Final Week of School

Oh my!! Brooke is done being a kindergartener!!  That is so crazy.  While if I really think about it, it does seem like she's been in school for quite a while, the year has just flown by!  I think the saddest part is that she'll be leaving Mrs. Hammel, her teacher, who she simply adores!  Here they are together!  More on final week activities in a bit.

The roly-polies continue to do well.  One morning all the orange ones were out in a gang, so I snapped a picture.  You can also see the back of a Dalmatian too.  The Dalmatians are funny, they almost always hide, but lot of time they just stick their head in the dirt, with their bums sticking out, kind of like an ostrich.

Brooke had an end of school presentation on Wednesday.  It was supposed to be Thursday, the last day of school, but field day got moved because it was supposed to be rainy, so the last week got scrambled a little bit.  All the kids had a line they spoke, and they all got to say what they want to be when they grow up.  Brooke dressed in her recital outfit and said she wanted to be a ballerina!  They also sang a great song about summer coming.

While we were there Grayson started getting pretty loud about wanting a snack.  Unfortunately Monica had NOTHING in the diaper bag.  After digging, she was able to find a sucker... so Grayson got his first sucker...  At least he was quiet for the rest of the presentation.

After, we all got to go into Brooke's classroom for some refreshments.  Grayson was happy to get a proper snack.  The person who sits next to Brooke was sick, so Winry got to sit next to Brooke!  It was a lot of fun, and the kids took pictures together and with Mrs. Hammel.  Very last day of school vibes.  Too bad we didn't think to bring her yearbook or she could have gotten some signatures (no one had a yearbook with them, so it wasn't "obvious" we missed out).

Monica had to go to the kids doctors office to get an immunization sheet filled out for Winry for starting preschool next year.  Grayson went with her, and did a good job having fun while they waited for the paper to get filled out.

That night Brooke and Winry took a bath together, and had a really great time!

The next morning, Monica made special shape pancakes for the last day of school.  There were the more customary shapes, like stingrays, vultures, octopus, and various other animals.

 

But Brooke had a special request and got a Mrs. Hammel pancake!

Thursday was field day, and families could come visit.  Field day went all morning, but Monica, Winry and Grayson headed over for the last hour or so.  Winry had fun getting to hang out with Brooke!

They even got to see Brooke do a few events.  They were there for jump rope and for the... ladder hang... or whatever it's called.  Brooke had so much fun on field day!

Here's Brooke with some of her classmates.  She's made so many friends this year!  The good news is that she'll still have some of them in her class next year, and the opportunity to make even more friends!

There was face painting and Brooke got several things.  I remember an ice cream cone, I believe a snake... and something else I don't remember.  Winry stood and watched, but didn't go up and have her own turn.

Grayson spent his time straight chillin in his car!  He really loves that car, it'll be sad when he outgrows it.

Brooke ended up winning two medals at field day!  She got 3rd in jump rope (meaning she got over the rope 3rd most in a minute), and 2nd on the obstacle course.  I don't think Monica was there for that, so we don't know what all the obstacle course had.  She was VERY happy to have won some medals!

Aurelia came over on Thursday afternoon to play.  They moved this weekend ;,(!  We'll miss them greatly!  Aurelia drew the girls this picture, and gave them both a stuffed beaver.  The good news is that our neighbors still do intend to come back around the area from time to time, so the girls will have chances to get back together.

Winry's roly-polies are doing well.  They tend to hide away during the day, but often first thing in the morning I can catch a group of them behind the rock, and the carrots we put in (that seems to be their favorite) shrink every night, so they're definitely alive.  Well, they're more than alive.  I was looking in this past week and saw a BABY!  It's on the top of the dirt a little left of the center of the picture.  I've seen 2 or 3 at the same time, so I don't know exactly how many there are.  We might have to release some back into our yard if it gets too full in there!

Grayson was apparently having a hard evening, so he took his blanket over to lay on Monica's foot while she worked on dinner.  As one would expect, this is the natural position in which one should sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Monica took Brooke out for frozen yogurt to celebrate the end of the school year.  Everyone was supposed to go originally, but something happened (behavior problems with child #2)... so just the two of them went.  They had fun, and I assume the frozen yogurt was good.  They went to a serve yourself place down on Main Street.

The weather has been nice, so we've all been out in the backyard a bunch over the past week.  I noticed this past week that the leaf-seeds from the tree were starting to dry out, so they helicopter a lot better now that they're lighter.  I showed the girls a few times, and eventually we started collecting big handfuls to throw all at once.  Winry especially loved it, and would scour the lawn for the seeds and find lots and lots for me to throw again.

I guess Grayson was in need of a kitchen spot to lay this week, cause here we are, same room, new position.  This time he was laying on a box of clothes that needed to go in the garage.  No singing this time, just laying on his own little bed.  It was cute until he sat down on the box and leaned back, fell off, and hit his head on the floor...

Sunday was a bit crazy.  Grayson still had a runny nose, so he couldn't go to nursery, and Brooke had been having a cough off and on, so we were unsure about her.  In the end everyone went to church, and then Monica came home with Grayson and Brooke, and I stayed with Winry for second hour.  In sacrament meeting a brother and sister spoke.  The brother just got home from his mission last week, and the sister is leaving next week!  So it was a homecoming/farewell!  That was pretty cool, and they both did a really great job!  I think that's all I've got for this week!

Dance Recital!

Oh boy... writing this almost a week late... and Monica still hasn't read the last one...  Looks like we might have a triple feature this weekend.  Last weekend the girls had their dance recital!  They did so great!  Here they are after with their lovely flowers!  Don't worry, I've got pictures and videos later.

Grayson has had some really dry skin lately.  It looks pretty rashy too, so we think it might be allergies or something.  It gets itchy, and when he scratches it can look real bad, like it does below.  Yikes!  A note from the future, we've gotten allergy medicine and are doing prescription lotion every day, we'd already been doing regular lotion and some prescription, so the allergy medicine is really the new thing, and it's looking a lot better as of the time of writing!

When I got to the hotel for my trip I found out that I was in a "premium" room.  The room was the exact same, but there was this little pile of treats in the corner.  Pretty cool, but now that I know what premium means I definitely won't pay for it!

I went on several runs while I was in Texas, mostly around the Texas A&M campus.  They had a pretty cool bell tower that I ran past a lot.  One day I stopped by to see it and went through it, and then grabbed a picture from a ways away.

Back at home the girls were helping Monica take care of Grayson!  They love holding him in his chair, especially while he's having a bottle of milk.

I called home every day, and I had the opportunity to talk to everyone, and I mean EVERYONE!  I even got to say hello to Jelly!  On second thought, maybe I shouldn't emphasize everyone so much, I don't believe I was ever taken over to the roly-polies.  

While I was out, Grayson got sick with something.  He had a runny nose, and was pretty tired.  This was all around the rash, and Monica was also thinking allergy related.  Anyway, some days he was pretty tired and snuggly.  Monica set up an appointment for him to go to the allergist in a few weeks, so hopefully they'll be able to help us understand what's happening better.  But yeah, he was actually sick this past week as well.

The good news though is that my sisters came out on Wednesday!  They came early for the girls recital, and of course also helped with the kids.  Both of the girls were super excited.  Winry drew this picture of her and Niki, who was first to arrive.  Winry even drew some awesome glasses on herself!

Meanwhile, back in Texas... We were waiting for the facility to get the beam ready for us so we could start running, and in the meantime we watched some Angry Beavers off my phone!

When we finish testing parts, they all have to be surveyed before we can take them with us to make sure they didn't get radioactive during our testing.  Here are our parts being surveyed.  Good news, they all passed and were okay to be taken home.

Meanwhile, back in Denver, the mushrooms were growing!  These are growing out of a stump from a tree that was cut down a few years ago.  Guess it's decaying now, and the fauna is taking advantage.

On my to the airport I stopped at Buc-ee's.  It was a great trip.  I was there for swim wear season!  I got all the kids a swimsuit.  I wanted to get a matching one to Grayson's, but the biggest size they had was youth large... so no dice this time.  I did get myself a sweet shirt, and a lovely floral beaver shirt for Monica.  I also picked up lunch here, and the sandwiches are superb!  Not your typical gas station (they sell grills and smokers...)!

Back at home it was snowing.  I packed for a humid week in the upper 90's in Texas, and came home to a predicted 12"-18" of snow!  To be honest, I got really hot getting on the plane, and I don't think I put a jacket on until well after I got to Tyson's house (I headed there from the airport to meet up with everyone).  The cold felt pretty nice after the week of heat.

Slight rewind, back in the Austin airport I stopped at Amy's ice cream and picked up this mint chocolate delight!  Yum!

Friday night, as mentioned, we went to Tyson and Tina's house for Maren's birthday party and had a great night.  We headed home, and Grayson went to bed around 8 pm.  At around 10:30 pm he was coughing and it sounded like he had croup...We held him for a while and decided that it sounded bad enough to take him to the ER.  A mere 2 hours later, at 12:30 am on Saturday, Grayson had negative tests for the flu, RSV, and COVID, and I called the doctor back in to figure out what was going on.  She said she was listening for him to cough, so who knows how long his test results were back and we were waiting for nothing. He wasn't really coughing because he sitting up awake, but when he laid in his crib he would start coughing a bunch.  In the end she trusted my opinion (and a nurse heard him cough when we got there and said it sounded like croup) and gave him steroids and we were cleared to head home.  The worst part is that Grayson was awake the whole time.  I couldn't get him to go to sleep.  He was really cute though, we put him in a hospital gown (which had cats and dogs on it and he loved it!) and he kept pointing to his pajamas and sleep sack on the other side of the room and saying "jammies, sack, on."  In the end we were home around 1 am and he was back to bed.  Shocker, he slept in till almost 9 the next day.  I think we actually had to wake him up so we wouldn't be late to the dance recital!

Winry did amazing!  She knew her WHOLE dance, and from the video it looks like she was the only one in her class that did.  She loved doing her dance!

Brooke had 3 dances, because she's in a combo class that does ballet, jazz and tap.  It's amazing to see how much better she's gotten year after year.  Here she's in the front doing a perfect... leap (I don't know ballet terms) across the stage during her ballet dance!

And here's her class in their final pose!  Grayson was struggling during the recital, so Monica took him to walk around.  Fortunately we were in a large high school theater, and the entire back half was empty, so there was plenty of room to walk and still watch the dance!

After the dance recital we went to Spice Kitchen to get some Tikka Masala for lunch, and after that all the girls went to the Nike clearance store.  Brooke and Winry both got some cool water shoes, and my sisters got them sports bras. (Brooke has been asking for a bra for seriously 4 years)  They loved them!  Brooke even wore hers to church the next day!

Even after putting her shirt back on, Winry just couldn't get enough of her cool new sports bra.

That afternoon we all played some Pokemon snap together.  Celeste, unfortunately, isn't in this picture, but after going through the pictures I think this is the only one we had of a group of us during my sister's visit!  I really need to get better about taking pictures together when people come over...  We all had a great time playing!

On Sunday I stayed home with Grayson as he was definitely sick, and Monica and the girls went to church.  Around the time they left for church, my sisters also took off to head back to Utah.  It was so fun having them out there, but sad to see them go.  Fortunately, summer is right around the corner, so it won't be long until we see them all again!
 

My Birthday, Mother's Day and Cinco de Mayo!

What a crazy two weeks!  Things started off with my birthday, followed closely by us hosting a Cinco de Mayo party the day before Mother's day.  I think the second week was much more calm, but in a rush I totally missed writing the blog, and now I've got a long post of catching up to do.  Things start off at Tyson and Tina's house on a Sunday long ago!  May 1st to be exact.  We headed up for dinner and brought my birthday cake with us.  It was a lot of fun to see them all again, and the cake and ice cream were wonderful!

My birthday was wonderful too!  For breakfast we had cinnamon rolls, and a little later we opened presents.  I got a few pairs of running shoes, and a really great glasses holder from Brooke.  I've got a picture of it toward the end of this post.  Here's a picture of me and Brooke right before I opened her present.

And here's me with Winry.  I like to try to put in a picture with each kid, and I liked this one more than the one with the present in it.

Also... I'm not sure what happened to the Grayson picture...  (note, I FOUND it, I actually was going to put in a video of me and Grayson dancing together) anyway, things went well during the day.  I had to go into work to do some stuff to get ready for our upcoming beam trip, but when I got home the girls had planned a surprise!  We headed to Boondocks to find out that it's closed on Mondays...  So we headed to a different bowling alley!  We had a lot of fun bowling.  I believe this was Grayson's first time bowling, and once he got started he wanted every turn to be his turn.  We let him start after we finished our first game, so Monica and I mostly let him take over for our turns.  Brooke wanted to try throwing the ball herself after a little, and she did a pretty good job and really liked it.  Winry, not to be outdone, also wanted to give it a go!  As always, bowling was a great time.  That is, until some not so great stuff showed up on the TV and we ended up leaving a little early.

We stopped and picked up food from Spice Kitchen on our way back home for dinner.  We had chicken tikka masala, and it was delicious as always!  Fortunately the whole cake wasn't eaten the night before, so we were able to have cake and ice cream again after dinner (and sing happy birthday!).

Grayson love love loves the salad spinner.  I think he's had it over with the toys for a few weeks at this point.  He loves to pull off the top and put stuff in.  I used to spin it a bunch, but I don't think he tries to very often any more, mostly just stores stuff in it.  However, his best method to spin it is to sit down on top of it.  I don't remember if he wanted to spin something in it, or if he was just looking for a place to sit in this picture, but he and that salad spinner are mighty close right now.

One day while Grayson and I were out playing in the backyard, I got the idea to collect balls in a bucket and dump them down the slide.  Grayson really liked this game, and kept playing it over and over.  We played that until I got him to reluctantly head in for dinner.

Brooke still loves the spiral rocks, and she and Grayson got to go play there one day while Winry was at preschool.  They were having a good time, and I also went running at this time.  The trail I run on even comes close by the spiral.  On my way out I was thinking I needed to watch for them because they might be there on my way back, but on the way back I completely forgot.  They saw me, and Brooke and Grayson even came running across the grass field calling out to me.  Unfortunately I didn't hear them either, so I ended up missing them, which made Brooke a little sad.

Grayson still loves sitting in the window, and now he'll get buddies up there to join him,  Here he is with Winry having a snack.

A Trader Joe's just opened up right by us, so Monica went to the grand opening with a friend.  Monica hunted out the good snacks for me (Note: there's coffee in the Joe Joes (their brand of Oreos) so I didn't get to enjoy those), and the kids all got leis!

On Saturday (the 7th) we had a Cinco de Mayo party at our house.  We figured it would be better to have it on the weekend.  We had a great time having our friends over, and Grayson really enjoyed the horchata!  He just wanted more more more!  Also, note that he's up on his table!

Grayson loves a good story.  Well... he also loves a bad story... Grayson loves stories!  He'll sit on your lap and have you read the same book all day long.  As soon as you finish he'll say "again!"  We got some little board books from Chick Fil A a while back, and one is about your elephant getting sick.  He's REALLY into that one right now, and in it the elephant sneezes and I say "ahhh, ahhhhh, ahhhhhh..." and he'll quietly go "chooo."

For Mother's day the girls and I did ALL the cooking for Monica.  In the morning we made breakfast, and then when it was ready I let the kids start eating because I didn't want to wake Monica up.  She came down a little later to find that we'd finished eating without her, and that's when I found out she had been awake the last 40 minutes, but was waiting in our room for the girls to get her for breakfast...  Mother's day had a bit of a rocky start... but all in all it was a good day.  Monica can add her gratitudes here if she so chooses: (Thanks!).  Here she is with all the kids!

Winry had some birthday parties to attend this past week, so Monica took her to Target to get gifts.  While there they saw some donut press on nails and Winry just HAD to have them.  She used her allowance, and she was literally bouncing around with excitement all day after!  Sadly, they didn't stick very well and many fell off that day.  We got some nail glue a few days later, but I'm not sure we've re-applied the nails yet.  Anyway, she was so cute about her donut nails!

Speaking of the window breakfast club, the whole gang eventually got together up there!

Brooke absolutely loves to go in the backyard, turn on music, and swing!  We got a family tablet for Christmas, and I connected a bluetooth speaker to it, so Brooke heads out and can listen, and change songs, and swing to her hearts content.

While this is happening, Grayson loves to come steal the speaker, and then start pushing buttons, quickly resulting in the music stopping.

Brooke and Grayson are the best little book buddies!  I'm glad Brooke loves reading so much, and that she'll share that with Grayson.  Heck, she just loves to play with Grayson, so I'm sure if it wasn't reading they'd find something else.

We headed to Trader Joe's as a family, and they've got an alpaca/llama that they hide around the store.  If kids find it, they can tell the cashier and they'll get a sucker or a sticker.  We finally found it at the very far side of the store, but the girls were super excited (he's white and brown, and kinda looks like an eagle in this picture).

Oh my does Grayson love cottage cheese?!?  Yes yes yes, and he gobbles that stuff up.  He'll try to use a spoon sometimes, but he's still not very good, which means he usually resorts to his fingers... or... whatever this was...

On Saturday our next door neighbor, Aurelia, had her birthday party!  The girls were so excited to go, and they were there all afternoon having a great time!  I think the husband is from Ecuador, and Monica said that is pretty typical in Latin culture to have an all day party where you hang out and have a good time.  The kids loved it, so no complaints here!

Sunday morning I headed to the airport to leave for Texas A&M.  When I got to the airport I happened to notice someone had let their balloons go!  Hopefully they were still warmly greeted.

After arriving in Austin we hopped in our rental cars and drove to College Station.  We set things up at the facility, and when it was time to head back to the hotel... well, we got a little distracted on the way to the cars.  My phone was not able to get a very good picture of what was going on.

Fortunately there were other phones there, where you could see the lunar eclipse MUCH better!  So that was pretty awesome to get to see.

When I got back to the hotel, I whipped out my glasses stand that Brooke gave me for my birthday so that my glasses would have a safe place to spend the night.  I ended up with some extra room in my suitcase, so I brought it along!

That night while at the facility I stepped aside for a moment to call home and talk to the kids while they were getting ready for bed.  It's a little hard to tell because my video is in the way but here's Grayson kissing his tiger hand puppet!  It's really nice now a days that even when I'm gone I can call home and see everyone, and still at least somewhat be a part of what's going on!

Well, that catches up the past two weeks.  It'll be about another week before this post makes it online, as I'll have Monica proofread it once I get home from my trip.  Hope everyone is having a wonderful May!