NSA Art Show

Hey hey! Friday was the NSA art show!  Brooke has been so excited for it all week.  I guess the artwork has been up on display, and she's been telling us about different things she wants us to see.  Her favorite seems to be a pig with tentacles, so like, Octohog.  Anyway, it was fun to go to the school and walk around and see all the projects, and we'll get to a picture of Brooke with her picture later :).

Well, now that we know moving is upon us at some point, it's been time to start getting through whatever we think we may want to do.  I've been working on various minor projects and fixes around the house, and Monica spent a good chunk of time going through all the kids clothes boxes and reorganizing them, etc.  There was a lot to go through.

Jelly, of course, was willing to help her out!

On Monday night we had a karaoke night here!... oh wait... I wasn't part of this...

On Monday night Monica has a karaoke night here with a bunch of friends.  Originally it was planned as a party for her friend Jocelyn who is moving soon.  There was a little tag-teaming of our move, in the sense that Monica told everyone about it.  Anyway, from in our room it sounded like everyone had a great time.

We've had  a few rainy days this past week.  It's been nice, I enjoy the rain!  Jelly was really worried about getting wet, so she took cover.

During dance, Monica and Grayson went to Walmart, and Grayson ended up with this box of crackers.  He has been adamant that they are HIS crackers, and wouldn't even let me try one!

Here we are at the entrance to the art show.  The theme was underwater, though not all the artwork necessarily was underwater themed.  I really love Winry's dance pose!  I think it's funny how naturally stuff like that comes to the girls when we ask them to get ready for a picture.

Here's Brooke with her artwork, an owl!

After the art show we had Texaroni for dinner!  Check those noodles out!  Monica's friend, Nicole, sent them to us.  The girls loved it, so hopefully they're more widely available in Texas because they were a hit.

Winry wanted to play with some Duplos earlier in the week, and Grayson wanted to join in and he's been obsessed ever since.  He just has a pile of Duplos in his room basically all the time.  Whenever it's nap or bed time he plays with them.  He plays with them while I read him stories and sing him songs, and then once it's lights out he grabs his flashlight and keeps going.  I wish I would have taken a picture of the monitor, but he even stacked them all into a huge tower one night.  he loves to either spread them all out and evenly build across the plates, or he loves to stack them all into a tall tower.  We even took them to church today for him to play with.  It only worked until church started, and then he did other things and was VERY loud.

And now we're all caught up!  In the moving department, we're in the middle of talking to lots of people.  We're talking with realtors and a loan officer trying to get preapproved, etc.  There's been a lot of phone calls, etc. and of course house hunting online.  No big news on anything just quite yet though.  Hope everyone's having a swell week!

Moving to Texas

Well, crazy news time, but we're moving to Texas!  I've been interviewing at a new company, and accepted a job this past week!  We'll be moving to Austin, and we're pretty excited!  Obviously the kids can't wait to go to Buc-ees, and who can blame them?  Look how good we all look!  It's really too bad I never got Jelly a shirt... or collar or something.

On Monday Brooke took in her second big project this year.  This time everyone was assigned a national symbol, and she got the rose.  She was really excited to give her report, and it went great!

We went to celebrate the new job on Monday night.  Whenever I think of going out to eat as a family, I always think of Casa Mariachi, so that's where we headed.  Winry ordered the purest of Mexican food options, mac and cheese.  Grayson got a quesadilla, and wouldn't eat it when it came, so he ended up popping up (as in, traveled under the table) next to Winry to eat her fries that she didn't want.

I ordered an horchata with my food, and it was hard to get Grayson to give it a try, but once he finally did he just stole the whole thing from me!

And here's the whole family together!

Monica took the kids to the park this past week.  The new one on main street to be specific.  They have this really cool slide made of rollers, and it looks like the kids had a great time on it.

Michael, Oriah and Niki all came out to visit this past week.  They came to continue doing work at Michael's dad's house, but spent a bit of time here as well.  We had a lot of fun getting to hang out with them.

I got a call from Igor on Wednesday asking if I'd be available Thursday or Friday to get together.  I ended up having a free window to come meet him at TopGolf, and he brought along his developers from India and Bali!  It was cool to get to meet them.  In the end I didn't even hit a golf ball, but we did some program debug and ate some food.  

And I came back to have cake for Niki's birthday!  Here she is with the kids.

Technically I did hold up everyone, but I wasn't TOO late for cake.  We had lemon raspberry, and it was terrific!  Thank goodness Niki had a birthday.

I don't think I've ever seen something leave Grayson's mouth so fast as his first bite of cake.  He did NOT like this one, so we let him have some Sour Patch Kids.  He was being really cute, he'd pull one out and say "this one is Sour Patch Orange!" or "I love Sour Patch Yellow!"  If anyone needs someone to name flavors for them, let me know.

There's been work out in the garden this week, and the weather has been pretty good, so the kids have been enjoying playing in the backyard with Monica.  Winry has been flipping rocks and looking for roly-polies, and boy did she ever find them!  She did find a spider once, and didn't love that one though...

I'm guessing it happened when my sisters were out here, but the keep your elbows off the table song is back!  Grayson LOVES it, and loves to just lay his arms across the table and wait for people to sing it to him.

We got a new vacuum because the brush on ours stopped spinning.  Apparently the new one is really fun or something...  Brooke seems to enjoy it at least.

Well, that's all for this week.  Big news and big changes are definitely coming. I'll try to keep everyone posted!  have a good week.

Easter Part 2

Alright, lets finish up Easter!  Winry got a planting kit in her Easter basket this year.  She planted a few different flowers in there and has been diligently watering them every day!  Two of them have sprouted already!  One's just come above ground, and the other is around a half inch tall.  She's loving it and loves to look at it through her magnifying glass.

We dyed eggs in the afternoon, and we had a dinosaur kit to decorate them!  Here's Brooke's egg.

And here's Winry's egg.

I gave my egg some scratches to look tough.

And, well... Grayson's egg didn't dry before his nap, so it didn't quite get put together.

Brooke got a skip-it like thing in her Easter basket.  She's played with it quite a bit, and she's starting to get better at it, though it does still fly off her foot sometimes.

One day when Monica picked the kids up from school and as they were walking back to the car some of their friends were right there with them, so they all held hands and walked together.

Jelly has been sleeping in Grayson's room before bedtime lately.  She's been sleeping all the way back in the corner against the wall, and then once Grayson is asleep she'll come out and meow at the door.  I don't know if Grayson's noticed her yet.  He's not usually one to leave her alone, though he has been better as of late.

The girls had a wasp in their room at bedtime.  I believe it was Monday that Brooke saw a wasp when she was going to bed, but she came out and we lost it.  She slept in our room, and I moved Winry over to our room as well just in case.  We never saw it again... until Wednesday when it came back.  I had a talk with Brooke on Monday about keeping an eye on a wasp unless it's flying at her.  So on Wednesday she kept an eye on it and I was able to get it in a jar and outside.  I don't know if wasps leave much of a smell, but Jelly seemed to notice and was checking out the jar later.

Friday was an off day for me, and Monica was going to meet some friends at a new bakery nearby.  Of course I'm not going to miss that, so I headed along.  It was delicious!

Grayson didn't care much for staying and chatting, so I asked him if he wanted to go to Trader Joe's next door.  So we went and walked around there a bit.  He saw the bananas and got really excited, so I let him pick out a few.  He put the sticker on my hand and kept them up in the seat next to him.

On Friday night Monica and I went to Anastasia.  We had a lot of fun.  They performers were great, but the story felt a little lacking.  Still a fun night, just not my favorite musical I've been too.  It was downtown, and apparently there were a lot of other things going on because the parking garage was completely full.  We fortunately found a lot close by to park in and still made it on time.  We also had some friends that happened to be going that same night.  We didn't buy tickets together, but we went to dinner with the White's before the show and talked to them a little after as well.

Here's a view from our seats in the theatre.

On Saturday Monica had a baby shower that she helped plan.  It seems like it was a good time.

In the meantime I took all the kids to gymnastics.  The girls had a lot of fun, and got to spin over a bar for the first time!  Grayson and I were reading books, and then eventually he watched books on my phone.  He really wanted to go play too, which makes sense, it all looked pretty fun.  Anyway, we had a good time and the girls did great.

Brooke threw up last night...  It was not so fun.  I helped her get through it, and then we both stayed home from church today.

Today Monica subbed for primary and she made marshmallow houses with the sunbeams.  Everyone wanted to make their own when they got home from church, so they each got a pile of toothpicks and marshmallows.  Monica helped Grayson get the first few together so he knew what was going on... and then he ate all his marshmallows, pulled the final two off toothpicks and ate them too, and then asked for more.  Totally understood.  That kid's gonna build his house on a rock! 

That's all I've got for now.  Brooke seems like she's feeling a lot better this afternoon, so that's great news.  I think that's all I've got for now.

Hoppy Easter

Happy Easter!  We're having a fantastic day!  Here's the family after we got home from church.  We were able to get everyone together for a pictures before everyone changed after church.  All it took was some candy :).  That's why the smiles are genuine.

On Monday I found myself at the Denver Airport, getting ready for a trip to Austin.  At the end of the terminal there was one of those outdoor areas where you could watch some planes.  Out of this side you could mostly just see planes taxiing, but there was the occasional plane coming in.  There's another one in the airport that I've been to that has a lot more traffic to watch.  It was still nice, and the weather was good!

On my flight I had a pretty great flight attendant.  He was walking down the aisle doing magic!  It took him a while to get back to us, I think he stopped at the row with kids on it for a while.  Anyway, really fun to watch.

I ended up staying at a kind of fun place.  When I was booking I searched for places with breakfast, AC, and free parking, and this was the closest to where I needed to go.  It was fun, and I got to watch the March Madness championship!

Meanwhile, back at home, there were oranges for dinner!  Grayson has a really good orange smile.

On Friday Monica took Grayson and Winry to the museum with some friends.  There's a bubble room, and Grayson was having a good time with the air tube.

And Winry put herself in a bubble room.

We went to Costco that night, and the kids found a porch seat to sit in.  I can't remember the exact phrasing, but I do remember the excitement that the swing was covered, you know, for just in case in the middle of Costco.

On Saturday the ward had an Easter Egg hunt.  The kids were very excited and they had a great time.  I followed Grayson around and helped him.

I wasn't there, but I'm guessing Winry wanted to know what a horse would feel like if it were hunting for Easter eggs full of feed.

We opened the eggs while we were there and there were some toys inside, as well as candy.  Grayson really wanted his balloon blown up, but it was really windy so I said we'd wait till we were home.  he also got some tops, which he wanted me to spin.  I had to spin them on my hand because, you know, we were in a grass field.

The girls had their first gymnastics class Saturday.  They were both very excited for it, and got to be in the same class.  Monica took them while I played with Grayson.  They both had a great time and told me all about it when they got home.  It sounds like there was some cross over with things they've done in dance.

In the afternoon we went into the backyard so that Monica could work on planting things in the garden.  Grayson decided he wanted to play tomato.  The great news is that I did NOT have to get wire cutters and get him out of there.  He was able to climb back out on his own.

This morning the kids were very excited for Easter baskets, and for egg hunting as well.  Grayson gave all the eggs he found a thorough shake for good measure.

There were eggs inside and out, so we headed out to collect what all we could find.  In the end it was a pretty big haul, and I'm pretty sure Grayson had WAY more candy than we wanted him to.  Turns out the eggs aren't too hard to open.

I'd be remiss to not mention that awesome book I found in my Easter basket.  I got a book that goes over the history of the church in Mongolia.  It has a lot of interviews with people, and covers from the first missionaries and first converts, through my time there and the first stake, all the way up until 2020-ish.  I haven't read the book, just poked around in it a little.  I think it'll be a really great read, and my picture is in it!  There's a picture from the mission conference when then Elder Nelson came out to visit the area, and we took a whole mission picture which is in the book!  I haven't found myself in the picture yet, and it's hard to really make out people, but I definitely recognized some of the other missionaries I served with!

At church Brooke wanted to go sit by her friends for a little before Sacrament meeting started.

Primary sang a song, so we got to see and hear the girls.  Part way through the song, Winry started to seem a little... less enthusiastic to sing.

Here are all the kids after church.  For some reason it was a lot harder to get good smiles when Monica and I were in the picture too...

And we dyed Easter eggs this afternoon.  There's still a little work to do with the eggs once they're all dry.  

And that's all I've got for now.  I'm sure there will be a follow up part 2 to Easter next week, as we've still got a few things going on later today.  I'm really grateful for Easter, and for the chance it gives us, like Christmas, to reflect on Christ.  I am so grateful for the atonement.  I am grateful that we can repent and be forgiven of our sins.  I know that Christ is our Savior, and that He died for us.  I know that because of Him, we will all be able to live again.  I am personally grateful for the help and strength He gives me as I strive to overcome my weaknesses and challenges.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.