Parentheticals

This last week we went to California for the Poulson family Thanksgiving trip. Before the trip we quarantined ourselves for two weeks, during the trip we stayed away from anyone that was not in our group, and always wore masks when we were near people not in our group, and after the trip we plan on quarantining for an additional two weeks. With this minimum level of contact we didn't get sick at all during the trip (which is actually a first for our group, since usually someone gets sick during Thanksgiving), and we hope to prevent anyone from getting sick after the trip as well. There were far fewer people out there than usual, but the weather and beach was still fun. We played in the sand, and boogie boarded. We dug a giant pit, and built sand castles, and raked zen gardens. This year the three oldest girls (Rea, Sara, and Ellie) got along incredibly well, and Timmy, Kendrick, and William also got along very well (They played Pokemon practically the whole time), and Gideon and Æl...

We spent this week (and will spend the next) in self-quarantine before going to California for Thanksgiving. It's been challenging at times! But we also had some fun. Monday we woke up to snow! One day a week our school time is devoted to handicrafts and tales - normally we embroider or draw while I read aloud from King Arthur, Tales from the Odyssey, and whatever else we're reading. With the beautiful snow, I decided that snowcrafting was certainly a handicraft, so we headed outside. The boys and I built a snow fort, and the girls made a snow garden. It was a lot of fun! When we were tired, we came in and drank hot chocolate while I read aloud. It was awesome.  In the afternoon, we tried to do our Crowned with Virtue meetings over zoom. It didn't work so well. Only one of the two other girls got on, and Rea and Sara started by being super silly and ended by fighting. Oh, well. Tuesday we finished up our unit on medieval Japan. We must have done something else, but no one r...

This week baby Elizabeth slept better than she ever has before. She only woke up Michael two times during his core sleeps, and she was mostly happy for Alison on most of the nights as well. She is also sometimes eating meals with us like a toddler usually does, which is to say that she will pick one thing that she wants and eat a lot of it. This is significantly better eating than she usually does. Early this week we turned half of the Halloween candy that we collected from the children into Halloween candy cookies. We have approximately three dozen Halloween candy cookies frozen as balls and our freezer now. The weather has been good (up until today), so we have been playing outside a lot Mike's schooling is continuing to go well. He currently has A's in both of his classes. Mike's teaching is also going well, and he received some of the best ratings possible this last semester. He is also getting good ratings at work, and getting used to the newly reorganized team that he...

This past week we had Grandma Julie come over to live with us. she helped us to continue to get our house closer to being unpacked. The girls' closet is organized and working well, thanks to her, as well as the winter gear closet and the kitchen. It was wonderful having her! She stayed Sunday-Thursday, and we miss her a lot. We're glad that we'll be seeing her soon at Thanksgiving. Alison discovered that the delivery service for ugly fruits and vegetables (Misfit Market) is now available in Utah, so we signed up for it and got our first crate of ugly fruits and vegetables on Tuesday. The fruit and vegetables are organic and delicious, even if they are not sellable for various reasons. We asked the kids to contribute to this post, but only Gideon and Timmy wanted to. Gideon was very happy that they could make a house and play a game. He was a kid in the game and his mom and dad died and so he built a house by himself and then fire flooded it. And then he had to live in Timmy...