Bowling for Family Fun Day!

Hello everyone!  I hope you are all doing wonderfully today!  Monica mentioned sometime recently that she wanted to start having a monthly family fun day where we could all go out and do something great together.  We decided to go bowling for our first month, and we hoped Brooke would like it.  Great news, she loved it!  Here Brooke is with Monica after we finished!

Sunday night/Monday morning it snowed, and then it was pretty warm on Monday which meant the snow stuck together really well by the time Brooke and I got out there.  This was the first good snowman snow this year and we took full advantage!  Brooke walked over to me at one point without her mittens and said "I got sticks!" so those are mutually exclusive now...

After the snowmen we headed to the back yard for some laps!

Meanwhile Winry was inside keeping warm.

She even spent some time on the floor!  As for us outside braving the cold?  Well, we almost did enough loops to get rid of all the snow!

This past week Brooke got some new pajamas, and one of them came with a matching night gown for a doll!  She loves it, and her bear has been wearing that night gown ever since!

On Wednesday we went over to Old Navy, and while we were there Brooke was helping bear dance to the music being played.  She saw a little girl, a year or so older than her, and kept walking to about 3 feet from her and shaking bear like crazy to help him "dance!"  The little girl wasn't sure what to do, but Brooke just kept going and never said anything to her, just walked a little close and started shaking bear!!

Brooke also learned a new song last week in nursery, and one morning we got her up and she started singing it for at least 30 minutes!  It was really great!  She said they sang it again in nursery today.  We asked if she sang along and she said "NO!"

Monica also had to run an errand and took Brooke with her and when they came back Brooke had a PINK DOUGHNUT!  She was really excited about it, and she ate the whole thing!

Brooke continues to take care of all her stuffed animals, which often means that between her and Jelly always sleeping in the swing there's typically nowhere to put Winry...  This past week bear found a new favorite food, Jelly's fish!

On Wednesday for date night we went to look at some of the new homes being built by us.  We looked at these ones there were "city" style homes.  The houses are all narrow, as wide as a two car garage, but are three stories tall and most of the models had a roof top balcony area too, so kind of like 4 stories.  It was fun to go walk through them, and Brooke had a blast trying out every chair and laying on every bed!

Also, here's a cute picture of Brooke and Winry.  I have no context for this one...

Saturday morning we woke up, got ready, and headed to Boondocks to go bowling.  Here's Brooke, getting in the zone in her little bowling shoes!

Brooke had a blast, and she did a really good job too!  I may have paid close attention to how I set up the roller thing and even to how we placed the ball on it.  By the end of the game I was able to aim it pretty well for her and I think the main thing holding her back was just that her ball was too light to smash through the pins, but really, she didn't care.  She just had a blast rolling the ball!  Here are our finals scores.

After bowling we spent a little time in the arcade, won some tickets and got some prizes, and then headed back home.

This morning we went for a family walk.  Brooke was wearing her too small pajamas, flip flops, and her winter snow coat...  At least she can pull it off.

After church today Brooke decided she needed to put on Monica's shoes.  Not the best choice for walking around, so we made her take them off after we got a picture.

Also, Winry is 2 months (plus some days) old today!  So right on time we took 2 month pictures!  Here's my favorite.

And Jelly decided that she could share her swing with Mr. Bear today.

Today in church we had a lesson about the life of Jesus Christ.  It was a great lesson, and we talked about several events in His life.  Obviously there wasn't enough time to go through everything, but there was a great spirit in the room.  Toward the end of class we of course talked about the atonement.  The spirit was so strong in the room testifying of the truth of what we were discussing.  It was awesome!  I said the closing prayer, and in the prayer I gave thanks for the atonement, and at that moment I had a great feeling come over me confirming to me the truth of atonement.  That Jesus Christ suffered for our sins so that we could repent and return to live with God, and that He loves us and always desires to help us if we will look to Him.  I share this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Pi Day

Howdy all!  I hope you are doing great!  This past week was pretty great over here, but how could it not be with PIE!?!  Brooke continues to love being a big sister!  She just adores Winry and loves to help her however she can!

As mentioned, this past week was pi day!  Monica made a peanut butter chocolate pie for us to eat, and we had a chicken pot pie for dinner!  I've been really bad at taking pictures lately, and I know this because the only picture I have is of the chicken pot pie in the oven, and I only took it so I could text it to Monica to see if it was done...  but at least I have one!

Brooke went on a short potty training adventure this past week.  I think she was committed to the idea for 2 days.  She did a good job too.  She had some accidents, but she used the potty several times.  But after about 2 days she decided she was done and asked for diapers again...  She even had a play day with her friend, Eden, and they both worked on potty training together!

For those who don't know march tenth was Mario day (MAR10), and google maps let you use Mario in a go-kart as your location indicator when you were getting driving directions.  Don't worry, I grabbed a screen shot.  I know it's a limited time thing, so if you haven't gotten directions lately get some soon!

I don't know what it is about kids and clothing, but until at least a year they never seem to stay in it right.  With Brooke it was typically just getting her feet out and being curled up in the chest of her onesie, but Winry has taken it to new levels with her latest toe escape...

On Saturday morning Brooke got Monica's phone and wanted to take some pictures.  She took 95 in total (in about 2 minutes), and I grabbed a picture of me and Winry that she took. Most of them were of things like our feet and the play mat...but this one turned out pretty good!

As well as one of Monica, and I picked this one because it has the most of her head in it of any of them. (Note from Monica- please ignore the unfortunateness of this picture, in fact you can just skip looking at it all together if you want!)

I went to a podiatrist this past week to have him look at my foot and tell me his thoughts on my plantar fasciitis and I ordered orthodics.  I think the saddest news I got from the whole thing is that if I had just gone in 5-6 months ago I wouldn't have had to stop running... but the good news was he basically said I can start running again.  So we went for a half mile run yesterday all together and I got to push the double stroller.  It was great to get out and run again!  When we got home Brooke wanted to run too so we went in the back yard and took turns chasing each other.

I went to the temple on Saturday morning, and while I was gone Monica did an exercise video and Brooke joined her!  When they were done they needed some protein shakes to recover!  Everyone was so active this past week!  Jelly even did some stretches down the stairs.

Today in sacrament meeting things were going pretty well.  Monica had to take Winry to go feed her, and while they were gone Brooke asked to get in Winry's car seat,... so I put her in :)!  Monica was really excited when she got back!  She was good in there for the most part, but just a little before the end of sacrament meeting she started saying "Sooooo... Winry had a blowout last night." over and over.  Both our row and the row behind us were laughing pretty hard.

Also, Monica reminded me of another fun story from nursery a few weeks ago.  When we picked her up we asked her what she did in nursery and she said she cried.  So we asked "What did your teachers do when you cried?"  Her reply? "They put my shoe back on!"

Today in church we had a lesson about the scriptures.  The scriptures are such a blessing in our lives!  I am so grateful we have the scriptures to help us learn and remember Christ always.  I encourage everyone to read from the scriptures daily.  I know that scripture study has provided peace and enlightenment in my life.  I know the Book of Mormon is true, and is the word of God.  I know that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by the power of God.  I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Winry Smiles!

Hello everyone!  I hope you are all doing great!  We're doing well out here.  This past week flew by, and sadly, I didn't not take many pictures.  Fortunately I go through Monica's pictures every week to look for moments I missed at work to include, and all but one of the pictures is from Monica this week... oops!  I'll try to take more pictures this upcoming week.

I do have good news though!  I forgot to put in a video last week, but I'm remembering today!  Recently Alexa (Amazon Echo) learned a new skill, which is to let you talk to Pikachu!  Brooke really likes talking with pikachu, and especially likes when it sings happy birthday and tells her stories.

On Monday BYU had a big time basketball game against St. Mary's in the WCC tournament.  That means everyone had to show their team spirit all day!  The game didn't start until 9:30, and we figured BYU would lose since St. Mary's beat us twice already this year, so we didn't intend to stay up.  Winry had other ideas, and I was up holding her until 2 minutes left, so I got to watch the whole game, and WE WON!  It was pretty exciting and gave me hope for the game against Gonzaga the next day, but Gonzaga said "no thanks, bro" and rolled us... sigh...  Anyway, you can't see Winry's shirt, but she and Brooke had matching shirts.

Monica ordered some cleaning stuff from Norwex that came this past week.  Brooke is always interested to see what is in packages, and was excited to get to clean, so Monica got the window cloth wet and let her go to work!

On Thursday Monica and a bunch of her friends had a zoo day!  Brooke wore her flamingo mask to the zoo.  This is one of the masks that Monica made for Brooke's birthday, and just recently she's loved wearing it!  She also really likes flamingos right now because of her book called "Pink Lion."  It's about a pink lion, and he lives with flamingos, so whenever we see flamingos we always refer to them as "Arnold's family."  This also includes the lawn flamingos in the yard around the corner, and we always have to walk by the house when we go out even though it's not really on the way to anything.

Also, Winry may have been smiling a little before, so I may have mentioned it before, but this past week she really turned those cheeks on!  Here is my attempt at getting a picture of her when I was making her smile... I think I missed the moment.  This is the only picture in the blog this week that I actually took... and in the end Monica's video is far superior...  Maybe I should just stop taking pictures...

Anyway, I think that's about it for us out here.  Today we had a lesson about repentance.  Repentance is very important, and we should all repent every day.  This helps us to be able to work on issues as they come up, and hopefully make goals and progress every day.  We also talked about having Godly sorrow when we repent, which is something I feel I need to work on, especially with daily repentance.  Sometimes I feel like when repenting daily it's easy to gloss over the things you did wrong or need to improve and just move on.  It's very important to take time to reflect on what you did wrong, why you need to improve, and how you can do better or avoid the situation.  I know that through repentance we can find peace in our lives and come closer to Christ and our Heavenly Father.  I share this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Boogie Time!

Hey all!  I hope everyone is doing fantastic!  Things are going good here.  In fact, things are going dancing good!

This past week we got out our baby tub for Winry, and Jelly took full advantage.  She sure loves climbing into everything!

This past week Brooke wanted to blow bubbles in the back yard, and we had to take Winry out with us too!  I think this is Winry's first time playing in the backyard.  We all had a lot of fun.

This past week Monica had a few people over, and one of them brought her daughter who brought her rocking chair that she out-grew and Brooke LOVES it!!  She's been sitting in her pink rocking chair all week, and only tipped once that I know of.  Look at that smile!

I don't know where this workout outfit came from, but it appeared on Brooke's floor this past week and she was so excited to put it on.  I received this picture while I was at work.

Here's a shot of Winry taking a nap :)

On Saturday we headed off to the zoo in the morning!  Summer hours even started on the 1st, so we were able to head out an hour and a half earlier than expected!!  Everyone had a lot of fun, and this was Winry's first trip to the zoo!

When we were done for the day, Monica headed to the car and fed Winry, and in our extra time  Brooke participated in the zoo's hug and release program.  We started with the turtle...

A purple giraffe...

A pink tiger...

and a normal tiger!  There were a lot more hugs than that given, but I missed a bunch of them when I was trying to get my camera out.

After the zoo we headed home for nap time.  When Brooke woke up it was time to check our new tent!  We got a tent at Costco to use this summer, and wanted to set it up while they still had them at Costco just in case it had a hole in it or something.  It's a "dark room" tent, which means they're made to block out a lot of light, so we were also testing that out too.  The tent was great, and it blocked a lot of light so that should be good for camping nap time!

Also, Brooke LOVED the tent.  I don't know if love is an adequate word.  We just had to stay in there, to the point that we came in to make dinner, but took it back out to the tent to eat.  We had to get out our lantern because it got dark in there, and then when I came out it definitely wasn't dark enough to need a light.  Anyway, we had a lot of fun in the tent.

I think that's all I have for this week.  I hope everyone has a great week!