Parentheticals

All last weekend we celebrated Alison's 30th birthday. Friday night we went out for Thai food, and on Saturday night we went to a triple birthday party at our church. Sunday we opened up presents. Alison got nice salt and pepper grinders, a fiction book that she wanted, and a Pyrex storage set (which was her favorite gift). On Monday we invited people over for a Memorial Day barbecue. We had five attendees (including baby Ellie). We tried charcoal, but it took forever. We ended up using a George Foreman to finish everything off. During the barbecue Scott and I assembled a new 3D printer that we bought together. We got it put together and printed up some things. The first few prints were not very good, but over the last week I have been improving my printing skills, and I can now make any number of cats with ease. On Thursday and Friday Scott and I attended Google IO Extended. A new version of Polymer was just released, and Google just announced that they are allowing people t

Alison got a cd of Kirtan songs from the library. Kirtan is a Hindu worship style which involves call and response singing. Rea, Sara, and Timmy love it. They sing along with the songs (even though they do not understand the hindi lyrics of them.) There are also lots of parts that are in English, so they do understand the general meaning of the songs. They also apparently watched disney's Robin hood. some time this week (though I do not know when). Sara was singing mixed lyrics to the Hanuman song: "Robin hood jump! robin hood jump!Jump in to the sky robin hood jump!" "There was a time when the goddess divine was captured by the sheriff, what a terrible crime!" On Tuesday Alison's birthday gifts arrived in the mail. I wrapped them Thursday, and we are pretty much ready for her party. Also on Tuesday my new used drawing tablet arrived in the mail. So my drawing blog has some new pictures on it. On Wednesday we had something really yummy for dinner

This past week in Utah it rained a lot. I tried to look up how much it was, but apparently that is difficult to find on the internet. Anyway, it was a lot. Today it even hailed a bit. On Thursday we watched Music Man at the Pioneer theater. They did  a good job of it. The program commented how surprising it was that the play was thematically relevant after 100 years, and that was in fact true (with the exception of the shapoopie song, which wasn't even relevant the day that it was written.) They sang well, danced well, and enunciated well. They even watched their phraseology. On Friday we had a mushroom hunt, which was not very successful (but was fun anyway). Saturday we made a brie and went to the DI to discover a vacuum sealer on sale for $10. We bought it since I have been thinking of vacuum sealing cheeses and $10 is super cheap. We haven't used it yet, but we will soon. Saturday we also went to Grandma's house and picked up some things that the grands were g

There has been sickness in our family (this will not come as a surprise to those who have been reading regularly). Alison felt sick all this week, so the kids watched lots of movies. The kids enjoyed this a lot, but Alison was glad that it was over by Friday. While Alison and the kids were at the park Sara told Alison "Watch me mommy, I am going down the slide 400 miles!" Fortunately the slide was about 400 miles tall, so she didn't end up in another state. Rea wants us to add that Timmy got a booster seat at the table. He now sits up with the big kids and mostly throws his food on the ground. On Friday we went to a ward fireside entitled "Adore Your Spouse". They told us how to have a better marriage, but we were already doing all the things. We have always thought that we had a wonderful marriage, but now we have proof. Saturday morning at 4:00 am Mike came down with the sickness. Apparently it was a super bug or something because Mike rarely gets sic

This week Alison is proud of getting the family outside a lot. We hit our "4+ hours a day outside" on most days, which was fun. Mostly she took the kids to the wilderness park, but on Friday they joined our ward's play group at the neighborhood park. There was a great turn-out, and Alison and the kids had a fun time. Everyone is enjoying the nice weather. We did take one day off of being outside, because Sara got a stomach bug and was up in the night throwing up. The girls got to watch movies on Wednesday and rest, and Rea tried to convince Sara that being sick was very fun. Sara did not agree. Then Rea was up Friday night throwing up and spent Saturday laying around listening to the audio book of "The Secret Garden." ( Libri Vox is so cool.) We reminded her of how fun being sick was. She was not impressed. Timmy hit another milestone this week: he has begun shrieking as a major form of communication. It's an annoying stage, and we hope that he gets thr