Monday

Today happened.  I got a lot but not all my grading done.  I went out to lunch with a friend.  I cleaned the kitchen.  We were out of bowls.  We had more bowl food items than normal the last few days, and just ran out.  We've run out of plates a few times, but never bowls.  I came upstairs to find Ben eating his cereal out of our four cup glass measuring cup.

Don't be fooled; the kitchen isn't clean.  I ran the dishwasher, but there was over a load on the counter.  I'll get around to it.

I helped with homework.  I made dinner.  I went to karate, where we did self-defense, again.  I looked at my to-do list and thought, "well, none of that sounds like fun."

And so, in the end, it was a fine day.  A little boring, a little productive.  Tomorrow will be an odd day, so hopefully I remember everything.

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: