vacation Monday (June 15) part 1: swim and sauna

Good morning breakfast!  I think I mentioned it earlier, but now you can see the items.  The brown cheese in the upper left and the dried raspberry ball in the bottom right.

After breakfast we went back to the swim & sauna, this time with goggles.  This isn't a great picture of the boat, but it's the best one I had for the outside.

Inside there were two rooms.  A changing area/viewing room and the sauna.

We could also go upstairs, but the stairs were crazy!  I think these are called witch's steps and I've seen them on-line in a few other places since we used them here.  You really needed to start on the correct foot or the stairs were terrible, but if you started on the correct foot they worked pretty well.

The top was not all that warm, but it was nice and sunny.

Then it was finally time to jump in!  I went first.  I also went second because the second person wasn't ready fast enough.  The water was 11C.

Isaac followed.

Ben was third, but he went from the roof jumping spot so we don't have a good video of it.  Joshua followed.  He wouldn't jump out very far and was pretty much climbing back into the boat once his feet touched the water, but he did it!  By the end he was going a little bit farther.

Cheryl jumped in too!

Then we would warm up and while moving to a new place.  The sauna was so nice and warm after getting in the water.  There was a large window to look out of here too.

...the sauna was nice and warm, but only for about ten minutes.  Then it got too hot, so we all slowly migrated to the floor.  There was a substantial difference between sitting on the lower bench and sitting on the floor.  The thermometer, near the ceiling, showed 89C.  We thought that it must be wrong, but after looking it up it was probably correct.

More jumping at the very end.  Cheryl jumped in twice (which we were all excited about) and I think everyone else had 12ish jumps.  Isaac also jumped off the roof.  There were two big lessons.  First, remember to keep breathing.  It is easy to want to clench everything up in the cold water, but you need to breathe.  Secondly, make sure the person before you is almost out before you jump in, so that you don't have to wait to get out.  Our motto was, "That was terrible!  Let's do it again!"

I had a blast.  I would 100% do something like this again, and I'm really happy to say that I've swum in a fjord.

Thursday: cleaning

Joshua stayed home today.  Ben came home early to work from home, but Joshua was mostly on his own.  He was feeling better, although still not his normal self.

Isaac and I went rock climbing this evening.  (I didn't climb well.  I'm blaming it on the blood donation, but I'm not sure I can do that after a week.)  When we got home Joshua had cleaned up the kitchen, the table, and the mini-hallway.  It looked so much better.  It's not as though I didn't get things done yesterday with Joshua around, but I didn't get all of my normal things done.  He said it was because he really appreciated how well I took care of him while he was sick. <3

Wednesday: LEGO take apart

For most of the day Joshua was ok.  He probably spent about 95% of his day on the couch (by choice).  He got extra screen time and listened to audio books for quite a while.  While he was listening to audio books, he was taking about some of our LEGO sets.  The ones that have needed to be taken apart have been piling up, so I was super excited that he was willing to do this.  (Sometimes we do it during church if we do church at home, but we haven't done that much.  Sometimes Ben does it during dinner, but lately he's been on sorting the loose LEGO drawers because some needed to be split into two or more categories.)

I went on a walk with Natalie - the weather has been beautiful lately!

In karate we went over our knife defense.  I attacked my partner, Will, first, who did a nice job of dealing with the attack...if it wasn't a knife attack.  He punched my face and I swished the knife and then he had no legs.  We were working with knives, so by the end of the night he also had no fingers.  (I wasn't paying attention, but I probably didn't have all my fingers either.)  (Also, Will is much better than I am.  There are just a lot of things to remember.)

Tuesday: Fall break

Today was fall break, so Dad and I worked on the Christmas tree.  We had a great system down, and managed to drill 216 holes in about two hours.  I'm really curious and excited to see how it looks, but I need to wait for the Christmas tree stand to come first.

I got home and talked with Aunt C for a little bit.  While the morning had started out cold, by 11 is was really nice out.  I had lunch and then Ben called because he had made arrangements to deal with some e-foil stuff.  Things lined up pretty well, so he was dealing with that until mid-evening.  (Although he got extra ragoons so I could have some, even though I didn't have Chinese for dinner.)

At 2:20 I got a call from Joshua; he wasn't feeling well.  It didn't completely surprise me because he was a bit off this morning.  He really did seem pretty off, and when he took his temperature it was 99.1F.  Hmm, that's an annoying amount because the fever is starting but isn't high enough to say for sure no school tomorrow.  We decided that Joshua would take a nap and we'd check again.

Joshua slept for over two hours - he hasn't taken a nap in a long time.  When he woke up he definitely had a fever, so he gets to join me at home tomorrow.  He perked up a bit with some medicine, but never was his normal self and said he was still pretty tired.  We'll see how tomorrow goes!

Sunday: driving

I've been doing a lot of the driving for the kids this school year.  There are a lot of good reasons for this that I won't get into.

Anyway, Ben usually does the pickup after Sunday school.  His schedule changed at the last minute today, so I went to pick up the kids.  Then, about a minute after I left his schedule changed again such that he'd get home later and wouldn't be able to pick up food for dinner.

We laughed about the timing.  So many things are conspiring against us.

Saturday: eyes

For LEGO group today, we were bringing monster cookies.  I had a few candy eyeballs, but it would have been one small one per cookie.  Joshua was sure that we needed more eyeballs.  After discussing for a while, he said he would come with me if I went to the grocery store to get them and that he would help put them on the cookies.

I didn't want to go, but I did want to spend time with Joshua, so we went.  Ben also needed a few things picked up so it worked well, but it was an extra 45 minutes in the morning that I wasn't planning on.

Friday: blood donation, lunch

I gave blood today.  I just signed up to give the normal whole blood, and that was good because my iron wasn't high enough for power red again.  However, I drank plenty of water so getting the needle in was easy and the blood came out quickly.

Afterwards Betsy and I went out for lunch.  The last time was in late May, so we had all of summer and the beginning of school to get caught up on.  It was a really nice lunch.