Parentheticals

We asked the kids to dictate some of the blog post: Timmy loved playing with dad this week. He also liked playing with a teapot and plates. Timmy and Sara like the snow that we got. Timmy liked getting doughnuts from Grandma Sheila Sara loved seeing Grandma and Grandpa. (Except Grandpa wasn't there.) Sara liked going sledding and playing with Grandma and Petra. Gideon, don't touch our buttons! Gideon loves everything, especially peas. And music. Rea's favorite thing this week was reading "Pollyanna" for the first time. Also, on Sunday she made tiny snowmen and pretended to be a Tyrannosaurus and ate them! They didn't have noses or eyes or mouths. Rea was also super excited for her Baptism Preview last Sunday. Rea will be baptized on November 3rd at 10am, for those who like to plan ahead :-). Mike has completed his second week of teaching CS 101 at BYU-Idaho. He has been having a fun time so far. He has also bought tickets to Salt Con (a...

This week we created charts for the kids to mark off what they do every day. They are things that are part of the daily routine anyway, but don't happen every single day (math practice, brushing their own hair, scrubbing some part of the house, etc). We will still do these things most days, but now the kids have the option of marking it on their charts when they do them. At the end of the week, each mark on the chart is worth 10 cents. Rea is very motivated by marking things off and was pushing us to do more things every day just to get marks on her chart. Sara and Timmy care less about filling out the chart but are excited by the opportunity to earn money; both are saving up for cool Lego kits. We are just starting this system, so we will see how it works. (The idea is from the "Family Economic System" by Richard and Linda Eyre, to give due credit.) Our Montessori time went very well this week. In January, the girls worked on reading aloud every day as part of a challe...

On Martin Luther King Jr Day we were invited over to Scott and Sheila's house to visit with them. Max and Olivia really wanted to play Axis and Allies, and so Mike set it up to play with them. Scott called the game after a few hours, and since Timmy had abandoned Moscow and Olivia had taken it over, the Axis won. Max was very unhappy about that. Mike took the opportunity to discuss an idea that he has had with Sheila. He has decided to make a children's book entitled "Brave Lala", and he asked her if she wanted to do some illustrations for it. She agreed to give it a try. We are looking forward to seeing what her drawings look like. In addition, Alison and Mike have been reading through "In Which a Prince Burns Things" - A very rough draft novel that Mike wrote in 2011. We are considering trying to clean it up to get it published. It has quite a few funny parts, but also needs a lot of work. It will be a fun change of pace from editing rules docs all the...

This week was quite an eventful one. We had various family members throwing up most of the week (cousin Ellie was throwing up at Thanksgiving, so we probably got it there). Gideon did not get the throwing-up sickness, but at his checkup on Monday the midwife said she was worried that his cold might get into his lungs and told us all the signs to watch for in case it did. As a result, one of the parents has been awake for most of each night watching to make sure he can breathe. When Mike tried to go in to work on Monday his car wouldn't start (it was pretty cold, and his battery was 6 years old, so he thought it was that). Alison and all of the kids took the van and dropped him off with a plan of buying a new battery that evening. When they went to pick him up, the first snowstorm of the winter was starting, so it was a long commute, but we got the new battery and made it home. Mike installed the battery Tuesday morning, and the car still wouldn't start. He decided to try ...

Almost everyone achieved a goal in the last week or so: Rea read an entire chapter book by herself ( Polar Bears Past Bedtime , a Magic Treehouse book), Sara finished her first run-through of her phonics program, Reading Bear , and Mike read his scriptures for more than 60 days straight. (Alison needs to achieve a goal!) So we had a very big goal day party. The girls got balloons and created a unicorn piñata out of paper mache (mostly Rea with Alison's help). Then we stuffed it with some clearanced Easter candy and the girls joyfully smashed it open for our party treat. We also had hamburgers for dinner for our celebration. Alison and the kids were going to go to the zoo for the rest of the goal day party (goal day parties now include a special dinner, a treat, and a ride on the carousel at the zoo), but then it started to snow. It snowed for at least 24 hours and we got over 7 inches. Alison and Rea had a lot of fun playing in it; they like to play in the snow (yo ho!), mor...

This week Rea started her preschool again (Tues/Thurs morning).  She goes back and forth saying she likes it or doesn't depending on her mood, so we'll see how this goes.  Sara really misses Rea and wants her at home, and if Alison plans fun things with Sara then Rea decides that she hates preschool and wants to stay home.  We hope things will get better as we get into the routine. On Wednesday, the Dalyais came over and visited for a while.  Alison really likes their visits; the Dalyai kids teach Rea how to play better with other kids and Sylvia is lots of fun to talk to.  They're looking to make it a weekly get-together. Wednesday afternoon Timmy went in for his two month checkup (two weeks late, oops).  He is a whopping 16 lbs already!  We're pretty sure Rea hit 16 lbs at around nine months and Sara at a year.  No wonder Alison gets so tired holding him!  He can wriggle his way across the floor already, so we're hoping he sits and craw...

While I was writing this post, Sara decided that Timothy needed a diaper change.  So she yelled at me, "CHANGE. HIS. COUCHE!" Then she smiled sweetly and said, "I said it politely." Rea came up with a plan that she pitched to us the other day. She wants to invite everyone in our family over for a sleep over camp out in our back yard. Alison persuaded her to make it a late over: we'll set up tents and play in them, but at bedtime anyone who wants can go home. We're looking for a good Saturday for everyone to come over in the afternoon. We'll borrow the poulsons' portable grill and make hot dogs and s' mores. Expect invitations soon. Saturday was my work party at thanksgiving point. This year it was pirate themed. The girls liked riding on a barrel (on wheels) propelled by oars (toilet plungers). The pony rides and petting zoo are always big hits, and this year rea loved the bounce house and Sara liked a spinning teacup ride. It was shortened b...

We finally got a picture of Timothy smiling! I have made an Android phone app for Sara to practice her colors. All you do is press a button and the phone says the name of the color. If you have an Android phone (any smart phone that is not an Iphone or a windows phone), then you can download the app  here . It has been tested on two phones so far and seems to work ok. If you press the buttons too fast it crashes, so I have to figure out why that is. This weekend we made gyros for dinner to use our home made feta. I didn't originally think so, but the feta wouldn't be harmed by more salt. I have posted my card designs for dancing robots online, and have been getting a lot of feedback. I decided to give in to everything that everyone told me to do and then once I am done going back and making it look like I want it to. The thread is  here . So far they have changed a huge amount of the card. Here are the before and (current) after: I will contine to work with the...

 On Friday we got a load of hay. We ended up getting 25 bales (that is what fit in the trailer that my parents lent us). We were hoping to get more, but 25 bales will last us a long time. We got it from a place in Riverton , although in the future we might get some hay from a place in Highland  that we recently saw because it would be less driving. The big question is how much would the hay cost (the current hay is costing $9 a bale (which is good for the Salt Lake City area), and is very good quality) I took it home and stacked it up in the car port. it ended up stacking clear to the roof (which means that if we had gotten more we would have had a hard time storing it). As a side note, I discovered that you want to get hay from the second crop of the year because it is better for goats. All last week I had been working on building a manger for the goats. I finished it Thursday and the goats have been enjoying it ever since. One benefit of the new manger is that i...