Monday: Halloween

Last Wednesday we went to Trunk Or Treat at church.  We didn't do anything today, and the kids didn't complain about that.

Isaac went as a wizard with a magic orb.  It would light up and not light up, but it was very hard to see.  Ben went as Isaac's servant to carry the potion bottle/candy holder or orb as the wizard deemed necessary.

Joshua went as Squirtle.  He made a Pokeball candy container where the candy dropped down into a bag.  It worked quite well.

Saturday: walk

Joshua had a sleepover with a friend last night.  It went really well.

This afternoon we went for a walk with Aunt C.  We had originally been planning on doing it without the kids on Wednesday, but it was rainy and wet.  Today was much nicer and it was fun to have the boys along too.  We ran across a story walk that made the walk more interactive.

Thursday: barrels, bare, belay

They put up several barrels on the way to the kids' school last week Wednesday or Thursday bringing a two lane direction down to one lane.  (It's especially annoying because the didn't block the turn lane.  There are two left turn only lanes but one of them runs right into the barrels so it's always a bit of a crazy mess.)  The one lane makes it harder, although not impossible, to make a left turn out of the parking lot as I'm leaving the school.  I've opted to go right several times instead.

Then on Wednesday they put up more barrels, bringing the single lane all the way through the parking lot where I drop off the kids.

Today they extended the barrels farther down the other direction, which doesn't really impact me.

Do you know what hasn't happened though?  Any work that would require so many barrels for so long.  They're messing up my routine for nothing.

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Both of my classes were missing a surprising amount of people today.  Several were sick, but several just didn't show up.  Apparently summary functions (COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIF, SUMIF) just didn't seem that interesting.  It's too bad, because I use COUNTIF all the time and we had a bunch of good review for ANDs, ORs, and VLOOKUP.  Oh, I'm starting to touch on XLOOKUP too, if anyone cares.  Next semester I need to include it more, but this semester I'm trying to get a start on it.

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I took a belay class at our rock climbing place.  I passed and can now belay anyone, although I expect it'll mainly be my kids.  It was more fun than I was expecting.  I have a feeling that we'll get to know everyone there and I'll be on the floor belaying and I'll have my own equipment and...never actually climb on a rock wall.  Although since the kids are members I could go for mostly free once a month.  We'll see what happens.

Tuesday: rain

It was a lovely rainy afternoon.  Luckily, it was just misting when the kids were waiting to be picked up from school.  Shortly thereafter it started raining harder, so Joshua and I had the nice sounds of rain in the car while Isaac had his piano lesson.

Monday: O:CtH - bathroom

Today as part of Operation: Clean the House I worked on the area that contains the toilet in the master bathroom.  I've been looking at this area for a while, knowing that the window behind the blinds was going to be yucky.  It was yuckier than I thought.  Guess I should clean it more than once every ten years, but we never have a reason to lift those blinds and forget about it.

But!  Now the window is clean, the walls are wiped down, and some of the tricky places to clean on the toilet are all set.  There's still one place on the toilet that I'd like to get a little better, but need to think about different cleaning implements.

After rock climbing the weather was still wonderful and a bunch of leaves had fallen over night so the kids played in the yard for a while.  They made a leaf wall in order to hide from Ben.  It wasn't really all that tall, so I wasn't sure it was going to work...but it did!  I helped Ben find them after a few minutes or it would have taken forever.

Sunday: colors

This fall the trees seem to be especially pretty.  Several people have mentioned it, although no one seems to know if it's real or if we're all just imagining it.

Anyway, I normally notice the trees while I'm driving, so after church I gave the kids my phone to take a few pictures.

Saturday: a best part of the day

One of my favorite parts of some days is when Joshua comes down to give me good night hugs.  (I say some days because it's on days that Ben reads to the kids...otherwise I get the good night hugs upstairs.)

A while ago I started asking four questions.  How are you?  How was your day?  What was a bad part?  What was a good part?  (We don't do best and worst because that is too hard to answer.)  Anyway, in the last month or two Joshua has started asking me the same questions too.  I feel like it's a small step in becoming an actual person to him and not just a person that takes care of him.