Monday: a nice day

Isaac spent most of the day with Cheryl today.  Joshua and I had a lovely day with just the two of us.  One of the summer projects has been to put together the Mario Lego sets we have.  They were all in a box, because they're much easier to play with if they're put together, but in reality they were falling apart.  I think we have two or three sets left, but it's been fun working together to restore function.  Once we have them together, they can get played with for a bit and then they'll get stored as built sets but in separate bags; hopefully that will still make play somewhat easy without it being too crazy.

We also bought Joshua some shoes.  I don't understand shoe shopping.  At all.  The little mat in front of the kids shoes clearly said he was a size seven.  PSA: kids shoes only seem to go up to size 5, and there aren't many of those.  Ok.  So we walked around a bit and we used an actual shoe sizer, which said he was a size 4.  He tried on some of the shoes and we ended up with a size 5 so there is a bit of room to grow.  I'm still not sure what to do when Isaac needs new shoes; men's shoes don't seem to come in small sizes.  I cannot wait until we get out of this weird sizing limbo that is "big kid" shoes and I don't have to think so hard about it.  I will not be sad to never wonder about shoe sizing systems again.  

Isaac got his first set of Invisalign retainers today.  (An equivalent of braces.  They are trays that can be popped in and out.  They must be popped out while eating, but you can eat anything.  They also look a ton more comfortable on the inner mouth than braces.  They take a bit more responsibility, but Isaac can do that.)  The first few days he might be achy, but that should lessen as time goes on.

Sunday: old friends

Brian and Amy and family came over for the afternoon.  We played some games and talked.  Joshua and Emily played together the whole afternoon (Legos and in the lake) while Carolyn joined them a little bit.  Isaac was feeling a bit under the weather so he played games with us and relaxed instead.

We went to Larry and Cheryl's for dinner and it was lovely to see them again too.

Saturday

 Happy cat day!

Joshua finished his kitchen week.  He had a much different approach to kitchen week than Isaac.  Isaac tried to keep the kitchen clean.  Joshua did the bare minimum needed to keep the dishwasher processing.  If I had to have guessed, I would have switched the actions of the two kids.

The rest of the day was pretty boring.

Friday:

It was a pretty normal day today.  I dropped off Ben, Joshua and I went grocery shopping, we finished our escape room, Isaac and I finished a different game.  After lunch was an appointment, a nap, a few chores, and my bakery time - pizza crust and another sourdough loaf.

vacation Saturday: leaving

While I was originally a bit sad that we only had a vacation Sunday to Saturday (although there were good reasons), it turned out to be very fortuitous.  Tropical Storm Chantal was forecasted to make landfall early in the morning on Sunday.  

Isaac and I joined Heather for an early morning walk again.  We needed to leave pretty early, but the uber was scheduled to pick us up a bit after 8am.

We left the first of all the families, skipping out on the last clean up (again).  (There weren't many exit chores though, so we didn't leave them that much work.)  We got to the airport just as it started raining and ...they delayed our flight.  Of course...we're traveling with Ben.  Luckily we had a long layover, so weren't overly worried.  Also, they were doing construction in the airport and so there was only one set of bathrooms in our concourse...I'm pretty sure the line for the women's bathroom extended over 30 people at one point.  It was crazy!  I walked to the other concourse and found a shorter line.

We did manage to fly out in between rain bands - luckily it let up just long enough for us to get out.  While the other families were waiting for their flights they saw a double red flag at the beach - no swimming allowed.

Our flight in Baltimore was also delayed a bit.  I was so tired it felt like I was falling asleep on my feet.  They finally boarded the flight and I was napping before they shut the doors.  I vaguely remember take-off, but only enough to recognize that we were actually leaving.  (There have been other vacations where I've fallen asleep only to wake up and still be sitting on the ground.)

In Grand Rapids we stopped at the Lego Store.  Joshua was only feeling ok and we had all had a weird eating schedule, so Joshua and I got a smoothie while Ben and Isaac did the pick-a-brick wall.  We picked up some food in Holland and finally got home.  It was a lovely vacation, but it's always nice to be home too.

vacation Friday: Happy Fourth of July

The plan for today was an easy one.  Ocean in the morning, fly-over at 1pm, fireworks from the balcony at night.  And pack up somewhere in there too.

The ocean was a green flag for the day and honestly, it was a little boring.  Great for relaxing bobbing, not so great for fun boogie boarding.  I'm not sure I talked about the flags at all in the previous posts. Tuesday was a red flag during the day, which worked well because we had other plans.  One day it was a yellow flag, but as I was getting ready to be done I realized it was hard to walk back to shore.  (The water was knee deep.  I wasn't worried, but had to wait until the waves were going into shore to move.)  Right as I was getting out a red flag was put out instead.  Most of the time it was a yellow flag, and those were definitely the best.

Fly-over...most people crowded onto the lower balcony, although maybe a few went to a different one.  I elected to stay inside and eat my lunch.  The beach was packed by this time, so we were really appreciating our front row balconies.  

The rest of the afternoon we just hung out.

We finished the puzzle.

And played some games.

We did so much laundry this vacation, although most of the time it was a little bit of laundry from every family.  There were a few chairs in the upstairs hang out room that became laundry chairs as whoever was sorting the laundry divided it up.

At dinner it was leftover time as we were trying to eat up the remainder of the food.  (By the way, we did a great job.  There was barely any cold stuff left.  There were quite a few snacks left, possibly because they were a bit hidden, but the Parrs had the ability to bring it home.  Ok, all that being said, the oven stopped working.  So most of the adults were pressing buttons or whatnot and Ben snaps a picture...only to have Joshua photobomb it in the cutest way possible.

Oh, we can also talk about this artwork.  Here's it's form, sort of.  You can tell that the horizontal spacing is different, but also the vertical alignment is incorrect.  I was bothered.

So Katy and I flipped the outside panels upside-down.  This didn't help enough, so then we tilted them in.  The kids didn't love this because it looked like a Minecraft head and arms, but it was harder to tell that the panels were haphazardly put up.

Once it was dark the kids held a dance party.

And to cap off the day, fireworks!  They were shot off the end of the pier by us, so we were able to just step onto our balconies and enjoy.  Ben and I (along with Laura and Dusty), enjoyed them from the upper balcony while the rest went to the downstairs balcony.

Thursday: duck

 This morning I did several errands, which included getting rid of a bunch of scrap metal.  I was glad to get it out of the house.

We also picked up Isaac's clay giraffe.  It looked so cute with its head sticking out of the box.  It needed some minor repairs on the bottom, but I hope to get another picture tomorrow.

I often find myself categorizing summers - one summer was playgrounds and bakeries, one was games, one was puzzles.  This summer it would just be contentment.  Isaac could often be found reading his book.  Joshua was often reading or putting together Legos.

I used a strap wrench to open a jar.  I think this is the first jar that no one could open and we had to resort to drastic measures.

We started an at home escape room.  We're pretty bad at this one, but we're having fun.  We've all agreed to try, but also to give ourselves a lot of grace and look at the hint cards as needed.

And that brings us to the duck.  This story actually happened last night.  We were watching "Daily Dose of Internet", which has a collection of interesting videos.  The narrartor said, "You'll never guess the reason for this accident..."  as the video was showing a car crash.  I said, "Duck!"  ...and then the video panned to a mamma duck with several ducklings.  Everyone was in awe and Ben paused the video to ask if I had already seen the clip.  (I hadn't.)  I do feel as though I've had to wait for a duck recently though.  I also saw a turtle crossing the road a few months ago, but on my return trip there was no dead turtle so it must have made it across.