Missing my Girls!

Hello hello!  What a busy and kinda crazy week it's been.  I was originally supposed to be out of town on a work trip, but about 2 weeks ago they moved it back a week (surprise! I'm writing this from my hotel room).  Well, I was pretty sure the dates for this test were set in stone as the test was planned a few months ago, which gave enough time for us to plan a trip for Monica to go visit her sister, Melanie, in St. Louis.  Only one trip got moved back, and so on Tuesday everyone but Jelly left for vacation.  Brooke and Winry were very excited to see me at the airport when I picked them up!  In fact, I snuck up behind Winry and surprised her and she was SOOO happy!  She had a huge smile on her face for several minutes.  You can tell in the picture below!

So before everyone took off, first we had a visitor!  Gram came out to help Monica and visit Melanie together and help with getting through the airport.  On Monday night we headed to Benihana for Monica's birthday dinner (even though her birthday was a couple weeks ago!).  The girls had a great time, like, a REALLY great time!  Winry wasn't shaking with excitement in that video, but at some points she was.  It was just a party while we watched our food be made!  And Brooke really liked her hat-menu!

Here we all are after dinner!  We had a lot of fun, and it was great to have Gram join us.

On Tuesday Everyone took off for St. Louis and left me alone.  So what did I do? Naturally I worked on the basement every  night.  I finally got to making our windowsills.  We wanted to match upstairs, and the ones upstairs were custom cut work with a nice router edge on them, so I made boards to match.  Here's what it looked like before:

And here it is after!  I think I had the router bit just a little bit lower than the ones upstairs, but it still looks really good!  Definitely better than it did before.

While everyone was out we always try to do at least one video call each day.  The girls quickly found a favorite game to play with dad while we were talking, and that was to put me in Anaya's bouncer and bounce me!  I recorded my screen, so that's why there's no sound, but I'm still glad I got it documented.

On night while I was cleaning up my tools in the basement I saw a bunny that fell in our window well!!  So I hopped in and got it out.  Brooke and Winry were both very happy that I saved the bunny.

The cousins got to spend time together, and Brooke held Anaya!  They were all very happy to be together, or at least Anaya wasn't crying!

While out there they visited a local chocolate factory to Winry's delight!

And Brooke got to practice making chocolate herself!

They also went on a river cruise, and Brooke was very willing and happy to get a picture in front of the arch...

They also went to a free zoo, and of course they found the flamingos!!  What else would you go to the zoo to see?

The zoo had this cool drinking fountain that had spouts at all kinds of heights.  I thought this was really cool, so I decided to put it in.

Brooke slept on an air mattress, and Monica told me that it had a leak in it, so every night it got more and more deflated.  By the end of the trip it was deflated and ready to pack up, but you know what?  Brooke didn't mind one bit and slept just fine.

Meanwhile I spent my Saturday morning trying to finish up and clean up the garage for everyone's arrival home.  Here's the sawdust pile from all my work in the basement.

And here is the hall closet with it's permanent shelves all put up.  Just need to put some metal brackets on the walls so we can put the rest of the shelves up.

And here's the crazy angled closet in the bedroom.  I also finished up the molding in the places I could, and now that these shelves are up I can do the molding in the closets!

Brooke did great on the flights as she got to enjoy Doc McStuffins, and she also let her "red panda" watch along with her.

And soon we were all back together, and everyone was very happy about that!

We headed straight to a ward activity for dinner, which was a nacho bar, and then took the kids home for bed time.  Today I had to head to the airport right after church.  Winry fell asleep on the way, and I opened her door to give her a kiss goodbye, and when I closed it she woke up and started crying. :(  Sorry Monica!  Sounds like things were a little rough at home tonight, mostly because the kids were still tired after their trip.  As for me, I'm out in Davis, CA getting ready to start radiation testing tomorrow.  Hopefully everything goes well!