Happy Thanksgiving

Yay for turkey!  We had a great Thanksgiving this past week.    The cooking and preparation spanned two days, but was worth it.  The Chambers came over to have dinner with us, and we all had a great evening together.  Here we all are together.  Brooke was upset about something... which isn't unusual lately.

Rewinding to the start of the week, Brooke got to go to a hip hop/acro dance camp on Monday.  She had a lot of fun, and they spent the camp learning a new dance!  They worked on cartwheels and she's now spent the week practicing and has improved a lot! She had a lot of fun, so I'm really glad she went.

The play tent was still a hot item at the start of the week.  The kids were loving it, and they filled it up with blankets and stuffed animals and turned it into a cozy spot.  They also usually play it's their rocket ship since it's got all the space stuff on it.  I came to find Grayson and Winry in there with their legs poking out, and Winry was reading a story.

On Tuesday I believe, Monica met with some friends at a park.  The kids had a lot of fun playing together, and it sounds like Winry and Daniel were inseparable! 

I had work off Wednesday through the end of the week, so we celebrated by taking a ride to space!  It sure was cozy!  Also, with all the blankets in there, Jelly doesn't go crazy when she gets in.  Instead she'll climb in and take a nap.

There was lots of cooking and prep work on Wednesday.  Monica made two pies, cookies, and chopped up everything to be cooked Thursday.  It was a lot, and I did my best to keep up with the dishes all day long.  Grayson even came to help clean a dish from time to time if it tasted right.

Brooke went to the dermatologist this past week, and got to go to Wendy's for lunch after if she was good.  She did a great job, which is fortunate, because that means I also got a peppermint frosty.  It was pretty good, but not the best seasonal ice cream you can find.  As for the doctor, they put stuff on her warts called beetle juice.  It makes her skin blister, so I think the plan is you blister the skin where the warts are, and then the blister skin comes off and with it the wart.  She has another appointment in 3 weeks to see how things went.  She's had a few blisters come off already, and she had a day or so where it was decently uncomfortable for her, but I think it'll be really nice to have her warts gone!  I know she's really wanted that for a long time.

Meanwhile, Winry's just finding ways to entertain... I mean, to stay entertained.  I have no details on this one, I was just there for the show.  Oh, and Winry's in dance clothes because she went to a dance camp on Wednesday.  She also had a great time, and with the younger kids they do some crafts and things too.

Thursday was Thanksgiving.  I stayed up to put the turkey in, and it went in around 12:30 am.  It cooked a little more quickly than we thought, so we probably would have been okay waiting till later, but not until like 5 or something where it's just very early morning, so I'm glad I stayed up.  Anyway, the morning was mostly oven management since most of the dishes had been prepped the day before.  When the Chambers arrived we had dinner!  It was delicious.  After we made a big turkey on the wall.  The kids could trace their hand and write something they were grateful for inside to add feathers to the turkey.

Here we are decorating some turkey cookies to pass the time.  After a few hours we all had pie.  Monica made cinnamon pie, and tried a raspberry cream pie this year.  I think it was definitely my favorite pie!  The Chamber brought a pumpkin cheese cake with them as well that was also very yummy.  I took way too large of slices of everything, which I only half regretted.  

The next morning the kids table was still out, so when Grayson came down for breakfast he put out Thanksgiving plates on the table again!  It was so cute.  He wanted some goldfish, so Monica gave him the bag to get some, and the dumped out the whole thing!  We took some back, but talk about a Thanksgiving feast!

On Friday we started getting things ready for Christmas.  We went and got our tree from King Soopers in the morning, and decorated it and the house and hung up stockings.  I wanted to make sure Grayson stayed warm in style, so I may have borrowed a few of the latter.

Friday night is the mayor's tree lighting in Parker.  Monica was feeling a little over worked in her back, so I took all the kids.  They had a stage set up where they had performances throughout the night, and they turned on all the trees that were lit.  A kind sir offered to take a picture of us all together, so here I am with the kids... in front of... the port-a-potties...  I wish I'd realized that a little earlier.

The girls really liked when all the lights turned on, and then we wandered around the park a little.  They had ice sculptures scattered around, and some being carved live.  Santa was there, but we didn't wait in that line, and they even did a condensed Nutcracker on the stage.  The girls LOVED watching that!

On Saturday we had a garage sale.  We've been consolidating for a while, and it was finally the day.  I spent the day all over the place, moving things for Monica and playing with the kids, and whatever else needed doing.  Here's Grayson and I playing with the bubble machine.  He couldn't decide where he wanted it, and we kept moving it all around the front of the house.

Here's the garage sale in full force.  We had maybe around 10 people come by in total.  I don't know if there are cool ways to advertise to draw a bigger crowd, but we just put up a sign on the main road.  We still have a lot of stuff we'd like to get rid of, so maybe day 2? Or maybe Goodwill?  I guess we'll see.

Winry found a rolly-polly while we were out there, and she made a full circus course for it in the garden.  The girls also brought out a carrot for it to eat.  

Grayson booked it out of sacrament meeting because he was so excited for nursery.  Fortunately we made a clean escape, meaning we got out before most people got up from their pews, so he didn't push his way through legs and leave me behind.  Since we were first he got first choice of toys, and picked this car.  Pretty cool set of wheels for a pretty cool dude.  He was already climbing out of it by the time I left the room.

Winry gave a talk in primary today and she did a great job.  I helped her with it, and it was about Christmas.

I don't know if I've mentioned anything about my eyes, so I figure I'll throw out a quick blurb.  I think it's happened a time or two earlier, but starting about 3 weeks ago when I started back to work, part way through the day my eyes just lose focus.  It makes it really hard to read things, but my vision in each eye is clear and normal still.  I know because I close one eye.  I've been using that trick quite a bit lately to get through the work day.  I thought it might be caused by computer screens, but it doesn't seem like it as it also happens on the weekends, and usually starts around mid-day regardless of what my day was filled with to that point.  For the first bit I got a lot of headaches, and felt dizzy a time or two, but I think I've "gotten used to it" more or less and I haven't gotten a headache or felt dizzy much since.  I've already been to see my eye doctor, and he said my eyes are getting tired, but other than that were normal and fine.  Essentially it was useless.  I'll probably head to a different specialist recommended by a friend soon and see if they have anything more to say.  I just got some blue light filtering glasses, so we'll see if they help at all this upcoming week.

And with that, I think I'm out of things.  I'm going to go rest my eyes.
 

Brooke Turns 7

Well hello!  Brooke turned 7 this past week!  That also means I've been writing this blog for 7 years! Whoa!  Anyway, back to Brooke, she had a great day, and we topped off the day the same as her party, with mint brownies!  I've got some pictures later, so we'll get into the details there.

Our first real snow happened this past week.  I'm not sure whether or not it snowed small amounts already this year, but this is the first time we've really had snow on the ground in the morning.  The kids were VERY excited and had to get out.  Unfortunately, Brooke was at school, so it was just Grayson, Winry and I.  Monica got them all ready and then I popped up and went out to play with them for 20 minutes or so before lunch and heading back to work.

Jelly came out to see the snow too.  It took her a while to finally get out into the snow, but she didn't really seem to mind the cold.  Good thing she was shaved a while ago so her fur has had time to grow back in.  Anyway, you can kind of see his legs come flying in, but Grayson went down the little playground slide and flew into the water table, etc. and scared Jelly right back into the house!  Hopefully she'll give the snow another try.

Grayson wanted to join the snow angel crew, and did his very best, meaning he laid down!

And of course we had to have a snowball fight.  I got ganged up on, AND I had to make all of the snowballs.  Not the most fair snowball fight I've ever been in.

Artemis I finally launched this past week!  This is the one that I worked on when I first started as SEAKR.  I did all of the FPGA design in the VPU (Vision Processing Unit) for the crew module, so all of the camera feeds should be going through that to be processed and stored.  It's also set up as a back up flight computer, and who knows what else they might use it for.  Anyway, the great news is it didn't explode!  

Grayson has been helping Monica get in and out of the car and walk over to drop Winry off at preschool.  Someone's gotta hold her hand and get her places while she recovers.  He never did the seesaw when I was there, but Monica said he would have stayed there forever if she let him.

We had our house-iversay this past week as well.  We always get Japanese food, as that's what we did our first night in our house.  The weather even cooperated and I had to drive out in the snow, though it wasn't as bad as our first day here.

Here's Grayson and I... doing something... while Brooke opened her presents on her birthday.  We had a good time.  Also, Grayson is sick.  He's been sick since at least Thursday.  That's the first day I remember giving him medicine before his nap.  He's still been crazy full of energy until maybe today.  We went on a walk this morning and he seemed really tired, but insisted he walk the whole way.  He probably walked about a half a mile, and then I had to carry him back.  Oh, and I helped him have some vitamins this morning, he likes those.

Brooke woke up a little early so she'd have time to open her presents in the morning before school.  She was very excited for them all.  She got a bunch of books, and Winry gave her some cross stitches, and I'm sure there was some other stuff too.

As an added birthday greatness, Brooke and Winry got to go to the book fair.  They were very excited about it, and got some great books.  Oh, in addition to all of this, Michael was also out here staying with us.  He headed to Colorado Springs during the day to take care of things at his dad's house, and the girls loved to play with him in the evenings.  Anyway, here's our family together at the close of Brooke's birthday.

The next evening we found out Brooke's primary teachers sent her a card, so I wrapped Winry in a blanket and carried her to the mailbox to get it with me.  It was like 8 degrees outside.  Good news, we retrieved the card.

And that's about everything for this week.  Hopefully Grayson doesn't get the rest of us sick, or else I might have a rather subdued Thanksgiving post next week...
 

Brooke's Birthday Party

Brooke's just about 7!  I think I usually say it's crazy when my kids hit their next birthday, but lately I've been thinking about it and I feel like Brooke acts very 7 already.  That said, I don't know that 6 and 7 are that different in my mind.  It's like when Grayson turned two, he was definitely much more of a 2 year old at that point than a one year old in my mind.  Winry feels very five as well.  Anyway, Brooke's birthday party was on Saturday and she had a spa party!  We had a good turnout and everyone had a lot of fun.

Some nights Winry can make things a little difficult for Brooke to go to bed, so sometimes she sleeps in our room.  But usually she doesn't sleep like this!

Monica and I turned in our ballots on Tuesday.  Monica thought to take a picture, I did not.  Also, Monica has her selfie camera set to mirror, so it's not my fault the text is backwards.

I don't even know what Grayson was doing, but he was having a great time with his blanket.  We do enjoy being wild together.  Speaking of Grayson being wild, he was also dancing or rolling around or I don't even know what earlier on that day.

Well, I guess I knew this day would come eventually.  But after struggling through building a 3d printer 8 years ago I'm finally back to 3d printing.  It only took about an hour or so to build it, and 30 minutes to get the details tuned.  That's a bit different than the day I spent building mine last time, and the month I spent trying to get everything tuned just right.  I'd say things have come quite a long way.

Grayson is getting back into peppers.  We had some and I figured why not give it a try for dinner.  It's been a long time, but he enjoyed playing with it and eating it, and ate about half.  That's a big victory for a vegetable these days.

On Friday, Igor, the guy I've been working on golf stuff with, was in town and came to say "hi."  We ended up going over to Top Golf and we set everything up and played around.  We showed it off to the people in the bay next to us, and had a great time.  It was my first time meeting him in person, and it was nice to finally get to meet him.  My program was running on the laptop.  The phone recorded the shot and calculated ball flight metrics.  They get loaded to a server, and then my app gets the shot data and controls a game on the computer (in this case PGA 2k23) to take that same shot.  We loaded up Top Golf in the game too.  If that catches your attention, and you wanna give it a try and have an iPhone, the app is called GolfTrak (it's in beta and the integration to PGA2k23 isn't released yet).

You may be wondering, why go to TopGolf?  If I'm working on the program, surely I can hit balls in my house?  Well, you're not wrong, but Jelly was being territorial...

Saturday morning we headed over to the girls dance studio as they were doing a service day.  There were a bunch of things to do, like decorate Christmas tree ornaments, a bake sale, and putting together kits for the homeless like Grayson is doing!  He even put everything in that bag all on his own!

Saturday afternoon was Brooke's birthday party.  It was spa themed.  They played spa bingo to kick things off.  After that they all got manicures.  Monica had nail polish and nail stickers.

During nail time there were also several hair-do chains.  People also were heading in and out of the backyard to play.  We had a yogurt bar with lots of toppings and other snacks out as well.

Here are most of the girls together to show off their nails.

After nails they all did face masks together.  A bunch of the girls also wanted to get some cucumbers for their eyes.  We also did presents and sang happy birthday and had brownies.  The brownie picture was at the top.  Everyone had a great time, and it was great to have so many friends over.  I knew many of them as they were from church, but Brooke also had friends from school over, and Aurelia, who used to live next door, was even able to make it down for the party!

That night Winry really wanted to paint my nails.  They got some kid nail polish that peels off at the party, so I let her use that to paint my nails.  She painted my nails twice last night, and she painted Michael's as well!

Oh wait, you didn't know Michael was here?  He got in a little after the birthday party.  All of the kids were VERY excited to see him and they've been having a great time together.  He's out here to go take care of his dad's estate, but the kids are going to take every second they can!

For dinner we had a whole chicken.  It was a pretty good thanksgiving prep meal, and we just had mashed potatoes and some vegetables to go with it, so much simpler.  It was REALLY good though.  It stuck with me enough that I'm writing about it here.  We just don't eat whole birds all that often.

Anyway, this morning Grayson came to say "hi" while I was finishing getting ready for church.  He was riding a flamingo!  He didn't keep it on for very long, but he was so happy while he was in it.

Today was the primary program.  The girls both had a part and did a great job, and they sang well too.  Winry was up in the front, and we were sitting in the front as well.  I may have distracted Winry a few times, but I got some really cute finger hearts from her.  In the picture below they're doing sign language with their song.  Brooke is way in the back.  We could see her, but it's too bad she didn't get to be on the front wall with Winry!

That's all I've got for this week.  It was pretty good.  Things are getting much more back to normal.  It's been SOOO nice having Monica be allowed to help with more of the cleaning, and especially that she can watch Grayson.  She's been doing physical therapy, and it seems like it's been going really well.  If she wants to give any updates on how things are going, I'll leave a prompt for it here: I don't think I have much to add, but what Alex is said is true! My back is feeling really good, and hardly hurting! For the most part life is back to normal and I think PT is really helping. 

Wow, great stuff Monica!  Glad to hear it's going so well, and that's crazy that <really cool reference here> happened like that!  (I'm pre-writing this before Monica hopefully fills in her part).  

I guess in health news, I'll mention that I've got something weird going on lately.  My eyes are losing focus.  Things have always been fine every morning, but sometime during the day things start looking off.  One of my eyes is looking slightly above the other, so when I look at a face I'll see 4 eyes, 2 sets stacked on each other.  I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm going to the eye doctor tomorrow, and hopefully they'll have great and helpful things to say.  And now, that's really all I've got.

Happy Halloween!

It feels a little weird to be titling this happy Halloween, as Halloween feels like it was quite a while ago. We had a lot of Halloween stuff happen over the weekend, but it leaked into Monday as well!  The Cammacks invited us over for some chili and then to trick or treat in their neighborhood.  There ended up being a whole group of us, and this was Grayson's first time really getting to go!  He had a lot of fun.  Definitely loves when people give him candy.  So far his favorites are everything we've let him try!  He gets that from me.  When we got back I put Grayson to bed, and then Brooke and I headed for a loop around our neighborhood.

Monica has been feeling pretty good, so I gave work a go this past week.  It actually went really well.  I came up to change diapers and put Grayson down for his naps, but other then that I just worked and Monica watched the kids, got them food, etc.  So it seems like we'll be pretty much back to normal in the future.  Monica had her 6 week follow up on Friday, and they told her she could start progressing, but listen to how she's feeling.  It'll take 6 months to be fully healed, but she can start increasing how much she does so long as she feels okay doing it.  So no dead lifts with Grayson or anything, but if he'll climb a chair, etc. then she can pick him up, and she can get him in and out of the car/crib now.  All of that said, I've had the occasional buddy at work.  I heard the piano music and came out to see Grayson rocking on the horse while listening.  What a game!  Oh, and in the dark.

I wasn't around for this next one, but both girls are in there so this would be school pick up.  Looks like they had some fun in the leaves before coming home.  Looks like a good time!  I finally raked up all our leaves and almost burst a 55 gallon bag cramming them all in.  It was my last bag, so I had to make it fit...

I decided to play the piano on Saturday, and the main take away for me was that I need to play the piano more.  I very much enjoyed it.  Anyway, Jelly ever the lap hunter, noticed I wasn't moving and will always take a still lap when she finds one.  I'd say it made things a bit more difficult. 

Saturday afternoon I took Grayson on a walk, and Brooke wanted to come too.  Grayson loves wandering the paths, and we headed over to see the creek.  We didn't have a lot of time before dinner, so we went to the creek and turned right around.

The girls wanted to play hair stylist while calming for bed, and I was their subject.  It was a lot of fun.  I don't mind the bows, etc. and I thought it felt nice getting my hair brushed.  We had a great time, and then they headed to bed.

Grayson and Brooke both wanted to go on a walk again, so we headed out this morning.  With daylight savings it's unlikely that Grayson will get up with much light left today, so it was the morning or never.  We went to the same place as yesterday, and then kept walking down the creek and exploring the trails.

We found a little overlook like place down to the creek that was very pretty.  It's also kind of funny to see how green everything still is right next to the water.

Grayson's been picking up songs from nursery.  He can sing Popcorn Popping now, and I don't ever remember singing that one with him.  I'm glad he listens sometimes.  This week when I went to get him he was sitting in the hall on a rocking dog thing.  The nursery leaders said they had to take them out during singing time because the kids wouldn't do anything other then rock on them with them in the room.  So at least sometimes he listens!

And that's a wrap for this week!  Hope you're having a great life!