Parentheticals

This week our Brown grandparent's came over and we spent a lot of time with them. Alison went out with all of the girls and ate lunch together, the kids spent time at the grandparents, Mike ate lunch with Grandpa Mike, and we all also went over to eat dinner with them. It was fun to see them again. Wednesday evening we went to the nearby nursery and bought some tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Hopefully they grow well. Rea also planned and executed a may-day celebration. It had a parade of children and a maypole dance. They also ate a picnic of lemonade, peppers, pears and cheese.  On Friday we were all well enough to go to nature group for the first time in a month. It was hot, and a few of the kids whined, but we stayed the whole time and the kids had fun. Mike did yard work and mowed the lawn with our new mechanical lawn mower. It works pretty good, but doesn't do well on tall grass or sticks. Saturday we transplanted two new trees: a cherry and an apple which we bought from t...

Apparently we forgot to post this last week, even though we started writing it. On Monday (last week) Alison and the kids met up with Katrina and her kids (their friends who moved to southern Utah). They had a fun time. Friday Alison and the kids went to nature group and it was raining and snowing and quite cold and they were all very sad so they came home early. On Friday night the Plastow kids came over and had a sleepover with our kids. They are all good friends, so they enjoyed sitting up all hours of the night and talking about things. Baby Elizabeth slept down with them and she only woke up once during the night, so she seems to be getting much better at sleeping through the night even under unusual circumstances. Saturday Mike and Sarah went out to gather raspberry canes to transplant into our yard. They were located in a park in Sandy on the top of a wooded hill. We ended up digging up a total of seven plants and we planted them in our backyard beside the strawberries. Hopefull...

The weather has been really nice, so we went hiking some more this week. We gathered more plants for the food forest, and played that we were from redwall We now have lots of currants, some serviceberries, black raspberries, a gooseberry bush, strawberries, mint, a plum tree, and some Oregon grape. We want cherry trees, apples, raspberries probably more plums, and perhaps a peach tree and some asparagus before we are all the way done. The garden is finally starting to sprout. We have tons of pea plants, and some lettuces to show for our work so far. We have also been burning all of the trees we cut down and dug up from our yard. The kids really wish we had marshmallows. Mike's next school semester started, and it has mostly been going well. Alison has been preparing to teach a bunch of people about how to get along with their kids. Her class starts on Monday. She has nearly 100 people signed up so far -that is pretty exciting. We also have been recently playing a lot of...