Not born yet

Alison doesn't remember what happened Monday. They probably went to Forest Kindergarten. We had a Family Home Evening. It was a good day, we're sure, even if we don't remember it.

Tuesday the kids went to Wheeler Farm during the day while Alison went to the midwife. The baby is still doing well; he's changing position instead of staying huddled in the right back corner, so Alison has laid off the crazy exercises with some confidence that when labor begins he'll swing around to the front left like he's supposed to be. The kids loved showing Grandma all their favorite things at Wheeler Farm; it's one of our favorite places to go, so they had lots of them to share.

Tuesday Mike went to the board game design group. He presented his game, and they played it. It went very well. He is really enjoying it.

While Mike was at the board game design group, the kids cleaned up really fast, so they got to watch a movie before going to bed. This is Alison's standard deal with them because Team Clean with only one parent can be challenging. Last time she wasn't too strict about the "really fast" part and the kids weren't in bed by the time Mike got home. Oops. This week she insisted that if they weren't done by 7, they could only watch a Veggie Tales instead of a full-length movie. They worked hard and were done by 7, so they watched "My Little Pony: The Movie" again. They loved that and they got to bed at a reasonable hour.

Wednesday Alison hosted the playgroup at our house for the last time before the baby comes (she's not going to host again until the end of January). She was very confident that this baby wasn't going to come early, you can see by that plan, but she hadn't taken into account how tired she'd be. She had a brainwave the night before and made homemade playdough. The kids loved it and it made playgroup very easy; she handed it over and they played for an hour and a half without needing anything.

Timmy chose to play Legos for his date night, which was very popular with all of the kids.

Thursday Alison and the kids went to the zoo with Grandma Julie (this was the week of field trips for our kindergarten). They walked all day in hopes of encouraging this baby to come and had a wonderful time seeing all the animals. The bears were getting fed, so they were very active, which was exciting. We saw the three lion cubs, which are getting pretty big, and a gorilla turned and looked directly at Rea when she called, "Hi, gorilla!" It was a fun day.

Thursday evening the kids carved another pumpkin (which they have been doing periodically throughout the entire month). Alison's original plan was to carve a pumpkin a week from when they showed up in stores until the week before Halloween, but that didn't always happen. It was fun when it did, though. Now it's about time to let everyone carve their own for the holiday.

After the kids went to bed, the parents played a game of Dominion, which is something that both of us love to do. We are still working our way through all of the cards in the empires expansion.

Friday Mike and the kids went trick or treating at Mike's work. They had a fun time.

After work the kids played with Max while Mike and Alison went to a game night. He went there for a math trade, but he didn't end up trading any games. It was fun anyway, however sort of disappointing. We did find a new game we will watch for, called "Broom Service." That's one that we would enjoy having for game nights and things.

Saturday we went to a million stores looking for a Halloween bag for Rea (because she had lost hers). As Mike said this, Rea corrected him: "We did not go to a million stores Dad, just three or four!"

Saturday night was our ward's trunk-or-treat and chili-cook-off. Everyone had a good time, and the kids have eaten most of the candy that they collected already. We hope to have them through all of the candy in a few days so that we don't have to deal with it for longer than is absolutely essential.

Now, we have a skill that our children practice called disagreeing appropriately, which is where they say "I understand that you want ... but I want ... Please may we ...?" As we discussed writing this post, Timmy heard us talking about Legos, and decided that he wanted to play more. He just said to Mike:
"Me want you Legos, you say NOOOO!, please me play with you Legos?"

The answer was (of course) yes, to that.