Year 2, Day 245: This or that?

As far as holidays go, this one was fairly productive.  Since yesterday was our sabbath day this week, Jared got right into working on home projects when he got back from his normal Monday breakfast meeting.  Ethan spent the night, and although they (and I, whoops) stayed up until 2 am, Benaiah had to get up and start mowing asap.  He volunteered to help with tech for a funeral visitation this afternoon, too.  And he has homework.  I'm not sure when this kid will figure out his time management skills, but I'm thinking we've got at least another 10 years before that happens.  I guess I need to work on my time management as well if I'm also going to bed at 2.  Or, I just want to quiet, but I digress.

Jared built the bat box today!  And he picked up a small bookcase for the boys' room and got Keturah's bike fixed.  He got a shelf put in the bookcase in the living room as well that had sat there for a month because I couldn't do it.  He helped transport the boys to church this afternoon.  Oh, and he hung Keturah's butterfly shelves, after reconstructing one where the ends at come off and the screw holes were stripped.  So, he accomplished a ton!  I got 2 loads of laundry done, made sure people had food to eat, tried to teach antsy kids, supervised the projects, put things on shelves when they were put up, kept up with email and who needed to be where and when and how, etc.  Just a normal day for me.

Yes, we did school today.  Why not?  Kids were bored.  And tomorrow is Pokemon club day in the afternoon and the Grandpa Bible class so we won't get much of our afternoon work done.  So today, we reintroduced a writing method they had learned through co op last year.  It was just a portion of the lesson and I really don't know how to actually assign the different parts because they are at different levels.  So sometimes Justin had to wait for Keturah to catch up.  We still have some tweaking to do and some subjects to add in.  Sigh.  We'll get there.  I just need to start saying no to all the wonderful outings! Gah!

Oh yeah, and we managed to squeeze in an 1 hr trip to the splash park because today was the last day they were running.  They turn them on for Memorial Day weekend and turn them off after Labor Day weekend.  We all had a grand time!

Um, I think we like Skyzone alot!  You have to wear special "skysocks" that you can only buy there.  It is a franchise with locations in various locations.  But the socks have grippers on the bottom so you don't slip as you jump and play.  And no, you can't use the ones they give you in the hospital sometimes.  They have to have the logo on them.  Plus, look at how blue the sky is!  It was over 80 degrees today!

We weren't able to find aqua shoes for Keturah, but Justin tried out the ones that he and I will share.

Abishai didn't want to play in the water at first.  He wanted Daddy to swing him high!

Waiting for the dump bucket.

Boom!

Jared even got me to get close to it when it dumped.  It was freezing!

Are you two, kid?  Yes, you are apparently!

Swing me high, too, Daddy!

"Daddy, can't get me!" (you can't catch me!)

It's a whole octave of musical notes!

Spin until your arms hurt!

Abishai swang on this for a very long time!  He didn't move a muscle either.  I think he was slightly afraid of falling through the holes.  It's hard to push though.

We finally got him into the water!

His favorite part is stepping on the sprayers, and letting them hit his pants.

Keturah's favorite part was climbing up the sea turtle that sprayed water in different ways at different times.

Get a shot of cold water up the rear.  Brave boy!

Justin and Abishai's turn on the turtle!  And yes, I picked out those Superman shorts 10 years ago!  Cuz, well, he's a super man!

Oooooo, nice shot of the dump bucket!

Perfect!

This one took Abishai by surprise, so he was slightly upset and "done" with the water.

I'm cold, Mommy! So we watched everyone else while he warmed up.

Time to go home! There was a bit of wind so it was hard to get the towels wrapped around them.

Abishai even tried to wrap his towel around himself!

This is NOT a filtered picture!  Jared exclaimed, "Come look, now!"  The sun was nearly pink!  And easy to see with the hazy sky!

The monster trucks and bus "fly" over the rest of the cars and trucks.  Abishai really likes that monster truck video and is imitating it in his play.  So, he's constantly lining his cars up so they can be crushed by other trucks.  I think we'll have to finally hit up Monster Jam when it comes to Indianapolis.  I think it comes to here every year, actually.

We spent actual cash on another real wood bookcase.  It fits perfectly in the boys' room and will hold some of their more boy friendly novels, just like Keturah has girlie books in her room.  Now, some would object to separating the genders, but, when the kids go the library, they tend to pick things that match these genres.  They of course can read each other's books.  They just don't want to.  I love that we have an almost complete set of Illustrated classic readers as well.  Justin has read them all!

Have a wall? Put up another bookcase! Yes, we have 20 bookcases that either hold books or crafts.  I need two more for our room.  Plus, Jared has all those other books at his office.  No joke!  We live in library!

Stir crazy baby climbed up on Daddy's shoulders and was so loud!

Yes, he can touch the ceiling!

Pew, pew, pew!  Unfortunately, the kid knows the words "kill" and "die."  It's because we do have video games where you shot other people.  But, we talked about it at dinner, and there are a lot of characters like comic book characters, that make it a point that they won't kill another person or alien, but severely wounds them so they can no longer do harm.  I think that's a point I would like the boys to know.  War is war.  It still rages even today.  The Bible is full of fighting and wars.  But, there has to be a reason behind it.  It is kind of cute for a little one to take on a huge one and the huge one plays along hiding and acting hurt.

Abishai loves getting Ethan and Benaiah  "(You) Can't get me!" So adorable!

Daddy was working out in the garage and Abishai wanted to park his cars in, wow, a garage! Lol.  So he did!  He was also upset that Justin gave him the Lego cars without guys in them, so he went back to Justin's Legos and went searching through his dinosaur set for them.  Justin wasn't too pleased.  Abishai did destroy a few things, but it wasn't because he was bad at Justin.  Legos are actually pretty fragile.  Justin didn't understand the difference.  Sigh.

Building a bat box, in his bare feet.  And yes, he came in later and said that he hurt his foot somehow.  Told ya!  And this is one of the sides of the bat box!  It's like 3 feet by 3 feet!  I thought a bat box was like a birdhouse size.  I was so wrong!

Look at my "flippin' " Ethan!  If you don't, I'm going to climb on you and jump off your arm so you can't play your video game.  And yes, Ethan now has orange hair.  It was supposed to be red, but the bleaching process didn't turn out as well as it should.  Oh well, it's just hair.

Maybe I should enroll this kid in gymnastics!  He's way too young for it though.

Here are some pictures of the SUN, not the moon, using different settings on my DSLR.  crazy!

You can almost see sun spots!

Tomatoes are late, but they are growing.

Just two tomatoes.

Mom, pretty flowers! And yes, he really did think they were pretty and wanted both Jared and I to see them!

Uh, how is Daddy supposed to get up when adorable Abishai uses his lapdesk as a parking garage?  Or rather, he wanted Daddy to not be lonely while he typed on his computer.  And when we asked Abishai to move them, he just rearranged them.  Oh boy! And I might have 20 bookcases, but I guarantee you Abishai has more than 20 stashes of cars all over the house.  Oh, and he was talking about a Lego police car, maybe he saw it on the Lego video game Ethan as playing.  So, I let him scroll (yes, he scrolls!) through some pictures of different Lego sets that have emergency vehicles in them and he would name each thing as he scrolled through, "Wee-ooo, wee-ooo.  Fire truck. Police car. Bus. Boat."  And, he happened to find the cutest Duplo set that would be perfect for him for Christmas.  It has a big command center tower, and police men, and a police car, etc.  I took a screenshot of it so I can look for it for Christmas.