Parentheticals

I started a blog post last Sunday, but we were too busy to actually write the things up that were in the post, so I am now converting a bulleted list of things to write about into an actual post, and then adding all of the things that happened last week as well. Rea recently created an Etsy shop. Here is a link to it: https://ecogiftcreations.etsy.com . She is selling notebooks, candles, hanging stone decorations, and bags of polished rocks. She made all of the things herself, and is planning on saving the money that she makes for college. We also received about 200 lbs of expired strawberries from the Waters last week and processed them for storage. Many were moldy, but we ended up with a lot of good ones as well, so the freezers in the Brown house are all full of strawberries right now. The kids have been going at them with a will and have made multiple strawberry smoothies every day, so they are getting used up. Mike also made a gallon of strawberry syrup, which is being used to mak...

On Tuesday of last week Alison and Sara and Rea went to see Wicked with Grandma and Grandpa Craig and Julie. They really enjoyed it. Rea said it was great! Sara also finished all of her rise testing. She did very well and got good scores, so she is very excited about that. We will be making peanut butter brownies in celebration. On Wednesday Mike took a half day off of work to work on the house with Grandpa mike. They got a lot of work done: they filled in cracks with the exterior of the house and started the blocking and built some framing that had been missed by the other guys. The house is still moving forward, however, it isn't moving as fast as we would have hoped because there's just so much to do. We are going to have to push back the four way by one week. That being said we are still making major progress. For activity dudes we played various games outside and inside. The kids really enjoyed it. At Young women's this week Sara wasn't invited because it was only ...

We missed posting last week, so there are two weeks to report on.  We have been making good progress on the house during the time. The HVAC, electric, and plumber are all going regularly. In fact, we recently calculated that everything might be done in June Not this Saturday, but last Saturday we went to a ward fund raiser for girls camp. The girls put on a carnival for the kids and had a silent auction for the adults. It was fun. We also celebrated Mother's Day. We made Alison breakfast in bed, and the kids sang in church. Rea and Sara also taught the young kids in church for their Mother's Day lessons. The lessons went fairly well. This weekend the plastic stayed over for a multi-day sleepover since Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike have been taken care of them. The kids played way too many video games and watched way too many screens, however, they did get along fairly well. On Saturday Mike and Grandpa Mike took advantage of Taylorsville bulk waste disposal day to get rid of ...

Timmy and Gideon went to Disney with Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig this week from Monday through Thursday. We were sad that they were gone, however, we were very excited that they got to see all of the things at Disneyland.  They loved so many things about Disneyland. Gideon's favorite part was the Ferris Wheel and Timmy really liked the Car's ride. They got a wheelchair for Timmy; however, he also sometimes walked on his boot. While they were gone, we made smaller meals and Alison, and the girls went out most days to the library or somewhere like that. The result is that we had much less cleanup to do around the house. We can't say that that was a direct result of the boys being gone, however, it was certainly funny that that was what happened. Elsa missed the boys most of the kids, since she loves playing with her brothers so much. We are all glad that they came back. Wednesday for YW Rea and Sara walked to the temple. Rea said, "It was pretty cool", Sara said...

Mike brought Tim to the doctors on Monday and learned that his foot is broken. He has been ordered to stay off it and they gave him a cast that would allow him to stand on it if he needed to. He has been scooting around with a scooter that we borrowed from Grandma Sheila ever since.  Monday evening we all went to Thanksgiving point for the egg festival. The Poulsons invited us and the Rogers there and we had a fun time seeing everything. Mike went with Timmy and they found a route through the park that avoided most of the stairs. On Wednesday Sara's school invited Mike over to do a career Day presentation. He presented to three different classes and they really enjoyed asking him about video games and how programmers make them. Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike have been away for the last week, however they came back for one night before leaving again to go off to Oregon. When Grandpa Mike arrived back he noticed that one of the pillars that was poured was blocking the garage door. W...

This is a post that covers 3 weeks because we were too busy or tired to post the last two times Two weeks ago it was spring break and we organized lots of playdates for the kids. Timmy larped twice: once at Dimitri's house with Sally and Gideon and Momo and kind of Dimitri. Sally was a wizard Momo was a barbarian Gideon was a rogue and Timmy was the dungeon master. They fought some goblins and freed a city from an evil goblin. They also went to the Rogers house and larped there. During the whole time, Timmy has been playing his dinosaur game a lot and has enjoyed it a lot.  Also two weeks ago they got the digging done for putting in a new foundation for the garage and master bedroom. Alison also started organized simplicity and cleaned about one room a day in Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila's basement. It looks super good now that she is done with all of it. She rearranged the main room and our bedroom to make them much more efficiently positioned. We also moved the carpet rug ...

Elsa volunteered to help me write this blog post. This is what she said: "We were going to the beach house, and Victoria was there, and we went on the beach and we found so many pretty shells. That's all I remember." Just to be clear, we did not go to the beach house last week. :P I'm not sure if she's making up a story, telling me what she remembers from the last year, or what. She did get to play with Victoria this week, though; Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig were in town this weekend and invited all the cousins for a sleepover. Alison and Mike and Becky and Chauncey had Arby's for dinner and played Here to Slay at Becky's house while the kids were all at Grandma's. It was very fun! And when we went to pick up the kids, we sat and created characters for a The One Ring roleplaying game that Chauncey's going to GM for us. Earlier this week, Rea got to go to Grandma's house an extra time for an adventure. She was signed up to take her official ...

Early in the week we went to the DI and got bikes for Timmy, Gideon, and Elsa. Timmy's bike had one missing tire tube and Gideon's bike had damaged pedals, however, they were all pretty good other than those issues. Elsa has never ridden a pedal bike before so she is very excited to start learning this and has been having Mike come out and help her balance and practice a lot. We fixed up all of the broken parts of the bikes and the kids ride around fairly often now. The kids have also noticed the first flowers of spring in grandma Sheila's yard. They are very excited to be done with winter and getting into spring. On Thursday The architects finally gave us the final versions of all of the architectural drawings for our house so we submitted a final version of them then. We are really really hoping that this time they accept the drawings without any comments. Mike took the day off on Friday because he still has more vacation and the company will let him carry, so, Grandpa Mi...

Salt Con was the first weekend of March. Despite everyone being sick we had a lot of fun. We played a few new games and some old games. We bought a few games and a lot of toys. We painted miniatures, played in the Star Trek simulator, played a magical kittens RPG, and ate the continental breakfast at the hotel.  Although we usually go to the pool almost every day during SaltCon this time the pool was under construction.  After salt con the kids all had to go to the doctors and many of them got shots. Most of them recovered fairly quickly, however, Sara seems to have been impacted the most by the shots. Her arms hurt severely for more than a week, and she still seems to be a little bit lethargic, so that tetanus shot is pretty tough. The kids got invited over to a party at the Wilson's. Timmy says that it was just a parade pretty much. Elsa says that it was great, and it had a lot of food and snacks and that she loved it.  Mike and Alison saw Les Misérables at a theater do...

We ended up buying a car the Monday after our last post (which was not last Monday but the Monday before). The car that we bought was the one that magically appeared on our list of cars that we were looking at. Neither Alison nor Michael remembered adding that car to the list, so, we are currently calling the car Magic. The car we got is a 2013 Honda odyssey, and is working very well for us. We have already installed seat covers because the car has cloth seats (which was one of the reasons why we were considering not buying it). The day after we bought the car Alison went to Thanksgiving point with her family and the kids and they ended up getting locked out of the car so Mike had to drive the old broken minivan down to get them. It didn't break down during the drive, so that was a blessing. When they were at Thanksgiving point they went to the butterfly museum and had a lot of fun seeing all of the butterflies. Mike took Wednesday off and the whole family went to a meeting at Sara...

On Monday we went to Sara's 7th grade orientation for her new Junior high School. She is very excited to do acting and art classes.  Alison and Mike went to meet with the cabinet guy on Tuesday so that we could finalize our cabinet choices for the new kitchen.  On Wednesday Sara went to a play rehearsal for her part in Seussical the Musical. This week during outside time all of the kids who participate in outside time and Mike have been playing a LARP game. We go around the nearby Church and we each have our own characters: Michael is a cyborg named Stinky Pete who shoots rockets and has the ability to charge up with batteries. Timmy is a son of a wind God who uses wind Magic. Timmy also has a dragon who is a water dragon. Gideon is an apprentice to the god of wizards and he has a katana which was broken. Elsa is a pink ice dragon named Rapunzel who also has beautiful golden hair. Rocket is an assassin dog named Shadow who can use lightning and fire magic. We tend to go on epi...

On Wednesday Sara got news that she was invited to participate in the play as a leopard. It was the character she wanted, so she is very happy. On Saturday we had many wars members come over to our house to help us move our stuff from the portable storage units in front of the house to the Waters house spare room. It was hard work and took 2 hours, but surprisingly enough we got everything in except for a few small boxes. On Sunday we went to church like usual, and on the way home Mike noticed that one of the shipping containers that we were storing our stuff in in front of the house had its door open. Mike went to shut the door and found a comforter blanket and three knives and the container. He threw away the knives on the comforter blanket in our trash can, assuming that some hobo or some kids had gone into the container.  He later learned that apparently Timmy and James have been playing in the container and those blankets and knives were James's. So, Mike had to get the stuff ...

Last Sunday Grandpa Mike have the kids rocks and arrowheads to sell. They are excited to try and make some money (Timmy wants me to add the following emoji 💰 🤑) Wednesday the kids made a kraken theme park ride, which had lights, a camera and sound system and a moving box when you got attacked by the kraken.  Thursday the trains were delayed, so going to Rea's class was harder than usual. When they got there Rea did a speech about book binding, which went well. Elsa wants to add that Jello is so cute and fluffy and cuddly warm, and Gideon wants to add that he likes to play in a box. Friday we got back our wayward minivan, which hadn't broken down again yet. Friday we went ice skating. Timmy said it was great. We started timidly, however by the end we were all pretty proficient. Timmy made it to the center of the rink, and was happy about that. Elsa borrowed a ice seal that helped her not fall down. They named it sealio. It is sort of like a baby walker. We all had a fun time, ...

We forgot to write last week, so this is a two week post. Despite two weeks having passed, our car is still broken. The mechanic said that the engine block is cracked yesterday, so either we are going to have to do major repairs or just replace the car entirely.  Fortunately we are borrowing Grandpa Mike's truck, so we can still get places if we take multiple trips. Last Saturday we went to the thrift store and saw some Magic the Gathering cards, so Mike bought them and is reselling some of them at a profit. With the remainder the kids have been making decks and playing the game. It has been fun. Timmy's deck is called the Legion and is green and full of lots of creatures Gideon also recently got Henry Stickman, which he likes. Timmy and Gideon have been playing a fun game where they fight a dictator.  Timmy really wants to go home, and he wrote this poem about it. I want to go home: Think about it every day I want to go home.  It is a haiku. Lady night we had home made s...

This week we had so many sick people. We just can't seem to get rid of it. Sunday night Rea threw up again (for the last time), but by the morning she was feeling a lot better, so we went out to the hot springs and sat around all day soaking in the warmth. After that Rea, Gideon, Tim, and then Alison got sore throats, so looking back at it, that might not have been the best idea. Gideon's eye also swelled up and was itchy for some reason, but we gave him some antihistamine eyedrops and the swelling went down. Anyway, Tuesday we built Legos for New Year's Eve and watched Lego elf movies. Wednesday was New Year's Day, and we had been invited to Kaitlyn and Sal's house for games, but since everyone was sick we stayed home.  We played Dog Man the board game, which was pretty fun. We liked getting shrink rays and everyone was able to understand the game and enjoy it. On Thursday people were mostly feeling better so we went to Alyssa's birthday party at the waters hou...