Weekend: cottage

The kids and I went up to the cottage for the weekend to see Dad and Pat and Nathan and his family.  It was a lovely weekend.  It was great to see Nathan and Liz and the cousins had a great time playing together.

We got there around 11am and the whole day was on-and-off rain.  We enjoyed being outside when it wasn't raining and enjoyed doing inside things when it was.  At one point we played a few rounds of boche ball.  Isaac threw the snitch first down a hill and it landed about half way down.  Then we threw the rest of the balls and they almost went in the lake.  We all laughed about it a lot.

Liz brought up a rubberband bracelet making kit and it was a hit.  Joshua made close to ten bracelets and Isaac made interesting creations.

We also finally got around to making quills.  It's been a project that we've been waiting for for about two years.  Joshua was given an eagle feather recently so the timing was perfect.

After Joshua was finished trying his out, I took it over.  It took a ton of ink!  Writing in cursive and print was about the same; all old documents must be in cursive because that was just the style of the times.  I also had a lot of splatter and double lines, but for my first try it wasn't too bad.  Since I had to dip the quill every word or two it took a really long time to write.

Dad needed help moving some dock sections up a hill.  The kids actually helped, Nathan and I just heckled Dad.  When he was debating if the dock section would fit between two things, we said helpful things like, "Someone once told us that taking a few extra minutes to make sure something fits is worth the time."  Or "I was taught by someone to measure twice cut once."  Or "if only there was this thing to help one figure out if something will fit through a space."

In the evening we played a game of space base.  Isaac won the game; it's been a while since he's won.  But he had an amazing strategy and ended up with 44 base income if Dad/JJ or I rolled a 3 or a 4.  

The morning was cold!  It was a bit of a shock after the heatwave this past week.  More bracelets were made, some games were played, and the kids still played outside.  They made up a game involving the swing and played it a lot.

Isaac and Joshua went tubing before lunch, but when they got out of the boat their lips were turning blue.  Pat turned on the fire for them.  The weather started to get nice just as we were about to go, but I also wanted to get home and see Ben a bit.

Friday: Terra Firma

We went to a rock climbing place in Grand Rapids today, just to do something different.  (Also, it was air conditioned and our normal gym isn't and it's hot out.)

We also met up with one of Joshua's friends.  Both kids had a great time.  They climbed for about two hours, then they left and we went to have lunch.  We went back after lunch.  Joshua didn't climb for long as he said his shoes were hurting, but he was content to read while Isaac finished up.  Isaac continued to climb for 1-1.5hours, getting in a ton of new routes.

On this route, which looked like a big rainbow, the top was at the end of the rainbow.  I suggested that he just use his toe to get it but Isaac refused.  The elation on his face when he figured out how to get it with his hands was cool.

The cave.  It wasn't tall, which was both nice and not nice at the same time.

Thursday: sink

After the new water heater, our kitchen faucet, which was already on the fritz, really needed to be replaced.  It gave us water, but in a weird way.  The instahot had also died about a month ago, so I decided to try and replace both at once.

It was a day of ups and downs.  I got a lot of things unplugged, only to have a really hard time getting a water filter out.  Joshua and I picked up some strap wrenches after swimming lessons and were able to loosen it up.  Hooray!  Everything was out!  We had lunch and I took a nap.

Things were going well and I got to installing the instahot.  I ordered the exact same unit so it could just be switched out.  Of course, that didn't quite work.  The fittings looked different.  Turns out, I needed some compression fittings.  Ok.  Off to Lowes!  I found what I needed, with some help, but the 1/4 nut didn't seem like it was going to fit.  (I carried the old instahot all around Lowes like a baby.)  It was the best option, so I bought it anyway in case the new one was a little smaller.  It wasn't.  I was on my third call of the day to Dad while Joshua filed down the hole and ended up making it big enough.  Like I said, it should have fit it just didn't quite fit.  So I was able to tell Dad that I didn't need his help...this time.

After that, I was almost home free.  It took ten minutes to get one of the screws in the garbage disposal back in, but after messing with it the screw finally caught.  A few more steps and we were done!  No leaks!

Now, keeping it real, this project did take most of the day (with the exception of swimming lessons, nap time, dinner, and karate).  The rest of the kitchen looks like there was an explosion.  I'm not all that optimistic that it'll get all cleaned up tomorrow, but hopefully at least the floor.  Obviously, I didn't put anything away because I want to watch for leaks.  Yeah.  That's it.

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.