Weekend: stuff

It was a rather busy weekend, all things considered.  Saturday afternoon Joshua went rock climbing with a friend.  He really does enjoy social climbing the best.

Saturday evening was spent with friends that all have only sons.  The kids ran around and played well.  We had a very good dinner and fun talking with the adults.

Sunday was pretty normal.  Isaac had quite a bit of homework.  We had some questions about a graded homework and I "made" him email his teacher.  It turned out to be graded incorrectly, or at least that 2 of the 3 questions Isaac had marked wrong were acceptable.  I felt it was a good teaching moment.  We also played a math game that was part his homework.  It was...not the best game ever.  This is how the math games usually go for this class.  They're usually an easy way to get some points though, so we'll continue to do some.

Oh!  I did have a funny part.  I went upstairs to go get the boys from Sunday School.  Ben usually does it, but his back has been hurting so I just assumed I'd do it.  I put my shoes on, and opened the door and stopped.  Something looked wrong.  A car was missing!  Did someone steal it?  That seemed improbable.  Did I park it outside the garage?  Ummm...no.  So why isn't there a car?  Oh...Ben went to go get the kids and I didn't hear him leave.  It took me a disturbing amount of time to figure this out.

Friday: Fredrick Meijer Gardens

Today I went on a field trip with Joshua to Fredrick Meijer Gardens.  It was a bit cold out, and I didn't really enjoy the driving, but it was otherwise a lovely day.

There were plenty of chaperones, so all the adults only had one or two students with them.  I had Joshua, obviously, and his friend Ben.  Ben has been in my field trip group before and he's a great kid.

We got there no problem.  Besides the guided lesson we could choose what we wanted to look at so we started with the arid plants.  The butterfly area was looking a little full, so we decided to come back later.  We went outside and walked around the pond and farm areas.

Then it was time for the guided lesson.  It was on adaptations, especially of butterflies.  It was ok.  It was probably age appropriate but I was a bit bored.  Lunch was next.  Joshua and I were both hoping for an inside lunch but they had us in an outside pavilion.  When we sat in the sun it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't very warm either.

After lunch we were going to go in the butterfly room but the line was really long.  Dealing with plans changing was probably one of my favorite parts about these two kids...they decided that the line was too long so we should do something else and they were both fine with that.  Ben really wanted to get to the Japanese garden because he and his mom had been talking about the cherry blossoms.

The problem was that we didn't know what a cherry blossom looked like.  So we took several pictures of not-cherry blossoms.  I also took some of Joshua.

Eventually we actually found some cherry trees and it was a happy time.

After the Japanese garden we went to the children's area.  We went through the hedge maze, but the treehouse was declared too busy.  We decided to go look at the art exhibit in the building for the last 15 minutes.  However, the butterfly line wasn't long any more!  So we snuck in there for about 10 minutes.  The whole afternoon was great, but I really do like the butterflies.  (At the same time, 10 minutes was about right.)  No butterflies landed on us, although we tried really hard.

The traffic leaving the gardens was absolutely terrible.  But we made it without incident.

Grey Bear's bad part of the day was that Joshua didn't bring him to the gardens to recreate an old picture.

Wednesday: alarming things

Last night, around 1:20am I heard an alarm go off.  It was shrill and insistent...beep beep beep.  beep beep beep. beep beep beep.

I was out of bed so fast and to the bedroom door a second later.  As I opened the door, another second later, it stopped.  I walked into the house, and my first thought was that there was no smoke.  I checked the oven.  I checked the fridge.  Nothing.  I went downstairs and checked the freezer.  The furnace seemed fine.  What else could have made such an alarm?  Something from a device...the ipad?  A phone?  A battery backup?

Well, a half hour later there was still no additional alarms and my heart rate was finally slowing down.  I got back to sleep.

In the morning, no one else had heard the alarm, although that isn't all that unexpected.  Was it a dream?  I heard it when I was out of bed, so that would be surprising.  It is still a mystery.

My other alarming thing was when I grabbed a pen and it started to write in blue ink.  Well, that is odd; I was sure that it was a black ink pen.  Black?  Blue?  What was going on?!?  It turns out that we have two pens that look exactly alike but have different inks in them.  I wasn't going crazy.

Tuesday: reading

It was a pretty normal day today.  There were some new routes at rock climbing, and both kids really enjoyed working on them.  It meant I had more time for my book.  I read a lot while we were in Fort Wayne and got pretty far through my series.  I finished the book after dinner.  There's only one more in the series, which I fully expect to enjoy, but then I'll be rather sad that the series is done.

Monday: boring

 Honestly, it was a rather boring day.  I woke up before my alarm - I couldn't quite get comfortable.  I did assorted chores even though I didn't want to.  I'm far from on top of things, but several of the mundane chores (laundry/kitchen) finally got finished.  

I picked up Joshua from school.

I picked up Isaac after band practice.

I made dinner - it was pretty yummy.

I went to karate - we worked on some basic actions and getting them perfect.

Joshua started M-step testing today. We were asked to send a letter of encouragement for our kids.  I was pretty proud of what I ended up with.

Sunday: morning math

This morning Isaac asked me, "what would the math be that if a is a positive number b is positive and if a is a negative number b is negative?"  

It ended up being a collaborative effort, but we ended up with the equation: a = abs(a)*b.  Next he went to graph it.  Then he started playing around with the equation.  After he tried a few things that didn't work out I put in a+1 = abs(a+1)*b and that altered it like he was looking for.

 (Pat, don't roll your eyes.)

Friday: racquetball

Ben was having a back procedure today, so we decided to play racquetball in the morning!  It was lovely.  Ben won both games, but I put up a good fight.  We have obviously lost some skill, but it was also surprising how well we still did.  We had some great serves and some good volleys.  ...it was good exercise and we were tired at the end.

I found our college IDs in my racket case.  How did they manage to stay in there so long?

Horizon slept with Isaac a few nights ago.