Parentheticals

This week we celebrated Holy Week and Easter. When we told the kids that last Sunday was Palm Sunday, they got very excited. Apparently Rea and Sara at least remember some of our Easter traditions and were excited to do them again. That made Alison very happy. Mike was sick with a cold, so the kids took turns being the donkey for the Palm Sunday game. Then they went outside to find green things to wave while we sang "Hosanna" from the Children's Songbook. On Monday Mike was still feeling sick (as he had most of the last week), so he decided to take a sick day for himself. In the evening we talked about Jesus cleansing the temple and played a game of Clean Up Your Own Backyard with socks. Sara didn't want to play at first (she currently resents all organized games), but she got drawn in because it was so fun. We all enjoyed it. Tuesday we went outside in the rain at Wheeler Farm. Gideon actually made it a whole hour! He's hated being out in precipitation or ...

We missed writing last week. Certainly stuff happened, but I can't remember all of it. I can recall making a cheddar, and practicing my presentation a lot. This week I practiced my presentation more, started making a game called "Doge City", and also started printing Dominion Adventures tokens on my printer. We spent a lot of time outside (it was certainly unseasonably warm out in Utah, perhaps global warming finally caught up with us.) We spent a few hours on Saturday fixing up all the bikes and preparing for Alison to take three kids on extended bike rides. Alison has been reading a blogger called " Mr. Money Mustache " about having a better life by buying less, and one of his big points is how much better bikes are than cars. She is eager to try it out. (Warning: the MMM blog does include swearing.) Our first chicken started laying again, so we have about 8 eggs so far. Hopefully the others begin their laying regimen soon, otherwise we will have to sell...

Andrea has been enjoying the spring immensely. She loves to spend most of her time outside (she would probably spend almost all of it out there if her mother would let her). She loves to break into the goat food and feed the goats and chickens. She was digging holes under the fence (not to get through (she knows how to open the door) but to use the dirt as play goat food when we don't let her get any more real goat food) this leaves the chickens enough space to squeeze under the fence and enter into our garden area. The chickens have been laying a ton of eggs. The black and white one lays one every day and the other two lay eggs on alternating days it seems. Lala has been still producing milk in decent quantities (it is too bad that we have to dry her off when we go to Japan, but I doubt that we will be able to find someone who is willing to milk her that entire time). Clarabel is still growing it seems. We are looking at getting a stud for her so that she can start produci...

Sam has done it again. Ra  (which is still in ongoing development) is an interesting take on a post industrial magical world, where magic is studied like physics is today, and there is a mysterious group known as 'wheel' which is trying to 'protect' the world from magical artifacts of unknown abilities. I know that I will follow along with it avidly as it progresses toward completion. This last week I began to study Haskell - a functional language which is pretty different than anything that I have looked at before. I haven't yet written an entire program, but I am enjoying learning the language. On Friday Alison told me that she posted Rusty to be sold on Ksl classifieds. I  was never really was a dog person, but I was still quite surprised by this. When I got home I told her that she didn't have to sell him if she didn't want to, but she said that she was selling him because she didn't feel that she gave him enough attention (with us having two kid...