Parentheticals

Since last week was finals, Mike hasn't had to teach all week. This means that on Monday and Tuesday, Mike got work done at 11 and had the rest of the day off. He took the week between Christmas and New Year's off because work told him to use up his vacation days. We normally do the Twelve Days of Christmas from Christmas Day to Twelfth Night on January 5th, but this year Rea and Sara are invited to go to Disneyland with Grandma and Grandpa from January 1st to January 5th. So we started the Twelve Days of Christmas early and we'll do our Twelfth Night celebration tomorrow. The activities that we did this week were: Sunday - Read Christmas books around the fire Sunday - Made and drank egg nog Monday - Making ginger bread houses at the library Monday - Visited Temple Square to see the lights Tuesday - Put on the Nativity play Wednesday - Opened presents Friday - Played with Grandma and GrandpaSaturday - Watch Christmas movies Since Mike had all this time off and h...

We are starting the 12 Days of Christmas early this year. Usually, the 12 Days of Christmas are supposed to start on Christmas Day, but since The Poulson Grandparents are taking Rea and Sara to Disneyland for their combined 8th birthdays this year, we are not going to have twelve days together after Christmas. So far, the kids made their own peg doll nativities and candy cane sprinkles and gingerbread houses (at the library - Alison's favorite gingerbread house making experience ever), and today we drank eggnog and sat by a fire and read all our Christmas books. We're looking forward to having a picnic under the Christmas tree, putting on a Christmas play, making gingerbread men, going sledding (or dancing the Nutcracker if there's no snow), making neighbor gifts, going caroling, watching Christmas movies, and celebrating Twelfth Night before it's over. We also celebrated the Solstice on Saturday by eating butternut squash (to symbolize the sun) and telling stories ab...

Since having come back from California, baby Elizabeth has learned to sit and she is still only nearly crawling. She has made progress - she can take little "steps" with her feet and occasionally her hands - but she hasn't put it all together yet. She took a break to get good at sitting once she learned that. She really likes sitting and using her hands. She gets frustrated when she can't get to something out of reach, so she'll be very happy when she learns to crawl. (Although she's a very happy baby in general.) Monday night after getting back, for our family activity we went to the library to see a teenager acting group from Provo perform a short version of Cinderella. It was a lot of fun. The mice were the kids' favorite characters. The king really hammed up his part, and there was a very funny third trumpeter. We really enjoyed it. On Last Friday and Saturday we had the Plastows over for a sleep over. The kids were good, and they had a fun time pl...

We spent last week in San Diego mostly at the beach house. Yay for Thanksgiving! We look forward to this vacation all year. Over multiple days Mike, Gideon, and Rea picked a whole bunch of natal plums and made jelly out of them. The jelly was pretty sour but had a decent flavor. One of the days that we were there, Alison went boogie boarding. She was very brave. We have always been lucky and had sunny weather for all of our Thanksgiving holidays. This year, we had rain for almost half the week. We were so glad Grandma got such a big place this year; we didn't feel at all cramped by the rain. The kids really enjoyed playing with Grandma Julie's Legos for days and days while it rained outside. Grandpa Craig bought some metal shovels that were really high quality and we dug a hole almost tall enough for Mike to fit in standing up. It must have been five feet 6 in or deeper. We also built a very large sandcastle one of the days. We introduced kid Olympics to the fa...

We wrote a post last week but failed to edit and publish it. I will do that now before I write this week's post. On Monday of last week for her meal that she was supposed to help make Rea asked to produce Curry for dinner. We ended up making a coconut and tomato-based Curry. The kids liked it. Also on Monday we went out to the dI and bought all of the necessary equipment to build a powerful set of speakers to install in our front room. We have been enjoying the speakers quite a bit. Early last week Mike made peanut butter and chocolate SunButter. The children generally like peanut butter better than chocolate SunButter, however this time they all seem to like the chocolate SunButter quite a bit. It is a good thing to have a Vitamix because this would be impossible with a normal blender. Alison has never been particularly happy with Timmy's natural hairstyle, so she decided that she was going to get some gel and attempt to get him to style his hair before he went to chur...

Alison got sick after all - in fact she lost her voice and had a difficult time teaching English because of it. The loss of voice lasted three days and was very disruptive to getting things done. The kids had a lot more screen time than usual because of this. Baby Elizabeth is starting to gain mobility - she is able to roll over freely, and sometimes traverses the room by repeated rolling. She is also able to sort-of-crawl, but her chest remains on the ground, she pulls with her hands, and pushes with her feet and has her bum up in the air - kind of like this: She doesn't do it often, though, so it must not be comfortable. On Thursday there was a daddy-daughter activity planned as one of Rea's activity days. It was at the church in the cultural hall. There were games, food, and also dancing. Rea was feeling better from her sickness and pink eye by then, so we had a fun time. Alison worked hard this week getting the synthesizer set up to connect to the laptop, and ...

This last week was a busy one. Timmy has had a cold since sometime last week, and he's been slowly giving it to everyone else. No fun! That made the preparations for Halloween less effective than we might have hoped. Last Saturday was annual Trunk or Treat and Chili Cookoff in our ward. Timmy was only a little sick then, and no one else had gotten it, so we went. The kids pieced together costumes: Gideon was a tiger, Timmy was a Thingamajing, Sara was a princess, and Rea was a chef. We had a lot of fun. When we got home, it looked like Timmy had pinkeye. Yikes! It was gone by the next morning, but Sara and Timmy had started coughing and boogering, so Alison took Rea to sacrament meeting and sang with the choir, and then she went home and Mike went to the second hour of church. It was fun for Alison and Rea to go to church together. Sunday started tithing settlement, so Mike was gone all day. The kids were pretty good anyway. Tuesday we went to our nature group, even though ...

Last Sunday we had a game day at Caitlin and Sal's house. We played a game that Jay brought (which we enjoyed, but whose name we can't seem to recall), as well as multiple games of Resistance. It ended very late in the evening, but it was very fun. Since Sunday night it was really cold, we decided on Monday that we would pick the grapes that are at the park near our house. When we went over to pick the grapes on Monday, then we discovered that the grapevines were all dried out. It looked as if the previous owners of the grapevines decided that they were done taking care of the grape vines. Sad. On Tuesday Allison and the kids went to the natural history museum because Timmy wanted to go really really really really bad. Rea did some research into the Native tribes of this area and now wants to learn beading as her next handicraft. Timmy liked looking at dinosaur bones and digging in the play quarry. We managed to leave on time to get to nature group, which was extra fun beca...

This last week we went on our first "working vacation". We drove down to Zion's national park with Alison and the kid's nature group. We stayed at Zion's Most Wanted, which was a hotel built in the house where a prominent polygamist was living before he was arrested. We went to zion's, to water canyon, and coral pink sand dunes, glitter mountain, and also to the cabin of the lady that runs the nature group. We had a fun time hiking around, seeing nature, interacting with the nature group, and exploring that part of the state. During the mornings, Mike would work, and so it didn't cost us any vacation. We will likely continue to do small trips like this until we are ready to do large working vacation trips. The culmination of this will probably be a few months working from another country (perhaps in South America?), but Mike has to make sure that that is kosher first. We plan on visiting Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila next, however, given...

Apparently, we are horrible at writing blog posts right now. I guess that we need to find a new time to write them as we keep having things after church on Sunday, and so they always fail to get written. Now - to try and remember the last few weeks: On the 27th we saw Macbeth at the historic draper theater - it was pretty fun. They used a post-apocalyptic setting so that everyone could dress in steampunk styles. They also abridged the original play slightly, and they did an awesome job; we could only recognize a few spots where they'd cut things. It was a great performance. On the 29th we opened up our winter clothes and started putting away our summer clothes. The kids have enough warm clothes for a few days now, which was good because it suddenly got cold. We don't normally have to turn on the heater in September! On the 3rd Mike went to BGDG. On the 5th we drove to Reno to visit the Poulsons while Mike went on a business trip. We had a fun trip and did a lot of...

Last week we failed to click the post button, so even though we wrote a post, it was never published. Two sundays ago we had a game night with the Fords. We played The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Nefarious. Both games were fun, and the kids had a fun time as well. That Tuesday Mike went to the Board Game Design Guild meeting, and talked about games mostly. Also on Tuesday we also went to nature group at 2:00 for the first time this year. We picked some feral plums, apples, pears, and we also saw a fox. It was fun. Timmy found bones - they looked like fox bones. Rea read a historical fiction book called "Naya nuki: Shoshoni girl who ran" for her history and geography lesson. She then made a sheet cake, frosted it, and decorated it as a nap of Naya nuki's journey. Wednesday afternoon she told us the story and then we ate the cake. Homeschool book reports are the best. For our Thursday date night, Alison and Mike played "the Perfect Moment" - it is fun...

This week was a busy week. Monday was labor day. We went to the lake in daybreak with the Rogers and Poulsons. It was fun. In the afternoon we had a barbecue to which the Plastows and Gutierrezes came. We played Small World, and had a near disaster with the hotdogs. It was fun. On Tuesday night Alison worked on getting ready to write a blog about homeschooling as a possible type of alternative income. If we can get our alternative income up a bit, perhaps in a few years Mike will fully retire instead of just working till 2. On Wednesday Rea put on with her friends a play that she wrote. It is called "Hamlet: Not a Tragedy" She has been writing it since Alison and Mike went to Hamleton and told her about it. It is based on Hamlet, but Ophelia is a more important character, and no-one dies in the end. Also, Ophelia has a sneaky brother named Demetrius. Here is the recording. On Thursday we went to the library, and Mike went to BGDG, and got a lot of amazing feedback a...

This last week on Monday we went to Oliver, and because we liked it so much, We decided to change enchanted's name to Oliver (well, Mike and Alison did, anyway). We have also been singing the music all week. They did a good job, even if they played Fagan as if he were a nice guy. On Tuesday Alison and the Kids went to the splash pad with Ellie. They love having more cousins in Utah. Feel free to move back to Utah, guys - we will like you even if you moved away for a while. On Tuesday night, Mike got his current game played at the BGDG meeting, and made the decision that it needs more cards to be good. He has added more cards to it, but hasn't yet tested it out. On Thursday we went over to Amy's house and got some family history stuff and school stuff. The family history stuff is memoirs by grandpa Frank.We are going to read the stories to the kids, which should be fun. On Friday we went to Sister Act as a whole family. It was fun, and the kids enjoyed it, thoug...

On Monday Mike went back to work with a damaged finger. It was hard, but he managed it. The kids have a hard time being gentle with his finger. The Rogers moved back to Utah this week, so we helped them move in on Wednesday and Thursday. We are so excited to have them back in Utah. They hadn't unpacked their toys, so we had to bring our own when we were helping them. On Wednesday we got a new kiddie pool, and we brought it over to their house to play in. It was very popular. On Thursday we went to a convert baptism in our ward. The kids liked the fact that it was short. For school this week we started reading the story of king Arthur and his knights, and so they got to see the Disney movie "Sword and the stone" on Thursday as well. Timmy liked the start of the movie the best. Thursday night Rea went to activity days and learned cross stitching with the other young girls. On Friday Alison and the kids went to an oak connect meeting where they planned for their ...

We totally started writing this on Sunday as usual, but Sunday was interrupted to some extent, and we failed to finish it until now. Here is the blog post for last week (such as it is) Monday we got (and began to spread) another load of wood-chips - that chipdrop website is great if you want free wood-chips, and don't mind getting some leaves and sticks along with them. This load was large enough to pretty much cover the remainder of the yard, so we probably will not order another load this year On Tuesday we went to the park group's faux camping trip up the canyon. We had dinner, and played and talked, however we didn't spend the night. After the camping trip, Mike went to BGDG. He played a game by another member of the guild, and had a fun time. On Wednesday, when trying to clean out the drain, Mike got the cleaning tool stuck and it broke off when he tried to get it out. That was annoying. On Thursday we spread wood-chips again - we finished most of them. Hopef...

Apparently we have not written blog posts in a long time. From the 22nd to the 26th of July we went to a family Reunion in Oregon. Much of the Brown family was able to make it there, and we had a fun time. We loved playing with our cousins and going to the beach. The kids also "found" arrow-heads that seemed to magically be seeded in the yard of our camp site. Rea remembers the really windy day at the beach where it was so windy that it kicked the sand around all over the place. The first time that we tried to fly kites at the beach, we were hardly able to get them up, however the second time, it was so windy that we had a hard time controlling all but the largest kites. Sara liked the fact that we stayed in Yurts, and she also liked "crab paradise", which was when grandpa Mike caught them a lot of crabs and they played with them in a man-made tide pool. Gideon liked playing on the sand, and drawing pictures to Mommy, and grandma Sheila sharing out foo...