Parentheticals

On Monday Mike went to his new office for the first time. It is down near where 1800Contacts used to be, so he is not that excited about the move. They don't have car charging stations set up yet, so he has to drive carefully on mornings where it is cold enough to warrant the heater. Monday night we watched the Emperors New Groove for family night activity. The kids loved it, and the adults did as well. Kronk was (as always) the favorite. Wednesday we watched Paw Patrol, and ate popcorn for Timmy's date night. He had a fun time, which is sort of the goal of them. Mike discovered the SaltCon Math trade had started some time this week, so he has been adding his games to it, and perusing the games for trade. He really enjoys the math trade. On Friday morning Alison went to get an ultrasound to determine the gender and healthiness of the baby. It is a girl, and healthy. Mike was working from home at the time, so he stayed with the kids, although they didn't end up needi...

On Monday, Alison opened up the new Montessori room for the kids. It was a big hit. They have had no trouble choosing work to occupy themselves for the entire 3 hour work cycle every day and usually wish it were open longer. It was set up perfectly for Sara and Timmy, but Rea's part needed some work. Her school is much more book focused; Alison has a list of classics for her to read and do something with. This week she read The Secret Garden, then looked up the flowers mentioned in it and drew pictures of them and labeled them with their Latin names. She also has a microscope and some science and history work to do (along with the math we do as a family first thing), so we decided Elementary needed its own set of shelves. But it was still a great start. Also on Monday, in the middle of the day, Mike got a message from Google Flights (which will watch airplane ticket prices for you and notify you when the change) saying that we could get to Italy from Utah and back for $400 each. ...

This past week in Utah it rained a lot. I tried to look up how much it was, but apparently that is difficult to find on the internet. Anyway, it was a lot. Today it even hailed a bit. On Thursday we watched Music Man at the Pioneer theater. They did  a good job of it. The program commented how surprising it was that the play was thematically relevant after 100 years, and that was in fact true (with the exception of the shapoopie song, which wasn't even relevant the day that it was written.) They sang well, danced well, and enunciated well. They even watched their phraseology. On Friday we had a mushroom hunt, which was not very successful (but was fun anyway). Saturday we made a brie and went to the DI to discover a vacuum sealer on sale for $10. We bought it since I have been thinking of vacuum sealing cheeses and $10 is super cheap. We haven't used it yet, but we will soon. Saturday we also went to Grandma's house and picked up some things that the grands were g...