Parentheticals

This week we discovered the true meaning of infinite sickness (or endless hopeless bleak despair, either one really). Sara and Rea have been coughing for a long time. Fortunately they don't act too much more sick than is usual. Sara has been a bit fussy, though. We went to a play on Thursday. It was 'one man and two governors' (or something like that) The play was ok, but honestly the Off Broadway Theatre would have done a much better job at it because they are way better at keeping a straight face when faced with improvisation. They were stumped by a hummus sandwich. Saturday we got the first snow of the year, which was a bit surprising, but the girls wanted to play in it anyway. In response to the snows we have been having fires in our fireplace. It is great to have a fire. Timmy (and everyone else as well) loves watching the fire. He says "I love you! Hello!" to the fire (as well as a lot of things we do not understand.) He has been babbling a lot lat...

Alison and I are still not behind on our Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) novels. That means that between the two of us we have written more than 24,000 words already. So far there are a few decent parts of my novel and a whole bunch of horrible parts. I need to get back in to practice when it comes to writing. This week we tried to make our first blue cheese. The make went pretty much terribly. Somehow we forgot to turn on the timer multiple times and we also forgot to turn on the temperature alarm during this second heating of the milk It ended up that the curds were much much firmer than anticipated. We are hoping that the Penicillium Roqueforti (blue mold) will still colonize the cheese even though it is not perfect. We are also hoping that the mesophilic bacteria did not die when the curds reached 101 degrees. This Saturday as we worked on the cheese we also made another batch of granola. This batch came out pretty good. We made a double batch, so it will probably...

We are starting up NaNoWriMo. Our stories this year are "broken fairytales". So far we are both on track. Since I have decided that Halloween is a terrible holiday as it is implemented I decided to change the way our family does it. We went to about four houses and let the girls eat all the candy immediately. They currently have one single piece of candy left between the two of them, and the less candy that is in my house the better.  Rea ended up dressing as a Indian fairy princess, and Sara as a penguin. On Sunday we were invited in to meet with the bishop and released from our callings as ward missionaries/leader. Alison has been called as primary music leader and I have yet to get a new calling. Perhaps I'll join the board game design guild :). Saturday we had our annual Halloween RPG. We had 8 players, so the party was split a lot. We ended up telling a story about a ski lodge that was attacked by extra dimensional dwarves and dragons who had time magic. Three ...