It's been three weeks

We haven't written in a long time, so this one will contain a lot.

On the 27th Mike went to a work conference in Florida. He got to meet many of his team members for the first time and had a fun time - despite missing his family.

When he came home the family picked him up at the airport and we immediately all drove to Salt Con, since it was going that Thursday through Saturday night. We had a lot of fun at the convention as always. The highlights of this year were:

We painted miniatures and won a bunch of bat miniatures too. Rea painted a jungle bat, Mike a frost bat, Sara a rainbow bat, Timmy a goblin moneycarrier, and Gideon another jungle bat. Some of the kids also bought more miniatures to paint as well. We always enjoy painting them.

Mike participated in the regional Dominion tournament, but he lost, so that was too bad.

The kids loved the vendor hall this year and commented on how it had levelled up from previous years. Mike enjoyed the math trade and the game swap hall, and got rid of a few games and also got a few other games.

Gideon won a few gigantic pokemon cards which he is very happy about, and Timmy bought a turtle wizard figurine that he plans on painting.

Rea also won a copy of Echidna Shuffle is a drawing, which is cool because we really like the game and have wanted it for a while. Rea also won two decks of Magic the Gathering cards, (which are still totally a thing)

The girls were sewing a quilt for Aunt Sheila and they finished it up this last week. Grandma and Aunt Amy helped, but they did a lot of it themselves, and it turned out great! Then they decided to make a bunch of gifts for the Stromberg cousins, too, and send them along with the quilt when Grandma and Papa went out to visit. They made a rice heating pad for Olivia, a homemade book for Max to write recipes in, and a toy pet carrier for Petra. They had to hurry to get them done in time; they came up with the idea Thursday evening and Grandma and Papa ended up leaving Friday night. They came over to pick up the gifts at 10pm, but they were all done! Rea and Sara did a great job.

Alison has been working on her business again! She's really hoping that the new medication she's on is actually working and this is not just a hypomanic episode, because she's excited to get back into it. She's working really hard this week on a simple way to summarize what she does so that people want to know more, because she tends to go into a ten-minute explanation and that's not the best way to introduce people to the subject. :) While she works on that, she's preparing emails she can send out to her email list. It has grown over the years, even without sending anyone links to it; she wonders if it's real people signing up or bots. But she's excited to find the people who do want to hear about Power Emotions and start talking about it again. 

We were supposed to have a game night with Caitlyn and Sal last week, but when Alison mentioned her business, they got very excited and we ended up talking entrepreneurship all evening. They are planning a very cool venture called "Hot Tub Networking" where they'll charter a cruise ship for entrepreneurs and have presentations on various useful topics as well as socializing time. It's a neat idea, and they gave Alison lots of ideas for her business too.

On Friday we went to see the play Newsies at the local highschool. They did a good job of it, and the musical numbers and acting were all good. The kids liked it, and we all listened to it as we cleaned up the house on Saturday.

Saturday morning we were double booked for service, so we ended up having to wake up early even though we usually sleep in on Saturday. Mike went to the food bank and collected a bunch of donations and sorted them. The news was there, so if you watch a segment on it on some major news station you might see Mike in it (he wasn't paying attention as to which it was, however.)

While Mike was gone, Alison and the kids helped clean the church. Rea and Sara did all the classrooms by themselves; Boo and Gideon helped with windows a bit, and they and Timmy were very excited about the idea of dusting in the chapel, but they mostly played while Alison did the rest. A man from the neighborhood brought his dogs to play fetch in the church parking lot, and Timmy threw balls with them until his arm was tired. Now he's really excited to teach Rocket to fetch, so he doesn't have to take him on walks.

It's spring! The crocuses in our backyard lawn started to bloom. The kids were so excited when they found them that we ended up having an impromptu day off school to celebrate spring. Then on Friday it was warm enough at Nature Group that the kids played for hours and hours and didn't want to go home. They buried themselves in a huge sand pile, apparently; unfortunately, Alison got there too late to get a picture. The moms had fun enjoying nature and talking, and it was a very good day.

Saturday Alison and Rea and Sara also went to the thrift store looking for costumes for the girls' Faces of History presentations. On the last day of our Classical Conversations school year, April 17th at 11am, all our family and friends are invited to our final showcase. All the kids will sing the timeline history of the world song, and then Rea and Sara and their classmate Paisley will each stand up and do a presentation from the point of view of a character from Medieval History. (You're all supposed to guess who they're being, but let me warn you, you probably won't be able to; they picked very cool but not well known people.) The costumes we found are just about perfect. We still need accessories, but they both have their main outfits, which makes Alison feel a lot less stressed.