Sunday, September 3, 2017

Finishing the Basement (and a trip to the zoo)

Hello all!  I hope you are all doing terrific!  We're doing great here.  I am super tired today, but we'll get to that story toward the end.  We had quite a picture filled week!  That's probably a good thing, right?  I mean, I'm assuming that's really why you come here.  To start things off here's a little ditty with Brooke and a bubble.  She loves playing with bubbles, and Jelly has started to chase them around too!


This picture is a miss from last week.  Somehow I didn't see all of the pictures of Brooke sweeping!  Last Saturday I edged around the lawn, and Monica came out with our push broom to sweep everything up.  Brooke wanted to help, and lucky for her we have this turtle push broom!  She had a blast helping to clean up all the grass!


Last Sunday afternoon we went over to the temple grounds to walk around.  We thought it would be fun and a good Sunday activity!  We were right!  While we were there a worker happened to walk by and asked if we'd like a picture.  We were around back in what we assume is a little place for wedding pictures, and family pictures of course!  We had a lot of fun, except for Brooke tripping and scraping her knees! :(


Brooke was very interested with the fountain out front.  She kept wanting to see the water, but then when we put her up close she'd get scared and want to get down.  I'm not sure she ever got wet even a little!


Monica is watching a baby in the ward one day a week.  Her name is Lyla.  Last week when she was here Jelly took an interest in her.  Eventually this resulted in Jelly laying on her lap.  She started farther away, and slowly rolled and scooted closer to Lyla!  The really good news here is that Jelly should do great with the new baby!


One day this past week Brooke decided she'd had all she could take, and collapsed on the stairs!  Sometimes she's a little dramatic...


Also, Jelly has found a new fun place to hang out.  We have a little window next to our front door, and there's this curtain thing in it.  Well, Jelly has figured out how to slip around the side of it and push it open.  She seems to enjoy it in there, and I really don't mind her going in there, except that if Brooke sees her in there she always comes and terrorizes her.


This past week we were also able to make it out to the zoo!  It's great to have a zoo pass.  I like being able to head to the zoo and only spend a few hours their looking around without feeling like I'm wasting my money or something like that.  And, we get to leave before it starts to get really hot!  Anyway, currently the zoo has a dinosaur thing going on.  They have a bunch of big dinosaurs all around the zoo that move and roar!  The one's below even shot out water!  I thought it was really neat, but every time we walked by one Brooke would say "loud... loud... loud!"


This turned out to be one of the best zoo trips we've ever had.  The lions were awake this morning, which isn't typically the case.  And not only were they out, they were laying right up on the glass!  I don't know if you've ever been within 6 inches of a lion, but they are HUGE!  I don't think you realize just how large they are unless you can get up really close to them.  We tried to get some pictures with Brooke up next to them, but they were close enough and large enough that she'd get scared after we set her down.  We did get some pictures, but Brooke wasn't quite as excited in them as we'd hoped.


In the other glass window there were 4 male lions eating.  This one was still within just a few feet of us.  The zoo seemed to have a lot more lions than we remembered.  I don't know if they recently got more or what, but it was a good day for lions!


Of course we had to go see the tigers, they're Brooke's favorite!  Brooke was really excited to see the tiger, and loved to watch it drink.


After it had it's drink it went and climbed up on it's walkway.  I've seen the walkway before, but there's never been a tiger up there before.  I had always wanted to see one go up there.  You could even walk right under it!


The lizards were even being cooperative!  The chameleon was walking all over the place, and that's more interesting to watch than you might think.  The only thing that would have made this better is if it would have changed colors too... but alas...  Guess you gotta save something for a future trip.


We also stopped by to see Ol' Mossy the turtle.  He didn't do much, just sat there, living the dream, growing moss...


When we walked by the hippo it happened to be eating some grass.  Good thing I grabbed this picture because Brooke loves it!  The next day after our trip she said "hippo, eat grass" and pointed to our phones.  We showed her the picture and she loves it.  She asks for it quite frequently now.  So on second though... maybe it would have been better to pass on this picture...


Later that day Jelly sat on Brooke's lap.  Brooke always wants Jelly to sit on her lap (she must get that from me!).  Jelly typically doesn't want to sit on Brooke's lap (also from me probably...), which isn't surprising.  Well, at least for one glimmering moment Jelly did sit on Brooke's lap.  They even played together a little.


This past week we also started to make some progress on finishing our basement.  I took our basement plan in to get checked on Wednesday, and my plan passed!  So that means we can get started on the work.  That really means it was time to clean up the basement.  Before we started work we needed to throw away all of the carpet scraps that had been left in the basement since who knows when, as well as destroy the couch that was stuck down there.  We also needed to go through the stuff down there and start finding some new homes for some of it.  We did a little of that yesterday, but there's still more to do on that front.


We picked up a bagster to throw all the carpet and couch pieces in.  It all just barely fit!  Phew!!!  Now I just need to schedule a pickup and get that thing gone!  So far we've made good progress, and we may go get some lumber tomorrow and start doing some of the framing.


This past week I got a cat highlight video from Google Photos.  A bunch of the pictures are of Jelly sleeping in different places, and watching it made me want to try to get some more interesting pictures of her.  This past week Brooke has been getting into these books that have finger puppets with them.  The puppets tend to get spilled all over the floor, to Jelly's delight!  Take that wicked witch!


Also, Jelly (as I'm sure all cats do) after playing with a toy for a little while will pick it up in her mouth and carry it off somewhere else.  This morning she was playing with an outlet cover (one of her favorite toys) and kept picking it up and carrying it back and forth across the room.  I was able to get a picture while she was on the move.  It is quite blurry, but at least you can tell what's going on.


I think that rounds out the highlights for this week.  My kickstarter is still running, and can be found here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2124836706/egyptian-architects

There's about two weeks left, but if you're interested don't wait till the last minute!  The earlier you hop on board the better as it helps encourage others to as well, and then things like card quality upgrades, etc. are more likely to be unlocked.  And for those of you who have backed the project, thank you so much!  You're the greatest!

In church today we talked about after Joseph Smith was killed and the succession of the prophets.  I am so grateful that we have a prophet on the earth today to lead and guide us.  I am grateful that we have an organization in place to ensure that we will always have all of the keys of the priesthood here on earth, and that the fullness of the gospel will never be taken away again.  I know that we have a living prophet, and that the prophet and apostles receive revelation from Heavenly Father on how to direct His church and His work here on earth.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

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