Friday: dishwasher

Yesterday as one of the boys' chores I had them load the dishwasher.  I wasn't really expecting too much from Joshua, but I figured that Isaac would be able to do a pretty good job.  After all, he has to put away a lot of it as a normal chore.

Well, Joshua did about as expected.  He did a good job, but needed a lot of prompting.  Isaac did about the same as Joshua, which surprised me.  Maybe it shouldn't have.  We had to talk about where to put the cups and how to use the space as efficiently as possible.  I had to remind him where the bowls go.

I think this means they need to do it more often.

Isaac had a good time at the lock-in last night.  I was expecting him to call by 10am, as the after breakfast time sometimes drags and I told him he could call when ready.  I ended up going to get him at 11:30.  I think he was awake until about 2:30am, but stayed happy all day.

Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving!

1 Thessalonians 5:18: give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

This was the passage at church today.  It was a good one.  There have been some things this year that have been hard.  Don't get me wrong; there have been a ton of things that have been really good too.  The good far outnumber the hard, but the hard always seem to be ...more on the mind.  I'm not sure that's really what I mean, but I think everyone understands how it goes.  Anyway, give thanks in the hard seasons and give thanks in the good seasons of life.

After church we put up the Christmas tree.  It's unique.  It's also the first time the cats have had a Christmas with decorations, so we'll see how it goes.  I'm at 30% that the tree will get knocked over.  When we got home after Thanksgiving today there were four ornaments on the ground.  None broken, and most not even breakable.

We had Thanksgiving with Ben's family, and it was a lovely time.  I feel like it's been a while since we've all seen each other, and it was nice to get caught up again.  The food was also delicious.

Isaac is at a lock-in tonight.  He hasn't been in many of the pictures that have been posted but they've run the obstacle course (his favorite), made a fort with the obstacle pieces, and then several other things (but I didn't see him in the pictures, so I don't know what he was doing).

Wednesday: half day

Today Isaac had a half day of school.  Joshua also chose to have a half day of school, even though it meant he'd have to do some cleaning at home.

After cleaning Isaac made a checker board.  He added an extra rule into the game which I didn't love, but it was at least a simple rule so it wasn't too bad.  His strategy needs some work, as he got a little bit stuck and then just went back and forth between two safe spots while I ruled the rest of the board.

Tonight the boys started out with a sleep over again and there was lots of laughter until there suddenly wasn't.  Isaac was in his own bed.  Joshua was sad.  I think they were annoying each other and didn't handle it by just going to sleep.  Tomorrow night Isaac will be away, so maybe it'll be a good reset.

Tuesday: Happy Birthday

It was Ben's birthday today!  It was a rather normal day though.

We got him a Lego set, surprise surprise.  (Joshua had a pajama day.  He's apparently grown about three inches since last Christmas when he got the pajamas.)

Also, do you want to know how a Venus flytrap and an alligator ...hug?  When Joshua asked us this yesterday it was not the question I was expecting.  Apparently they use their mouths.

Monday: fridge and green belts

I ordered a new refrigerator today.  It's going to take over two weeks to get here though. :(  It's probably because white isn't as popular of a color any more.  I really liked the black stainless color too, but that cost even more than the white (which was already more than the stainless).  Oh well..at least it's ordered.

Isaac and I were promoted to green belts in karate today.  This means that we're officially considered 'advanced belts'.  I'm not sure that if it really means anything else...will training be more rigorous?  More exacting?  I guess we'll find out.  There was a bit of that today, but nothing too bad.  We still aren't quite half way to black belt.  Which is fine by me!  The black belt test looks scary so if it takes us a while to get there I'm fine with that.  Isaac needs some time to grow into his coordination too.

Saturday: giggles

The boys had a sleep over in the fort tonight.  We heard lots of giggles for quite a while after they went to bed.

Friday: in pictures

I tried to microwave the milk this morning.  I caught myself as it didn't fit.

While I was making breakfast Joshua gave me a three minute explanation about how his toy medal works.  It has a safety snap on the cord, which made the explanation take an extra two minutes.  Tornado blocked Joshua from getting to his breakfast.  Joshua's grunts didn't persuade Tornado to move out of the way.

Dad stopped by to help with a home fix-it project.  It only took two minutes, which was about 58 minutes less than I was expecting.  So we had some spice tea.

I helped out at Isaac's Thanksgiving Feast.  This year he was an Indian.  The students were much calmer than I was expecting.

We watched Frozen 2 with Ben's family.  It was good.  There were several very funny parts.  Earlier in the day Joshua and I were talking about it and he said his favorite character from the first one was the bad snowman.  (Whose name, I just learned, is Marshmellow.)  For Frozen 2 it is the big rock guys.  Normal Joshua...he does like his bad guys.

Thursday: Pokeball

This morning, as with most mornings, the boys were playing in the basement before school.  It was time to go, so I called them up.  Neither of them like turning off the lights, so they go pretty quickly.  This morning Joshua was the last one, and so had to turn off the lights.  He is allowed to turn off the basement lights and turn on the hallway light, so I don't really know what the big deal is.  Anyway, I started telling both of them that if this is how they are going to act I might not let them play down there in the morning.

Joshua proceeded to cover his ears and say, "I'm not listening!"  I proceeded to tell him to grab Pokeball, who hadn't made it all the way into Joshua's backpack.  (It's Joshua's responsibility to make sure he's there.)  I tried again.  Joshua just pushed his feet in his shoes, grabbed his coat, and went outside.  Hmm.  I stuck Pokeball in my coat.

We got to school and Joshua realized he didn't have Pokeball.  Immediate tears.  We had a bit of a talk about how it's usually a good idea to listen to Mom before Pokeball came out and the tears stopped.

Wednesday: freezer

Yesterday the freezer stopped working.  It still cools, just not enough.

Luckily we have a second freezer.  Everything fit in it, although just barely.

Luckily the dryer is working again after we hired someone to come clean out the dryer duct.  Apparently the DIY cleaner didn't work at all.

But seriously, it's been feeling like just one thing after another lately.

Grey Bear

Some old pictures were scrolling on my screensaver and I noticed how many had Grey Bear in them.   He went everywhere with us.  He doesn't come everywhere with us anymore, but is still well loved at home.

I am sad to report that Grey Bear's paws are both currently broken.  They've been broken for a few days, but are slowly getting better.

I'm happy to report that Grey Bear seems to like me more lately, and will often give me a hug.

In other news, I tried to convince Joshua that I was a ghost today so that the ghost Legos would stop bothering me.  I put a blanket over my head.  I did my best ghost voice.  I was in a ghost competition...and declared the loser.

Sunday: loud

The boys were loud today.  And rather crazy.  It was a bit trying, but they were at least having fun.

Saturday: relaxing

It was a pretty relaxing day.  The boys played well with their assorted toys.  Isaac made a cube semi-outlines yesterday (similar to the video) and rearranged them in all sorts of different ways today.  Joshua did a lot of Legos and some play-doh and I think some other things too.

As part of the assessment at Joshua's school he had to describe a few things that were used in a story.  It's pretty cute.

Thursday and Friday: conferences

This week we had conferences for Isaac and Joshua.

Joshua's was last night.  It was the first conference we've ever had for him, so I was interested in how it would go.  In the end, about as expected.  He's surpassing all the 'necessary' requirements in regards to letters and numbers, but still has quite a bit of learning to do with them.  His pencil grip needs to get stronger, although that assessment was from the beginning of the year and I can already tell that it's better.  He loves all the science things.  He interacts well with the other students, although sometimes stands on the sidelines when not required to do something.

Isaac's was today.  Again, no issues.  He's getting his work done on time this year, so that's an improvement over last year.  He is often the last person to finish, but he finishes.  His teacher loves his sense of humor.  He got all the points on the last math test and it was a hard one.  He is implementing the concepts that they're talking about in writing, even though it isn't his favorite subject.  We talked a bit about the social side of things.  There's still not one really good friend, but we also don't see anything alarming.  He sometimes plays with people at recess.  He interacts well during group work and people talk with him/he talks with people.

In other news, Joshua was in my office for a while today.  Oh, he made such the drawing!  It has people and chains, dinosaur prints, prints with lots of toes (some up to 15!), a ghost, and a mummy.

well, I had a few pictures for today but they're not uploading.  Maybe tomorrow.

Wednesday: scary

Today I brought Ben's car in to get the winter tires on.  The trip - drop off Isaac, drop off Joshua, get to the place - was one of the scariest drives I've had.  The car didn't have all season tires on, it had summer tires on.  Summer tires don't work well at all in the (partial) snow.   They don't stop.  They don't turn.  They barely go straight. I told Ben I am never doing that again.  If the snow surprises us next year he can drive to the shop and I'll follow him and switch cars there.

I made it though!  I was only about ten minutes late, but late enough that all the people had started on a car so I needed to wait a bit longer than expected.  After the winter tires were back on driving went so, so much better.

The snowman keeps bending over more and more in our front yard.  I've made lots of snowmen that have done this, but usually there is a heat source on one side that barely melts the snow before it bends and refreezes.  I'm not really sure why this snowman is bowing so low.

Tuesday: snow day

Isaac had a snow day today!  I knew it was supposed to snow a lot and he only had half a day, so I was wondering if he'd get one.

It really was a good call; the roads were terrible.

We let Joshua have a snow day too and Ben stayed home with them.

Weekend: cottage

This past weekend we went up to Dad and Pat's cottage.  Nathan and his family were there too, and we had a great time.

It had snowed out, so we ended up spending quite some time outside in the morning.  The kids threw snowballs, 

did some swinging,

cracked as much ice as they could find (carefully),

sledded,

and helped with the fire to burn some sticks.

Oh, they also investigated snow melting on the fire.  The well-packed snow balls melted much slower than I was expecting.

Isaac is really into a book series and spent some time reading.  I was rather surprised, because this is usually not his activity of choice.

The kids watched Lady and the Tramp.

There were also a few Lego sets that came out.  Isaac and Jameson got theirs done pretty quickly, but Evelyn and Joshua worked steadily on theirs both days.

More matching people!

Dad played Azul with Isaac.  Isaac explained most of the rules and did a pretty good job.

Joshua finished his spider lair and so the younger kids played with that for a bit.

It's been a while since I've seen Nathan's family, so it was especially nice to be able to spend some time with them.

Friday: firewalls and schedules

Joshua made a firewall...

He also told me his schedule.  He repeats this on a fairly regular basis.  (It starts on a Tuesday.)

Thursday: stuffed

On the way to the car this morning, Joshua said, "I have a song stuffed in my head."  I can't remember which one was 'stuck' in his head, but it caused Isaac to start singing a bunch of other others.  Joshua kept laughing and saying, "Isaac, you're getting another song stuffed in my head."

Wednesday: snow!

While today wasn't our first snow, it was the first snow that stuck around.  It actually snow/rained throughout the morning, although it never accumulated any more.

We also decorated some cookies.  Isaac really wanted to make one for his teacher, but you can't make just one.

I put 'Boo' on one of the cookies for Joshua.  He was telling Ben about it later, and everytime he talked about it he said, "The cookie with BOO!" and it was pretty cute.

Tuesday: nothing

We have a less busy week this week and I love it.  I don't think we're overly busy even in our busy weeks, but there's nothing 'special' that's waiting for us this week.

I'd like to say that I'm doing things to get caught up with life, but that'd be a joke.

Saturday: Lego League

Today was the expo for Lego League.  It went fine.  There were a few things I would have changed in hindsight (like coaching the kids on the interview process better) but overall everything came together.

They got a trophy and so everyone was happy.

(This was before the main Lego display showed up.)

We got the Legos out for the kids to play with near the beginning because there was a lot of waiting around.  There was still a lot of waiting around after we cleaned up, but it wasn't as much.

Friday: dryer vent, pumpkin experiments

This morning Joshua and I worked on cleaning the dryer vent.  You see, the new dryer hasn't really been working very well.  However, the company wanted us to clean the dryer vent before they sent anyone out.  I guess it makes sense.  The dryer vent was very clean and now the drier seems to be working worse than it was before.  I learned a lot about how to clean the dryer vent though, as I got stuck and annoyed a few times.  Next time will be better...if I can get the pieces apart again.  I might need to call in the people with the good tools to re-separate the sections.  Joshua was a good helper and kept going inside to see if any fuzz had come out yet.  He yelled at me from inside, but since it is sort of in the middle of the house there was no way I could hear him.  I kept telling him this, but he kept yelling and asking if I had heard him anyway.

Then I went to help out with pumpkin experiments in Isaac's class.  I got the "does our pumpkin sink or float" station, which was an awesome station to have.  First of all, pumpkins float.  (I had been debating it in my head so the first one was a surprise to me too.)  Secondly, kids love finding out if things sink or float.  The second group I had had their stem fall off, so we put that in the water too.  That started putting lots of things in the water.  We may not have talked as much about density and instead just put stuff in the bucket of water, but it sure was fun.

When the third group got to me, they had cut open their pumpkins and taken out the insides.  So what did we do?  We filled the pumpkin with water!   Small pumpkins still float and the large pumpkin did not.  As they got filled with water you could see that they floated lower in the water.

Only a few people got their sleeves wet.  I cleaned up after myself, including the bucket of water and pumpkin guts.