Spring Breaking!

Hello from sunny Texas!  Spring break has sprung, and as alluded to before, we had friends out to visit!  The Packers were down staying with us, and on Monday it was warm enough that the kids all went swimming in the pool.  I had work through the first half of the week, so I wasn't able to join, but I heard the water was pretty cold, but everyone had fun.

I spent the front half of the week getting sicker and sicker.  That's always a fun place to be after starting to feel better over the weekend.  To jump ahead in the week a little, on Wednesday I ended up going to the doctor and got antibiotics, and they've been helping a lot since.  I'm still clearing things out, but through this sickness I'd have a roll of toilet paper at my desk while working (there's just not enough tissues in a box) and I've gone through 2 rolls... yikes!  I'm glad that currently things are greatly calmed down, and I mostly just need a good nose blow first thing in the morning.  I kinda hijacked this picture to talk about my week of health, but this picture is actually of my new AR glasses I ordered.  Essentially there's just a screen in these glasses, and then you plug a usb c cable into the back of one of the stems and my phone/steam deck can run it like a monitor.  I like them.  If you try you can see through the image to still see and interact with the world around you, but it's also been easy to see the image too.  As an example, I used them to watch an F1 race while folding laundry over the weekend.  Pretty slick!

Grayson's been having a lot of fun playing outside, and we put water back into the water table this week too.  He really loves playing out there.  I went out and sat on a chair next to him and we made "chocolate" together.  It was pretty fun, and fortunately, low effort for me.

Jelly's really been loving going into the backyard.  She'll wander a little, and then she plops down as flat as she can into the grass.  I honestly think she's probably trying to hide from us so we don't take her back inside.

I was working during this tree climb, so I don't have context, but I liked the picture.

Lincoln and Winry both really enjoyed the piano and metronome.  They even worked on playing duets together.

Here are the Packers at the home they're putting an offer on.  I thought to take a picture while I was sitting in the car with the kids who were early leavers.  Didn't think to take one any sooner.

After seeing their house, we went for a hike!  Oh, this was Thursday, and I took Thursday/Friday off for spring break.  We were actually supposed to go meet up with Oriah's family in Dallas, and then head to OK and AR and go camping, but on Wednesday I was feeling too sick and figured there was no way I could do it.  Fortunately, we weren't the only party poopers and William and Michael had COVID.  Not good that they were sick, but my understanding is everyone is still doing alright.

Anyway, back to that hike.  We just went on a short hike next to a bridge.  The name is something like 360 bridge hike... That's not the name of the bridge, but close enough for Google I guess.  Anyway, it was short, like maybe a tenth of a mile, and up a hill.

And the hike ends up on top of a cliff overlooking a bridge and the Colorado river.  It's almost like being home there.

On Friday morning we took the kids to Pinballz.  It was Grayson's first time, and great news, it was the first time giant hungry hippos was working!

Grayson and Winry and Monica also played mini bowling while Brooke and I went and rode the virtual rollercoaster.  When Brooke and I got back we were able to throw a few balls ourselves and the mini bowling is pretty awesome!  I think it's one of the best value games in the whole arcade.

After that we had a snack and went and played some actual video games, and then we wrapped things up and headed out.  We all had a super time at the arcade, and if you're around Austin, I highly recommend giving it a try.

In the afternoon we went to a pottery painting place, and all of the kids picked something to paint.  We left them there to head to a kiln, so when we get them back I'll try to get a picture of them all together.

Friday night we had a campfire on the driveway and roasted hotdogs over the fire.

And then we toasted marshmallows and ate smores!

And finally did some camping in the backyard.  This was in lieu of our camping trip that got cancelled.  Grayson was having a hard time going to sleep, and in the end Monica took him inside to sleep in the house.  He was up at least half the night with his ear hurting, so that was likely why he wasn't able to get comfy.

Here's the tent in the backyard.  The night mode really brightened this up, but we did have a lantern on inside and we left the back porch light on as well.  I really enjoyed sleeping in the backyard, and it was also nice that it's not hot yet, so it cools off over night.  I also busted out those new AR glasses and watched a show while the girls were going to sleep and I was waiting for my own bedtime.

Grayson's ear hurting?  His ear drum ruptured in the morning... back to the doctor.  While the morning was rough, you can see here that he was still able to be his happy self.  We're onto the third round of antibiotics and second dose of ear drops.  It's been quite a month for this little guy, and I hope he's better after this round.

Later on Saturday, we went to a nearby river for a short hike.  The river bed is rock all the way across, and there's a pretty cool surprise along the way.  Here's a potential sneak peak as to why, but here's all the kids laying in a big depression in the river bed.

And further along at the bend in the river there are a bunch of awesome dinosaur tracks!  There are like, 8 or 9 of these three toed tracks. When I was looking for info on the hike someone had a drone shot, and a paleontologist who worked in the Texas area commented that he thought he saw several other tracks around these ones.  They were not as easy to see, but cool to know there was a lot going on there.

In the river we saw a turtle, and little snake, and this little frog!

From what I read it sounds like if you go after rain the river will go all the way across and you have to hike through some water, so we were all in water-safe shoes.  On the way back we did some rock jumping to get across some of the water for fun!

And on the way back home, we stopped at Jeremiah's for a water-ice!  Yum!!  I love going to that place, and I really like their frog mascot.

And when we got home... Grayson crashed on the couch.  To be honest, he didn't want to stop and get ice cream on the way home because he was really tired.  The thing that got him through was sitting on my lap, and in the end he had a great time the whole time we were there.  However, he really was tired, ya know, cause he was sick, and was awake most of the night before.

On Sunday, Grayson stayed home from church, and the last few days he's been really enjoying building magna-tile houses around different plastic animals that we have.  He calls it freezing the animals, and we built a bunch of different shaped "ice blocks."  In the end it was a giant tower.

And that's our week.  While we missed out on our trip, we had a really great extended weekend at home.  We had a lot of fun while the Packers where here, and found a lot of fun stuff to do around town once they had to go.  I hope Grayson gets better soon, but even he was doing super through it all.  Hopefully he'll be back to full health next week, and hopefully my antibiotics work effectively as well.