Wednesday: the day after

The election has been called for Trump.

I'm going to copy someone else's post from Facebook, because it is the kindest way to put this that I've seen.

"Well, I did my part -- thoughtfully formulated opinions that I hope are data driven and rational and then submitted my ballot. That's all the power I have in a democracy.

So, now that my preference did not come to fruition, I'll wish Trump well and hope his policies have a net positive affect on the country.

Obviously, his winning doesn't change my strong opinions about how vile of a human he is -- but what are you going to do?  I certainly don't hope for his failure, because his failure is our failure."

Tuesday: normal

Really, it was a rather normal day.  I thought classes went pretty well - there was good engagement.  I had lunch with Natalie and that was fun.  It was lightly sprinkly all day.  Rock climbing was ok - I was feeling slightly dizzy so I didn't climb as much as normal.

I've been watching all night as the election results roll in.  Eight years ago I woke up to a surprise result. so maybe I should have just waited a little longer to look.

Monday

 I finally got pictures of Grey Bear's cave from Saturday.

This afternoon Isaac had a dentist appointment to remove a tooth that wasn't coming out quickly enough.  Isaac was not excited about this, especially since it was a little loose.  So while he was brushing his teeth he pulled it out himself.  It was a weird call to the dentist - sorry for the late notice, but Isaac just pulled out the tooth that you guys were going to pull out, so I think we need to cancel.

Sunday: radish

Nothing amazing happened today, so let's talk about the use of the word "radish" in our house.

Anyone can say it when two people are arguing about something nonsensical and they need a break.  It's an argument that no one can win and people will just be frustrated and annoyed.  (Either the people arguing or the people around them that need to listen.)

When someone says, "RADISH!" the conversation stops.  Immediately.  

'Radish' must be used carefully and only for unimportant discussions.

This came about when Isaac was about two years old.  We needed a word that would stop the conversation.  There were some radishes on the cup he was using, and so that's what was chosen.  It has worked surprisingly well since then, although I'll be the first to admit that I'm the one that uses it the most.  It gets used on me once in a while, always to my chagrin, but it's easy to bounce back because no one is super frustrated yet.

Saturday: celebrating Grey Bear

Grey Bear's birthday was on Tuesday, but we were rather busy so his celebration was today.  There were two activities.

The first was fishing for Grey Bear.  Joshua made us all fishing poles, we 'fished' over the banister, and slowly fished up our bucket of 'fish'.  Whoever finished their bucket first then fished up Grey Bear and won!  While a bit repetitive, it didn't take too much time and Ben won.

We also did a group Lego challenge to build a home for Grey Bear.  We made a cave because it doesn't have to be exactly the same and so it made it easy to all work on.  I don't have pictures yet.

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Tornado appeared in several of the pictures today.  Once just being cute:

and once being compared in weight to the Lego cat Ben is working on:

Friday: stuff done

I got stuff done today!  I just worked my way down the list and even got stuff done that wasn't urgent.   It was all in the "do this soon" section though.  The big project of the day was cleaning out drains.  They weren't as clogged as I was expecting, so the job wasn't as yucky as I was expecting either.  Everything seems to be draining better, hopefully, so hurray!

It was sleepover day for the lovies.  I was wearing a shirt that said, "There's a nap for that" which caused Isaac to remember that Giraffe wanted to join me for nap time and then all the other lovies (including the Gnome, who usually just sits in a corner) showed up too.  Creeper propped up my book while I was reading/falling asleep and he was really glad for that job so he didn't have to cuddle.

Three weekends ago: Indy/Fort Wayne

 Three weekends ago we had a big weekend and I'm just getting things under control and so it is time for the blog post.

Isaac had his first USAC competition in Indianapolis, and of course he got the morning slot so we had to stay overnight.  Ben was going to come with us, but in the end went up to Mackinac Island to have some bonding time with his mom.  We left Friday night, obviously.  I had wanted to leave about fifteen minutes earlier, but things happen and we left just a little later than ideal.  The drive was good until we got close to Indy and I saw that we had missed being able to take our preferred route by about 10 minutes due to a nightly road closure.  Oh shoot.  Well, I couldn't really look at the map very well, but we went the opposite way on a highway and only got to our hotel six minutes later than expected.  So we must have been going in a circle.  We got into the hotel and the kids got to sleep.  It wasn't all that late, so I did a little grading and then went to bed too.

In the middle of the night we had to weird things happen.  1) A car alarm went off.  After waiting a few minutes I finally got up and looked out the window.  Hmm...is that our car?  I went to find my keys to turn it off, but luckily it turned off right as I grabbed the keys.  I can imagine it though - two car alarms going off at once because I couldn't think straight in the middle of the night to see if it was my car.  2) Joshua yelled, " ZOUP!" (pause) "Ha!"  And went back to sleep.  It was our rally cry for the rest of the weekend and could always make Isaac smile.  

Saturday started out pretty well, although we maybe should have gotten there fifteen minutes earlier.  Not a huge deal.  There were six routes for Isaac, and he really wanted to top at least one.  Well, he topped the first one on his fourth try.  Ok, goal achieved.

The next two hours were...a bit harder.  The routes were hard.  Some of the lines were long.  A mistake was made.  Isaac was feeling the pressure.  We took a break and had a snack.  The coaches had been around and talking with him, but at this point they started talking with him a bit more.  

There was one route he hadn't tried yet, so after a very nice talk from the coach he went over to try it.  Aside: the coaches were amazing.  They're always amazing, but, as one put it, they want to make better human beings.  Becoming a better rock climber is just a secondary goal.  Isaac ended up spending the last half hour and all ten tries on this route and he got so, so close.  He got one hand on the top hold several times, but couldn't quite get his second hand on it.

He was disappointed.  We had another pep talk.  He tried climbing it after time was called but he was so tired by then that it just didn't quite work.  But since time was called, the pressure was also off at this point.  He had something to eat, walked around a bit, and started to shake off the bad parts.  He said, a day or two afterwards, that he enjoyed it.  I loved watching him as always.  It was definitely a good growing experience for him!

After lunch we headed over to Fort Wayne to see family!  They also had some competitions away from home on Saturday as JJ had double header soccer games, so we got to their house a few hours before they got home.  In the end, it was rather nice though.  It gave Isaac some times to unwind, take a shower, and work on a math test before cousins and all the fun showed up.

I didn't get many pictures at Fort Wayne.  The kids kind of just disappeared after dinner.  We had a fire on the deck with smores.  I talked with Nathan and Liz.  We left a bit after lunch on Sunday.  It was a short trip, but it was also really, really nice to see them!

Oh, while I wasn't with Ben, obviously, I did get one really nice picture sent to me.