Graduation and Guests

Not only did this little champion graduate preschool, he also graduated PREschool...!  Home preschool if you will.  Joy school as some may say.  The kind with super sick hats.  Grayson got a diploma and all the kids sang a song together.  Then we ate! And talked and had a great time.  And the kids ran wild in the church, but hopefully in a respectful way.

Monday afternoon we took advantage of our Memorial Day by heading over to Blue Hole.  It was VERY busy there, but that's fine, plenty of water to go around.  Oh, in the morning (even before graduation) I went to the doctor, had confirmed pink eye, and started taking eye drops.  I think I was decently sick, but nothing a little Excedrin couldn't handle as we walked out the door.

Anyway, Blue Hole was really cool.  It's essentially a series of dams in the river that create a few swimming holes in a row.  One deep, one shallow, and then a shallow but fast moving place at the end.  Grayson was a little nervous about going in the water at first, so we went to the shallow (and fast) part and walked around a bit, but eventually he went in.  We also met up with the Packers there, which was the real icing on the cake.

The Packers had a paddleboard, and boy did Grayson love it.  Winry enjoyed going on it too, but it was hard to get Grayson off.  He wasn't the best at driving it himself, but he wanted to be on there all day!  I actually never made it all the way into the water. First I ran back to the car to get our air pump to blow some stuff up. Then as I was doing that, a guy right next to our tent was cleaning up and said someone stole a bunch of his stuff... so I decided to keep an eye on things.

Little back story, Grayson put his last tooth he lost on top of his pillow, and it went completely missing.  I don't know if we ever found it.  I think the tooth fairy eventually came for it.  In my mind that's related to this orange tooth.  This came out of his piranha plant piggy bank I 3d printed for him, and he's leaving it out for the tooth fairy to come get sometime.  As I'm writing this, I thought "I wonder if anyone's made a tooth fairy coin to 3d print"...I guess we'll see if one shows up!

Friday was Winry's last day of school, and Monica went in for her end of school party.  Winry had a great time this year, and even got a special award on the last day of school for scholarly excellence!  She was the only one in her class to get it.

On Saturday I headed to the airport to pick up my parents. Oriah, her family, and my other sisters rolled into town around the same time.  We have a lot of events next week that everyone came into town for.  Each kid has something, with Monday and Tuesday being Winry and Brooke's dance recitals, and Wednesday is Grayson's tonsillectomy.  But Saturday was party day!  We went to the pool in the afternoon, and Brooke and I practiced her jumping off my shoulders and touching her toes.  This looks most like a star jump, but still awesome!

The Albright boys made a human totem pole.  Pretty impressive for Jonathan to be able to hold them both all the way out of the water.

Speaking of swimming, Grayson and Winry finished up swim lessons on Saturday morning before I went to the airport.  They both did an amazing job.  Grayson actually swam all by himself across the pool the short way, and Winry has been working on swimming across the long way, and nailed it!

That night, Niki and Grayson were having a sleepover, when Niki "accidentally" threw Grayson into the running ceiling fan!!  Ok, that's not really what happened, but Niki did carry Grayson downstairs to get some help, and was so calm no one realized there was actually a big problem!  She's really grown up since Andrew called out while changing his diaper when he was a toddler by saying "this girl needs her mother!!!"

So the real story is that Grayson was playing up on his new bed, and the ceiling fan was on, and he accidentally got too close.  It sounds like he probably even got hit a few times, and just continued playing after for a minute before telling Niki his head hurt.  We got him cleaned up and he stopped bleeding pretty quickly.

And in his room I set up a bunch of stuffed animal buddies to look down, say hi, and watch over him for the night!  He was actually in a toddler mattress under here, and Niki was on his mattress out in the floor of his room for a sleepover while she was visiting.

And those are the stories I've got.  We've been having a lot of fun having so much family out here with us, though we could use a second leaf in our dinning table!
 

A week of Things

As I looked over the pictures from this past week I just couldn't think of an over-riding theme to the week, nor did one of these events really stand out over the others.  The school year is winding down. This week that was only seen in some final preparations, like Winry's dance class practicing for the recital as can be seen below.

We also had a decent storm early on in the week, and our basketball hoop didn't take it too well.  To be fair, this is not the first time it fell over, and it looks like the rim could only take two falls before breaking.  Not too surprising as it was pretty bent up the first time.

While we were having dinner one night, Grayson was telling us that the honeydew melon hurt his tooth.  My mind immediately went to a cavity or something, but a few bites later he said "hey! I lost my tooth!"  The  melon took it right out.  And then he wouldn't finish that piece because it got a little blood on it.  The story was so great that he had to share it with someone, so Monica and I started trying to get someone on the phone and succeeded at the same time.

As summer is on the way, we've started swim lessons for Grayson and Winry.  Monica tested everyone at the pool and Brooke still remembered how.  Once we're all champion swimmers, we set a goal to try to swim across our neighborhood pool in one go, so we'll have to practice our strokes this summer.

I spent Saturday doing more than I should have.  I woke up feeling a bit sick, but not too bad.  Things have been going through the house for the last two weeks or so with various people being sick and Grayson getting pink eye from school and giving it to Brooke.  Anyway, since I was feeling sick I skipped my run, and instead did yardwork from when I woke up till sometime after noon.  I think the real killer task was actually trying to rake all of the leaves out of the front yard so we could put down more seed.  The tree just has small, little leaves that have worked their way into the base of the grass. You just rake and rake and rake and they're still there. But I got two bags of leaves out.  I saved my indoor work for the afternoon when it was hot, and I finished up the cabinets.  I was going to buy wood and start on the bookshelves, but when we looked at the shelving at Lowes it was not what Monica wanted. I didn't have time to run to Home Depot, so maybe next week?

Grayson's dream for the last few days has been for his lizard to be able to pull his mylar balloon across the room.  I guess really it's pulling the weight on the end of the string, and he got it to work. YES! Very exciting Sunday morning.

Oh, I woke up Sunday with gunky eyes. I guess I got pink eye from the kids, so I stayed home from church.  Probably better not to take it to my primary class, right?  Just before church, Grayson's new bed came 4 days early. So while everyone was at church I listened to conference and put it together.  It sounded like a not-to-stressful afternoon, but I think I was a bit sicker than I realized and it was quite hard work to get it all done.  But Grayson was so excited when he got home from church!  I wasn't quite finished in time, but got it done quickly and he was climbing around his new bed all afternoon.

We're at the point where we're starting to get stuff from our garden, and Jelly kind of likes our green beans.  She's usually very uninterested in any of our food, other than salmon, but almost nibbled on a green bean and enjoyed playing with it for a little while.

And that's a wrap on the week.  Hopefully I'm feeling fantastic tomorrow, as we're going to Blue Hole with the Packers.  Oh, also, we'll see in the morning about me having pink eye. After I cleaned up my eye this morning, I thought it looked totally normal all day... so I didn't go to urgent care today but will tomorrow if it's back...  Only time will tell!
 

Grayson Graduates Preschool!

Hello from preschool graduation, with the spotlight on Grayson as he walked to take his place on the stage.  Look at that smile, that confidence, those pandy-the-poo-pooh crocs.  Perfection!

The graduation was pretty fun, and the kids had several songs and poems they performed in between a few speakers.  It was a lot of fun to go, and I always have enjoyed going to events at preschool, but this one was a little sad.  You could tell the director of the school was very sad to have to say goodbye to another year of children, but the kids had a good time, and it was fun to see Grayson get a diploma.

We got Winry out of school so that we could all attend together, yay!

Grayson got a balloon at graduation, and pretty quickly accidentally got it off the string and to the ceiling.  Unfortunately, Brooke took a picture at the start and end of the action instead of a video. But Monica used the leaf blower on a ladder to scoot the balloon out of the living room and into the play room upstairs (we did get the second chance video over the stairs).

On Friday night, Valor had a family dance in the evening, and I took Winry.  Grayson didn't want to go, and Brooke had dance, or else we all would have gone. But Winry and I had a great time.  First we ate some dinner together.

And then we stopped at the treat stand and got some cake pops that were very good.

And danced the rest of the night away.  Winry found Macy there and they had a lot of fun dancing together.  They kids had learned line dances at school in preparation for the dance too, and Winry taught one of them to me.  We had a lot of fun dancing the night away.

On Saturday, I took Brooke and Grayson to Target so that Brooke could get a present for Robin, whose birthday party she was going to that night. While we were there, we checked out the Switch 2 kiosk.  Of the 15 games or so available, Grayson picked... Mario Wonder, the game we have!  But to be fair it was the upgraded Switch 2 version, and he did get to play some new stuff he hadn't seen before.

On Saturday, we noticed that Grayson appears to have pink eye!  He picked it up from school, we'll call it a graduation present.  Anyway, he was pretty worried Saturday night because we told him he needed to wash his hands if he touched his eyes so he wouldn't spread it to everyone else. So he kept coming out every 5 minutes to wash his hands... We told him he'd be okay to just sleep, and I guess he didn't want to get his stuffed animals sick either... cause he fell asleep on the floor.  I guess I could have also made a joke that toddler to twin wasn't big enough...

Some exciting news from the weekend though is that Grayson has started to read!  He's been doing some learning to read lessons and getting good at blending the sounds together. He pulled it all together this weekend and has been chugging through his books!  That means we had Grayson start riding a bike, move to a bigger bed, graduate from preschool AND learn to read all in a week!  Oh my goodness, grow up a little slower please!

Well, Sunday morning Grayson wasn't going to church due to pink eye, and Brooke woke up sick, so it was just Winry and I heading to church.  I had to be there as I was giving a talk in sacrament meeting, and teaching in primary.  My talk went well, and Winry and I had a good time at church.  However, in the afternoon, Grayson's ear started to hurt, so it seems like he's getting an ear infection. I'm sure that will lead to a restful evening... I hope the upcoming week goes well.

Donut Dashin' Mothers' Day

I was thinking about just leaving the pictures in order, but then I saw the picture of my trophy and realized we didn't get one of me holding it at the end of the race! So since it's just the trophy, why not start there.  It's a squishy foam donut on a regular trophy base, and I LOVE it!!  The only problem is that my running display only holds bib numbers and medals.  Maybe I'll have to make a little shelf to put on the wall next to it so I can keep my trophy with the rest of my running stuff!  If I do I'll try to remember to share a picture.

In homeschool Brooke has been working on chemistry for her science lately. This week they did a fun experiment with various liquids.  You put them in the graduated cylinder in density order, and color some of them (like the blue), and then drop things in to see where they float.  I think most of the stuff we put in made it down to like, honey, or something, except for the marble that made it all the way down.

We of course celebrated Cinco de Meow-meow, and nobody partied harder than Jelly.  She was completely wiped out by 9 am and had to nap all day long, just like usual!

One day after preschool, all the boys found a lizard and one caught it.  Then they took turns holding it, but obviously I'm most interested in Grayson holding it here.

And I really like it hanging out on his shirt.  This makes me think of those characters in books that have some little animal on a chain attached to a pin on their shirt.  At least I think it was from a book, and I think I'm remembering a beetle with gem stones on it or something.  Anyway, we just need to bedazzle this lizard for Grayson and he's essentially a story book character.

Grayson really wanted to start riding a bike this week, so I went out one morning really quick and put the training wheels back on Winry's old bike.  He had a little bit of a hard time getting the hang of keeping his pedaling going forward, but by the afternoon he was riding all over and having a wonderful time.  He also tipped the bike many times, but always hopped right back up and got back on.  I was out with him while Monica went to pick someone up from dance or something, and he started trying to ride into the garage over the little bump there. That became the new coolest thing ever.  It did cause a lot of tip-overs though as he often didn't approach straight in and a training wheel would hit the bump up and tip him over.  But he wasn't phased and just hopped back on and went again.

The school year is getting pretty close to being over for Grayson, and they took this class picture at the rainbow bridge.  I have so many feelings when I see this picture.  When we moved to Texas and first looked for a preschool, Grayson was so bridge obsessed.  He still likes them, but I feel like it's not as strong as it was before.  Anyway, he was immediately in love with his preschool because of the rainbow bridge. And now to have a picture of him with all the other kids in his class who are about to graduate next week.  I just really love this picture.

My goodness, this post maybe should be retitled to "Grayson, stop growing!!"  To continue on with the theme of riding a bike, finishing preschool, and turning into a successful adult (those are the only kind with animals on their shirts), he also upgraded his bed!  Goodbye toddler mattress, hello twin.  We are planning to get a frame, and likely a fun one with a slide or climbing wall next to it or something. However, we're putting that off for a little until after he gets his tonsils out because we're a little worried about him being on medication that makes him groggy and wanting to come find us in the middle of the night.  Let's try NOT to fall out of bed.

Saturday was the day of days.  The donut run arrived.  Connor and I were pumped!!  The run was a little different than the training, with the donuts being 1 mile into the run.  Not a huge shake up.  I wish I took a picture, but the donuts were delivered to the race on pallets.  There were ~1000 people signed up, so ~12000 donuts. So I guess that makes sense.  I've just never had someone unload a box of donuts from a pallet for me before.  I did manage to finish my dozen, and I ate them 3 at a time smashed together.  The first 6 were fine, just like last week.  Seven to nine I had already had enough donuts that I didn't enjoy the sweetness quite so much. Ten to twelve I had to drink water with each bite to wash the glaze off as I just couldn't handle the sweet taste any more. I often had to take another drink of water to help me be able to chew it all up.  But I did finish, and my fancy, pinky-out eating style scored me a spot on the news!  For some reason the news video had essentially no audio, so you are hearing it right.  I was able to finish in about 50 minutes, with about 25 of those being running, and 25 being donut eating.  That was under the hour, so I scored my sweet sweet trophy.  Oh, and maybe one of the roughest moments of the run was actually on my way back, when I got about 5 blocks out from the finish, the smell of glaze in the air suddenly hit me again.  I did NOT enjoy the sweet smell, but I was able to hold it together and finish strong.

There were donuts EVERYWHERE at the finish line.  I did the challenger race, but if you did casual you just got a dozen donuts at the end of the race.  After powering through a dozen, it was kinda painful to see people walking around with like, 5 dozen donuts as one person was carrying the whole families donuts from the race.  Just like, what do you even do with that.  My bib had a tear off for donuts, which I used during the race, and one for food, which I used after.  I got a breakfast sandwich, which was made on donuts.  I had no desire to eat it, but Brooke enjoyed some of it.

On the way home from the race, we stopped at the church to help clean as it was our week.  I'm really glad we went, because only one other family came, as well as the rep from the EQ presidency.  We stopped at Monster Donuts on the way home as that's our church cleaning tradition, and I passed on getting a donut.  In fact, after the race I didn't eat again until like 2 in the afternoon.  When we got home, I started working on mowing and weed whacking and trimming hedges. Somewhere in that time, I shifted from feeling kinda bad from too much sugar to feeling kinda bad from too much sun and heat and not enough water.  What a day!  Jelly was really trying to get out all day long, so I put her on her leash and she ate some grass.  Then, she met a friend.  I kept them separated since Jelly wanted to be a bit more "friendly" than the lizard was ready for.  Also, there were 3 of them out on our back patio all at once!

Sunday was, of course, Mothers' Day.  We showered Monica with gifts before church, and it's a good thing too or else she wouldn't have been able to be properly fashionable with wavy hair!

At church the kids went up to sing.  Grayson didn't want to go up, but then his friend, Parker, from up on the stage looked around and said "Where's Grayson?" so Grayson ran up to join him.  Thanks Parker!  It turns out that earlier in the morning, Parker told his parents he didn't want to go up and sing, and they said "but Grayson will be up there, don't you want to sing with him?"  Sometimes it's good to have friends, they help us get through the hard times and do the things we need to.

I feel like I spent a decent amount of Mothers' Day cooking, because, you know, that's what Monica spends a decent amount of the day doing.  Oh, and Brooke and Winry made chocolate chip cookies all by themselves.  That's great to know if I'm ever in the mood for a cookie!  We played a round of Yahtzee in the afternoon as a family, and I think it was the kids first time.  Everyone really enjoyed it, though with 5 people it does feel a little slow as it's quite a while before you get the dice back.  Then, in the evening, a thunderstorm rolled in.  It even came late enough that we didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night to see it, but got to watch for a bit before going to bed!

Tis the end of another fine week.  I feel like something about this coming to the end of the school year has really made me appreciate my kids.  How cute and wonderful and fun and funny they are right now.  It's good to recognize how much I enjoy being with them now in the moment.  I feel like sometimes we don't realize how much fun we're having until it's over and you wish for it back, so I'm glad I'm enjoying the here and now.  I hope everyone else is feeling some joy too.
 

Happy Birthday Me!

What? It's my birthday? Already?... oh.  Well, better make the most of it!  And peanut butter cake is back!  Monica can eat peanuts again.  Not that she wasn't willing to make it before, but I prefer to pick something we can all eat.

Rewinding, this is... a picture.  I think they're comparing their similar bangs.  No, it's not really that... oh! I finally remembered by using the next picture.  Grayson's school had a "pastries with parents" style event that we all went to, and Monica was smart enough to get a picture.

Don't worry, we didn't forget to get a picture of Grayson with Lincoln.  At least we have all the important pictures.

On Friday evening, Monica had a Relief Society activity, so Grayson and I picked up pizza on our way to get Winry, and then stopped by the church to give Monica some things she forgot. We took advantage of being out and had dinner in the back of the van.  I don't know why, but I really enjoy eating in the back of the car with the door open when the weather isn't too hot.

I started off my birthday as one does, driving over to Round Rock Donuts and picking up a dozen donuts.  When I got back, we had some picture pancakes for breakfast. Then I headed out for my morning run with Connor, who was 10 miles into his run.  We did a preparation run for our 5k next week, which is to say we ran a mile and a half, and then split the dozen donuts and finished our 5k.  We've got to eat a full dozen next week, but the training run went surprisingly well.

Once I was cleaned up, we headed to Pinballz for family fun.  We had a great time.  The super cool air hockey table was working again and Grayson had to try it since he missed out last time we came.  Monica and Winry played a round too.

On my list of must do things was to play a round of mini bowling.  We realized we could pull up the bumpers about half way through, and Grayson started having a much better time after that.  He was always so excited to hit pins, but would get pretty annoyed if he threw gutter balls and wanted to quit just before I noticed the bumpers.  Anyway, we had a fantastic time.  After that, we let everyone pick something they wanted to play. This included Luigi's Mansion, ski ball, a claw machine and a round of pinball for everyone.  I played a Jurassic Park table and I think had the best game of pinball on a real table (i.e. not digital) of my life!

The weather cleared up on Saturday, but it was still pretty cool.  It rained all day Friday and through the night.  Originally I thought we might go to the creek or a hike. It was too cold to get in water somewhere, and I think all the trails would have been muddy, so we played some backyard kickball instead.

For dinner we tried an Italian place called Dough It Up, and it was very good.  Everyone even ate food from the restaurant, like, including Grayson! It was a big deal.

We realized when we got home that Winry forgot her water bottle at the restaurant, so I drove back to get it.  This gave everyone some time to wrap presents, etc.

The kids practiced a lovely birthday song for me, and if you think that means Winry practiced Happy Birthday on the piano and they all sang it, you're quite wrong!  But this was better, especially for the shock factor when they got started.

In Monica's primary class they built a tabernacle.  Looks like a fun time!

Jelly continues to need her weekly dose of grass.  If she hasn't been outside for a little bit she increasingly tries to get out of the house and you just gotta let her chomp for a bit.  Yum!

And that's a wrap on our week.  A very fun birthday indeed.