Parentheticals

On Monday we spent time at Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila's house. We don't remember much about it, but Caitlin and Sal were there. On Tuesday we walked around downtown Salt Lake with the Brown family and donated at the giving machine that they have set up there. The walk was cold but fun. Elizabeth loved the nativities, and all of the kids loved being with their cousins. The kids ran around like crazy, and we had to take uncle Dan's offer of being the leader of a penguin huddle at each street corner. It kept them all together and relatively warm - not to mention it being fun. Wednesday there was a basketball tournament at our house where the kids played the adults. Somehow the kids got Dan on their team, so they won. After that there was a late over at our house where the kids went crazy. During the late over Sara declared that she was no longer scared of Bruce, and so she stopped being scared of him at all. It was pretty sudden, but we are happy with it. On Thursday we w...

Pretty much all we can remember about this week is getting used to having a dog. He really is an amazingly good dog. He loves his kids and is very well-behaved in general. Alison has also started on obedience training and he is good at it; he learns fast. Timmy is the most responsible for him, so Timmy and Alison take him out morning and night to walk around the block or run around the dog run. Brewster Rockit absolutely loves playing "Tag;" he play-bows, and the humans crouch down and then jump or lunge. Then Brewster dashes around at top speed before play bowing again to start over. Sometimes he goes around trees and waits behind them to see which way you're coming before running out the other way. It's a lot of fun, although Timmy is getting less enamored of the process as it gets colder. Alison will have to help him get properly dressed for the temperature before going out, even if it's annoying to spend as much time dressing and undressing as actually being o...

This week we've been thinking about and working on Christmas presents. There were two big ones that we knew we wanted to get off KSL, so we were working on finding the right ones: a basketball hoop and a dog. We have been getting flu shots and finishing up everyone's covid vaccinations (the kids can now get vaccinated, and the parents can get a third shot, so we are doing all of those now. On Monday Boo got her flu shot. She was sad when she got it, but she also got a sucker, so that was good enough that she stopped crying right away. Later in the day Mike got his flu shot and his final covid shot too. After that he went to check out one of the basketball hoops that was for sale, and decided to buy it. It took about three hours to get the thing in the car (we had to take it apart and dump out the gravel from the base, and some of the parts were rusted. They broke one of the bolts, but otherwise it came apart without any trouble. On Tuesday, we played with the Dalyais for the fi...

Continuing in the theme of explosions, we thought we'd go for two weeks in a row. So on Tuesday, Alison filled up the bathtub for Boo, and then exploded the water all over the kitchen floor. Now that we're getting into the groove of explosions, perhaps we'll have one every week! If you recall, right before we left on vacation we discovered some problems with our kitchen sink. Tuesday afternoon, Mike got to work fixing them. (Monday Alison took the older kids for their second Covid shots [yay! they will be fully vaccinated next week!], so Tuesday was his first opportunity.) He replaced the parts that had problem parts just fine, but then the sink started backing up in a whole new way. He pulled it apart again to try and figure it out, and warned everyone not to touch it. Boo asked for a bath, so Alison gave her one. After she was done, Alison let the water out of the bathtub and went to get her dressed. Then from the kitchen, Rea suddenly said, "Should the sink be filli...