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.

Thursday: at second glance

 At first glance, it was a normal day.  

At second glance, it was a pretty good day.  I had lunch with Natalie.  I taught conditional formatting with a new rule, which is one of my favorite subjects.  It lightly rained most of the day.  I belayed with Kristyn and it was a really fun session.  My chicken sandwich for dinner was delicious.  My book is currently great!

My bad part of the day was that Isaac told me he was done climbing at a terrible point in my book.  The main character was about to fight her ex-fiancé in the colosseum.  (Obviously, there is a lot of backstory that I didn't mention.)  We drove home, I put the chicken in the oven, and finished reading the chapter.

Wednesday: trap

Isaac left me a booby trap for when I was grabbing his laundry today.  He was pretty excited about it.

I put all the dice in this bed.  I put a few in his pillow cases.  I hope he finds a few during the night because he didn't get them all out.

vacation Sunday (June 14) part 4: return train

The return train was actually two different trains.  The first one was getting from Flam to another train station and was more of a tourist train.  It also had some nice screens with good information.

And more waterfalls!

The train was really warm.  There were a few windows that could go down, but then when we were in tunnels it was really noisy.  (Also there were signs that asked for the windows to stay up.)  We found seats with one other person who was just traveling by herself and she became an honorary member of our family for the trip.

Rjoandefossen:

Partway through there was a stop!  We could get out of the train for the Kjosfossen waterfall.  There is a legend that says Huldra, a seductive and elusive forest spirit, lures away travelers from the falls.  Surprisingly (ish), a woman in a red dress started dancing about half way up the falls and I think some music started playing in the background too.  I think most of our pictures were before she came out.  It was a nice way to wake up and cool off a bit.

Isaac decided to use this picture to recreate in different media once we got home.  (Spoiler: he started a LEGO remake and quit, so I picked that one up.  I think it would be interesting if he make one in LEGO too and we could see how different they are.  He has also done a painting.  I'm planning on a quilt.)

After this we were starting to get slightly worried...we only had about five minutes for our transfer and we seemed to be running a few minutes behind.  

We needn't have worried.  The transfer was all of a five second walk across a platform.  We laughed at ourselves a bit, but it was just something we didn't know!

The return part of a scenic tour is always the most boring.  I gave Isaac and Joshua devices, and was surprised to see that Isaac continued to look out a window!  Well, apparently he was rather bored but didn't realize I that I had given him his phone to play games on and not take pictures with.  I still think he must not have been that bored or he would have said something.

This was the same lake that we passed in the morning, with all the fog burned off.

We walked back to our hotel.  We stopped at a chicken place to get some food to bring back to the hotel room.  The lack of sauces in Denmark and Norway was sad.  They had some, but they were always expensive and extra.  They also didn't have our normal sauces...new sauces can be fun to try, but I like ours better.

The lovies enjoyed watching Norway from the window.

Bed time!  (Although I had to look at the date stamp of the picture to see if it was bed time or wake up time!  The room was so bright.)