Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!  Well, at least I started putting this post together before the new year... it's just taking a bit longer to actually write it out.  We had a wonderful Christmas!  Here's everyone coming down the stairs.  That's the advantage of being the dad, you get to head down first to get Grayson's bottle ready for when he wakes up and to be ready to take a video, and if you happen to sneak a few peeks first, well, that's just dad life!  Also, I love in that video when Winry tries to come down the stairs without looking!  So cute.

Grayson has started to be a climber.  He'll be our first climber, and may it pass fast, though from what I've seen from other people it doesn't.  We've started to find him on lower things like these kids chairs.  Fortunately they are small enough he can climb up onto them and get back down himself.

Brooke had her 6 year checkup this past week!  What!?!  She's just getting so big.  She loved going because she didn't need any shots and she loves the doctor!  Everything was good and she's healthy and growing well!

Speaking of Grayson and climbing, he also gets up in the basket of blankets.  This is probably more dangerous than it seems as I'm sure that's a very stable seat he's sitting on.  He loves to walk over and bury his face in the blankets, and now he sometimes climbs up on the blanket pile to bury his face.  He also started reaching for the stockings, so we had to move those out of his reach.

Here's Grayson on a chair again another day.  We eventually put the chairs away where he won't find them.  In retrospect, I'm not sure why it took a day or two to put them back away.

He was a little more bold this time and thought it was fun to stand up on the chair!  Fortunately he was always safe, and hopefully those chairs stay put away, but it was the girls who brought them up.

The girls have started to play with the next door neighbor, Aurelia more.  She invited them over one day, and we had her over I think twice.  They've had a lot of fun together, and I like having a good friend next door.  She's right in between Brooke and Winry's ages, so they all play together great!

Here's Jelly playing with a ping pong ball.  She LOVES them!  She hits them around and chases them and everything.  It's fortunately quiet enough that I never hear it in the middle of the night, but I definitely know she plays in the middle of the night sometimes.

I've got two picture-less videos, both from Christmas Eve.  I was playing the piano and the girls started asking for Christmas songs and sang along.  Top quality.  It's a real shame we didn't go caroling this year.  The second video is of Grayson with Monica's coat.  The fur liner around the hood looks quite a lot like Jelly, and he was grabbing it and rubbing his face on it.  There is a chance he actually thought he had Jelly, because he was loving it until he looked over and saw Jelly sleeping on her hammock and left the coat to see her.

Speaking of Jelly, here's Jelly with her stocking contents on Christmas morning.  She also got a pack of ping pong balls and a ball that rolls around on it's own.

Brooke got her much anticipated, and much loved Fur Real Pig!  The kids took it for a walk across the house, and Brooke has been a great pet owner since.  I do believe the pig has slept in her bed every night.

Grayson loves the baby shark song, and so got a baby shark toy that sings.  He loves it, but doesn't get the concept of squeezing it, so he carries it around for people to play for him.  He doesn't usually sing along with it, which is really too bad.

I wanted to get a picture of everyone from Christmas morning in here.  Here's me opening something.  From the size I'd guess it was my gift from Brooke which she found at Costco, which was a magic kit!  I'm going to learn a whole bunch of magic tricks to I can amaze the kids!

Here's Monica opening... a thing.  I really don't remember what.

We got some camping stuff from my parents, and the girls both got kids sleeping bags (Grayson got a... sleeping bag suit thing).  Brooke loves her sleeping bag and climbed right in.  She even slept in it Christmas night, got really hot half way through the night, and had to climb back out.

Grayson got this little car.  He LOVES going on walks, so I think he'll love this.  Of course, he also has his breakfast in his hand.  Babies just can't wait like everyone else.

Brooke got some piano books and is starting piano lessons with Monica!  She is so excited, and they are going to start doing lessons on Mondays while Winry is at preschool.

After opening everything, eating breakfast, and getting ready, we headed over to Tyson and Tina's house.  I think we've done this every year we've been out here for Christmas, and we always have a lot of fun.  We let the kids bring a few things with them, and Winry brought her Daniel Tiger reader.  She LOVES it so much.  I think she uses it every day, and will just go sit and listen to all the stories.  Each story also has a song in it, and you can listen to all the songs as well.

Our presents from Niki were at Tyson and Tina's house, and Grayson got these puffin booties from Iceland!

We also went to say hi to the salamander again.  Brooke thought it was cool, and Grayson got REALLY excited to see it.

Jelly loved the girls tent.  She loves to get in stuff like this, but she usually goes crazy too...  She'll try to paw at you thought the wall of the tent if you walk to close by the side.  We put the tent away because Jelly was going too crazy in it, and the girls never played with it.

Here's Winry listening to some books while she was waiting to head to church.

I took Grayson for a walk in his car after church.  He liked it, but it was really windy and I wrapped his arms under the blanket for most of the time.  I feel like if I need to bundle him up, the stroller is a little nicer as it has a higher back rest, but he did like playing with the steering wheel when I let him.

We had a super Christmas!  We had a lot of fun and enjoyed spending time together and with family.  All in all it was a good year.  Grayson is growing up so much, and the girls have been loving school.  Brooke is thriving in the learning environment and loves to do her homework.  Preschool has been great for Winry and she's making new friends and having so much fun.  It's been a wonderful year and I'm excited to see what 2022 has in store for us!

Winter Showcases, Seeing Santa, Trip to CA (work) and Ice Skating

It would appear I missed a week, and of course we had two very full weeks!  Looks like it's time for some catch up!  This past Saturday we had a great time in downtown Parker.  More details with pictures later, but at the park on Mainstreet there was a Santa's Workshop set up.  We grabbed a family picture in front of it, and it was pretty fun to look inside.  Even better was Santa sitting next to it on a bench! But more on that later.

I think we've got all our lights up for this year.  Don't worry, they were up at the start of two weeks ago!  We were getting ready to head out and look at Christmas lights, so that's why the garage is open.  It would have looked better with the door closed, but it is what it is.  Also, our projector light is actually supposed to be over on our tree, but we'll see if that ends up happening this year.

The girls both had their winter showcase at dance last-last week.  Brooke's class had two dances prepared, one ballet and one tap.  They also surprise grabbed someone from the audience to dance with them.  Brooke tried to get Winry to come with her, but she was busy covering her ears cause the music was loud.  She did eventually go out though, and she also went out to do the freeze dance with Brooke at the end of her class.  It was really fun to get to see a dance class, and Brooke is improving so much!

One of Brooke's good friends from church, Eleanor, is in her class, so we got a picture together at the end of class.  Winry and Clara also joined in.

We headed straight from Brooke's winter showcase to the SEAKR Children's Christmas party.  Everyone was VERY excited to see Santa.  Grayson, that includes you!

Winry had a fun time talking with Santa, sharing her age, and letting him know what she wanted for Christmas.

Brooke was also very excited to get her chance to talk with Santa.  She told him she wanted a FurReal Pig, which is a toy robot pig you can interact with, but Santa heard a "for real" pig, and had a little chat with Brooke about how he can't always bring live animals to houses.  It was great!

Grayson... well... it's a good thing Santa has a good grip.

After sitting on Santa's lap, we had dinner and did some crafts.  Most of the crafts were to make some form of ornament, and Winry REALLY wanted to hang hers on the Christmas tree there.  It's that little ginger bread man at the bottom in the picture.  I told her she couldn't keep it there though, and she happily grabbed it to bring home to our tree.

The next day was Winry's winter showcase.  There were not prepared dances like Brooke's, but it was fun to watch all the things she's learning to do.  They of course did dancing, like the hokey pokey, but they also did tumbling and stretching and stuff like that.

The girls got a picture together in front of the E&E banner after Winry's class.

Once I got home from Winry's showcase I started packing for CA.  I had a work trip over last weekend, which is why I missed my post.  I meant to write it, but completely forgot until today.  In effort to prep for the test trip I actually woke up at 3am Thursday morning because I was going to be on the shift that woke up early... until I got to the airport.  Talking together, there was value in me switching with someone else on the other shift, so then I was night shift and stayed up until 2 am California time, which would be 3 Denver time, or a full 24 hours.  Not exactly how I want to head into a test trip where I'm staying up until 6 am every day, but it worked out.

The airport had decorations up for Christmas, and I think my favorite are these reindeer.  Hopefully I was one of the few who cuddled close, or else I was rather unsafe with this high touch surface.

It was too bad my flight got delayed about 15-20 minutes, or else I would have taken off during a great sunset.  That said, it was still cool to see the city below as we took off, and the clouds looked pretty once we got over them.  It would have been amazing if we hadn't been delayed though.

As for the test trip, things went well.  We were doing proton testing, which causes the board you are testing to become radioactive, and so we do our best to shield everything from each other.  Somewhere in there is the hardware that we're testing...

The facility also used ring dosimeters.  I've never used one before.  I had a film badge too, which I'm sure you all know is pretty standard ;).

Meanwhile in Colorado everyone headed to the outlets to pick up some clothes.  The outlets had a huge Christmas tree! They also had sleighs with reindeer that moved and giant ornaments!

At the conclusion of my trip, they gave us a tour of the facility after shutting it down.  Once we finished our run, they shut it down for some maintenance- they do this every weekend.  The facility was in a hospital, but the rooms we were in felt very much like a typical radiation facility.  During the tour, we got to see some patient rooms and everything looked very nice.  Anyway, this is the cyclotron.  That little copper portion is where they accelerate the protons.  They accelerate from 6 to 60 percent the speed of light in less than a second inside of there.  Once they're fully up to speed, they're going fast enough to go around the room over 9 million times per second, or around the world 4 times per second.  Pretty crazy stuff! 

The testing went well, and after packing up I recovered in my hotel until it was time to come home.

Back at home Grayson started a new game called "find the monitor."  He loves to carry around his monitor, but lately he's started to leave it in random places.  This can be a problem as the battery is typically dead by the time Grayson goes to bed so there's no noise to help you find it.  At least the first time we played the game the monitor was out in the open.

Winry did something to her nose while I was gone.  Monica may fill in the details, but it wasn't serious, she's just in the "need a Band-Aid" phase.  I really included this because I thought it looked cute.

Everyone was excited to have dad home.  Grayson celebrated with a game of hop on pop!  He likes when I sit/lay on the floor so I can play with him, and sometimes that involves interaction and handing toys back and forth, etc.  But sometimes that just involves climbing over me.

Grayson loves to snuggle with the blanket pile.  It's funny because there's no connection with nap time.  He'll do this right after he wakes up.  It is MORE likely to happen when he's starting to get tired, but you never know when you might catch him over there.  He also likes to take any pillows on our bench and put those on the floor and lay on them too.  

Thursday was Brooke's last day of school before the break.  They had a holiday party at school, and she came home with a present for us!  It was this amazing picture frame!

We made Santa pancakes for breakfast one day this past week.  That was probably Friday on the first day of Winter Break (It wasn't)!

Round two of "hide the monitor" was inevitable.  Fortunately Monica found the monitor before it was too late!  I don't know that we would have EVER looked in the kids dishes drawer, so it's a good thing it caught her eye as she was closing the drawer.

Brooke continues to love helping put Grayson to bed.  Monica was commenting about how Grayson is close to having 7 teeth, and Brooke started crying because Grayson  was "getting too big" and growing up too fast.

I found Winry "taking a nap" at the top of the stairs one day.  I asked her to move back from the stairs because I didn't want her to fall down, and that's when I found out she was actually laying on the top step...  sigh.  There's a reason she's fallen down the stairs more than the rest of our kids combined.  Glad she was safe this day.

Grayson is now at the point where he MUST have his bottle as soon as it's ready, and you just get him the rest of the way ready for bed/nap while he drinks it.  That typically includes carrying him to his room, which doesn't always look this great.

We made gingerbread houses a few days ago.  The kit was from last year, and that may have led to some of our problems.  The white icing bag got a hole when we started squeezing it out, and it came out of the hole faster than the nozzle, so that made it hard to use, and the red frosting already had a hole in the back...  We made it work in the end, but we were a little frosting light due to the difficulty of using it.

On Saturday I thought it was a good idea to swap out our entry light.  We've had the new light for a while, but it turns out the correct answer is that there was never a good time to swap the lights...  The girls went downstairs because it was too scary to see me way up on the ladder, but Grayson enjoyed watching me.

Grayson got a turn on the ladder once I was done.  Definitely was helping out.

Saturday afternoon we went ice skating!  I helped Winry with getting and keeping forward momentum, and she was having a blast!  She slipped a few times, but I don't think she ever fell, so the plastic thing did it's job!

Brooke was able to go on her own with a helper-thing and was flying around the rink.  After she had done several loops, and while Winry needed a break, I asked Brooke if she wanted to try going holding my hand, so we did a loop like that.

We had a WONDERFUL TIME!  Monica was on the side with Grayson for this trip.  She wasn't feeling the best, or else we would have alternated.

After skating we continued down Mainstreet to Spice Kitchen and had some amazing Tikka Masala.  After, we continued down the street to see the decorations.

When we got the park where the Mayor's tree lighting happens, Santa was sitting on the bench!  We stopped by to say hi again, and the girls had a great time!

He gave them each a candy cane, which they were very excited about.  He gave one to Grayson too, but we didn't make Grayson sit on his lap again.

We made it to the big tree, and naturally the girls wanted to give it a hug.  I mean, what else do you do with a giant Christmas tree?  Not get poked in the face? Lame!  After that it was time to head back home for bed, and we rushed to the car to get warm.

At church Grayson got a bit grumpy, so Monica got him out a snack.  She opened the applesauce pouch and accidentally shot apply sauce right onto his sweater!

When we got home from church we took a picture in front of our Christmas tree in our Christmas church clothes.

We spent some time in the backyard in the afternoon, and I swung the girls on their swing.  Grayson woke up from his nap and also wanted to swing, and I decided not to take the girls swing off.  I just used my swinging to get Grayson going!  We also got to play peek-a-boo!

Later we also baked gingerbread cookies.  The hope was to decorate them too, but there were some hard moments at home.  Cutting out the cookies with the girls ended up being a highlight of the day, so I'm glad we at least got that done, and now we just need to make some frosting and we'll be ready to decorate this week!

That's everything for these weeks!  Glad to be caught up.  Have a wonderful week, and Merry Christmas!