Parentheticals

This week on Monday we got a cat. Sara has done such a good job of taking care of Rocket that when she asked for a cat and agreed to take care of it the same way the parents decided that she was mature enough to trust to do it. We looked online at a few options and settled for a mixed breed not-very-allergenic black and white cat. He has had a few names - he started with the name Choge but now he is being called Jello, because he is a jellical cat. We will attach pictures to the bottom of this post. He is 8 weeks old (his birthday is June 14th), and he is very energetic and loving. He enjoys playing with everyone and doesn't love rocket a lot yet, however he tolerates him. Timmy also seems to be getting sick. He slept through the visit to Grandma's house and seemed poorly. He is coughing a lot, but he claims to be well. On Thursday was Rea's first day of school for the year. She is doing a class that meets every Thursday from 8:30 till 4:00. In class they all bring interest...

Previously on parentheticals blog - we had already moved the bare minimum of stuff and furniture into this house so that we could survive. We then discovered that our car was broken in such a way that we shouldn't drive it and our mechanic was unable to get to our car before Wednesday of last week. As all of this was going on all of the kids were coming down with symptoms of some sort of sickness. Timmy ended up having symptoms that could theoretically have been covid so we had to keep the whole family quarantined until we were able to get Timmy's test results back. For the first half of last week we pretty much had to stay home the entire time and tried to eat whatever random stuff we happened to have in our freezer. Wednesday we went back to Sandy to drop the car off at the mechanic. We took the entire family back to the old house and spent the day boxing up every single thing in the entire house. we ran out of boxes, however we were able to make it through by using garbage b...

On the way to our vacation last week we listened to some books on tape. The highlight of the books we listened to was "Diary of a Mad Brownie." It was a fun book about a faerie that was supposed to clean up a bedroom of a slob. It was highly funny. We arrived in southern Utah and eventually found the cabin that Mike's parents rented for the Yoder reunion. It was a bit of a difficult job finding it. The cabin was beautiful, and we had a great time there. The cabin had a lot of mosquitoes (the kids think that this is the most pertinent bit of information about the cabin.) We spent an awesome day at the mouth of the Narrows in Zion's. The kids slept on bunk beds with Max, and the trip was very fun. Apparently Mike and Alison are bad at taking pictures, because we have no pictures of the entire trip. Next, we went to California to visit the Poulsons. The trip was long, but the kids were pretty good. The thing that the kids think is the most important to tell about t...

When asked what we did this week, here are the kids answers: Rea: "This week the we did a lot of leprechaun hunting." Timmy: "We made a library in our house." Sara: "Look, there's a leprechaun's head!" On Monday: Sara "We slept all day." Rea: "What Monday? The hyacinths and daffodils bloomed. Mommy Started riding her bucket bike." Sara: "And there were princess leprechauns. Can you draw a princess leprechaun?" Rea: "Ok" Timmy: "we made a library in our house, and it was fun fun fun! Now we have a library in our house if we want to go to the library in our room" On Tuesday: Sara: "Tuesday we watched a movie" Rea: "Don't cover up my leprechaun seat!" Alison wants to add here that Timmy got sick Sunday and Monday, and on Tuesday Rea and Sara got sick too. They mostly laid around and threw up. On Wednesday: Timmy: "We played legos on Wednesday a...

This week Mike made muffins for breakfast every day because they work better than wheat-meal bread. The recipe ended up pretty good by the end of the week. 18 muffins were never enough for a whole day, so he just kept making them and making them... Saturday morning we helped clean the church, and Alison started doing an "Organized Simplicity" cleaning on the kitchen. We really like this type of cleaning because it makes us look at all of our things and throw out all the stuff that is neither "Beautiful" or "Useful". This turns our smallish house into a reasonably large house every time that we do it. We ended up with a lot more space in the pantry, and more space in the cupboards too. We haven't yet done through the chest freezer or refrigerator, but that is now on our radar. On Saturday we also got a "new" wheat grinder. It is one of those old electric mills with a real mill stone. The thing weighs a ton (not literally), but it grind...

This week we finished cleaning out most of our house. We did the kids room, the front room, half of the 3d printer room, and the garage shed. We tried really hard to get done with everything before this Saturday so that we could have a garage sale. We didn't finish the house in time for Saturday, but we had the garage sale anyway. We piled everything outside and posted an ad in KSL telling everyone about the stuff that we were selling. Some of the things were very popular, since people started showing up an hour before the sale was supposed to start and perusing the stuff that we already had out in the driveway. We ended up making over $250 and getting rid of a ton of stuff. Our house feels much more comfortable and spacious with fewer things crowding it. We still had to take a large load of stuff to the DI (more than would fit into the car with our whole family), so I drove it down while Alison and the kids played. One of Rea's friends had ridden her bike over while we wer...

Last Sunday Rea and Timmy and Mike went over to a nearby church on a bike ride while Sara and Alison took a nap. They found strawberries and gooseberries in a field behind the church, but had to go home before they could pick them. On Monday the whole family went out and picked a bunch of berries. The kids had a lot of fun and ate a lot of berries. They also stepped on a whole lot of berries. We made a new rule that when picking berries one must take off one's shoes so that one will feel the berries that one steps on. We ended up taking home enough strawberries to make a strawberry pie and freeze a gallon bag full of strawberries for future smoothies. We also got a few gooseberries, which we made a smoothie out of. On Friday, for our date we played two board games while the kids watched two movies. It was fun for the whole family.  Saturday morning Mike harvested more than 10 lbs of honey from the bees. With this much honey, it is likely that we will be selling some. R...

This week Alison has felt pretty good most of the week. We even got the entire house cleaned on Saturday for the first time in a long time. It was nice to have the house clean (even if it doesn't last very long.) Our gardens are starting to grow wonderfully. We stole some lettuce, strawberries, raspberries, chives, and other various plants from Sheila and Scott (they had some extra that had volunteered from last year). The raspberries died, and so did most of the lettuce, but the strawberries, mint, and chives transplanted like champs. We got a weed whacker last week, and tried it out this week (a little bit). It worked well. I still need to whack most of the weeds in the front yard. The funny thing is that the more weeds that I look at the more edible plants that I am finding in the yard. As of yet we have lambs-quarters, mallow, henpeck, alfalfa, blue mustard, shepherds purse, nettle, and I am sure that we will find other varieties edible as we look more. We have also found...

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...

Monday night Rea taught family night with flannel board people to act out the story of the brother of Jared.  She told it very well and remembered a lot more details than we expected.  The girls had fun moving the characters, although it was frustrating to try to keep Timmy out of them. Tuesday was Sara's date night, but Alison also had to be at a Stake Auxiliary Training meeting, so Mike took her to get ice cream right after dinner and then came home to be with all the kids while Alison was gone. Thursday evening we decided to have a fire and roast marshmallows.  We've had S'more supplies since June, so it was good to use some.  We all enjoyed the fire, and Timmy was pretty good about understanding that it was hot. On Friday, we went out to go to the park with the homeschooling group, and the car wouldn't start.  The kids had turned on the dome lights and Alison hadn't noticed to turn them off, so the battery was dead.  Our jump box battery was dead,...

On Tuesday night we went to the temple with the ward bishopric. Apparently the ward financial clerk is invited to such events. It was good to go. We don't get there enough because finding babysitters for an extended period of time is difficult. We also went to dinner afterward. It was fun. On Wednesday we had Science Time with Daddy. The subject was gravity. We had a fun time talking about why we build walls vertical (and not diagonal or horizontal). We also talked about how on the moon you can jump higher, and how every planet has gravity that pulls things that are near the planet to the planet. On Thursday Rea and I went out to the library for a daddy daughter date. She wanted to get more fairy books. It is great that she loves reading chapter books. Hopefully she can pick some that are higher quality some time :). I also went to do some home teaching. Friday we made apple sauce as a family date. It was surprisingly easy, and the results tasted great. Saturday we ...

This week Timmy has been standing independently quite a bit. He really likes doing it. He is still not walking, but it has to be coming soon. He is really proud about it. On Monday I printed up a larger twist counter to see if I could display 40 numbers on a twist counter. It took two tries to get something usable, but that is way less than the 20ish tries I had to do for the smaller ones. On Wednesday we had a Sandy Board Game Design group meeting . It was fun. We played three games (one of which was a possible sequel to Above and Below (Which Alison and I both liked quite a bit)). Ryan liked my "Sorcery, Inc." game enough to offer to co-design it with me (which is really exciting since he is a game publisher, which makes me believe that if we can make it finalized then it will probably be published). On Thursday I found out that my work was going to be moving to a new building one day early. That meant that I had to pack up all my stuff and get out one day early. ...