Parentheticals

This has been a busy week! Monday we had CC. We lost another tutor, so now we have all 15 kids in one classroom. The tutor who's still here is a former public school teacher and is AMAZING, so it works, and the kids have made some new friends in the group. But it's also harder to keep everyone focused. We're working on other ideas to help the kids sit still and quiet. Tuesday and Wednesday Alison felt like she was coming down with a cold, so she rested a lot. Everyone else did fun things, probably. Thursday was Rea's Carnival party. We came home from Grandma and Grandpa's house early to meet the Dalyais. Rea picked Vietnam as her theme, and she and Aunt Amy made Vietnamese ginger cookies (yum!), and she helped everyone make paper lanterns and taught them a Vietnamese game. Then they had so much fun playing for four hours that we forgot to have dinner and got to bed pretty late. On Friday the 3rd we had a game day with the Wilsons at our house. We finished up playing...

This week was not as exciting as last week (phew!), but we had fun. We switched over to our summer schedule this week, since our scheduled school-ish things (nature group and weekly learning logs) ended last week.  This year, summer schedule involves listening to a early-elementary-school-level audiobook over breakfast (nature stories, stories from history, things like that), then getting ready for the day, then half an hour of review (math, reading, handwriting) before they head out to play. They also need to take a siesta in the hot part of the afternoon if they want to stay up in the evening when it's nice - not that it's hot yet, but we're starting the transition now, because it's always a grumpy week or two until we all adjust. We're listening to less-exciting upper elementary/middle school level audiobook over naps, in hopes that it won't keep people awake. The kids have gotten to play with their cousins a lot, and they will get to do more now that public ...

 This week we had some sickness. Sunday night almost everyone threw up - we think it was too much junk food right before bed, because no one felt at all sick otherwise. Oops! Mike's homemade donuts might have to be eaten less enthusiastically in the future. Since Wednesday, we have a tiny bit of a cold going around the family. Baby Elizabeth is the only one with significant symptoms - mostly a runny nose, but she got stuffy enough at night to not sleep for several nights. Everyone else just gets really tired (and sometimes grumpy) for a day or so. It's not the worst cold ever, but it's annoying.  We stayed home from Nature Group and Wildflower Park on Friday so that we didn't spread the cold far and wide, but Mike and the kids built a treehouse this week, so they played in that instead! We have a huge waist-high stump at the front corner of the backyard, and Rea requested half-walls on the street and neighbor sides of it, with windows in them. The walls are up; the wind...

This week was the end of the 12 Days of Christmas - Tuesday was Twelfth Night. We watched lots of Christmas movies (Muppet Christmas Carol was a big hit) and had eggnog and enjoyed the Christmas season. Our Christmas tree almost stayed alive for the whole time! In order to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas now that we don't have a VHS player, Alison bought the Ultimate Edition on YouTube. It also includes two other Grinch movies, one about Halloween and one that Alison has decided is about Mother's Day. Neither one is very good, but in the Halloween one, a kid says "I have to visit the euphemism" when he has to go to the bathroom, and we all decided that was hilarious, so we might have a new joke phrase from it. For Twelfth Night, we made our crown cake (canned cinnamon rolls arranged in a circle in the baking pan, one with a crown under it) early, and ate it when Mike got off work at 2pm. Alison thought it would be fun to have most of a day for the King to choose ...

This week baby Elizabeth slept better than she ever has before. She only woke up Michael two times during his core sleeps, and she was mostly happy for Alison on most of the nights as well. She is also sometimes eating meals with us like a toddler usually does, which is to say that she will pick one thing that she wants and eat a lot of it. This is significantly better eating than she usually does. Early this week we turned half of the Halloween candy that we collected from the children into Halloween candy cookies. We have approximately three dozen Halloween candy cookies frozen as balls and our freezer now. The weather has been good (up until today), so we have been playing outside a lot Mike's schooling is continuing to go well. He currently has A's in both of his classes. Mike's teaching is also going well, and he received some of the best ratings possible this last semester. He is also getting good ratings at work, and getting used to the newly reorganized team that he...

This last week the weather was nice, so we played outside a lot of the time. As we were preparing to plant our garden in the backyard, we ordered some fruit bushes. Alison had read about building a permaculture food forest, and this seemed like a good way to start that. We had ordered a gooseberry bush, two Serviceberry bushes, and also a pair of black raspberry bushes from a nursery in the east. The bushes all arrived on Friday, so Mike went outside and planted them and watered them heavily. We hope that they produce lots of berries for us to eat in the future. Of all of the seeds we planted a few weeks ago, very few of them have begun sprouting, so we went and replanted the whole entire area yesterday. We have also been burning a lot of wood that we got by ripping out all of the trees of heaven which were growing in our backyard. The fires have been crazy, according to Rea. Alison also went on a massive food shopping trip on Saturday so that we could get all of the stuff that w...

We had lots of warm weather this week. The kids have been loving being outside for long periods. Inside, though, they have been argumentative and grumpy. It got so bad that when they finally started playing nicely together on Thursday, we canceled everything we had planned and just let them play as a reward. But we eventually decided that everyone needs more sleep in order for things to go well, so we're overhauling our bedtime routine. We're going to try to put each child to bed separately, so bedtime will take at least four times as long as it does now. If it means that everyone gets enough sleep to be reasonable during the day, it will be worth it. The kids thought this was an excellent week because we saw the Dalyais every day except Sunday. Monday they came to our house for a Carnival party; Tuesday we all went to nature group; Wednesday we have the Dalyais' nature group and Thursday is ballet taught by one of the older Dalyai girls; Friday Faith Dalyai had a birthda...

This weekend, Gideon finally took his next steps (apparently he took his first step several weeks ago but hadn't repeated it until now). On Saturday he was standing up and saw something he wanted and took three solid steps before sort of collapse-shuffling the rest of the way. That evening he took another two steps, and Sunday afternoon he took one solid step and then collapsed on the next one. We're all very excited; he may be walking a bit by Thanksgiving! The bulk of Saturday we were participating in Extra Life, which is a charity event that Mike's work put on an instance of. It is to help the primary children's hospital. We raised over $1000 for the hospital. It was pretty fun. Mike liked best playing games with the kids. You can see some of the games we streamed here . Alison has been re-adapting to polyphasic sleep after giving it up when everyone was sick a couple weeks ago. If you've been polyphasic for more than a few months, you're supposed to be a...

On Tuesday we went to the ward trunk or treat and chili cook off. The kids enjoyed visiting all of the cars, and we all had a good time. The chili and the company both were good. Also on Tuesday Timmy told Mike and Alison that he was an emeritus eagle. It took a while to figure it out, but he meant American. On Wednesday we went over to Scott and Sheila's house. Mike was showing Scott the ins and outs of the laser cutter, and the whole family came over too. It was fun to talk to them. Sheila has an idea for a website for Mike to make. It sounds like a good idea, and perhaps it will be lucrative too. On Friday, Sara and Timmy both started throwing up. They felt better by Saturday, and then on Saturday Alison and Gideon started showing symptoms of a cold. We are not sure if we just have two independent sicknesses going through the house at the same time, or if they are related. Either way, the cold is lasting much longer than the vomiting. Mike and Alison have contin...

On Monday, we had a special treat. Grandma Julie came to town to spend a week at the cabin with her sisters, and we picked her up at the airport and went to the zoo all day. It was wonderful! Grandma said that she should start coming to Utah once a month, spending a day with us and a night with Patty before going home. We would sure love that! It was great to talk and play and see all the animals. This week Mike has begun getting ready for the Ion Awards again. He has three games this year that he hopes to have ready by December 1st. That is a month earlier than is usual, but he still hopes to have them all ready in time. He has also been doing more work on the website that he is making in his spare time. It is nearly ready to show off to the board game design community. Perhaps in a few weeks it will be done. Gideon is working on standing and walking and climbing on everything. This week he learned to stand for much longer at a time and once even picked up a foot while standing...

Gideon became a meerkat this week. He can crawl around, stand up on his two legs (without any support), and then squat back down to crawling all by himself. He seems to be closer to walking than he was before, and his balance is getting much better. This week Sara, Rea, and Timmy all drew all over their faces. It took quite a lot of scrubbing to get it all off. Perhaps this will be a learning experience for them. They also carved some pumpkins. We are not sure what they were supposed to look like, but they are pretty scary. On Thursday Rea invited some friends over for a Halloween party. It was supposed to be a costume party, but no-one showed up in costumes since they all cam straight from school. They cut corn tortillas in the shape of pumpkins and coated them with orange oil, and toasted them into chips. Rea was very excited about this recipe. Other than that they mostly played outside. It was Alison's type of party. Alison and Mike have been dreaming of making an onsen ...

On Tuesday Alison and the kids went up to silver lake for their nature group. It was rather cold down here, so Alison rustled up all of the cold weather layers that weren't packed away and put them on the kids. Then they got up there and it was snowing, and she realized that it was not enough. Sara has not outgrown her inability to deal with cold. Despite her warm clothes and carrying around a hot sweet potato she was miserable within half an hour. Then Timmy started whining too, and Gideon (just because everyone else was.) It was not the most successful nature group ever. On Wednesday Alison came down with a cold, and in an attempt to get better faster before the primary program she tried to eat no grains nor dairy the entire time. She got better in two days, so it seems to have been successful (or maybe it was just a blessing). On Friday we went to the Stromberg's house for dinner. The kids played, and the parents talked, and it was very fun. I dropped off the 3d prin...

On Monday we celebrated the 4th of July with a barbecue. We had Amy, Sheila, and their respective families attend. The kids played, the adults talked, and all had a good time. We did fireworks toward the end. The kids all got scared from the morning glories, and lit the grass on fire (fast stomping by the ladies put it out). The 'Bestest Crackering Ballz' were aptly named. Sara chose them because of the glittery pink and purple wrapping, and they were amazing. We did scare Dustin into a screaming fit because all of the cheap crackling balls we had done before were so pitiful that we were standing very close when the "Bestest Crackering Ball" went off, and it was surprising! Even Dustin enjoyed the later ones. After the extended family went home we went off to the park on the hill and watched every firework show in the valley at the same time. It was very fun, and the kids loved running around with other kids at the park in the dark. Next year, we need to bring ...

This post is days late. I am going to blame it on our week of little sleep. Timothy put on 1 lb at his two week appointment. I have been working on Dancing Robots cards. They are coming along nicely. Perhaps in a week more I will be ready to order an actual printing of them. Bob - our development lead - has accepted a job at a different place. Additionally Chris - one of my coworkers - broke his leg recently and is out recovering from the surgery that they had to do to fix it. Because of this things have been hectic at work. Hopefully we can get a new team member and get Chris back some time soon so that we can get back to working normally. If anyone is looking for a software engineering job, contact me. I could give you the posting. We have tickets to see Wicked today. I have never seen it, so hopefully it is good. It sounds like it is not in any way based on the original book by Baum. This could be good, or it could be bad. Rea and Sara want me to post that they got rag d...

This week we have been ambling along like we were members of the living dead, or perhaps more like a polar bear in cowboy boots. What I am trying to say is that we have not gotten much sleep. Timothy has made some unusual decisions about the importance of sleep in relation to the three other things that he knows how to do (I am sure any parents out there know the list of four things that a baby can do). Either way, last night we needed to have an intervention. It was three am and he had just pooped for the fifth time in the same number of hours and I had had enough. I gave him a pacifier and a stern (if not coherent) lecture and he finally went to sleep for two whole hours. And they say that parenting is a lost art :). Either way, Rea and Sara were up and in our bed for who knows how long before we became conscious at 6:00 am. To go back in time a bit, I started to go back to work on Wednesday. Alison had her mom help her out a lot, and we are paying some of the yo...

Baby Andrea woke up a lot last night. I am tired. This last week we made a cheese, and we actually cheddared it. This is the first time that I have cheddared a cheese. Hopefully it ends up tasty. It has been being pressed for about four days now. I will wax it tonight if I remember to (and if it is dry enough). This saturday we will start playing 42 Earths (weather we are ready for it or not). I have done more work on the SRD, and continue to work on it daily. Baby Andrea has also decided to start playing pat-a-cake. She has learned so many new things to do in the last few weeks. She has gone from barely crawling to crawling across the entire house. Standing only with help to pulling to standing. Watching rusty walk around to chasing rusty around. She has started 'singing' on command, and who knows how many other things. It is really amazing to see her progress. Alison's birthday went well. I made her a treasure hunt birthday game, and she had to find her presents. She said...