Wednesday: urgent things finished

Today was full, with boring things, but things worked well.  There were no thunderstorms or even rain when Isaac was going to the bus stop, so I didn't feel the need to bring him.  Then Ben woke up a bit early and so brought Joshua to school.  

I had the laundry washed and dried by 11am, fairly amazing.  I even got most of it put away!  The kitchen was cleaned (and is still mostly clean), groceries and library books were obtained, Hope work was finished.  Several of the things that were "urgent" got finished, although there are several important things that didn't get done.  I feel more on top of things today, but we'll see if that feeling remains tomorrow.

Tuesday: busy

It's been a while since I've had a day this busy.  I woke up at 6am (annoyingly before my alarm) and then felt like I was going full speed until about 7:30pm.  I had a half hour for dinner, then read to Joshua and finished up a few work emails.  It was about 9pm before I decided I was done for the day.

Part of the problem was that there were several problems throughout the day. 
*There was some unexpected cleaning before I left the house. 
*One of the files for my classes doesn't seem to be working correctly on some computers.  It does work on my computers, so I'm having a really hard time troubleshooting the problem.  Is it my file?  Is it the computers?  Was there a weird update to an OS that changed some settings?
*I had a meeting that went longer than I was hoping.
*Traffic on the way to rock climbing is still really bad.  I could avoid some of it by going a slightly longer way, but I keep forgetting because the traffic is only really bad during rush hour.

But even with that, it didn't feel like a bad day, just a long day.

*I went the wrong way from Hope to pick up Joshua, so decided to do a zig-zag to get to him.  I think it might have been faster than any other way.  (Two of the major north-south roads have construction right now, so everyone is taking the highway and it backs up quickly.)
*I belayed with some friends (who also have kids on the rock climbing team) while the kids had practice and it was fun.  There was one route that was especially fun!  And there was one route that we tried to start and it was significantly more challenging than it looked.
*I got several big things checked off my work to-do list.  I'm not quite under control there yet, but almost.
*Isaac forgot his phone in the classroom before lunch.  I got a very nice voicemail from the teacher letting me know she brought it to the front office.  That being said, I am really glad that Isaac is in a place where he forgets his phone and he isn't too attached to it.
*Snaxalotl is going to try frosting with pieces of brownie in it tonight as one of his snacks.  Joshua and I agree that it sounds delicious.

Monday: Labor Day

We went over to Larry and Cheryl's for lunch and some games.

On the way way home the kids were trying to figure out where we were going to to next for a small surprise.  Joshua said Bricks & Minifigs at one point and then immediately said, "oh, I hope we're not going there.  I don't want to go there."

Obviously, we were going there.  We briefly talked at home but decided to go anyway.  I had a great time.  Joshua had at least a good time.  We got some interesting pieces.  They put some Minecraft sets on the table when we were there, so the kids got a lot of Minecraft themed pieces.  We got some normal pieces - there are some that we just don't have enough of right now, surprisingly.  (When you're looking for a specific piece in a certain color and you need several of them, we sometimes don't have enough.)

And with the end of this weekend, we start getting into a busy season.  Isaac's evening stuff starts, Ben has a work trip soon, and I'm just trying to stay on top of everything.  Ben and I have also managed to increase our social calendars, so we're figuring out how to fit that in.  Joshua has a few more weeks before his extra-curriculars start.

Saturday: new litter box

Our excitement today was getting a fancy new litter box.  Joshua came with us to get it from the store so that he could get out of the house today.  He said it was a lot more exciting than he expected because he was expecting a tiny little litter box but instead we got a big one.  And then he helped me get it all set up.  It doesn't really take up less space, but should be much easier to clean.

We had it set up around 11am and I was starting to get a little nervous as evening rolled around and the cats hadn't used it yet.  I know that cats can be temperamental when their surroundings change, and so I was hoping for an easy transition.

They both used it shortly after that.  Yay!

Friday: rain

It rained all morning.  Per the weather apps, there was supposed to be a brief amount and then it would be done.  Instead it rained pretty constantly and the thunder came and went too.  It's been like this all week, and has been really weird.

It was an excellent day to not have school.  It would not have been a good option for Isaac to walk to the bus stop, but I don't know if I'd bring him to school or just to the bus stop.  It's going to happen at some point and I guess I'll just play it by ear.

Our evening plans were canceled due to a family having sick kids, so we went over to another family's house for a few hours this afternoon.  It was a great choice.  The kids played well and Natalie and I haven't seen each other for a few weeks so we were able to catch up on everything.

Yesterday's karate class was just warm-ups: push-ups, sit-ups, and squats.  "Do as many as you can."  "Ok, now let's check your form and do them properly.  Do as many as you can."

I didn't do well on push-ups, but I was under the impression he wanted toe push-ups and not knee push-ups, which is what I usually do.  However, I did really well with the sit-ups, outlasting most of the kids.  (It worked well because I was just about to drop out and he told us to stop, so no one knew that I was at my limit.)  I did well at squats too, but would say I was just in the high middle of the pack.  Anyway, all that to say that stairs have been difficult all day.  We sometimes do squats as warm-ups, but not often enough that my legs are used to them.

Thursday: busy

It was a pretty busy day.  I worked hard before/between classes but didn't quite get everything done that needs to be done.  I do this to myself because I don't do any work during the summer, but it's a bit annoying at the beginning of the semester.

Joshua got a new trophy from piano.  It's mostly a participation trophy, although I think he is required to play something during his lesson in order to earn it.  He's just a *little* excited about it.

Wednesday: the little stuff

I woke up to my alarm this morning, shut it off and went to the bathroom.  While I was sitting on the toilet I looked at the time.  6:24.  6:24?!?  My alarm was supposed to go off at 6:15!  Where did those nine minutes go?

While there's a chance I didn't hear my alarm, I think there's a greater chance that I fell asleep on the toilet for a few minutes.  I'm waking up earlier so Isaac isn't by himself in the morning and Tuesday was busy.

Later in the day I had a great idea for a Christmas present.  I looked it up to see if such a thing existed.  Yes!  ...For a grand total of $15.  I'll still put it on my Christmas list, but I'll need a few more options I guess.

Tuesday: first day

Today was my first day of class.  There were a few small hiccups, but nothing major.  Just normal first day stuff.

Dad and I also drilled another quarter of the holes for the Christmas tree.  We were a well-oiled machine and got it set up and drilled in about an hour and ten minutes.

I also dropped off some stuff at Goodwill from the garage.  It wasn't a ton of stuff, but it did free up a nice amount of space in the garage.

Monday: bang

 **BANG**

Ben half jumps out of bed and I, previously sleeping, actually jumps out of bed.  Ben is often in a medicated sleep, so any funny noises belong to me.  He asks me if he should go look, but by that time I'm half out the bedroom door.

I look around and decide it was just cats running through LEGO.

I go back to bed and tell Ben.  He doesn't seem to believe me.  He thinks maybe the ladder fell.  I say it was LEGO.

We go to sleep.

I wake up, and find the ladder had fallen.

So, in hindsight, I think I only had my eyes open 20% of the time I was looking around.  And by looking around, I mean looking in one spot.  And by looking in one spot, I mean deciding what to see and seeing that.

The whole story came out this evening when Ben came home and Isaac was cracking up.

Sunday: after church

After church today Isaac had a 30 minute meeting.  It's long enough that if we left at the beginning of it we would have enough time at home, but if we didn't leave at the beginning we might as well stay at church.  Joshua ended up playing tag.  I ended up talking with several different people.  By the time we were ready to go, it had probably been about a half hour.  But...I didn't know exactly when the meeting had started and it had a high chance of running long.

Joshua and I decided to leave.  We got in the car when I got a text from Isaac, saying that he is done but someone else could bring him home.  Well, I said that would be fine but we were still in the parking lot so we might as well bring him home.  It was just about perfect timing.

Saturday: back into it

Today wasn't really a normal Saturday, but not all that abnormal either.  Ben went e-Foiling in the morning (which is a different time than normal).  Isaac had homework.  Joshua made a roller coaster.  I got some chores done.  We worked our our LEGO projects.  I took a nap.  We played some games.

vacation Friday (June 12): travel to Norway

Today was travel to Norway, do laundry, and relax a bit.  I would say that we accomplished all of those.

Before we left the LEGO hotel, Joshua sent an email to our tour guide.  He had mentioned several times that the robotic lawn mowers should have LEGO horses on top of them and wanted someone to do something about this.  We decided that she would probably be the best person to email, since the people at the front desk barely seemed to care about anything.  She replied with a lovely response: "I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE IDEA!!! 🤩 And that is another reason why you anyhhd Isaac are such awesome LEGO builders! Thank you so much for sharing and have the best summer building, playing, and having super-duper fun! 🥳✨"

The flight itself was unremarkable, other than we got to the airport too early and still didn't have a gate.  (To be fair, we only got a gate about 45 minutes in advance, and the internet said we should be there before then.  We weren't sure if this counted as international travel, etc., so we went a bit early.)  There was a fosball table that Isaac, Joshua, Cheryl, and Ben played at for a bit and we relaxed in comfy chairs instead of uncomfy ones by the gate.

Waiting for the bus.

The LEGO store had a hand print detector that would tell you which minifig you were.  All of them were soccer players.  I know the world cup had just started, but a few other options would have been nice.

Coming into Norway!

We got to Bergen and Ben was still debating on how to get to the city center.  We thought we might be able to make the bus and so we walked quickly and just made it.  Yay!  On the way though, as we walked and walked and walked through the airport, we saw the city sign.  It said, "Bergen?" and made us all laugh.  I didn't have time to take a picture of it then, but got a picture of it on the way out.

We got to the hotel and dropped off our luggage in the luggage waiting area.  There were so many suitcases.  It was locked and secure, but at the same time a little sketchy.  It was good that we had gotten bags from the fan tour.  I had separated everything that needed to be washed in the vacuum bags, but it was much easier to dump the vacuum bag (with no handles) into the fan tour bag (with handles).  I sure we could have used back packs or something otherwise but this worked nicely.

We had also been debating on how to do the laundry.  There was a drop off service close to the hotel, but there was also a laundromat pretty close too.  I decided we'd at least try the laundromat because it would be a lot cheaper and, for the most part, it worked pretty well.  We went before we got lunch (early afternoon at this point) because I had read that it can get busy in the evening.  Getting everything in the washing machines was no problem.  They started and we went to lunch.

There was a burger place not too far away, so we headed there.  Cheryl and I finished just in time to go back to the laundromat and change the clothes from wash to dry.  Again, no issues.  The dryer seemed to think it was only going to take a half hour, which I was surprised about but foolishly believed.  Cheryl and I walked back to the restaurant as the others were finishing up and as it started to rain.  Not a huge rain, but enough rain that we got our rain jackets out.  We bought some cookies at a nearby but crazy-busy bakery and then went back to the laundromat.

Well, we obviously don't need five people waiting around for the laundry.  It was only supposed to take fifteen more minutes, so Isaac stayed with me and everyone else went home.  Well, the dryer kept adding more time.  Not so much time that we could leave and come back, but enough time.  Cheryl's stuff finished.  Hooray!  One of our dryers said that the dryer plinth was full.  I have no idea what a dryer plinth is.  I attempted to clean something out, but then it stopped the cycle and there isn't an easy way to restart without repaying and getting a refund.  I was annoyed, but when I felt the clothes they were all dry except for one sweatshirt, and even that was just a little damp.  I took the clothes out and looked with suspicion at the last machine.  It kept adding time.  Isaac didn't have his book, and I was done playing heads up.  I gave up a few minutes later and took the clothes out.  They were plenty dry and it was a good call.  We stuffed all the clothes back into the bags (which were especially nice now, since the clothes were folded and compact like upon arrival) and went back to the hotel.

We were relaxing and about to have cookies now that Isaac and I returned, only to find that Ben had left his water bottle at the laundromat.  I went to get it because that's what I wanted to do.  It ended up being a beautiful walk.  It was slightly drizzly, but just enough to make it enjoyable and not too wet.  I attempted to make the walk without my phone since we had been all over this area several times now.  I did take one wrong turn into a dead end, but it was a short dead end and I was back on the correct path quickly.  Our cookies were salted caramel and brown cheese.  I forgot which one I liked better, but I expect it was the brown cheese.  It is something that Norway is known for and we had it on all sorts of items throughout the next week.

Our hotel room was amazing.  It had plenty of room for four people, plus a sitting area.  The shower doors were weird though.  The shower was in a corner (two of the shower walls) and each other shower wall was a glass door that had a magnetic closure.  When unused, it added a small amount of room to the already large bathroom.  When trying to get in and out of the shower, it was awkward.  On top of that, our room looked out onto the fish market and part of the fjord.

We had a pretty late lunch, so we decided on waffles for dinner.  Cheryl and I went to get them and got to walk through the fish market, which was really interesting!  There were shark heads and sea urchin and lobsters and whale.  The waffles were delicious too.

Ben took a ton of pictures of us from the hotel room on our way over and back.

Ben and Joshua enjoyed our pick-a-brick LEGOS while waiting.

We were winding down for the night and the kids were complaining about having to sleep in the same bed again.  I guess not complaining, but just the "oh, Lego Hotel was really nice because we didn't have to sleep in the same bed."  Well, I noticed a pull tab on the couch and while Isaac wasn't looking gave it a small tug to confirm that it would open up.  It did!  Ben went down to ask for another set of sheets and when the front desk looked at him oddly he just said, "My kids don't like sleeping in the same bed."  And the frond desk completely understood.  Isaac was so excited when we opened up the bed for him.  He didn't care that Joshua got the bigger one or that we were going to make it into a couch during the day.  He was just really happy to sleep by himself.

We looked it up as we were going to sleep too...There was only 1.5 hours of pure dark along with another 3 hours of darkish.  The curtains in all our rooms were great and blackout though, so we didn't need to sleeping masks that we brought.

Oh my.  A whole day completed in one post.

Friday: chores

Today I got a ton of chores done.  Sure, I don't love chores, but it does feel good to get them done.  The kitchen even stayed clean all day.  (This summer I peaked at 101 to-do items, but most of the time it was around 75-80.  Today I finished at 64, so things are going down...for now.

Joshua remembered that we needed second day pictures.

Everyone's second days seemed good to fine.  They actually started doing things, which is nice.

vacation Thursday, part 3 (June 11): Aahous

Then we were getting close to the end, but making sure that we had at least looked at everything.  We were by what was expected to be a dead end because the installation at the end wasn't open yet.  I walked down the hallway to double check and some doors automatically opened and I went, "whoa."  I summoned everyone else.  The installation was called "the populace" bu Nina Beier & John Miller and was bunch of mannequins going about their day in a huge room.  There was one other person in the room with us at the beginning, but he left pretty quickly.  So then we had the room to ourselves and still found ourselves whispering.  It was a bit eerie.  Obviously, we played some hide-and-seek.  My hair was in a ponytail which gave it away as all the other women had their hair down.  I thought about it while Joshua was seeking me, but if I moved to take my hair down he would have seen the movement.

We found a few more rooms near the basement, but the kids were very interested in the playground outside.  The rain had been on and off, but it was currently off so we went out.  We stayed there a bit, but it was a rather normal playground so we didn't stay long.  Joshua also got a sliver around this time, but it wasn't sticking out enough to get.  His response?  "Can we find a doctor or something here?"  Inwardly I said "no way...we don't get hurt on vacation" and outwordly I said that I had bandaids in my backpack that we could get shortly.  I believe that it hurt a lot, but it was not doctor worthy.

We finished up and went back inside to get our stuff.  As normal, we stopped at the bathroom...which was a unisex one.  Honestly, it was a great idea.  The stalls were all floor-to-ceiling individual stalls, and then everyone just washed their hands at the closest sink.  We saw this is a few other places too, but it was such a good idea to prevent lines on one side or the other.

We walked around the city center a bit.  The kids hopped over rocks in a man-made stream, we went to some tall trees, and we looked for a game store.  The game store wasn't really what we wanted, so we didn't stay there long.  Pizza for dinner again, but I love pizza so it worked.  (I do think that was the last time we had pizza on the trip though.)

I don't remember the exact context, but one of the kids said something like, "oh, those are cool trees.  I wish we could see them" ...as we were walking up to them.

The pizza slices were gigantic!

We went back to the parking garage and thought we'd go one floor higher to a little overlook bridge.  Well, this overlook was much more exciting than we realized.  I thought there was a restaurant over the overlook bridge and so it wouldn't be appropriate to go any farther, but it turned out that there was just a really nice room with bathrooms.  We could continue to walk on the roof and there were several seating areas and a few special overlook places.  To think we almost missed it!

The sun kept going in and out, so some pictures are sunny and others aren't.  You can see the rainbow bridge in the distance.

This was the church was saw at Legoland the day before.

They had some artsy benches that were almost for playing on but not quite.  They weren't very exciting to play on, although still interesting as benches go.

Near the end we were waiting for Ben and everyone sat on Joshua.  I'm not sure why, but two views of the same scene was interesting.

We drove home and I made Ben bring the rental car back.  We debated a bit about bringing it back in the evening or in the morning, but if it was in the morning we would have to be up and out earlier and I just wasn't feeling comfortable with it.  To be fair, I packed the whole time he was bringing the car back, so we both worked.

Joshua got an owl with his treasure hunt and put it by the other owls in the room.

Isaac wanted to walk the playline one last time, so I went out with him.  We only walked the fun part and then we walked the fun part back.  During this time Ben and Joshua went to build some butterflies as part of the butterfly challenge the hotel had.

Here we are again: extra vowels

We eventually got to bed and Ben pushed one of the light switches by his bed to turn off his light.  It turned off all the lights!  Whoever was in the bathroom yelled at us.  I also wanted to comment on the beds while I'm talking about sleeping.  Both hotels used individual duvets, which was fine.  It wasn't too hot, so for the most part not having a sheet was ok and it was really easy to stick your feet out if you did get too hot.  The weird part about the duvets is that housekeeping always folded them sideways.  So in order to open up the duvet you needed to turn it 90 deg and then open them up to put on yourself.  While a minor annoyance, it was surprisingly annoying.