Parentheticals

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 ...

This last week the weather was nice, so we played outside a lot of the time. As we were preparing to plant our garden in the backyard, we ordered some fruit bushes. Alison had read about building a permaculture food forest, and this seemed like a good way to start that. We had ordered a gooseberry bush, two Serviceberry bushes, and also a pair of black raspberry bushes from a nursery in the east. The bushes all arrived on Friday, so Mike went outside and planted them and watered them heavily. We hope that they produce lots of berries for us to eat in the future. Of all of the seeds we planted a few weeks ago, very few of them have begun sprouting, so we went and replanted the whole entire area yesterday. We have also been burning a lot of wood that we got by ripping out all of the trees of heaven which were growing in our backyard. The fires have been crazy, according to Rea. Alison also went on a massive food shopping trip on Saturday so that we could get all of the stuff that w...

Rea's favorite thing this week was going to the Dalyais' nature group on Wednesday. There was water in the normally-dry streambed, and the kids had a great time playing with it and collecting beautiful rocks. They started to build a boat. They're looking forward to continuing the boat next week. Sara's favorite thing about this week was her Carnival party on Thursday. She wanted a ballet themed party, but she also wanted worms in dirt as her treat. We ended up not doing much with the theme. We had the Nutcracker music playing and some of the kids dressed up and danced. The worms in dirt became dancing gummy bears in dirt. She invited our best friends the Dalyais and our new best friends the Birds. The kids loved playing together and the moms had a great conversation. We hope this group will continue getting together after Carnival. Timmy's favorite thing this week was playing LEGO. He made a LEGO Ewok and an Ewok forest for it to live in. He even found a spear f...

Ultimate baby wrestling This week Mike worked half a day on Monday and Tuesday, and he worked all day Wednesday, but he had the rest of the week off. This was part of his paternity leave package that he agreed upon with his employer. Alison and the kids did a good job of holding down the fort while Mike was gone, although the house did get pretty messy since Alison spent a lot of time taking care of the baby, which took away some time from her taking care of the rest of things. One thing that happened early in the week was the conclusion of the light install in the front yard. Mike was able to finish putting everything together, and the lights were easy to install. They look good, however they are not bright enough to be the sole source of light in the room. On Tuesday we picked the "last" of the strawberries on strawberry hill. On Wednesday during the day, Amy offered to watch the kids, so Alison dropped them off, and napped. When mike came home we had pizza at A...

On Tuesday of last week we had Nature group, which was cancelled due to rain. It was raining all week, which made it hard to work on the tree house. Wednesday was Rea's date night. It was raining so we read the hobbit, had a fire, and then we ate currant pie (we still have some frozen currants that we just found in the freezer.) On Thursday we bought and wrapped presents for Alison's birthday. The kids wrapped all of their presents by themselves. Friday was Alison's birthday. Mike worked from home, and Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike came over and dropped off a care package. It included easy to make food for when the baby is born, which was a very nice thought. After Mike quit working we had Alison's birthday party, brownies, and then we went to bed. On Saturday first thing in the morning we had a dance party, and then after that since it was the first time in a week that it wasn't raining we worked on the tree house and Grandma Sheila came over to visit us....

Good grief! Apparently we are terrible at remembering to make blog posts. We will now try to remember the last two weeks... We gave up trying to hunt morels. They just don't seem to be out there this year. We made more shoes for Gideon two weeks ago as well - that is a huge process. Alison's mom came over two weeks ago, and they all went to gardner village and had a fairy party. Also, we gathered ingredients for, and began construction on a "tree house"for the kids. It also rained a ton this last week, so construction has been slow. We read and finished "the last unicorn". The kids really enjoyed it. We ordered another bunch of parts from Haba in order to enter their kids game design contest. Timmy and Dad designed a game that we are considering entering into the contest. It is currently about stealing a magic lamp from a cave full of monsters. On this last Friday we went to see Matilda, which was pretty fun, but was also one of those Dahl st...

Apparently, last Saturday the morel hunters wandered through a patch of poison ivy without realizing it. Rea woke up Monday with an itchy, red, oozing mass on her neck that almost drove her crazy all week. Luckily she is old enough to rub hydrocortizone on it when it itches instead of scratching, and also luckily, it only lasted one week. Daddy, Sara, and Timmy just had localized patches of red bumps, but all three of them still have it hanging on and refusing to heal. Daddy's is the worst now. Mommy and Gideon are glad that they missed it. Other than the poison ivy attack, the week went fairly well. We played outside almost all day every day, since it was warm-to-hot (in the eighties all week). Saturday we planted some seeds in the backyard and fixed up bikes for the summer. For Sara's date on Wednesday we got pizza and ate it at Dimple Dell and then looked for more mushrooms. We didn't find any, but we had a lot of fun wandering and exploring new trails. Mike and th...

This week Timmy has started drawing things that look more like things than like scribbles. He usually draws people and robots, and they have faces, limbs, heads, and other body parts. Sheila was gone until Wednesday, so we volunteered to keep babysitting Petra Monday and Tuesday. It's very easy to have her when we're at home; she plays happily with our kids and doesn't take much effort. Monday we picked up Grandma Julie at the airport and went to the zoo. We always love the zoo. However, this was not the best visit the grown ups have ever had. It was very hot, and Petra would wander away constantly and didn't like to hold hands. We saw the bird show and the elephant show, though, which was great. Rea finally got invited to participate in the bird show; she gave a water bottle to a cockatoo at the beginning so he could drink it and drop it, and then the trained raven picked it up and put it in the recycle bin. Rea has always raised her hand when they asked for volunt...

For the first half of the week, the kids were still a little sick. They'd have little half-day fevers, or sleep for long periods. We've gotten good naps out of them all week, which has been nice. By Thursday, they seemed better, so Friday Alison took the kids to a library puppet show and then to play group at the park. Everyone is looking forward to good weather and good health and lots of fun for the upcoming week. Monday an electrician was supposed to come install a outdoor plug for the electric car, but we got a call from the company saying that the electrician was in the ER and they had to reschedule. The kids were still pretty unwell and it was a lazy day. Mike took the car to work and charged it up; he likes it as a commuter car (although it only has a range of about 60 miles so anywhere but necessary nearby driving is out) and is looking forward to no gas and no oil changes. Late Monday night our foreign exchange student arrived. She is about 40 and is here getting a...

On Saturday morning Mike harvested more honey from our bees. It is probably going to be the last harvest of the year, however as he contracts the hive more, he will likely get a little more honey out of it. Saturday afternoon Grandma and Grandpa Poulson came over and visited us. It was nice to have them over; it's been three months since we saw Grandma and a month and a half since we saw Grandpa. The kids had a wonderful time showing off all their favorite tricks and activities for the grandparents, and Alison was so happy to sit and talk to her parents. We are excited to see them again when the baby comes. (About 6 more weeks, not that we're impatient or anything...) The most exciting thing about their visit for the kids was that they were given new dress ups which they are all very excited about. Rea loves the jewelry, Sara is excited about the dress up shoes, and Timmy is excited about the cowboy costume. He loves to catch horses with his lasso, and then shoot them with ...

This week for family night we bought some stuff for the ward secret Santa. On various other days we wrapped them up. Sunday we delivered them to the ward building (where the massive pile of gifts filled the clerks office). It was fun to talk to the girls about the spirit of giving and how it relates to the birth of Christ and the meaning of the Christmas season. Starting Thursday we had a medium length sickness in some of our house. Rea and Sara both caught it, and it manifested as fever, lethargy, and vomiting. The lethargy was actually kind of nice a little, since it gave time to clean up the vomiting without the girls causing too much trouble. Timmy was still super healthy and he wanted to cheer up the girls. This led to humorous miscommunication between the three, and Timmy learned how to say the word "OW!" whenever anyone does something to him that he doesn't like. Rea got the worst of the sickness (she threw up on two different days), and Sara got a much less ...

This week we finally decided that the kids were old enough to enjoy the 10 gallons of Legos Mike has saved since his childhood, so we've taken them out on about three different occasions and let them play.  Rea and Sara enjoy putting people on the horses and setting up barns and pastures.  Timmy watches Mike build space ships and then flies them around with whooshing noises and smashes them into things.  It has been very enjoyable. A neighbor gave us a large bag of beets this year.  She gives us all kinds of garden bounty and we're very grateful for it, but Alison is the only one who really loves beets.  So Alison spent a lot of time and effort this week trying to find new beet recipes.  Probably the best-accepted one was beet-stuffed ravioli in a cream sauce.  Beet hashbrowns aren't bad either. We did a lot of Halloween things this year.  One night we had a fire in the fireplace and ate donuts and drank apple cider; that's not exactly Hallowe...

This week we were still sick.  Timmy's pinkeye finally cleared up today, but he had the sniffles last night and during their naps both girls were coughing, so we might be starting again. Timmy is getting pretty good at sitting up and moving around and being happy on the ground. He is especially happy outside, and when he's not tired or hungry he'll play happily inside unless his diaper is wet; then he always cries for Mommy. He is also now crawling around the ground foraging for food. I estimate that he is at least as smart as any given dog in the world. (Alison remarks that this may be, but he is far less obedient than many dogs.) Sara has decided to rename him to Pigger (See Amy's blog for more info.) Sara has been saying wonderful things to us this week. We were talking about Rea's stomach problems (more on that later) and said that we were going to put her on a wheat free diet to see if that helped her. Sara chimed in with "Let's have muffins!...

We've been trying to  teach the girls the skill of disagreeing appropriately.  This involves seeing the other person's point of view, stating your own desires, and trying to suggest a solution.  Rea has gotten pretty good at it; if the girls are fighting over a toy, I can yell, "Disagree appropriately!" and she'll say something like, "I understand that you wanted that toy, but I had it first, so give it back!"  Sara usually goes along when Rea disagrees appropriately, maybe because she thinks she has to.  But this week, for the first time, when I yelled "Disagree appropriately!" it was Sara who did!  She said, "Understand... you want... but..." and held out her hand for the toy!  Super cute!  So I made sure she got a great toy.  I was so impressed. Sara also was very excited for nursery this week.  Saturday night, when I put her to bed, I mentioned church, and she said, "And nursery, and bubbles, and snack, and dollies, wrap in...

This last week we started making Paneer. We have made three batches of it already. It is a very mild cheese that doesn't melt at all, so you can fry or grill it up and use it like tofu. Our recipe is this: Heat 1 gallon of goat milk to 195 F Let it cool to 190 F Add one tbsp of vinegar at a time and stir Keep adding vinegar until the milk forms curds. The whey will be yellowish Let the curds and whey cool down drain off the whey and collect the curds in a large white napkin using a colander Let drip for about 20 minutes Salt the curd with 1 tsp salt Press with 5 lds of pressure for 10 minutes and then 10 lbs of pressure for an hour Chill the cheese overnight in the fridge Eat it fast Sara told more stories this week, and they now always end with "And Slam Slam Slam all the way home." She and Rea made up the game Slam Slam to play in the car a few weeks ago; as best we can tell from the front, it consists of asking each other, "Ready for Slam Slam?...

I didn't post for on Monday first time in a long time. We have been a bit busy, but not that busy. For one thing, 1800Contacts is being bought out by an investment firm. People don't really seem to be too worried about it (apparently this happens all of the time with 1800Contacts), so I am following suit and assuming that it is business as usual. Sara and Rea have both been cleaning up the house since Alison is still feeling pretty drained of energy. They have been getting money to spend for their efforts (though Sara doesn't have any idea what to do with it). They both love Herd your Horses now, so it is a really popular game. We have two tapes of Veggitales songs, and Sara loves them so much that we listen to them at least twice a day. Mommy is getting sick of them, but what can you do? We went to an art exhibit and went out to eat afterwards. Rea was so excited about going out to eat that she wants us to drive down to Provo again just to go back. We have been...

Whatever that means. This weekend I waxed the gouda that we made a few weeks ago. We went to a farmers market at Gardner Village on Saturday. We bought some beets and some cherries. The cherries are pretty good. We also lit off a few more fireworks this weekend - Andrea is starting to like them more. Yesterday we made pizza - pineapple mushroom pepperoni pizza and pineapple mushroom sausage pizza. We added 1/7 white flour this time, and the crust came out way more fluffy than it usually does (not necessarily a good thing - I like the pizza for the toppings usually (but not a bad thing either, it is not like thicker crusted pizza is horrible, it is just different)). I have wanted to reread the Chronicles of Amber since yesterday. I will probably give in and read them some time soon. Perhaps when we are stuck in the hospital after Alison has the baby. I want to reread them because someone commented on the internet that they thought that Corwin was the villain of the s...

This morning I went to the SLC Library book sale. We got 3 bags of books for $11. That is a pretty good deal. This weekend we made another lb of cheese, and a double batch of granola. The granola is so good with Swee's yogurt, and 'ape jelly'. I eat it pretty much every day. We made faux curry pizza last night. The ingredients are: garlic bread, red sauce, cheddar, bacon, pork sausage, anaheim peppers, and curry powder. layer them like a pizza, and bake it (250 for a half hour, 'just like every thing else'). My secret gift for Swee's birthday is complete. Also, my D20 Modern SRD modifications for 42 Earths are sort of done. I need to add new psychic items, and search for errors. Here is the link to it. This weekend, we are going to be leaving for Becky's homecoming in California. It will be a week long trip, and will use up a lot of my vacation. Also, there are boxes of ~300 comic books at the local DI for $50 each. There are about 12 of them. I think that ...