Counter Cuts

Hello on this fine day!  This past week Monica decided she'd had enough and shaved her head!!  Not really, but she did get a hair cut.  She went over to a friend in the ward, Brandi, to get her hair cut.  She even got to lay on the kitchen counter to get her hair washed!!  What fun!

Lately the girls have really been enjoying playing hide and seek at the park.  It might be Brooke's favorite game, though she also loves a good game of T.O.T.S.  Winry will even take turns counting and looking for Brooke!

Monica finished Brooke's apron this past week!  Brooke was very excited to have it and had to have a fashion show!  Brooke wears it every time she cooks with Monica. It's been a huge success!  In fact, she's wearing it and helping make brunch right now.

On Thursday, I believe, the girls headed to Eleanor's house to play.  When Monica went in to see how things were going, Eleanor, Winry and Brooke were all cuddled in bed having a blast!

On another park excursion everyone needed sun glasses, and Winry just had to put her own on!  Perfect!

On the way home from the park, Melvin was sitting on his front porch.  When he saw the stroller coming he jumped down and came right over!  The girls got out and were delighted to pet him.  Melvin is maybe the most social cat I've ever met, and just loves to be around people!  The girls had a blast and didn't want him to go!  Also, since Melvin came up, I've got another funny story that I don't remember if I shared before.  One day there was a piece of pizza in the road, and we saw Melvin out picking at it.  The next time we got in the car, the pizza was still in the road and Brooke exclaimed "look, it's Melvin's pizza!"  Melvin, a true cat of the world.

On Saturday, as mentioned, we all headed to the Green's house so Monica could get her hair cut.  Alayna and Brooke are great friends as well, so we all came along and the kids all played together.  Here's a picture of Monica's hair before.

And here it is after!  I don't think we've taken a picture where you can see Monica's face... but once she reads this that might change :).  Anyway, her hair cut looks great!  It's very different than before.

And with that, the week's a wrap!  I hope you're all doing wonderful.  Have a great week ahead!

A Week Bookended by Sickness

So, you may remember that I was able to drop a p.s. last week about the kids both being sick.  Well, we got the kids ready for bed, and in doing so made sure they both had their hair up/out of their face just in case.  Brooke was very excited to have "horn hair!"  It's a little hard to believe that she threw up just an hour or so before this picture, right?  Fortunately everyone slept well and it seems the worst was behind us.

The next day Jelly was getting a drink in the sink, and decided to start attacking the water.  I don't know if she does this often, but I've never seen it before!  What a crazy cat!

That night when we were getting ready for bed, Winry started to pull out her big tricks!  I don't know where she got that idea from, but she just started to put a book up on her feet to balance it over and over!  It was really cute and awesome!

On Tuesday while Gram was still in town, everyone (but me) headed to the museum!  They had a great time playing and showing Gram all the most important sights.  In the afternoon they took Gram back to the airport so she could head back home.  The girls were sad to see her go, but we're all happy that we got to have a whole lot of fun together!

On Wednesday morning, Winry found Brooke's Cinderella shoes and slipped them on.  She was really cute walking around in them!

Brooke missed preschool on Monday since she threw up the night before, so her second day was Wednesday!  It wasn't quite as great as the first day, but she still liked it and is excited to go back.  She got two bloody noses at preschool.  That would be her first time.  Nothing happened, it just started bleeding.  She also got pulled off a slide and pushed on the playground.  So a little rougher than the first day, but she was still a happy camper.

Later that day, the girls were playing with stickers, and a piece of the edge was on the floor and got stuck on Jelly's paw!  Monica said she was running around for a minute or so trying to get it off but couldn't.  In the end Monica helped her get it off, but not before taking a video!  Brooke still laughs about it when she sees the video or the animation below, so it must have been even better in person!

On Friday for family scripture study we acted out Lehi's dream.  The kids loved it, and honestly we should probably act out whatever the story is each week.  Brooke is at the perfect age for that right now and always wants to act things out over and over.

On Saturday we did some grocery shopping, which means we rode the horse at King Soopers.  Brooke started doing something that I started to call "fancy riding."  When Monica finished checking out, she came over and saw Winry taking her turn.  Winry also took part in fancy riding!  Brooke was doing the same thing, but with both hands forward.

And then to cap off the week, Winry threw up this morning... all over me... again.  Brooke hasn't gotten sick this time though, so lets hope she keeps going strong!  Winry stayed home from church with Monica today and I took Brooke with me.  Winry's also doing a good job of staying (mostly) happy through a rough time!

Well, I think that's all I've got for this week.  Let's hope for a full week of health ahead!  Have a great week!

Winry Turns 2!!

Happy Birthday Winry!!  This past week was pretty crazy.  I put Winry to bed one night, and I kid you not, the next morning when I went to get her she'd doubled in age!  Let's hope that's just a once in a life time occurrence!  We had a birthday party for her on Saturday, and she had a great time all day!  Just look at the excitement on her face.

This past week Brooke also started preschool!  What a week!  She goes Monday and Wednesday, and on Monday this week she went to meet her teacher, so her first day was Wednesday.  She was super excited to go, and she had a wonderful time.  She sent me a Marco Polo (video chat message) once she got home and told me all about everything that happened.  She's doing great.

We've already got a funny story from preschool.  I got an email from her school this past week saying they're trying to get better ratings.  One of the areas they're trying to improve in is the nutrition of the food they have at snack time.  However, the preschool doesn't provide snacks!  So they were asking parents to send their kids with healthy snacks to improve their rating.

I found Jelly calmly lounging in Winry's room one night when we headed up to get ready for bed.

On Thursday night when we were getting ready for bed Winry laid on the floor to get her diaper changed and pulled up the very hungry caterpillar.  She held the book over her head (as seen in the picture) and then exclaimed, in a very concerned voice, "I don't know words!!"  It was a rough revelation...

The girls had an intense dance party to Book of Mormon Stories that night.  The next morning we found out that Winry really likes when I jump up the stairs and scare her!  We had a lot of fun with that!

Friday morning/noonish Gram flew out to join us for Winry's birthday!  Friday afternoon/evening we spent a good amount of time blowing up balloons.  We were trying to get ready for Winry's birthday.  The girls loved having balloons around to play with, and Winry was even helping the sick ones get better.  That night we crammed everything into the corner so we could let Dobby vacuum the floor.

Then Saturday was the big day!  Brooke came into our room in the middle of the night, so when Winry woke up, the monitor woke everyone up.  Since we were all up, we all went in together to sing her Happy Birthday!  We let Winry pick out all of the meals.  This meant for breakfast we had "cereals".  There were a bunch on sale this past week too, so we got a lot of options to choose from.  In the end Winry picked the cheetah cereal (and then the Panda cereal because I didn't put things away fast enough).  While we ate breakfast, Pikachu called on the Echo and sang Winry happy birthday too!

We spent the morning getting the house ready for her party, such as by stringing all the balloons together into an arch.

Here's the whole table set up.  Winry wanted a "sucker" birthday, so we spun that a little and had a Candy Land party.  For lunch she picked to have "jelly ham-wich" and so we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, amongst other items.

Here's the cake inspired by Candy Land.  We've got the peppermint forest, gumdrop... area, licorice house and lollipop bouquet!  All complete with a Starburst path.

The main party activity was gingerbread houses because that very possibly is Winry's favorite thing.  Or at least, favorite candy related thing.  I think most of the kids did a good job putting candy onto the house, and eating was a minimum.

I said candy eating was at a minimum, not that it didn't happen, or that no one could have gotten a little caught up in it.

Here's Winry chugging along!

And after house decorating it was finally cake time!  Everyone sang happy birthday, and then everyone 4 or younger was VERY excited for some cake.  We let Winry pick the first piece, and then continued dishing from there.

The cake was great!  It was lemon.  I think it was a vanilla cake, but Monica soaked a lemon glaze into it the night before.  Wonderful.  Winry was definitely happen with it!  Also, nerds in cake (or in the frosting), also great!

After cake, we opened presents, which is where the first picture came from.  Winry was very excited to open her gifts and spent a lot of time with that open mouth expression!  She was super cute.  After presents, kids were starting to get tired, so the party disbanded due to our lack of nap stations.  Winry also went down for a nap, and so did I!

While Winry was asleep, Gram and Monica ran out to get a few gifts for her from Gram.  We were going to go bowling once she woke up, but Winry slept too late.  Once she got up, we had Mac and Cheese for dinner, and then opened some more presents.  Here she is hugging her new dress!

When she opened a wrapped present, she'd rip off pieces of wrapping paper, and then she had to hand them to Monica before she could continue.  Here she is, wishing mom would take things a little faster!

Winry got a mermaid tail from Gram, but unfortunately wouldn't put it on for a group picture!  Gram brought her mermaid tail out that the girls gave her for Christmas, and she and Brooke got a "Fin Friends" picture!

After dinner and presents, we got the girls into their pajamas, and then we let Winry pick something fun to do since it was her Birthday (and since we missed bowling).  She picked Mario Kart!  She had a great time!

After playing for a little, she then wanted to watch some T.O.T.S.  She cuddled on my lap with her mermaid tail while we watched.

And we got a family picture under her happy birthday banner before taking everyone up to bed!  It was a pretty great day, and I hope Winry had a wonderful time!

I'm so grateful to have my wonderful little girls!  They bring so much joy into my life and have been such wonderful blessings.

P.S. since it took so long to have Monica proof read this and get it posted, I can now add that BOTH girls just threw up within 5 minutes of each other... poor Winry got really upset.  Brooke handled it like a champion and even made it to the toilet!  Hopefully everyone can get some sleep tonight.

Welcome 2020!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I hope everyone's resolutions are going just great!  I haven't reviewed mine yet, that'll come later tonight, so for now I'm doing superb! :)  For new years eve we had a snack style dinner.  Monica made a few appetizer like things like meatballs, pretzel bites, bruschetta and stuff like that that we combined together for dinner.  It was great, and provided easy snacking for the rest of the night.  Brooke took a nap that day, and so she got to stay up.  I think she didn't go to bed until 8:30, or maybe a little later!  What a night!  Here are a couple pictures together in a collage from the night.

Last Sunday we went out to play in the snow since it was still around.  We had a lot of fun and were out there for about an hour.  It was pretty great snow weather.  I'm guessing it was just below freezing, so it really didn't feel too cold.  We built our first snowman of the year, which is a real shame because we've had some really big snow storms and really good packing snow this year already.

In addition to loops around the back yard we also sledded down our biggest hill.  The girls loved it, and even went just the two of them several times.

The next morning Brooke worked on her beat boxing while we were playing her new cupcake game!  Everyone was a winner!  Jelly is still learning to get along with Dobby, our robot vacuum.  She likes to spy on it from around corners while it is running.  Maybe someday they'll be best friends.

On Tuesday Brooke ready stories for Winry on the couch.  It was very cute!

Tuesday was new years eve, and we stayed up till midnight.  Brooke got to stay up a little late and had a lot of fun with mom and dad.  After she went to bed we played Splendor, a board game I got for Christmas, until midnight.  I'm so proud of us for staying up all the way till midnight!

The next morning we got out noise makers for the kids at breakfast!  They had a lot of fun with them, and we also made donuts for breakfast!!  What a way to start the new year!

Brooke and I wore our "matching" Pokemon shirts too!  If we were Team Rocket, we'd be ready to blast off!

We headed over to Boondocks to go bowling as soon as it opened.  The girls were very excited.  I don't think Winry really remembers what bowling is yet, but once we got started she was in love again!  Brooke even threw the ball all by herself a couple times, which was a first.

Winry used the metal ramp thing, and had a wonderful time!  Winry did pretty well with turns and was typically willing to move back and let someone else go.

And who do you think won?!  BROOKE!!  Guess I'm better with the kids metal ball roller thing than I am throwing the ball!!  Everyone had a good time too, so we were all at least that kind of winner.

I had to head back to work on Thursday, and it was nice to have a short week to get back into the flow of things.  Everyone else headed to the library for play group!  They had a fun time, and I feel like it's been a really long time since we've been to the library because there haven't been library books around for a while.  There was also a cut out for pictures there!

On Friday we went to the rec center to go swimming, and they had a blow up snow man!  So many last minute Christmas/winter photo opportunities.  I know winter won't be gone for a while, but do you really think they decorated because it might snow?  I didn't think so either.

On Saturday we took out our Christmas tree.  It stopped absorbing water some time ago and was rather dry.  Like... really dry.  It might have left a rather large mess.  I think this is the worst we've ever had from a tree...

This morning Brooke and Monica made brunch from Brooke's new princess cook book!  They made Tangled braided biscuits with ham and cheese!  They were great, and Brooke had a wonderful time cooking with Monica!  Wins all around.

My nursery class is BIG this year!  Fortunately everyone was good today.  They may have just been subdued because we were marching into nap time, but whatever it was, they were great!  Winry was even in there with me!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the year so far.  Have a wonderful week!