The Daily Double

Another two-week blog post!

Last week was the Fourth of July. We went foraging and found berries for a red, white, and blue berry pie. Raspberries, strawberries, and red currants for red; serviceberries and black currants for blue. We have two white berry plants nearby (white mulberries and white currants), but neither had fruit for us, so we threw in some marshmallows for white :). It was very good!

We went to Aunt Amy's house to do fireworks again, since they're still banned at our house. The kids (Browns and Plastows) have decided that this is the way of things and we always do fireworks together. We discovered that Baby Elizabeth loves fireworks. She was shy of strangers, but still wanted to go to Mike when he set them off, and she clapped and cheered and pointed for each one. It was very unusual and very cute.

This week Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig came to Utah to help Aunt Becky move. We had Grandma come to our house one day, and we all met at the park near Becky's new house one evening, and Grandma and Grandpa came to dinner another evening. It's been so great to talk to/play with them!

The Rogers are living in the human-centric design section of Daybreak, and seeing it made Alison want to move there. We would have to give up homesteading, but we basically have already, and the design really works: the park and neighborhood was full of relationships and foot traffic and kids playing outside. It's really great.

We are pretty sure we'll have to either move or build on to our house in the next year; one bathroom is just not sufficient for seven people. We're still exploring options, but Daybreak is now on the list.

Mike's electric car also stopped charging recently, so we took it into the dealer, and they replaced the small battery in it (not the one that moves the car, but the one that runs the computer). Mike has been intending to sell it since he got his new job, so here is another reason to do so. Perhaps he will do so finally.

Alison is doing another launch for her business this week. She designed a quiz that got lots of people to give her their email address; we'll see how many of them end up joining her program :). Here's the quiz if you want to check it out: www.alisonpbrown.com/quiz. It's about how you react as a parent when you're under stress, and the results page teaches you something about how to deal with stress better.

The white currants I mentioned as not being ripe for the Fourth got ripe this week. They are really good! We wonder if we can grow white currants and white mulberries someday.

One day this week Gideon also cleaned up the house in order to get us to buy him ice cream, and so we ended up taking him to the grocery store so he could pick out a favor. He picked cherry moose tracks with blueberries on top of it. It was super tasty.

We also discovered that the carrot seeds we thought never germinated were growing under the plants we'd planted later. Yay, carrots!