Saturday, November 23, 2013

Two Weeks of Craziness

I didn't post last week because I was honestly so completely exhausted that I had no motivation to do it.  We still managed to stay on top of schoolwork, but by the end of the week, I had to drag myself to bed.  Here are the highlights (both school and non-school).

School pics/video

We had fun with a science experiment and were surprised at the strength of an egg!
Luke completed all of schoolwork this week, but we didn't take many pictures.  Here is what I have.

We've been reading about homes throughout the ages in Luke's Living Long Ago book.  Here is his drawing of a Viking longhouse.

He wanted to be cozy while working on his Explode the Code.

Gym
Luke has needed to participate in an organized sport so we signed him up for indoor soccer.  I love the program because it is very organized and the kids never stop moving.

Several times during the past two weeks, we have been able to go outside for walks.  We walk to the bank or our local market which are both just a mile or so away.  The kids come back exhausted and ready for naps.
They dragged these sticks for a mile.


Ben School

Learning how to make two digit numbers out of base 10 blocks.

He practiced writing his upper and lower case letters on the whiteboard (the best Target dollar section purchase ever!)

Assembling his Wedgits

"Me" and "my" were Ben's words of the week for the past two weeks.

N is for narwhal and O is for ostrich


Finding out that 911 really does work/The day we shutdown our street
Last Friday, Aaron had the day off and we planned to work around the house all day.  After finishing schoolwork, the boys decided to stay in their pajamas in order to fully relax. :) I was busy preparing for a Mom2Mom sale and had taken over every square inch of our basement with piles of children's clothes removed from storage bins and thrown into piles by gender and size.  The boys were enjoying their newly cleaned, purged and reorganized room by playing pirates.  This involved removing all of the previously mentioned organized toys and piling them into the living room (I assume this was their loot).  By noon, we were all getting hungry, so I began to make lunch and assigned the boys to return the stolen goods to their room.  One of them plugged in a lamp into a newly exposed wall (before reorganizing it was covered by their dresser) and blew the fuse.  Aaron reset the fuse and tried plugging the lamp into another outlet in the room.  As he plugged it in, the original outlet caught fire.

At this point, the boys came running out of their room screaming, "OUR WALL IS ON FIRE!!!!  OUR WALL IS ON FIRE!!!!" 

Aaron came racing out after them saying, "Quick!  Grab the fire extinguisher!!"

I grabbed my phone and dialed 911 while waiting to find out if I needed to hit the send button.   As I stood in the living room holding Olivia, I waited to see if Aaron was going to be able to extinguish the fire and yelled to Aaron, "Do I make the call??  Tell me when!!"  As he sprayed the extinguisher, I saw bright flashes of light coming from the room.  "Never mind!  I'm calling!!" I yelled.  When I made the call, I told the operator, "We have a small electrical fire in our wall.  We think we can handle it, but we would like for someone to come and check it out."

I put the kids (still in their pajamas) in their coats and loaded them into the car.  We parked across the street so that we were out of the way and safe in case everything was bigger than we thought.  As we waited, I looked in my rear view mirror and saw it.  We live in a relatively peaceful neighborhood where not much really happens.  Apparently, we were the excitement of the day (or maybe week), because all of a sudden two fire trucks, an ambulance, the truck of the chief of the fire department, and a police cruiser came racing down the street and parked in front of our house.  Everyone piled off the trucks in full gear carrying their axes and filed into our house.  The boys' jaws dropped.

Aaron had extinguished the fire and they checked everything out and confirmed it was okay.  In the process, they had to walk through our basement filled with all of the Mom2Mom sale stuff covering the basement floor.  Sigh.

It turns out that two wires in the wall were touching and they started the fire.  We were able to have an electrician fix it for pretty cheap and after a week, the boys have finally become convinced that their room will not spontaneously combust.

Luckily, the fire didn't spread past the outlet!
 
 
I managed to make it to the Mom2Mom sale.  I can't believe how much we've accumulated through the years!


 
Happy Birthday, Luke and Olivia!!
Luke and Olivia have birthdays in December, but we have their birthday party in November.  We figure that December is already packed for everyone, plus it gives a little space between birthdays and Christmas.
 
The beautiful birthday cake!

Lovin on Granny Bop

Olivia was very excited about her new boots.

Blowing out six candles

Cousins!

Nana and Yogi with all of their grandbabies

Luke is really into Legos and we had a great time assembling them together.

Pushing Sunshine and Lulu in her new stroller

Our little princess
Tradition!
Every year, we visit Frankenmuth as a family.  Each of the kids get to pick out an ornament from the thousands available at Bronners.  We then head to Zehnder's for a fabulous chicken dinner.  This year, my dad came with us and we met my sister and niece there as well.
 
Helping their cousin pick out her ornament


Mmmmm. . .  chicken!

The whole trip was exhausting.
 


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