Parentheticals

The kids and adults in our family have adjusted back to life together. It was a little exhausting the first few days, but things are going well. We started a new clean up procedure this week. Now for Team Clean the girls each have two loops of string, one in the front room and one in their bedroom. We pile stuff into the loops and they have to clean up everything in their areas. This has been especially helpful to Sara, who tends to lose focus when cleaning. Having a confined space seems to help her a lot, and we have to spend a lot less time redirecting her. This means that we're less frustrated, which is always nice. We also set a 30 minute timer for Team Clean and whoever has finished their jobs (one parent has the kitchen, the other arranges the girls' piles and then does our bedroom and the bathroom) gets to do something fun. Anyone who hasn't finished doesn't get any parental attention until they do. We like it so far. On Monday, Timmy was in charge of the FHE...

Tuesday Alison and the kids went to the park and hung out with some family friends. They had a fun time, and I understand that Alison ordered birthday gifts for me during the trip. Wednesday we packed because on Thursday the kids went to Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila's house. They stayed there for three days and had a grand time. They all were sad to go home, and they miss their Grandparents. While The kids were gone, Alison and Mike went on a three day vacation to downtown Salt Lake City to enjoy the cultural things there. We saw a play, went to art exhibits and a museum, ate out at restaurants. It was very fun. While the kids were gone Rea's box car children books on tape arrived, so on the way home we listened to them. Rea loved them and the other kids slept through them. Another interesting thing that happened was that we finished motorizing Alison's bucket bike. It is now a electric/muscle hybrid bike. Alison is really excited about it, and it works pretty go...

On Monday we celebrated the 4th of July with a barbecue. We had Amy, Sheila, and their respective families attend. The kids played, the adults talked, and all had a good time. We did fireworks toward the end. The kids all got scared from the morning glories, and lit the grass on fire (fast stomping by the ladies put it out). The 'Bestest Crackering Ballz' were aptly named. Sara chose them because of the glittery pink and purple wrapping, and they were amazing. We did scare Dustin into a screaming fit because all of the cheap crackling balls we had done before were so pitiful that we were standing very close when the "Bestest Crackering Ball" went off, and it was surprising! Even Dustin enjoyed the later ones. After the extended family went home we went off to the park on the hill and watched every firework show in the valley at the same time. It was very fun, and the kids loved running around with other kids at the park in the dark. Next year, we need to bring ...

This week we finished cleaning out most of our house. We did the kids room, the front room, half of the 3d printer room, and the garage shed. We tried really hard to get done with everything before this Saturday so that we could have a garage sale. We didn't finish the house in time for Saturday, but we had the garage sale anyway. We piled everything outside and posted an ad in KSL telling everyone about the stuff that we were selling. Some of the things were very popular, since people started showing up an hour before the sale was supposed to start and perusing the stuff that we already had out in the driveway. We ended up making over $250 and getting rid of a ton of stuff. Our house feels much more comfortable and spacious with fewer things crowding it. We still had to take a large load of stuff to the DI (more than would fit into the car with our whole family), so I drove it down while Alison and the kids played. One of Rea's friends had ridden her bike over while we wer...