Weekend: brick world Chicago

 This past weekend we went to a Lego show.  It was the same one we went to five years ago.  It was busy at times, but super fun again. 

It's hard to choose favorites, but this dress was one of them

There was a study in color, only some shown here, that made Ben's to 5.

This was made of spider webs

This table had a lot of flowers, and many of them used fabrics (capes mostly) for the pedals

Isaac's favorite part was the great ball machine.  I only have one shown here but marbles move around in a big square over lots of machines.

This was in the top five for Ben and me.  It layered trans-blue pieces on other colors to make the painting effect.

This was in everyone's to five.  There was a black light to make the reef glow.

We got to build some city buildings.

And saw a landmark from home.

This was by far Joshua's favorite, a big and deep Minecraft scene.  Before finding it he was flagging and almost done, but then we spent 15 min here.

We thought that was the end, and it was about 45 minutes from closing.  Then we found the activity room!  The kids had asked about the green bricks because they remembered them from last time, but we didn't see them in the main room so thought they weren't around.

Joshua and I both built creepers

The back of my creeper had his mouth closed because he was underwater, so I also made some kelp.

There were several other tables, but they were all a bit busy. The lawn games were clear, so we spent some time there.  That rounded out our time nicely.

We did stop at the Lego store for some pick-a-brick boxes and then went home.

Wednesday: groceries

 I know, it's another installment of grocery adventures with Amanda.  I'm listening to a book right now about WW2 England and how some people were observing and writing everything down for posterity.  This blog doesn't come close to that, but at least if anyone ever finds it they'll know some about the grocery stores.

Anyway, it's been on my mind lately that I should switch to Aldi.  I've shopped there a little in the past, but I enjoy the variety and the large selection of items that Meijer has.  But...groceries are expensive.  And some items are getting 'really' expensive.  I buy the off-brand items most of the time anyway, so why not buy Aldi brand?

So Joshua and I tried it out today.  Of course, my grocery list was crazy small; only about ten items.  I can't remember the last time I've only had ten items on my list - it's usually about 33.  At the same time, it's a good time to start since we don't have to hunt for as many items.  We found eight of the ten items and the total came out to $29 dollars.  If we pretend that I had my normal 33 items, it would be about $120.  My grocery bill at Meijer is usually $150 +/- $50, so I probably saved a decent amount.

I think we'll try shopping there over the summer.  I like the idea of saving money, but it was annoying to be in a new place and not be able to get all my items.  I'm hoping to save up enough items that I can do a Meijer pickup just once in a while.

A, after dinner: The grocery total was less than $30 so I gave myself a triple gold medal*!
B: Well, that negates the savings offset.

*Yeah, I give myself pretend medals based on my grocery bill.  $75-$125 = gold, $125-$175 = silver, $175-$200 = bronze, >$200 = sadness - hopefully there's a weird and expensive non-grocery item

Tuesday: rock climbing

The Huismans joined us for rock climbing today.  We were afraid it was going to be really hot, but it ended up only being warm.  It wasn't sunny and there was a nice breeze, so it was good.  Everyone had a wonderful time, with one of the them even rating it 200/10!  Score.

Monday: normal

It was a pretty normal day, other than that Ben took a day of vacation.  So it felt like a hybrid Saturday/Monday: we did some of our normal Saturday things, but also normal Monday work.

The kids were occupied well this morning, so I was able to actually get a few things checked off on my to-do list.  I also gave several of my items to Isaac as chores, so the list isn't increasing as rapidly as normal.

There's a heat wave going on, so we stayed inside most of the day.  I brought Joshua to swimming lessons and went to karate in the evening, but that's was it.  (It was disappointing to come out of karate.  Usually I'm all hot and sweaty and the cooler air is a welcome relief.  Today it was hotter, because thankfully the school has A/C, and it made me even sweatier.)

Sunday: Happy Father's Day!

The kids did a great job celebrating Ben today.  I helped facilitate some things, but for the most part they did things or figured things out on their own.

Joshua spent all week making a sword from a video game for Ben, along with a stone to pull it from, a scabbard, and a stand.  He also got Ben some chocolates.  Isaac got Ben an expansion for Space Base, and we played that after church.  It was a really good expansion; it added interesting mechanics while not making the game longer or harder.

We went to Larry and Cheryl's for dinner and it was nice to see family again for a bit.

Thursday: tar pit

We ended up starting a new game of Castle Panic this morning; we were going to lose the other game.

We've had a hard time winning this game, so about half way through the game I implemented a new and permanent house rule: the tar (which used to just stick a monster in place for one turn) is now a tar pit.  We quickly came up with some additional caveats to the rule: 

1) Monsters are stuck in the tar and can't move until they take damage
2) you can attack flying monsters with the tar pit, but if the tar pit is already on the ground the flying monsters can fly over it.
3) the tar pit stays in its section until moved (which doesn't happen often)

This was just the extra little bit that we needed to win the game against the monsters.  We barely won, but we won.

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We went rock climbing in the afternoon.  There was a new traverse route around the middle section that was fun and easy, but I am just not very strong.  I got about half way around in two tries.  Joshua got around twice in the first fifteen minutes.  It will be a good new goal for me.

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I also had karate this evening and my body wasn't quite working right.  There are just days it's a little off, and there's a chance that rock climbing didn't help.  It was fine, just not amazing.

Wednesday:

 We started playing Castle Panic this morning.  I needed to pause it to get a few chores done before swimming lessons, and ten seconds after we all stood up a new monster showed up and completely destroyed our castle.  (Luckily, I had taken a picture before he arrived.)

We also went to a playground with some friends.  It was a lovely day and there was some nice shade.  The kids played well and Natalie and I had a nice time chatting.

We're also getting a new furnace/AC and water heater tomorrow!  We've been talking with the company for a bit and I sent them another few questions on Sunday via email.  Imagine my surprise when I opened my email at 3:30pm this afternoon and it said that the install was set up for tomorrow at 8am.  I called them in a slight panic.  My guess is that most of the time when furnace installs are set up it is an emergency install and happens as quickly as possible.  We have just been having small problems with the furnace - enough to need a new one but not to make it an emergency so the lack of communication surprised me.  Anyway, the company closed at 4pm.  Ben and I quickly reviewed the install quote and called them up to make a slight change and get the questions from Sunday answered.  Everything looked good and so now we're getting it set up tomorrow.