Friday: a bird

I've had to travel from the north side of the city to the south side of the city a lot this week.  Usually two to three times per day.  Well, there was (is) a dead bird right after the bridge.  All week I've been watching the two parts of the carcass slowly move forward along the one-way road.  I've told both boys as I find it...interesting.

Anyway, we were traveling on the road for the last trip of the week, all looking for the bird, and I thought it had disappeared.  Maybe someone finally cleaned it up?  Nope.  It had managed to travel really far in the three hours since my last trip and was just farther up ahead.  We all got a laugh about it. 

Joshua finished Star Wars camp.  I think he mostly had a good time, but didn't enjoy "light saver" training and got poked in the eyebrow and so that was what I heard first today when he got in the car.  He did come back with some pretty cool things though.

Thursday: clocks

None of the clocks in our house gives the same time and it is driving me nuts.  They're all +/- 5 minutes, but it's enough that it can really mess me up.  I know there is an easy solution to this, but I don't enjoy changing clocks.

Isaac and I started his next Minecraft set and it is going very well.  Things were a bit touch and go for the animals at the beginning, but once we found some of them already made things have been going smoothly.  We went out for our treat since Joshua was in camp; we split a cherry and apple pie.  We both enjoyed the cherry more.  Then he had some gift certificates to the Peanut Store and got 'adult' chocolates.  There's nothing really adult about them, but they're more expensive and so the kids have usually gone for quantity over quality.  He enjoyed the first few that he got.

Wednesday: minecraft set

 Isaac and I finished his Minecraft set this morning...it was good to have two people working on it.  I had a note on my sheet that it may have gotten mixed up with another set and that was definitely the case!  We had so many extra pieces when we were done, and of course we were missing a whole bunch of piece too.  We were able to find most with ease (some with super-ease), but some must be with the other set.  We don't know which set it got mixed up with, so that's a bit of a problem.  Hopefully they'll show up, but if not I made notes on which pieces we need.

Tuesday: this and that

 Joshua rainbow colored some Legos this morning.  

Isaac and I got groceries and then worked on the Minecraft set.  Now that we're getting close to the end we're missing a lot of pieces, but most of them are normal pieces that we can find in loose Lego easily.

After lunch we did some errands, the kids went rock climbing, dinner, karate.  Nothing all that special, but still nice.  Oh!  After dropping off Joshua I saw a van with the company name of 'Creative Ice Rentals'.  I thought a long time about what the company actually did, because renting ice seems like a poor choice.  Renting ice sculptures seems like a poor choice.  I briefly thought about ice machines, but are there that many that it needs a rental company?

It's ice machines.  "Ice machine sales, service, and leasing."  I guess I understand all of those options, but their name does not seem to describe what they do.  Creative?  It seems normal to me.  Ice?  It's actually an ice machine.  Rental?  I feel like a lease is slightly different than a rental, although that one is pretty close.  (I just looked it up.  Rentals tend to be shorter, <= 30 days, and leases tend to be longer.)

Monday: Minecraft Lego

 Isaac received some Minecraft LEGO sets a few years back that were well played with and therefore got all mixed up.  It's been one of our goals to get them all sorted out this summer.

Joshua has science camp this week, so we got started.  It was slow going in the very beginning with lots of missing pieces, but we hit a grove in the middle with just some missing pieces.  I'm hoping we can finish up the first set tomorrow, but tomorrow is a bit of a busy day so we'll see what happens.

Isaac and I also played a game of Dominion that didn't take forever, which was rather nice.

Saturday: favorite animals

 Joshua: what is your third favorite animal?

Amanda: My third?  What is my second?

Joshua: polar bear.

Amanda, surprised: oh [I thought that was my first].  What is my first?

Joshua: cat

Amanda: fair enough.

Amanda: ok, my third.  Hmm, well, that's not something I've thought about before.  Cardinal.

Joshua: what is your forth favorite?

Amanda: oh, we're doing this.  Uh, jelly fish.

Joshua: fifth?

Amanda: Really?

Amanda: well, let's see.  I've done a mammal, and bird, and a fish...ish.  I should do an insect.

Joshua: or an amphibian

Amanda: yeah.  Well, let's go with water strider.

Joshua: what's your favorite amphibian?

Amanda: the geckos we see in Florida.

And with that I have a fifth favorite animal and probably will never be able to change it.

Also, I found out my sink is magnetic!  I was thrilled.  And a bit sad, as I feel like there were so many waterfall science things I could have done with small children.   I might have Joshua do them anyway.  Eleven years without realizing my sink was magnetic.  I feel like I should do something else amazing with this.

Friday: friends

Friends came over tonight!  The two other families also only have boys around the same age and there are a lot of connections within the group (high school, work, college).

The kids played really well together and enjoyed the lake.  At one point most of them were trying to get on the paddleboard and it was hilarious.