Parentheticals

Last Sunday we celebrated Elsa's birthday party because the older kids would be gone on her actual birthday. She got a doll, a huge squish-mallow, a bike, some clothes for her doll, and a few other gifts. She had fruit pizza and ice cream for her meal, which came out pretty good. Overall it was a fun birthday for her. On Monday Rea, Sara, and Tim went to Trek. They had a fun time, and were all safe and healthy. The weather was fairly mild, and they all wore enough sun-screen that they didn't get sun burnt. Also on Monday we took Rocket to the vet because he had been acting very lethargic and not eating or drinking. The vet took some blood samples and told us that he had diabetes. He prescribed insulin, and said that we needed to get some food in him, and then give him the insulin. We took him home and then tried to get him to eat. On Monday night he finally ate some food so we gave him the insulin and everyone went to bed except for Alison, who stayed up with him. When Mike wok...

We forgot to post again last week, so here we are with another double post. Not this week but the week before the garage door installers came over and installed a new garage door in our house. It looks pretty good and opens and closes very easily. That week we also had the four-way inspection again and finally passed it. That opened up our ability to finish wrapping the house and also installing insulation.  We scheduled the insulation installation as soon as we could (Monday of this week). Late last week we moved to the Waters house because they had gone to Africa and we wanted to be closer to our house and our Ward. It was great too stay at the Brown's house, however, it is also nice to have an entire house to yourself and to be able to walk to the park and church and our friend's houses. Last Saturday we went to a wings of fire convention which is named fan wings fest. Everyone at the convention was interested in wings of fire series, and the author of the books was also in ...

I started a blog post last Sunday, but we were too busy to actually write the things up that were in the post, so I am now converting a bulleted list of things to write about into an actual post, and then adding all of the things that happened last week as well. Rea recently created an Etsy shop. Here is a link to it: https://ecogiftcreations.etsy.com . She is selling notebooks, candles, hanging stone decorations, and bags of polished rocks. She made all of the things herself, and is planning on saving the money that she makes for college. We also received about 200 lbs of expired strawberries from the Waters last week and processed them for storage. Many were moldy, but we ended up with a lot of good ones as well, so the freezers in the Brown house are all full of strawberries right now. The kids have been going at them with a will and have made multiple strawberry smoothies every day, so they are getting used up. Mike also made a gallon of strawberry syrup, which is being used to mak...

Last Sunday evening we went to the Stake Christmas Concert at our stake center, which was good. One of Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike's friends got us a puzzle Advent calendar. The kids have enjoyed opening up every little puzzle and completing them on the day they can open them up. They also like to go back and re-complete all of the prior days some times. The puzzles have been very popular, so it was a very nice gift. Dave and the other leader were going to not be able to make it to Activity dudes, so it was up to Mike to organize and execute it all alone. He got Brother Waters to agree to come to the activity so that there would be 2 adults present. He then invented plans for a Christmas tree pickle ornament out of felt and stuffing. The kids sewed it up and had a fun time. Mike spent pretty much the whole time threading needles and tying threads off. All in all it was successful. At the same time the girls went to see the Christmas lights. The temple grounds were under constru...

We missed writing last week apparently so, last week we did Halloween and probably did some other stuff too but I don't remember any of it. Elsa walked pretty good and kept up with us so we didn't have to split the group. Alison wanted Mike to stay home because he was feeling a little bit sick however since the group stay together we were okay. Sara performed the Thriller with her class at the elementary school Halloween party. She's been practicing very hard, and she did a fabulous job. Alison and the younger kids went to watch her (Rea was at her coop and Mike was at a service project at the cannery). We were very impressed! This week we celebrated Gideon's birthday. Gideon just turned eight, and we are very excited about that. Gideon got some cool Squirtles and other toys. Rea sewed him an amazing Squirtle plushy; Elsa absolutely loves it and carries it around and has it do school with her. Gideon is mostly very nice about this. He also got a stuffed frog with a Chri...

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...

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...

Last Sunday the kids went Grandma Julie's house for a sleepover. They had fun and got to play with their cousins. At the park they noticed that some people had damaged the play equipment and sprayed some graffiti. They reported the incident, so hopefully it gets fixed soon. After that they all came over to our house and played more at out house, which was also fun. Since it was president's day Mike was trying to determine if he was supposed to get it off of work, however, earlier the kids asked if Mike got valentines day off of work and he told them that "Valentines day is not a real holiday". Because of this, they said that they have never heard of President's day at all before this year. On Tuesday the kids had a carnival party, and they Gideon chose the theme. It was France themed, and they mostly just ate croissants and played with some neighbor kids. On Friday was Faith's birthday party. Rea and Sara went to the Dalyia's house to celebrate it. The par...

 Last week Sara discovered the KSL classifieds free page and decided to get some things from it. We now are the owners of a cat carrier and a foot stool. Also Last week we went to the OBT to see Dracula vs the Hunchback. The play was very fun, and had some of Mike's favorite Dracula scenes in all of the OBT's repertoire. One of the girls that was in the acting class that Rea, Sara and Timmy went to was acting in that show, so they were really excited to see her. Last Saturday was the ward chili cook off, which usually is at the same time as the ward trunk-or-treat, however they didn't do that this year. We made cornbread muffins, and Amy made lemon jello that was colored orange, and it won the best dessert award, so apparently catering to the tastes of the children worked very well. On Tuesday was Halloween. First we went to the trunk-or-treat, and when our car ran out of candy we left to go to the trick-or-treat. One of the cars was very popular with our kids - they dresse...

Timmy attended his martial arts class again on Monday and Tuesday. He had a lot of fun and learned more things. On Wednesday Sara went to acting class, which she also enjoys a lot. Alison and Sara took the train to get to the class, which took about the same amount of time to get there as the car because of traffic. The eventual plan is to have Sara take the train to get to the class, however it doesn't seem like that is going to happen immediately. On Thusday we went to a combined Waters family birthday party. The party was at Buck's house since he was also apparently having a birthday too. We ate potluck, had cake, played No Thanks, and various other things. It was pretty fun. On Friday we were invited to see a horse show by the Poulsons. Becky went into labor, so the adult Rogers were not there, however we had fun with the grandparents and the younger Rogers. The horses were impressive, and we also saw the knights do jousting and other combat sports. The four horse "Yod...

Since we missed last week's post we are reporting on two weeks now. I will refer to the 14th-the 20th as last week and the 21st-27th as this week. Last week Alison got a new calling - she is now the Primary Secretary. That combined with Mike's new calling (Activity Dudes leader) means that neither of us are teaching anymore. It is too bad because we both like teaching, but it is what it is. For Mike's first activity dudes meeting he had the kids play an amongus retheme of mafia/werewolf. The kids enjoyed it and we got to know them a bit. It was good. Mike still has a lingering cough which just hasn't gone away for far too long. It is super annoying, but he is dealing with it Last Sunday the ward had Treats at the Park, (the kids insisted in calling it "Pops at the Stops" because the fact that popsicles were the treats, and the park is located at a three way stop.) Alison's birthday was this week. We were super busy all week so we waited till Saturday to ha...

This week, Rea sprained her ankle Monday afternoon, which was a definite drawback when it came to trick-or-treating that night. We pulled every item with wheels into the house before we finally decided that sitting side-saddle on Sara's bike with her hurt foot tucked up was the most comfortable. She managed to make it close to most doors, but someone had to carry her bag the last few steps for her. It never occurred to us how hard trick-or-treating would be if you couldn't climb stairs. Something to think about. Halloween was fun anyway. Boo was a fairy, Gideon a blue dragon, Timmy a caveman, Sara a jellyfish, and Rea a naiad - the kids made their costumes themselves out of things from our dress-up bin. We met the Plastows at 6 at the park and did a couple of streets. We decided that 6-7:30 is about the perfect time to trick-or-treat. We also found out that our porch light turns off automatically, so that's why no one ever takes our candy. We'll have to fix that next ye...

 We missed a few weeks again, due to General Conference throwing off all of our Sunday routines and then going on a family reunion campout and getting home late yesterday. Here's a brief overview: We went back to having school, but tried to keep everyone busy enough that we wouldn't miss video games too much. It was only moderately successful, and Alison ended up spending a day in bed due to exhaustion, so we decided to slow down a bit. We talked to the kids (mostly the boys) about how, when they moan and complain and cry that there's nothing fun in the world except video games, we feel like they need less time playing video games and more time rediscovering all of the other fun things, and they volunteered to try and stop complaining by themselves. So we're all trying to adjust. Grandma Julie and Grandma Sheila and Papa Mike, were all out of town for General Conference. But our tradition is to get together with family for conference, so Saturday afternoon and evening a...

Wow, SO MUCH has happened in the last three weeks! Buckle up, it's been a wild ride. The first week of August was Rea's first time at Girls' Camp. I'm going to ask her to type up an account of it for her typing class this week, so we'll give it its own post. Suffice it to say, she had a wonderful time! Aunt Amy was still YW President (she got released two weeks later), so she had that point of familiarity, and Rea made good friends with some of the other girls. It was perfect and we're all so happy for her. While she was gone, the rest of the family went to a meeting of a homeschooling group called Classical Conversations. I (Alison) first heard of this organization eight years ago when I was first looking into homeschooling. I went to their three day homeschool parent training class and their high school program sounded AMAZING. My kids were really too young for it then, and it's very expensive, but I bought their Memory Work CDs and we've been using th...