Chicago for a Week

Hello from windy Chicago!  I'm actually not there anymore, but I did travel out for work this week.  We had an all in the office week, and the timing couldn't have been better with the big freeze happening around the south and icing up all the roads.  It was definitely colder in Chicago though, but I still have enough winter clothing I was able to get by just fine.  AND on my way to the train to the airport to head home, it was SNOWING!  This is the first snow storm I've been in since we moved to Texas I do believe.  We did have to drive in the snow to the airport once in UT, but I wasn't actually out in the snow at all.

Our salt experiment was a huge success last weekend.  I found this lovely face waiting on the sidewalk when I went out to the car to go to the airport.  The kids, especially Winry, were pretty worried about me driving in the snow all the way down to the airport, so they all came out to watch me drive off.  I had to do my very best to not slide or make it look dangerous, but watching the video I really wish I'd just floored it once I was in the street to spin out the wheels.  Maybe next time.

The roads just got better and better through the drive. I gave myself 2 hours to get to the airport (it's usually ~45 minutes without traffic) and it only took me a little over an hour, so I had a bit of time to stretch my legs before my flight.  In fact, my flight was delayed so I had a solid 5-6 hours to kill.  I walked end to end in the airport several times, and I stopped to get a picture on Grayson's favorite pink hand chair that I sent back to everyone at home.

Speaking of everyone back at home, they were all huddled together for warmth!  Not really, but school got cancelled for much of the week due to the ice, and I managed to lock Monica's keys in the van on my way out the door, and the inside of the house was being painted! So they were all stuck at home in one room until they could find a locksmith to brave the icy roads and open the car!  It looks like they're all still in good spirits though, so that's a good sign.

Since everyone from Austin and New York was heading to Chicago, we made a whole week of it.  On Tuesday evening the team went out axe throwing.  It was my first time, and it's quite a lot of fun.  Getting an axe to stick into the wood took a few throws, but aiming... yeah right.  After a little while they also had knives you could throw too, and I spent the second half of our time there working on that.  If I were to give someone tips from my experience, they'd be to first, find a consistent way to do the throw, and then second, change how close/far you are until it's the right number of rotations to stick.

Back in Austin everyone was eventually able to get into the car, and off to the park they went.  This is the park we lovingly have nick-named "Dirty Ditch."  I believe it's really called Devine Lake, and it started to freeze over!  That's pretty impressive for Texas.

Brooke, ever the opportunist, took my spot in bed while I was gone.  Jelly was delighted though, she didn't even have to find a new location to sleep at night.

Back in Chicago on Wednesday night, we had an event with people outside of our team, and on Thursday we had a team dinner.  I typically didn't get back to my hotel room until 8-9 at night, and so each day was a pretty full day.  On Friday I headed back home, and the dinosaur in the airport was wearing a hockey jersey!

The snow continued to fall the whole morning, and it caused my flight to be delayed with the de-icing and all that they have to do.  Once we were all on, there were delays again because of de-icing, and the planes water pipes freezing when they de-iced the plane, and finally because the line of planes waiting to take off was backed up to right behind us, so we couldn't back away from the gate!  We did eventually take off though, and thank goodness because things were not looking good on the runway as we went down, and in the middle of the flight they told us that flights out of O'Hare had started getting cancelled!  So I made it out just in time.

It was nice to be back with my family, and I was really excited to see everyone again!  The week in the office was really draining, and I'm not 100% sure why.  It felt like I never had a moment to myself all week, and when I'd get back to my hotel room I was always so tired and just fell right asleep every night.  Usually traveling gives me a bit more energy.

On Saturday I got to take Grayson to a birthday party for one of the kids he goes to preschool with.  Elsa came to her party, and the kids got to sing along with songs and color and all sorts of fun things.  Grayson wasn't star struck by Elsa, which I guess isn't too surprising, but he did have a good time, and everyone was super nice.  Also, there was totally a dad crew. I think most of the kids were brought by their dads, so I wasn't alone in a corner either!

That afternoon,Grayson and I were working on his Lego donut truck, and decided to just build our own creations.  It was so much fun!  I made a little space ship, and he made a cool new donut car.  He has been REALLY into Legos lately, and it's one of the few things he can just disappear and do for hours at a time.

On Saturday night we got invited to Cocoa-oke (hot chocolate and karaoke) at the Week's house.  It was a lot of fun, but it's a little too bad I'm not as confident in my singing as everyone else was.  It was fun watching everyone, and there were some really great performances up there by both kids and adults.  I did make my karaoke debut singing Angel by Shaggy, and if you don't know, I can talk just like Shaggy, and he pretty much just talks in the song, so that's why it was the natural choice.

On Sunday I found out that fake mustaches are about the exact same size as it takes to wrap around a plastic fog, and that a fuzzy frog looks really funny.  This amazing creation was put together by Grayson, and I absolutely love it!

Also, Monica saw an idea where someone took all the books they owned but hadn't read yet, and wrapped them all in paper with a number on them, and would pick one at random to read next.  So we went through our board game collection and wrapped a bunch in paper.  Some of these we've never played, some only I've played, and some it's been 10+ years since we played.  I'm pretty excited to draw some numbers and see what we've got, but I also know that whenever we draw BattleTech, well... let's just say I was going to post a link to the rules, but there were so many rules sheets on the website I couldn't even figure out which one was for the game I have!  But hey, I'm excited to finally get to play them all.

And that's a wrap on this week.  It's good to be back home again, and I missed everyone terribly so much!  Oh, I ended up calling home every morning.  Winry and I would talk while she was riding in the car to school, and then I'd call the other kids after I had breakfast.  It was nice to get to chat with everyone every day, and I'm glad we were able to figure out a way to make it work with me not getting back to the hotel until after bedtime.  Anyway, we're all looking forward to a more relaxed, normal week ahead.

Snow Day!!!

We had our first ever Texas snow day today!  And by that I do not mean the first time things closed down due to cold and weather, but instead, the first time the accumulation was such that we could really go play in it!  Now I'll admit, calling it snow is being nice, but this is probably as snowy as it ever gets here.  In the end what we had was more like a half inch to an inch of ice frozen over all the sidewalks, driveways and the road.  I even found videos of people skiing, snowboarding and ice skating down the roads around Austin.  In total, I think we saw 1 or 2 people walking dogs the whole time we were out playing, but we never saw a car drive by.  We could hear other kids somewhere in the neighborhood also out playing too.

You may remember that last week ended with Winry's baptism and us having a bunch of visitors.  Well, that means people were still here Monday!  What great bookends to this week, visitors and a snow day.  Michelle's flight was early so I took her and Laura to the airport, and then when I got back we all went out to breakfast.  We tried a new place called Nick's and it was pretty good.

After breakfast, we took everyone for a hike to see the dinosaur tracks in the river bed.  It looks like all the construction is done, which means we even got to walk over the new pedestrian bridge to cross the river from where we parked.  The hike out was fun, and the kids really liked these giant boulders that have fallen off the cliff.  I will say that you can see people's houses over the edge of the cliff above... so that's a little sketchy for them...

Also, I just need to mention how crazy it is that on Monday we were out on a hike in shorts and were feeling warm, and now there's an inch of ice on everything!  What a week!

We eventually made it to the main event.  I used up almost all my water to make the tracks more noticeable, but it was totally worth it.  These tracks are pretty awesome, and there's like 10 of them in a row.  In fact, you can almost imagine the dinosaur who walked through here.

And here's everyone on the walk back from the dino tracks.

Oh my, and here's Winry and Clara keeping those houses safe!  Also, we found a nice location for skipping rocks and I had the best skipping of my LIFE!!  Like, the first one I threw looked like it just slid across the water for like 10 feet, I couldn't even count 'em.

That afternoon it was time for my sisters to head back home, but not before group hugs!

The kids liked getting to lean back for their pictures.

And we'll wrap it up with Brooke's turn.

Oh, wait!  Brooke wasn't the last one.  I was!!!

On Tuesday when I headed to work, I got a pleasant surprise.  Turns out they haven't taken the Christmas wrap off yet.

Brooke got to go on a fun hike for toadstools this week. They went to a reserve for the gold-cheeked warbler. This is the only one in the world. So every single one of those birds is born here!

In preparation for the cold weather this weekend everyone had to go nuts, right?  Monica wanted to get like a banana or something, and tried to go Friday to beat the craziness of the weekend, but not so!  I think the real lesson here is that no matter how dire things get, NOBODY wants to eat celery!

Grayson had a week where they talked about doctors at school, and I think a dentist came in to talk to them about teeth one day.  Looks like the kids got to play doctor as well.

Grayson was in need of a hair cut, and actually made a great time of it.  He got to play Angry Birds, which I think was his first time.

In preparation for the cold, the kids put on some socks.  Like 5 pairs of socks.  Gotta keep those toes warm.

We've had this water bob for a while, and we figured this would be a good time to try it out.  So on Friday we put it in the tub and filled it up.  It comes with a little pump so you can get the water back out as well.  We haven't had any water problems yet, but it was a good reason to try it out.  Hopefully we won't actually end up needing this water.

And on Saturday night the ice storm started!  It was kind of like snow, except you could hear it clinking when it landed.  But it wasn't like hail either.  Anyway, in the morning there was like a half inch or more of solid ice frozen on the driveway, sidewalk, everywhere.  The kids were so excited to get outside and play first thing in the morning.  Time to boot skate the driveway.

Here's our house, for the first time looking snowy.

We left our sleds with our neighbor in Colorado, but I did bring my snow skate, which we pulled out as our only sledding option.  Our driveway has a small slope, so with a little push we were able to slide across it, and I even gave the neighbors steeper driveway a try once.  Also, we never saw a car the whole time we were out playing, so the road ice was safe to use as well.

I tried, you know, snow skating too.  I eventually got the hang of hopping on the board, and those sick kick flips?... yeah, not gonna happen.  But really, I put this in here because I loved Winry throwing snow at me.  We'd slide our boots around and grind out some ice to make a snowball, but it was too cold to actually get it to stick together, so when you threw it it was pretty much an ice cloud.

The kids also had a lot of fun kicking the ice and trying to break it up.

Inside, it was a good day to work on a puzzle.  We got 2 1000 piece puzzles that I would call puzzle+, meaning they're a puzzle but promise to have more.  So far the more seems to be some where's Waldo like finding of items in the picture, etc.  In the end I'd say they're pretty much just puzzles, and we personally prefer 500 or less pieces.

Here the kids are back out and at it in the ice.  They were trying to kick the ice in the gutter to get it to chip up.

And Grayson did a science experiment and poured some salt on the ice.  It was mostly some random pours in the gutter, but I took the ice and poured a smiley face on the sidewalk, so I guess we'll see tomorrow if it worked!

And that's it for now.  It's been so much fun to have snow, or ice I guess, but it's been so fun out playing in it.  The kids have had a great time, I had a great time, it's been wonderful.  Oh, the world did shut down, and church was cancelled today, so we got to spend the whole day together as a family and have fun.  Oh, we also played an escape room like board game where you scatter some clue cards around the house and have to find various keys to unlock the doors, etc.  The kids had so much fun running around the house trying to solve the clues.

I'm supposed to fly to Chicago tomorrow morning at 9 am.  I moved my flight to the afternoon as I don't think the drive will be very fun at 6 am, so now I'm leaving around noon.  Hopefully the roads clear up and the drive goes well, and also the flights don't all get cancelled!  One way or another I'm sure I'll have a story to share next week!
 

Winry's Baptism!

We now have more kids baptized than not!  So I'd say things have been pretty successful.  Winry was baptized this past Saturday, and a whole lotta friends came to support her.  Monica and I are so proud of her.  She's been doing great and reading her scriptures and saying her prayers and has been trying her best to prepare herself, and the day finally came!  We're all so proud of you Winry!

Monica caught this rather gorgeous sunrise sometime this week.

Grayson LOVES spinning.  It's honestly a problem and he usually spins way too much on the ground, but give him a swing?  Well, it's his favorite thing to do out on the playground.  He's recently discovered that I'm willing to be spun up in the swing too, so now whenever I get home from work he wants to head right out to the swing.  I don't have the same resilience for it that he does.  If I'm laying the wrong way I'll feel not so great when I'm done, but I guess it's helping keep me young at heart, right?

We were trying to take apart this cardboard mini-store that we had to put in the recycler because it's falling apart, and Jelly just couldn't resist getting her one last change to climb in.  Even if that means squirming under the roof while it's upside down and popping up in the sun roof.

I got some good pictures of Grayson from school.  This might be from this week, or from last.  I'm never really sure when I get them exactly when they're from.  Grayson's New Year's resolution for 2025 was to cut something every day with scissors, and he did a pretty good job.  It's even carrying into the new year at least a little bit.

Here's his class in a group hug.  I have no context, but it is a cute picture.

Guests started arriving Thursday night, which meant it was party central at our house from Thursday on.  If memory serves correctly, my sisters came Friday, and they all happened to wear all black as their travel gear.  This did not go unnoticed to Grayson who started calling them his "black aunts," and he proceeded to rank them 1, 2, and 3 for the rest of the weekend and had them compete for his favor.  They put him to bed, and he refused to let me in too, so I went and changed into all black so he wouldn't notice me when I came in.  We're like zebras now, you can't even tell where one starts and the other ends, or how many of us there are!

The highlight of Saturday was Winry's baptism.  We showed up a little early to work on setting up and taking some pictures.  Eleanor and Clara were able to travel out from Colorado with Hannah, their mom, to attend the baptism.  It was so great that they could come join us.

Here's Winry and I listening to Brooke's talk on baptism.  She did a great job.

And here's Winry being baptized.  I'll assume that Oriah took this picture at a time when it was okay to do so!  She was managing my phone for me to make sure we captured all the best moments.  But really, pretty cool picture to have.  Also, the turnout was incredible!  We had a lot of people come support Winry from our new ward, and from our previous ward we just left a few months ago.  It was awesome to see so much support there for Winry, especially from her friends.

Our kids, as well as the Cammack girls and Laura sang a musical number together.

And we of course had Winry's confirmation as well.

... there's no cat here.... moving on.

Winry had her butter themed party for real Saturday evening while everyone was still out with us.  There were all kinds of yellow/butter decorations, and for dinner we had soup and lots of kinds of butter with biscuits and crackers.

Here are all the kids that were in attendance. Though as I wrote that, I realized that only Jonathan joined the picture, but Cameron and William were here as well.  So I guess this isn't quite ALL the kids under the giant butter stick.

And we all sang Happy Butterthday to Winry and watched her blow out the candles.  We watched Descendants and ate buttered popcorn and had cake to close out the evening.

The kids all had a great time out on the playground.  It's been really fun to have, and everyone really loves to go play on it when they come over.  It's also nice to have an easy way to get the kids outside.

And that brings birthday season to a close.  It opens in October with Grayson, and ends in January with Winry.  Things should finally calm down around here for a little, though if things being "uncalm" means visitors, maybe it's better to be busy!  Tomorrow's a holiday, so we've got most everyone still for at least part of the day before we have to come back down to reality.  Also, this weekend has been so packed with things it's felt like a full on mini-vacation, not just a weekend!  Thanks everyone who came and helped make it so much fun.