Parentheticals

Carnival ended this week with Mardi Gras on Tuesday February 13th. We had planned to invite all the kids in the neighborhood to parade around the park and eat doughnuts to celebrate. We bought party favors and Mardi Gras beads and invited everyone we knew. Then Monday night, the kids started throwing up. All four of them threw up multiple times that night, so there went our Mardi Gras plans. We spent the day laying around watching movies (Wild Kratts, Nothing Can Stop the Smooze, and Roger and Hammerstein's Cinderella), which was fun, but not Mardi Gras. Alison was going to let it drop, but the kids insisted that Mardi Gras be rescheduled. So we emailed everyone to come to the park Thursday after school. Thursday ended up having a bitter, biting wind that froze us to tears. No one else braved the wind to join us, so the kids got to eat some doughnut holes and then went home. So we took our decorated bikes and doughnuts to our regular park day on Friday. Then at least we had som...

On Monday, Alison opened up the new Montessori room for the kids. It was a big hit. They have had no trouble choosing work to occupy themselves for the entire 3 hour work cycle every day and usually wish it were open longer. It was set up perfectly for Sara and Timmy, but Rea's part needed some work. Her school is much more book focused; Alison has a list of classics for her to read and do something with. This week she read The Secret Garden, then looked up the flowers mentioned in it and drew pictures of them and labeled them with their Latin names. She also has a microscope and some science and history work to do (along with the math we do as a family first thing), so we decided Elementary needed its own set of shelves. But it was still a great start. Also on Monday, in the middle of the day, Mike got a message from Google Flights (which will watch airplane ticket prices for you and notify you when the change) saying that we could get to Italy from Utah and back for $400 each. ...

The last few years mike has been an Ion Award finalist. This Tuesday Mike found out that he is Not an Ion Award finalist this year. He is disappointed, however it is better to not be a finalist than to be a finalist and lose. He can never submit any games that are finalists again to the Ion Award, so if they didn't make the cut this year, he can continue to develop them and submit them next year. On Wednesday we had this week's carnival party. The kids worked really hard spreading woodchips last week, so we offered them a great treat, and they picked a cake from the grocery store bakery. We invited the Dalyais and the Guertlers over to make masks - we cut them out of cardstock, decorated with glue and glitter, and stapled on elastic to hold them on. Then the kids played on the piles of woodchips decorating our yard. The cake was a huge hit and totally worth the effort for them. We're having a lot of fun with Carnival. We have one more party this coming week, and then it...