Parentheticals

We looked at a house in the Plastows's neighborhood, and we think that if we move into it it will suit our needs very well. We are preparing an offer on it.  Rea says: It was pretty nice. It had three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. Downstairs it had a kitchen and a front room and it had half a level with a big fireplace and it was a big room and it would be a play room, and also it had a bedroom downstairs that would be a Montessori room. and it had a garden with pumpkins and tomatoes and zucchini and yellow squash and peppers and chard. And it also had three big box elder trees and it had a nice yard. Also, we are going to put an offer on it. Sara says that we went berry picking and that we picked plums and crab apples and black berries. She adds that dad made an amazing plumble out of the plums. Timmy says that we saw a movie with the Plastows and the grandparents. It was about animals that were fighting, and they were fighting against an evil lizard and it was called the w...

We have no excuses. We just failed to write blog posts for a while. Here are the things that have happened in the interim: Mike's birthday was August 5th. He got a baker's lame (for his bread making hobby), a cutter for making card game cards, some video games to play with the kids, and another controller for the NES classic - so that we can play 2 player SNES games on it. The architect that we are talking to responded to our emails with a quote, and now we know what approximately our add on will cost. We are now looking around at different options for houses in the area. We are limiting our hunting to a max of $450k, because if we sold our house and bought one at that price it would be about monetarily equivalent to the cost of the add on. We haven't found anything particularly worth it yet. Mike sold his electric car. It was a nice car, but since he no longer goes anywhere, we don't really need it. Mike also got a new calling (in addition to his current one). He is no...

This last week was pretty eventful - especially Thursday. The beginning of the week was pretty normal - killer hot, but otherwise not particularly remarkable. On Thursday morning Alison's phone stopped working, and upon opening it up, Mike discovered that the battery was bulging. Apparently we accidentally bought the exploding kind of phone for her, but it was a dud. Mike has lent her his phone, and with her sim card in his phone, we have tried to make things work out for the remainder of the week. We bought a new battery for the phone, but it will take a few days to get here, so until mid next week Mike will be without a phone. Later on in the day when she took the kids to the Dalyias house, Alison noticed that a bunch of lights on the car dash had all started lighting up at the same time. She drove the car home, and told Mike about it.She determined that it might be the alternator through google, and Mike called the mechanic Friday morning to see if we could bring it in right awa...

On Saturday we went out in the morning to dimple dell to pick currants. There were four different varieties of currents that we we were able to pick: the first was golden currants the second was wild currants the third was red currants and the last was jellyfish currents (which were named by the kids, and were a colorless variety of red currants.) This week for dinner Gideon really wanted to have corn on the cob, so we bought a bunch of corn on the cob and then after we ate it for dinner Gideon was very happy, and since we are currently planning meals for this upcoming week he planned corn on the cob again. Giddy had a fun dream last night: his dream started with us in a tent. The tent was full of hammocks instead of sleeping bags. There was corn in the shower. And then we hiked in a cave. Finally, Gideon says that he popped out of his dream back into real life. Rea has been writing a book over the last little while, and she is pleased to report that the book is nearly done. Baby Eliza...

What an exciting week! To kick it off, we were at Dimple Dell and discussing how, if we have to move to get a second bathroom, a house near Dimple Dell would be nice. So while the baby was nursing and everyone else was playing, Alison looked at houses on her phone. And she totally found her dream house! It has a xeriscaped front yard, mature fruit trees and grapes in the solidly fenced backyard, beautiful huge windows in the living room, a large kitchen/dining room, a second living room, three bedrooms, bathrooms, and a half-aboveground (so natural light) basement. We drove by it and everyone was excited; even Rea, who has flatly refused to move, said that she would move there. As soon as we got home, we contacted the realtor, only to find that it was already under contract. That was really disappointing! But after a day, we started thinking about using the house as inspiration to add on to our house. We've started to draw up plans to make a huge lighted front room with a basement ...

Another two-week blog post! Last week was the Fourth of July. We went foraging and found berries for a red, white, and blue berry pie. Raspberries, strawberries, and red currants for red; serviceberries and black currants for blue. We have two white berry plants nearby (white mulberries and white currants), but neither had fruit for us, so we threw in some marshmallows for white :). It was very good! We went to Aunt Amy's house to do fireworks again, since they're still banned at our house. The kids (Browns and Plastows) have decided that this is the way of things and we always do fireworks together. We discovered that Baby Elizabeth loves fireworks. She was shy of strangers, but still wanted to go to Mike when he set them off, and she clapped and cheered and pointed for each one. It was very unusual and very cute. This week Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig came to Utah to help Aunt Becky move. We had Grandma come to our house one day, and we all met at the park near Becky's...

This week we went up to Jordan pines camp ground and camped all week. We went up there with the nature group. We had a lot of fun. We set up hammocks in the trees and slept under the stars. We hiked up to donut falls, and saw tons of different types of wild berries (though only the strawberries were ripe yet). We saw wolf currants and gooseberries, both of which we have never seen here before. Every night there were campfire stories told, and Mike, Rea, and Alison told one each. Baby Elizabeth slept terribly up there, but otherwise it was pretty successful. Saturday we picked more strawberries, and currants as well. We are deep into strawberry season, and currant season is well underway. This year has been an excellent year for currants. Perhaps we should meet with the Plastows and pick the currants near their house as well We went down to dimple dell, Sunday and checked on the red currants there as well as the gold currants and serviceberries but they were not ready yet. We did end up...