Thursday: arriving

I got home today and there was a box of donuts on the counter!  They were delicious! 

Dusty arrived safely. He's here mainly to see Ben, but the kids have strong ideas of what they want to do with him too.

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.