Year 3, March 15th-17th, 2018: Time to Rest

Due to going to the Children's Museum on Tuesday and the upcoming concert trip on Sunday, we've spent the in between days at home mostly resting.  We did school and chores of course, but no major projects.  Benaiah went with Grandpa for an overnight consulting event and will be gone until Sunday. Jared and I had a mini date night on Friday night.  My brain is tired from dealing with the emotions that go along with physical stress and pain, so I'm a little short on words, but I'm sure the photos will jog my memory.

Abishai was very clingy on Wednesday, and also wanted to go out and be with Keturah the whole time.  He loves his sister very much.

They are working on their front walk overs.

So they run, skip once, and then get into a handstand.  Then the coach helps them to bend into the bridge position and stand up.  It's the very basics of doing all those fun flips you see the bigger girls do.  It takes a LOT of work to get there, and I could never do it.

Sack race time!

We drove past the church and Justin said Grandpa had just gone into the building, so Abishai wanted to stop and say hi.  And as customary, the kids had to name all the animals on the candy tray before they could have one.  Grandpa was super dressed up because he was officiating a funeral that day.  This was all on Wednesday and should have been put with yesterday's blog, but since there was already all the museum pictures there, I just threw these up on here.

I guess your sister can be a great place to stretch out your legs on while you play, lol.

At church, Justin insisted on having Grandpa's chair, and told me to use the stationary chair.  Bossy little guy.

When the wifi goes down at home, you reconvene at church for Bible lessons and then resume your normal Wednesday activities of Bible Bowl and screen time.

How big boy hands in between school and Bible Bowl.

Dinner had church because I didn't have anything prepared in time to get to church for Bible class.  Jared was out and stopped by the golden arches before coming back to the church.

Home away from home.

I got your packpack, Dad!  Hehe!

Thankfully it wasn't too full and heavy.

Watching baby Abishai videos.

Using a vehicle with a forklift to lift up his other cars to put them back in the bag to bring them home.

Most patient dog ever.

Abishai was playing with some pennies, and I thought it would be a good idea to clean them up a bit.  I'm glad I looked up how to do it properly.  This penny has either been cleaned the wrong way for its' age or was eaten by a machine.  If a penny was minted in 1982 or after, you can't use an acid based solution because it's made of zinc and covered in copper.  I always felt the newer pennies were different.  You can only use a pencil eraser to get off some of the grime, and regular soap and water.

Unfortunately, a couple of the pennies I did soak were from 1982 or more recent, but thankfully they weren't ruined.  You just use some distilled white vinegar and a little bit of salt.  Some use ketchup or tabasco sauce because it has the vinegar in it.  And you have to rinse them off or the leftover vinegar will keep eating away at it.  This was today's impromptu science lesson on acids and metals!

I don't know why it's such a fascinating thing, but Abishai will throw away his own stinky diapers in the big trash can outside.  Ok, then, sure!

Cute baby on a brick wall, which, gives me an idea for the next warm, sunny day!

We got to see the garbage truck go up and down the street!

Mommy, jump with me!  So I "jumped" or rather stepped down and walked over the other rock, and Abishai kept switching with me.

Reading time in the morning.  He's loving this Richard Scary vehicle book that is a copy of Jared's book from his childhood.

Weird snack, but ok.  Fruit, veggie, and carb.

This was so adorable!  I was having a few moments of self pity today, but Abishai decided to take matters into his own hands.  He asked for the "elephant" book and got into my chair to "read" aloud to the other two kids!  He turned the book around to show them the pictures!  He asked them to find the elephant, "Elephant? Good job!", and rewarded them!  And he told me to go drink my coffee and have fun. 3 yr olds are incredible imitators, which is cute, but is a constant reminder to check your words and attitude lest they copy them!

Highest duplo tower ever!

Abishai asked me to take all the police stickers off his bike, so I did, and then snapped this last picture of the words Keturah had added, "Abishai's police motorcycle."

Abishai was playing with his sandbox and cars and said he needed some boxes for box truck.  Then he remembered that his magnetic vehicle book had some box pieces.  He got down the box of pieces and we found the boxes and he put them in the box truck!  Genius!

Ooooo, Justin is getting quite good at this!  He decided to build a Lego Taco Bell!  He has a handle for the handicap people on one door, and has a second door on the other side.

He explained all the components to me, but I don't remember them all.  I do know that the yellow thing is the soda fountain where you can choose like 40 different kinds of pop.  And R2-D2 has a Mountain Dew slushie.  And I think they are eating the normal tacos and such.

This is the kitchen and there's a guy out front taking orders.  To the left is the bathroom.

Drive through order window!  And then you pick up the food on the right side.

Abishai is quite the builder, too!  Ok, he didn't build all of this, but he did play with it and arrange it.  I also built a house for him out of regular Lego, but he promptly destroyed it when I wasn't looking.

The first 3 guys went into the space habitat at Benaiah's school for 12 hrs on Thursday!  It's in the gym so they had to listen to everyone else coming and going that day.  They performed experiments and were tested, too.  They were going to have a live feed for classrooms half way around the world, but couldn't get it up and running.  I think maybe 1000 or so people were going to watch!  How crazy is that?  Benaiah DESIGNED this and he and his classmates BUILT this and they were showing it off to the WORLD through the company Space Port.  Crazy awesome!

Ok, so we finally saw Thor: Ragnarok.  And this is how it went down.  We had waited too long to see it in the cheap theaters, so, we rented it from Redbox, which are kiosks outside of stores that you can rent DVD's and video games from for fairly cheap.  You can reserve online, and that's what I did.  We have one at our CVS half a mile away.  So, Grandma came over and watched the kids, and we went "out on a date" to CVS to pick up the movie and a couple of other things and took it to her house to watch it, uninterrupted on their humongous screen!  This is what happens when you are a) cheap b) too busy to make time for date night and c) married this long that you really don't care how it goes down, but date night needs to happen.  And we did it early enough in the evening that we were back in time for 9pm bedtime.  Bwahahaha!  We are so lame sometimes, but we did it!  As far as the movie goes, it was hilarious if you knew going in that it was supposed to be more light hearted than the rest of the Marvel films.  There's a lot more swear words that I would have liked and a couple of other inappropriate words where they could have used something less obvious for the kids' sake.  But otherwise, it was pretty straight forward comic book film, a stepping stone to the regular big one coming up next month, the first installment of Infinity War with all the past characters in it.  Jared didn't like the zombie warriers, but I found they were very tame compared to Pirate of the Carribbean movies and weren't a big focus of the movie.  Even the big baddie, Hella, wasn't too over the top sinister.  She reminds us of the evil queen in Cinderella or Snow White (the live action remakes).  Yes, there's the Norse mythology and lots of sci fi elements but that doesn't bother us or the kids since we've been up front about other religions.  This is just all a fairytale to them.  We did let them watch it today and I had forgotten that they don't see all the behind the scenes footage and pics on Instagram that I do, so they had a ton of questions.  I had to keep telling them to watch and listen carefully and your questions will be answered.  And there were so many easter eggs and funny moments.  It looked like the actors were having a blast ad libbing a good portion of it.  Justin's main takeaway was that the Sychar, the junkyard planet, was too colorful.  And that was the whole point.  Ok, now that I've written more about some crazy fake story instead of our own story, I'll stop now.  It only took us 4 months to see this film! Lol!

And now for the main event......after 19 years.....I have the privilege of seeing the 'boys playing united! (Aka, Newboys United concert.)  It's going to be an adventure with my second born!  And in my pity moments, I have to remind myself that I say no to so many other good things so I can make these memories with my children.  Why be selfish like that?  Because the memories of going to concerts with my mom or going on a few field trips or even the homeschooling in general are so precious to me.  I want my kids to have what I had, even despite my not so good parenting moments. Right now, it's Benaiah and Justin's turn.  Keturah and I did see Anne of Green Gables the real musical on THE Island from whence the book came, just the two of us, but we will also enjoy other outings as she gets older.  They are all growing up fast and they are my primary focus.  I am glad they see their grandparents going on mission trips, and their Daddy doing ministry events because I choose to spend my strength and time taking them on different trips and educating them.  It all balances out.  And hopefully, the good stuff outweighs the not so good stuff of their childhood.  That is my prayer.  It's what I have from my imperfect childhood.  I'm clinging onto those good memories, and dismissing the bad (which have been emotionally processed).I'm carrying on the torch the best I can.  It's so very hard, so I pray that I can make it through the next couple of days, and then rest, and then back out for two days at the homeschool conference.  Is it spring break yet? Lol! For Benaiah it is, and I think for us, too.  Fun times ahead!