Hickety Pickety

We got to see Becky's family twice this week. They joined us at nature group on Tuesday and then came to our house to play afterwards. Ellie loved being around Rea and Sara, and Aelfric, Timmy, and Gideon all had fun building with blocks with their moms, if not with each other (they're a little young to play together yet). Then Wednesday we drove down to Springville to go to the splashpad with them. We had a lot of fun both days.

On Tuesday night Mike went to the BGDG meeting, and played the Citadel of Madness there. It went well. He got some new ideas and is currently working to implement them. Wednesday night Alison went to League of Utah Writers and learned about different ways to name characters and then critiqued some interesting chapters. Maybe soon she will have enough written in her novel to bring a chapter to critique group herself.

Sometime Wednesday the electricity in the master bedroom went out (and also one outlet in the spare room). We were so busy all week that we just had to make do without any electricity in there for a few days.

This week we got an order from Amazon, which included some new books for our school: the series Mean Girl Makeover. It includes three very well-written books for 10-12 year old girls about a group of bullies, their victim, and the girls who decide to stop the bullying. Alison is going to require all our girls to read them before they turn twelve, and she recommends them to anyone else with girls. Rea decided to read them because they were new, and she said she liked them, but Alison will have her reread them later.

Friday Marissa came home from park day with our kids and played at our house all afternoon. She got permission to stay for dinner and a movie, and the kids watched Cinderella. Rea called it a "late-over" and was very, very excited. It was nice for Alison and Mike to have an at-home date without kids interrupting us.
 
For our date, we watched A Wrinkle in Time. Alison walked past a RedBox, and saw that it was being rented, and we both love the book, so we thought that it would be a good thing to check out. The movie was decent - not really like the book all that much, but what movie ever is?

They probably ruined any chance of making any of the other books since they made Camazotz the source of the darkness instead of a place where darkness was winning. They cut the story short, but they did make the happy medium into a funny character, and more interesting than the original one. I would say that it was worth the $2 that we paid for it.

Saturday, since the kids lost a movie that we rented from the library, we decided to do a big clean of  the house. We spent most of the day and cleaned most of the rooms, but we didn't find the missing movie.

Additionally, Mike tried to fix the electricity in the master bedrooms, but it wouldn't come back on, so we are now thinking that it must have something to do with the main breaker box. We will be calling an electrician on Monday, and hopefully it is pretty easy to fix whatever is wrong with it.

We have been reading Bartimaeus for the past week or so. So far Rea and Sara like it, but Timmy is bored. They are fun books, but perhaps too scary for kids as young as ours. 

Rea created a poem:
Hickety pickety my black hen,
she gives kicks to gentlemen.
Gentlemen come every day,
but then they all get kicked away.

Sara has also just started reading! She finally got over her mental block that made her think that she couldn't. She is not super fast yet, but she is working hard and improving rapidly. She is also so excited about her birthday this Thursday. Expect updates next week.

Timmy is currently bouncing off walls. Normally we throw kids outside when they get like this, but it's 100 degrees here this week and Alison can't face the sun any more. So he is wrestling with Daddy a lot. It's a good thing Daddy is so strong.

Gideon asked to use the potty before pooping once this week! We were very excited, but he has not done it again, so obviously he's not potty trained yet. But we're hopeful that it won't be too much longer. He's the last of our kids to start using the potty by more than six months, so we're rather impatient.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The marshmallow cream trainwreck

In which we blacken someone's name

Not Penguins