Still Quarantined

Hello all you good people!  What a week we had.  For the most part things have continued on, the same as they have been.  I started heading into work again this past week.  Work is pretty empty, so it's not so bad.  I probably could have done everything I did this past week from home, but you gotta go back eventually, right?  Anyway, this past week the girls decided they really needed to wear their masks! They've never actually had to wear them yet, but they thought it was really fun!

Brooke has been working on learning to read recently and has been loving it!  She's doing really great, and she already knows most of the letter sounds, so she jumps through the lessons very quickly.

Winry was roaming around for dinner in just her diaper.  I'm pretty sure it's because we took off her clothes to not get stained.  She was busy playing with her phone, and tucked it into her "pocket."

This was the last week for preschool, and so was the final week of Brooke's preschool calls.  This is both a blessing and a curse.  Brooke has really been enjoying the calls, however the bedtime story calls start at 7, and run till about 7:15 at least.  That doesn't sound that late, however if Brooke lays down and tries to go to sleep before 7 she'll be asleep within 10 minutes.  If she lays down at 7:15 or later, she doesn't go to bed until both Monica and I are in bed, and even then it's still iffy.

This picture is from mask day.  You can see that Winry has her mask on.  She spent a while putting all of Jelly's cat toys on Jelly who was laying in the sun right by where Winry is in the picture.  Eventually Jelly left and Winry laid down under a blanket and piled the toys on herself.

Winry started joining Brooke on her preschool calls, at least for some of the time.  She very much loves everything that Brooke does, and I'm pretty sure the kids were all supposed to stay muted so that helps alleviate Winry interruptions too.  This past week they even did baby shark!

Baby shark was followed up with the next most popular kids song, whatever is going on in this picture...  In actuality, after doing this Winry was walking around the house even though she couldn't see where she was going.  She was walking around really slow, and had her hand out, and you could tell she was just hoping not to walk into anything.  She fortunately never got hurt.

This past week we headed into the car market to get a minivan.  Monica decided that moving car seats between cars would be a good time to clean out the car seats.  There wasn't much to clean.......

Winry helped Reesey get all snuggled into a seat, and then sat down to enjoy the ride with him!

The girls have been doing baths pretty often lately.  It's extra exciting when they get bubbles too!  They love playing together, and we found some little plastic dinosaurs a week or two back and that's the hot toy for the tub.  Also, Brooke spelled PAM on the wall!

Jelly was laying next to me this past week and I got a good close up of her.  That's the whole story.

So... speaking of that new van.  Here it is!  I was out working on stuff in the garage yesterday and realized we never took a picture of our new car, so I grabbed one just in case it was the only one, and it is.  The girls love the van, and want to play in it all the time.  I've spent a decent amount of time just sitting in the van with them as they climb from seat to seat and sit down.  I don't quite understand all the excitement, but it's real!

When I came in the house, Brooke and Monica were outside working on garden stuff.  Winry apparently didn't want to go out with them, and so she was laying on the floor mat just inside the back door.  She had a stuffed animal, so it sort of looked like she was going to sleep.

Well, that's all I've got for now.  Have a fabulous week!

Juice and Fire

Howdy all you fine people!  It wasn't ready in time for last week's post, but there's a picture of Monica and the girls!  Freshly taken on Mother's Day.  What a wonderful bunch of cuties!

This past week Jelly took to the blanket as if it were her own kitten.  Fortunately, she didn't make herself sick!

Brooke drew Jelly a picture on a post-it note this past week.  She wrote To Jelly Love Brooke on it, and then drew a picture of a cat.  She wanted to make sure it was somewhere where Jelly would appreciate it, so she stuck it right next to Jelly's food bowl!

Now that spring is here, Jelly has been actively de-bugging the house.  This typically involves her going to places she's not allowed to, but we let it slide since she's chasing bugs.  Last week it was on the bar that locks the back door, this week she climbed up next to the TV over the fireplace!  If you look closely you can see the bottom of the moth at the top of the window behind the blinds.

For Mother's Day, Monica got a juicer.  We washed it this past week and got it all ready to go one morning and Monica and the girls juiced the morning away!  Yesterday when I went grocery shopping at Sprouts I was instructed to get 2-3x everything, so I expect much juicing in the week ahead.

Winry was very dancey and bouncy earlier in the week.  I don't know if there's a story to this, but if there is maybe Monica will add it.  Anyway, I thought it was cute, so here it is. Also her shorts are on backwards, that's why that little tie is in the back! That was her putting on her own clothes again!

One night as we were getting the girls ready for bed, I found Jelly, ever the master of stealth.  She was hidden quite effectively from the opposite side of the teepee.

Monica planted our garden this past week.  I believe this is all produce bearing.  I know we got tomatoes, strawberries (we even still had a plant from last year that's coming back like a champ!) chard... and that's all I remember right now.  Don't worry, as soon as Monica started planting the precipitation started, so mother nature even approved!.. oh wait... that's hail... oops.

On Friday while I was working, there started to be a bad smell in the basement.  I thought it smelled a little like melting plastic, or something like that.  When Monica came down she said it smelled like formaldehyde.  Well, at around 3:15 I looked up and saw smoke coming out of my monitor!  I unplugged it really quickly before it caught fire.  It was running the whole time up to me unplugging it.  I have no clue what happened, I guess I just got "lucky."  Anyway, it made it's way to the trash, and the basement is starting to smell better.  I think the smell got trapped in the carpet or something, so it's not all the way gone yet.  Also, this was happening for 7 or so hours while I was down there that day.  After work I felt a little... off, and spent some time sitting outside in the fresh air.  Anyway, I've heard of monitors catching fire before, but it's always been one of those almost folk lore type tales.  I don't actually know anyone that it's happened to, until last Friday. 

This morning Winry was getting ready for church and Monica asked her to pick some bows.  Winry promptly grabbed the kitty hair brush and headed to the bag.  According to Monica this is the new normal, and kitty always picks the bow with his tail.  I wish I could have gotten a picture too, but thought I'd value the video more.

And that's all I've got!  Have a wonderful week!

Happy Mother's Day

I want to give a HUGE shout-out to my mom! Happy Mother's Day!! Thanks for all of the love and support you've provided over all the years! Thank you for all of the life lessons. Thank you for teaching and helping me do what is right. Thank you for instilling in me a love of stories, ice cream and playing games! I wanted to share just a few of my favorite memories I have with my mom.

Potentially the first story I remember of me and my mom was us driving together in the car. I don't know where we were going, but it was in Pennsylvania. We were driving along and I was telling my mom about me and Alex, my imaginary friend, and all the cool things we did. I was telling her about how we'd fight ninjas. While we drove, there was an old, run down building that I could see out my window. I pointed it out to my mom, and said "That's where we fought the ninjas mom!"

My mom started volunteering at my elementary school once I started going. She worked in the copy room and made the copies for all of the teachers. It was nice to have my mom close by, however, I still took the bus to/from school. One time in first grade I got really sad and missed my mom. My teacher let me go see her in the copy room. I am glad she was there to comfort me. Being at school most of the day also made it easy for her to come on field trips!

I also remember in jr. high/high school I'd go grocery shopping with my mom. The big allure here was that after parent teacher conferences if everyone said nice things about me I'd get a bottle of strawberry milk! I'd get a big 32 oz bottle and drink it all before we got home.

My mom fought the powers that be and gifted me a Nintendo 64 for my birthday, potentially the greatest gift I've ever been given. Monica nearly matched this spectacle by gifting me a Nintendo Switch for Christmas a few years back, but she let slip the surprise before Christmas.

When I was in high school, a junior I think, I was playing in a winter indoor lacrosse league. I broke my thumb one night at our game. Fortunately Brad King's parents were there and took me to the ER. My mom came out to get me. That was probably one of the most painful moments of my life, and my mom was there to comfort me. A few months later I knocked the screws that were holding my thumb together loose. I had to have another surgery (I had surgery to screw the bone back together, my dad came to that one) to get the screws taken out. It was early in the morning, like 6 am. When I woke up from surgery we were still able to make it to school on time... yay. So that's where my mom dropped me off.

I also remember when there used to be a Winder Dairy by our house (It eventually became a Chinese restaurant, Ho-ho's gourmet, across the street form Nielson's frozen custard). It was a drive through, and you get get a big cup of soft serve with a sugar cone on top for just $0.25! We had many a fun trip there. Winder Dairy isn't there anymore, but we've kept the tradition alive by taking my mom to Butterfields whenever she comes to visit!

I also remember my mom taking me places I'm sure she had no interest in, link End Zone (it was next to Winder Dairy, so there could have been worse places to go). It was a card game/miniatures/collectibles type store. Our trips mainly revolved around Pokemon cards, and while not exactly my mom's cone of ice cream (instead of cup of tea), she was always willing to go and was even willing to help me with decisions, etc. To the extent you can understand a 10 year old's Pokemon decisions, my mom tried!

I also want to express my gratitude for Monica. I'm grateful for Monica and for all the love and nurturing she provides to our whole household! I'm grateful for her effort and dedication to us and the gospel. She is a great example to our girls, and I am grateful for the example she sets.

Last Sunday, Monica and I were playing Draftosarus and Brooke wasn't have any of going to bed, so she came down to hang out with us. She played with the extra dinosaurs we didn't need for the game while we played. She had a blast, and even stayed up as late as Monica!! She also said she was lining up the dinosaurs to watch the fireworks, but they had to be spaced out from the ones that weren't in their families because they were social distancing! I'm not sure if this is funny or sad....probably some of both.

On the first of Weekday the kids did this in the basement... It might not have all been from that one day, some of it might have carried over from the weekend, but still... They do great playing down their by themselves, and often do without anyone else coming down with them. However, they are not quite as good at cleaning up. I was in the basement working and headed for the bathroom and found the mess. As I was walking through the room I was surprised by Jelly laying there in the middle of the floor! Don't worry, we've since cleaned up. That video is actually Winry vacuuming up cracker crumbs after she flipped the last of the box upside down on the couch, and then it all got dumped on the floor... Her toy vacuum does actually have suction, but not enough to clean that all up. At least she was trying though.

Later in the day we found ourselves in the backyard. Winry jumped and jumped and jumped on the tramp.

And Brooke got out her bear to push on the swing.

On Tuesday, Winry just needed a story and cuddle from mommy! Fortunately Monica was willing! What a pair of cuties. This led to Winry reading me stories while I ate my lunch. We got excited for Jungle Book because the last time she read it she said "In the light of a village, and little tiger lay on a leaf!" That's how the very hungry caterpillar starts, but village is moon and tiger is egg.

That night at dinner, Winry started to spin her fork. She may have seen me do this a time or two before... I'm not going to say I'm a bad example, but I will say there are things I'd rather the kids be doing while "eating" dinner, like eating!

Winry is super content in her crib right now. At night we lay her down and she'll be singing and talking with her stuffed animals for sometimes another 2 hours. She eventually does go to sleep, so it's not a big deal. Not quite as commonly, she does the same in the morning. She's usually happy for 10-15 minutes after waking up, but this past week she was having a heyday in her crib. When I came in her room she was giving her stuffed animals check ups. I asked if she wanted to get up and she said no, so instead I went and got her the doctor toys and put them in the crib with her. I came back up about a half hour later and she was finishing up checkups, and once everyone was healthy she was willing to get out and come downstairs with me for breakfast.

Winry has started working on getting herself dressed/undressed all by herself. She's been working on pants for the last week or so, and she is able to get them on and off all by herself. However, she doesn't worry about forward/backward just quite yet. It's a little more noticeable with something like jeans though. Those back pockets just aren't usually up front! Also, she loves to pull on socks and put on shoes still. So she's currently decently self sufficient at getting dressed from the waist down.

This past week we got a marble run for the girls. They love playing with it, and Brooke is already pretty good at building them and will make one for both her and Winry to put marbles down.

This past week Brooke got her learning to read books/set/thing. She has been sooooo excited for this to come. She wants to learn to read so bad! She's worked on it a few times, and right now I'd say her biggest struggle is connecting letter sounds together. She's always learned the sounds as individual things, and now suddenly she's being told to cram all those sounds together in her mouth! There are a bunch of books and a work book and stuff. The first book just has 4 words in it, and she memorized the words pretty quick. So far she can read a few words pretty well, but is still having a hard time blending sounds together. When she does blend the sounds she's pretty good at reading new words though.

On Friday Brooke had an online call dance class! Winry got suited up and joined her. Brooke continues to LOVE to dance, and she does such a good job too. Winry seems really excited to start her own dance class. She did great following along for the first half-ish of Brooke's class, and then laid down in the middle of the floor and Brooke had to dance around/over her. She also spent a lot of dance class taking on and off her shoes, stealing Brooke's bear that she was supposed to dance with, and asking for snacks! Also, in that video of the girls dancing, when they go to shake their hips, doesn't Winry look super pregnant? Hilarious!

The girls are getting better and better with Jelly all the time. For the most part they do a good job of letting Jelly sniff their hands before trying to pet her, etc. Jelly is warming up to the girls too, and is much more trusting of them/willing to be pet, etc. Winry got to scratch Jelly's chin!

Saturday I got to spend some time working on the sprinkler system. The grass has already gotten pretty brown and crispy this year, so it probably should have been a project a few weeks ago. Anyway, we've been having trouble with our main line in the front yard for about a year. I started working on it last year, but went in to finish the job this year. We cut down our pine tree last year to dig up the lines, but couldn't get everything dug out with the stump still there. I finally pulled out the stump yesterday, and at the very bottom of it I found the sprinkler lines! You can see that the tree pinched it shut! Technically the whole problem was just that small ~6" of pipe, however, I used a pick ax to dig it out, resulting in about 2 and a half feet of ruined pipe... Got it all patched up and the sprinklers are running again! It was a pretty long/tiring day seeing as the stump digging was the follow up activity to my 15 mile run.

This morning while doing our primary call, Winry found a great game to play. She put her water bottle under her dress and then tried to drink out of it! Her dress got very wet, but I'm not sure she got much to drink.

A few minutes after that, Jelly was following a moth around the house. It went out to the very top of the glass door, and maybe climbed into a little crack up there. After watching and waiting for it for several minutes she decided it was time to get a closer look and investigate, so she jumped up on our metal security bar thing! It's only about a half inch wide, but she leaped from the floor, landed right on it, and then stretched out to look for the moth. She didn't find anything and jumped back down. It was pretty hilarious though!

Those are all the adventures I have for now. Have a wonderful week!

I'm Feeling [Thirty]-Two

Hello hello!  I hope everyone is doing fantastic!  We had a good week here, capping it off with my birthday yesterday!  Everyone worked super hard on making sure I had a wonderful day, and we basically just had tons of fun all day long!  Our "3" shaped candle snapped in half, so we had to improvise on the cake.  We've been using the same set of number candles since we moved into this house.  On top of that, we didn't actually buy them, they were left behind when the last family moved out, so it's probably okay if we have to buy some new ones.  Monica and I both being in our 30's, as well as Brooke passing through 3 means that that particular candle has seen it's fair share of use...

This past week on Weekday the weather finally warmed up enough to use the pool!  The girls were very excited, and when I finished work everyone was out playing and splashing in the water.

I joined in as fast as I could.  The girls were playing in the main part of the pool, and I ended up in the way, so I moved into the little part by the slide, which meant everyone wanted to be in there.  Good news, we fit!

Over the weekend the girls wanted popsicles so when I went grocery shopping I picked up some strawberry lemonade to make homemade popsicles since that was the only acceptable flavor.  Here's everyone cooling off!

It went great until it became too cold!  No matter how many times I suggest that drying off would help someone to warm up, the advice still goes unheeded...

Winry decided she wanted to float around in the duck (?) pool floaty, so she got back in the pool and climbed inside.  Pure convenience!

Since Brooke was so cold, she ran inside and changed.  She came back out with her kitty headphones ready to bust a move!  This girl loves her dancing!

This past week I finished up a project I was working on.  I made a rechargeable battery pack for a Game Boy Advanced with a USB C port!  No more AA batteries needed.

I went to get Winry up on Weekday, and she had piled up all her stuffed animals around her.  When I came in she asked me to pull her blanket over everyone and then laid back down snuggling them all!  What a cutie!

My Dad is out helping Tyson and Tina with their addition to their house, and came down one day for lunch, for my birthday, and really to play with the girls.  Brooke and Winry had SO much fun playing with grandpa while he was here!  We were all sad to see him go.  He brought down a build your own binocular kit for Brooke and me to do, so sometime over the past week Brooke and I put those together.  Brooke is going to paint them, and then decorate them with the stickers that came with them.

In addition to the battery pack that I made, a few days later my new backlit Game boy screen came in!  They can be pretty hard to see otherwise.  Here's everything taken apart as I swapped both screens and cases.

And here it is put back together!  Unfortunately the new screen draws more power than my battery pack can currently provide, so I need to make a few modifications to the design before I can use it.  However, in the mean time I just plopped some AA batteries in there.  It looks great!

On end-of-weekdays-night we had a movie night!  It was pretty hot that day, and our AC just wasn't keeping up for some reason (aka it wasn't working).  Cool air was blowing, but it wasn't cold enough.  Anyway, the house got pretty hot (80 degrees!), so we watched in the basement where things were nice and cool!

We took down our little pocket projector to shine on the wall and watched some Doc McStuffins!  I think the basement will be the new norm for movie night, at least through the summer!

Saturday was my birthday!  Once everyone was awake, first thing in the morning we HAD to open presents.  Obviously I won't complain about this.  There were two good reasons for it being so early.  First, Brooke just loves giving present and was so excited for me to open hers.  But seriously, this girl lives for other people's birthdays!  And second, because I secretly had some running stuff in there, so I needed to open it before my run!

Also, Brooke labeled all of the presents!  Her handwriting is getting really good. And the only thing she needed help spelling was To!

After presents, it was out for a 14 mile run.  I got a little running vest thing that can carry a camelbak bladder in it.  It was wonderful to not have to hold a water bottle in my hands for 14 miles.  Yes I have a water bottle with a strap attached to make it easier, but this is even better!  My run went great, and most importantly, gave everyone time to prepare.

When I got home and cleaned up, the first order of business was to go find rolly pollies!  While I was showering Monica and the girls ran some food over to the church to drop off for a food drive, and when they came back Winry wouldn't come inside.  She was busy looking at the rolly pollies.  In fact, Monica said she only got Winry in the car by saying "Winry, do you think there's a rolly polly in the car?" and then when Winry came over "Winry, maybe there's a rolly polly in your car seat, better check!"  After seeing a bunch of "mommy" "baby" and "Winry" rolly pollies we headed inside for a hug and a scavenger hunt.

While I was on my run, Brooke hid these candles all around the house, along with clues for where to find the next one.  Each candle was double sided and said something that someone in my family loves about me, including items from my parents and siblings.  Monica wrote everything down and Brooke cut it all out!  Here I am with all the candles found and attached!  Thank you everyone!

After the hunt it was lunch time, and then Winry was too tired to stay up to play Mario Kart so I put her down for a nap.  Once Winry was down I showed Brooke Mario Maker and she played Mario for the first time!  I made some levels for her and for Monica, and Brooke even picked everything for a level of her own!  We also played a little Mario Party and Mario Kart and had a great afternoon playing together!

That afternoon, mother nature even cooperated and rained!  What a birthday!  Oh yeah, and the impending rain made my run so nice!  It was pretty cool, no sun beating down on me, and it hadn't been raining yet so it wasn't humid or muggy yet either!  Weather, you nailed it!

In the afternoon, Monica made my cake.  The girls, of course, cheered her on!  Also, little sneaker snatch Winry looking for anything she can find sweet on the counter!  She had been sticking her hand in the frosting and licking it off until I moved it.  Here's the completed cake.  It's themed this year as my family started doing a "Nailed it" competition this week.  This week it was both mine and Celeste's birthday, and so the cake design was supposed to have Pikachu (for me) and a basketball (for Celeste).  I told Monica she could just make her typical cake and we'd make it work for a picture.

Once the cake was ready it was time to eat it!  Monica finished frosting it after we had dinner, which was take out from Maggianos.  I already went over the 3 candle debacle, so then it was on to singing Happy Birthday.  We're starting to get enough voices to be a mini choir!

And of course, time to dig in!  The cake was chocolate with peanut butter frosting, and I had mint cookie crunch ice cream to go with it.  I know there's a lot of mint/peanut butter nay sayers out there (aka everyone but Alex), but I think they're just fine together and thoroughly enjoyed it.

After cake, the girls hurried into their jammies and brushed their teeth so we could play a little Mario Kart all together before bed.  Winry missed out before, and she loves playing too.  We all had a wonderful time, and grabbed a family picture before bed.

Once the kids were in bed, Monica and I played Draftosaurus, a new game I got for my birthday.  It was a lot of fun!

Thank you to everyone for your birthday wishes.  I had a terrific day, and at dinner when we did our best part/hardest part of the day the only hard part I had was that the cinnamon rolls took longer than expected to rise this morning for breakfast!  So I had to eat some cocoa pebbles while waiting.  It's pretty hard to complain when that's the worst part of your day!  I hope you are all safe and well!  Have a wonderful my 32nd year!