Happy Easter!

Howdy all!  What an adventuresome week!  Brooke has been doing great and growing well, she even rolled over for the first time this week!  She's rolled over twice so far (that we know of).  I've been home every time, but she only does it when I'm not looking.  The first time I was upstairs, the second time I was looking away, and when I looked back she was on her back not her belly...  Thanks Brooke.

She's also learned to grab my nose.

Here we see Monica using Brooke as a claw like in those quarter machines you can never win.  Turns out that Brooke is better at grabbing with her feet than those claws.

Wednesday the big snow storm hit.  On Tuesday my program manager sent an email that said if we wanted to work form home the next day he understood because it was supposed to be so snowy, so I figured if it had snowed much in the morning I'd just work from home.  Well, as I was running that morning it was snowing some, but wasn't really sticking anywhere.  By the time I was ready to head to work there was a little snow all over, so I thought "hey, I'm allowed to work from home, maybe I'll just work from home!"  I hopped on my computer to check my email and WORK WAS CANCELED!!  It then proceeded to dump at least 18 inches on us, and it was very windy.  Most of the roofs ended up with very little snow on them, unless somehow protected from the wind, and the tops of trees were low on snow while the bottoms were caked in it!

Here's a picture out of our front door.  You can see that the snow stuck onto the side of our house.

And here is our front porch, with snow stuck to all sides of everything.

And this is one of our window wells.

I was pretty surprised in the morning that work was canceled, but I wasn't gonna complain.  But throughout the day it became pretty apparent that it was not a good idea to drive anywhere.  They never plowed the road outside our house and the freeways were shut down unless you had chains on your tires.  Basically there was just more snow than snow removal could keep up with.

While I was home Brooke and I decided to split a bowl of cereal.

The plow came by once overnight after the storm ended and on Thursday morning the middle of our street was plowed.  Unfortunately this turned the 18 inches of snow, which was already higher than the ground clearance of any of our cars, into at least 2 feet of packed snow which I did not want to ram a car through, so I worked from home Thursday.  All in all it made for a rather interesting week!

Last night we dyed Easter eggs.  Here we are in the process... pretty far in the process.

Gotta protect my shell parts from dye!  That's how you make the really cool eggs at least.  Our "magic stick" of wax didn't work super great.  We'd draw stuff on eggs, and then half of what we thought we drew would get dyed anyway...

Look at that blue egg!?

Here is a close up of some of the eggs.

We have some pictures with all the eggs completed, but we just took them so I'll save them for next week.  We still need to take Brooke's Easter pictures, so I'll keep some egg pictures to go with those.

This morning we hid eggs for each other to find.  It was quite fun.  Fun enough that the discussion did come up of having mini fake-easters throughout the year.  Here's my Easter basket.

And Monica with her's.

It's been a good Easter so far, and Monica's making a super great dinner!  Things are definitely good over here!

Happy St. Pi-trick's Day

Happy Pi Day and St. Patrick's Day everyone!!  What a jam packed week!  It's not every week you get 2 holidays.  First up was Pi Day.  Monica made little key lime pies in our muffin tin, and I thought those look like Brooke size pies!  So I cut her a slice and we gave it to her... long enough to take pictures, then I ate it :).

Outside the holidays it was a pretty normal week of FHE, mutual, and math tutoring.  Of course Thursday started March Madness, and my brackets are doing quite well this year.  I'm not sure when I got good at lucky guessing, but this is 2 years in a row that I've been at the top.  I guess I'm just in the prime of my life right now.

On Thursday Brooke went in for her 4 month checkup!  She is now 13 lbs 7 oz (50%), and 25 inches tall (90%), with a 16.5 inch head(93%)!  4 month also means she got shots again... and it was much worse than last time.  The real issue we had today was that right at the end of the doctor's appointment she was getting hungry, so she was already crying when the  nurse came in with the shots.  Despite already crying I could definitely tell when she felt the first shot.  Her eyes shot all the way open and she stopped crying for a second... and then she wailed!!!  To the nurses credit she got all 3 shots in in at most... 15 seconds.  So at least it didn't take forever and then I picked her up and she started to calm down.  She also got really sleepy this time (she didn't with her 2 month shots).  She even slept for 11 hours that night.

On St. Patrick's Day Monica made an Irish dinner.  It was really good.  There were potato pancakes, and a stew, and things for dessert with names I don't remember...  Monica will probably edit that last sentence with all the correct names when she reads over this. (The dessert was sticky toffee pudding!- love, monica)

This dessert even has dates in it and is still good, impressive.

We took a family St. Patrick's day photo as well.  Just look at all the green!

Yesterday we all went shopping together.  It was decently cold over here, so Brooke was all bundled up in a coat and blanket.  While we were out walking around she fell asleep and when we got back she just looked really cute.

Such Adventures

Toward the end of last week we got a chair style thing for Brooke.  She's been sitting up some lately, always assisted, but seems to really enjoy being upright as of late.  Well, since here chair was here I figured it was time to give it a try.  I think she could still use a little work on sitting up on her own.

Also, we were going through the LDS tools because updating your picture was mentioned in relief society.  This was the household picture for us:

During the week... not much happened.  On Wednesday nights the elders play basketball at the church and I decided to go.  I got super wonderful blisters on both of my feet!  It hurt to walk for the next few days and I wasn't able to run again until Saturday.  All that said it was a lot of fun.  I'll have to try different shoes in the future and see if I can find some relief for my feet.

At some point in the last week a situation arose that resulted in this picture.

And that's the whole story I know...

Brooke has started to like when I bark and growl at her.  It is worth noting that she does not like actual dogs barking.  I tried playing a video of dogs for her and she didn't like it.  Hopefully the video works for reals this time.

In the way of an actual adventure we did go next door and play Ticket to Ride on Friday night.  It was a lot of fun.

I'm posting so late today that we already went to church.  It was good, but Brooke was real smelly.  Pretty sure she had gas most of today so far, which is super exciting for everyone around us!  We're planning to go on a walk here in a little to air her out!

Down Week(s)

Sorry for the egregious error of not blogging last week.  I forgot on Sunday, and by the time I remembered it was Thursday and it just didn't seem worth it.  As I reflect upon the last 2 weeks I realize that this post may be very brief...  

Eventually ago we went on a walk.  It was pretty chilly outside so we bundled up Brooke and headed out.  She loved it the whole time, but Monica got cold.

We went down to the outlets to trade in some clothes we hadn't used for upcoming sizes that we would need clothes in.  While walking through H&M I found these child size mannequins.  I think the picture captures the awkwardness pretty well.  They were approximately Brooke's size, but posed all "cool" and with hats and such.  It was a really weird display.

Then we did capture a few videos of Brooke.  But as anyone with kids can attest, whenever they're doing something cute/great they always stop once the camera comes out.  Brooke was hiccuping in her sleep, but of course I only got the last one!!

She loves to lay in her... play thing, and has to be at an angle so she can kick the poles.  She's maybe reached up and tried to grab stuff once or twice, but she loves kicking and watching everything move.

Well, I tried publishing and watching the videos and got an error... so hopefully they're just still uploading and will work by the time everyone else comes and checks this out.  With that I think I've covered everything of note in the last two weeks.  Hope everyone has a great week, and hopefully we'll have an adventure or two as well!