Neglecting Things

We have again been negligent in our writing, so here it goes:

Mike and Alison celebrated their 17 anniversary - Alison found a website where people post about the gluten free restaurants that they have discovered and she told Mike about a place that makes gluten free Churros. They were very good, so we will definitely try them out again.

Mike also took a few days off since he had filled up his PTO and was in danger of losing it. He ended up building a fence during the time off, so now our house has a fence on the south side. Hopefully it will stop all the kids bikes from getting stolen so much.

That being said, Timmy and Sara regularly leave bikes outside of the fence, so it seems like it most likely will not work until they actually avail themselves of the protection that the fence would offer.

We also went to the county health office and everyone got covid shots and flu shots except for Sara, so here's hoping that we don't all get sick this year. There were no side effects that we noticed except perhaps for a little bit of lethargy

Right after getting shots we helped the Grandma and Grandpa Sheila and Mike move to their new house. They moved down south near the Poulson's, so that is too bad for us, however, they seem to like the new house better, so hopefully it is good for them. It is a nice house. No one got hurt, and they gave us a bookshelf, an outside bench, and three pieces of petrified wood.

The kids are finally ready to get a new dog, so we are on the market for one. We have met with one, but he didn't seem to be right for us. We are going to meet another one this upcoming week, so here's hoping that we find one that is good soon.

Rea and Sara have been going to rehearsals very regularly. They don't talk much about it, but I can only assume that things are going well. They sometimes are seen practicing dance moves, so obviously they are learning a lot of those.

We watched General Conference over the last few days - in a strange occurrence we were not invited anywhere, so we watched it at our own house for the first time in a long time. It was much easier than going elsewhere, and general conference was very good. I have a few talks that I am going to have to listen to again.

Mike has also been working on the jailbroken echo dots, and has programmed a lot of new abilities into them. He has considered sharing his repo so that other people could use them, however, it seems like a lot of work, so perhaps he won't

Tim and Gideon have been digging a swimming pool in the back yard. Right now it is perhaps five feet long and three feet wide and a foot deep, however, they have a lot of fun filling it up with water and then playing in it, so that is good at least.

We also finally painted Tim's 3d printed boat, so it is now brown in color. Perhaps we will get a picture of it sometime.

On another topic - the kids have been riding their bikes a lot. Mike spends at least a half hour fixing chains and flat tires a week, but sometimes much more than that. Sara came home with 6 goat heads in her front tire two days ago.

Some of us have also been participating in Inktober. Sara started it first and invited others to join her. as of yet I have seen drawings from 5 members of the family - we will see how many people finish the whole thing.

Rea and Alison and Mike have also been doing a poetry class together. It has been very fun to both read and write poetry.

Gideon, on the other hand is making music, which is pretty fun. He has been having a fun time with it, and enjoys composing songs and listening to them as well. Here is one that he recently made.

Rea is in a stage makeup and costume design class at co-op. This week they made things out of latex for the first time. They learned how to make bites and injuries out of latex, so she made a Were-wolf bite, which is pretty cool. The picture does not do it justice.

Rea has also been selling a lot of dragon plushies on her Esty shop and they have been receiving good reviews. She will be putting more Wings of Fire merchandise up in the next few weeks.

We also went to Second-hand Salamander for the first time - it is a creative reuse store, and they really liked it. It is similar to the Clever Octopus (which went out of business a few years ago). Here's hoping that this one works better, since we do like being able to get second hand arts and crafts stuff.

Finally, Mike has been working on making better ghosts for our ghost musicbox - these new ones work much better than the old ones and they are also closer to the right size.

Finally, we have been meaning to start reading "A Night in the Lonesome October" again, but we haven't yet started...