The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

These past few weeks have been fairly difficult. We all ended up sick we discovered bad news about our house and Gideon stepped on a goat head.

As you all know we have been out of our house for about 4 months now because we have been having a home addition put on. We recently discovered that the contractors that we hired are involved in government investigations because they seem to be ripping people off and not completing their houses. Once we discovered this we immediately stopped paying them and also told them that they need to finish our house before we pay them anymore. We got a lawyer also. 

We discovered that they never got a permit for construction, so everything that they have been doing has been illegal. We are currently giving them one last chance to get a permit and finish the job without us paying them and if they fail to do that we're going to have to find a new construction crew to finish the house. This has been very stressful and annoying to us.

Grandpa Mike also got sick, and then Dad Mike got sick and then all the kids and Alison got sick as well. It seems like it was the flu and it took a while to go through us. Gideon wants to mention that it was influenza, and not the stomach flu. Mike has been coughing for weeks, but by now everyone else is better.

Every Thursday Rea goes to a class far up north, and she had two adventures recently. Here are her words:

First I was getting ready to go home from school but my alarm didn't go off since I set it for am instead of pm. Because of this I missed the bus and had to walk to the train station. I arrived at the train station just as the train was leaving and missed it. Two trains going in opposite directions, at the same train station at almost the same time. I get on the Ogden train coming there and the Provo train going home, but I always get then confused, so I got on the wrong train by mistake. So I went one stop on that train and realized it was the wrong one so I got off. I had to ask a UTA employee to text my mom to get me home. 

The next week:

Everyone was sick but I was feeling mostly fine but I had a sore throat so I took medicine for my throat, but it turned out to be the night time medicine so it made me sleepy. I got to class fine, but in my public speaking class I did a stretch and felt dizzy, and the next thing I remember is that I was walking up leaning against my friend. I got up and left the room. My friend got the director and told the director what happened, but when she tried to call Mom, she was asleep. (Alison was sick at the time) Then I was feeling sick through my other classes, so the director said I should go home on the earlier train, but Mom was asleep and still hasn't gotten my messages, so I waited for over a half hour until they came to get me.

Because of all of the times that Rea ended up having to get home by calling using some random person's cell phone Mike and Alison decided that we really need to get her her own cell phone, so we were gifted Grandma Sheila's old iPhone and we bought her a SIM card that was prepaid.

Sara is still loving her school. Her first parent-teacher conference said that she was doing wonderfully well, and was even ahead of grade level in math and her English teacher complemented her essay writing skills.

Timmy invented a new country called Megastan. Megastan is a country composed of all of the other countries whose name ends in Stan. He wonders whether it would be heavily pro Russian or heavily anti-russian.

Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike took all of the kids cold weather clothes shopping. The kids all had a lot of fun and Elsa got a very cool neon rainbow colored cat eared leopard print outfit. It is 100% her style, and she wants to wear it everywhere.

We also celebrated Rea's 14th birthday. She got a lot of cool presents, had broccoli cheese soup for her meal, with German chocolate cake made by Grandma Sheila as the dessert. We also went outside and had a fire and sat and talked and she declared it to be one of her favorite birthdays ever.

Mike also acquired a laser hair removal device about 8 weeks ago and he has been shooting his face with lasers ever since then on a periodic basis. The instructions said you should notice results after 8 weeks so now we are going to report that it's hard to tell whether there were any results. Certainly his neck hair is not growing in as fully as it used to be, however the facial hair still seems to be growing in so he's not sure whether the device just doesn't work or whether he has persistent hair and has to do it for longer.

Dan and Leah also came over to visit Grandma and Grandpa Mike and Sheila. Since Leah is pregnant and we were all sick they ended up staying at the Poulson's house so that she wouldn't contract what ever we had. It was fun to have them over and enjoy their company.

Finally, today we went on a walk on the Jordan River trail with a Plastows and Grandpa Mike. We found two geocaches on the trail and also three praying mantises and a praying mantis egg. It was a very fun walk. Mike also showed his impressive manliness by skipping a rock all the way across the river.