Thursday: half days

The kids had a half day of school today.  Isaac also had his math class in the afternoon.

Isaac also managed to convince Ben that since he had math class in the afternoon, he shouldn't have to go to school in the morning.  

So I brought Joshua to school in the morning, and then picked him up after my first class.  We all ate lunch at home, then Isaac and I went to Hope for our afternoon classes.

The half day really broke up my day.  Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but there were a few extra things I needed to deal with today.  Although I managed to get many things done, I'll need to do a little bit of work this weekend to finish up the important items for Tuesday.

Wednesday: boring day

It was my boring day.  I started the laundry.  I got more cat litter.  I got groceries.  I stopped by the library.  By this time it was almost lunch - so I put away the groceries and then had lunch and a nap.

I did a few other miscellaneous chores when I woke up and picked up Isaac.  A half hour later I went to pick up Joshua.  I made dinner and went to karate.

I may have had my last evening reading time with Joshua.  He said he wants to be done with book time and we'll see if that sticks or not.

I won at Azul tonight by two points.  Isaac was trying to be mean in the last round, as appropriate, but didn't spend all the time to fully understand my board and made the wrong choice as he was trying to be mean so I got more points than he was expecting.

Tuesday: computer programs

Moodle was finally up again this morning.  CIT has done a nice job keeping me informed...it was mostly fixed yesterday around noon but they wanted to wait until this morning.  They had a good reason that I didn't completely catch.  

I also needed to put midterm grades in today - my computer in my office won't connect to the system.  This is the second this has happened, so I guess I need to put a ticket in to CIT.  I give them so many tickets.  At least most of them are low priority.  I can reach the system from home, so it's an easy temporary fix at least.

Monday: county country

Ok, who in the world made the two words 'country' and 'county' both look so similar and be used in similar contexts?  It's the worst.

I was signing Isaac up for high school next year and got to the field to fill in the county.  Ok.  I, as always, have to pause, think about if there is an r in the field.  Then, once I figure out there isn't, I put in the county.  But I have to pause every single time there is a county.  

Oddly enough, if I have to fill in a country it usually isn't a problem.

I found a good picture of Isaac on the third route from the competition.  I didn't get a picture of him this far through the route.

Saturday: Scrapyard QE

Scrapyard's rock climbing for USAC was today!  It was amazing to wake up in our own home and only need to travel 10 minutes to get to the competition.

Isaac competed in the morning and the routes were hard.  It started with a pink route.  I think one person finished this route the whole morning.  It didn't go all that well for Isaac, but honestly, we expected that.  Even the demo video for the route looked really hard.

Next was a red route.  We thought this route might be possible, but when it was seen in person we changed our minds.  There was an outcropping that was very difficult to get around and then it was slippery to get up to the next point value.  Isaac didn't get any points on this one either.

Next was a black route.  This one looked hard...hmm, I'm saying that a lot...but Isaac got to the 5 point hold!  We weren't really expecting that, but he figured it out near the end of his time.

Lastly was the yellow route.  This one looked to be the easiest, as easy goes, and it was also the one Isaac got farthest on.  It took several tries, but he was able to get the 10 point hold.

A friend from church came to watch Isaac climb too, and his youth leader got there for the last climb.  The last climb was the best, so it was nice.

In the afternoon Ben and I judged while Isaac did some miscellaneous running tasks.  I had route #4 for F-13.  It must have been on the easier side because about half the athletes finished it.  All the athletes got the 10 point hold.  It was an easy route to judge though.  Ben had route #3 for F-13 and said it was really hard.  Judging was more interesting than I expected.

Friday: Moodle emergency

It was a nice day.  I did a few normal chores and then started working on the LEGO room.  I cleaned one small cabinet and apparently it was not being utilized well because when I was done it was almost empty.  I also cleaned the front of the doors - I'm not sure how one of them got so messy.  It's in the basement!

My moodle course disappeared from the website this evening.  I received an email from a student saying, "did you close Moodle?  I can't see it."  I thought that was the weird, obviously, so went to look.  My ability to even see the course was gone.  So I put in a ticket for CIT.

But, it was after hours.  I wondered if I should call the emergency line for CIT.  I checked with Dad - I figured he would know if this was emergency level or not.  He said it was.  So I called campus safety and said I had a tech emergency and needed to contact the on-call CIT person.  They called back a little later - I felt pretty bad about it, but it seemed like it was the right answer in the end.  They were trying to do some updates in advance of a different update that was going to happen on Sunday, but it didn't go quite as planned.  They thought they had fixed everything, but obviously not.

Fast forward about an hour and I could see my course again.  However, it wasn't really fixed - there were some issues getting half the students back into it.  The on-call guy had called three other people and they got it mostly working but not fully working.  The long and the short of it was they wanted to hide the course for the weekend and then it would be the #1 priority for Monday morning.

I have some work arounds and so said that was ok.  Tuesday is pretty light in regards to homework, so it just involved me sending an email with some links in case people are trying to get ahead or catch up.  It was annoying, but it was also new!  I've never gotten to call saying that I had a technology emergency.  All my requests tend to be low priority.

Last Saturday: Magic Kingdom

This was supposed to be a slow day for us, but Disney time happened and suddenly we had spent most of the day at the park.  What a problem to have. :D

I forgot to talk about the previous night's adventures!  It really should have been in Friday's post, but I'm writing this one.  Before making our way all the way to the room, Cheryl stopped at the front desk to complain about a noise in the room.  It was frequently reoccurring, happening at least once every ten minutes but not on a schedule.  I think it woke at least Ben up if not Ben and Cheryl the night before.  We could not figure out what it was.  If we were on one side of the room it sounded like it was on the other side, but when we went to the other side, it sounded like it was on the first side.

A housekeeping manager came up.  Never did she not believe us, but the first time she heard it understanding dawned on why it was annoying.  She attempted to troubleshoot the problem, but in the end called engineering.  They attempted to troubleshoot the problem, and in the end got us a new room.  The new room was much closer to the elevators!  It was almost worth having to change rooms at 10:30pm just to not make the five minute walk to our rooms.  Ben kept in touch - after confusing several people they thought it was a pipe in the bathroom in the wall or ceiling.

We started out with breakfast at a hotel and it was probably my favorite of the trip.  There was strawberry soup, gummy bears, and a great eggs benedict.  Oh, and potato barrels.  I do love the potato barrels.  There were characters at this breakfast and I think they were more fun than normal because they could talk.  Maribel loved the blue on Joshua's glasses, Aladdin was looking for his monkey, and Tiana talked about the food.

I did not take many pictures today - a bit of a problem when I end up writing these several weeks later.  However, Ben's scooter worked well the whole day.  I think we headed over to Tron next.  I don't seem to have the ride pictures for the first time we went on it, but Ben and Isaac went in the front car so they got a picture of us while we were waiting.

I loved it!  I loved how it got really fast, but slowed just enough for the first turn to not be jarring.  There was a lot of discussion about favorite roller coasters, but this one was probably mine. 

We went on the people mover as there was a bit of time before Space Mountain.  It had a bunch of stops and starts and we were wondering if something was wrong with it, but overall it kept moving.  Then on to Space Mountain!  I love Joshua's expressions in all these photos.

It was lunch time (ish) when we got off, so we had a snack of pretzels.  I love soft pretzels.

We went to the laugh floor with Mike Wazowski.  While waiting, you're supposed to text jokes in.  I feel like we've texted a joke in every time, but Joshua got his told this time during the show!  (The bile at the beginning is for which show you're going to be watching.)

The boys tried their strength, but everyone failed to get the sword out.  The day had warmed up a bit too, which was nice.  Joshua, our hot one, was getting too hot, but it was only mid 60s.

Seven dwarves!  I rode as the single rider with a guy who promised to hurt my ears from screaming, but then didn't make a peep.  The rest of the crew went to the front of the line.

After a dinner of some dressed up tater tots (have I mentioned they're delicious?) and a few other small rides, we had done most of what we wanted to do.  The wait for Tron was down to 75 minutes, so we decided we would wait for that.

It took more than 75 minutes - it was probably at least 90.  We had a few things to do in line and the line kept moving, but it was still a rather long time.  At the end, we asked the kids if it was worth it and they both had a similar answer - yes, but only because there was nothing else they really wanted to do.  Even so, I think it was on the edge of the maximum wait time they both wanted to wait.

But it was so much fun!  Isaac convinced me to go in the front with him and it was good.

We got home that night, of course rather tired.  We grabbed some corn dogs from the Boardwalk to eat in our new, annoying-sound free room.  After some showers everyone went to sleep early.