Friday: busy

Today was a busy day.  I was thinking it would be a bit overwhelming, but it ended up being perfect.  

We went on a walk with Aunt C first thing in the morning.  Well, I walked and the boys scootered.  The temperature was nice and it was cloudy and it was a lovely walk.

At home we put the LEGO towers back in the LEGO room.  Due to painting we put the towers on the opposite side of the room, so we'll see if we like them over there or not.  The kids acted like the LEGOs had been out of commission for a year.  They immediately started building and had a sense of relief that they were back.  (They were only gone for about 40 hours and that included two nights.)

I went to donate blood.  I was hoping to give power red (two units) but my iron was too low and I could only give whole blood.  It was fine.  The guy doing the needle poke did a great job and I had hydrated well.  I was done about five minutes after starting, which was really fast.  When I remember to hydrate well I can go fast, but this was one of the fastest.

I got home and the kids were working together on a tank with special features.  I laid out a quilt since I wanted to rest for a bit.  I noted that we should eat lunch soon and they could barely be dragged away from their project.  It was ridiculous in a really good way.

After a short nap I was the driver to bring Joshua and some friends to Grandville for the Soar N Bounce.  (Think SkyZone, Urban Air, etc.)  The day ended up being quite a bit of driving, but not too bad.  While the kids were playing I was free because another mom was the designated adult.  I went to Bricks and Minifigures to look through their loose LEGO.  My expectation was that I'd spend an 45-60 minutes filling my bag and then still have 45-60 minutes to do some computer work.  Well, after 60 minutes my bag was only half full and I was still going strong.  There were so many cool pieces to find!  I spent about two hours looking through their pieces and found several that I'm excited for the family to be excited about.  I didn't get any work done, but I did have a really good afternoon.

Isaac was in charge of making dinner and he chose tacos.  I really thought he had made them before, but he hadn't.  So I guess it was a good thing that he didn't see my text that we'd be home in 30 minutes, hoping that he'd have dinner ready.  In the end I just asked leading questions and he could have absolutely figured it out, but he enjoyed having the confirmation that he was doing it correctly.

Thursday: carpet cleaning

The carpet cleaners came today.  They had a rather large time window.  I was hoping they would come a bit sooner, but they didn't come as late as possible either.  So now the carpets are drying.  They're pretty dry in a few places and still drying in others depending on if there was a fan available or not.

Tomorrow I'm rather busy so we'll see how much gets put back.  On the top of the priority list are the LEGO part towers and the mats under our desk chairs.  Isaac's bed and the desk chairs have already been put back since the footprints are small.

We also went for a walk with Cheryl.  The boys got to scooter because it works better.  They're willing to walk, but if they can ride it's better.

Wednesday: house cleaning prep and Christmas tree

The kids and I finished prepping the house for carpet cleaning tomorrow.  It took a fair amount of time, but wasn't insane.  We emptied the LEGO room in less than an hour which was pretty amazing.  (Joshua was panting at the end because he set himself a goal to keep ahead of Isaac and I as we moved the drawers to the back room.  I told him he didn't need to work so hard, but I think it made it more fun for him too.)

Dad and I worked on a template for a branch level of a new Christmas tree.

Tuesday: droid giraffe

This afternoon Joshua brought up a droid made of droid pieces.  A "droid droid".  Then he started changing it around into different configurations, and one of them was a "giraffe droid".  In my head it was a good idea to combine the two words into one.

A: "Giroid"
A: "Draffe"
A: flummuxed

Isaac laughed because he could see the confusion on my face.  In my mind's eye these were very different words, but once I said them they sounded so similar.

We also had a birthday party this evening with grandparents.  We had BWW, the kids had some presents, there was cake.  A nice time was had.

Monday: prep

There was a lot of prep today.  We started to prep for carpet cleaning.  This pretty much meant moving stuff from one place to another, but the places we moved stuff from look really nice right now.  If only I cared just a little bit more to not have so much clutter.

The kids also prepped decorations for the birthday party tomorrow.  They did an excellent job making the room look festive.

Friday: normal summer

It was a pretty normal summer day.  Isaac had managed to get into a Blender class at the library yesterday and it was a two day class, so he did that in the afternoon.  

We played some games, did some chores, and stuff like that.  Isaac and I went rock climbing and Ben went e-Foiling.

vacation Wednesday, part 1 (June 10): Legoland

Today's activity was Legoland!  Once again, and based on other Legoland parks, we weren't sure we'd end up staying the whole day but we absolutely did.  We enjoyed the early entry half hour and left with about a minute to spare.

We ate breakfast at the hotel.  The food was again excellent.  Ben was able to continue his streak of having a soft boiled egg, I had bread and cheese, but there were still the normal breakfast foods too.

Outside our door:

Going to the other building for breakfast:

We walked through the other LEGO hotel on the way to the park.  It had many cool sculptures and we found a lot of favorite animals.

The early entry didn't apply to very many things.  We were able to walk around mini land, but we enjoyed that.  We saw several places that we expected to see in the near future, and there was a really nice replica of Fehmarn.  While I had never heard of this, it is the largest construction site in Northern Europe.  There is a tunnel factory and then the tunnel piece is floated over to the right spot and sunk in the water...and the exhibit showed several of these parts moving around and sinking.

Now you can see where we went yesterday on our roof adventures: up the yellow steps, through the French fries and rocket ship (although I'm not sure if I included any of those pictures), on the roof, down to the submarine, on the surfboards, and down blue stairs.)

Ben had done his amazing thing and figured out the rides we should go on first.  In the end, it didn't matter because the park wasn't very busy and we never had to wait more than two cycles for a ride.  But one never knows, so it's good to have a plan.

We went to the speedway battling coasters first!  It was nice and smooth and pretty fast.  They let us switch from one coaster to the other without having to go through the whole line too!

Then the dragon coaster.  It was not as exciting as I expected.  There was fun stuff to look at while the ride was starting (castle-type stuff with dragons and ogres) but then the roller coaster part was all of about twenty seconds.  We were able to go on this one twice too, so I took some pictures the second time.

Then the polar expedition.  This was my favorite!  It was pretty fast and then it stopped and we watched an animation.  I expected that to be the end of the ride, so imagine my surprise when the whole coaster dropped a few feet.  It was probably an even smaller drop, but since I wasn't expecting it at all it was great fun.  (Ben and a child often rode in the front of the coasters, especially since the lines were so short.  This is one time that it didn't work out as well for them because they could see the track.)  We went on this at least three times, but not three times in a row.

After this it rained a bit.  We went to the Emmitt's couch ride, which is inside and kind of like Soarin'.  We didn't have the best of seats, but it is still a fun ride and got us out of the rain.  (It wasn't quite raining enough to get our rain coats out, but it was getting close.  There was the tiniest of overhangs to stand under while we waited to get on the ride, and that was enough.)  While waiting, it was rainy and sunny at the same time.  The weather was actually quite crazy and it kept trying to rain throughout the morning but then stopping enough.  I said something about the fact that there should be a rainbow somewhere and Ben said "I see a rainbow."  He was talking about the permanent rainbow on the ride across the street.

It was sunny again by the time we got out, so three of us decided to do the ride across the street.  It ended up being a ton more fun than I was expecting.  I was expecting a somewhat bouncy ride, but the ups and downs were just right.  Enough to be fun, not enough to feel yucky.  While we were on the ride Cheryl had apparently told Ben something like, "Keep an eye on my purse" and so they gave it a mini-photo shoot.