Howdy y'all! You may remember two weeks ago I said I was heading to Texas, and I did. Now I'm all cowboy boots, and y'alls, and trailer hitchin, and the like! I got back last Sunday, and attempted to write a blog post, but had a headache I couldn't shake until sometime Tuesday, as well as being incomprehensibly tired after working an 85 hour night shift week. More on that to come, but this past week after recovering for a few days I realized it would be easier to just combine the weeks into one blog post, so naturally we had to go camping so that there was TONS to put in this post (we also happened to cross paths with our anniversary too)! Here we are on a hike to kick things off!
Going back to Texas, we tend to need to take test equipment with us when we travel. For the most part this is because we don't want stuff like our expensive and fragile hardware we are planning to test to get damaged going through the airport. In my case, I checked an about 40 pound block of plastic with handles as a checked bag, because we needed it, and it didn't arrive until a few days before our trip... When I checked my "bag" the lady from Southwest asked "What is this?" and I said "Plastic!"
The testing was at Texas A&M, and we stayed at a nearby hotel that happened to have a waffle maker like this! It's just so Texas!
While I was having breakfast, Brooke was at home putting on lipstick! I may not have mentioned this before, but I go through Monica's pictures each week to try to grab our best of the best. It's extra nice for a week like this because you get to see what I was doing, as well as what was going on back at home.
Anyway, back to Texas and we headed in to the cyclotron to try to set things up. Here is a picture of the cyclotron we were using. We had a tour a little later on in the week, and then explained a little on how a cyclotron works. I'd try to give you a basic run-down, but there's just way too much going on in this picture to try to tune you in... If you're really interested, you can ask me sometime, it's pretty interesting.
Anyway, follow a tube across the room and here we are at the beam! The facility installed a degrader in front as well to let us only run at one energy, but be able to get multiple. You know, even as I try to say some "basic" things, I'm realizing this may just be zipping over heads... so... err... this is the beam shooty part :).
One affect of proton radiation is that it can make things radioactive, so the room is pretty thick cement walls (pretty typical of all cyclotrons I've been to), and you get these really crazy thick doors. I stood in the middle for scale, but this door raises up from the floor and takes ~15 minutes to open and ~20 minutes to close! It was probably 7-8 feet across.
Hi Corey! Here we are with our setup! Corey happened to be on the opposite side of the setup in all the pictures I took, and this one he's smiling, so I figured he'd prefer it. I don't think he reads this... so he probably will never know, but maybe I'll tip him off. (If you're reading this, Hi Corey)
Here's the control room. As you can see most of it looks like the 60s and 70s when it was built, but they have put in some new monitors in there. I believe those are new since the last time I went, which I think was about 7 years ago.
And here I am with the setup! I figured I should probably at least get one picture of me while I was on the trip.
Oh and look, here's a picture of the full setup all cabled and everything! Guess I didn't need to include Corey... Sorry Corey!
Meanwhile, while we were testing our setup at the beam, Brooke was doing basically the same thing, except
swinging with her bear... in her underwear...
While I was gone they also went swimming and
Brooke even swam by herself! She's doing such a great job swimming! She used to be pretty afraid of the water, and especially wouldn't float without us holding her! What a big girl!
Back in Texas after the first few days of setup/waiting for everyone else to arrive we started our testing. Our first shift ran from 8 am to midnight on Wednesday, then we had Thursday "off" and I had to work the night shift on Friday. This means that after a 16 hour work day on Wednesday I stayed up until 4 am, and then only slept until 7 am. I can do a pretty good job of waking myself up, so that was my plan for sleep shifting. I knew I'd get super tired in the afternoon and then I'd take a nap until 7 or 8, and then if I could stay awake all night my sleep schedule should be shifted in a day! Well, during those awake hours in the middle was the facility tour. I think the tour started around 2 pm, and we started with a presentation about how a cyclotron works, etc. I think I made it at least half way through before I fell alseep... it felt like college all over again!
Anyway, after the presentation we got to tour the facility. I took a picture of this contraption. Basically they've got a super strong magnet, and they need to stick in inside something that has a slit just big enough for it. They need to use those screws to push it in, but should you mess up at all the magnet will suck to the casing and destroy the entire thing! So... they haven't done it yet. It's waiting for a "brave" volunteer.
Also on the tour we saw a bunch of new and old experiments. I had to grab a picture of this control panel that was hooked up to one of them!
The tour was really cool, and I liked learning about cyclotrons and getting a better understanding of how everything worked. After the tour I slept thorough dinner, and then stayed awake all night! I slept as much as I could the next day, and was at the beam working from about 8 pm to about 10 am on Saturday. The whole system went crazy and everything kept intermittently dying during my experiment (from midnight to 4 am), so that was exciting, but we eventually got if all figured out and fixed the problems for the rest of the tests. All in all, it was a success!
Sunday morning I flew back and was rather exhausted. On the drive home I had the radio off, and it felt like a long drive for no music, so I started to sing church songs. I was singing "How Great Thou Art" (
Here's Brookes rendition) and as I sang the verse about God sending Christ to atone for our sins I had a very strong spiritual moment in the car. I had my testimony of Christ's Atonement reconfirmed. I know that Christ suffered the atonement to make us all clean! I know that if we will live His gospel and truly repent we can be forgiven of our sins and return to live with Him and God for all eternity! It was such a strong spiritual moment. I'm very glad I decided to sing some hymns while driving home!
So, originally I was going to skip church and come home and sleep because I was very tired, but when I called Monica the night before she told me Brooke had been crying on the couch all day wanting me to hold her. I got home around when church started, grabbed a quick bite and changed into my suit, and headed over to the church to surprise everyone! Brooke was so happy to see me! She came with me through all of church instead of going to nursery, and she even said the closing prayer in Gospel Principles! We had a great time together. I also took Winry with me to Gospel Principles and it was great to be with my little girls again!
Speaking of, you may have already seen these, but Winry turned 7 months this past week, or just over a week now I guess! Monica got a some great pictures of her like she always does! Here she is with her flower 7.
And here she is sitting up, pulling on the blanket to get those flowers closer.
And into her mouth they go! She looks like she's having the tastiest plastic salad of her life!
Once Winry was done Brooke wanted to do her 7 month pictures, so here she is in her new flamingo head band!
It looks like she also enjoyed pulling on the blanket and tossing flowers around!
I'm not exactly sure where this GIF came from, but here's Brooke helping Monica by cleaning the windows! I'm glad we got Norwex, because Brooke will take it and clean clean clean!
Oh, and here's Winry chomping down those leaves!
On Thursday We took off to go camping in the mountains by Estes Park! All the camping grounds with reservations were already full, so we were hoping that since we were heading in on a Thursday there would be an open spot at the first come first serve camp grounds. Sadly, there was not, but we talked to some people that were leaving the next day and they said they were leaving really early and we could pay for and reserve their spot ahead of time if we wanted, so we did that. Then we headed into Estes Park to find a hotel for the night. By the time we got a hotel it was time for Winry to go to bed, and Brooke soon followed. Here's a picture of Brooke sleeping on a sleeping bag next to the bed.
And Winry sleeping on the changing mat on the other side of the bed.
And me in the bathroom dealing out a round of 5 crowns.
And Monica, also in the bathroom, playing with me. It was a VERY SMALL room, so we definitely couldn't stay out in the bedroom after the kids were in bed.
Later Brooke turned on her star light, which woke Winry up, so I rocked her and Monica laid down for bed.
Next thing I knew Winry was on the bed in my spot surrounded by pillows! Guess I'll just sleep on the floor!
At least come morning everyone seemed like they were happy, though still a little tired! And Happy anniversary Monica! We've been married for 5 years! It's been a great 5 years too! I love you with all my heart!
Also, the night before we had the privilege to cook in our bathroom, and we heated up the hot dogs we were going to cook over the fire in our large pot with the hottest water the hotel could give. In the end the hot dogs were warm, and the ketchup forgotten at home.
Also, for breakfast, as well as dinner the night before, Brooke got to sit on the potty to eat. She wanted a seat, but Winry was asleep in the other room the night before, so we made due with what we had. In the morning, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Finally Friday we got far enough to set up tent! Victory! Brooke really likes the tent, and of course wanted to be inside!
Once we were settled in we decided to head for a hike. The camp ground (Longs Peak Campground) was right next to a trail head, so Monica put Winry on her stomach...
... and I put Brooke on my back and we headed for the trail head. The trail ended up being a quarter mile from our camp, and we ended up hiking another half mile up the trail before we turned around, so a mile and half total. It was a fun hike, though Brooke did continuously inform us that she wanted to go back to the tent and sleep.
While we were out we even saw this squirrel gnawing on a pine cone!
When we got back we had a little lunch and then we headed into our tent, and really we got there just in time as a big rain storm blew in!
We had a lot of fun listening to the rain from within the tent at the start of the storm, but we were also supposed to be having naps, and I think we got a little excited for that... well... I still took one!
Oh, and here's Winry being a happy camper! Also that elephant she's holding is the one that does the stars. It also can play music.
After I woke up from my nap the rain was over and it was time to go fishing. Brooke has really wanted to go fishing for a long time because in Goldie and Bear they go fishing and catch Big Bart!
I guess technically they catch little Mac, but the legend is all about Big Bart! Anyway, fueled with realistic expectations (they also use a sandwich and piece of pie for bait) we headed off to go fishing! We went to a place called Trout Haven that has a stocked pond and rents out fishing gear. They also clean and gut your fish for you too, which is good because I didn't want Brooke to see me (or really anyone) doing that! Anyway, we got there and they got us all set up, and here's Brooke reeling in a cast I did for her!
After a few casts we got a bite, so I gave the pole to Brooke and helped her
"reel 'im in!" Brooke had SOOO much fun fishing and I'm so glad we took her! When we asked her she said she didn't want to go (probably because she was tired) but I'm glad we went anyway because when we ask her what her favorite thing about camping was it was fishing fishing fishing!
We even got a net to help get the fish out of the water, and a bucket to keep them in until we were done fishing.
We got the fish in the bucket, and
Brooke immediately started talking to "Big Bart!" She just wanted to watch him swim and swim! She was also very (and somewhat surprisingly) okay with the idea of eating her newly acquired fish! We caught a second fish and then called it quits because we didn't want more than we'd eat, and we already had other food for dinner.
On our way back to the camp ground we saw this sign on the side of the road. The road is sloped a little and the picture is crooked but there's a pretty mean drop off on this shoulder that happens to be closed...
Our campsite had a grate that flipped over the fire, and we used that to cook our fish as well as boil water. We took mountain house dehydrated food for our second dinner. All of the cooking worked really well, so that was great! And we got a little more meat than we expected from Big Bart and Big Bart II...
Brooke was super excited to try her fish, and she liked it too! We all enjoyed the fish, and I'm also really glad we had something fresh and different to eat.
Oh, and around this time I thought it expedient to grab a picture of our RV! Good ol' Luna. Which reminds me, on Texas my rental car was a '19 Toyota Corolla! I drive a '99, Monica drives a '09, and I rented a '19! 20 years of Corolla! Also, because I'm afraid I'll forget later, when we were driving home our low tire pressure light came on, so when we stopped for gas we paid for an air pump. No tire was flat, they just all got a little low over time, so that was good news! That almost "took the air" out of a great camping trip!
Oh, and by Friday night, this is how Monica and I felt... at least the kids were in bed.
We slept decently in the tent, and both Brooke and Winry stayed warm! We actually probably got more sleep this night than the night before in the hotel. This is mostly due to Winry sleeping better. She woke up a bunch in the hotel, and at 3 am I had to get up and rock her and stuff and I woke all the way up and was afraid I was awake for the day. I did eventually fall asleep, but the tent provided a more restful night. I woke at about 5 the next morning and got to watch the sunrise!
Monica and Winry came out about the time of sunrise as well! Here's Winry in her bear suit, sleeping and staying warm. You may remember the bear suit from Brooke wearing it to
youth conference!
Anyway, I held Winry for a while while Monica started a fire. Also, I am wrapped in a blanket because someone forgot to bring my jacket! It was fine though, I also stayed warm the whole time.
And here's Monica's fire in it's infancy!
And Winry laying in her car seat, still sleeping!
She did wake up a little later, and was in a super great mood! Looks like someone loves camping!
And you'll probably want to click on this picture and make it bigger to see her super cute smile! I almost missed it when I was going through the pictures!
Eventually Brooke also joined us in the land of the awake, but she wasn't quite as happy as Winry. She ate a little breakfast (like one bite), and then wanted to sit in her car seat. She was ready to go home, and she really missed Jelly too!
We packed up as quick as we could and headed back for home. Brooke was a little sad until we got back in cell reception and started playing music! Then she cheered up and sang along, danced and clapped her hands!
Good ol' Google photos came through and gave me a slideshow of the trip, and you can watch it
here! It was a lot of fun, though it was very tiring, but definitely a good anniversary trip! We let the anniversary celebrations carry over (and we didn't want to cook) so we headed out to dinner for Thai food at Indochine! We got our usual curries (Panang for me, Massaman for Monica) and
Brooke even got to use chopsticks! The first bite she took she actually got a bunch of rice, so I wanted to get a picture because I was so impressed and she just couldn't quite get it to work again!
Today Winry wore her Westminster Griffins shirt, so we had to take a picture to send to Niki!
And once I took a picture Brooke really wanted to take one as well!
And with that, I've made it to the end! Phew, I feel like this was a very long post! Sorry I missed last week, I was just so tired, but at least I still wrote all about it today! I hope everyone is doing fantastic!
