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.

Wednesday: a good day

Today was a good day.

We're getting rid of the basement futon.  It's old, shaky, and really we just use it as a shelf lately.  However, no one wants it...I can't blame them.  I put the futon mattress by the trash can today and the trash people didn't take it, so I was disappointed about that.  However, there is a large item drop-off in a month and it should fit in the car, so I'll bring it then.  In the meantime, it'll live on the front porch.  This was the annoying part of my day, but there are still several different options for getting rid of it.

We also took apart the frame today.  Tomorrow I'll bring the metal parts for recycling.

This afternoon Joshua went with a friend to Urban Air and Isaac and I went to a climbing gym in Kalamazoo.  Joshua played hard for 3.5 hours and was dead on his feet coming home.  Isaac and I stayed significantly longer than I was expecting.  It helped that the other mom brought Joshua home and a friend brought Ben home so we didn't have to get home by a certain time.  It was a really nice gym - there were several auto-belays, tons of ropes, and two nice (albeit small) bouldering walls.  They were fun shapes and you got to climb over the top which is always fun.  The worst part was that people aren't allowed to belay until they're 14, which meant Isaac couldn't belay me.  (Maybe next year - and maybe we'll come back when we have a bit more time.)

On top of one of the walls.

Climbing up a large...doorway type thing.

They had some actually holds made out of rocks.  They were fun to climb, but colder than the rest of the holds.

They also had some zig-zag walls, which created some interesting climbing spaces.

We were getting a little bit close to done when some people walked into the gym.  (The gym had people most of the time, but it wasn't too busy.  Just enough to be nice.)  We knew the people!  Leah is the manager at Scrapyard and she came with her husband.  They were going to a concert later that night, but decided to hit up a new gym first.  It was very fun to see them.

Ben and Joshua were kind about having a super late dinner and the fact that we ended up picking up food*.  We got home at 6:30pm, and if I needed to throw dinner together too it was going to be a really late dinner.

*To be fair, people usually like take-out.  It's not something we get complaints about, although we usually don't do it during the week.

Tuesday: little things

 It was a rather easy day today.  Probably a boring one for Joshua today, but there were no complaints.  Isaac and I met some friends at Scrapyard for rock climbing in the afternoon.

We had a friend over to play Root in the evening.  I was one turn away from a quiet win but it was seen and so I didn't win.  Ben allied with Isaac who won the next time it was his turn.  I felt a bit jipped, but this was also the first time playing where I actually felt like I knew what I was doing and that was nice.

Monday: party

Joshua had some friends over for a little birthday party today.  It wasn't anything big: cake and ice cream, swimming in the lake, and hide-and-seek.  But I overheard one person saying it was the best birthday party.  It was a lot of fun listening to their chatter.  We also found out Joshua's teacher for next year and he is with Mr. Jackson, who I was hoping for.  I don't know much about him, but he has seemed cool at pickup.  He's also in a class with Jonathan, his best friend.  (The other two are also in the same class, which is nice.)

Isaac had a pretty boring day.  I'm of the opinion that a few of those before school starts are good though.  He's also getting really close to outgrowing all of his large-sized t-shirts, so he's wearing his favorites much more often.

Saturday

 I made another loaf of bread.  It looks even better than the others.

Friday: fan

When we first got the ceiling fan in our bedroom, something happened and it really scared Tornado.  Now, we don't have it on very often because it makes a funny noise.  It works well - we don't have it on, he is willing to come in the bedroom.  But he always checks the fan.  Every time.

We had it on the other night.  He stopped at the door and looked at it.  Horizon came in, did his normal checks, and left.  Tornado continued to watch the fan.  Then he loafed while watching the fan.  Ben finally came up the stairs which knocked him out of his trance and he escaped from fan watching, but he stayed there a really long time.