Wednesday: feeling better

I can tell I'm feeling better.  I'm just moving and fidgeting more.  I went to karate and that went pretty well too.

Beyond that, the day wasn't very exciting.  I just worked on my chores.  Even grocery shopping didn't have any interesting observations.

Tuesday: busy

It was a busier day today than I was expecting.  Midterm grades needed to be turned in, which meant a bit of grading, plus the normal class plans, plus getting stuff ready for Thursday, plus a few extra emails.  I also ate lunch with Dad, but that is more of a fun thing than a busy thing.

It ended up working out well though - I just stayed at Hope an extra hour and then went to pick up Joshua from school, since he has art club on Tuesdays.

Besides that though, it was a pretty normal day.  My book is taking a bit of a lull.  It isn't bad right now and I'm still sitting down to read it at random times, but the story feels like a bit more of the same and that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.  There's also a love interest that just feels weird.  Maybe it's that way on purpose but still odd.

vacation Monday (June 15) part 2: Fløibanen funicular

 After lunch and a rest at the hotel room we went shopping and then for a ride to the top of the mountain.

We had moose burgers, but Isaac said it wasn't as good as the first time.  We think the person used less sauce.

There was a polar bear while shopping, so I obviously got my picture taken with it.

Once we were done shopping, we went to the funicular.  (A funicular is a cable train for going up and down steep slopes.)  You can see the top of the railway in the picture below.  There were paths that you could walk up too, and while walking around we saw a lot of people that seemed to have done that, but it was nice to not have to do that.  It was also about five minutes away from our hotel room.

Pictures don't really seem to be doing justice to how steep the car was.  The internet says the angle was 29deg

The funicular was for more than just tourists, and on the way up had one other stop and on the way down had three additional stops.

Once we got to the top we took some pictures and enjoyed the view.

...and then found a playground.  It was a rather normal playground, but I felt like I was tearing the kids away so we could go walk and explore a little more.

Ben and Cheryl walked for about five minutes and found a lovely place to sit and enjoy the view.

Isaac on a rock in a fjord.

We continued to explore.  The path/road that we were on had a lot of things to climb on, so the kids were happy with that.  We'd walk a bit, then they'd get to climb on something, we'd walk a bit, etc.

We found a gathering a rocks.  (A pile?  A flock?  A cairn?)  It was probably man-made, but it's sometimes hard to tell.  We searched for a few more rocks.

Walking a little ways further we found another bench/lookout combo

And then we started back.  I had noticed that there was a side trail following the road on the way out, so on the way back I started using it.  The kids, of course, followed suit because it was a much more interesting walk.  (This was more of a hike, which I wanted, than a walk, which was what others wanted.  It was perfect because we were still near each other.)

We found another playground!  I think this one was supposed to be troll themed, but either we were in the wrong place or I just didn't see the trolls.

Walking over another hill brought us to a ropes course.  This was the coolest part, so I was glad that we found it last.  Four of us did all the ropes stuff, although Ben and I stopped at the play structure.

Cheryl had found a nice place in the sun to wait for us.

On the way down!  I just sat on the step so I could see better.

It was decided to go to a tapas place for dinner and it was so much fun.  They gave us popcorn as the appetizer.  I like popcorn.  We ordered two rounds of about eight main entrees and then a round of desserts.  So we had a little bit of everything and two bites of the things we liked the best.  My favorites included the mushroom pasta, Korean chicken, and the chicken skewer.  

The desserts!  I recall them being very good, but nothing stood out as extra extra amazing.

After this I think we headed back to the hotel room.  I have no idea what time it was, but by the time we did showers, the kids wrote their daily recaps, and such it was time for bed.  We discovered that the emergency exit map was glow-in-the-dark, which we thought was pretty cool.

Sunday: Isaac laughing

 I made Isaac laugh so much today, over dumb things.

He wanted to have what was essentially a clip thumb-war.  Using an extra large clip, you try to "eat" the other person's extra large clip.  It was more fun than I expected, but still pretty dumb.

Then this afternoon he made a LEGO contraption that pushed a stick up through a frame when a button was pushed. Then he upgraded it so it worked better and he said, "and if you turn it upside-down it won't fall out."  What I didn't think about was all the other sticks that were also in the frame - they fell out.  His practical joke worked and Isaac obviously found it hilarious.

Saturday: blah

Today I only felt ok.  There were times of feeling fine and there were times of feeling a little yucky but I survived.

We played some games.  I didn't do as much cleaning as I hoped to do...we're having people over tomorrow so it matters more than normal.  They'll only be in the main area though and that gets cleaned up pretty quickly and I did get some cleaning done.

Friday: vaccines, dinner

The kids and I got our flu and COVID vaccines at Meijer today.  The sign-up process was a bit annoying, but in the end totally worth it.  We were in and out in about fifteen minutes, which is so much better than last year at Walgreens when it took at least 45 minutes.

We got home, I put the groceries away and I started dinner.  Ben and Isaac needed to leave at 6pm, so I had been a bit worried about getting dinner made in time so we were rushed.  Well, Meijer went so well that dinner ended up being early.  I'm really bad at timing dinner.  It seems like it is always late.

Thursday: groceries

Wednesday is normally grocery day.  For assorted reasons, I didn't get, or even order, groceries.

As I was picking up Joshua:
J: Did you get groceries?
A: No, I worked all day
J: oh, that's right

As we were making snack:
I: did you get groceries?
A: No, I was working

An hour later, after I took a short nap:
I: Did you get groceries?
A: what?  You already asked me like, an hour ago.
I: well, you disappeared and I thought maybe you went to get them
A: no, I took a nap, like I said I was going to.  [side note: we even had a conversation about celery while I was in the bed]