Parentheticals

On Monday we had a guy from a window place come over to give us an estimate for replacing all the old windows. It was over 10k and Mike had already scheduled another meeting with another company, so we didn't accept it at that time. By Tuesday we had received offers from 7 people to buy our house. They went from 1k under the asking price to 15k above it with most in the 5-10k above range.  The one that offered 15k over also sent a letter and seemed pretty excited to buy the place, so we went with him. However, he had an inspection on Wednesday, and the inspector told him that some weeds were growing in the crawlspace, and it freaked him out so much that he backed out of the deal.  Mike went down there to fix the problem that night, and with the help of the teenage Dalyai boy, had all the tree roots removed in two hours. There has never been normal weeds growing in our crawlspace, however those trees of heaven aggressively sucker, and they constantly attempt to colonize the cra...

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...

 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...

Rea's favorite thing this week was learning that Grandma and Grandpa are going to come and help us move. She thinks that will be very fun. Her least favorite was going to our ward for the last time, because she likes our church a lot. She bore a beautiful testimony about how Heavenly Father helps us with trials like moving, which made Alison, who bore her testimony right after, cry all through her testimony. It was hard to say goodbye. We hadn't planned to start attending church yet, but we decided to do one last week for the goodbyes; it was very sad but good. Sara's favorite part of last week was talking about and planning for moving. Her least favorite was Team Clean. The plan we've created for moving is as follows: Wednesday afternoon we close, so after we get the keys we're going to grab our sleeping bags and toothbrushes and pick up fast food at a drive through. We'll go to the new house, eat a picnic on the floor, explore the yard and the neighborhood, an...

Mike is doing midterms for his master's program, as well as doing week one of his BYU-I class he teaches. He's doing a good job keeping up with all of it. At BYU-I, he's teaching a new kind of class, and they're paying him an extra $400 to be a "class representative" and $300 for teaching something new. He normally makes $900 per class per semester, so he's getting almost twice as much as usual for one class (which is all he wants to teach while also going to school and keeping his day job).  Alison is still teaching her program to two groups (one is 9 weeks into the program and one is 3 weeks into the program). It's going well; she's getting things automated and feeling like she's doing a good job on the coaching calls. She's cut back everything else she does in her business to a minimum until after the move. It's nice to have that freedom. We finally got a plumber to check the main sewer pipe at our new house, and it has roots growing...

On Monday we went to a splash pad with the Rogers and Grandma and Grandpa. We talked about moving and little toy trucks. It sounds like the Poulsons won't move into our neighborhood with us, which is unfortunate, however we are still happy to be moving in with Amy, and also probably convincing Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila to move in to the same neighborhood as well. On Tuesday we went to ballet, and Mike went shopping and did some work for his calling (it is rare for him to do anything other than the one hour after church on Sunday) On Wednesday Mike had a dentist appointment, and we also had Amy's realtor come over and look over our house. She said that we could probably get about 300k for our house without much work, and in this market that it was rare for big changes to the house to pay for themselves, so we should just clean it up and then list it without much work. Thursday we walked to the school playground and played around for a while. It was actually really nice wea...

On Monday, Alison got a new bike. It is a Madsen bucket bike, and can hold all of the kids as well as groceries. We hope that Alison will be up to taking trips in it to the library soon, so that they can go to the library every day and Alison will keep in excellent physical condition. If it is too hard, we are going to get her an electric assist to help her on the hilly parts. The bike rides pretty well, and is obviously very well built. On Tuesday they rode the bike to Macey's, which went pretty well, and it was also Sara's date night. For her date we watched Joseph and the amazing technicolor dream coat. Wednesday Alison's parent's moved to California. Now that we have no more parents in Utah, it is much more likely that we are going to move. We do not, however, have any immediate plans to move. On Thursday Alison and the kids went to the pool. The girls all loved the water and swam for a while. Sara got too cold and got out after a while (I used to do that a ...

This week Mike has been working hard to fulfill the rewards for his Kickstarter campaign. The new colors that some people ordered came in on Friday, so he printed the last of the rewards and sent them off on Saturday - except for one person who hasn't actually told Mike which size of windows he wants in his counters. When that person gets around to answering, we'll print and be done! We're glad to get it done so quickly and to have time to spend on other things. (Note - as we were composing this, he told Mike what he wanted, so the last counters are being printed at the moment and we will be done Monday, when the post office is open.) Thursday Alison and the kids spent all day at the park, playing on the playground, eating a picnic lunch, and swimming in the pool. They went to the pool four times this week, and everyone's swimming is continuing to progress. They are really enjoying their pool passes and the time they spend outside. And still no sunburns! Thursday ev...

On Tuesday I found evidence that my mushroom log is definitely not (entirely) dead: Also on Tuesday I found  a book  by Tom Brown at the DI. It sounded interesting so I read a page of it. I liked it enough that I bought it. Since then I have read most of it in small chunks. Tom Brown writes in such a way that he makes me want to move back east where I can enjoy a non-arid landscape again. Alison and I continued our ongoing discussion of the merits of moving back to Michigan (or, for the first time the Appalachians). We are currently leaning toward moving close to Andy some place near the eastern seaboard. If we were to do that and Becky and Chauncy were to move to New England then we would have the majority of the Poulson clan living out east again (perhaps that would be enough to convince Craig and Julie to move out there as well). If we were to move out there we are talking about getting a few acres and building a small home and farming and foraging for most of...