Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Tuesday: a nice day

Well, I had a very nice snow day today, and it culminated with another snow day tomorrow!  My week was going to be quite busy and, honestly, I wasn't very excited about that.  But both things for tomorrow have been canceled and I had time to get several things done today.  Doing my other things would have been good, but I can also be happy that I don't have to do them now.

Isaac is only medium-excited about the snow day tomorrow.  I think he'd prefer it next week...which we have absolutely no control over.  He might have this idea in his imagination about what a snow day should look like and in reality they include more work.  Joshua was excited though!

I sent Laura a Happy Birthday picture and she wasn't sure if I photoshopped it or actually went to the store and put party hats on chip bags.  I'm just excited that someone thinks I would do such a thing and now I think that'll be my goal for her next birthday.  The chip bags and I can go around to all the different foods that say "party size" on them, put a party hat on them, and get a picture.



Monday, January 20, 2025

Monday: extra weekend day

Today was a lovely day.  Ben stayed home and the kids were home because of MLK day.  We put together Legos.  We fixed a light switch.  We did a Lego challenge a la Joshua.  We worked on the D&D puzzle.  There is also a snow day tomorrow!  I am rather jealous: I'd like a snow day, or at least a virtual day, too.

The Lego challenge was to make something for a lovie.

Isaac got Snacksalotal.  Isaac was going to make five treats, but only had time for 1.75...a Danish and mint chocolate chip ice cream.


Ben got Creeper.  He made an exploding cat hospital.


Catcachinno got a coffee dispenser with a coffee cup that would move from the dispenser to his mouth.


I got Grey Bear!  He's my favorite.  Grey Bear likes taking naps so I made him a new bed.  I was going to make a really fancy bed!  I ended up with a basic bed because I didn't have much time.


BREAKING NEWS!  Hope just canceled classes tomorrow.  How exciting!!  It will mess up the schedule a little bit, but I don't love 'date day' and the lab computers now have TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER which is so much easier to understand than LEFT(, SEARCH()) and RIGHT(,LEN()-SEARCH()).  I'll probably combine the two.



Saturday, January 18, 2025

Saturday: Lego and friends

 Isaac has been working on a Lego radio set that he got for Christmas.  He asked for this one because it is supposed to be a really interesting set to build.  It's been a kind of funny set though.  Isaac will build about five pieces and then fiddle with the latest thing that he made for a while, figuring out how it went together.  Then he would roll on the floor a bit, then he would play with Joshua a bit, and then he would do another five pieces.  And repeat the process.  It's been hilarious, and wonderful.


Friends came over this evening.  It was lovely.  We had tacos, played Space Base, and talked Legos.  

Friday, January 17, 2025

Friday: Operation: Clean the House - Storage Room

Today I started cleaning the storage room.  I originally was planning on doing the storage room last, but it's gotten really hard to move around in the storage room so it needed to be moved up.

Today's project was to get rid of one bookcase's worth of books so that I could stuff that is currently on the floor in the empty bookcase.  We don't use actual books anymore, so for the most part we would just read these books on a kindle if we wanted to read them again.

Before:


After.  I know it looks neater too, but that wasn't really the goal.  There's still a lot of dust and some spider webs, but I was able to move other stuff out of the way.


I grabbed a few other easy things, and this is how much I took out.  It's still a mess, but I feel like it's a lot easier to walk around in.  I'm not completely sure what to next, but I'll contemplate it for the next week and do something.  The goal is about two hours a week.

As I was dealing with some books I had grabbed from Cheryl's house, I found a pack of cards.

I opened them up to see if they were all there, and to my surprise they weren't playing cards!  Ben was happily excited about finding them.


Thursday, January 16, 2025

Thursday: traffic

Thursdays are my 'run the kids around in the car' the most day.  However, the trips went faster than normal because there wasn't any traffic.  Well, there was some traffic, but not nearly as much as normal.  It was kind of weird.

Giraffe joined me at work.  Apparently he wanted to watch students go past.




Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Wednesday: book

I'm listening to an audio book, as normal.  It's not a very good book.  One of those, "I did something wrong so instead of fixing it I'll just ignore it."

Anyway, one of the quotes is when the main character is saying how she needs to get out more, but her favorite activity is reading.  'And reading, by its very nature, is a solitary activity.'  Honestly, this person is doing it wrong.  My favorite way to read is next to someone else.  Yes, can be solitary but it doesn't have to be.

Other things interesting things that happened:
1) The humidifier people came.  They said there was one small mechanical value that they opened and they changed the programming so that the humidifier works independently of the furnace.  The humidity in the house is already up to where we want it.

2) I removed the piece of flooring between the kitchen and dining room.  It popped up a day ago and it was a trip hazard.  I glued it once before, but as I was looking at it again it was really beat up.  So I took it all out and will get a new piece tomorrow.

3) Ben and I went out for dinner while the kids were doing church things.  It was lovely.

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Tuesday: snow

This morning we opened the garage and there was a surprising amount of snow.  Ah, well, that happens.  The drive to Hope was pretty bad.  I texted Ben to make sure that he had also gotten to work ok.  

Ben said the following, "The conversation in the car was: [Dad says almost anything]. Boys respond: "And that's why we should have had a snow day!"

To be fair, it really should have been a snow day.  I think the snow started too late to call it though.

There was a new alcove up...there were really interesting routes and the kids talked about them a lot.