Thursday, August 27, 2026

Thursday: first day of school

Everyone made it through the first day of school.  For the most part I got "fine" reports, which, for the first day of school, is good.  Let's be honest - the first day of school is not that fun.  Teachers introduce themselves, classroom policies are discussed, and you just try to figure out where you need to be.

Joshua might have had it the worst because he has one teacher three times, but since it is with different students each time the teacher had to do the introduction each time.

Joshua enjoyed being with different students all the time. Besides that I think things were pretty normal.

Isaac made it through the day.  He talked to a few people that he recognized, but not many.  He said AP calc was probably the best class, partially because the rest of the students were more relaxed and they played some games.  Hopefully more classes will have "get to know each other" tomorrow.  The bus home was quite a bit later than it should have been; we'll see if it is a normal problem or just a first day problem.  The worst class seemed to be Team Sports because the teacher took a while to get started and there were a lot of students in the class.

I remembered Isaac's first day pictures.


I forgot Joshua's, so we decided to do them tomorrow.  However, I took a picture of him in the car.



Wednesday, August 26, 2026

Wednesday: open house

This morning Isaac and I finally did our toe-hook off.  Isaac maxed out around 23lb and I only had 17lb.  I was really hoping I would win. 

This evening was a freshman meeting and open house.  The freshman meeting was mostly old information for me, but Isaac hadn't heard all of it yet so that was good.  Ben and Joshua came for the open house so we walked all the classes again.  Isaac didn't go to any of the wrong classrooms this time, but it still took him a bit to orient himself.  It felt rather odd because I could have found 6 out of 7 of his classrooms significantly faster than he did.  Oh well, it was good practice for him and after a few days he'll know exactly where to go.  He was also able to meet most of his teachers.

Tomorrow's the day!  High school and middle school!

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Tuesday: Joshua

After several days of doing more with Isaac, I finally had a Joshua day.  He joined me to help with the Christmas tree, although it was not his favorite part of the day.  He made around 100 holes, and there are about 300 left.  We're making good progress and I should be able to drill more holes during lunch breaks over the next several weeks.

I gave Joshua a haircut.  Apparently he doesn't like it when people comment that he got a haircut, and so wanted to put that off as long as possible.  I mentioned we could do a haircut more often, but I'm not sure he'll go for that.

It was also Back to School night for Joshua!  He's in his homeroom class with two good friends.  This class is together about half the day, then I think it changes around a bit.  His first special, besides band, is gym.  Anyway, the locker went fine.  I like his teacher, although Isaac didn't have much experience with him due to PATH.

Snaxaltol was grumpy tonight.  He had no good part and grudgingly accepted the snack we had as his good part but was not happy about it.  Catcachino's bad part was having to deal with Snaxaltol all day and asked to sleep far away from him tonight.

Monday, August 24, 2026

Monday: 5 words, mini golf, game cat

This afternoon after snack Isaac and Joshua were talking semi-nonsense and I was ignoring them.  However, I was drawn into their conversation as we could only speak in five word sentences.  "Why are you still talking?"  "Where do we go first?"  "Library, mini golf, ice cream".  You get the idea.  We saw Mr. Rob in the library and he was all in and joined us as we conversed.

Then we went to play mini golf.  I made them recreate the cannon picture, only to just find out that they switched sides.


Oh well.  It was a beautiful day for mini golf and we had a lot of fun with golf and ice cream afterwards.

We played Metro X as the game of the evening.  Horizon sat near Isaac's board for quite a while making sure he did things correctly.


Saturday, August 22, 2026

Friday: almost famous

I was looking through Instagram.  I try not to do this too much, but I do still add our LEGO pictures to the IJAB account several times per week.  Anyway, I saw Isaac!  He got used for an advertisement.


Thursday, August 20, 2026

Thursday: pipe

I made Joshua take a walk with me to Lowe's today to walk home with a long PVC pipe.  I probably could have done it myself, but it's more fun with friend.

We started with "Would you rather have pink flowers or red flowers in front of your house?"  Then continued through several more would you rathers, but each one needed to be based on the previous.  I forgot what the next one was, but it could be something like wear a pink shirt or a red shirt?  Then a shirt that is too small or a shirt that is too big?

The hardest one was would you rather be sick for a year but then die peacefully or not be sick for a year but then have a (30s to 20min) painful death?  (The shorter the death the more painful, but you don't get to choose.)

The one that caused the most discussion would you rather have a loaf of bread that never runs out or a teleporter that could teleport one person anyone once a week?



Wednesday: Happy Birthday

It was my birthday today!  Rather low key, but excellent all the same.

It started by working on my Christmas tree.  Isaac and I made all the pieces of the trunk (with Dad's help).  There are still lots of things to do, but it is moving forward!


After lunch Isaac and I went rock climbing.  The weather was beautiful and the garage doors were open at Scrapyard, so it felt nice.  That being said, the set on the walls seems especially hard right now and there were a lot of beginners on the same routes that I wanted to climb, so I didn't climb for too long.

Then I dropped Isaac off at home and brought Joshua to get groceries.  It was his "get out of the house" for the day.  While not an exciting "get out of the house", it is pretty fun to get groceries with him.  We also got school supplies, although we were able to shop our own school supplies for most of the items.

Ben picked up Tai for dinner and it was exactly what I wanted.  We got extra ragoons because it was my birthday.

We started Ark Nova for our evening game, but Isaac was crazy tired so we ended a bit early.  Oh well...we'll still finish the game over the next few days.