Parentheticals

Last Sunday Rea and Timmy and Mike went over to a nearby church on a bike ride while Sara and Alison took a nap. They found strawberries and gooseberries in a field behind the church, but had to go home before they could pick them. On Monday the whole family went out and picked a bunch of berries. The kids had a lot of fun and ate a lot of berries. They also stepped on a whole lot of berries. We made a new rule that when picking berries one must take off one's shoes so that one will feel the berries that one steps on. We ended up taking home enough strawberries to make a strawberry pie and freeze a gallon bag full of strawberries for future smoothies. We also got a few gooseberries, which we made a smoothie out of. On Friday, for our date we played two board games while the kids watched two movies. It was fun for the whole family.  Saturday morning Mike harvested more than 10 lbs of honey from the bees. With this much honey, it is likely that we will be selling some. R...

This week we went to the Dalyia's  neighbor's house a lot, and while we were there we picked cherries off of their tree. Neither the renters of the place nor the owner of the place wanted the cherries, so we ended up with about 7 gallons of frozen cherries. We also ate so many cherries that the kids don't want them anymore. This is quite impressive because they love fruit with a love that is unparalleled in any world in all possible universes. The kids really enjoyed it this time because the Dalyia's are their good friends. Alison and Sister Dalyia also get along quite well, so it was fun all around. I spent most of my time up in the top of the tree on a ladder, but that suited me just fine. Most of the week was spent in such pursuits, however on Friday we went to the Off-Broadway Theater and saw "The Pirates Of Penzance" - which is one of our favorite plays. The kids really enjoyed it. Rea said: "It was great!", Sara countered with "It was ...

On Monday, Alison got a new bike. It is a Madsen bucket bike, and can hold all of the kids as well as groceries. We hope that Alison will be up to taking trips in it to the library soon, so that they can go to the library every day and Alison will keep in excellent physical condition. If it is too hard, we are going to get her an electric assist to help her on the hilly parts. The bike rides pretty well, and is obviously very well built. On Tuesday they rode the bike to Macey's, which went pretty well, and it was also Sara's date night. For her date we watched Joseph and the amazing technicolor dream coat. Wednesday Alison's parent's moved to California. Now that we have no more parents in Utah, it is much more likely that we are going to move. We do not, however, have any immediate plans to move. On Thursday Alison and the kids went to the pool. The girls all loved the water and swam for a while. Sara got too cold and got out after a while (I used to do that a ...

Monday was Memorial day, and so we had a Memorial day barbecue. We invited all of my siblings over, but only Scott and Max could come over (Sheila and Petra were having a nap, and everyone else was busy and or didn't answer). Even though we didn't have a huge amount of people, it was still fun. The kids all played bopping games with pool noodles, and ran around. We had hamburgers, ribs, hot dogs, barbecued pineapple, watermelon, lazy blueberry pie, veggiekabobs, and chips and home made humus. everyone seemed to enjoy the food. It was really fun. I really wanted blueberry pie, but didn't want to work hard to make it, so I invent a new recipe. Put it in your recipe book: Lazy-Mike Blueberry Pie 1) Buy a pre-cooked graham cracker crust. 2) Cook a Danish dessert (boil 1 3/4 cups water on the stove, add 1 box danish dessert mix, boil for a minute.) 3) Pour blueberries and danish dessert in to pie crust. Two cups of blueberries should do. 4) Chill it for two hours. ...