Snow Fun and Utah Run

Why hello!  There was quite a bit that happened this week.  I'll try to be semi-brief, as I am currently in a hotel room, and need to get to bed soon as I need to be up early tomorrow for the first day of my test trip.  We finally ventured out into the huge snowstorm that hit over the weekend on Monday.  We had SOOO much fun.  I actually had the most amazing time.  Having 2 feet of snow made it deep enough that it felt like being a kid again playing in the snow.  What used to be tall enough to come up to my  knees and randomly trip me is a lot of fun for my kids now, but having 2 feet of heavy snow brought me right back!  The kids had an amazing time.  We made a snowman, because this is the first snow we've gotten all year that actually would pack together.  Here are the girls standing next to it.

Our treadmill has been dead for about a year.  I swapped the motor control board and belt around a year ago, and it got the treadmill back for maybe a week before it died again, so I figured it was really the motor that was bad.  We finally ordered a new motor a while back, and it came last week.  I swapped it the end of last week, and what timing!  I was still able to get in my Monday run even though there was 2 feet of snow!  The girls like to watch me run... or probably like to watch the TV while I run.  I was watching Goof Troop, and they really enjoyed the episode that was on.  I asked Brooke to grab a picture for me to put on the blog!  She's usually good at not getting her fingers in any more, but I guess she was in a hurry to get back to watching.

When I finished work on Monday we went out to play in the front yard!  This was a perfect choice because all of the shoveling made HUGE mounds of snow.  We all took turns sledding down our manmade hill.  I took Grayson for his very first sled ride!  Monica also joined us on the slopes, and the girls obviously took LOTs of turns going down the hill.

As mentioned, we made a huge snowman.  While it was snowing over the weekend I told my kids about when I was in elementary school, and at recess groups of kids would get together to roll HUGE snowballs.  In the end they'd pull up all the snow down to the grass and leave a trail of grass behind.  I didn't join in too many times, but I do remember pushing the snowball until we couldn't any more, and then climbing up and jumping around until it crumbled.  Well, the bottom of our snowball was just about as large as I could have rolled it.  The girls really wanted to sit on top of the car in the snow, so I put Brooke up there.  I hope is was as fun as all her dreams made it out to be.

There was quite a bit of snow melting, and the gutters were pretty full.  Winry REALLY wanted to play in the water, so we got her some yard tools to play with.  As you may remember from the video of Monica sledding, she was walking through the water and soaked her feet...  Despite that, she stayed out and played all 2 hours that we were out there.  The cold does not bother her, so long as she's having fun.  We also spent some time jumping into the snow, and I did a flip!  Again, just pure bliss all around!  I couldn't believe it had been two hours when we went in to start getting dinner ready.

We let Grayson have some solids this past week.  Here he is his very first time eating solids!  He had squash the first two nights, and you could tell he really wanted to eat, but just didn't like the food...  We tried Bananas the third time, and that was it so far.  Why?  Because he slept REALLY bad all 3 nights, so he's probably not quite ready for solids yet.  We can maybe keep easing him into it or something.

On Tuesday Monica took the girls out and cut a little snow cave for them.  They had a lot of fun playing in it, as well as doing all those things we did Monday!  This was while I was at work, so I don't know as much about what all happened.

Monica was feeling a little sick over the weekend, so she went to get a COVID test on Tuesday.  Came back negative, so that was good so that we could still come out to Utah at the end of the week.

Here's Grayson in his St. Patrick's day clothes.  That's all...

On Friday morning we packed everyone into the car and started the drive to Utah.  While heading through Denver we saw a truck with a dinosaur in it!!  The girls were very excited.

Here's everyone at nap time!  I don't know if Brooke every actually fell asleep... but they were all being good.  We just got Brooke a booster this last week, and she really wanted to use it.  It fit between Winry and Grayson's car seats, and so we put here there.  It's a little hard to get to her buckle, but it was nice to have more space in the back, and even nicer to have Brooke there to help Grayson!  She was a champion turning on his noise maker, and giving him his pacifier, and making calming shuushing sounds when he needed to go to sleep.  Hero child.

We stopped for lunch and to play at a park in Rock Springs.  We ended up breaking the drive into 3 parts, as Grayson needed to eat about every 3 hours.  So stopped in Laramie real quick to feed him, get gas, and use the bathroom, and then stopped for lunch in Rock Springs.  Here was a plane at the park and the girls really liked it.  We played for a little, and then ate lunch in the car.

I don't know that I can stress how great the kids were.  There were a few semi-rough moments.  In a few moments it seemed like things were going to go bad, but in retrospect those were short moments.  Grayson did amazing being happy and playing with Brooke for 1-2 hours each time after he ate, and then sleeping for 1.5-2 hours in his car seat until we were ready to stop next.  Brooke was an amazing helper with Grayson, and only struggled once a little when Grayson cried for a while despite her best efforts, but we talked her through it and she did amazing.  Winry did great entertaining herself and taking naps when she got tired.  Speaking of, one of those times was while she was eating a sucker...

There were a lot of beautiful views while we were driving with all the fresh snow on the mountains.  Here's a picture while we were driving through Provo Canyon from Park City.  The drive was great and took just over 9 hours.  I think the expected time for the route is pretty close to 9 hours, so again, the kids were amazing.

It was all smiles when we got to Gram and Pop's house!  We had dinner and it was time to get ready for bed.  The girls asked if they could each pick an extra stuffed animal from the toy room, and Brooke picked.... well... she picked the chocolate swirl.

Grayson and Pop had a great time together watching March Madness!

Monica and I snuck away for a lunch date.  We went to In-n-out and ate our burgers in the parking lot at BYU.  The fries smartly auto-inserted themselves into my burger, which was a great idea!

After eating our burgers we walked around campus a bit eating our fries, and then headed into the book store.  Brooke really wanted, and didn't have, a BYU shirt in her size, so we were on a mission.  I also forgot to pack one...  There is currently a Lego model of the Provo City Library (originally Brigham Academy, the original BYU building).  That was really cool to see!  We found the clothes we needed and headed back to beat Grayson to needing to be fed.  It was a lot of fun to be back on campus and to get to spend time with Monica just the two of us.

We got 2 shirts for Brooke.  I really liked this dress one.  It's really cute!  Brooke also started playing ping pong for the first time with Audrey.  She's a natural.  They were having a lot of fun though.  Brooke loved playing with Audrey all day long!  Once Audrey got there I only saw Brooke when I went looking for her, which is very different from a typical day.  I'm glad they are having so much fun together!

Winry held Grayson a bit this morning, and they were so happy together!  That reminds me, We did have a Grayson scare when we first got here.  Gram and Pop were holding him, and after a minute or two he started crying, so we were afraid he might have gotten old enough for stranger danger and to be scared of other people.  Not so, and he's been fine being held ever since.  Not sure what happened, but I think everyone is glad it ended quickly.

Here's everyone that was there for primary today.  Things were less reverent than usual... and if you remember some of the things I've posted of Winry during primary you know that's saying something.

All the kids wore their Easter clothes today.  Monica tried to get a good picture of them all, but not every picture can be in the back of the van right after eating In-n-out, and so the kids were not giving their best smiles.

Grayson's baby blessing was originally planned for today, but my dad got total knee replacement on Thursday and wasn't going to be able to make it.  We wanted him to be able to be a part, so we moved it back to next Sunday, and up at my parents house.  Dad, I hope your knee is doing well, and that you're feeling better soon!  We had a fun and relaxed afternoon together, and after dinner I headed off for my work trip.  And that's where I currently am, watching march madness, and writing the blog.  My bracket has been typical.  I usually somehow end up getting lucky with the first day of games or so and up at the top of my groups, and then slowly work my way down the list over the proceeding days.  I'm somewhere around the upper middle...

Anyway, I'm already up a little later than I had hoped, so I'm going to take off.  I've got a pretty long day ahead tomorrow, so I'm off to bed!  Have a great week, and may your bracket bust worse than mine!

In-n-out Brings Huge Snowstorm

Hello fellow travelers!  What a day today has been!  We're in the middle of a HUGE snow storm (currently the 4th largest in Denver EVER!).  We've been in all day, I shoveled twice and the driveway is still covered in snow, and the day felt oddly long.  Anyway, I did have to prepare before shoveling, as you may notice in the picture.  I'll have more pictures of the world and the snow later in the blog, but it was a LOT!

Early in the week (I believe Tuesday) we went to an In-n-out that just opened a few weeks ago.  The line was still pretty ridiculous, but it maybe took us 15 minutes to get in, order, and get our food, so not too bad.  We headed to a nearby park to meet the Cammacks and eat together.

And here are the kids in their In-n-out hats!  And can you even believe it, they are ALL looking and ALL smiling!  Even Grayson!  I'm not sure if Grayson or Winry was looking away in more of the pictures I took, but I got one with them all, so victory!

On Wednesday night we headed down south to the Pinery to pick up some food stuffs Monica ordered from a company.  I guess it costs a lot to get it shipped to your door (one item was a 25 pound bag of oats), but is cheap/free if you get it grouped in the area shipment and go pick it up from someone's house.  Not sure how these people got to have the lucky house, but when we got there there were deer everywhere!  They were all over in the next few lawns.  They were closest to lights at this house, and the girls were excited to see them too.

Speaking of the girls, they have been putting dolls to bed in Grayson's pack'n'play, and have been stealing his swaddle blankets too!  It's pretty common to find several in there together like this.  In fact, even tonight, Winry was late to our family home evening lessons because she just needed to "put a baby to sleep real quick!"

Grayson has started to attempt to suck on his thumb.  He's not great at it yet, and it'll probably be easier in the future if he doesn't get good at it.

The snow started yesterday morning, and has been relentless since.  I'm pretty sure the windows on all sides of the house are wet/icy from the snow.  Jelly enjoyed watching the water drip down our back door today, and even tried to snatch up a few of the more pesky ones that intruded in her space.

Here are the icicles growing nicely on our rain gutter.  They even started to curve from the wind blowing on them all day.

Here's our house from the sidewalk once I got there on my second foray out with the shovel today!

And here's an attempt to measure the snow.  That's just a typical 1 foot ruler on the ground.  This is after I shoveled off the driveway the second time.  There is already enough snow out there again to deserve a shoveling, so I am glad I cleared things off twice today, because I think all of that snow at once would be WAY to much to handle.

And for a more honest example of how much snow there way, I thought I'd try to measure how deep the snow was on top of the car.  The result?  Over a foot.  Looking online the total at 7pm was supposed to be something around 19 inches I believe (Monday morning update, snow total is 26.5 inches!  I no longer feel like that picture could be deceiving).  I am quite sure we had much more then that on our front yard, however, looking across the street the neighbors houses seem to have less, so I think the wind kicked up a lot of their snow and dropped it at our house.

As you hopefully knew, today is Pi Day!  We doubled down our celebration by having chicken pot pie for dinner, and cinnamon pie for dessert!  They were both wonderful!

I think that covers all of the highlights from this past week.  Have a great week ahead, and look forward to some good snow related content next week!
 

Jelly and the Razor!

Hello!  The time finally came!  We found a groomer that would call us back and we took care of Jelly's fur clumps.  There's only one way to take care of fur clumps...  Jelly did... okay with her visit.  The lady said she wasn't thrilled and tried to run away every time she unscruffed her.  She even had to get her boss to come help hold Jelly to get some places shaved so she didn't hurt her.  Jelly made it through and has been nice to us, so I think all is well.  She did keep her distance from us for a bit when she first got back in, but things are back to normal now... well... except for her fur.

Last weekend one of my coworkers went on a brief radiation trip.  On the trip he used a web cam to monitor the experiment (which will eventually kill said web cam), and while the radiation beam was running he recorded the video.  On the video he could see blips caused by the radiation, but he went through and pulled this still frame.  This was his favorite, and I really like it because I feel like it's the best way to show people what it is I do.  That white streak is a proton.  No, the proton was not visible to the camera.  Instead, the proton struck the image sensor in the camera and traveled down it's surface leaving charge in it's path.  The effects the proton caused on the sensor made it report seeing a white streak instead of the actual light that hit the sensor.  Pretty cool!

It was pretty warm this past week, with several days in the 60's.  Monica took advantage by taking the kids to a park almost every day (it rained/snowed one day).  Sometimes they even went to two.  The girls had a lot of fun, and they also were a lot happier/less bored when at home throughout the week (except Friday morning, the day after the storm).

One day we played out in the front yard.  The girls wanted to ride bikes and scooters.  Brooke really wanted to focus on her balance bike, and getting better at balancing.  She did a pretty good job, especially compared to her typical levels of risk aversion.

This past week I wrapped Grayson in a blanket, and I don't remember why... but it's cute!! Yay!

Saturday at breakfast I sat down and the girls toy sunglasses were sitting there in front of me on the table.  Swipe, swoop!  Grayson rocking breakfast in style!

That afternoon the groomer came.  It was a mobile groomer, as we didn't think we'd have great success taking Jelly somewhere.  We even got some stuff that is supposed to help calm cats to spray in her kennel before she got in.  She did okay.  She basically just got shaved, and nails clipped and then the groomer just wiped her down to clean her off because she was afraid Jelly would lose it if she tried to put her in a bath.  I fully agree, and am grateful for the shave!

As Jelly's been going around the past day sometimes I feel like she seems a little bit cold.  This is pretty understandable as she had a good 2+ inches of fur shaved off.  I mean seriously, did you see how small she actually is?!?!  It blew my mind!  Anyway, I put a blanket on her today while she was taking a nap to help her stay warmer.  Hopefully she appreciated it.

Today, after our primary call with Monica's parents the girls were being wild and show-offy for everyone who could stick around.  The best part of this was that Winry was being the music, and Brooke was dancing to the music.  To start, Winry was standing by the door and Brooke said something like "Winry, play the music."  To which Winry responded "CLICK!" and then started singing a song.  I honestly don't know if she was making it up (I'd never heard it before), but it all flowed really well together.  Winry just kept walking around Brooke being her music while she danced until Brooke asked for the music to pause, at which point Winry would go back to the front door and stop singing, probably making another clicking sound.  They made a really good duo.

Before I sign off for the week, I just wanted to express my gratitude for having this blog.  It got me out of doing the dishes!  I was washing the dishes and remembered I still needed to write a blog post, and Monica said she'd do the dishes so I didn't have to stay up late to write it!  Thanks blog!  and Thanks Monica!  Have a good week, and I'll drop another update when I need to get out of a chore!