Hebdomadal

 This week, we were still not sick! Yosh!

Monday we had our next-to-last Crowned with Virtue meeting of the year. The girls have enjoyed getting together, and Rea learned to love embroidery. The boys have had fun playing too. We don't know yet if it will continue next year.

Mike was on call during a release this week, which meant he worked a lot more hours than usual. Luckily, his masters program has a one month break during May, so it worked out OK. He also found out about another 18 card game contest being put on by his publisher, Buttonshy Games. The challenge is to create a rules-light RPG. Our family loves playing rules-light RPGs, so the idea of creating one appealed to us a lot. When we started throwing around ideas at the dinner table, Alison suggested that an RPG based on the format of the best Disney movies would be awesome, but that you would have to sing, so that wouldn't work. Mike took that idea and decided to make the songs into cards, so that you could play without actually singing, and we've been working on it ever since. We've had a lot of fun with it and we hope to have something we can play next week to test it out. It's really fun.

Thursday the kids were going to go learn to mow Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike's lawn. They offered to pay their grandkids generously to take care of it, and Rea and Timmy were interested in learning how. But Marissa ended up coming to play before Mike got done with his meetings on Thursday, so Timmy, Gideon, and Mike ended up doing the work. It took 3 hours, but Timmy mowed both yards himself (with Mike straightening up the edges and weedwhacking). Timmy earned $20 (which, in our house rules, made $10 to spend and $10 to invest, tithing being considered the best possible investment), giving him enough to buy his long-awaited game for Mike's Nintendo Switch, Mario Maker 2. Gideon earned a few dollars for helping, which he spent on a container of ice cream and cones to share with the family.

Friday we went to nature group and then our playgroup at the park. It was perfect weather, and we ended up being outside for almost 8 hours. The kids had to clean up really fast to get Team Clean done between dinner and bedtime so that they could have their hebdomadol (which is a cool word meaning "weekly" that should be more known, like quotidian and annual) kids' sleepover in the playroom. I'm not sure if the real draw is getting to sleep together or getting to use unlimited screens in the morning until the parents get up, or both, but they were motivated and got it done. They enjoyed their sleepover, and Alison and Mike got to play a short game for their date night.

Saturday was devoted to two change-of-season tasks: rotating winter-to-summer clothes, and fixing the sprinklers. We tried twice to order the part we needed, and after weeks we were finally told that the manufacturer was backed up but that it would come soon. So we've been watering by hand for weeks. It finally came this week, and Mike managed to get it installed and fix all the broken zones while Alison was at Savers' replacing all the necessary clothing. It was a lot of work, but now both tasks are done, which should make the summer go smoothly. The kids loved seeing their new clothes and playing in the randomly-squirting sprinklers.

Today we're going for a walk on the Jordan River with the Plastows after dinner. We are excited.