Parentheticals

This week Timmy has woken us up way too many times. It is like he has no respect for sleep. On Tuesday the kids and Alison went to the Zoo. Rea and Sara both loved the dinosaur birds the best. Apparently, some scientists have decided that Utah Raptor was heavily feathered, so the zoo had a new feathery Utah Raptor. Timmy liked the elephants best. Timmy has been playing peekaboo with people, and saying "Boo!" a lot this week. On Wednesday Timmy had his 15 month check up. Alison was a little worried that the doctor would be concerned that he's not walking yet, but the doctor watched him walk holding on to Alison's hands and realized that he's capable of walking, he just doesn't choose to, so no worries. That's nice. Apparently his language development is right on target, although it's so far behind where the girls were at this age. He'll get his next shots when we get the not-sleeping-through-the-night thing worked out. On Friday, Alison'...

I have been printing up the 240 twist counter order that I received. I ran out of filament on Friday, and had to order more. I am not done with all of the counters yet, but I have completed 175 of them. Thursday grandma Sheila offered to watch the kids, so we went out to dinner and had a walk in a park. It was nice. We went to see Fiddler on the Roof on Friday. It was excellent. We took the Poulsons and the Browns out to see it with us, and we had a good time. I would highly recommend it to anyone that has not seen it. I have been reading about an ancient German permaculture technique called hugelkultur as part of doing research for my space game, so on Saturday we made a hugelkultur in our front yard. We have planted it with beans and are hoping that it will grow us lots of good food in future years. Additionally, on Saturday we made another Havarti. I skimmed the milk this time, so hopefully it comes out less sharp than it did last time. I had it hotter than it needed to be ...

Rea's rash is getting better, though it is still a little bit itchy for her. We expect it to be better entirely before next Sunday. I worked more on my space game this week. On Thursday we had a Board game design group meeting wherein I got a lot of good feedback. Alison and I brainstormed afterward and rewrote a lot of the game to make it simpler. Also on Thursday I got a rough draft of the Moar Moai board from Dave. It is looking pretty good. I look forward to playing it again once he finishes it. On Friday we finished off the sharp Havarti that we made a while back. We changed our minds and decided that we liked it because it melted so well. We will have to make another Havarti soon so that we can have more creamy Havarti goodness. On Friday and Saturday we were able to go the seminar that Alison wrote about last week. The seminar was not as good as Alison was hoping, but we still had fun spending time together, and talked about good things. We are grateful to the Poulso...

This past week we went to Wyoming to visit grandpa Mike and grandma Sheila.  We spent the early part of the week getting ready to go, and on Friday we left. We carpooled with those of or siblings that were also going, so that we only had to drive two cars total. The kids loved riding together, and on the way there they were very good.  The trip was successful (though sleep was hard to come by (due both to late night talking as well as kids sleeping poorly)). We saw some sites while we were out there (the coolest to me was an arch that spanned a river), and I also worked a lot on my space game.  My cards are coming along quite nicely. I should be ready for the design group meeting. Timmy is now folding his arms during most of most prayers, and saying amen at the end. He loves shaking his head 'no' at everything, and still climbs like a champ.  Sara was sick during much of the trip, but was still happy (for the most part). She loved playi...