Thursday: cleaning

I did the minimum required chores this morning so that I could start Operation: Clean the House - Master Bedroom edition.  I cleaned the end tables and the top of the dresser...and got rid of a ton of stuff!!  It looks nice, but at the same time there are still some very messy parts so the overall effect is still lacking.  It was an excellent start though.

We had parent-teacher conferences today.  Both were rather boring, but I'd rather have it that way then need to actually discuss anything.  I did learn that Joshua is actually using his noise-canceling headphones that I got around Christmas, so I was happy to hear that.

I made a lemonade pie for pi day and to give to Isaac while we finished our board game.  However, he was in significantly better spirits tonight, so I'm not sure the pie was necessary.  At the same time, food always helps.

Wednesday: game cat

Horizon loves games.  He loves sitting on them.  He loves to walk through the middle while we play.  He goes around to each player, trying to see what they have.

I also bought too much butter.  I didn't realize we actually had enough and then it was on sale.  Also, the kids have stopped eating the cinnamon butter so we're not going through that quickly any more.

Joshua built a laptop.  I should get a few more pictures of it, but it's pretty cool.  From a distance, it has tricked me more than once.

Tuesday: half day

The kids had a half day today because of conferences.  It worked out well because I am on break.  Well, I guess Isaac had more than a half day because he still had to go to PATH.  Let me tell you, he was not excited about that.

Besides that the day was fine.  I got a little less done than I was hoping, but about as much as I expected.  The kids and I did some good take-away routes at rock climbing.  (Each time they do a route, one of the holds is removed and can't be used anymore.)  Isaac frequently gets down to only a few left and Joshua had some impressive moves this time too.

Monday: fun things

First of all, I finished cleaning the downstairs bathroom!  It might be a bit hard to tell from the pictures, but I scrubbed the floor, repainted the blue shelf, and touched up some paint.  (The paint touch up is a little obvious, but it's better than what was there before.)  I also cleaned off a ton of marks from one of the doors.

Before and after:

I'm most excited about the cabinets.  They went from a huge mess to useable.

While the volume of clutter wasn't huge, things that didn't belong have been moved to better spots.

I haven't been biking for a while so the bike got moved.  It might come back at some point.  In the meantime, the tables and ladders are being stored in that awkward area.

This only took me 4.5 months!  However...November and December were especially busy for me.  January had a ton of snow days which always throws the routine off.  So in some ways it's only been 1.5 months of frequent work.  Next up is the master bedroom.

Isaac was telling me about how he used Excel to sort some data to get frequency numbers from it more easily.  I had him show me.  And then I taught him about pivot tables!  And then about conditional formatting.  He said he had used an IF statement before, but he just kind of puzzled it out.  So we briefly looked at those and he realized that between the IF statements and the conditional formatting, he could make the "color by square" math puzzles he did during the pandemic.  (Note: I know you don't need an IF statement, but it was what was working for him.)  So he made this nice message for when I solved the math equation:

By the time Ben came home, Ben had to solve three equations.  One for each word. :)

Sunday: low-key

It was a pretty low-key day for me today.  We watched church from home and Ben brought the boys to visit Grandma without me.  Right now I'm feeling better, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Saturdays: ups and downs

 Let's start with the down: my cold is worse.  I've had it for several days now, but I was quite worn out today.

Then the up: the car just needed a jump start and it seems to be working again.  We got it back to the house this morning and took it out later this afternoon with no problems.  The battery is probably getting old, so we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Friday: popcorn

Joshua and I decided on popcorn for our evening snack.  I have a ton of normal popcorn...hmm...not the microwave kind.  Anyway, I decided to give it a try.  

Here's how it started...

And here's how it ended.  I forgot to account for the volume change in the kernels.

We added our toppings and it was delicious.  It was more work than I was hoping for, but also more delicious than I was expecting.

In other news, my car isn't starting.  We don't think it's a dead battery but is acting weirdly.  It's sitting in a parking lot by the kids' school because obviously that's when it decided to die.  I suppose there's never a good place though.  We're going to try again tomorrow and then I guess we'll need to get it towed if it doesn't miraculously fix itself.   I called Ben several times while trying to troubleshoot and it turned out he was giving a presentation.  Oh, I felt so bad but not having the car start is a small emergency.  There was a friend still in the parking lot so she brought us home.  Also, I want to note that I'm always the one with car problems and Ben is always the one to bail me out.  It doesn't seem fair, but he's always so nice about it.