Walnut Week

Mike is doing midterms for his master's program, as well as doing week one of his BYU-I class he teaches. He's doing a good job keeping up with all of it. At BYU-I, he's teaching a new kind of class, and they're paying him an extra $400 to be a "class representative" and $300 for teaching something new. He normally makes $900 per class per semester, so he's getting almost twice as much as usual for one class (which is all he wants to teach while also going to school and keeping his day job). 

Alison is still teaching her program to two groups (one is 9 weeks into the program and one is 3 weeks into the program). It's going well; she's getting things automated and feeling like she's doing a good job on the coaching calls. She's cut back everything else she does in her business to a minimum until after the move. It's nice to have that freedom.

We finally got a plumber to check the main sewer pipe at our new house, and it has roots growing into it, so we negotiated $5k off the purchase price to split the cost of fixing the pipe (it will cost $10k total to fix it in a way that hopefully won't kill our beautiful front yard tree). While the plumber was there, Mike measured a bunch of the walls and the space for the refrigerator, so we started planning what bookcases and fridges and other things we need to buy.

This week we ate the big fishes that Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike gave us. They were very well-received by those who like fish. (We serve fish every week because it's so healthy, but not all of our kids like it yet. We're working on it.)

Thursday we got a dumpster from the waste company, since normal bulk waste day is apparently a COVID hazard. We're not sure why, but we sure enjoyed having our own private dumpster! We filled it up with all the junk from our backyard, all the way to the brim. Timmy was a big help carrying heavy stuff and throwing it in. He's a strong guy.

Friday was nature group, and the activity was mapping the park. That was way too exhausting for Alison. She ended up buying a wagon off KSL on Saturday, so hopefully in the future she won't be quite so exhausted from carrying a 1 year old and gallons of water as well as her own stuff.

We went to our ward this week for the first time since COVID, expecting it to be our last week. But they announced that starting next week, we'll have sacrament meeting every week, since the restrictions in Utah just went up to 150 people. So we'll go back next week, since we were asked to bear our testimonies before we leave, and maybe we'll even get released from our callings before we're gone. Our ward is following the social distancing protocols very well, but we still don't feel comfortable taking our germy kids where there are lots of elderly people, so we don't intend to start attending regularly yet.

We also picked up some walnuts that had fallen from a tree that overhangs the fence into the park. We got 24 nuts, and it looks like there will be more for the next few weeks. At the park, we also found scotch bonnets growing. We plan to take them and let them spore all over at our new house. If we're going to have a lawn there (which we intend to for at least a while), we might as well get lovely mushrooms out of it!

This week was our 11th wedding anniversary! We spread out the celebration over several days, but eventually we made a marvelous asparagus and bacon and mushroom quiche, and a decadent chocolate cake with a coconut-walnut frosting that we served in far too big slices :). Both were delicious. We also watched an episode of a tv show for just Alison and Mike, which was very funny. The show in question was named Jeeves and Wooster, and it is available on youtube. We will probably watch more later. They did such a good job casting the characters.