Parentheticals

Early in the week we went to the DI and got bikes for Timmy, Gideon, and Elsa. Timmy's bike had one missing tire tube and Gideon's bike had damaged pedals, however, they were all pretty good other than those issues. Elsa has never ridden a pedal bike before so she is very excited to start learning this and has been having Mike come out and help her balance and practice a lot. We fixed up all of the broken parts of the bikes and the kids ride around fairly often now. The kids have also noticed the first flowers of spring in grandma Sheila's yard. They are very excited to be done with winter and getting into spring. On Thursday The architects finally gave us the final versions of all of the architectural drawings for our house so we submitted a final version of them then. We are really really hoping that this time they accept the drawings without any comments. Mike took the day off on Friday because he still has more vacation and the company will let him carry, so, Grandpa Mi...

Salt Con was the first weekend of March. Despite everyone being sick we had a lot of fun. We played a few new games and some old games. We bought a few games and a lot of toys. We painted miniatures, played in the Star Trek simulator, played a magical kittens RPG, and ate the continental breakfast at the hotel.  Although we usually go to the pool almost every day during SaltCon this time the pool was under construction.  After salt con the kids all had to go to the doctors and many of them got shots. Most of them recovered fairly quickly, however, Sara seems to have been impacted the most by the shots. Her arms hurt severely for more than a week, and she still seems to be a little bit lethargic, so that tetanus shot is pretty tough. The kids got invited over to a party at the Wilson's. Timmy says that it was just a parade pretty much. Elsa says that it was great, and it had a lot of food and snacks and that she loved it.  Mike and Alison saw Les Misérables at a theater do...

We ended up buying a car the Monday after our last post (which was not last Monday but the Monday before). The car that we bought was the one that magically appeared on our list of cars that we were looking at. Neither Alison nor Michael remembered adding that car to the list, so, we are currently calling the car Magic. The car we got is a 2013 Honda odyssey, and is working very well for us. We have already installed seat covers because the car has cloth seats (which was one of the reasons why we were considering not buying it). The day after we bought the car Alison went to Thanksgiving point with her family and the kids and they ended up getting locked out of the car so Mike had to drive the old broken minivan down to get them. It didn't break down during the drive, so that was a blessing. When they were at Thanksgiving point they went to the butterfly museum and had a lot of fun seeing all of the butterflies. Mike took Wednesday off and the whole family went to a meeting at Sara...

On Monday we went to Sara's 7th grade orientation for her new Junior high School. She is very excited to do acting and art classes.  Alison and Mike went to meet with the cabinet guy on Tuesday so that we could finalize our cabinet choices for the new kitchen.  On Wednesday Sara went to a play rehearsal for her part in Seussical the Musical. This week during outside time all of the kids who participate in outside time and Mike have been playing a LARP game. We go around the nearby Church and we each have our own characters: Michael is a cyborg named Stinky Pete who shoots rockets and has the ability to charge up with batteries. Timmy is a son of a wind God who uses wind Magic. Timmy also has a dragon who is a water dragon. Gideon is an apprentice to the god of wizards and he has a katana which was broken. Elsa is a pink ice dragon named Rapunzel who also has beautiful golden hair. Rocket is an assassin dog named Shadow who can use lightning and fire magic. We tend to go on epi...

On Wednesday Sara got news that she was invited to participate in the play as a leopard. It was the character she wanted, so she is very happy. On Saturday we had many wars members come over to our house to help us move our stuff from the portable storage units in front of the house to the Waters house spare room. It was hard work and took 2 hours, but surprisingly enough we got everything in except for a few small boxes. On Sunday we went to church like usual, and on the way home Mike noticed that one of the shipping containers that we were storing our stuff in in front of the house had its door open. Mike went to shut the door and found a comforter blanket and three knives and the container. He threw away the knives on the comforter blanket in our trash can, assuming that some hobo or some kids had gone into the container.  He later learned that apparently Timmy and James have been playing in the container and those blankets and knives were James's. So, Mike had to get the stuff ...

Last Sunday Grandpa Mike have the kids rocks and arrowheads to sell. They are excited to try and make some money (Timmy wants me to add the following emoji 💰 🤑) Wednesday the kids made a kraken theme park ride, which had lights, a camera and sound system and a moving box when you got attacked by the kraken.  Thursday the trains were delayed, so going to Rea's class was harder than usual. When they got there Rea did a speech about book binding, which went well. Elsa wants to add that Jello is so cute and fluffy and cuddly warm, and Gideon wants to add that he likes to play in a box. Friday we got back our wayward minivan, which hadn't broken down again yet. Friday we went ice skating. Timmy said it was great. We started timidly, however by the end we were all pretty proficient. Timmy made it to the center of the rink, and was happy about that. Elsa borrowed a ice seal that helped her not fall down. They named it sealio. It is sort of like a baby walker. We all had a fun time, ...