Swim Lessons

This past week Brooke and Winry started swim lessons.  They're at the outdoor pool this year!  I don't know if this has always been an option, but this is the first time we've done lessons there.  The lessons are Monday through Thursday, and next week will be the second half.  The girls have been loving it, and they've been staying at the pool after swim lessons and enjoying extra swimming time.  It's also been a lot hotter this week, which is both a great time to be in the pool, and also a rough time to be outside all day.

Here's Winry with Grayson, watching Brooke's swim lesson.  They are really enjoying getting to be out of the house doing things!

Here's Monica and Grayson.  I guess if you want to be in the blog this week you've just got to put your arm around Grayson.  Now wonder it's so hard for me to make it in here any more.

Grayson has been working on putting on his own sunscreen.  He's still struggling with pushing down the button to spray it.  I'm sure he'll progress soon.

Heading back home, Winry has been patching this past week.  One of her eyes has a lot better vision than the other, so she has to wear a patch for 2 hours every day to prevent getting a dominant eye.  She loves getting to wear her patch, and after the first day and experimenting with getting things very wet before removal she's even started to take off her patch herself!  However, this morning when she got up she told Monica and I that her head was hurting, and that it had been recently.  The doctor did warn that it could give her headaches, so we're going to call tomorrow and see if there's anything we can do.

Back at the pool, here's Brooke out with her teacher.  Brooke is loving swim lessons, and, when we're out as a family she'll swim all around the pool by herself in her floaties.  She's loving the water, and loving to learn.  She still doesn't like her face to get wet though, but we've noticed from Grayson getting splashed in the face that he doesn't seem to mind.

After swim lessons there has been some other activity just about every day.  Sometimes it was more swimming, but Winry also had dance lessons right after, and one day there was outdoor story time at a nearby library.  After story time everyone went in to explore the library, and it had a pet vet station!  The girls had loads of fun taking care of the animals.

In addition to all the other fun activities, we've also spent some time at splash pads around town.  It's been a very water week.  It's also been a hot week, so it seems fair.  Grayson snuck into the lunches while no one was looking and munched away on an orange.  Someone needs to teach him to peel those things first.

Here's Winry in her swim lesson.  She's floating on one of those dumbbell looking things, practicing kicks.  She's had a bit of a rough time getting in and trying things out, but her teacher has been very patient and nice to her, and the other girl in her class, Summer, also encourages her, cheers her on, and tries to help her out!  I don't know who this little girl is, but I'm very grateful she's so wonderful!  Winry really appreciates her.

Grayson is still having a bottle a day, and Brooke has started to give them to him.  Brooke's gotten pretty good at holding Grayson and is getting really good at helping out.  In other Grayson news, Grayson has waved a few times now.  I don't think he has recently, but he did it a few times about a week ago.  He's also started pointing, again, currently intermittently.  He's a cutie for sure!

Winry found a really helpful way to wear her glasses...  I don't know what inspired this, but it was great!

On Saturday I headed into the backyard with the girls.  I cleaned up some stuff in the yard and then wanted to practice a little golf.  The girls wanted to share my golf balls, and so I let them have most of them and just rotated through hitting the same few.  I had a lot of fun until I broke both my mat and tee... at least the net and house are still in good condition.

We're all a little tanner at this point, but I think the sun and heat has made us all more tired.  I'm definitely feeling it!  I'd say I'm heading off for an afternoon nap, but Monica just left for a ministering interview, so I'm not sure I'll get so lucky...  Have a great week!

Dance Recitals

Look at me getting back on schedule!  Writing two posts in 2 days seems a little ridiculous, but I am glad I split the weeks.  Yesterday Brooke and Winry had their dance recitals!  They were in back to back hours, which was kind of nice because they got to watch each other dance.  Here they are in their costumes together between recitals.  They both did great!

Here's Winry practicing dancing.  This isn't her recital dance, she just LOVES dancing!  She has some really good moves too.

Winry went back to the eye doctor this last week.  Her glasses are doing great, but she still very much has a dominant eye, so we're going to have to do eye patches for a while each day to help balance things back out.  Be excited for those pictures in the coming weeks.

The girls both had dress rehearsals.  Here's  Brooke with her friends from church (who are also in her class) Eleanor and Emma. 

On Thursday Monica and the kids headed off to a park for play group with other families in the ward.  They went from their straight to the splash pad outside the library as E&E (their dance studio) had organized a play time there.  Winry kept saying she didn't want to go to the splash pad when they were leaving, and kept saying she didn't want any swim suit.  Turns out she didn't want to jump into a pool, which is why she didn't want a swim suit.  When she saw what the splash pad actually was, she was all on board and had a great time.

Jelly has been taking a nap on my lap every day for about 30 minutes as of late.  I think she's really enjoying the work from home arrangements.  Also, she caught a bug on Friday afternoon!

Saturday was quite a day.  I went for a run in the morning, and left a little late and it was HOT on my way back!  It was an omen as it ended up getting up to 90 yesterday, which is the hottest it's been all year.  After my run I did various chores like mowing the lawn or cleaning the bathrooms.  Eventually we all had to get ready to head to the dance recitals!  Brooke's started at 2, and Winry's followed at 3.  Brooke was in a combo class this last year which means she also did tap, so she had two dances.  Her first dance was her ballet dance. 

Brooke's second dance was to a song called Go Go Flamingo, and was her tap dance.

Winry's recital was up next.  She just had one dance to a song called "Never Smile at a Crocodile."  She did a great job, and even was right in front of us!  We didn't have to leave the room between recitals, so after Brooke's we moved up to the front row after everyone emptied out.

We stopped outside the building to get a family picture before heading to Culver's for ice cream on the way home!  Everyone had a great time, even Grayson.  He loved watching the dances, and I'm pretty sure he caught the eye of a few of the older girls when they were dancing and got some really big smiles!  I'm so proud of Brooke and Winry for doing an amazing job!  Keep it going girls!

I think that's all of the news for this week.  I will also note that Google Photos did just end their free unlimited storage, so I've had to change some stuff with the blog.  I think the pictures should essentially be the same, but I've moved to YouTube for videos.  Hopefully it's working well.  If anything seems amiss let me know and I'll hopefully be able to fix it.  Have a wonderful week!

Memorial Day Weekend

Well, this is just about as late as possible that I can get a blog post out and now have to do a double week... oops.  I hope you're all excited for another post tomorrow!  Hopefully that one doesn't take an extra week!

Anyway, this "past week" we spent the weekend in Colorado Springs.  We had some pretty good plans, but then it rained the WHOLE weekend!  There were little bits of each day without rain, but we did not really follow a single plan for any of the days.  We did still get to go to Garden of the Gods and had fun walking around the rock formations.  Here we all are in this... slot?  

Monica has been working on repainting our room, which meant she needed to go to Home Depot.  Fortunately she had a lot of helpers to find all the things she needed!  I think this is the first time Monica has gone out to a store with all of the kids.  This was probably Grayson's first store outing.

We finally patched the giant hole I cut in the wall.  Our shower was leaking within the first year of us living in the house. Likely it was already leaking before we moved in and we were the first to notice (our shower hangs over the side of the house, and I was mowing the lawn and Monica was showering and I saw water dripping out of the house...).  We fixed the issue all those years ago, but never patched the whole until this last week.  Here it is textured, and you can see the new paint color all around it.

We've started working on getting Grayson to bottles.  We're working on this because there are some things Monica can do for her migraines (medicines, etc.) but she can't use them while breastfeeding.  The first few bottles were a little hard, but now that he's familiar he's doing great!

We still love going out to play with the neighbors.  This past week Aurelia saw Winry playing in her Elsa dress with a giraffe and since she was in her Elsa dress too she went in to get her own giraffe!  Twins!

The weather has been nice and we've been enjoying the backyard as well.  Grayson and Brooke did a little wrestling this past week.

On Saturday we headed down to Colorado Springs for the Memorial Day weekend.  Our first stop was Garden of the Gods, and we made it before the rain but it was insane there.  There were cars parked way down the side of the road before the turn in.  We ended up stopping at the visitors center to use the bathroom, and Winry got surprised by this statue as it came around the corner, so we grabbed a picture.

While we were at the visitors center it started to rain a little.  I called the hotel to see if our room would be ready early, so we made the hotel our next stop.  When we got there, some people were out to walk their dogs and let the girls pet them.

We got in the hotel room and quickly changed to go swimming.  We were racing the storm we drove away from.  We got to swim for 15 or 20 minutes before the thunder started, but at least we were able to get in!  The rain was substantial the rest of the day.  We went out to get dinner and tried to stop at a park on the way home, but the rain was still too much and the thunder persisted.  Fortunately we brought the Switch and board games, so we played a little Pokemon Snap to pass the time.

On Sunday we headed to church, and then to a park we drove past on our way there.  The girls had fun running around, and I had to follow along everywhere.  It started sprinkling while we were there, but eventually let up so I'm glad we didn't leave when it started.

Here we are all hiding in this tube!  Monica and Grayson still found us.

Monica took Grayson into the car to nurse him, and while in there they also had some chips!  Grayson loved them.

Before we left, we went over to see the wagons that were at the entrances to the park.  The girls really liked them, and there wasn't a no touching sign so we let them climb on them.

We headed back to the hotel for lunch, and a little after we got back the rain returned with vengeance!  We spent time in our room playing board games and playing the Switch.  Eventually being cooped up in our room got to the kids and they started to lose it.  We had a decent size room too.  It had a near full size kitchen and a separate bedroom, but that didn't change the fact that we were confined to a hotel room.

As the storm worsened, the girls started fighting, and our solution was to get out of our room.  With it being Sunday we didn't really want to go anywhere, so we toured the hotel.  We walked around every level of the hotel and rode every elevator.  We checked out the area where breakfast usually is, etc.  and after a long walk everyone was feeling better!  Here's a view of the hail from our room window.

Fortunately we also brought stuff for Grayson.  He had a blanket and a bunch of toys to play with on the floor.  He was great!  We set up his pack n play in the closet of our room.  I just thought that detail was worth sharing...

Monday morning we woke up and headed straight to Garden of the Gods.  We made it there before 8 am and beat the rain and the crowds.  It was overcast and a little misty the whole time, but we got to see everything and stayed dry.  We all had a great time, and it was nice to get to do one of our plans!  After Garden of the Gods we drove through Old Colorado City and back to the hotel to pack and head back home.

On the way home we stopped at a park in the south part of Parker that the girls have really wanted to go to.  It was a pretty neat park, and it was also empty as rain continued to threaten.  We stopped at Tokyo Joe's for lunch, and then when we got home we changed and went to the rec center to go swimming again.  It's been a long time since we've been there, but it was so much fun!  The girls took back to the water pretty well.  Not as comfortable as before COVID, but Winry even jumped in again!  Afterwards we had a BBQ, and then I got straight to writing this blog post.  There was just so much content it ended up taking... 6 days....

Well, that's all for this week.  Again, I'll try to be a little more punctual next week.  Hopefully I'll be putting out a post again tomorrow.  See ya then!