Parentheticals

 Last week Sara discovered the KSL classifieds free page and decided to get some things from it. We now are the owners of a cat carrier and a foot stool. Also Last week we went to the OBT to see Dracula vs the Hunchback. The play was very fun, and had some of Mike's favorite Dracula scenes in all of the OBT's repertoire. One of the girls that was in the acting class that Rea, Sara and Timmy went to was acting in that show, so they were really excited to see her. Last Saturday was the ward chili cook off, which usually is at the same time as the ward trunk-or-treat, however they didn't do that this year. We made cornbread muffins, and Amy made lemon jello that was colored orange, and it won the best dessert award, so apparently catering to the tastes of the children worked very well. On Tuesday was Halloween. First we went to the trunk-or-treat, and when our car ran out of candy we left to go to the trick-or-treat. One of the cars was very popular with our kids - they dresse...

Since we have tickets to Star Wars in Dec. we are trying to watch the rest of the Star Wars movies before we see the new one. I don't think that we are going to make it. We just finished Episode 2, and we have been trying for over a month so far. This week, Alison added a new section to Kidschool: Montessori activities.  She studied Montessori and we invested time and money into learning about it and making materials back when Rea was a baby, but it never really worked well then.  But she's pulled it back out now, with more mother-skills and knowledge about adapting things, and it's going very well.  The kids ask to do Montessori most days and spent hours using the materials on several different days this week.  It's been very rewarding for Alison to finally have it work. On Tuesday, Rea achieved her math goal (playing our math block Mastermind with four blocks hidden) and wanted to go straight to the zoo.  Unfortunately, Alison got flashes of light obscurin...

This week we discovered the true meaning of infinite sickness (or endless hopeless bleak despair, either one really). Sara and Rea have been coughing for a long time. Fortunately they don't act too much more sick than is usual. Sara has been a bit fussy, though. We went to a play on Thursday. It was 'one man and two governors' (or something like that) The play was ok, but honestly the Off Broadway Theatre would have done a much better job at it because they are way better at keeping a straight face when faced with improvisation. They were stumped by a hummus sandwich. Saturday we got the first snow of the year, which was a bit surprising, but the girls wanted to play in it anyway. In response to the snows we have been having fires in our fireplace. It is great to have a fire. Timmy (and everyone else as well) loves watching the fire. He says "I love you! Hello!" to the fire (as well as a lot of things we do not understand.) He has been babbling a lot lat...

Alison and I are still not behind on our Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) novels. That means that between the two of us we have written more than 24,000 words already. So far there are a few decent parts of my novel and a whole bunch of horrible parts. I need to get back in to practice when it comes to writing. This week we tried to make our first blue cheese. The make went pretty much terribly. Somehow we forgot to turn on the timer multiple times and we also forgot to turn on the temperature alarm during this second heating of the milk It ended up that the curds were much much firmer than anticipated. We are hoping that the Penicillium Roqueforti (blue mold) will still colonize the cheese even though it is not perfect. We are also hoping that the mesophilic bacteria did not die when the curds reached 101 degrees. This Saturday as we worked on the cheese we also made another batch of granola. This batch came out pretty good. We made a double batch, so it will probably...

Rea and Sara have been on a midnight joke telling rampage. They stay up super late talking and laughing. Eventually Rea complains that Sara is out of her bed, and we have to tell them that they have to be quiet and go to bed. Hopefully this passes. Rea has also been drawing lots of pictures recently. She usually gets eyes, a head, and any important limbs (though her spiders have way too many legs). She loves drawing owls, bats, spiders, worms, snakes, trees, seeds and eggs. Rea has also begun to enjoy playing bats. She names us, and then we eat food and hang upside down from the monkey bars. If we are fruit bats the names are things like fruity, eaty, and batty. If we are vampire bats the names tend to be bloody, drinky, and batty (batty being the default bat name). Grandma Poulson took Rea away to do some shopping with her, and when Rea left Sara forced mommy to walk with her down the street to smell the roses. Sara is learning so many things, especially how to express herself. ...

It is eleven fifty eight pm and Sara just woke me up. She was laying in the floor of the sleep room crying. I put her back in bed and patted her back. She seemed to be thirsty so I got her some water. Hopefully that is all she will need tonight. (It wasn't... she woke up three more times so far) We had the primary program today (which Alison was in charge of). It went well. Andrea really wanted to be up there with the big kids. We told her that she would be up there next year. It is amazing how they grow. Sara has been following Andrea around and doing whatever Andrea does (including dancing during their favorite song during the program today). This weekend we went to a Halloween party that a ward member put on, Rea wanted to read all of their books, so that is what we mostly did. I ordered a copy of Puerto Rico, which arrived on Thursday. Alison and I played it that night. It was am interesting game, but if I make my Easter island game that I have been thinking of it will ...

Early last week we got some more chickens from an add on KSL. They are mostly larger than our old chickens (except for the americana, who is about the same size.) We ended up with 9 chickens (which is over our legal maximum), so we had to send some to the chopping block. Slaughtering chickens is not particularly terrible, but removing the guts was pretty gross. Additionally, when they say that you should let the meat age so that it is not tough and hard to eat they are not joking. At least they were not as terrible as the chickens that we had to eat on my mission (for those who don't remember, my companion had a bright idea which ended with the health department forcing us to eat some chickens on the spot). The new chickens are surprisingly different from our old ones. for one thing they like to roost. All of our old chickens didn't much care to roost, but the new ones love it. I found them all roosting on the wall to the compost heap the first night that we had them. Thi...

This week: For Halloween we went to my parent's house and Andrea trick or treated at perhaps 15 houses. November 1st marked the first day of both NaNoWriMo and NaGaDeMo. I am participating in NaGaDeMo, and Alison is in NaNoWriMo. NaNo is fun, but I didn't want to take that much time away from developing Polynesia. The game that I decided to make is "Dancing Robots". So far I am not too far along. I have a basic rules doc, but not even all of the rules are defined, and most of the cards are not yet created. I read Harry Potter and the Natural 20 this weekend. It was pretty funny (though it is not a complete story yet). D&D folks - you will find it a fun read. I also have been reading a fair amount of HP Lovecraft recently, and decided this weekend to have a Halloween RPG one-shot campaign. We used the Inspectres   Unspeakable  micro supplement for rules, and 'The Dunwich Horror' as a starting point for the story. The gamepl...