Parentheticals

We made it through another week ... Barely The first thing that I recall was on Tuesday night Alison was feeling absolutely awful and we took her in to the emergency room and found out that she had a kidney stone. She was discharged at 1 AM and full of enough pain killers she was fine on Wednesday.  Thursday at 3 am she woke up again and felt enough pain that she needed to be taken back to the hospital. They finally found a medicine that worked on her (either that or the kidney stone passed) so we went home at 1 PM On Saturday we went to see Dracula vs Henry Botter at the OBT. It was super fun. We need to buy tickets for Christmas Carol II, the next play they are putting on Saturday evening we went to the Ward's chili cook-off. The chili was excellent and we had a fun time. We then remembered on the way home from the chili cook-off that Alison and Mike had both been asked to give talks on sunday, and with all of the sickness we totally forgot about it, so we spent the rest of the e

These past few weeks have been fairly difficult. We all ended up sick we discovered bad news about our house and Gideon stepped on a goat head. As you all know we have been out of our house for about 4 months now because we have been having a home addition put on. We recently discovered that the contractors that we hired are involved in government investigations because they seem to be ripping people off and not completing their houses. Once we discovered this we immediately stopped paying them and also told them that they need to finish our house before we pay them anymore. We got a lawyer also.  We discovered that they never got a permit for construction, so everything that they have been doing has been illegal. We are currently giving them one last chance to get a permit and finish the job without us paying them and if they fail to do that we're going to have to find a new construction crew to finish the house. This has been very stressful and annoying to us. Grandpa Mike also g

Last week the girls did pedicures with Aunt Laurie. They had fun, and it is good that they are able to spend time with her. Grandma Julie has also been in town this week, so Alison and the kids have spent some time with them. We got to walk the Rogers kids home from school and play with them for an hour. The kids loved that. Mike was informed this week that his general contractor might be being investigated by the Utah attorney general's office for taking people's money and never finishing the jobs he started, so he is pretty stressed out about that. He hasn't gotten in contact with the office yet to verify it, so he is not 100% sure, but wouldn't be super surprised, since they have been working so incredibly slowly. This week Timmy wrote another book. It is named The Willow Tree , and it is a sequel to The Great Expanse. He still needs to write chapter names, but other than that it is finished. Timmy also made a few video games this week on scratch. The first one was c

On Tuesday Alison had a bunch of teen kids come over to do a discussion group. There are two other kids besides Rea, and Rea's friend Marissa Dalyai is going to start coming next week. They're discussing history primary sources, American literature, and doing a high school Biology course together. The first week went pretty well, and Alison is excited about it. On Wednesday all of the kids went to the dentist in order to get their check up. Timothy had a cavity which is pretty unusual for him. They were able to get him in to fix it on thursday, so it was a pretty fast turn around. Also on Wednesday Grandpa Mike was chopping down the tree in his front yard, and so on Thursday we helped him clean up all of the branches leaves and shavings that he produced in the chopping down event. Gideon helped the entire time and was very helpful. Timmy, Rea and Elsa both helped for a little while and Sara helped from the time that she got off of school until the time that it was done and she

Monday was labor day, so Mike took the day off. We went to Grandma Julie's and swam and had pizza. Wednesday was activities, and Dave planned s'mores for the dudes. The boys really enjoyed learning how to start a fire, and then mostly burning their marshmallows. Saturday there was a youth yard service day, so Rea and Sara helped some old lady in our ward to clean her yard. After they ended up going to a yard sale and spent some money to get cool things. Timmy and Gideon also helped Grandpa Mike on Saturday to cut branches of the big tree in the front yard. Elsa wants it recorded that she loves her dog, cat,  her neighbors (the Waters) and her family. She also wants to say that she knows how to dance the Macarena. We also noticed that Jell-O has not been escaping nearly so much recently, so that is good. Finally, we think that we are nearly done picking things out for the home addition, so hopefully they finish up with the work some time.

Since we have a season pass for each member of our family to see every off Broadway theater show this year, and since we don't tend to stay up late enough to watch laughingstock, we decided to see The Scarlet pimpernel another time with the whole family to use up those tickets. Since it was on the closing day they were pretty much as practiced as they ever could be. The show was really fun, and they had added in a couple jokes over the course of the time that they were putting on the play, so it wasn't the exact same play as we saw earlier.  This week we also talked to the cabinet guys on the floor guys and ordered cabinets and floors for our home remodel. Alison has done a lot of planning and is very excited about her new kitchen. It is going to look really cool and be organized in a way that is very conducive to the way that we cook.  On the left is the image of what Alison wants the final kitchen to look like, and on the right is the actual flooring that we picked. On Friday