Parentheticals

Mike has started to work on his Lil'Warbucks website again. For those that do not remember what that is, it is the website that he made to help keep track of the kids money. It works like a phone app on Android phones. It doesn't work on iPhones yet. As a side note, Mike is looking for an old iPhone to test the app on. If anyone has one that they are not using, and would like to sell for cheap ($20ish) he would buy it from them. This week Mike created  a Patreon page  as one of his new years goals for making alternative income.  For those that do not know what Patreon is, it is a website that allows fans to pay creators a monthly income for things that they are creating. If any of you would like to become one of his patrons, he would work on things that you want. You can pay as little as $1 a month. Alison's plan to wrestle with the kids every day has been going well. Sara said that wrestling was her favorite part of the week. It seems to have helped Sara's whining

Rea and Sara worked hard this week weeding daffodils and playing "The Secret Garden." We've been getting lots of rain and it's warm, so things are sprouting wonderfully. We might have a good garden this year if Rea keeps up her enthusiasm. Alison is starting to look at seed catalogs again; last year she said she was jaded and done trying to garden, but that's probably not actually true. Mike got to present a game at BGDG on Tuesday because they didn't have enough games there for the amount of people who came. He did "One Perfect Moment," a new game he's developing for an 18 card game contest. He didn't get much feedback, but a few comments were helpful. Montessori time is still going very well. Sara and Timmy are playing a store game with Mommy, where they find random things, make prices out of our place value cards, and count out the correct number of thousand cubes, hundred squares, ten lines, and unit points to pay for it. They're

On Tuesday, we had an arctic themed Carnival party at the park with three families from our ward. Alison filled water ballons with water and food coloring and froze them and then hid the blocks of ice for the kids to find. They had a blast smashing them and melting them with salt. Carnival has been very fun and will probably become a tradition. Tuesday evening we had a Book of Mormon party (because we finished reading it). Mostly that meant having a dessert, and acting our favorite parts of the Book of Mormon as a family. It was pretty fun. We are now starting on the New Testiment. Wednesday was Sara's date night. She wanted to go to the DI and buy a new bowl (she had broken hers Tuesday night), and then to come back home and play Barbies. Yay. Friday Alison and Mike went to a play and ate sushi as well. The play was funny, the sushi was good, and the company was excellent. It was a well needed date. On Saturday we had a Mexican fiesta, which Sara had picked for her Carniva

This week we created charts for the kids to mark off what they do every day. They are things that are part of the daily routine anyway, but don't happen every single day (math practice, brushing their own hair, scrubbing some part of the house, etc). We will still do these things most days, but now the kids have the option of marking it on their charts when they do them. At the end of the week, each mark on the chart is worth 10 cents. Rea is very motivated by marking things off and was pushing us to do more things every day just to get marks on her chart. Sara and Timmy care less about filling out the chart but are excited by the opportunity to earn money; both are saving up for cool Lego kits. We are just starting this system, so we will see how it works. (The idea is from the "Family Economic System" by Richard and Linda Eyre, to give due credit.) Our Montessori time went very well this week. In January, the girls worked on reading aloud every day as part of a challe