Happy Birthday!... ME?!?!?

What a birthday!  Thirty six.  It's definitely an age you can be.  I'm trying to think of something interesting about 36, but nothing comes to mind.  It's like, I'm getting slightly old-ish, and it's not a "big" number.  It is a multiple of 12, so that's something I guess.  Anyway, I had a fun day, and we had a wonderful and HUGE cake that evening with the people I love most!  Look at those cuties clamoring all over me!  What a blessed and lucky life.  And on top of all that there's Monica too!  She's on the other side of the camera, but is just as wonderful.  Who could want anything more?  Brooke also worked on and played Happy Birthday for me on the piano, and I still got presents too!

So after Gram came to visit, the towel she used fell off the hook and apparently Jelly could still smell her on it.  Jelly took several naps on the towel over the day or two before we picked it up for the laundry.

After work one day I went over to meet with everyone at the Eller's neighborhood pool.  We had the reusable water balloons with us and had a really fun time with our water balloon fight.  Monica was the winner because it wasn't THAT hot, and the water was THAT cold, and she didn't get THAT wet.

For my birthday we had lasagna, which was amazing.  But the biggest shocker of dinner was EGGNOG!!  Around Christmas Monica made eggnog and when she did I told her that I would never remember, but if she really wanted to surprise me for my birthday she should make some for me then.  I completely forgot, as I predicted, but she remembered!!  It was awesome.  For my birthday the kids all gave me a basketball hoop, which I guess I don't have a good picture of from my birthday...

We'll come back to the hoop later, but the girls had dance pictures this past week.  Here's Winry in, I believe, her jazz outfit.

And here's Brooke in her ballet outfit.  Monica took some pictures of them while they were getting pictures taken.

They also let them take pictures together, and I liked this one more than the ballet one.

Grayson gave the scripture in primary on Sunday.  I came in to help him with it.  Here he is sitting up front waiting for primary to start.

Sunday afternoon we were out playing in the front yard.  There was some basketball, and some bike riding, and some relaxing.  Grayson found a bike helmet that he REALLY needed.  Looking good.

I was sitting on the back of my car keeping an eye on everyone, and he wanted to come up and join me.  Later all the kids were sitting on the car during my family's call, and I took a picture, but my phone... lost it.  My phone has done that a few times.  I'll take a picture and it'll show it was captured, but then it's just not there when I go look.  It also only happens whenever I don't go check that the picture worked...

While we were out there, Winry did a lot of bike riding in loops around the drive way.

The basketball hoop has a spot for a basketball on the back, and Grayson loves to keep a ball there.  He was also standing on the ball, and I was pretty impressed with his balance.  Also, I don't have any pictures of this, but Brooke and I played some one on one on Saturday, and the loser had to go start Brooke's laundry.  It was a very close game, but I won 5-4.  It's been a lot of fun playing basketball.

It's beetle season here.  Our back door is glass, and at night the bugs get drawn to it due to our lights on inside.  We'll be sitting downstairs and hear bugs flying into the window over and over, and the sound draws Jelly to the window to play with her new friends.

And now you're all caught up!
 

Last Day of Volleyball

Brooke had her last day of volleyball on Saturday.  They had a little tournament and then the team all had donuts after.  Brooke loved volleyball.  It's too bad it's over, but we'll have to keep playing until the next time a season rolls around.

Gram was still here at the start of the week, and as such, a tea party was in order!  I may have stolen a sandwich in trade for my picture taking!  Also, the kids dressed up fancy, with Brooke putting on an old dance outfit, and Grayson putting on... a Buc-ee body suite.  Fancy.

We can't leave Winry of our special lunches with Gram, so everyone headed over to the school on Tuesday to have lunch with her!

A little after lunch at school, Winry got pulled out of school early to go get a pedicure!  What!?!  Kids, education is important.  But nails? They be moor guud.  Everyone had a great time, and that's what's most important.

Brooke has been really excited about riding her bike, so much so that she asked Winry to wake her up so she could ride to school with her in the morning.  So here they are, taking off ahead of me.  It's also funny that we get to school, walk all the way up to the door, watch Winry go in, and then turn around and Brooke comes back with me.

I feel like the kids have been enamored with the street as of late, which is not the best...  I think it's mostly the desire to ride bikes, but I feel like it's in general pulled everyone into the front and out to the road.  Our family has a pretty profound influence on the local wildlife as well, as this lizard followed Grayson in the the street!  Ok, maybe the lizard was there first.  Either way, it's always fun to see a lizard, or a fuzzy caterpillar!

Alright, a little background.  This Mickey toy is one of the best toys I think we've ever got.  Whenever it comes out the kids are obsessed with it and dance and play all day.  It'll play red light, green light, color guessing games, and of course dances.  The even better game this time was to pile things on Mickey's head!  The entertainment was looooong lasting.

After Brooke's final volleyball practice on Thursday Monica took her out for dinner.  They ordered dessert, so they must have had a good time.

Here's Brooke in one of her final volleyball games.  She did great.  They got to play two matches, and unfortunately lost both, but the first one was very close.  Most importantly, Brooke had a lot of fun, and loves volleyball.

We saw Vivian there, though they didn't play each other at all this week.  Maybe next time we'll have to try to get them on the same team!

Oh boy... Grayson headed upstairs on Sunday and it definitely got too quiet.  Sometimes you need a break and you're just happy with the a noise break.  Well, eventually we found out why he was so quiet.  Turns out he had gotten into the markers.  Guess it's bath night!

And we'll call it there for the week.  Till next time!

 

Happy Birthday Jelly!

Happy Birthday Jelly!  Doesn't she seem like she's having the best of times?!  Here she is eating her "cake" and waiting to dig into her presents!  She's 7 years old now, which is crazy to think.  She's been such an amazing cat all these years and I'm so glad we have her.

We bought a whole big bag of oranges so that we could make some fresh orange juice.  Grayson and Brooke had a lot of fun sticking the oranges into the juicer.

We made quite a bit, and it was very delicious, so it seems like we got good oranges!  Lucky day.

We went to Chick-fil-a for dinner, and while we were there about half the restaurant was reserved for a tea party.  The star of the party was definitely the CFA cow!  I didn't even know she existed.  She came by our table and our kids were really excited to see her.  Grayson was may be a little nervous the first time they met, but he gave her a big hug before we left.

Sadly, Monica has a miscarriage this past week at 7 weeks pregnant. She had an ultrasound just before the miscarriage happened so here's a picture of the little babe. It's been a hard and long week for her, but things are starting to get better. When we got our license plate for the van in Colorado, it was 

BWG T29, which the kids noticed aligned with Brooke Winry and Grayson, and meant we were due for a T next. So here is Tyrone/Tyrella.

Grayson got sick this week, and for the first time I can remember he was very tired and sat around while sick.  Usually he's still jumping around and full of energy.

And then we came to Jelly's birthday!  YAY!  Brooke wanted to make her a birthday banner, so she folded a bunch of origami cats to write on.  Look at the excitement on Jelly's face!

We gave Jelly a cake, consisting of wet food surrounded by treats, and sang her happy birthday.  Pretty fancy!  We even lit a candle and sang her happy birthday.  The flame wasn't enough to stop her from getting in there, though it made me nervous so I blew it out quick.

We found a little cat tunnel thing for her at the store as well.  I think she's only been in it this once when I coaxed her in.  Hopefully she plays with it more soon.

Gram came to visit through the latter half of the week and help with the kids.  It was great to have her here, and she even cooked with the kids!  They're making banana bread and Grayson is being a great helper.

For nailed it in my family call this month we were supposed to make my dad.  You may remember the bust I 3D printed of him back in September/October of last year, well I turned that into a mold and made a chocolate head!

There was a really nice rainstorm on Friday, and we had some fun playing in the rain.  Grayson wanted to go out with an umbrella, and he even came in and told Monica to open up the blinds and see him outside, and then came back out and over to the window to say hello!

Sunday a mean game of tag broke out in the backyard, and not even Gram could escape it's pull.

That's everything for this week.  We're doing well and things are on the up and up.  Have a great week.
 

The Eclipse!

I have seen totality, and it was beautiful!  The big upside in our move to Texas is that the solar eclipse went straight through out backyard!  It was actually a pretty cloudy day, but fortunately there were breaks in the clouds at the time of the eclipse and we were able to see it!  It was fantastic, and I've definitely never experienced anything like that before in my life.  Also, in downtown at work it was cloudy through the eclipse.  I asked my coworkers about it after, and I was one of the few that got to see it because I stayed home for eclipse day!  Good thing too!

On eclipse morning, I found Winry hiding in the couch.  The cushions have clips on the bottom, and someone undid this one, and Winry thought it was really funny to hide in there.

I got things out for breakfast in the morning, and laid out a spread for our guests before heading to work.  I like these little signs Monica got, and we should probably use them more.

Here's the kid crew waiting outside for the darkness.  I'm honestly not sure if Grayson missed the eclipse.  He was out there with us, and we tried to get him to look.  He also wouldn't remember it anyway, so I guess that's less of a big deal...?

Here we are in the yard waiting for the totality.  We spent a lot of time standing and looking at the sun before we got the good sense to just lay down.

I like this picture that Monica got.  You can see how cloudy it was, so it was pretty fortunate we got to see it so well.  We were in totality for a few minutes, so I think there were times when the clouds blocked the view, but we got to watch when the moon first got into position.

It was dark enough that you can see that the street lights automatically turned on.  It was not as dark as night, but deep into sunset.  Also, as I was writing this post, something that caught my attention is how fast it got dark.  In Monica's video, at the start it is darker than daylight, but if you jump into the middle of the video you'll see it's SO much darker!  Pretty crazy.

After the eclipse, the Seawrights headed out for their long drive home.  Grayson was pretty tired after all of that playing, but insisted he wasn't tired enough to sleep.  Monica convinced him to at least snuggle in our bed, and he promptly fell asleep.

Tuesday morning, probably around 2 am, our next visitors arrived.  The Halberts came to stay for the week.  They came out from AZ to see the eclipse, and stopped at our house on the way home.  The kids played well together, and while they were here Nicole helped with all sorts of things.  She helped dig up more of our grass for the garden, mowed the lawn, and even taught the girls how to ride their bikes!  Apparently all they needed was a little shove. Huge thanks Nicole!

Tuesday night a big thunderstorm rolled in.  It was pretty crazy, with near constant lightning flashes.  We also had a warning for up to softball size hail, and I had to go to the church for a meeting!  Yikes!  I headed out early as it wasn't hailing to try to make sure I missed the worst of it if it came, and in the end no big hail came down around us.  There was some hail by the house, but I don't think there was any at the church.

Saturday morning I took Brooke to her volleyball game.  It was a lot of fun, and she had a great time.  In the afternoon, I took Brooke over to pick up a new used bike to make sure it was the right size.  She hadn't had much interest in a bike before, so when she needed a new size we went to Goodwill, and there was one rusty bike there, and we figured good enough.  Since she's actually been riding now, we figured we could upgrade her to something a little nicer, though I didn't take a picture... oops.  Both the girls are very excited about riding a bike, and just need to keep practicing to get a little more comfortable.

That's everything for now.  Winry is super excited to start riding her bike to school next week, so hopefully that goes well.  Have a great week!
 

Seawrights, Conference and a Carnival

Guests, guests galore!  It's a busy time of year for travel, or at least it has been at our house.  This week the Seawrights came to visit!  They are here for the eclipse since we'll be in totality, but got here on Friday so we got to spend a few days together hanging out.  This included watching conference together.  Grayson was this good and let everyone watch and listen for the full 10 hours... :)

Rolling back to Monday it was time to work on the garden.  Monica got this little area all nice and planted, and it looks great!  We had enough random rocks scattered in the grass to make a nice edge as well!  Winry put in some good work shoveling out there as well.

Sometimes your stuffed snake gets tired, and when that happens, you just have to make a bed on the fireplace.  Grayson did such a great job making him nice and cozy!

Monica took all the kids with her to Brooke's volleyball practice.  Typically Grayson does not do well sitting and watching things, but the good news is that Monica found something to keep Grayson busy.  Grayson and Winry were being the ball collectors, chasing them down and putting them back in the ball carrier.  They had a REALLY fun time, so that's fantastic.

On Friday evening the school had a carnival!  Winry was very excited to attend.  We went just the two of us to scout it out and let everyone know if they should join us.  The school gave all of the students wrist bands, and you had to have one to do the activities.  There was no buying tickets, etc. to do any activities, so it was just Winry and I.

There was lots of fun to be had.  They had several inflatable games to play, like an obstacle course and slide, ball kicking games, and even a bungie cord dash.

We also stumbled upon Willy the wildcat who was looking fine.

They had a petting zoo there.  Winry was very excited to get to pet the animals.  Here she's petting a chicken, which was likely a life changing moment.  She loves chickens so much.  There was also a pig there, which she really wanted me to take a video of so that we could share it with Brooke.

And on our way out we saw a slot car race.  Winry was the red car that's right in front of her.  Winry did awesome driving the car and even won the race by putting in the most laps!

So yeah, Grayson wasn't actually super great and quiet for conference on Saturday, so after the morning session it was up to his room for a nap so that we could focus a little better on the afternoon session.  I went to check on him after he'd been up there a bit and he fell asleep in his doorway!

That night at bedtime Grayson was working on his somersaults.  I actually didn't realize he was trying to roll the few days before this he was working on them.  I thought he was doing donkey kicks, but was also impressed that sometimes he'd jump himself high enough to stall up on his hands for a bit, kind of like a hand stand, but not stretched out.  Well, while he was working on somersaults he would maybe get 1 in 5 attempts, and had lots of cool looking handstands, so I wanted a video of him doing a handstand and I think he successfully did every somersault for the full minute video I took!  But hey, you can see Grayson doing a somersault.

On Sunday we went to see the bluebonnets again.  It's the time of year for it, and it was a new set of visitors, so our hands were tied.

When we got back Monica started working on cinnamon rolls while eating some yogurt.  Big mistake!  She accidentally cracked an egg straight into her bowl of yogurt!  She scooped it out into her measuring cup and everything turned out okay.

Our Don't Break the Ice has been missing an ice cube for a while, and I finally printed a new one.  I found one that looks just the same, but the pattern on top is mirrored.  It's orange because that's what was in my printer.

Grayson has been really into bubbles lately, and we've gone through a LOT of our big gallon jug.  Possibly a fourth of it just this weekend.  Here you can see he's got stacked bubble machines for maximum bubble joy!

Tom and Carolyn came down to join us for Sunday dinner and to see the Seawrights while they were here.  We grilled a bunch of chicken, and had a really great time all being together.

And that brings a close to this week.  Conference was great, but a bit noisy, so it'll be good to revisit things, and probably better to do so sooner than later!