Friday: Fredrick Meijer Gardens

Today I went on a field trip with Joshua to Fredrick Meijer Gardens.  It was a bit cold out, and I didn't really enjoy the driving, but it was otherwise a lovely day.

There were plenty of chaperones, so all the adults only had one or two students with them.  I had Joshua, obviously, and his friend Ben.  Ben has been in my field trip group before and he's a great kid.

We got there no problem.  Besides the guided lesson we could choose what we wanted to look at so we started with the arid plants.  The butterfly area was looking a little full, so we decided to come back later.  We went outside and walked around the pond and farm areas.

Then it was time for the guided lesson.  It was on adaptations, especially of butterflies.  It was ok.  It was probably age appropriate but I was a bit bored.  Lunch was next.  Joshua and I were both hoping for an inside lunch but they had us in an outside pavilion.  When we sat in the sun it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't very warm either.

After lunch we were going to go in the butterfly room but the line was really long.  Dealing with plans changing was probably one of my favorite parts about these two kids...they decided that the line was too long so we should do something else and they were both fine with that.  Ben really wanted to get to the Japanese garden because he and his mom had been talking about the cherry blossoms.

The problem was that we didn't know what a cherry blossom looked like.  So we took several pictures of not-cherry blossoms.  I also took some of Joshua.

Eventually we actually found some cherry trees and it was a happy time.

After the Japanese garden we went to the children's area.  We went through the hedge maze, but the treehouse was declared too busy.  We decided to go look at the art exhibit in the building for the last 15 minutes.  However, the butterfly line wasn't long any more!  So we snuck in there for about 10 minutes.  The whole afternoon was great, but I really do like the butterflies.  (At the same time, 10 minutes was about right.)  No butterflies landed on us, although we tried really hard.

The traffic leaving the gardens was absolutely terrible.  But we made it without incident.

Grey Bear's bad part of the day was that Joshua didn't bring him to the gardens to recreate an old picture.

Wednesday: alarming things

Last night, around 1:20am I heard an alarm go off.  It was shrill and insistent...beep beep beep.  beep beep beep. beep beep beep.

I was out of bed so fast and to the bedroom door a second later.  As I opened the door, another second later, it stopped.  I walked into the house, and my first thought was that there was no smoke.  I checked the oven.  I checked the fridge.  Nothing.  I went downstairs and checked the freezer.  The furnace seemed fine.  What else could have made such an alarm?  Something from a device...the ipad?  A phone?  A battery backup?

Well, a half hour later there was still no additional alarms and my heart rate was finally slowing down.  I got back to sleep.

In the morning, no one else had heard the alarm, although that isn't all that unexpected.  Was it a dream?  I heard it when I was out of bed, so that would be surprising.  It is still a mystery.

My other alarming thing was when I grabbed a pen and it started to write in blue ink.  Well, that is odd; I was sure that it was a black ink pen.  Black?  Blue?  What was going on?!?  It turns out that we have two pens that look exactly alike but have different inks in them.  I wasn't going crazy.

Tuesday: reading

It was a pretty normal day today.  There were some new routes at rock climbing, and both kids really enjoyed working on them.  It meant I had more time for my book.  I read a lot while we were in Fort Wayne and got pretty far through my series.  I finished the book after dinner.  There's only one more in the series, which I fully expect to enjoy, but then I'll be rather sad that the series is done.

Monday: boring

 Honestly, it was a rather boring day.  I woke up before my alarm - I couldn't quite get comfortable.  I did assorted chores even though I didn't want to.  I'm far from on top of things, but several of the mundane chores (laundry/kitchen) finally got finished.  

I picked up Joshua from school.

I picked up Isaac after band practice.

I made dinner - it was pretty yummy.

I went to karate - we worked on some basic actions and getting them perfect.

Joshua started M-step testing today. We were asked to send a letter of encouragement for our kids.  I was pretty proud of what I ended up with.

Sunday: morning math

This morning Isaac asked me, "what would the math be that if a is a positive number b is positive and if a is a negative number b is negative?"  

It ended up being a collaborative effort, but we ended up with the equation: a = abs(a)*b.  Next he went to graph it.  Then he started playing around with the equation.  After he tried a few things that didn't work out I put in a+1 = abs(a+1)*b and that altered it like he was looking for.

 (Pat, don't roll your eyes.)

Friday: racquetball

Ben was having a back procedure today, so we decided to play racquetball in the morning!  It was lovely.  Ben won both games, but I put up a good fight.  We have obviously lost some skill, but it was also surprising how well we still did.  We had some great serves and some good volleys.  ...it was good exercise and we were tired at the end.

I found our college IDs in my racket case.  How did they manage to stay in there so long?

Horizon slept with Isaac a few nights ago.

weekend: Fort Wayne

 Like normal, we went to Fort Wayne for a weekend over Spring Break.  Joshua, especially, was so excited.  He was hoping for waffles or French toast sticks for breakfast and to go to the wooden playground.  Liz delivered both delicious breakfasts and we went to the playground.

When we got there in the evening the cousins immediately started doing their thing.  They didn't have all that long though because it was already 9pm.  This time Ben also came with us!  Usually he stays home and works, but we were happy to have him along this time.

Saturday, after homemade waffles, JJ and I played Dominion.  He wanted to play and it's one of my favorite games, so I brought ALL the cards.  We ended up playing three times throughout the weekend so while it might still have been overkill to bring that many, it was reasonable.

We had a late morning trip to go get croissant-donuts.  They were delicious!  I split a donut with Isaac, so ended up with half a lemon and half a chocolate peanut butter.  I liked the chocolate peanut butter better, but they were both very good.

Then we went to a nearby farm.  It had rained a lot recently and so the trails were slightly squishy.  As normal, Joshua fell down in the mud.  It wasn't as bad as his last mud escapade though, and he just walked it off.

They had a few animals but not a ton.  The day was a beautiful one - cool but sunny so it felt warm.

We also saw activity at the blacksmith shop, so we stopped by to see what was going on.  It turns out there was a ladies blacksmithing class, but they were finishing up and the instructor was so happy to tell us about what they were doing and show us things.  Several times I thought it was about time to go, but then she'd say, "and let me show you..." and  we'd learn something else really interesting.

Sunday.

The plan was to go to the playground after lunch.  JJ and I easily roped Ben and Isaac into playing a game of dominion.  Ben and I trounced the kids, with Ben winning overall.  JJ had a bit of a hard time with the strategy with the set of cards.  (I mean, I kept giving him additional rules each time we played.  He did well with the rules.)  Isaac's plan didn't pan out at all and he never acquired more points.  I was a bit surprised about that because he usually has a plan.

The the kids continued playing with plus-pluses.  They had started on Saturday, playing with them for at least an hour, but on Sunday they played with them for several more hours.  The adults were all rather surprised, but happy that they found something that worked for them.

If the afternoon we went to the wooden playground and the kids had a great time!  They played their normal game.  It was a bit warmer than previous years - it's often grey and cold, and this time it was mostly sunny and cool.

The kids were really tired at the end of the day and had a hard time figuring out where to sleep.  It was finally figured out and they fell asleep quickly.