Parentheticals

Apparently we forgot to write last week. This post will cover both weeks. Last week everyone got better from their sicknesses (except Gideon, who was still a little bit sick, but also much better). By now he is pretty much the rest of the way better. Last week and this week we wrapped Christmas presents. We have a few more to wrap, but we are mostly done. Mike has been working on the rule books of his games in anticipation of sending them in to the Ion Award again. Hopefully he gets them done in time. If anyone wants to help, feel free to volunteer. The 3d printer has been broken for a long time, but last Saturday I fixed it, so it is working again. Alison has begun doing Montessori again (for the past two weeks). They have been doing it pretty much every day, and are enjoying it a lot. The kids watched a few episodes of My Little Ponies as Sara's date, and then they were all terrified (except Timmy). Sara won't go to the bathroom by herself since then, which is rea

This week was quite an eventful one. We had various family members throwing up most of the week (cousin Ellie was throwing up at Thanksgiving, so we probably got it there). Gideon did not get the throwing-up sickness, but at his checkup on Monday the midwife said she was worried that his cold might get into his lungs and told us all the signs to watch for in case it did. As a result, one of the parents has been awake for most of each night watching to make sure he can breathe. When Mike tried to go in to work on Monday his car wouldn't start (it was pretty cold, and his battery was 6 years old, so he thought it was that). Alison and all of the kids took the van and dropped him off with a plan of buying a new battery that evening. When they went to pick him up, the first snowstorm of the winter was starting, so it was a long commute, but we got the new battery and made it home. Mike installed the battery Tuesday morning, and the car still wouldn't start. He decided to try

Our week in California was wonderful, just like it is every year. Timmy liked playing with Grandpa Craig, Sara and Rea both liked everything about California, and Alison like sitting on the beach and talking to her parents and siblings. Mike liked being with Alison and the kids among other things. Rea thinks that we should mention that we built sand and water structures on the beach. Mike found out that the natal plums that grow all over the place out there are edible (which is cool). Perhaps next year we will make a salad out of them, and bring some seeds home to try and plant inside our house. Rea and Sara both loved the beach and stayed out all day with whatever grown-ups were there. They played in the sand and the waves and Rea even learned to boogie board. Timmy liked the beach somewhat but was always happy to go back to the house and didn't ever get wet. Alison sat and held a baby inside or outside, and Mike worked on his NaGaDeMon game and kept Alison and the kids compan

This last week Gideon got sick. Timmy has had a cold since two weeks before Gideon was born. No one else had gotten it, so we were feeling fairly safew, but then the day after Gideon's one-week checkup, he came down with the cold. Rea started sneezing, too, and Sara claims she's sick as well though Alison hasn't seen any evidence of it. No fun! Timmy is almost better - just a lingering cough at night - and Rea can blow her own nose and be fine, but Gideon was stuffed up and couldn't breathe. Alison stayed up with him Tuesday and Wednesday nights to hold him upright so he could breathe a little better. By Thursday she was utterly exhausted (Thursday was not a good day), so Mike took the baby between feedings Thursday night. He was starting to get a little better by then: Mike got a solid 3 hour chunk of sleep and some smaller naps with Gideon sleeping on his mattress. (We have Gideon's mattress on the floor and a mat next to it for a grown-up to sleep on, and whe

Mike took this week off work to help us adjust to having a new baby. The adjustment has gone quite well. Alison's midwife always recommends at least a week in bed after having a baby, but Alison actually felt so good by the end of the week that she was itching to get up. She's had a very easy recovery this time. The kids have loved having a new baby; we were a little worried about how they'd respond, but they all seem very happy. Baby Gideon is determined to be different from his brother and sisters, in good and bad ways. He is our first baby who likes to suck beyond what's necessary for eating. Alison got really sore before we figured that out. Now we're trying to convince him that he likes pacifiers and wants to keep one in his mouth, while he much prefers to suck on a parent's thumb, We're also working on him sucking his own thumb, but that will take longer. He's very quiet; he pretty much only screams for diaper changes, and even that is much quiet

For some reason I'm feeling lazy today. Here are a bunch of pictures of things that happened this week. Halloween costumes: KGB agent, African lady, Pioneer girl, Princess, and Cowboy. We let the kids eat candy Halloween night and pick 6 favorites to save, then chopped up the rest of the chocolate and made chocolate chip cookie dough that we can eat for the next few months. Everyone likes the plan except Rea, who is old enough that she could ration her candy and just eat it for months; we might adjust how much candy they get to keep based on age next year. Grandma Julie took Alison and the kids to This is the Place Heritage Park on Thursday in hopes that walking would bring on labor. (It didn't.) We rode the train and saw a family of deer only a few feet away. Rea thought this was about the coolest thing she'd ever seen: "I've never seen a live deer before, Mom!" We petted a sheep at This is the Place. The wooden train at This is the Place

Alison doesn't remember what happened Monday. They probably went to Forest Kindergarten. We had a Family Home Evening. It was a good day, we're sure, even if we don't remember it. Tuesday the kids went to Wheeler Farm during the day while Alison went to the midwife. The baby is still doing well; he's changing position instead of staying huddled in the right back corner, so Alison has laid off the crazy exercises with some confidence that when labor begins he'll swing around to the front left like he's supposed to be. The kids loved showing Grandma all their favorite things at Wheeler Farm; it's one of our favorite places to go, so they had lots of them to share. Tuesday Mike went to the board game design group. He presented his game, and they played it. It went very well. He is really enjoying it. While Mike was at the board game design group, the kids cleaned up really fast, so they got to watch a movie before going to bed. This is Alison's stand

This week was still pretty busy. It seems like until this baby is born we won't have a minute's rest. Monday we had family night. Sara taught us about Moses and the burning bush. She said that we should obey heavenly father, so that was pretty much all you could ask for. Timmy wanted to play chess for the activity, so that was fun as well. Tuesday Alison had stake auxiliary training, so Mike watched the kids while she went. We cleaned up the house, and then, since we were done early we watched an episode of My Little Ponies (Mike was tired, he hasn't been sleeping well.) Alison went to the midwife on Tuesday and found out that the baby is facing the wrong way. He's head-down, which is the important thing, but his face is toward her stomach instead of her back, which tends to lead to longer, more painful labor. She's not having that, so she is doing all sorts of crazy exercises to turn the baby around. Timmy is loving his new tiger pajamas Wednesday was

Monday night we got a new goat named Olive. She is a LaMancha. She is much the same color as Lala was, and only a little bit taller. She is producing about a half a gallon a day, and she is so quiet. We are very happy with her so far. We have started making yogurt again, as well as cheeses. Tuesday Alison went to the midwife and found out that she is Group B Strep negative. She was positive the last two babies we had and so had to get 4 hours' worth of IV antibiotics while in labor. She is really excited about not having to go to the midwife so early on our new baby's birthday. She has been eating a lot of probiotic foods to try and make sure that would be so. Tuesday night Mike went to another game design meeting. It was fun, and he played a cool new game. Wednesday was Rea's date night, and we watched "My Little Ponies: the Movie" (which is the movie with "Nothing can stop the smooze" in it). It was fun, and we had a good time. Thursday Ali

It rained a lot last weekend, so the kids had a great time seeing how the creek changed due to the weather patterns. We all love Forest Kindergarten, even if we don't have anyone joining us right now. Alison is holding off inviting people more because this baby might come at any point (even though he's not due for three and a half weeks). Thursday we picked more grapes. The kids did a good job of staying on task this time, and they got a lot of grapes in the box. Rea enjoyed climbing up the fence to get the grapes. They have been eating them since. Mike also found a website  to generate planet images. He will use this in creating his games. He is really working hard to try to get them done before December. On Friday we went to a play: Drac Man vs Superior Man. It was one of the plays at the Off Broadway Theatre Utah. It was in their usual style: silly jokes and a light story. They had a few parts where they totally went off of the script and ended up improvising a whole

On Tuesday Mike went to his first Board Game Design Guild meeting. He played a game, and had a fun time. Before he can join officially, he has to attend three meetings. They meet twice monthly, so hopefully he can get in enough meetings before the next Ion Award deadline to gain the benefit from joining it. Sara's date night this week was delayed to Wednesday because of Mike's meeting. She ended up picking watching My Little Ponies as her date night. The kids ended up with a lot of movies this week, because on Thursday Alison was feeling rather nauseous in the morning and canceled Forest Kindergarten to let the kids watch a movie while she took a nap. Three movies in one week is unusual for us, but they really enjoyed it. We also came up with the idea of bribing Timmy to stay in bed all night with the offer of a YouTube clip in the morning if he does. It's worked on about 50% of the nights this week. Mike is getting very tired of getting up with him. While we were hom

Did you know that in japan the word trivia translates to "bean knowledge"? Sunday was our Primary Program. Since Alison is the Primary music leader, that took quite a bit of our time and energy last week. Réa and Sara earned some money helping her prepare her visual aids for the kids to sing to. They've also been practicing their talks for the past two weeks (they got a treat for saying their parts from memory whenever Timmy got one for potty training) and listening to the CD of the program songs in the car every time we drove anywhere (Alison is SO GLAD to be done with that). It paid off; both girls said their parts clearly and without needing any prompting, and both knew all the words to all the songs. In fact, all of the kids did a wonderful job singing loudly and clearly. The closing song was Praise to the Man, with the kids singing the first verse and the congregation singing the rest, and Alison told the kids that from where she led the music, the kids were just a

On Saturday morning Mike harvested more honey from our bees. It is probably going to be the last harvest of the year, however as he contracts the hive more, he will likely get a little more honey out of it. Saturday afternoon Grandma and Grandpa Poulson came over and visited us. It was nice to have them over; it's been three months since we saw Grandma and a month and a half since we saw Grandpa. The kids had a wonderful time showing off all their favorite tricks and activities for the grandparents, and Alison was so happy to sit and talk to her parents. We are excited to see them again when the baby comes. (About 6 more weeks, not that we're impatient or anything...) The most exciting thing about their visit for the kids was that they were given new dress ups which they are all very excited about. Rea loves the jewelry, Sara is excited about the dress up shoes, and Timmy is excited about the cowboy costume. He loves to catch horses with his lasso, and then shoot them with

This last week began with Labor day. Mike was off of work, and so we worked around the house and had a good time together as a family. We sang the traditional Labor Day song, and generally enjoyed ourselves. We had a bit of a late night Monday because the kids were in a really festive mood, so it was with a little bit of trepidation that (on Tuesday) Mike went back to work and Alison back to taking care of the kids full time. Things went pretty well, although Mike forgot to wait for Scott to carpool with him. Tuesday night Mike had a daddy daughter date planned with Sara. She picked that she wanted to go Geo-caching at wheeler farm with Mike and the other kids. They were able to find the Geo-cache that was there after a few minutes of searching. It was not in plain sight, however it wasn't hidden in a terrible place. They had some things to put in the box, and they took some things out of the box. It ended up being a very fun pastime. They also got to see all of the animals a

For Rea's date night we bought mint ice cream, and had mint ice cream and watched an episode of my little ponies. Since then, we have been eating mint ice cream every so often, because - hey! mint ice cream. Sara read a book for the first time this week, so we had a goal day party for her. She wanted brownies, so Alison made us a batch, and then we played games together. and ate mint ice cream. On Wednesday Mike finished his dragon game up and entered it into the game competition. He hasn't heard anything back yet, but even if he doesn't win, it was a fun contest. The outdoor preschool is going well. Alison decided to hold it on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays: there is a ward playgroup that meets on Wednesdays, and on Fridays they already have a preschool group. They had a different family join every day this week (which the kids really enjoyed). They managed to stay outside for about 5 hours each day without the kids whining (which was the goal). The kids had a l

Last Saturday the pool closed, so we went to the pool and spent some time there on its last day. We found some left over choke cherries and wandered around. It is a good park. Alison plans on setting up a outdoor preschool, and inviting other home-school kids over to the park to talk and learn about nature. We'll see how it goes this next week. This week Mike worked a lot on his new dragon board game - playtesting it at least 8 times. It has to be done by Wednesday if he is going to enter it into the competition. It is no-where near ready, but it was a fun thing to work on. Alison has been working on making lots of movies for the kids curriculum for this year's home schooling. She has become very skilled at putting words to animations, and has a whole bunch of songs done. I found this on my phone. No idea how it got there. On Monday, Rea gave us a lesson for family night - we can't remember anything else about FHE. On Tuesday we went to Wheeler farm again for Ti

On Monday we had family night. Sara was supposed to do the lesson, so she chose Ammon for the lesson. We put on a youtube video that some young men and women made with a fancy camera and a bunch of fake arms. It was quite surprising to watch. Alison had to remind the girls that it was not real. In a summary of the lesson Sara told us that "It teached us that we shouldn't chop arms off!" Alison went to the midwife on Tuesday. She is officially entering the 3rd trimester this week, so she is now able to look at things on the floor and say "There is no way I am getting that". Other than that, she is feeling great. She didn't even pass out at her glucose screening blood draw this time. Tuesday night was Rea's daddy daughter date night. She chose to go to Maceys and get ice cream cones and then to make ice cream and watch a My Little Ponies episode. It was fun and the ice cream was tasty. On Wednesday the kids went to the dentist. None of them had any c

And all the men and women merely vikings. We didn't write last leek because we were out of town on Monday. This post will cover two weeks. Tuesday the 26th Alison drove out to deliver the duckling to someone that wanted it. The drop off was successful, however we didn't actually deliver the duckling to the person that wanted it, but to the secretary of the office. Hopefully the guy got the duck and is now enjoying his new duck. The whole rest of the week was pretty much consumed by getting ready for the trip, and processing the remainder of the apricots. On Thursday we drove out of town to start our 21 hour drive to Lake Winnipeg. The kids were surprisingly good during the drive. Alison had a scheme wherein we stopped every three hours to let the kids play and then we gave the kids new and exciting toys at the end of each of these stops. The kids went through the entire trip there without nearly any screaming or fighting. I didn't believe it was possible. We als

The kids and adults in our family have adjusted back to life together. It was a little exhausting the first few days, but things are going well. We started a new clean up procedure this week. Now for Team Clean the girls each have two loops of string, one in the front room and one in their bedroom. We pile stuff into the loops and they have to clean up everything in their areas. This has been especially helpful to Sara, who tends to lose focus when cleaning. Having a confined space seems to help her a lot, and we have to spend a lot less time redirecting her. This means that we're less frustrated, which is always nice. We also set a 30 minute timer for Team Clean and whoever has finished their jobs (one parent has the kitchen, the other arranges the girls' piles and then does our bedroom and the bathroom) gets to do something fun. Anyone who hasn't finished doesn't get any parental attention until they do. We like it so far. On Monday, Timmy was in charge of the FHE

Tuesday Alison and the kids went to the park and hung out with some family friends. They had a fun time, and I understand that Alison ordered birthday gifts for me during the trip. Wednesday we packed because on Thursday the kids went to Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sheila's house. They stayed there for three days and had a grand time. They all were sad to go home, and they miss their Grandparents. While The kids were gone, Alison and Mike went on a three day vacation to downtown Salt Lake City to enjoy the cultural things there. We saw a play, went to art exhibits and a museum, ate out at restaurants. It was very fun. While the kids were gone Rea's box car children books on tape arrived, so on the way home we listened to them. Rea loved them and the other kids slept through them. Another interesting thing that happened was that we finished motorizing Alison's bucket bike. It is now a electric/muscle hybrid bike. Alison is really excited about it, and it works pretty go

On Monday we celebrated the 4th of July with a barbecue. We had Amy, Sheila, and their respective families attend. The kids played, the adults talked, and all had a good time. We did fireworks toward the end. The kids all got scared from the morning glories, and lit the grass on fire (fast stomping by the ladies put it out). The 'Bestest Crackering Ballz' were aptly named. Sara chose them because of the glittery pink and purple wrapping, and they were amazing. We did scare Dustin into a screaming fit because all of the cheap crackling balls we had done before were so pitiful that we were standing very close when the "Bestest Crackering Ball" went off, and it was surprising! Even Dustin enjoyed the later ones. After the extended family went home we went off to the park on the hill and watched every firework show in the valley at the same time. It was very fun, and the kids loved running around with other kids at the park in the dark. Next year, we need to bring

This week we finished cleaning out most of our house. We did the kids room, the front room, half of the 3d printer room, and the garage shed. We tried really hard to get done with everything before this Saturday so that we could have a garage sale. We didn't finish the house in time for Saturday, but we had the garage sale anyway. We piled everything outside and posted an ad in KSL telling everyone about the stuff that we were selling. Some of the things were very popular, since people started showing up an hour before the sale was supposed to start and perusing the stuff that we already had out in the driveway. We ended up making over $250 and getting rid of a ton of stuff. Our house feels much more comfortable and spacious with fewer things crowding it. We still had to take a large load of stuff to the DI (more than would fit into the car with our whole family), so I drove it down while Alison and the kids played. One of Rea's friends had ridden her bike over while we wer

Last Sunday Rea and Timmy and Mike went over to a nearby church on a bike ride while Sara and Alison took a nap. They found strawberries and gooseberries in a field behind the church, but had to go home before they could pick them. On Monday the whole family went out and picked a bunch of berries. The kids had a lot of fun and ate a lot of berries. They also stepped on a whole lot of berries. We made a new rule that when picking berries one must take off one's shoes so that one will feel the berries that one steps on. We ended up taking home enough strawberries to make a strawberry pie and freeze a gallon bag full of strawberries for future smoothies. We also got a few gooseberries, which we made a smoothie out of. On Friday, for our date we played two board games while the kids watched two movies. It was fun for the whole family.  Saturday morning Mike harvested more than 10 lbs of honey from the bees. With this much honey, it is likely that we will be selling some. R