Parentheticals

We had our first sub-goal achieved this week: Rea finished reading 1st Nephi. Her goal for the year is to finish the small plates section of the Book of Mormon, but waiting until the end of a year for a goal day party is too long for the kids, so they get parties for important milestones. We went to a drive through for a chocolate Oreo milkshake and made homemade macaroni and cheese with ham to celebrate. (The mac and cheese had a secret ingredient that no one even guessed: a baked sweet potato pureed in the sauce. Alison had her doubts about the recipe, but no one noticed a thing, so maybe this will always be done in the future; more vegetables are always good.) Gideon loves grabbing on to people's fingers and getting picked up in that manner. We compliment him profusely when he does (calling him a strong baby). Whenever he is done with a diaper change Alison does that, and Mike just does it whenever Gideon seems to be in a good mood. He really is a very easy baby. We are so h...

On Martin Luther King Jr Day we were invited over to Scott and Sheila's house to visit with them. Max and Olivia really wanted to play Axis and Allies, and so Mike set it up to play with them. Scott called the game after a few hours, and since Timmy had abandoned Moscow and Olivia had taken it over, the Axis won. Max was very unhappy about that. Mike took the opportunity to discuss an idea that he has had with Sheila. He has decided to make a children's book entitled "Brave Lala", and he asked her if she wanted to do some illustrations for it. She agreed to give it a try. We are looking forward to seeing what her drawings look like. In addition, Alison and Mike have been reading through "In Which a Prince Burns Things" - A very rough draft novel that Mike wrote in 2011. We are considering trying to clean it up to get it published. It has quite a few funny parts, but also needs a lot of work. It will be a fun change of pace from editing rules docs all the...

In January we switched over to late church. Late church is not my favorite thing, it feels like the whole day is used up getting ready for church. Alison doesn't love it either, but at least we don't have to have two lunches. The kids seem to be adjusting OK. This week Gideon started sleeping all night long. It is a much appreciated development. He still has rough nights, and he still doesn't always sleep all night, but he does it a decent amount of the time. He is almost two and a half months old. This might be the youngest that any of our kids have slept through the night, but we aren't sure. Alison and the kids have been really regular about doing Montessori time; they've done several hours every morning this week. They are really enjoying it and learning a lot. Sara can count much better than Alison expected and is moving quickly through the Montessori math materials; it's time to start the Golden Beads. We are also doing a read aloud challenge, where bo...

This year we acted out the nativity with our children. Timmy chose to be a donkey while Alison was Mary and baby Gideon was baby Jesus. Rea and Sara were all other characters. Mike was the Narrator. During the performance, there were many hasty costume changes. We opened our Christmas eve pajamas, and the kids loved dressing up in them. We ended up taking a picture for our Christmas post in them. Christmas eve we left out fudge for Santa, and he swapped it for cookies, which he must have picked up somewhere in the neighborhood or something. We definitely did not make them. On Christmas morning, the kids woke up at 5:00, and we went out to open our presents. Santa had also brought us fruit, which we all cut up and made a salad out of. It was amazing. We also had Apple dumplings, but the salad was really the star of the show. Gideon got two presents,  and he didn't really like either of them since he doesn't grab things yet. Timmy really loves his robotic dog toy. He al...