Ring Pops

Hello hello!  I hope everyone is doing fantastic.  Another week flew by, and I don't have terribly much to report on.  We've started working with Winry this past week to give up her pacifier.  The current plan is she is only allowed to have it in her room, so she can have it at bed, or for naps, or for "quiet time" which I think Monica called paci and play time.  She's had a few rough moments with it, but over all she's doing great.  She also stopped taking naps this past week, and so now she typically spends some time each afternoon playing in her room.  Unrelated, she was also giving a flamingo a shoulder ride this past week!

Brooke ate a ring pop this past week and I was able to witness the aftermath.  My real thought when I saw her was "where was THIS for the baby gender reveal!!"  Even her front teeth turned blue.

I've continued to mainly work from home.  I currently have hardware in the lab, so I did have to go in for at least a little just about every day this week, but having everything home centered has been great!  One day when I got up to help Winry with something, Mia took over and worked for me for a little!  Thanks Mia (and Winry!)!  Also, if only it really were that easy...

The girls had a bit of a dance party this past week.  My favorite video that came from it was of Winry taking a break to get a drink.  She can't even stop dancing to get a drink!  That girl just needs to dance, dance, dance!  She is going to be SOOO happy this fall when she gets to start her own dance class!

This past week while I was running there was a hawk or golden eagle (it was very large, definitely over a foot tall) sitting a few feet to the side of the trail.  I wish my phone could capture just how close I really was to it.  Anyway, I stopped for a second to get a picture and see if it would take off, and it didn't.  It just sat there staring at me.  Eventually I walked by on the far side and I wish I had been taking a video while I passed!  As I walked by it took off to the sky, and it was carrying lunch with it!  It made a lot more sense why it was so content to sit exactly there and watch me pass by!  I just wish I could have gotten a video of it taking off.  It was really cool to see!

This past week one of our friends, Jessica, dropped off some gifts for the girls.  They were SOOO happy!  And as you may have noticed, it was ring pop time right away!  That resulted in Winry looking much like Brooke did earlier in the week.  Now I just need to eat one and we could cut together a new gender reveal!

As we continue into summer and the days continue to get warmer (though now are getting shorter!), we've apparently started to miss the winter here.  Winry could really use one of those June snow storms we drove through in Park City a few weeks ago.  Though, it appears that sometimes a hardwood floor can make a decent alternative to a snowy field.

Last night we had a hot dog roast in the back yard.  As I sat down to eat I finally remembered to take a picture, so here's the fire, post hot dog cooking.  It was a pretty good fire for the hot dogs, but now it's simmering to coals for s'mores.

Speaking of s'mores, apparently that's what everyone in the world wanted this weekend, because there were no graham crackers in the store all week!  We did a grocery pickup, and they substituted for bunny graham crackers, and I went on Saturday to try to get some and found like 5 boxes in the whole store (it was a gross brand).  So what did we do?  We made exploded s'mores, and after I roasted a marshmallow we just pushed everything into it.  They were still really good, though I do think they were a little marshmallow heavy, but I'm not complaining!

After that it was bath night so the girls didn't smell like smoke, and because it's Sunday today.  The girls were great and went right to bed after too!  Nothing exciting has come up yet today, but my dad is on his way over as I am writing this, so there could be some good adventures this afternoon!

Happy Father's Day (p.s. it's a boy!)

Hello everyone and happy father's day (yesterday)!!  I completely spaced on writing a blog post yesterday, so a day late it is.  We had a great day together, and everyone tried to be super extra nice to me, which was nice.  

Much like mother's day, I'd like to share some of my fond memories with my dad.  I remember that my dad was always super supportive and tried to come to everything.  I know he attended many cross country, track and lacrosse games throughout high school to support me.  Recently I was looking for old pictures to digitize and I found lots that my dad had taken!  He even took notes on the back of pictures on how my performances were in track in the various events I did!

When I had surgery on my thumb, my dad came with me to the hospital.  I remember when I first woke up and my dad was there in the room waiting.  He showed me an x-ray of my finger, I saw it, and then dropped back asleep!  I also remember the whole drive home it was EXTREMELY bright, and I'm pretty sure I complained about it.

I remember going camping a lot with my dad growing up.  It helped that he was the scout master, but it was from him I learned my love for the outdoors.  We shared a tent many times, and I remember I asked my dad for stories from when I was a little kid at night.  I got to hear about a bunch of things I never remembered!  I still remember hearing about when our family drove out to Utah (from PA) and my mom and I would spend the night in the van, and one night I needed a bottle and it ended up spilling all over me!

One night when we were backpacking (on my first trip when I was 10) I started getting up and told my dad to unzip the tent.  I kept saying "dad, I gotta go!"  He asked me where, but all I'd say was "dad, I gotta go, I gotta go dad!"  Eventually he unzipped the tent, but asked, "Alex, don't you want to get back in your sleeping bag where it's warm?"  I said "yeah" and laid back down.  I don't remember any of that and was asleep the whole time.  Good thing he didn't let me go out!

I remember my friend and I looking through a book (it was a Warhammer book) and my dad came and told us to play outside.  So... we took the book out on the front porch and kept looking through it.  Eventually my dad found us out there and mentioned that wasn't quite what he had in mind by "go play outside."

I remember after one of my church basketball games, that we went to get in the car and it had gotten stuck in our parking spot.  My dad had happened to park with the wheels on ice, and they were spinning out when we tried to back out of the spot (backing out was uphill).  We did eventually get out after a bit of trying, and I didn't even have to push!

I remember doing monthly PPIs with my dad to check in on how things were going with school and with life.  It was nice to know my dad was concerned with how my life was going and was willing to offer advice.

I also remember when my dad baptized me!  I was very excited, and I remember asking if I could swim down and unplug the font drain after.  Thing is, my dad and brother went to the stake center quite a bit earlier in the day to fill up the font, and the water was COLD when we got in.  I no longer felt like dipping in the water again, and let my dad pull the drain instead!  The day I was baptized was a very special day, and I am so grateful to have a father who was a worthy priesthood holder who could baptize me!

Also, I made my dad this swag card using the Google doodle for the day!  Pretty lucky guy, right?

Getting back to the past week, on Monday Monica had her 20 week ultrasound, and we found out we're having a.... BOY!!  Thank goodness too, because the pink cotton candy didn't taste very good!  We're all very excited, and are currently trying to pick a name between Silver, Hershel, and Axolotl. 

This past week Monica was eating a popsicle, and it was just more temptation than Winry could stand.  At least she is asking and being very cute.  She walked over to Monica and just started climbing up her on the couch trying to get to her popsicle while saying "aaah, aaah, one bite?"  Monica wasn't keen on sharing, and Winry was willing to express her disapproval of that decision.  In the end, Monica did give her one of the last bites.  How could you not when everything plays out that cute? I also think I should mention, if you look closely in the video, you'll notice that Winry has dried popsicle on her face from her own that she had already eaten!!

Brooke has been super duper into going on walks for the last little bit!  It's calmed down a little, but we were going on 2 or 3 a day around the neighborhood.  Really it's a great thing, and I enjoy getting outside too!  We often ask Winry if she wants to come, but she doesn't very often.  The exception to that would be when Monica takes the girls for a walk while I'm at work.  Sometimes it's more of a skip than a walk, but that's probably better exercise anyway.

And here they are with their killer shades on!  And yes, Brooke pushes bear in that stroller every time!  I think that's the real driving force behind the walk.

Brooke drew a hopscotch board on our walkway this week, and the girls love to play it.  Brooke is pretty good at it, and Winry tries.  They have a lot of fun out there, but now the stroller always has to be lifted over it so that it doesn't come off while we walk by on our walks.

The girls got ring pops this past week.  Both of their mouths turned completely blue/green from them (Brooke ate hers today, so wrong week).  It even got all around their lips and their front teeth!  Where were ring pops on Monday!?  The cotton candy didn't really change our tongues, but that was supposed to be the plan.

On Saturday morning I had a huge dance party with the girls!  It was a lot of fun, but I think the energy I expended was absorbed by the girls because they were more ready to go after a few songs, and I was ready for a break...

On Sunday, Brooke spent a solid 30 minutes or so working on a gift for me for fathers day, and then wrapped it up.  When I opened it I got this awesome coupon book!  Also, when we said it was time to open presents Winry went to get her present for me and came back upstairs with a roll of wrapping paper!  Christmas gifts, here I come!

For dinner we had "chicken and waffles" which was actually chicken nuggets and pancakes.  Tomato, tomatillo.  It was still really good!  I'm very good at picking classy foods for special occasions!  Let me know if you need the recipe, it's an old family secret. ;) 

Sorry I was a day late!  But it's better late than never!  Honestly, I just completely forgot.  I think I remembered once at like, dinner time, but couldn't write the post then.  Fortunately I remembered today though!  Have a wonderful week ahead!

Brooke's Dance Recital

And we're back!  That was quick!  Hopefully these posts make it out relatively close together... :)  I am at least writing them close together.  Monday morning we packed up the car and got ready to head back to Colorado.  We cut our trip short because Tuesday was Brooke's dance recital!

Monday morning we packed everything up and said goodbye and got a picture with cousins!  While we were getting things ready Winry read her kitty book to everyone.  I will note, Jelly is a Siberian, not a Japnese Bobtail, but she does look the closest to the Japanese Bobtail of any of the cats in the book.  Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that Oriah and her kids arrived at my parents house the previous Saturday (before the swim party at Alyson's house).

Winry and William got some pictures together too!

After saying goodbye it was time to hit the road.  Ironically, when we were picking a van we decided we didn't need an AWD Sienna because around our house is pretty flat, and we just wouldn't drive to Utah in a snow storm.  And lo and behold, it snowed on June 8th on our return trip... Fortunately it wasn't a bad snow storm, and so the car did fine.

Here's Brooke being a rock star and coloring on the drive home.  It rained for a lot of the drive, but again, in most places it wasn't raining too hard either and so everything went pretty smoothly.

Except Winry apparently filled her diaper and we didn't stop often enough to change it.  On the return trip we stopped in Little America and got lunch, and then pulled off real quick in Rawlins for gas.  Just after we passed Laramie, Winry woke up after too short of a nap and started to cry (scream) that her diaper was full and could not be consoled.  We ended up pulling off at the Colorado state sign to change her diaper, and I grabbed a picture of her with the sign because we don't typically ever stop here!  After the diaper change the rest of the trip went smoothly.

Tuesday we mostly relaxed and then got ready for Brooke's dance recital.  Here's a really cute picture of Winry I got while she was eating a graham cracker.

Brooke knocked it out of the park at her recital!  The first dance was a ballet.  I put a few of my favorite pictures of her dancing below.

Brooke did a great job and even was in the front of the stage.  Instead of a large recital like they'd usually do they did them class by class, so it was just a small group of other families in her dance class.  That means we got to be real close to the stage, which was nice!

The second dance was a spicy salsa dance!  I think this was Brooke's favorite, and she really loved the maracas!

This was also a tap dance!

After, all the girls got together with their teacher for a group picture.  Winry was very proud of Brooke and clapped and cheered for her after each dance! She kept yelling "Brookie, you did a great job!" Unfortunately we didn't get that on video.

And Brooke got flowers both from us and from her dance studio!

And here we are as a family after the show!  So proud!  After the recital we picked up food from Panera Bread (Brooke's choice) to celebrate, and then the girls spent the rest of the night playing recital.  It was pretty cute watching Winry try to do Brooke's dances with her.  I think Winry is going to LOVE her dance class when she starts this fall!

Thursday Brooke had her hip hop class again, and when she got home she taught Winry all of her cool new hip hop moves!  It was fun to watch Winry try the new dance moves, and it's AMAZING how fast Brooke is learning things at her dance class.

Brooke has started to want to go run around the block every day, which is a great thing!  Most days we went with Winry, which means that Brooke has to frequently stop and wait for us to catch up, but one day we went just the two of us.  Video warning, I was jogging with Brooke so there's a lot of shaking.  You may notice that yellow circle in the picture below, well that's the medal Brooke made for herself earlier that day!  I'm really glad Brooke enjoys being so active!

Also, Friday evening I ran to the store and while I was gone everyone was playing outside.  Brooke was riding the trike, but couldn't get it up the driveway, so Winry went and gave her a push to help her get up!

Saturday morning Jelly found my running clothes and horded them like a dragon on a gold pile!  Those are HER clothes now!

And that brings us to the end of my pictures.  Phew!  It's a relief to be caught up again!  I hope everyone has a wonderful week ahead!

Utah "Vacation"

Well hello!  It's been a while since I've written, and I'm still going to split the last three weeks into two blog posts, as there are two distinct events that happened over the last three weeks.  The first was a trip out to Utah!  Rewinding to nigh unto forever ago takes us to Sunday three weeks ago.  It was a rainy day here in Denver, and the girls and I loved every  minute of it!  We spent a little time in the back yard, mostly just standing in the rain.  

We did play family for a little, which involved telling each other jokes.  Eventually we were feeling a little cold, which meant we walked through the house and played in the front yard!  The girls splashed in the "puddles" on our walkway.  I mean, in some places there were little puddles...  Also, this is in the backyard still, but look how cute Winry is with that umbrella!

During the week, the girls did a good job of entertaining themselves.  I think we're starting to get the hang of finding things in the house to entertain ourselves.  The girls played with the marble run, and always have fun with that, though this time the bag of marbles got dumped between the seats on the couch...  I believe I found them all that night when I was cleaning up, but I wasn't going to count 40 marbles.  They girls also really like coloring on boxes when we get packages, and will color all of the sides of the box.  Once the box is colored, it becomes a drum!

On Thursday, Brooke started her summer dance class, and the dance studio is having kids back at the studio for the summer classes!  Brooke is doing hip hop this summer, and there's a good video going in next weeks blog of stuff she's learning.  They're keeping the classes small, with 6 spots total.  The first week Brooke was one of three girls at class, and this past week there were 4 total.  She has been loving it and loves getting to go see her teacher in person again!

My dad was back out in Denver helping Tyson with the addition to his house.  I'm going to have to go see it sometime...  Anyway, he came down for dinner the night of Brooke's dance class and played with Winry while I took Brooke to dance.  Here they are playing "grandpa can't see."

The girls continue to love playing in the van.  I tried warning them that after we drove out to Utah in it they probably wouldn't love it as much anymore.  In spite of my warnings they kept insisting on playing in the car.  Here's Winry smashing her face on the window when we were getting them to come back inside.  Also, note from the future: they STILL love playing in the van!!  And the first thing they wanted to do when we got to Utah was to give everyone a tour of the van they just spent all day in!  Not what I was expecting...

Speaking of the drive, here we are half way.  We stopped in Rawlins for gas and went to a park to eat lunch and let the girls run around in the grass.  It was really windy, but lunch was good, and the girls really enjoyed getting to stretch their legs.  While we were there some deer came to visit!  They just walked right out of the neighborhood.  Eventually Winry noticed the deer and loved them!

Wizz wham wazoom, we made it to Utah.  We only had that one stop in Rawlins and the girls were amazing in the car.  Our van can play DVDs, so we started off the drive with a movie, and watched one more at the end because I wanted something on to listen to.  Mostly, the girls colored and did various other activities I picked up at the dollar store earlier in the week.  But mostly, it was coloring.  Winry colored for at least 5 hours of the drive.  They were rock stars, and I think having some extra space definitely helped!

So part of our reason for coming out was because I had a work trip in Utah on June 1-5th, and it's easier to leave the family with family than strand Monica on the island that is child care.  As such, on Saturday (we drove out Friday) I had to go pick up my rental car for my work trip so I didn't have to steal our van.  My rental car pick up was supposed to be the same time as closing, so I called to try to figure out if I could pick up my car early and found out the location I reserved my car at 5 days earlier was closed and my reservation was moved to a different location!  I'm pretty sure the location was always closed... so anyway, it was a bit of a sprint to get to the car in time, but I ended up getting there.  When I asked for the rental car I was asked if I needed anything special, and I said I wouldn't mind a sports car.  I ended up with a Dodge Charger, and I won't complain about that!

On Sunday, we joined our primary call with Monica's family from on the other side of the couch where her parents were.  Here's Winry, attention undivided.

After the call, Audrey came up to hang out with Brooke.  They even both wore cherry dresses!  What a bunch of cuties.

Sunday afternoon I headed off to visit my family before continuing up to Ogden for my trip.  Family dinner was pot luck, and fortunately I brought some granola bars... :)  Anyway, it was fun to see and spend some time with my mom and sisters before heading to my hotel.  Meanwhile, back in Provo Winry would not go to sleep!  The girls typically go to sleep at 7, but here's the scene at 8 o'clock!  That girl doesn't look like she'll ever sleep!  At 8:30 they finally got her to read herself a bedtime story.  I think eventually she went to sleep.

Monday I started the beam trip.  We were at a LINAC at Hill Airforce Base.  We had to lock our phones away on arrival, so I don't have any pictures from my work week.  We'd leave for the facility around 6 am every morning and get back to the hotel around 5-6 pm.  Heading into the trip I expected my nights to be much more free than they really were, and so on Monday I headed back up to visit my mom.  I went for a run up around their neighborhood too, which was a lot of fun.  It was fun to run by the places I used to run during high school and the summers in college.  However, this really meant that I got to my parents house and changed, and then returned from my run, showered, gave my mom a hug and headed back for my hotel.  In actuality I did get to spend a little time with my mom, but not much.  My evenings were definitely not as free as I had anticipated, and Monday was the only night I tried to squeeze a trip in.  However, I did remember to take a picture with my mom, and my chronic down fall on the blog is forgetting to take pictures with people.

The test trip went well, but I don't really have anything to show for it, so we'll focus back on Provo for the week.  I wasn't on any of these excursions, so may be Monica will add more information later when she proof reads this.  One day everyone hiked up to a waterfall!  I heard that Alan had to carry Winry a lot of the way.  Good thing he was there!  Here are the girls at the waterfall.  It looks like everyone had a great time.

Another day, everyone headed to the beach at Utah lake.  They didn't go in the water though because it was really muddy.  Sitting in the shade probably felt better!

This was also an excellent week to be out in Utah as there were TWO cousin birthdays!  Jack's birthday was on Wednesday, and he got a dog cake!

And that night he even read everyone a bed time story!  What a great cousin!

Friday was Audrey's birthday, and I'm sure it was super double nice for her to have Brooke and Winry there.  Brooke and Audrey played together all week long.  As I looked through Monica's pictures there are a LOT less pictures of Brooke from this week, but that's probably due to Brooke always being off with Audrey, where as Winry spent time both with them and with Monica.  Anyway, for Audrey's birthday they had a tea party!  We knew ahead of time so Brooke could bring a princess dress!

Winry joined them too, sans princess outfit.  They ate cheez-its (or cheesers as Winry called them!) and even got to put water in their cups!

Here's Brooke and Audrey being best friends on a chair.  It's a really cute picture.  Also, in this picture it amazes me how much clothes can affect the age appearance.  I feel like Audrey looks a lot older than Brooke because she is wearing clothes I more associate with older children.

On Friday, after I finished up my last day at the facility, I headed down to spend time with my family.  I headed to Niki's house first because I was going to help her with a sprinkler, but a real nice storm blew in so I got out of that job!  I also took the opportunity to get some classy pictures with my car!  In the end we headed up to my parents house and hung out with them for the night.  My dad came back on Tuesday, and it turns out he brought Maren and Emilee with him, so there were more people and more fun than I expected awaiting us!

Saturday morning I headed back to Provo to drop off my rental car and pick up my family.  We loaded up the van and headed up to spend a few days at my parents house.  Saturday afternoon we went to visit my aunt, Alyson, and swim in her pool.  The girls ended up not wanting to swim (it also was raining the whole time and fairly chilly to swim), but we got to tour Alyson's new camper trailer, and we got to see Barkley.  We had a lot of fun and always love going to visit Aunt Alyson's!

Saturday night while we were reading bedtime stories, I found out a new Winry trick.  We read her kitty book with pictures of various breeds of cats, and Winry will point at the cats and say "this one has skirf eyes."  Don't know where skirf came from... pretty sure she made it up.  Monica said earlier in the week when they'd read the story, every page Winry would say the kitty's name if she knew it and then say "I feel like this cat has skirf eyes!"

Sunday morning Winry got to eat a bunch of raspberries and stuck them on her fingers!

Our family has been doing a Nailed It challenge for the last while, and on Sunday we had to make a motor vehicle.  Brooke made this pink flamingo!

We asked the kids what we (Monica) should make, and Brooke said "our car!!"  So speaking of, I also got a better picture than the one of it in the garage that I posted before.  Here's what our van really looks like.

And here's Monica's recreation!  I'd say that looks amazing!  I even tried to climb into this twice!

Brooke and Winry enjoyed getting to spend time with Maren and Emilee as well!  It was a lot of fun having everyone out there!

And that brings us to the end of Sunday!  I almost forgot to mention, while we were out there I kept my mom's VCR busy playing old Disney movies that I was digitizing onto my computer so we could watch them again!  Hooray!  We all had a great time seeing family, but unfortunately drove home the next day (Monday).  I'll talk more about that in the next post, but we had a great time with everyone while we were out there!  Stay tuned, I'll have another post coming out shortly (I hope!).