Parentheticals

We forgot to post again last week, so here we are with another double post. Not this week but the week before the garage door installers came over and installed a new garage door in our house. It looks pretty good and opens and closes very easily. That week we also had the four-way inspection again and finally passed it. That opened up our ability to finish wrapping the house and also installing insulation.  We scheduled the insulation installation as soon as we could (Monday of this week). Late last week we moved to the Waters house because they had gone to Africa and we wanted to be closer to our house and our Ward. It was great too stay at the Brown's house, however, it is also nice to have an entire house to yourself and to be able to walk to the park and church and our friend's houses. Last Saturday we went to a wings of fire convention which is named fan wings fest. Everyone at the convention was interested in wings of fire series, and the author of the books was also in ...

I started a blog post last Sunday, but we were too busy to actually write the things up that were in the post, so I am now converting a bulleted list of things to write about into an actual post, and then adding all of the things that happened last week as well. Rea recently created an Etsy shop. Here is a link to it: https://ecogiftcreations.etsy.com . She is selling notebooks, candles, hanging stone decorations, and bags of polished rocks. She made all of the things herself, and is planning on saving the money that she makes for college. We also received about 200 lbs of expired strawberries from the Waters last week and processed them for storage. Many were moldy, but we ended up with a lot of good ones as well, so the freezers in the Brown house are all full of strawberries right now. The kids have been going at them with a will and have made multiple strawberry smoothies every day, so they are getting used up. Mike also made a gallon of strawberry syrup, which is being used to mak...

On Tuesday of last week Alison and Sara and Rea went to see Wicked with Grandma and Grandpa Craig and Julie. They really enjoyed it. Rea said it was great! Sara also finished all of her rise testing. She did very well and got good scores, so she is very excited about that. We will be making peanut butter brownies in celebration. On Wednesday Mike took a half day off of work to work on the house with Grandpa mike. They got a lot of work done: they filled in cracks with the exterior of the house and started the blocking and built some framing that had been missed by the other guys. The house is still moving forward, however, it isn't moving as fast as we would have hoped because there's just so much to do. We are going to have to push back the four way by one week. That being said we are still making major progress. For activity dudes we played various games outside and inside. The kids really enjoyed it. At Young women's this week Sara wasn't invited because it was only ...

We missed posting last week, so there are two weeks to report on.  We have been making good progress on the house during the time. The HVAC, electric, and plumber are all going regularly. In fact, we recently calculated that everything might be done in June Not this Saturday, but last Saturday we went to a ward fund raiser for girls camp. The girls put on a carnival for the kids and had a silent auction for the adults. It was fun. We also celebrated Mother's Day. We made Alison breakfast in bed, and the kids sang in church. Rea and Sara also taught the young kids in church for their Mother's Day lessons. The lessons went fairly well. This weekend the plastic stayed over for a multi-day sleepover since Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike have been taken care of them. The kids played way too many video games and watched way too many screens, however, they did get along fairly well. On Saturday Mike and Grandpa Mike took advantage of Taylorsville bulk waste disposal day to get rid of ...

Timmy and Gideon went to Disney with Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig this week from Monday through Thursday. We were sad that they were gone, however, we were very excited that they got to see all of the things at Disneyland.  They loved so many things about Disneyland. Gideon's favorite part was the Ferris Wheel and Timmy really liked the Car's ride. They got a wheelchair for Timmy; however, he also sometimes walked on his boot. While they were gone, we made smaller meals and Alison, and the girls went out most days to the library or somewhere like that. The result is that we had much less cleanup to do around the house. We can't say that that was a direct result of the boys being gone, however, it was certainly funny that that was what happened. Elsa missed the boys most of the kids, since she loves playing with her brothers so much. We are all glad that they came back. Wednesday for YW Rea and Sara walked to the temple. Rea said, "It was pretty cool", Sara said...

Mike brought Tim to the doctors on Monday and learned that his foot is broken. He has been ordered to stay off it and they gave him a cast that would allow him to stand on it if he needed to. He has been scooting around with a scooter that we borrowed from Grandma Sheila ever since.  Monday evening we all went to Thanksgiving point for the egg festival. The Poulsons invited us and the Rogers there and we had a fun time seeing everything. Mike went with Timmy and they found a route through the park that avoided most of the stairs. On Wednesday Sara's school invited Mike over to do a career Day presentation. He presented to three different classes and they really enjoyed asking him about video games and how programmers make them. Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Mike have been away for the last week, however they came back for one night before leaving again to go off to Oregon. When Grandpa Mike arrived back he noticed that one of the pillars that was poured was blocking the garage door. W...

This is a post that covers 3 weeks because we were too busy or tired to post the last two times Two weeks ago it was spring break and we organized lots of playdates for the kids. Timmy larped twice: once at Dimitri's house with Sally and Gideon and Momo and kind of Dimitri. Sally was a wizard Momo was a barbarian Gideon was a rogue and Timmy was the dungeon master. They fought some goblins and freed a city from an evil goblin. They also went to the Rogers house and larped there. During the whole time, Timmy has been playing his dinosaur game a lot and has enjoyed it a lot.  Also two weeks ago they got the digging done for putting in a new foundation for the garage and master bedroom. Alison also started organized simplicity and cleaned about one room a day in Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila's basement. It looks super good now that she is done with all of it. She rearranged the main room and our bedroom to make them much more efficiently positioned. We also moved the carpet rug ...