Korean hotdogs, broken toilets, and a dragon's head.

This last week on Tuesday Alison and the kids went to see the dinosaurs at Ashton gardens at Thanksgiving Point. It was the first time that they were going somewhere with the new homeschooling group, however despite Alison's heroic efforts which enabled her to get there with all of the kids on time, everyone else that was supposed to show up showed up super late, and the kids were hot and tired by the time that the activity was supposed to start. It was frustrating.

On Wednesday Alison and the kids went to grandma Julie's house in the morning, and then Alison drove back and picked up Mike in the afternoon so that the kids could all show him how well they learned how to swim over the summer. Mike doesn't remember a summer happening, but the kids all did swim really well, so he must have just missed it somehow.

On Thursday evening Alison took the kids out to tombstone tales. They heard a lot of interesting stories about the graveyard and how the people in this area used to live. It was very popular, and they had a lot of fun. While that was happening Mike worked on the bathroom - in fact all last week Mike worked on the bathroom whenever he had free time.

Friday at 4:30 grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila invited the kids over for a "grandkids party". They had a fun time eating barbecue, watching movies, eating popcorn and playing outside. While they were doing that Mike and Alison picked up a bunch of caterpillars for the kids schooling, dropped off food at the Dalyias house (who were sick), and also went to a korean hotdog shop and ate "Korean hotdogs" - which are apparently deep fried mozzarella sticks skewered by a chopstick with french fry cubes stuck to the outside. We also had tayaki (fried pancakes with sweet red bean paste in between them), and custard tayaki (the same but with custard in the middle.)

After we picked up the kids we then drove them over to Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig's house for a sleep over. They stayed up late talking and slept in different rooms (boys in one and girls in the other). Saturday morning Rea did a magic show for everyone, and then Alison and the kids went to the dragon boat festival. They went to stalls that taught them traditional Chinese crafts and also saw lots of performances (dances, and musicians). Rea really liked the musical instruments, and the traditional asian clothes fashion show. They played games and participated in the dragon dance (where they all got to carry parts of a large dragon puppet around). It took 9 people to carry it, and Rea got to carry the head.

 Before Alison went to the dragon boat festival she went to a stake relief society women's conference. While she was there she got the following texts from Mike (with the associated images):

The keys are behind the AC unit

The AC unit is behind the bike, and the bike is attached to a cherry tree in the center area of the church

You parked straight out from the cherry tree but now I am taking the car. Love you!

Mike needed the car to pick up parts for the bathroom, so he biked over to the stake center and stole the car during the meeting. By the end of Saturday with Grandpa Mike's help all of the work on the bathtub was 99% done (there is still one bit of molding that has to be installed above the window, but otherwise it is all done). The new bathtub is a Kohler (a brand that Mike approves of), and is very deep (which Alison wanted, so that she can soak in it). The kids are very impressed with it.

Late in the evening Mike tore out the old toilet and threw it into the trash can and then opened up the new toilet to find this:

He is highly disappointed because it took Home Depot three weeks to get us the toilet, and that is a long time to wait for a new toilet. Hopefully on Monday when he returns it they can get one ordered faster.