Parentheticals

This past week we have been working on the new card game that we have been code naming " Magic, Inc. " Currently it is in a playable but by no means complete stage. It is a puzzle-based game in which you try to use the cards you have available to create machines that generate resources and then create more machines that turn your resources into points. We are enjoying it. Last week, if you recall, we dogsat for the family Mike home teaches. To thank us, they gave us a WalMart gift card. That was so kind of them, and since Mike refuses to set foot in WalMart, Alison told the girls that they could have half the money for helping so much with the dogs. They were looking for My Little Pony coloring books, but instead found a My Little Pony story book with 12 toy ponies and a playmat. They absolutely love it and have been playing with it every day for a week. With the rest of the money, Alison picked up some tubes for Rea's pedal bike, and she ended up spending all but 2 cen...

This week was a very mixed week. Monday morning Sara started to act sick again. She threw up for three days (on and off) and is now better again. She had played with Max last weekend and he was sick, so perhaps she caught it from him. On Tuesday I got an email reporting that I am a finalist in the Ion Award competition. That is super exciting since winning the Ion Award is a guaranteed way to get your board game published (and being a finalist makes it fairly likely). The final judging will take place March 12th (when I present the game to three or four board game company owners) and the results will be announced Saturday March 14th at Salt Con. I really hope to win. Also on Tuesday we were asked to dog sit for a family in the ward. If you recall Alison loves dogs and I do not. We got the dogs Wednesday night and been watching them since. (Tonight they are going to be going back). We don't remember their names, so we have been calling them Danger and Ashpoodle (similar ...

This week no-one on our family was really sick that is a first for at least a month. That is a relief. We got to leave the house without the children twice this week. It was good, however it would have been better if we hadn't known that Timmy was screaming the whole time. Timmy hates babysitters. When we got back from the board game night Alison asked if Timmy had screamed the whole time and the baby sitter said "Oh, no, he took two half hour naps." In a three hour babysitting job that is pretty rough. Grandpa mike had some success in quieting him down by feeding him cookies. We might suggest this tactic to future babysitters. On Wednesday we had a board game design group meeting wherein we played Witch Hunt and also Above and Below (which is quite popular on Board Game Geek). On Saturday Sara decided that she wanted to give her potty timer watch to Timmy. Alison said to her "You can give it to Timmy once you have graduated from needing it". To wh...

This week we ran out of Brie. Our homemade Brie was very good. Mike thinks that we can made brie pizzas and quit making mozzarella; however Alison thinks that we should try it out before we commit to something like that. Mike went to a grocery store that happened to be selling its fancy cheese cheap because it was old (the cheese, not the grocery store). He found some apple wood smoked cheese that tasted like a very tasty Gouda. We are considering making smoked cheese in the future. It is probable that a smoked paneer would be excellent. Rea was sick with an ear ache this week, which prevented us from doing much of anything fun. The girls missed out on preschool, Rea's dance class, and just about everything else we had planned. By the end of another week of sickness, Alison was about to go stir-crazy. Sara was having a rough time, too; she was used to having Rea to play with, and when Rea spent all day in bed with Mommy either reading to Rea or taking care of Timmy, she felt a ...

I am tired, so this will be a bit disjointed. This week we ate a lot of brie. It was pretty melty, but not spreadable to the core. Everyone loves it when it is toasted over bread. It tastes way better than mozzarella and melts just as good. Probably we will make a pizza on Monday with brie on top of it. If we like that then perhaps we will start making brie instead of mozzarella on a biweekly basis. We went on a date to a Indian restaurant in Sandy named Karma. While there we had a new type of naan bread (this one was called peshwari naan). It was pretty good. Perhaps we will make it some time. The food was very good, but medium was a little too spicy. Alison wants to get some coconut cream to make lots of curries. In terms of sickness: we all got better, and then Alison and Timmy got sick again. They are a little better, but it is a never-ending thing it seems.. We made a parmesan this week, and also 1 lb of butter (we made the parmesan from skim milk). They both turned out pre...

This last week we got better from being sick and then got sick again... sometimes that is life. We opened the second segment of our brie, and been eating it over toast. It is tasting a bit stronger, but is still not yet very runny. Over the past few days we have our I have been working on a website which is used to generate cards so that I don't have to manually edit a lot of image files. I think that this will be useful to myself because it will save me a lot of time but it also could potentially be useful to other people who generate cards. I haven't yet hosted it online because it is not yet complete. Perhaps I will host it soon. Alison and I also played a game of 'Guards! Guards!', which was sort of fun, but which was a bit too random for me and a bit too confrontational for Alison. We might trade it away at the upcoming math trade. Alison has also been going to a lot of meetings for her new calling. This means that I am watching the kids a lot. Sometimes it...

This week, we tried to resume normal life after all the vacation excitement. Alison is in charge of teaching the preschool co-op this month, so she is organizing everything for the kids to play restaurant at our house. It's been a very messy process; the kids made personal pizzas on Tuesday (coating the kitchen in flour) and made burgers from homemade play dough on Thursday (getting play dough stuck everywhere). The kids have been enjoying it, although Timothy would like more attention than he gets when all the kids are over. Alison has been focusing on helping Timothy learn to crawl and other skills. Timmy can now pull himself along the floor if he's in a good mood and really wants to get somewhere. It works best on carpet; we have no carpet. He will also get up on all fours and rock, so he's probably within a few weeks of actual crawling. Both Alison and Timmy have been enjoying their regular daily practice sessions very much. So she decided to try to work more with t...