Saturday: easy day

It was a pretty easy day as we all tried to get better.  Well, Joshua is still feeling ok but enjoyed extra screen time anyway.

I was feeling much better until about 8pm, when my cough came back.  Overall I'm still doing better.  Isaac and Ben are about the same.

We did manage to get the eFoil out of the dock box.  It was a family affair but went pretty quickly before that.  The weather was beautiful, so it was nice to get outside for a little bit.

Friday: tater tots

Buffalo Wild Wings no longer has tater tots.  This is a bit of a tragedy.  I love tater tots.  Recently they also discontinued the orange chicken, which was Isaac's favorite.  They still have good stuff, but at the same time I won't be as excited about getting food from there.

I have a cough/cold today.  I managed to get a lot done this morning, so much that I was even a bit surprised about it, but then this afternoon I got pretty much nothing done.  Ben is very sick.  Isaac also has a cold.  Hopefully Joshua doesn't get sick.

Wednesday:

 I made a Gatorade tower!

Tomorrow is Grey Bear's birthday, so Joshua put him in my bed for a birthday nap.

The kids, as Trojans, participated in Trunk Or Treat at church.  They hung out with the youth group, so I just dropped them off and picked them up.  It was a beautiful day for the activity, but I was also glad to just go home in the middle.

Tuesday: decorations

Tonight Joshua and I took a short walk down the road to look at some Halloween decorations.  There's one house that looks really cool at night, but I'm never driving with Joshua there when it's dark.  The weather has been holding out for us so we went today.

It was really nice.  It was a nice walk with Joshua. and nice time looking at the decorations (and there were a lot!)

Friday/Saturday

Friday was a normal mail day in a purple state: 5 pieces of mail, all from politicians.  All straight into the recycle.  (While the text/phone calls are more annoying, I feel like all this mail is so wasteful.)

I brought the kids to Peach Wave after school.  I didn't really want to go but Joshua was so, so excited about it.

Saturday Isaac was at a robotics competition all day  (7:30am-9:30pm).  Apparently the comp went much slower than normal, because the expected schedule had Isaac finish at 7pm.  Joshua and I went to watch for a few hours in the afternoon - Isaac's team made it to the semi-finals.  We had a fun time watching.  Isaac wasn't feeling great after eating a very late dinner, but said it was good otherwise.  He wasn't very talkative on the way home.

Wednesday: feeling better

I can tell I'm feeling better.  I'm just moving and fidgeting more.  I went to karate and that went pretty well too.

Beyond that, the day wasn't very exciting.  I just worked on my chores.  Even grocery shopping didn't have any interesting observations.

Tuesday: busy

It was a busier day today than I was expecting.  Midterm grades needed to be turned in, which meant a bit of grading, plus the normal class plans, plus getting stuff ready for Thursday, plus a few extra emails.  I also ate lunch with Dad, but that is more of a fun thing than a busy thing.

It ended up working out well though - I just stayed at Hope an extra hour and then went to pick up Joshua from school, since he has art club on Tuesdays.

Besides that though, it was a pretty normal day.  My book is taking a bit of a lull.  It isn't bad right now and I'm still sitting down to read it at random times, but the story feels like a bit more of the same and that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.  There's also a love interest that just feels weird.  Maybe it's that way on purpose but still odd.

vacation Monday (June 15) part 2: Fløibanen funicular

 After lunch and a rest at the hotel room we went shopping and then for a ride to the top of the mountain.

We had moose burgers, but Isaac said it wasn't as good as the first time.  We think the person used less sauce.

There was a polar bear while shopping, so I obviously got my picture taken with it.

Once we were done shopping, we went to the funicular.  (A funicular is a cable train for going up and down steep slopes.)  You can see the top of the railway in the picture below.  There were paths that you could walk up too, and while walking around we saw a lot of people that seemed to have done that, but it was nice to not have to do that.  It was also about five minutes away from our hotel room.

Pictures don't really seem to be doing justice to how steep the car was.  The internet says the angle was 29deg

The funicular was for more than just tourists, and on the way up had one other stop and on the way down had three additional stops.

Once we got to the top we took some pictures and enjoyed the view.

...and then found a playground.  It was a rather normal playground, but I felt like I was tearing the kids away so we could go walk and explore a little more.

Ben and Cheryl walked for about five minutes and found a lovely place to sit and enjoy the view.

Isaac on a rock in a fjord.

We continued to explore.  The path/road that we were on had a lot of things to climb on, so the kids were happy with that.  We'd walk a bit, then they'd get to climb on something, we'd walk a bit, etc.

We found a gathering a rocks.  (A pile?  A flock?  A cairn?)  It was probably man-made, but it's sometimes hard to tell.  We searched for a few more rocks.

Walking a little ways further we found another bench/lookout combo

And then we started back.  I had noticed that there was a side trail following the road on the way out, so on the way back I started using it.  The kids, of course, followed suit because it was a much more interesting walk.  (This was more of a hike, which I wanted, than a walk, which was what others wanted.  It was perfect because we were still near each other.)

We found another playground!  I think this one was supposed to be troll themed, but either we were in the wrong place or I just didn't see the trolls.

Walking over another hill brought us to a ropes course.  This was the coolest part, so I was glad that we found it last.  Four of us did all the ropes stuff, although Ben and I stopped at the play structure.

Cheryl had found a nice place in the sun to wait for us.

On the way down!  I just sat on the step so I could see better.

It was decided to go to a tapas place for dinner and it was so much fun.  They gave us popcorn as the appetizer.  I like popcorn.  We ordered two rounds of about eight main entrees and then a round of desserts.  So we had a little bit of everything and two bites of the things we liked the best.  My favorites included the mushroom pasta, Korean chicken, and the chicken skewer.  

The desserts!  I recall them being very good, but nothing stood out as extra extra amazing.

After this I think we headed back to the hotel room.  I have no idea what time it was, but by the time we did showers, the kids wrote their daily recaps, and such it was time for bed.  We discovered that the emergency exit map was glow-in-the-dark, which we thought was pretty cool.

Sunday: Isaac laughing

 I made Isaac laugh so much today, over dumb things.

He wanted to have what was essentially a clip thumb-war.  Using an extra large clip, you try to "eat" the other person's extra large clip.  It was more fun than I expected, but still pretty dumb.

Then this afternoon he made a LEGO contraption that pushed a stick up through a frame when a button was pushed. Then he upgraded it so it worked better and he said, "and if you turn it upside-down it won't fall out."  What I didn't think about was all the other sticks that were also in the frame - they fell out.  His practical joke worked and Isaac obviously found it hilarious.

Saturday: blah

Today I only felt ok.  There were times of feeling fine and there were times of feeling a little yucky but I survived.

We played some games.  I didn't do as much cleaning as I hoped to do...we're having people over tomorrow so it matters more than normal.  They'll only be in the main area though and that gets cleaned up pretty quickly and I did get some cleaning done.

Friday: vaccines, dinner

The kids and I got our flu and COVID vaccines at Meijer today.  The sign-up process was a bit annoying, but in the end totally worth it.  We were in and out in about fifteen minutes, which is so much better than last year at Walgreens when it took at least 45 minutes.

We got home, I put the groceries away and I started dinner.  Ben and Isaac needed to leave at 6pm, so I had been a bit worried about getting dinner made in time so we were rushed.  Well, Meijer went so well that dinner ended up being early.  I'm really bad at timing dinner.  It seems like it is always late.

Thursday: groceries

Wednesday is normally grocery day.  For assorted reasons, I didn't get, or even order, groceries.

As I was picking up Joshua:
J: Did you get groceries?
A: No, I worked all day
J: oh, that's right

As we were making snack:
I: did you get groceries?
A: No, I was working

An hour later, after I took a short nap:
I: Did you get groceries?
A: what?  You already asked me like, an hour ago.
I: well, you disappeared and I thought maybe you went to get them
A: no, I took a nap, like I said I was going to.  [side note: we even had a conversation about celery while I was in the bed]

Wednesday: Christmas tree

Today was an odd day.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible sore throat.  Sore enough that I got up to take some medicine.  I took a pretty long nap and have felt better and worse throughout the day, but no fever.

Isaac had the morning off school, which was weird but nice.  He got some work and chores done, and had some fun.  Ben also stayed home for a little bit this morning because he was working crazy hours Monday and Tuesday.  We played a game which was nice...we haven't been playing as many games due to schedules.

I also got started putting the new Christmas tree together.  The pegs are not as consistently sized as ideal, but we're figuring it out.  Below is the top half of the tree in two different configurations.

Tuesday: book interludes

 So, the book series I'm currently reading has put a "major interlude" at the end of the last three books, where we follow the story of a completely different character.  They seem to be in the same world, but probably not in the same time.  (There's a high chance the two characters will meet, but that has not happened yet.)

I do not appreciate it.  The main story tends to end at a cliff hanger, as books tend to do, and I want to know what is going to happen next!  Except I have to shift my attention to this other person.  Then I just get into their story and the book is done and I need to shift my attention back to the original character.  In my current book the interlude is 10% of the book!

I find myself stalling slightly every time I have to change, as it's basically like changing books.  Two good books, yes, but still annoying.

I will still highly recommend the books (Beneath the Dragoneye moons), but so far am not a fan of this interlude mechanic.

Monday: missing

So many (ok, only two) things went missing from right under my nose today.  Since usually zero things go missing, it was a bit surprising.

First of all was a fruit scrap container.  The fruit was feed to the worms.  But where did the container go?  I looked all over, except for in the worm bin.  But why would I have left it in the worm bin??  We'll find out next time, I guess.

Then Joshua had geared up a LEGO contraption and the blades flew off it.  We found one of the two missing blades, but the other one is gone.  We even pulled out the fridge and looked under it.  I think there is still a very small chance that it's under there, but we didn't find it.

vacation Monday (June 15) part 1: swim and sauna

Good morning breakfast!  I think I mentioned it earlier, but now you can see the items.  The brown cheese in the upper left and the dried raspberry ball in the bottom right.

After breakfast we went back to the swim & sauna, this time with goggles.  This isn't a great picture of the boat, but it's the best one I had for the outside.

Inside there were two rooms.  A changing area/viewing room and the sauna.

We could also go upstairs, but the stairs were crazy!  I think these are called witch's steps and I've seen them on-line in a few other places since we used them here.  You really needed to start on the correct foot or the stairs were terrible, but if you started on the correct foot they worked pretty well.

The top was not all that warm, but it was nice and sunny.

Then it was finally time to jump in!  I went first.  I also went second because the second person wasn't ready fast enough.  The water was 11C.

Isaac followed.

Ben was third, but he went from the roof jumping spot so we don't have a good video of it.  Joshua followed.  He wouldn't jump out very far and was pretty much climbing back into the boat once his feet touched the water, but he did it!  By the end he was going a little bit farther.

Cheryl jumped in too!

Then we would warm up and while moving to a new place.  The sauna was so nice and warm after getting in the water.  There was a large window to look out of here too.

...the sauna was nice and warm, but only for about ten minutes.  Then it got too hot, so we all slowly migrated to the floor.  There was a substantial difference between sitting on the lower bench and sitting on the floor.  The thermometer, near the ceiling, showed 89C.  We thought that it must be wrong, but after looking it up it was probably correct.

More jumping at the very end.  Cheryl jumped in twice (which we were all excited about) and I think everyone else had 12ish jumps.  Isaac also jumped off the roof.  There were two big lessons.  First, remember to keep breathing.  It is easy to want to clench everything up in the cold water, but you need to breathe.  Secondly, make sure the person before you is almost out before you jump in, so that you don't have to wait to get out.  Our motto was, "That was terrible!  Let's do it again!"

I had a blast.  I would 100% do something like this again, and I'm really happy to say that I've swum in a fjord.