Wednesday: Trunk or Treat

We signed up to host a trunk at church this year.  Amazon has some great trunk decorating kits so we chose a cheap one.  We, and by we I mean Joshua, added a few embellishments and we ended up with a bunch of compliments.  The kids also made some swords from Lego.

It ended up being a lot more fun than I was expecting - the kids were cute.

I had gotten four bags of 75pc candy, two boxes of 75pc granola bars, and about a dozen mac and cheese packets.  SNAP is set to expire soon and my guess is that some of the kids that went by us are food insecure.  The mac and cheese packs went slowly, but they disappeared in the first 45 minutes.  The granola bars were taken pretty consistently: we went through a box and a half.  We also finished all the candy I had brought in the first hour and needed to restock a few times from the traveling candy bucket.  (I knew it would be available, so I wasn't worried about not having enough candy.)  That does mean that we had over 400 trick-or-treaters and probably closer to 500!  The post-event email said they had record candy donations and thought they were well stocked but still needed to make a grocery run for more candy part way through - they estimate there were over 1000 people that came on the campus over the night.  (They also ran out of hot dogs.)  Since the goal was just to get people on campus in a welcoming way, I would say it worked.

Last Sunday: Grandma's party

 

Tuesday: mad lib

Today was XLOOKUP day! 

One of the activities we do is a madlib.  This semester I realized that the students are surprisingly consistent on the words they select.

Number: something less than 100.  Today I was surprised when someone chose 16281
Verb (ends in -ing): running.  This one is chosen at least 50% of the time.
Noun: this one changes all the time.  There isn't a consistent noun.
Animal: dog
Dwelling: cave.  Again, this is chosen about 50% of the time.
Sport: lacrosse

Monday: life

It was a pretty normal Monday.  I started with some chores.  Sometimes I get exciting chores on Monday,  but today was not that day.  The kitchen had been ignored all weekend and there were other normal things to do.

Pat and I met for coffee in the morning and that was nice as always.

Isaac tried to get his COVID shot, but after we got to the doctor's office they said they had just run out of the vaccine.  The office isn't too far away, but it was still a bit annoying.

I made homemade applesauce with dinner.  It was yummy and Isaac was really excited about it.

Karate had a few more black belts show up tonight that haven't been there for a while, which was nice.  That being said, it wasn't a very good workout and that was a little disappointing.  We did a lot of self-defense and that is not very exercise-y.

Saturday: party

It was Great-Grandma's birthday today, and there was a party.  Isaac gave her some of the rocks that he's polished lately.

She also played a game of spot-it with Isaac and Joshua.

Joshua carved a pumpkin.  He did a really nice job of doing it by himself.

One of Isaac's chores was to fill up the tires with air.  It was his first time doing it.  The air compressor is really loud and he was surprisingly jumpy around it.

Friday: rock climbing

 After a half day of school, we went rock climbing.  It was actually Joshua's first time climbing at Scrapyard since the expansion; he's taken a bit of a break.  I think the current plan is actually to bike once a week and rock climb once a week.

Isaac also worked really hard to get the route of the week.

Thursday: busy busy

Today was the busiest day I've had in quite a while.  Everything went pretty smoothly though.

6:25am: wake up.  Everyone needed lunches made today plus the cutting of bread and it took me longer to get through everything in the morning.  Usually I have a at least 10 minutes to eat my own breakfast, but today I ate at work.

7:35am: leave the house to drop off the kids at school and go to work

9:30: teach

11:15: lunch with Natalie

12:15: make-up test (this was super easy on my end.  I needed to be around to administer it, but otherwise I just did my work)

1:30: teach

3:20: pick up Joshua from school

3:40: pick up Isaac from PATH

3:55: get home

4pm: leave to get some library books for Joshua and drop off the compost.  The compost place has new (and fewer) hours and they just aren't quite as convenient.  The library is on the way, so I thought I might as well go there too.

4:17pm: get stopped by a train.  This was not in the plan.  I had about eight minutes of wiggle room, during which I was going to eat my dinner in the parking lot.  I ate it while waiting for the train instead.

4:29pm: Show up to Joshua's conference, just in time.  He's doing amazing!  His teacher had so many nice things to say about him - academically and socially.  I couldn't have asked for a better report.

4:50: Go to Isaac's first conference.  They said some nice things about Isaac, gave us his report, and we talked about books.

4:55pm: Go to Isaac's second conference.  This one was with a teacher I really like.  We talked about a few minor things (both positive and neutral) so that we're on the same page.  I had been on the fence about signing up with her because we only needed to go to one, but I was glad that I did.

5:20pm: get home, look at Joshua's sketch book...it was amazing.  He's really upped his art skills recently.

5:30pm: leave for rock climbing

5:40pm: start my lead belay class.  It was three hours, but the time went so quickly!  There's another class next week and I'll need more practice to get everything down, but things are going well.

8:35pm: leave for home

8:45pm: finish the pizza dough

9pm: finish a few items for work that need to be done after classes

9:15pm: relax

I was effectively gone from the house for 13 hours, but the day at least flew by.