Parentheticals

 Last week we mostly got ready for our trip to California. Friday night, as we were doing the last dishes before we left, the sink started leaking. Mike went and looked at it and found that some idiot somebody had taken two pieces of pipe, one of which was threaded and one wasn't, and just shoved them together as if that made an appropriate join. We had to leave it unfixed (just shoved together again) in order to leave on our trip, so hopefully it stays working until tomorrow when Mike can fix it. On Saturday we drove out to California. The drive there went fairly uneventfully. It went fast, too; we didn't have to stop for nursing a baby or anything, so we actually made it in twelve hours. (Twelve hours is still an insanely long drive.) But it was worth it, because being at the beach house is wonderful (although we missed Andy's family). The kids had a blast playing with their cousins all day every day. Alison stayed up late talking to her mom and sisters; Mike stayed up pl

 This week Alison and Mike caught whatever Elizabeth and Gideon have had. Alison stayed in bed all day Monday, then moved to the couch all day Tuesday, and was mostly better (if a little tired) after that. Mike got sick Friday and had a sinus headache Sunday. Neither of us was anywhere near as sick as the little ones, though. Gideon is almost  done coughing, and Boo stopped getting feverish in the afternoons sometime this week, so they're improving, but Boo is still super grumpy a lot of the time and needs lots of cuddles. (If grumpy is a symptom of this sickness, maybe Timmy has it, because he's had a really hard time getting along with people this week.) Mike took the oldest three kids to get their first Covid shots Monday afternoon. He decided to walk in to a clinic; Alison worried that they'd have to wait forever, but it wasn't that bad. The kids are very proud of getting their first shots and excited for their second ones. When they're fully vaccinated, they

Alison assigned the kids a new project for school this week. They've been listening to the Wings of Fire novels as audiobooks and playing dragons, so for biology, they are each supposed to design a real-life dragon. They have to explain their dragon's skeletal, muscular, nervous, and digestive system, and how it would be classified scientifically. Rea also has to talk about how her dragon develops from an egg and how the cells differentiate to make those different systems. It has been fairly popular; the kids are enjoying looking at books of how bodies are put together and thinking about what their dragons are like. Rea wants to make a swimming octopus dragon, Timmy an ice dragon that's eaten by polar bears and is adapted to protect itself, and Sara a crocodile dragon. Alison is working hard on getting better at helping the kids learn to design their own projects for learning; the dragon one is a fun start, and she hopes it will help them learn how to create their own proje