Parentheticals

Throughout the week Mike has been slowly packing up things and moving them box at a time into his office and the carpet room. The front room is completely empty and the kitchen is as close as we can get it without moving anything that is completely necessary to living and eating in this house. Mike's office is pretty darn full right now, however it still is possible for him to work in it. On Wednesday the Water's kids found some mushrooms in their yard, so we decided to see if there were any mushrooms up at the dell. We found three morels, a few clusters of oyster mushrooms, and a cluster of wild onions. We picked one of the onions to transplant to our yard and gathered the mushrooms to make into some sort of mushroom food in the future. Mike sauteed them and froze them, so the next time we make pizza we can have wild mushrooms on one. On Thursday the kids were bored, so Mike cut up some dowels that we had sitting around the house and made some drumstick sets. He sanded them do...

On Monday we dropped off our car at the auto repair shop because for years our doors have been slowly degrading. It got to the point where everyone had to climb in through the front doors and then climb over everything to get to wherever their seat was. After dropping the car off the auto repair shop looked it over order the parts and got it fixed by wednesday. We are super excited to have a car whose doors work again!  While we were out of a car Grandpa Mike lent us his truck so we were not entirely unable to get around. On Monday at dinner time we also discovered that Elsa had some incredible eyebrows. We aren't quite sure exactly how it happened, however her eyebrows were very impressive. (Alison mentions that it is nice that Sara has someone to practice makeup on.) Early this week (Tuesday or Wednesday probably) Timmy started having an allergic reaction to something that we aren't quite sure what it is. It seems that it flares up when he goes outside so we're guessing i...

On Monday the grandmas took Rea and Sara out to shop for new clothing. They had a lot of fun and got good clothes. It is nice that they can go shopping for themselves now because they get clothing that they like a lot. And each of them is able to show their own personal style. Elsa says that she loves cats so much, and that her favorite cat is jello. She loves to play with cats and loves that they are so cute and fluffy.  On Tuesday we went shopping for groceries and also were given some berry bushes by Grandpa Mike. Sara got a bunch of strawberry plants, and Mike got a few raspberry bushes and a blackberry bush as well. We got them late at night, however, so we didn't plant them immediately.  Wednesday we planted out the bushes and Mike fixed the sprinklers so that they will water the new bushes. There is still one zone not running currently, so Mike still has to do some more work, but it is closer to being able to be turned on  On Friday nights since Amy told us about t...

Monday afternoon this week Alison began to feel sick. Mike took off the day Tuesday to help her feel better by taking care of the kids. On Wednesday, she thought that she was feeling better, so Mike went back to work. However she was feeling awful and throwing up again Wednesday night, so Mike took Thursday off. Alison felt better Friday and took it easy Friday and Saturday to avoid a relapse, so we think she's all better now. (Hopefully)  On Monday night (right after Alison began getting sick) we (Mike and the kids that is) went to the tulip festival with grandparents Poulson. Elsa says that the kids had a lot of fun at it, and that she liked the dragon the best. Gideon said that he had a fun time, however Gideon also says that he was sad because he didn't get to keep the map.  On Wednesday we did chair soccer for activity dudes, which is a game where each person has a chair that they have to defend and everyone tries to kick the soccer ball and hit everyone else's chair t...

Apparently we forgot to write a post last weekend, so this is a twofer. That being said, we are not able to come up with too many things that happened that were not normal stuff. Sara is done playing in The Lore of the Rings, since last night they put on the last showing of it, so if you wanted to see it, it is too late. We went to see her last performance, and we all agree that they did even better than their first one. Sara was incredible as Frollo and we are so proud of her. We all love the OBT, and are happy to have had our kids participate in one of their plays.  Rea has been doing a lot of sewing - both making plushies for herself and helping her friend Rachel Waters make a seal for her twin cousin's baby blessing. Rachel wanted to make a stuffed animal for them, and wanted help the evening before they had to leave to go there. She had also never sewn anything from a pattern before and she was using minky, which is very difficult to sew with. Despite all the difficulties they...

This week was the most beautiful spring weather! We've been spending lots of time outside. (Except when Mike's work was bonkers and awful, which happened a lot this week.) The fruit trees are all in bloom, and it's wonderful. Everyone has working bikes now, so we've been riding to the park and stuff and having fun. Tim choreographed and announced a bike show where he and Gideon performed feats of derring-do like riding straight toward each other and going really fast. It was very fun. Early in the week Rea threw up again. We're starting to wonder if there's something wrong; she's thrown up more in the last couple months than she had for years before that.We're just not sure what to do about it. Alison's first thought was to get her tested for food allergies and intolerances - it's definitely not tied to one specific food, but maybe she's damaged her digestive system and now it's more sensitive? Who knows? Maybe it will just go away. Grand...

We didn't get around to an Easter egg hunt last week, so we did one Monday morning. We've had warm weather and rain this March, so it was really easy to hide the eggs; Alison said, "I didn't even have to bury any to hide them all!" Alison is kind of obsessed with making Easter egg hunts actual hunts and not just picking up eggs that are laying around. We joke about it, but it's a tradition, as is losing a few eggs every year. We didn't have an official egg count this year, but we're sure we lost less than 10. Out of almost 200, that's not too bad. This week was the local schools' spring break, so Alison picked one thing that each kid HAD to do for school and let them skip the other things. Except for Réa; she had to do CC since there are only 3 weeks left. She got to skip math, though! She was not super impressed by Alison's attempts to sell that as a break.  They had a lot of fun playing with friends and playing outside and building with L...