Thursday: climbing

Today went well.  The kitchen is mostly clean.  Many presents got wrapped. 

While I was picking up Isaac from rock climbing, I was talking with one of the other moms.  She mentioned that she needed to dethaw the meat.  Dethaw!  That's a word Mom used to use.  I used it for a while until Ben mentioned that it actually means to freeze meat, although it is a combination of defrost and thaw.

The 'professional' pictures from the last rock climbing competition came out and Isaac was caught for once.

Wednesday: swirls

Ahh, my thoughts were pretty swirly today.  There are a lot of things with Christmas that need to be remembered.

This morning I frosted the brownies, made peanut butter cookies, dealt with shredded chicken, and made mashed potatoes.  I'm not keeping up with the dishwasher, so that made things a bit difficult.  There is only a short food thing to deal with tomorrow though, so maybe it'll happen.

I worked on getting Christmas presents ready.

Oh!  Laundry!  I did that too.

So yeah - it wasn't all that exciting of a day, but it was fine.  

This lego pencil fooled me.  I thought the eraser looked weird at a glance, but I only glanced at it.

Tuesday: Christmas prep

Well, now that grades are in I can start working more on Christmas prep.  Although really, the day was pretty boring.

I got groceries, went to the library, and dropped off the compost.  I made brownies, chex mix, and started getting some Christmas presents prepped.

I took a nap.  It was a lovely nap.

I made dinner.  I feel like I did a few other things but I'm not sure what.  A few emails, cleaning up a few things, stuff like that.

We went to rock climbing.  Joshua came up with a new game.  I don't always love new games, but this one turned out pretty good!  There is one off-limits hold on a route, choosen by person 1.  Person 2 gets three guesses as to which hold it is.  If they guess it, great!  It gets skipped as you do the route.  If Person 2 doesn't guess it correctly, they have do the route with as few holds as possible so that they don't accidently use the off-limits hold.

By the time we get back from rock climbing, Isaac takes a shower, and we eat, it is pretty much time for the kids to go to bed.  Yesterday I finished a quilt top, which usually means I at least pretend to clean up my desk and deal with odd things.  Isaac really needed some clothes alterations done, so I did two of his three items.

And then it turns out it is time for me to go to bed.  Yesterday my to-do list was at rather high, and I think I added as many things as I took away today.  But maybe tomorrow I'll be extra productive!

Monday: grades

 I put grades in today!  I finished up what I needed to finish and put grades in by 11am.  A bit longer than I was hoping, but still done.

I had lunch with a friend.  I took a nap.  I made dinner.  I got rid of some of the short tasks on my list.

Also, I realized today that I forgot ear day!  Ear day is Dec 13 and it's when ears are the best for eating.  It's a cyclical thing, and July 13 is the day when they taste the worst.  Anyway, I forgot the day until I was teasing Joshua during nightly questions.  So I ate his ears.  Then Isaac showed up and I called him in a for a hug.  He was rather suspicious, but came for a hug anyway.  And I ate his ear.  But!  Everyone was laughing!

Sunday: got better

This morning was a bit rough.  The kids and I had different expectations about breakfast and time management, and so Isaac was sad I rushed him out the door and Joshua was starving because he didn't eat second breakfast.

But then it started to get better.  Isaac finished all the pages of a math test that he needed to finish faster than normal.  Joshua went to a fun birthday party while the rest of us played Apiary.  (Isaac and I tied, but I won on the tie-breaker.  So, per tradition, I had to put the game away at the end.)

I send Isaac some desmos equations that returned swirling hearts.  He gave me a single heart back:

And then one of his chores was to send me a text (so that we can keep his free wi-fi number) and he sent me this, which is so true and cracked both of us up.

And lastly I sent a quick thank you to the mom of the birthday party and got this lovely text back:
"Joshua is an exceptionally kind person. He really cares about how other people feel. "

Saturday: normal

We had our first "normal" Saturday in a while.  I don't know if that makes it a normal Saturday or not, but it was nice.  Legos were built, work was done, games were played.

Friday: getting done!

I gave the last final exam today!  I finished grading the physics labs and was also happy to find that I'm over 2/3 of the way through the final exams.  I've been pecking away at them at night; it isn't as efficient, but somewhat more enjoyable.

I went to get groceries and was in and out of Aldi in about 15 minutes.  This is much shorter than I was expecting.  I was pretty pumped about it, but at the same time it just meant that I had to go wait in a parking lot because I was too early to pick up the kids.

I don't have jury duty next week.  This would have been the best week to have it; I'm really hoping not to get it the week of Christmas.  It seems like a mean thing to do.