Parentheticals

The funniest thing this week was probably when Alison decided that too many kids had colds and they couldn't go to CC. Timmy spends every Sunday evening/Monday morning whining about how much he doesn't want to go to CC. This week, when he heard Alison talk about it, he started in with "But I don't want to go to CC."  Alison replied, "Guess what, you don't have to!" There was this moment of blankness before he started to whine, "But I want to go! Why can't I go?" Alison has now declared that she is not listening to his whining any more, since obviously he is just whining to whine and not for any real reason. Alison and the girls went at lunchtime to show Grandma Sheila the kids' artwork from this quarter and then to do Essentials. The kids' artwork looked very impressive:   Wednesday we had a huge snow storm. It was beautiful! We went out and played in the snow (it was deeper than the dog's legs, and he loved wallowing in it)...

On Monday for the first time Alison made breakfast cookies to try and bribe the kids to be good during CC. The kids liked the breakfast cookies and did behave fairly well, so hopefully that continues to work for them. Tuesday morning Rea and Sara made a valentines day breakfast for all of us. They really like celebrating valentines day, and Mike and Alison don't do anything for the holiday, so they have to do it themselves. On Tuesday we also had Gideon's carnival party. He invited over the Birds (Mason, Malachi, and family) to play with us. The kids all had a fun time, and Alison talked with Brittney (the Bird mom) and had a fun time too. We have had sickness in the house for most of the week in various forms. On Wednesday Alison got sick, and she is still sick today, so for most of the week we didn't do too much more than the absolute necessities. Mike took a partial day of work on Thursday, but she planned on dropping off the kids with sister Dalyia on Friday but ended u...

This week was less hectic than last week, which was nice. But we still managed to have lots of fun. On Wednesday, while the older kids were at their church activities, Mike and Alison let Gideon and Boo watch a show while they watched one of the Jackie Chan movies Mike got for Christmas: Half a Loaf of Kung Fu. It was very funny. Friday Timmy and Sara has to go to the dentist to fix some cavities. After debating options, Alison decided that the best choice was to take all the kids and make Rea and Gideon do school in the dentist waiting room, then have lunch from the instant pot right before nature group. It actually worked really well! Rea worked a lot in her math book, and Gideon played a reading game for quite a while before going to watch a movie with Boo.  Everyone has lots of fun at lunch and at nature group; it was a gorgeous sunny winter day. There was invisible ice in the water again, along with ripples of ice at the edges of the pool. It was so nice that people took their...

This has been a busy week! Monday we had CC. We lost another tutor, so now we have all 15 kids in one classroom. The tutor who's still here is a former public school teacher and is AMAZING, so it works, and the kids have made some new friends in the group. But it's also harder to keep everyone focused. We're working on other ideas to help the kids sit still and quiet. Tuesday and Wednesday Alison felt like she was coming down with a cold, so she rested a lot. Everyone else did fun things, probably. Thursday was Rea's Carnival party. We came home from Grandma and Grandpa's house early to meet the Dalyais. Rea picked Vietnam as her theme, and she and Aunt Amy made Vietnamese ginger cookies (yum!), and she helped everyone make paper lanterns and taught them a Vietnamese game. Then they had so much fun playing for four hours that we forgot to have dinner and got to bed pretty late. On Friday the 3rd we had a game day with the Wilsons at our house. We finished up playing...