Standard Week

This way, that way, shake shake shake!  I know it's easy to tell, but Grayson is leading the music at FHE last week!  He really got into it and did an inspiring job.  We had to have a jumping jack break halfway through FHE, and raced to do 50 several times.  I think we'll probably need to do that again tonight.  I should just insert it into the agenda!

The kids have taken more interest in cooking lately.  I believe I shared about Winry's cooking day last week, and Brooke had a day this week.  For lunch we had sandwiches on a skewer with strawberries.  It was a pretty fun idea, and tasted great!  She even made my whole sandwich and everything all by herself.

The 24th was pioneer day, so we made homemade butter like we do every year.  The kids all helped to shake the jars.  Winry was very dedicated to the cause and did a really good job with her jar.

Monica took the kids back to school shopping this week.  They got various clothes and school supplies and were very excited to show me when I got home from work.  Grayson, of course, came along, and he was a super trooper.  There was not much excitement in it for him, but he just cozied up with the cart cover and made the best of it.

One of the local libraries, well, a slightly less local one... anyway, was doing a reptile show!  Monica took the kids, and it looked like a really great time.  They were all telling me about it after work.  They said no one was allowed to touch anything, but they were right up close to get to see things.  There were turtles, and snakes and lizards, and even a legless lizard, which is somehow different than a snake.

After, they all headed to Chick-fil-a and even got ice cream after lunch.  What a lucky group of kids.

They had a lovely sign out, and Brooke was the only one that could really fit in it.

Brooke decided to draw Texas on the etch a sketch.  Not too shabby!

Winry got a scratch or something on her finger, and put a band aid on.  While looking at her finger she said "look dad, it looks like Bruno!"  I said it was too bad there wasn't a face on her finger, and a few minutes later she was ready to show me again!

A piece of other fun news is that I got an electric scooter this past week.  My office is about a mile from the train station, and while that's not bad in the morning, in the afternoon when it's 100+ degrees I'd rather not make that trek, so I've been grabbing random rental scooters and riding them down in the afternoons while I waited for one to come.  It's pretty fun to ride around, and it saves a lot of time.  It only takes me a little over 5 minutes to make it now, depending on red lights.  I also take it to get the mail, and in general just think it's fun to ride around.  

I've also been trying to get back to running more regularly.  I've been really tired lately, but I was still able to get out all 5 times this week!  Hopefully as the craziness of unpacking and moving boxes around begins to ease up I'll be able to get back into exercising regularly again!  Oh, I found my old journal from high school and gave it a look over this past week.  I must say I was a rather inspired writer...  It was fun to read the parts I did, and I do want to finish reading it (I wasn't a great journaler, so all of HS is maybe 50 journal pages if I'm lucky), but it's really interesting to get a look back at previous you and wonder what you were thinking!

That's all I've got for now.  Maybe I'll go enjoy a scoot around the neighborhood!  Have a great week!

 

Settling In

Well, we're finally back at home with nothing on the horizon.  Time to settle in.  Jelly's definitely hunkering down and finding her place!  I feel like she's still testing out the house for potential places to lay, because we find her all over the place just laying there.  Sink?  It's a new sink, maybe it's a really comfy sink.

I also got Jelly a cat tower.  She spent a bit on there right after I built it, and slept in there the next day while I was working.  It's in the office now.

Monday we got groceries, which included many ice cream flavors.  We're still trying HEB out, and we heard their ice cream was really good.  It IS!  Some of them were just good flavors, but some of them were GREAT flavors!  They had a honey sopapilla flavor that might have taken the cake, but the grasshopper was also terrific.

Brooke was able to get into a dance camp on Monday-Wednesday in the morning.  While she was there Monica took Winry and Grayson to the Cedar Park library.  It seems like they had a pretty good time there.  They had some shape pattern things that Winry had a lot of fun playing with!  I think I heard that there were mats to match the patterns on, and Grayson really liked putting the shapes on there too.

I still continue to see a bunch of lizards outside, and I love it.  This little guy was hanging out in our garage when I took the garbage out.  On Saturday I was unpacking and organizing the garage and I saw a really long one in the front, and a really fat on out by our shed.  I never get close to them though, because they all run away so fast.

Everyone walked to the pool this past week.  This must have been Friday, because I was home when they left.  From what I gather the walk wasn't all that fun, I think in part because Grayson quickly decided he didn't want to ride in the wagon and then everyone just fought.  But they made it, and had fun swimming.

Friday night Monica had a sleepover with Brooke in her new bed!  I did catch them sneaking downstairs for some ice cream, and it looks like they had fun playing games.  I reminded them a couple times not to stay up too late, but I doubt they listened!

We had a smoothie this morning, and Winry's smoothie turned amazingly into lip stick!

Monica let the girls pick days where they picked all the food and helped to cook it, and today is Winry's.  This morning they made that smoothie and muffins, and for lunch we had little pizzas!

Not terribly much to report on this week.  I did head into the office Tue-Thurs this past week, and things went well there.  I've been taking the train in, which is nice because I work on the train, so then my travel time becomes work time, which is nice.  The walk from the train station is about a mile, and in the afternoon I grab a random scooter to ride back.  I've ordered a scooter, and am really excited for it to come.  I've had a lot of fun riding them back to the train from work.  Well, I think that's about all the update I have from this week.

Lake of the Ozarks

What a week!  We had a superb time out at the lake this week.  There was a lot going on, and plenty to do.  We went hiking one day, and that hike had just about everything we could ask for.  Nature, bridges, animals, everything!  It was tiring, but still a lot of fun.

Here are all the kids together having dinner.  I believe this was the first night... but that would be Saturday night and should have been last week... oh well!

Being at the lake means, well, that we were at a lake, so of course we spent a bunch of time playing in the water.  The girls got new life jackets for the trip since we were going to head out on a boat.

The house we rented had two kayaks out on the dock.  All the kids had a really great time going out on them.

There were a few fishing rods that were never actually used (i.e. no hooks), which is good because there were a lot of people swimming around the dock to catch.  We did see fish in the water though.  There were lots of little inch long fish, and I saw one other big one once too.

The dock bounced up and down in the waves of the lake, which did not mix well with Monica's motion sickness.  Fortunately, the whole weeks activities were not on the dock.  The kids were even willing to cross the bridge to play some Phase 10 with her!

The lake is all made by a dam, and we drove over to see the dam one afternoon.  Funnily enough, a bunch of trees grew in the way of most of the actual view of the dam.  Also, Grayson was having none of it.  He walked out there, and immediately turned around, so we missed out on the picture.

I know why Grayson was in a hurry though, he knew we were getting ice cream after!

It was a pretty good ice cream place, and I think everyone had a great time.

Also, Grayson came out of eating an ice cream cone without spilling anything on himself!  Great job!  Then he asked for a drink of water, and... well... at least it's just water! :)

On Wednesday we got a boat for the day, so Monica took Dramamine so she could come out.  This also meant she got to go on the kayaks!

Monica went out on the first boat tour with Brooke and Winry and rode on the tube with them.  The girls absolutely loved boating and had the best time riding the tube.  I even got a chance to go with both of them.

We brought our s'more maker and made s'mores throughout the day

Here's Monice riding with Brooke on the tube.

As mentioned at the start, we headed out for a hike.  There were old castle ruins with a trail around them.  It turns out that the ruins weren't actually on the trail loop, so we really just ended up on a hike.

However, the hike was really pretty.  I'm not really sure what to call this, it was in a stream, but was almost lake-like.

And better than the view would be the fact that there was a bridge all the way along it for us to walk.  Grayson's dream!

We had watermelon with dinner one night, and the girls love to scrape the red off with their teeth. They call them "scrapey teetheys".  It's a sight to behold.

There were a few nights where rather large thunderstorms rolled in.  During the day the weather was always nice... by which I really mean sunny, but there were a few nights with some pretty incredible storms.

On Friday we went over to one of Ron's friends homes.  Turns out he knew someone in high school who now lives on about 90 acres of land right by the lake.  While we were driving the road to their house we stopped to help a turtle cross the street and get to safety.  I also kept hearing a hawk in the distance while I was holding him, so I'm glad we helped out.  He even said hi to the kids.

The main attraction for the general crowd was their own lake with a rope swing and zip line.  However, Grayson just wanted to hike to the bridges.  We got lucky, and when we asked, they offered to drive us around to a few, so into their side by side we got.  Grayson was a bit scared to get in at first, but once I had him and and we started going he was loving it.

They had a really cool bridge they made out of a log that fell over the creek.  That one was really fun, though I had to be careful and make sure Grayson was safe crossing it.  Grayson was in bridge heaven.

That night we set up karaoke for everyone, which was a very big hit.

Grayson jumped in to try to help figure out who let the dogs out?

The girls prepared a dance for everyone as well.  They worked on it here and there throughout the week and did a really great job.

And the sunsets.  There were people out every night to watch the sunset across the lake.  Monica and I were even able to make it out for a few as well.

I spent the week sweet talking Layla, and it all worked out!  She LOVES me!  Well... technically she'd let anyone hold her, but that included me!  Also, she smiled at me a bunch, so I'm clearly the favorite.

The girls had a spa afternoon on Friday.  They painted nails, did face masks, and had a fun time.

Some of the kids had gotten cookie decorating kits from Wells Fargo for their birthdays, and they brought them along.  everyone had a cookie decorating party, and there were actually a lot of cookies in there.  Brooke and Winry each made one for me, and I ate them straightway.

Saturday found us on the drive back home.  It was a little over an 11 hour drive.  We chose to stop again at Buc-ees on the way.  The Buc-ees was also right next to my sister's house, so we planned to stop here in case we also just needed to stop for the night.  While we were there we ran into Buc-ee himself!  Grayson was a little nervous because he was so big, but when I asked if he wanted to, he ran straight up and gave him a hug!

I ran out and got the rest of the family, because it's not every day you see Buc-ee at Buc-ees.  The girls were super excited to get to meet him, and we got a family picture as well!

And that rounds out the week.  We had a great time out at the lake, but it'll be nice to start getting settled into our house.  Since moving to Texas, we've spent about as much time at Lake of the Ozarks as we have at our house!  And with that, I'm off to settle!
 

Settling in, 4th of July, and Leaving for Vacation

Why hello!  It's nice to have the moving shenanigans behind us and get to start settling in!  We had a bunch of fun.  On July 4th we took some time playing in the backyard on the splashpad, and even made homemade ice cream too!  It was a fun day!

Now that we're in the new house, we've had various things we need to get.  Obviously an oversized pillow would be on the list, though maybe just to keep Grayson happy in the cart.

I took some time to start setting up my golf simulator Monday night.  I got the screen set up, and I hit a few foam balls into it.  Hopefully I get the rest of it set up... sometime. :)

We went on a few walks around the neighborhood on Tuesday.  Mostly, we tried the walk to the girls school.  On one of our outings we saw a lizard running across someone's driveway.

Grayson took a pretty crowded nap, and it really doesn't look that comfortable to me.  But I guess sometimes being surrounded by your friends is more important.

Of course we had a watermelon with our dinner on the 4th.  It was a really good watermelon, though it hadn't been in the fridge, which I now know is a pretty big deal to me.  It was even better the next day after spending a night in the fridge.

The kids were playing with all our silicon molds, which mostly meant standing on them.  I never picked up what the game was... maybe the floor is lava or something.  They were all happy though.

Monica and I were unpacking stuff in our room Tuesday night, and the neighbors behind us were doing fireworks, so it turns out we were in a pretty good place for some fireworks!

I've been in the works with the HOA company to try to get us early pool access, and it got all taken care of Wednesday!  So we got to go try out our pool, and it was super fun!  Possibly the best part is that we got all of the kids jumping in, and Grayson was getting his whole head completely wet and didn't care, he was just having so much fun jumping in.  He also did quite a bit of swimming around by himself too.  He'd jump in, and turn around and swim back to the edge of the pool.  He also started swimming back and forth across the whole pool, and it was so fun to watch him swimming along with his feet running in a walking motion!  I'll have to try to get a video of it with the waterproof camera.

And here we are after some pool side festivities getting ready to head home on Thursday evening.

We've been working on getting Brooke's new bed all set up, and she's been loving it.

Saturday found us in the car all day, driving to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri.  We got lucky and there was a Buc-ee's on the way!  We stopped to go to the bathroom, and we picked up a few things and snagged a picture with the Buc-ee statue out front!

One of the things we needed was a straw for Grayson to drink his chocolate milk, and boy did they deliver!  What a happy camper.

We drove the full 11 hour drive Saturday, and made it in about 12 hours.  The kids are doing a lot better with road trips lately, and we were able to keep the breaks short.  The Ozark lake is actually a flooded river, and the hills down the side are STEEP!  Hopefully that comes across in this picture, but to be honest, it's steeper than you're thinking.  Our car didn't want to stay parked on the slope, so we pulled to the side halfway down the driveway.

Brooke and Audrey were very excited to get back together and hang out.  They headed to the back porch to read some stories together before bedtime.

Sunday morning Grayson helped me take the trash out to the dumpster.  When we were heading back a neighbor called out to us and asked if we wanted to see a turtle.  There was one chilling out right next to their tree, so we stopped by to give it a look.

After church Grayson and I headed to the dock for lunch.  We didn't stay there for long.  Grayson mostly wanted to just walk back and forth across the bridge to the dock.  He is... bridge obsessed!

Winry took her winky mustache to a whole new level by taking on the snappy mustache challenge!  I'm really glad she's learned to snap, because she really loves to do it.

And here's Winry walking out onto the dock in her church dress.  Just thought it was cute.

Well, we had a week settling in, and then taking off again!  We had a good time, and are looking forward to some fun this upcoming week here at the lake!