Parentheticals

We totally meant to send this Monday night, but it never got finished.  This past week we didn't have any luck in finding morels - It looks like the season for them is over in Utah. We also celebrated Alison's birthday, which was fun. Besides the brownie crust chocolate pudding whipped cream and mint chocolate ship pies she wanted Alison got some books, artificial additives for making movie-theater-style popcorn, and a new belt as well. We played a game of DnD with the group from our ward. It was fun. We fought goblins and more goblins, and hopefully they won't all kill us. This week Alison also continued to work on her business. She is still trying to figure out how it should look, but she is diligently working on it none the less. The Browns came over to visit us, and we got to play and swim and hike with them. It was good to have them over. We also went to a barbecue at the Plastows - which was fun as well. The digital version of Mike's "how to be an evil manage

Our garden is growing nicely this year, even if we haven't seen a single cucurbit sprout yet. The beans, lettuce, and peas are all growing quickly, and various other plants are doing well too.  We went on two more morel hunts this week, but we only found three more morels so far. It did rain a bit on Wednesday, but not enough to produce that many morels apparently. All of the other mushroom hunters that we have found in the dell have reported that it was a bad year for them as well, so the Utah morel crop of 2020 might be a decidedly meager one. While going out mushroom hunting, we must have run into a little bit of poison ivy, because Mike got a bit of it behind his knee (it was only one spot, but even one spot is annoying.) To a lesser extent Rea and Sara got it as well (though their rashes were smaller - single blisters mostly.  There has also been a sickness that has gone through our family - It doesn't seem like covid - it mostly manifests as a sore throat, and lasts only

Utah went to "Orange" social distancing this week. After studying and pondering the directives for DAYS (because they were so contradictory), we finally figured them out: "Stay home, unless you want to spend money, in which case, try to stay 6 feet apart, but go ahead." Since we have literally engineered our life so that none of the things that bring us joy involve spending money, we can either just stay home forever (Alison isn't anticipating getting out of orange before next Christmas), change the way we live, or stretch the guidelines a bit. We've started socializing with one other family outdoors, reminding the kids to stay 6 feet apart. They try hard :). And once every week or two we'll get together with another family. However, Alison's best friend's mom just died, so we have been babysitting her kids several times this week; we feel that's far more important than the guidelines.  The kids have lost a lot of social skills in two months

The government of Utah seems to be schizophrenic: they told us that we were going to be no longer in level 1 isolation but when they changed it to level 2 isolation ,the description sounds pretty much exactly the same as level 1, so basically they have no idea what they're talking about. Alison devoted this week to the launch of her new business, Power Emotions Parenting. She did a free week-long online class and invited a few of the most active participants to join her for free in the Power Emotions Parenting coaching program that she wants to sell later. This way she can actually do it once and know that it works :). If anyone would like to participate, let her know! She only wants people who are willing to do the work and participate for eight weeks (for that "know it works" goal), but if you can commit, she'd be happy to give you a place in the program. Alison had to spend less time on the business this week than the week before (when she was getting ready for