Parentheticals

We didn't get around to an Easter egg hunt last week, so we did one Monday morning. We've had warm weather and rain this March, so it was really easy to hide the eggs; Alison said, "I didn't even have to bury any to hide them all!" Alison is kind of obsessed with making Easter egg hunts actual hunts and not just picking up eggs that are laying around. We joke about it, but it's a tradition, as is losing a few eggs every year. We didn't have an official egg count this year, but we're sure we lost less than 10. Out of almost 200, that's not too bad. This week was the local schools' spring break, so Alison picked one thing that each kid HAD to do for school and let them skip the other things. Except for Réa; she had to do CC since there are only 3 weeks left. She got to skip math, though! She was not super impressed by Alison's attempts to sell that as a break.  They had a lot of fun playing with friends and playing outside and building with L

On Monday we went and made a fire in Crestwood Park and we had hot dogs and cooked s'mores. We usually do this activity on Thursday in memory of Jesus in The garden of gethsemane, however this time we did it on Monday because it was the only day of the week that we had enough time for the activity. The fire went well enough apart from some local busy-bodies telling us that open fires were not permitted in the park (which, our fire wasn't open because it was inside of one of the fire boxes that are provided by the park). Tuesday we had our last supper, which is usually on Wednesday. Since this year we learned that it is not appropriate to make a meal similar to a Passover if you're not Jewish we instead made unleavened pizzas and drink grape juice and had haroseth. On Wednesday we watch Prince of Egypt and talked about the Passover. Thursday we played clean up your own backyard in memory of how Jesus cleansed the temples. And we sent our oldest two daughters off to their tem

On Wednesday we had activity dudes in the park since the church was off limits. We played ball games, ate ice cream sandwiches to celebrate March birthdays, and had a generally good time. Saturday and Sunday was stake conference. Alison and Mike went to the Saturday adult session and Rea and Sara went to the Sunday youth session and we all went to the general session, however, the kids whined most of the time, which made it hard to pay attention. The were a few good talks despite that. Saturday Alison also went to her cousin's baby shower. She had a wonderful time seeing all her cousin's. We have been building a lot of Legos recently, and Timmy and Gideon built a large town with multiple residents each with their own house. It was really cool. Timmy and Gideon were both very excited about it, but Timmy didn't want to take a picture of it. This week the weather has also continued quite nicely and we have been playing outside a lot most days. On one day we cut a tree that was

For most of this week we had one family member or another sick. Because of this we didn't do most of the things that we had scheduled to do this week. Mike has been toilet training jello for the last few weeks, and this week we had a major breakthrough and the cat has started pooping on the toilet. So far he has only pooped on the toilet three times, however Mike is confident that he is going to only poop on the toilet in the future. We were invited over to have a pie Day celebration at one of our friend's house, however we didn't do it because of all of the sicknesses. Sarah is also continuing to practice for her play - this week they started to do their practices on the actual stage so it is getting close to the time where they will have the play. Timmy and Gideon also both got goal day parties this week: both of them decided to have chicken nuggets and french fries as their meal, however, Gideon also wanted to have Sprite and sherbet floats. Mike wants to have a goal day

Last week we got ready for and went to saltcon. Mike traded and sold some games, we had a lot of fun checking out various games from the game library, we painted miniatures, we played a lot of games, and we bought a bunch of things at the vendor hall. Some of the games that we enjoyed playing and hope to get someday were: Hogwarts Battle, Blue Lagoon, and Trade on the Tigris. Here is a picture of the miniatures that we painted. This year they provided us with goblins and various monstrous races. I can't find Rea's and Sara's (probably because they took it up to their bedroom instead of leaving it with all of the other ones.) While we were at saltcon we left the pets home and had the waters kids come over to take care of them. That seemed to go well. For the next few days we got everything back together and tried to get back into the groove of school (which is always difficult for certain children) On Tuesday the kids all went to the dentist together. We have to make sure th

Last Sunday the kids went Grandma Julie's house for a sleepover. They had fun and got to play with their cousins. At the park they noticed that some people had damaged the play equipment and sprayed some graffiti. They reported the incident, so hopefully it gets fixed soon. After that they all came over to our house and played more at out house, which was also fun. Since it was president's day Mike was trying to determine if he was supposed to get it off of work, however, earlier the kids asked if Mike got valentines day off of work and he told them that "Valentines day is not a real holiday". Because of this, they said that they have never heard of President's day at all before this year. On Tuesday the kids had a carnival party, and they Gideon chose the theme. It was France themed, and they mostly just ate croissants and played with some neighbor kids. On Friday was Faith's birthday party. Rea and Sara went to the Dalyia's house to celebrate it. The par