Sunday: kids

 Today Isaac made me a house!  It was a fun house.

Then he added a nice green lawn with a river an foliage.  Why yes, I would love to live there.

But it turns out it is also surrounded by lava that is noisy and sometimes lights your house on fire.

And there are steep mountains with lots of monsters that always watch you.

And the only way out, to get groceries and such, is past the monsters, though a narrow crevice filled with spiders and loud chipmunks.

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Ben: You're running a race and you pass the person in second place.  What place are you in?
Isaac and Joshua think.
Joshua: Oh!  I know!  The desert or the forest!

That one is still cracking me up.

Saturday: boat

This afternoon we went out with Travis and family on their boat.

The boys had fun on the tube, but didn't like going really fast.

So after a pleasant ride with them Scarlet and Autumn joined me and then we got to go fast!  I haven't done much tubing since I was 10, but I remember the best part was being thrown in the water.  (I managed to hang on the whole time, but I think it helped that I was in the middle so Scarlet fell off first.)

Ben went wakeboarding.  He looked like a pro.  Maybe not a pro but he did get up on his first try and knew what he was doing.

Isaac tried for the first time and got right up too!  Unfortunately, his hands hurt so his ride was only about two seconds long.  But he was definitely up.

After this we brought the lily pad out and the kids played on it for a quite a while until they noticed snacks were available.  Isaac tried playing some more but was too cold, so we headed back in before too long.  It was pretty good timing though, as it was dinner time by the time we were home.

Look at this cool picture I got too:

Friday: wildlife

This morning we went on a little hike.  We saw so many chipmunks!  But no bears.  We also saw a green butterfly.

Joshua had (has?  It's still in process) a friend come over for a sleepover.  His mom and I have been working on a puzzle for a few months and it was a hard one.  It was kind of blurry and there were repeat patterns.  But we finally finished it today!  Phew.  I have another one from Mother's Day that I've been excited to get on the puzzle board.

The boys played outside for a while.  The mulberry tree is dropping it's berries right now and the ducks are cautious but very willing to get close to people to get the berries.

vacation Sunday: meeting

Three of the four families were all in the same hotel, so we slowly met each other throughout the morning.

The women had a plan: a year ago we had all bought the same shirt (albeit in two different colors).  We wore them today to see how long it would take people to notice.  Violet was the first person to notice and did a good job of staying quiet.

We all met in the same place same time a bit later for mini golf at Disney.  We thought we were going to need to pay (a lot) for parking, but we didn't!  It was a great start to vacation.

Eva noticed our shirts right away and announced it to the families that were there...which was almost everyone but not quite.  (This is important for later.)

Mini golf was great!  It was a little hot, but we moved through the course well.

At the end of mini golf we were all standing around waiting for everyone to finish and we talked about the shirts.  Ben and Isaac both had their *aha* moments that we were wearing the same shirt.

Then we went to the Florida mall.  The girls went to have lunch at the American Girl store and the guys hung out in the mall and went to the arcade.  The (male) employee at the American Girl store noticed that we all had the same shirts and asked for the story.  It was rather funny that he noticed when we weren't even all standing together.

Ben and I took Marshall and skipped the shopping.  (It was probably a good choice...Costco was apparently a mass of humanity and didn't need five more people.)  Unfortunately, our house took an extra hour to get ready and they have some serious parking/towing rules.  We ended up by a shaded playground for a bit and Ben stayed with the car.  Katy and the girls joined us for a bit (Ryan stayed with the car) and then we got to the house.

It was a lovely house!  Tons of bedrooms, clean, and large.  The ninja room was an instant hit and the arcade room was free.  The fun bedrooms were fun.  The kids were instantly gone exploring.

Isaac and Joshua ended up with the Mario room to themselves, although no kids had luggage or anything in a fun room.  There were enough rooms that every family had two rooms, plus the fun rooms, plus a spare.

There was also a candy room, a pirate ship (not pictured yet), and a ninja course room.

One of the reasons we chose this house was due to the private pool, which got used a lot.

Thursday: this and that

Today was the last day of VBS.  It went well.  I showed up because it's important.  I engaged.  And I can be glad that it is finished.

Joshua and I had a few hard times today.  He also decided to use one of his "skip a chore" coupons so that he didn't have to do his writing.  I then ripped it so that it didn't get mixed back into all the coupons we have in this house.  I came back from karate to the following note.

"Dear mom, as you can see I wrote for 10 minutes.  I taped the coupon back together.  I decided that it was not worth it to use the coupon.  I put it in my room.  It was not worth it to skip 10 minutes of writing.  After all, I only have 2 left why waste it on only 10 minutes of writing.  And this was [oris] the chore as you probably figured out.  Why did you rip it?  When you can reuse it.  From Joshua. *heart*"

Wednesday: a little work

Another day of VBS!  It went fine.  I never love VBS like some people do, but it's important and the time goes by quickly.  The kids are fun.  Joshua wore a bunch of bling from this year and last year today.

A pretty normal afternoon: nap, World of Warcraft (Joshua is getting better but still sometimes runs in the opposite direction), rock climbing.  We got home and I had to do some outside chores.  That was probably a mistake because it was so hot out.  Luckily, Isaac was helping so we got through pretty quickly.  We also have a bunch of mulberries on the ground right now and the ducks are not very afraid of us.

Joshua had wanted a weekly chore list like Isaac gets this summer, but realized today that it wasn't going all that well.  He wasn't really behind, but it does take more effort to manage a weekly list than a daily list.  So we went back to a daily list today and that really seemed to work better for both of us.  Isaac is doing a nice job staying on top of his list, although it's also only the first week of summer.

I also managed to get a few things done from my to-do list.  However, "think about dinner" was not a good choice of words.  I thought about the dinner.  How it is nice to eat.  How I should make some food.  And then I ignored it until dinner was soon and I actually had to decide what to make.  I'll be honest...I expect to say I didn't get many things off my to-do list a lot this summer.  There are other fun things to do and most of the stuff will wait until the kids are back in school, even if it drives me nuts a little bit.

Tuesday: normal day

It was a pretty normal day, all told.

It started with VBS.  It went fine.  Isaac had a better day.

The power was out for about 45 minutes this afternoon.  It went like this:
*The fan turns off*
A: oh shoot, there goes my nap.
J: ISAAC! CAN YOU GET ME SOME PAPER TOWEL*??  I'M OUT AND DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS.
A: YOU MEAN TOILET PAPER!
J: Oh yeah.  That
I: Why can't you get it yourself?
J: The power went out.
I: Ohhhh. **

*Joshua can't seem to remember it's called toilet paper and not paper towel.  Every time.  It makes me laugh.

**I think Isaac was in a bright room and that's why he didn't realize, but I was still a bit surprised.