Parentheticals

We started milking Olive this week. Mike goes out and gets about a quart of milk every morning before work. We think that's pretty good for not separating the mom and baby at all. Usually when the baby is about two weeks old, you can separate them at night and get more milk in the morning, but a quart a day is a good start. We haven't figured out a good way to separate them in our shed yet. Monday we went to the new Butterfly Biosphere at Thanksgiving Point. It was lots of fun. The girls took pictures of butterflies for their photography class. Everyone enjoyed finding Blue Morpho butterflies. Everyone also liked the climbing play area. It was a good field trip.    We stayed home and did normal school on Tuesday to let Alison recover, and on Wednesday we went to the Museum of Ancient Life. The kids love the sand and water table where you can use the water to bury and uncover toy dinosaurs, and the quarry where you can dig for dinosaur bones. Sara made some awesome sketch...

This week Timmy has started drawing things that look more like things than like scribbles. He usually draws people and robots, and they have faces, limbs, heads, and other body parts. Sheila was gone until Wednesday, so we volunteered to keep babysitting Petra Monday and Tuesday. It's very easy to have her when we're at home; she plays happily with our kids and doesn't take much effort. Monday we picked up Grandma Julie at the airport and went to the zoo. We always love the zoo. However, this was not the best visit the grown ups have ever had. It was very hot, and Petra would wander away constantly and didn't like to hold hands. We saw the bird show and the elephant show, though, which was great. Rea finally got invited to participate in the bird show; she gave a water bottle to a cockatoo at the beginning so he could drink it and drop it, and then the trained raven picked it up and put it in the recycle bin. Rea has always raised her hand when they asked for volunt...

Mike left for a work convention last Sunday after church, so we didn't do our blog post. So this post will cover two weeks. Last week, Alison and the kids started doing Forest Kindergarten again. After mushroom hunting, the kids really wanted to go to Dimple Dell, so we went there all week. The kids loved it. Alison was not huge fan of the switchbacks, but the creek and trees at the bottom are nice. The kids had a fabulous time, and Alison and Gideon sat and read and cuddled. Friday we had Brown Family Dinner, because Daniel had graduated and his parents were in town. We met at Amy's house and had pizza. It was fun. Mike showed off the Brave Lala illustrations Sheila made; they are awesome! The kids loved playing in the playhouse and on the trampoline. The adults talked about investments. Saturday morning Alison had to attend a Stake Baptism for a girl in our ward. Rea was invited along to sing, and all the kids ended up coming. They were decently well-behaved, and Rea sa...

This week for FHE we talked about what we learned at General Conference. Wednesday we went to Wheeler Farm for Timmy's date night. The kids loved seeing the animals, and playing on the play structures. Thursday Mike went to the BGDG meeting, and the kids and Alison watched a movie. On Friday we went to the new sushi place for a date. It has really good prices, and the sushi was also pretty good, so we are excited that they opened the place up. We also got a large quantity of cooking oil, which we ordered from a website which had qite reasonable prices. At the rate that we use oil for Mike's bread making, it was a good thing to get. Saturday Mike spent some time getting Storybook weaver up and running on Alison's computer. Alison remembers playing it all of the time as a kid, and it seems that the kids quite like it already. Mike made a story for Timmy, and this is a page of it: Saturday night we had the church easter egg hunt, and made toothpick-marshmallow ge...

This week was still pretty busy. It seems like until this baby is born we won't have a minute's rest. Monday we had family night. Sara taught us about Moses and the burning bush. She said that we should obey heavenly father, so that was pretty much all you could ask for. Timmy wanted to play chess for the activity, so that was fun as well. Tuesday Alison had stake auxiliary training, so Mike watched the kids while she went. We cleaned up the house, and then, since we were done early we watched an episode of My Little Ponies (Mike was tired, he hasn't been sleeping well.) Alison went to the midwife on Tuesday and found out that the baby is facing the wrong way. He's head-down, which is the important thing, but his face is toward her stomach instead of her back, which tends to lead to longer, more painful labor. She's not having that, so she is doing all sorts of crazy exercises to turn the baby around. Timmy is loving his new tiger pajamas Wednesday was...