Swim Lessons

Hello everyone!  I hope you are all doing great!  This past week Brooke started swim lessons!  She has been having a lot of fun, which isn't too surprising since she loves going to the pool.  I missed Tuesday because I was at mutual, but I did make it on Thursday.  I tried to go in the pool with Brooke, but she wanted to swim with mommy!

They did a lot of little activities, and Brooke likes to blow bubbles (if she get's her face down into the water) and jump in!  Actually, first, she loves the idea of blowing bubbles, but usually does all of her breathing out before getting her face to the water, and then starts the inhaling... or now just doesn't put her face in the water.  Also, Brooke still has a vertical of 0", so jumping is a gracious term.  She crouches down and then slides forward into the pool.

At the end of this week the weather suddenly got cold, so Brooke got out her warmer pajamas.  I just think this picture is so cute!  Also, you'll notice she has a "book" in her hand.  That's the lyric book that came with the Moana sound track, and she asks us to read it all day long... She doesn't want us to read the lyrics, but instead to look at the picture and tell her about them and the story.  It's kinda fun, but still a little ridiculous.

Also, Brooke was happy to wear warm pajamas the next morning!

Brooke found one of her more efficient ways of drinking water.  Words won't do it justice, so just take a look at this video.

Saturday I spent time working on the basement again.  I finished putting up fire block around the edges of the basement, and then I framed my first section of wall.  I got it put up, plumbed it, and marked the floor so I could put in the baseboard.  Well, that's not as simple as I hoped with 20 year old concrete.  So after trying to drive my concrete nails for a while and bending a few and not being able to get the rest in deep enough I did some research online and headed to home depot to get some cement drill bits.  Then I got home, got out my drill and... my battery was dead...  Anyway, long story short I've almost got all of the holes drilled in the cement, but the wall isn't quite up yet.  Things should go faster in the future though as I have everything I need now.

On Saturday we also headed to a chalk art festival.  It was right next to a park, and since we got there right as it started we spent a little time at the park first.

Brooke found a really great leaf while we were there.  She sure loves her leaves.

When we headed back to the festival things were much farther progressed.  Brooke really liked this picture with tigers in it!

One person also had some chalk out for kids to use.  Each of the art spots had 2 parking spaces, so they just used 1 typically leaving a buffer between them all.  Brooke enjoyed coloring a little with the chalk!

Here is her art work.  You can see some red, and if you look close maybe some blue.  But there's even a little green and orange in there too!  You just have to look super close...

I got a text from the bishop last night asking if we could make it to church a little early.  I was released today, and now I am the ward mission leader.  What a whirl!  I don't know much about what I'm doing yet, but we'll get there.  I went to the Gospel Doctrine class today and it was great!  We talked about families and all the great things we learn from them and why they are so important!  I'm so grateful I have a wonderful family and I can live with for eternity!

And with that art, that's about all we've got for this past week!  I hope everyone is doing wonderful.

The Basement Begins

Hello everyone, thanks for joining us again!  Things have been going well here, and I hope this finds everyone else doing superb!  Brooke is still in love with the bears at Costco, and this past week Monica let one of them take a ride around Costco with Brooke!  She was in heaven.

Jelly is still all about helping us reach peak productivity, but seriously, maybe a little less micro-managing?

For mutual this past week we went geocaching.  There were a few pretty close to the church, so we just walked around and tried to find them.  We went 0/2... :(  We were going to head over to a third one, but it was too close to time up, so we headed back to the church and played basketball for a few minutes while waiting for parents.  While we were out searching for the caches I stumbled upon this!  Fortunately I saw it before I walked into it!

There was a relief society activity this past week and they did water color painting.  Monica had a lot of fun and decided to do a little water coloring the next day too!  Of course, this means that Brooke had to join in! Brooke loved it too!

I think they both had a lot of fun, and Monica painted some pictures to make some cards.  Here's one with flowers.

And here's one with some ACL repairing bandages!  We're going to send this to my sister who just found out she tore her ACL (13 years ago, but finished off the tear recently).  It turned out great! I think I'm going to have Monica do water color paintings for a game, I just need to come up with one first!

Monica and Brooke headed to the zoo Friday morning.  They had a lot of fun, though Brooke was a little bit of a wreck so they didn't stay too long.  They did manage to get a great picture of a snow leopard for me though!

Yesterday just about everything arrived for us to get going on our basement.  Here's a panorama of it now that we've cleaned up the carpet and stuff.  We still have some things down there, and some/most of it will stay down there and get rotated around as we work (I'm looking at you, treadmill!).

In the morning our pressure treated wood arrived.  This is what I needed first, but I got a little worried because this was far from the majority of the order.  We called Home Depot, and after a short investigation they called us back, said they weren't sure what had happened, but they'd get the rest of the wood over ASAP!

And within an hour or two it was at our house!  That is hopefully enough wood to frame the entire basement, guess we'll see how my estimating skills were.

I moved all of the wood into the garage, so now Tuna is out on the streets.  I guess my real motivation to finish the basement is to have a parking spot for my car again!  Between moving all of this into the garage, and the pressure treated lumber into the basement I moved over 3000 lbs of lumber yesterday!  It didn't hit me until I tried to get out of bed this morning, at which point I promptly gave up, rolled over, and slept for another 2 hours.

In the midst of the basement storm yesterday we headed over to Chik-fil-a because we had some coupons for free food!  Chik-fil-a does a bunch of little things that definitely makes it the best place to go with kids.  One such example is the stick down place-mat that was on the high chair, and the little container of cheerios over by the straws and ketchup.  Perfect to tide Brooke over while we waited for our food.

Coming back to the basement, once I got all the wood sorted out it was time to get started.  I spent a little time with the air compressor and nail gun making sure I was doing everything right before I started on the wood that mattered.  Also, when my frame nailer came I learned something about frame nailers.  When you ask someone if they have a frame nailer, and they say they don't know, they don't have a frame nailer.  Just look at this thing!  It can drive a 3 1/2" nail!  I just needed 3 inch nails, but still, it's huge!  I was thinking about letting the teachers come over and learn about framing for mutual one night, but now... I'm second guessing that decision...

I wasn't able to make too much progress on Saturday, what with the late arrival of the wood and we were actually quite busy.  I started to put up some fire block around one of the walls though.  It's a code thing, since I'm not going to put my framing right against the cement wall (because of the insulation) I have to have a fire block at the top, and blah blah, no need to go into details.  Anyway,  I got the fire block up along one side of the house, and started doing some measuring for other places.  As I looked around and tried to do some planning for what walls should be done first I realized just how much of a mess the builders left... Guess when you don't have to finish the basement you just do what's easy... sigh.  Anyway, I anticipate having some interesting pictures of work around throughout this process, and I'll chronicle them all here!

There's just a few more days until my kickstarter ends (67 hours to be exact (at the time of this writing)!)!  If you haven't yet, now is the time to check it out before it's too late!  Here's the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2124836706/egyptian-architects

Today in Teachers Quorum we talked about keeping the Sabbath holy.  It was a great lesson!  I think the best part was that everyone participated.  Various questions came up about the Sabbath and what they did to keep it special, how they helped others, etc.  It was great to see all of their examples about the choices they make on Sunday to ensure they get to church on time, get the Sacrament ready, spend time with their families, etc.  

IT'S A...

Hello everyone, and good day!  I hope you are all doing well!  This past week we found out the gender of our new baby!  And as you may have noticed in the title, it's a GIRL!! (Just kidding, it's not in the title so it's more dramatic!)  Brooke has taken to calling the baby Hannah, because that's the main character in her potty book...  We're all very excited for the new baby!

With Monday being a holiday we decided to go take a hike.  We went down to Castle Rock to climb... castle rock?  It was technically called Rock Park, but I'm pretty sure the town got it's name because the rock looks like a big castle up on a hill.  Anyway, it's a pretty short hike, about a half mile up, and Brooke loved hiking where she could!

Here we are getting back to the car.  Brooke was very tired by the time we got back, but there's the rock off in the distance.  We went to Cafe Rio to celebrate a successful hike!

Later that day we found ourselves at Target to burn some time and look for various odds and ends.  While we were there Brooke had to sit next to the dog and pet it.  Petting the dog took the form of grabbing it's collar and yanking on it... probably good it's not a real dog.

While at Target Monica and I decided to get some puzzles because they sounded fun.  It was a box of 8 puzzles, and we're working our way through them.  They range from 100 to 500 piece puzzles which means they're a little faster to do than the 750 and 1000 piece puzzles we were looking at.  That's probably for the best because we can get them done after Brooke goes to bed and then don't have to worry about Brooke getting into an uncompleted puzzle the next day!

On Tuesday Monica was not feeling great and having a little bit of a rough day at home.  She felt bad because she hadn't been able to take Brooke out to play or anything, so when I got home I whisked Brooke away to the park!  We had a lot of fun, and it was hard to get Brooke to go home!  I finally got her to head to the card, but we had to stop at the bumpy on the way.  And yes, she was "jumping" onto it!

Brooke loved the bagster!  Every time we'd go anywhere she would point to it and say "bagster, bagster!"  Naturally I had to get a picture of her with it before it was taken away.

Brooke has started to do much better with the cat lately.  She usually is very soft and only pets her, and doesn't try to pull her tail or hair or anything.  This week we've also helped her hold Jelly a few times too.  Whenever she gets to hold her she always hugs her in close and snuggles her face on Jelly!

Thursday was the fateful day that the bagster was hauled away!  When I heard the truck pull up I took Brooke outside to watch so she could wave and say bye!  She fortunately hasn't seemed to miss the bagster since it left us.

Thursday was also our trip to the doctor to get the ultrasound and find out the baby's gender!  We had them write it down and had a friend put frosting in some cupcakes for our reveal.  We invited people over and tried to have a video call with all of our family.  We took a video too, and here it is in case you missed it! We're excited for Brooke to have a little sister!

Oh!  And here's Jelly waiting for her diaper change.  No wonder Brooke woke up saying "Jelly did it!" pointing into her closet.  (Don't worry, nothing had happened in the closet).

This morning Monica was using the blender to make pancake batter, which of course is loud!  So I taught Brooke to put her hands over her ears!  Such a relief!

I think those are the highlights of our past week!  I hope everyone else is doing fantastic!  The kickstarter is still running for a little over a week, so feel free to go check that out if you haven't!  We just hit the stretch goal for higher quality cards, so that's great!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2124836706/egyptian-architects

This week was stake conference.  It was great, though it's hard for Brooke to be in a single meeting for 2 long hours.  We spend most of the last half hour out in the halls looking through some New Era and Ensign magazines that the bishopric keeps outside their offices.  Anyway, at the Priesthood Leadership meeting I went to yesterday we had talks about going to the rescue.  While much of the discussion was focused on finding and bringing back less actives, my personal take away was that I need to start looking for more service opportunities around me and participate in them.  Today in one of the talks someone mentioned that when you are worried you should find someone who has it tougher than you and serve them, and just like that you're worries will go away.  I'm not worried about anything right now, but it is true that when you serve others you are blessed and your general attitude improves!  I encourage everyone to look for ways they can serve those around them, and make service a larger part of your life!

Finishing the Basement (and a trip to the zoo)

Hello all!  I hope you are all doing terrific!  We're doing great here.  I am super tired today, but we'll get to that story toward the end.  We had quite a picture filled week!  That's probably a good thing, right?  I mean, I'm assuming that's really why you come here.  To start things off here's a little ditty with Brooke and a bubble.  She loves playing with bubbles, and Jelly has started to chase them around too!

This picture is a miss from last week.  Somehow I didn't see all of the pictures of Brooke sweeping!  Last Saturday I edged around the lawn, and Monica came out with our push broom to sweep everything up.  Brooke wanted to help, and lucky for her we have this turtle push broom!  She had a blast helping to clean up all the grass!

Last Sunday afternoon we went over to the temple grounds to walk around.  We thought it would be fun and a good Sunday activity!  We were right!  While we were there a worker happened to walk by and asked if we'd like a picture.  We were around back in what we assume is a little place for wedding pictures, and family pictures of course!  We had a lot of fun, except for Brooke tripping and scraping her knees! :(

Brooke was very interested with the fountain out front.  She kept wanting to see the water, but then when we put her up close she'd get scared and want to get down.  I'm not sure she ever got wet even a little!

Monica is watching a baby in the ward one day a week.  Her name is Lyla.  Last week when she was here Jelly took an interest in her.  Eventually this resulted in Jelly laying on her lap.  She started farther away, and slowly rolled and scooted closer to Lyla!  The really good news here is that Jelly should do great with the new baby!

One day this past week Brooke decided she'd had all she could take, and collapsed on the stairs!  Sometimes she's a little dramatic...

Also, Jelly has found a new fun place to hang out.  We have a little window next to our front door, and there's this curtain thing in it.  Well, Jelly has figured out how to slip around the side of it and push it open.  She seems to enjoy it in there, and I really don't mind her going in there, except that if Brooke sees her in there she always comes and terrorizes her.

This past week we were also able to make it out to the zoo!  It's great to have a zoo pass.  I like being able to head to the zoo and only spend a few hours their looking around without feeling like I'm wasting my money or something like that.  And, we get to leave before it starts to get really hot!  Anyway, currently the zoo has a dinosaur thing going on.  They have a bunch of big dinosaurs all around the zoo that move and roar!  The one's below even shot out water!  I thought it was really neat, but every time we walked by one Brooke would say "loud... loud... loud!"

This turned out to be one of the best zoo trips we've ever had.  The lions were awake this morning, which isn't typically the case.  And not only were they out, they were laying right up on the glass!  I don't know if you've ever been within 6 inches of a lion, but they are HUGE!  I don't think you realize just how large they are unless you can get up really close to them.  We tried to get some pictures with Brooke up next to them, but they were close enough and large enough that she'd get scared after we set her down.  We did get some pictures, but Brooke wasn't quite as excited in them as we'd hoped.

In the other glass window there were 4 male lions eating.  This one was still within just a few feet of us.  The zoo seemed to have a lot more lions than we remembered.  I don't know if they recently got more or what, but it was a good day for lions!

Of course we had to go see the tigers, they're Brooke's favorite!  Brooke was really excited to see the tiger, and loved to watch it drink.

After it had it's drink it went and climbed up on it's walkway.  I've seen the walkway before, but there's never been a tiger up there before.  I had always wanted to see one go up there.  You could even walk right under it!

The lizards were even being cooperative!  The chameleon was walking all over the place, and that's more interesting to watch than you might think.  The only thing that would have made this better is if it would have changed colors too... but alas...  Guess you gotta save something for a future trip.

We also stopped by to see Ol' Mossy the turtle.  He didn't do much, just sat there, living the dream, growing moss...

When we walked by the hippo it happened to be eating some grass.  Good thing I grabbed this picture because Brooke loves it!  The next day after our trip she said "hippo, eat grass" and pointed to our phones.  We showed her the picture and she loves it.  She asks for it quite frequently now.  So on second though... maybe it would have been better to pass on this picture...

Later that day Jelly sat on Brooke's lap.  Brooke always wants Jelly to sit on her lap (she must get that from me!).  Jelly typically doesn't want to sit on Brooke's lap (also from me probably...), which isn't surprising.  Well, at least for one glimmering moment Jelly did sit on Brooke's lap.  They even played together a little.

This past week we also started to make some progress on finishing our basement.  I took our basement plan in to get checked on Wednesday, and my plan passed!  So that means we can get started on the work.  That really means it was time to clean up the basement.  Before we started work we needed to throw away all of the carpet scraps that had been left in the basement since who knows when, as well as destroy the couch that was stuck down there.  We also needed to go through the stuff down there and start finding some new homes for some of it.  We did a little of that yesterday, but there's still more to do on that front.

We picked up a bagster to throw all the carpet and couch pieces in.  It all just barely fit!  Phew!!!  Now I just need to schedule a pickup and get that thing gone!  So far we've made good progress, and we may go get some lumber tomorrow and start doing some of the framing.

This past week I got a cat highlight video from Google Photos.  A bunch of the pictures are of Jelly sleeping in different places, and watching it made me want to try to get some more interesting pictures of her.  This past week Brooke has been getting into these books that have finger puppets with them.  The puppets tend to get spilled all over the floor, to Jelly's delight!  Take that wicked witch!

Also, Jelly (as I'm sure all cats do) after playing with a toy for a little while will pick it up in her mouth and carry it off somewhere else.  This morning she was playing with an outlet cover (one of her favorite toys) and kept picking it up and carrying it back and forth across the room.  I was able to get a picture while she was on the move.  It is quite blurry, but at least you can tell what's going on.

I think that rounds out the highlights for this week.  My kickstarter is still running, and can be found here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2124836706/egyptian-architects

There's about two weeks left, but if you're interested don't wait till the last minute!  The earlier you hop on board the better as it helps encourage others to as well, and then things like card quality upgrades, etc. are more likely to be unlocked.  And for those of you who have backed the project, thank you so much!  You're the greatest!

In church today we talked about after Joseph Smith was killed and the succession of the prophets.  I am so grateful that we have a prophet on the earth today to lead and guide us.  I am grateful that we have an organization in place to ensure that we will always have all of the keys of the priesthood here on earth, and that the fullness of the gospel will never be taken away again.  I know that we have a living prophet, and that the prophet and apostles receive revelation from Heavenly Father on how to direct His church and His work here on earth.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.