Parentheticals

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...

Rea and Alison got new glasses this week. Rea has never had glasses before, and they help her see much better than she did before. They are green and very cute. Some of the other kids that didn't have to wear glasses are jealous of her, however, we told them that they can get sunglasses if they want to the next time that we go to savers. From Tuesday to Wednesday the kids had a sleep over at the Poulson's house, so Alison and Mike got to have about 24 hours without kids. We went shopping, made a fancy dinner, watched a move, and had a very quiet day. It was nice, although we were happy to get the kids back when it was over. On Friday our internet broke, and Mike spent a lot of time trying to get it working again. It was finally working by Friday night. Mike nearly canceled our account with the company, since they said they couldn't fix it for three days, but persistence paid off for now. Friday night we had our first meeting regarding Welcome Corp with Craig and Julie. They...

 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...

On Monday and Tuesday, Boo and Gideon were sick. We had to spray Boo down to clean up the vomit a couple of times, as well as washing the couch cover and blankets and cleaning the carpet. Luckily, Gideon is old enough to use a bucket. Luckily, it was over by Tuesday, and no one else got it, so we thought we got off lightly. On Thursday Mike had an insanity of meetings for his teaching job. They are having him prepare materials for new teachers and wanted to discuss that, and they also wanted to discuss the new version of the course they are trying out this semester, and possible changes for next semester. It went on for a long time, but good stuff was accomplished. Alison took the kids to nature group on Friday and mostly had fun - it was great weather! This week was the annual egg drop, and all three egg containers made by our family kept their eggs safe. Alison and Gideon and Boo used the simple handful-of-leaves method, while Sara and Timmy packed theirs in probably 8 pounds of sand...

Rea finished her story "Ever," but it wasn't quite long enough for publication through Amazon. While she's deciding what to do about that, she's started another story. It's a magical school story, the same genre as Harry Potter, and she's having a lot of fun writing it and discussing it with her siblings and figuring out the plot and characters and magic system. It's very exciting.  On Wednesday, Mike and Amy went to help Grandma Sheila finish moving in here in Utah. This is now their permanent home, even though they will still travel quite a bit. We're very excited to have them! The Plastow kids came to play with the Brown kids while the parents were working, so it was fun for everyone. Before the Plastows got here, Sara decided that she wanted to try following a more advanced recipe than she had before. She ended up deciding on raspberry-filled lemon cupcakes with buttercream frosting. It was a recipe that would have intimidated Alison a little, ...

 This week we did all of our Holy Week traditions. Sunday we played the Palm Sunday triumphal entry game, where Mike is a donkey and the kids have to race to strew blankets in his path. Then we read about the triumphal entry. On Monday we played up Clean Up Your Own Backyard and talked about Jesus cleansing the temple. Tuesday we watched The Prince of Egypt and discussed the source of the Passover traditions. Wednesday we had our modified Passover meal. This year we made it a bit longer because Rea wanted to include the afikomen and waiting for Elijah. It went pretty smoothly. Thursday Easter walk in the canyon with fire and marshmallows. This is a new tradition to commemorate the Garden of Gethsemane, and it seems we finally have a winner! Alison has tried a lot of things that haven't worked, but everyone loved going up the canyon, and we built a fire and talked about Jesus' suffering and sang "The Miracle" before roasting marshmallows. The kids didn't want to le...

 Monday and Tuesday we did all of the kid's school for the week to get ready to move. We went to sign the papers Wednesday afternoon, and the check engine light came back on again, even though we just got it fixed. We ignored it and went to the closing, which went fine, and then asked the agent if we could get the keys. He said that he had an appointment in Park City, and so he texted the sellers' agent to see if we could get them. The house that Amy is moving into had an excess washer and dryer that they were willing to give to us, so we moved them out of the house so that we could get at them once we got our moving truck. Getting the washer out of the basement was difficult, and unhooking the dryer required borrowing a tool from Amy, but we got it eventually. By then, it was almost 7pm, and everyone was very hungry. The kids had gone through the coupons from the mail and created a meal plan for us from Wendy's, which fortunately turned out to be very near our new home. We...

We never actually finished our blog post last week, so this week is two-for-one. That means that it is double long as well. Last week was Holy Week, and we have been celebrating in many different ways. Alison always comes up with activities for each day, so this week, on Sunday we played the Triumphal Entry game, On Monday we talked about cleaning the temple and played "Clean Up Your Own Backyard", on Tuesday the kids learned about the origins of the Passover by watching Prince of Egypt, Wednesday we had a Passover meal, Thursday we did service (opening the church nursery for a funeral), Friday we talked about the Stations of the Cross, Saturday we had an egg hunt, and Sunday we celebrated Easter. Really, Easter should be as big as (if not bigger than) Christmas. We wouldn't celebrate Christmas at all if it weren't for Easter. So Alison goes to a lot of effort to make Easter a big deal. This year the food turned out the best of any of the years we've done...

On Tuesday the kids and Alison went up to Nature Group, which was not at silver lake this time, so they didn't have to deal with snow. It was at a pond, and the kids did a nature scavenger hunt. They had fun looking at minnows and quacking like ducks. That evening, Mike brought his game to the BGDG to have it played in order to try for guild approval this week. It was found wanting. The rule document was not up to snuff. He will certainly work on it some time before the end of the year, and try again. Wednesday Alison went to writing group, and wrote her first draft of her first chapter of her book. She is rewriting it with the eventual goal of making it publishable. It went well. On Thursday we didn't have anything planned at all, so we built a fire, and after the kids went to bed we played a game of The Madness Place (one of Mike's board games). It was nice to not have anything planned for once. Friday we had a babysitter and went to a play. It was "Foreve...

Andy's family visited us this week! Rea has been telling everyone for weeks that her "cousins from Tajikistan" were coming; Alison would usually explain that her brother works for the State Department, and most of the time that Tajikistan was part of the former USSR, in response to blank looks. Alison took a week of vacation from all her Primary President responsibilities (good thing we had Conference this weekend!), playgroup, homeschool, grocery shopping, and everything else in order to have fun with Andy and Amanda and their kids. They went out to eat a lot, visited Temple Square and toured the Conference Center, and went to the Natural History Museum of Utah to see the dinosaur skeletons. It was incredibly fun, but exhausting. The big cousins all shared a room and stayed up way too late, and the adults liked to stay up and talk too. Alison also realized that there's a reason she only does a selected group of habitual things while Mike is at work: carting four ki...

On Tuesday Mike went to his first Board Game Design Guild meeting. He played a game, and had a fun time. Before he can join officially, he has to attend three meetings. They meet twice monthly, so hopefully he can get in enough meetings before the next Ion Award deadline to gain the benefit from joining it. Sara's date night this week was delayed to Wednesday because of Mike's meeting. She ended up picking watching My Little Ponies as her date night. The kids ended up with a lot of movies this week, because on Thursday Alison was feeling rather nauseous in the morning and canceled Forest Kindergarten to let the kids watch a movie while she took a nap. Three movies in one week is unusual for us, but they really enjoyed it. We also came up with the idea of bribing Timmy to stay in bed all night with the offer of a YouTube clip in the morning if he does. It's worked on about 50% of the nights this week. Mike is getting very tired of getting up with him. While we were hom...

Last Tuesday was Sara's daddy-daughter-date. She chose to get ice cream at macey's and to go to the playground and go on the slides. This last week I also worked on my tower defense game that I am making for a programming competition. It is coming along decently. You can play the game, but it isn't complete yet. I also finally convinced Scott to make a board game. It is moving quickly. It is a game where you play as villains, sending monsters to fight heroes. A unique idea. On Wednesday we had 'science time with daddy' again. This time we talked about energy, and what it was. It went well. On Thursday we had another Board game design group meeting. I presented my changes to Space Game, and there wasn't much feedback (perhaps I need to make some bigger changes or get it played with another group before I get more feedback). Friday Alison went out and bought treats for General Conference as well as stuff for Rea's birthday while I took care of the ...

This post covers two weeks, since we apparently never clicked post last week after we wrote our post. On Wednesday last week we had our Passover dinner. We ate matzoh, maror, haroseth, lamb, and drank a lot of grape juice. Sara didn't understand that she was supposed to ask me the questions (the youngest kid is supposed to ask the patriarch why we eat so many weird things) so she tried to answer the questions herself. In the end Rea asked them. Sara said that matzoh is a boy, and that the girl is named Mozzarella. I don't know if she knew that the bread that we were eating was the matzoh. On Thursday last week we went to "I Hate Hamlet", which is a play. It was a decent play. There was a crazy girl, a ghost of a womanizer, a Medium (bordering on small) a TV doctor, and a guy from Brooklyn, CA. Last weekend we watched General Conference and celebrated Easter. General Conference was really good. I am glad that we were able to attend it. Last Saturday we had ou...

When deciding what to write in the blog Rea said that we should write "Baby Timo is a big baby". Timo is her name for Timothy (the baby, not the animal food). She also said that we should write that "Clarabel is giving more milk", though I have not actually noticed that to be true. We made some more sorry food this week as a dessert for the girls. They think that it is a great dessert, and since it has nothing unhealthy in it we are willing to give it to them freely. We went around on tuesday inviting a lot of people to attend General Conference with us. Only one family showed up in the end, but they were a family of 6, so we ended up having a decent amount of people over. On Wednesday and Thursday Alison baby sat the Dalyias. She loves babysitting them; she gets a ton done, because the big Dalyai kids (they're 10, 8, 6, and 4) take care of their younger siblings and Andrea and Sara too. Rea and Sara also love having so many playmates. Rea really wants to ...

On last Monday we had a family night in which we went on an Easter Walk. An Easter walk is a walk where you try to find things that remind you of Christ's Atonement in specific ways (stones that remind you of the tomb, wood that reminds you of the cross, a living thing reminding you that Christ is alive still, etc). Ever since then without exception the girls think that we need to do an Easter walk every day. It has been really nice weather, so this is OK. On last Tuesday we had a big stake missionary meeting. Everyone was invited. Rea and Sara came as well, but they were surprisingly well behaved for a two hour meeting at the end of a long day. You already know of the events of Wednesday and Thursday, but on Friday Alison and I played Pandemic for the first time. It was pretty fun (I got it in the math trade at SaltCon, so I was hoping that it would be good). It is a cooperative game against the board. We won (Which Alison always likes on the first time that we play cooperativ...

This last week I had 3 other people request copies of my game (bringing the total to 9.) No-one has given me any feedback about playing it yet, but hopefully that will come soon. I also got a message (on the same website) from a guy in New Zealand who requested me to sell my copy of " First Strike " to him. First strike is a WWIII war game about the cold war becoming a hot war. It was printed in Utah, and I found a copy of it at a thrift store. I played it a few times (I think with Andy and Scott), but it was pretty boring, and took much longer than it should have for the strategic depth that it had. I told him that I was likely to never play it again as I didn't like it, but that did not deter him. I priced shipping, and told him that it would cost over $40 to ship it, but he still wanted the game. I mailed it late last week (since he really wanted it). Hopefully he gets some enjoyment out of it. This weekend was General Conference , which I spent with my parents....