Parentheticals

Tuesday morning when Alison got up, the toilet was clogged. This happens every couple weeks or so, so she grabbed the plunger to fix it, which is usually a 30 second job. As she worked, Gideon walked in and asked, "What are you doing? Are you getting the rock out?" Uh-oh. All day Tuesday the toilet wouldn't flush by itself, but the plunger could still make it work. When Mike got home, Alison asked him to try and fix it. He worked all evening, but the rock only got more stuck. Finally we decided to just replace the toilet, because it was old and gross anyway. However, at that point we realized that the former homeowner, who messed up all the wiring, also thought he could do plumbing. The toilet was resting on top of an iron pipe with not flange or any connection, in the middle of an 8 inch square hole which was too large for the toilet bolts to go into the floor; they were just dangling into the hole not connected to anything. The only thing holding that toilet up was a

Rea scheduled a party this week with some local kids. The Beuses ere going to come but they couldn't because they got sick, however the Dalyias were able to make it. Rea made a lemon cake for the party, which turned out pretty good. They also put on a play: Cinderella. Everyone got a part, and they had a fun time putting on the play. Sara was particularly silly - she was Cinderella, but she played that she was scared of the fairy godmother. Mike finished his game of Twilight Imperium at work on Friday. He won despite two of the other three players teaming up against him. It is good that they were not able to stop him because this upcoming week Mike's office building is changing to an office in Draper (right next to 1800Contacts actually). Friday we made tempura for our date night. It ended up pretty good. Mike determined that with the oil at a really high temperature the tempura ended up more crispy than is usual (which was good.) This weekend Mike tried to fix the fridge

We split our FHE up in to a lesson on Sunday, and an activity on Monday for the first time this week. The lesson went well. Our plan is to always cover the last week's church, and also to prepare for the next week's church too. We had Sara teach the lesson, and it went well. On Monday Mike started a new semester in school. He is only teaching two classes this semester. He was thinking that they might ask him to teach three, since they asked him in December if he would be willing to try it, however he is sort of happy that they only asked him for two because three would be a lot of classes. On Monday night we went to see a play at the local library. The production was Alice in Wonderland. Mike loved the tweedle dee/dum song. Alison loved the caterpillar/butterfly. Rea loved Alice and her sister, the cat, the butterfly, and the flowers. Sara loved the cat. Timmy loved the rabbit, and Gideon mostly just enjoyed the songs and dancing. This week Rea, and the younger kids built

For New Year's Eve, we attended a large family-and-friends party at the Stake Center. The girls had a wonderful time playing and dancing with their best friend Marissa. Timmy and Gideon had fun running around with other kids, and Mike and Alison got to play Mike's Christmas present Small World: River World. Small World is an excellent game and the expansion was lots of fun. We left at 10, which was as late as Alison could make it to celebrate the New Year. Usually we stay at home New Year's Eve and put together a big Lego Elves set. Since we went out this year, we spent New Year's Day putting it together. The kids loved playing with the pieces while Mike and Rea put it together and Alison kept Gideon out of the way. They really enjoyed playing with the final product and it kept them happy most of the day. We did some more Twelve Days of Christmas activities the rest of the week, including inviting the Dalyais over for a hot cocoa party, making gingerbread houses