Parentheticals

We haven't written in a long time, so this one will contain a lot. On the 27th Mike went to a work conference in Florida. He got to meet many of his team members for the first time and had a fun time - despite missing his family. When he came home the family picked him up at the airport and we immediately all drove to Salt Con, since it was going that Thursday through Saturday night. We had a lot of fun at the convention as always. The highlights of this year were: We painted miniatures and won a bunch of bat miniatures too. Rea painted a jungle bat, Mike a frost bat, Sara a rainbow bat, Timmy a goblin moneycarrier, and Gideon another jungle bat. Some of the kids also bought more miniatures to paint as well. We always enjoy painting them. Mike participated in the regional Dominion tournament, but he lost, so that was too bad. The kids loved the vendor hall this year and commented on how it had levelled up from previous years. Mike enjoyed the math trade and the game swap hall, and ...

We spent this week (and will spend the next) in self-quarantine before going to California for Thanksgiving. It's been challenging at times! But we also had some fun. Monday we woke up to snow! One day a week our school time is devoted to handicrafts and tales - normally we embroider or draw while I read aloud from King Arthur, Tales from the Odyssey, and whatever else we're reading. With the beautiful snow, I decided that snowcrafting was certainly a handicraft, so we headed outside. The boys and I built a snow fort, and the girls made a snow garden. It was a lot of fun! When we were tired, we came in and drank hot chocolate while I read aloud. It was awesome.  In the afternoon, we tried to do our Crowned with Virtue meetings over zoom. It didn't work so well. Only one of the two other girls got on, and Rea and Sara started by being super silly and ended by fighting. Oh, well. Tuesday we finished up our unit on medieval Japan. We must have done something else, but no one r...

This week baby Elizabeth slept better than she ever has before. She only woke up Michael two times during his core sleeps, and she was mostly happy for Alison on most of the nights as well. She is also sometimes eating meals with us like a toddler usually does, which is to say that she will pick one thing that she wants and eat a lot of it. This is significantly better eating than she usually does. Early this week we turned half of the Halloween candy that we collected from the children into Halloween candy cookies. We have approximately three dozen Halloween candy cookies frozen as balls and our freezer now. The weather has been good (up until today), so we have been playing outside a lot Mike's schooling is continuing to go well. He currently has A's in both of his classes. Mike's teaching is also going well, and he received some of the best ratings possible this last semester. He is also getting good ratings at work, and getting used to the newly reorganized team that he...

What an exciting week! To kick it off, we were at Dimple Dell and discussing how, if we have to move to get a second bathroom, a house near Dimple Dell would be nice. So while the baby was nursing and everyone else was playing, Alison looked at houses on her phone. And she totally found her dream house! It has a xeriscaped front yard, mature fruit trees and grapes in the solidly fenced backyard, beautiful huge windows in the living room, a large kitchen/dining room, a second living room, three bedrooms, bathrooms, and a half-aboveground (so natural light) basement. We drove by it and everyone was excited; even Rea, who has flatly refused to move, said that she would move there. As soon as we got home, we contacted the realtor, only to find that it was already under contract. That was really disappointing! But after a day, we started thinking about using the house as inspiration to add on to our house. We've started to draw up plans to make a huge lighted front room with a basement ...

Utah went to "Orange" social distancing this week. After studying and pondering the directives for DAYS (because they were so contradictory), we finally figured them out: "Stay home, unless you want to spend money, in which case, try to stay 6 feet apart, but go ahead." Since we have literally engineered our life so that none of the things that bring us joy involve spending money, we can either just stay home forever (Alison isn't anticipating getting out of orange before next Christmas), change the way we live, or stretch the guidelines a bit. We've started socializing with one other family outdoors, reminding the kids to stay 6 feet apart. They try hard :). And once every week or two we'll get together with another family. However, Alison's best friend's mom just died, so we have been babysitting her kids several times this week; we feel that's far more important than the guidelines.  The kids have lost a lot of social skills in two months ...

The government of Utah seems to be schizophrenic: they told us that we were going to be no longer in level 1 isolation but when they changed it to level 2 isolation ,the description sounds pretty much exactly the same as level 1, so basically they have no idea what they're talking about. Alison devoted this week to the launch of her new business, Power Emotions Parenting. She did a free week-long online class and invited a few of the most active participants to join her for free in the Power Emotions Parenting coaching program that she wants to sell later. This way she can actually do it once and know that it works :). If anyone would like to participate, let her know! She only wants people who are willing to do the work and participate for eight weeks (for that "know it works" goal), but if you can commit, she'd be happy to give you a place in the program. Alison had to spend less time on the business this week than the week before (when she was getting ready for...