Strawberry Planet

On Tuesday Mike had a work team building where he painted a picture. It was pretty fun. He probably wouldn't buy paints to paint on his own, but he found painting to be enjoyable.


Tuesday we had Mike's friend Lauren and his family come over for dinner. It was a fun challenge to cook for someone on a low FODMAPs diet, which their oldest son is on. Lauren is working with a startup on the side, programming an app for physical therapists, and invited Mike to join him. Mike is not quite ready to give his hobby time over to programming for free, but he did get an email this week from BYU-I asking if he would be interested in part-time work as a online adjunct professor, and he filled out the application. He and Alison both love teaching, and this would be an ideal retirement job for him if it works out, he likes it, and he could teach a couple of classes every semester.

Mike also joined another game design contest this week- this time he is making a game for kids out of parts that were selected at random for him by the person holding the contest. He got the following parts:

So far he has designed two games, one where the kids run around a zoo and try to become brave enough to befriend a spooky animated t-shirt, and the other one where everyone is trying to catch gnomes. The younger kids liked the spooky t-shirt one best, and the older kids liked the gnomes one best. Perhaps he will combine them to the same game. He has a month to work on it.

The kids had a fabulous time having Max over, even though we had a bug going around the family: a day or two of low fever and lethargy, with some nausea or sore throats. Everyone got it in turn, so we had to skip a couple of days of swimming. We still managed two or three trips to the pool, though. We also spent a lot of time at parks and Wheeler Farm. Max was not used to the idea that Alison is only willing to pack up five kids if we're going somewhere for at least several hours; he wasn't as happy to just play wherever we were for hours on end. On the other hand, he was much more motivated to do our daily duties than any of our kids. He was always the first one done and ready to go in the morning, while the Brown kids just wander off and play. It was thanks to him that we managed to get above 30 pins in our daily duties chart, which earned the kids a pizza party at the pool with Daddy.

Max was not a fan of the way we cook, which Mike summed up as "mostly vegetables." He had very good table manners, but he would ask every day if we could have pizza, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, pancakes with syrup, or at least dessert every night. Instead, we offered vegetarian curry, penne and cauliflower in tomato sauce, german pancakes with vegetables or berries, and tacos, and we only had dessert once. He must be glad to be home!

On Saturday Max left in the morning, and at lunch time we went to the pool with a pizza to celebrate the kids' work at getting their daily duties done. We ate pizza first, and then we went swimming. Rea is swimming very well, and Sara is getting much braver than she used to be. Timmy even left the stairs to play in the shallow water a few times.

Rea felt so brave that she jumped off of the diving board in the deep end and swam back to the side by herself. It was a fun trip to the pool.

We also picked strawberries on Saturday. The strawberry patch was finally ripe, and we got a pretty good haul. We ended up with so many that we made a pie and jam with half of them, and have been enjoying the other half of them raw.

Rea really wanted to pick enough to make a pie, so she picked really well. She was quite proud of her haul.

Gideon and Alison were napping while we went over to pick them, so they didn't get to eat as many as we did. Gideon does, however love fresh strawberries.

Sunday morning while Alison was at ward council Mike and Timmy worked on a birthday present for him. It is named "Robots fighting Aliens and saving Princesses". It is a board game, and is pretty much what you would expect based on the name. We hope to get it finished before his birthday. So far we have robots, aliens, good aliens, hero robots, a map, and a box (with cover art). We still need to add on the princesses, and perhaps codify some rules, but Timmy is really liking it as it currently stands.