Thursday: Operation: Clean the house - quilting area

I'm calling the quilting area finished.  There are a few more little things I could do, but I either put them on my to do list as a separate item because I want to wait on it (one more quilt to hang) or it just really doesn't make since to do it now (put together more batting scraps).

While it's hard to tell, everything in front of the futon is actually part of the other room.

The futon did get cleaned up...it just also happens to be the best place to currently store all the soft stuff used for courses.  I'm hoping to eventually get a better shelf for them, but in the meantime I know they'll be off before too long.

                             

The bike had been in Joshua's room because he wasn't using his room much last year and so that I could exercise while being close for virtual school.  It was time to move it to a new place though.

                             

I know it looks only a little cleaner, but it is quite a bit cleaner.  It's also been dusted and the walls had a bunch of dings fixed up and some fresh paint.

I think I'm going to take a break on O:CtH.  There's only two weeks left of school, so I'll try to knock out a few of my outstanding to-do list items.  The summer is looking busy, so the goal will be to just keep things under control.  I'm not sure what room I'll do once fall starts; it'll give me something to think about over the summer.

I was a little surprised how slowly this project moved.  There were some good reasons; the painting of two rooms took extra time and the bigger rooms that I did really needed a lot of work.  I'm not sure it'll be any faster next year, but I suppose we'll find out!  Stay tuned!

Wednesday: back at it

I've decided to start wearing a mask in public again, at least for a little bit. I know that Ottawa county currently is classified as "low risk", but I'm not sure if I agree.  I feel like many people I know are getting it and people are probably taking home tests and not reporting the results.

Furthermore, I've been a close contact and not been notified properly.  I understand that people don't seem to care much anymore, but...  (I did not get COVID from the close contact.  It's been several weeks now.)

I also scheduled the boys' booster shots.  I know they're in a good position since they've been vaccinated and had COVID, but they're eligible so we're going to get them.  I was a little mean and scheduled them on a Friday after school, so if they don't feel good it's going to fall on a Saturday.  But they're doing so many fun things in school right now that I didn't want to schedule it on a school day.

This came home from school yesterday.  I'm not sure Joshua completely got the point.  "I will show integrity like Rosa Parks by not giving up my seat."

Tuesday: a day in the life

When we were at the Museum of Michigan's history, I enjoyed reading some of the journal entries that were around the early 1900s exhibit.  I know that the blog does a decent job of the normal things that happen in our lives, but at the same time there's a lot that is ignored because it is so normal.  Well, with the exception of Grocery Adventures.  Today was a rather boring day, but here's how it went.  (Note that it is also "Too much Tuesday", so we have more activities after school than any other day.)

6:45am: wake up.  Pack lunches for the kids, make them breakfast.  They chose yogurt.  Bring them to school.

7:45am: Eat my breakfast while playing an idle game on my phone.  Do my devotions.

8:15am: Decide to take my nap early.  Horizon cuddles up with me.

9:30am: wake up.  Clean the kitchen.  Always the kitchen.  This time I actually took care of all the on-kitchen stuff that was accumulating there too.

10am?: Work on vacation planning.

10:30am: take out the bathroom trash and a few other small chores

11am: Intend to get right to work on some Hope College work, but play on the computer a bit before getting down to it.  I also sent out some texts and dealt with some emails.

12:15: make lunch.  Leftover pizza, half an apple, and water

12:30pm: read for a little bit

12:50pm: continue the chores.  Bring out the deck chairs, move the strawberry plant to a better place, rinse out the bird feeders.

1:30pm: Continue Operation: Clean the House.  Put the bike back in the bike roller, clean up the stuff that's accumulated in the last two weeks, and realize that part of this should be sewing together small batting pieces into large batting pieces so that they actually get used.  I save that for a different day though.

2:15pm: decide to read again because I'm pretty happy with what I accomplished today

2:35pm: doze off

3:05pm: get stuff together, pick up the boys

3:30pm: get gas ($$$), pick up my flute from the repair store

3:45pm: start waiting in the parking lot.  Isaac has his piano lesson, I read.  Joshua does some homework and has screen time.

4:30pm: Isaac comes out, we go home for a quick turn-around.  I remember to start the rice cooking and change into my karate uniform

5pm: karate.  It was hotter than I expected.

5:30pm: go home, get dinner finished up.  Eat while watching a little bit of TV.  (Currently the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.)  Wish that Isaac would eat faster.

6:30pm: karate with Isaac.  I worked harder than expected.  Muscle memory is a pretty cool thing though.

7pm: come home, brush the children's teeth, get some audio books all set up.  I don't care that Joshua is bored.

7:30pm: Ben is in charge of bed time and plays a video game with the boys for a bit so I head downstairs.  I do some word and logic games

8:30pm: I work on some quilting, but realize that I'm about to run out of green thread and take it as a sign to stop for now.

9pm: Continue to stream some shows, work on piecing the next quilt, putz around.  Be more sad than expected by the school shooting.  I think it was because of the post below.  Pray that better gun legislation finally happens, but realize that I'm not actually very hopeful that it will.

expected 11:30pm: go to bed, read

expected 12:30am: fall asleep because my eyes close.

Monday: productive

 Well, it ended up being a productive day.  I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it off, but I just kept checking things off the to-do list.  I brought Grandma to her doctor's appointment and then "made" her go fabric shopping with me.  I thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Joshua gave his animal report at school today.  He was the only penguin (which he's holding).  There were apparently a lot of giraffes.

 

Thursday: field trip

Today was the big field trip day!  They were unable to get a bus driver, so parents were driving.  That was probably the part that made me the most nervous.

And rightly so!  Google maps told me several times to take an exit that was very clearly closed.  Very closed.  It obviously rerouted me right away, but I couldn't tell if it was just sending me in a circle to go to the closed exit again or it it was properly rerouting me.  I took a quick detour to a parking lot to assess the situation, realized it had properly rerouted me, and we were back in business.  The other issue was the that parking lot had changed so that you had to pay to enter, using a credit card, with a crazy complicated machine that you couldn't see the screen because of the sun and the enter key ink had been rubbed off so it was hard to tell which one it was.  If things went well it took about a minute.  If things went poorly it was taking about three minutes.  There were at least twenty cars.  Needless to say, we were a bit late for our Capitol Tour because of it.

But after those fiascos the day went very well.

This was a class picture, but I zoomed in on a small part.

The tour guide did a great job giving details, information, and answering questions.  The Senate was in session and it seems like every tour group guide gives their senator a card so that they can be welcomed by the entire senate.  The senate did a great job clapping and welcoming us, even though they probably need to do it at least three times an hour whenever they're in session.  That would get so annoying.

After lunch we went to the Michigan history museum.  It was also pretty cool.  We had a docent guide us through the first floor and it was so much more fun to listen to him than try and read the signs.  The signs were good, but he added the details that you might not otherwise pick up.  We had to do the upper floors by ourselves and we went through them pretty quickly, but it was still very interesting.

The drive home was uneventful.  We listened to a Brains On! podcast about elevators, which I also found interesting.  I wish I could remember things better, because in a few weeks I probably won't be able to tell you much of the history behind elevators.

Wednesday: productive

After yesterday's sleepy day, today felt very productive!  Groceries were purchased in good time.  (Yogurt cups are still somewhat gone and orange cinnamon rolls are back to being gone, but I think I found everything else.)  

I'm driving for a field trip tomorrow, so I finished cleaning out the car.  It's been one of Isaac's chores the last few days, and that helped a ton.  I did a quick vacuum and emptied out some of the stuff from the passenger seat, so it's all ready.

I did the painting for the quilting room.  I'm not sure why I thought I'd be able to finish the room yesterday; the paint was the next thing to do and it would need to dry over night.  I ended up using a roller to get some large swaths of wall...the walls were a mess when I started to look at them!  I know we did some of the dings, but surely we didn't do all of them.  There were also a lot of scuffs that wouldn't come off with magic eraser either.  Anyway, I do feel like it looks nicer now, but some of that might just be my imagination.

I had lunch with a friend!  We ended up talking for 1.5 hours...I was fine with that, but it's the middle of her work day and I felt a little bad about that.

I drove Grandma to the doctor.  This was quite easy, as expected.  I was slightly worried finishing with enough time to get the boys, but it worked out just about perfectly.  (And the back-up plan was just to have Grandma come with me to get the boys, so I wasn't really worried.)

The evening was a bit crazy...the kids seemed especially hyper.  They ended up going to bed a little early because Isaac wasn't feeling great and Joshua had some screen time in bed.