Parentheticals

 Last Monday we brought dinner to Grandma Sheila because she had foot surgery. We made chicken noodle soup with chicken bone broth. It ended up really good, so we are going to remember the recipe: Add 10 chicken wings (bone in with skin) to a slow cooker and enough water to cover them slow cook until the meat is done. Pull out the wings and remove meat from them. Set aside meat in refrigerator. throw back the skin, fat and bones back into the water add five celery, an onion cut in half, two carrots, lots of garlic and then slow cook overnight. The next day toss out everything but the broth. Re-add the meat and then add carrots, celery, egg noodles and salt to taste. Cook as long as it takes egg noodles to be done. Serves multiple people. The first half of the week Mike was working on his final project for his Masters degree. He submitted it Wednesday and it has since been graded and he passed the class and earned his master's degree. Last Thursday we cleaned the church. We did...

 This week has been killer hot. There was only one day that it wasn't above 97, and the temperature right now is 106 degrees. Mike has been working on his finals pretty much all day every day so that leaves Alison to do all the work around here. (Internet cookies for anyone who recognizes the quote; it's a favorite around our house.) She is working very hard and we are all excited for Mike to be done shortly. He wrote an essay on the ethics of reverse engineering (which Alison had fun editing for him) and then recorded a presentation about the topics in his essay. He and his team are still working on coding a kids' banking app. It's due the day after tomorrow, so it's almost done! Alison has been catching up on all the to-dos from a over month ago, before everything was "get ready for Andy's visit" and "enjoy Andy's visit" and "recover from Andy's visit." (We absolutely adored having Andy's family here.) One of those thi...

 We posted last week and now we are posting again this week. Hooray for us! On Monday we celebrated the Fourth of July by having the Plastows over for Barbecue and fireworks.  Alison and the kids went over to visit Andy's family more this week. They spent Wednesday - Friday at the Poulson's house. Mike was doing his day job again, so he only went over in the evenings to have dinner and conversations with them, and during the day he worked on work and school and teaching and taking care of the dog. Rocket was a very sad dog last week. He thought that we had lost most of the members of our pack. He was very happy when they all came back home on Friday. Mike was happy too, but he at least understood what was going on. It was over 100 degrees all week so the kids all went swimming every day for most of each day. The ones that were not brave in the water all became very brave. Timmy can float and swim some now, and Gideon and Boo both practiced floating and swimming using puddle ju...

We failed to write for a few weeks, so this is a big post to get caught back up. Three weeks ago we did Organized Simplicity on the front room. On Monday the 13th we took everything out of the room. It doesn't look like it has that much stuff in it, but it still took up half of the carpeted room and half of Mike's work room to hold all of the stuff. After cleaning out all the stuff we cleaned the room and Alison decided that she also wanted to paint the walls. We ended up painting it a yellowish white that matches the color of the Kallax. Painting took till Wednesday night, so we started moving things back in Thursday and we got it all back together by Friday. Mike marked some board games for disposal, and we also got rid of some art stuff. The room was re-arranged during the move, so we now have a cool new setup which gives us less horizontal furniture to put things on. Hopefully that works to keep the room cleaner. Boo's birthday was on the 15th. We ate fruit pizza and sh...

 We Organized Simplicity'd the kitchen this week. It was really nice to move everything around to places that make more sense, now that we've been here for over a year and know better how we use the kitchen. It was a big job - it took two days. And we keep opening the wrong cupboard for certain things. But it's very nice to have it done. Next up we'll have to do the front room. Alison is excited to rearrange and is considering painting it. She would have to pick a color, though. Mike has also been working on adding drip lines to our sprinkler system to water his berry bushes. It's getting hot, so it will be good to have it done. Mike finally went back to the dentist, and they filed down the filling, figuring that the pain was because the filling was too tall and was putting pressure on his jaw. It is feeling somewhat better, but not all the way, so he might have to go back in again. We watched another episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The kids whined a lot, so ...

 Getting better from all the sickness last week took most of this week. Alison kept getting mostly better, and then doing too much and getting sick again. The kids are slowly stopping coughing, so hopefully it's about over. Mike's mouth is still hurting from the dentist over a week ago. Alison's mouth hurt for a day or so after and her jaw is still stiff, but Mike has been needing painkillers for at least ten days now. He keeps forgetting to call the dentist and see if there's anything he could do about it. We have been slowly making progress on Organized Simplicity. We did the kids' rooms on Saturday. We gave Timmy and Gideon bigger shelves for their stuff, so hopefully that helps them keep it cleaner. Really, most of the mess in their room is not their own stuff but stuff from other places in the house they've brought it, so it probably won't matter much. But the girls' room got a really good cleaning and organizing and Rea is very hopeful that it will...

 Rea has been asking and asking for us to do Organized Simplicity, and we finally decided that this would be a good week. Our school stuff ended last week, so we decided to just do reading and math in the morning and then let the kids play outside while Alison took everything out of a room. Then after Mike got off work we could move everything back. Monday we did the master bedroom, and it looked amazing! Alison got rid of Montessori stuff ruthlessly, and we ended up with extra space. Tuesday was Alison's birthday, but she woke up with the sore throat that usually heralds a cold for her. She decided not to do any Organized Simplicity and just relax for her birthday. It was lots of fun. We had a barbecue for dinner and the kids made her a throne to sit on while she opened her presents. It was a lovely birthday. Wednesday, Alison woke up with a full-blown cold. She has learned recently that if she stays in bed for two days straight, she doesn't have to be miserably sick for two w...