Parentheticals

On Saturday of last week we got a watermelon at Maceys and brought it home and put it on the counter because Timmy had requested watermelon with his dinner. Monday morning when mike woke up he stepped in a puddle in the kitchen. After some looking around he discovered that the watermelon had ruptured. Apparently the thing was infected with some sort of gas producing bacteria (perhaps yeast?) and its internal pressure was too much for it. When he picked it up the middle fell out (though the shell was still mostly strong). That was a disappointment. Later on Monday we picked a bunch of apples at the Payne's house and then Mike went to help Grandpa Mike to get his computer printer working. The apples have been really good, and we have made almost 5 gallons of apple chips already. Timmy  has joined a martial arts dojo because he has wanted to start learning a martial art. The one that we found was mixed Judo and Ju-jitsu and Muay Thai twice a week. He liked it, so we signed him up for ...

As I sit down to write this, I see a one-paragraph summary from last Sunday and remember Mike telling me that he couldn't remember anything from that week and did I want to write something. I guess we never did anything about that. Oops. Last week we picked apples at the bishop's house, tried to get grapes, but didn't find many. We ended up buying grapes and made nearly three gallons of grape juice. This week we picked apples at the Paynes' and made delicious apple fruit leather. Gideon loved it so much that he wanted to eat all of it, so Mike told him that if he picked and processed the apples himself, he could have all the fruit leather that came from it. It took him four days, but he ended up with fruit leather that should be ready tomorrow morning. We hope it works for him. Monday was the last day of the first quarter of Classical Conversations; we had donuts and pizza. The kids are still not unequivocally enthusiastic, but Alison still thinks it's a great thing...

 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...

 Last Monday we brought dinner to Grandma Sheila because she had foot surgery. We made chicken noodle soup with chicken bone broth. It ended up really good, so we are going to remember the recipe: Add 10 chicken wings (bone in with skin) to a slow cooker and enough water to cover them slow cook until the meat is done. Pull out the wings and remove meat from them. Set aside meat in refrigerator. throw back the skin, fat and bones back into the water add five celery, an onion cut in half, two carrots, lots of garlic and then slow cook overnight. The next day toss out everything but the broth. Re-add the meat and then add carrots, celery, egg noodles and salt to taste. Cook as long as it takes egg noodles to be done. Serves multiple people. The first half of the week Mike was working on his final project for his Masters degree. He submitted it Wednesday and it has since been graded and he passed the class and earned his master's degree. Last Thursday we cleaned the church. We did...

We failed to write for a few weeks, so this is a big post to get caught back up. Three weeks ago we did Organized Simplicity on the front room. On Monday the 13th we took everything out of the room. It doesn't look like it has that much stuff in it, but it still took up half of the carpeted room and half of Mike's work room to hold all of the stuff. After cleaning out all the stuff we cleaned the room and Alison decided that she also wanted to paint the walls. We ended up painting it a yellowish white that matches the color of the Kallax. Painting took till Wednesday night, so we started moving things back in Thursday and we got it all back together by Friday. Mike marked some board games for disposal, and we also got rid of some art stuff. The room was re-arranged during the move, so we now have a cool new setup which gives us less horizontal furniture to put things on. Hopefully that works to keep the room cleaner. Boo's birthday was on the 15th. We ate fruit pizza and sh...

This last week we went to southern Utah in order to attend the nature group fall camp out. The leader has a relative who has 800 acers and a cabin on the Utah-Arizona border, and they let us camp there for free every October during fall break. It's a lot of fun, although we always end up getting a hotel instead of camping because Mike needs to work at night. That was a good thing this year, because they had an unbelievable cold snap down there! At one point, they were predicting lows of 25 for those nights! I think it was a little warmer, but most of the families ended up finding somewhere indoors to sleep. Some of the teenage boys tented the first night and woke up to frost on their sleeping bags - they slept in their cars for the other nights. We were glad to be in a hotel. We drove down Wednesday afternoon and checked into the hotel. Thursday morning we went to Coral Pink Sand Dunes, which is one of our favorite places down there. The dunes are pretty, playing in the sand is fun...

Mike got over the not-Covid pretty fast, but Alison was wiped out for half this week. She barely got out of bed over the weekend, and Monday and Tuesday she dragged herself downstairs and did school while laying in a sleeping bag. The kids were pretty good. In the afternoons she would sleep while Mike took the kids - it is very convenient to have him off work at 2, so Alison didn't have to try to be functional for longer than that. By Wednesday Alison was feeling a little better, so we went on a few walks; Boo has started to ask to be walked in her stroller when she gets sleepy. We went to Crestwood Park to see what we could forage. There were tons of riverbank grapes this year, so we picked a bushel. (That is an approximation, since we don't actually know how much a bushel is, but it seems about right. It was a very big reusable shopping bag full.)  Thursday we were mostly back to normal life, just in time for the craziness of Friday. Every Friday, we have to get up, get break...

In celebration of completing a 5 year project we got a bonus day of paid leave at work. Since Alison and the kids' nature group was planning a camping trip on this last Wednesday, that day seemed like the obvious choice. On the day that the trip was scheduled to begin (Tuesday) it was raining, so all of the other people that were supposed to come wimped out except for one family. We got our tarps and hammocks set up before the rain was really going, and we also got a fire going despite the rain. It was colder than usual, however it was still pretty good weather. It didn't snow at least :) The rain continued all night, and well into the next day. Mike was able to get a fire going on day two as well by tearing apart a dried out pine tree that he found in the camp site. Mike, Rea, and Sara went out and picked a bunch of berries (raspberries, currants, and serviceberries). We plan on making a pie, though that hasn't happened yet.  The kids were a bit grumpy about the rain, but ...

This week was the camp out. Mike stayed home and worked and did homework. He is having a hard time getting all of his homework done during the night, so sometimes he has to work during the day on it. It is disappointing to him, since he has been really enjoying having such a lot of family time. Still - he only has three more weeks in this semester, so he is looking forward to a small break. Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila invite him over for dinner repeatedly, but he only ended up going over one time since he ended up going up to the campout on Thursday night. When Mike came up, we hiked around and looked for edibles. There were lots of strawberry plants and some raspberries and elderberries and sticky currants. We're thinking of going back in a month or so to see what's ripened; nothing was ripe this week. Alison and the kids had a great time at the campout, although they missed Mike a lot. They explored the campground and played in the stream and did crafts like friendship br...

Surprise! This week was supposed to be our campout - except it wasn't. It's next week. Alison is not 100% sure how this misunderstanding happened, but there you go. Camping next week. There will be a trade blanket at the campout, and Alison found a really cool craft for growing crystals on rocks and painting them. It was gorgeous in the person's blog, and she got really excited about doing it and taking it for trade fodder. Unfortunately, she forgot that she and crafts have an inimical relationship. They did not turn out so great. Mike is trying to do it better, so that hopefully the kids will have something to trade. We'll see how it goes. (Mike is now making monkey paws as a backup. Alison is very grateful.) Mike has been doing research into how to insure other people's stocks, otherwise known as options. He is pretty excited to try it out, since obviously the insurance company always wins. (Alison was a bit worried about our lack of actuarial tables, but it turns...

We had a family reunion this week! Monday we drove up to Flaming Gorge to meet Grandma Sheila and Papa Mike, the Plastows, the Strombergs, and the Andersons and spend a few days on the river. On the way, we stopped at the Dinosaur Quarry in Vernal and saw the dinosaur bones still embedded in the wall. It was very exciting for all the kids, especially Boo. It was hard for the kids to believe that this was exactly what it looks like when paleontologists dig up fossils, and that these were REAL FOSSILS. It was fun! We got to the motel fairly late Monday, so Tuesday morning we headed out to raft the river. The water was really low, so the rapids were very mild. Mike and I were in the "calm boat" with the Andersons, and we brought in any other kids who needed a break from the excitement (mostly Boo and Gideon). Everyone had a great time on the river! Wednesday we took the rafts and inner tubes to the lake and swam and floated and wandered the shore. Papa Mike and several of the ol...

This week Rea, Sara, and Timmy had horse-camp, where they learned how to ride horses. Timmy told me that he rode a blue roan, Sara said she learned how to ride all by herself, and Rea said she didn't want to talk about it. Since it was a long drive, Alison, Gideon, and Elizabeth all hung out at a nearby park during the lessons. Gideon liked the park and loved eating apples and nuts and pepperoni, and playing. When I asked Elizabeth what she liked about the park, she just signed "more water", and handed me a water bottle. We celebrated Elizabeth's first birthday, and Timmy's 6th this week. Elizabeth loved three dollies that the Browns got for her, and Timmy loved all of his presents a lot, though we have already had to repair his treasure chest. One night the Dalyias invited us over to pick their cherry tree. The tree was insanely huge (30ish feet tall), so we also brought over our pole chainsaw and hacked at it from the roof. Some branches were too high to reach e...

We totally started writing this on Sunday as usual, but Sunday was interrupted to some extent, and we failed to finish it until now. Here is the blog post for last week (such as it is) Monday we got (and began to spread) another load of wood-chips - that chipdrop website is great if you want free wood-chips, and don't mind getting some leaves and sticks along with them. This load was large enough to pretty much cover the remainder of the yard, so we probably will not order another load this year On Tuesday we went to the park group's faux camping trip up the canyon. We had dinner, and played and talked, however we didn't spend the night. After the camping trip, Mike went to BGDG. He played a game by another member of the guild, and had a fun time. On Wednesday, when trying to clean out the drain, Mike got the cleaning tool stuck and it broke off when he tried to get it out. That was annoying. On Thursday we spread wood-chips again - we finished most of them. Hopef...

On Monday we went to Rea's last horseback riding lesson. She was able to post at a trot, stop, start, and turn the horse, and keep it on a rail. She enjoyed her lessons, and would like to have more. We have some martial arts classes lined up for the kids next, however we are considering doing more horseback riding lessons some time as well. This week marked the first week of Mike's vacation from being a teacher. His last semester ended the last full week of July, and his next semester starts in the middle of September. He is really enjoying being a teacher. Tuesday night we looked at a house for sale around the corner from us. We were thinking about going into real estate: the house has a rentable basement, so we could live upstairs and rent our current house and the basement. But we decided we didn't like the house nearly as much as our current house, so we'll stick with our old plans. We did love that the other house had fruit trees: plum, apricot, and mulberry. W...

This was a full week. All week Mike has been working on a surprise expansion for The Perfect Moment. Jason Tagmire - Mike's publisher - asked him to prepare an expansion as a stretch goal for the kickstarter campaign. It has been fun so far to come up with some new abilities as it has been a while since the game has changed. Rea started horseback riding lessons this week. She has four lessons, every Monday night from 6 to 7pm. She is very, very excited and she had a wonderful time. She learned to signal the horse to walk and to stop and practiced posting and trotted a few steps. She is very proud of herself. She was also eager to tell everyone about how one of the older girls in her class got bucked off a horse! That was a little scary, but Rea still loves riding. Wednesday was the 4th of July, so we went to the pool park and picked some chokecherries. They were not as ripe as they could have been, but we still got a ton of ones that were fairly ripe. Mike and Rea were the...