Parentheticals

Oops, we forgot to write last week, so here's two weeks' worth of notes: Last week we played the board game Near and Far with the kids for the first time. It's a board game with a bit of an RPG flavor, so we picked it when Timmy wanted an RPG and the girls wanted a board game. It was fairly fun, although Timmy wanted a real  RPG and wasn't totally satisfied. Timmy got masking tape tangled in his hair and decided to cut it out instead of asking for help. He ended up getting a haircut, so it's now chin length. Mike did a good job; it looks nice and he still feels like it's long. Every kid has to cut their own hair at least once; at least Timmy's was more fixable than Sara's. There was a snowstorm last week; Alison offered the kids the day off school if they spent it outside in the snow. They had a good time. Gideon helped shovel Grandma and Grandpa's driveway after the storm (Mike invited the kids to go along, and he was the only one who accepted). The...

Monday we had our Crowned with Virtue activity at our house with the girls' friend Bailey. This month we're learning about a woman named Irina Sedlar, who smuggled Jewish children out of Nazi territory. We had never heard of her, so it was interesting to learn about her. The program suggested having the kids figure out codes or do a treasure hunt, so Alison bought an escape room from Teachers Pay Teachers, and the three girls spent over an hour happily working their way through the puzzles to save the baby doll. Tuesday Sara wanted Broccoli Cheese Soup for dinner, and Mike made it while Alison napped. We had some bunches of parsley and he threw them in. It made the soup vibrantly green, but the kids were not a big fan of the flavor addition. It all got eaten eventually. We had a lot of nice weather this week and Timmy became a big fan of riding his bike around the block. He fell several times, but he kept going, and he's had a lot of fun. Lots of times other people would go...

Earlier on in the week Timmy and Gideon decided they wanted to play DragonBox Algebra. It is a video game that teaches basic algebra. They picked up on the rules pretty quickly, and then they played through all of the levels. They can do basic algebra to isolate x if the operations in the equation are only +-*/, and they are given help to remind them to constantly balance the equation. The girls used to have drapes installed in their room, but when the windows got installed they were taken down temporarily. We finally reinstalled them this week, and also gave their door know an upgrade - swapping it for a locking one. Baby Elizabeth got a cold, but she has mostly recovered from it. It is very nice to no longer feel obligated to stay away from people all the time - not that we get much social interaction with Covid, but taking it down to none when someone gets a cold is always miserable. One day this week Mike got it in his head to clear off all of the kids board game shelves and to reo...

 Last Monday was Martin Luther King Jr Day, so we watched the Disney movie Ruby Bridges for school (we still haven't gotten around to canceling our Disney+ account). It was very good, and Rea and Sara and Alison had some good discussions about it. In the afternoon, we met at a park with Amy and her kids, who had the day off school. It was really fun to get together and play; it got cold, so Amy's kids came over to our house for a while so that Amy could go home and keep working on her remodeling project. We all enjoyed it so much that we decided to drop our kids at Amy's house on Tuesday. Mike and Alison got some stuff done around the house with no kids, which was nice. Wednesday we read more of The Devil You Know. We are getting close to the end of the first book; the author is only partway through the next book, so we haven't decided whether to start it now or wait until it's done (particularly so that parents can pre-read it and make sure it stays appropriate fo...

*Apparently we forgot to hit post last week. Sorry.* Our first full week of school after the holidays was a little challenging, but we made it through. It should get better from here. Mike made it through the first full week of his classes, too. Hopefully this semester goes very smoothly. We decided to restart our Crowned with Virtue club meetings with another family, the Birds. They have a daughter Rea's age, and Rea, Sara, and Bailey all get together and do projects and activities and read stories to learn different virtues each month. They also have sons a year older and a year younger than Timmy (some of you have heard of Timmy's great friends Mason-and-Malachi), so the boys have fun there too. We took December off of Crowned with Virtue, so it's good to get back to it after such a long break. On Thursday, we had our first Carnival party of the year. Sara chose Chincoteague and Assateague (location of the Misty books) as her theme, and we made fair food (popcorn and cho...

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 ...

Well, the holidays are over. We didn't make time to write a blog post for a few Sundays in a row now, but this time we are going to do it no matter what. The week before Christmas: On the 17th the kids built a duplo tower that spanned all the way to the ceiling. It was pretty impressive On the 18th we made and decorated some Christmas cookies On the 19th Grandma and Grandpa Sheila and Mike came to town and we saw them for the first time in a while. Mike helped them move in while Alison and the kids kept company. One item of note is that we shoved a mattress down into the basement which will never be able to come out. It will certainly have to be cut up into pieces if it is too ever be removed. On the 20th we went over to their house for dinner and had a lot of fun playing with them. The kids colored a big picture together and the parents talked. Week of Christmas: On the 21st we went swimming with the family in the Murray pool. Mike stayed home with the baby and reinstalled the bli...