Parentheticals

Oops, we forgot to write last week, so here's two weeks' worth of notes: Last week we played the board game Near and Far with the kids for the first time. It's a board game with a bit of an RPG flavor, so we picked it when Timmy wanted an RPG and the girls wanted a board game. It was fairly fun, although Timmy wanted a real  RPG and wasn't totally satisfied. Timmy got masking tape tangled in his hair and decided to cut it out instead of asking for help. He ended up getting a haircut, so it's now chin length. Mike did a good job; it looks nice and he still feels like it's long. Every kid has to cut their own hair at least once; at least Timmy's was more fixable than Sara's. There was a snowstorm last week; Alison offered the kids the day off school if they spent it outside in the snow. They had a good time. Gideon helped shovel Grandma and Grandpa's driveway after the storm (Mike invited the kids to go along, and he was the only one who accepted). The

Monday we had our Crowned with Virtue activity at our house with the girls' friend Bailey. This month we're learning about a woman named Irina Sedlar, who smuggled Jewish children out of Nazi territory. We had never heard of her, so it was interesting to learn about her. The program suggested having the kids figure out codes or do a treasure hunt, so Alison bought an escape room from Teachers Pay Teachers, and the three girls spent over an hour happily working their way through the puzzles to save the baby doll. Tuesday Sara wanted Broccoli Cheese Soup for dinner, and Mike made it while Alison napped. We had some bunches of parsley and he threw them in. It made the soup vibrantly green, but the kids were not a big fan of the flavor addition. It all got eaten eventually. We had a lot of nice weather this week and Timmy became a big fan of riding his bike around the block. He fell several times, but he kept going, and he's had a lot of fun. Lots of times other people would go