Sunday, May 3, 2020

I'm Feeling [Thirty]-Two

Hello hello!  I hope everyone is doing fantastic!  We had a good week here, capping it off with my birthday yesterday!  Everyone worked super hard on making sure I had a wonderful day, and we basically just had tons of fun all day long!  Our "3" shaped candle snapped in half, so we had to improvise on the cake.  We've been using the same set of number candles since we moved into this house.  On top of that, we didn't actually buy them, they were left behind when the last family moved out, so it's probably okay if we have to buy some new ones.  Monica and I both being in our 30's, as well as Brooke passing through 3 means that that particular candle has seen it's fair share of use...


This past week on Weekday the weather finally warmed up enough to use the pool!  The girls were very excited, and when I finished work everyone was out playing and splashing in the water.


I joined in as fast as I could.  The girls were playing in the main part of the pool, and I ended up in the way, so I moved into the little part by the slide, which meant everyone wanted to be in there.  Good news, we fit!


Over the weekend the girls wanted popsicles so when I went grocery shopping I picked up some strawberry lemonade to make homemade popsicles since that was the only acceptable flavor.  Here's everyone cooling off!


It went great until it became too cold!  No matter how many times I suggest that drying off would help someone to warm up, the advice still goes unheeded...


Winry decided she wanted to float around in the duck (?) pool floaty, so she got back in the pool and climbed inside.  Pure convenience!


Since Brooke was so cold, she ran inside and changed.  She came back out with her kitty headphones ready to bust a move!  This girl loves her dancing!


This past week I finished up a project I was working on.  I made a rechargeable battery pack for a Game Boy Advanced with a USB C port!  No more AA batteries needed.


I went to get Winry up on Weekday, and she had piled up all her stuffed animals around her.  When I came in she asked me to pull her blanket over everyone and then laid back down snuggling them all!  What a cutie!


My Dad is out helping Tyson and Tina with their addition to their house, and came down one day for lunch, for my birthday, and really to play with the girls.  Brooke and Winry had SO much fun playing with grandpa while he was here!  We were all sad to see him go.  He brought down a build your own binocular kit for Brooke and me to do, so sometime over the past week Brooke and I put those together.  Brooke is going to paint them, and then decorate them with the stickers that came with them.


In addition to the battery pack that I made, a few days later my new backlit Game boy screen came in!  They can be pretty hard to see otherwise.  Here's everything taken apart as I swapped both screens and cases.


And here it is put back together!  Unfortunately the new screen draws more power than my battery pack can currently provide, so I need to make a few modifications to the design before I can use it.  However, in the mean time I just plopped some AA batteries in there.  It looks great!


On end-of-weekdays-night we had a movie night!  It was pretty hot that day, and our AC just wasn't keeping up for some reason (aka it wasn't working).  Cool air was blowing, but it wasn't cold enough.  Anyway, the house got pretty hot (80 degrees!), so we watched in the basement where things were nice and cool!


We took down our little pocket projector to shine on the wall and watched some Doc McStuffins!  I think the basement will be the new norm for movie night, at least through the summer!


Saturday was my birthday!  Once everyone was awake, first thing in the morning we HAD to open presents.  Obviously I won't complain about this.  There were two good reasons for it being so early.  First, Brooke just loves giving present and was so excited for me to open hers.  But seriously, this girl lives for other people's birthdays!  And second, because I secretly had some running stuff in there, so I needed to open it before my run!


Also, Brooke labeled all of the presents!  Her handwriting is getting really good. And the only thing she needed help spelling was To!


After presents, it was out for a 14 mile run.  I got a little running vest thing that can carry a camelbak bladder in it.  It was wonderful to not have to hold a water bottle in my hands for 14 miles.  Yes I have a water bottle with a strap attached to make it easier, but this is even better!  My run went great, and most importantly, gave everyone time to prepare.


When I got home and cleaned up, the first order of business was to go find rolly pollies!  While I was showering Monica and the girls ran some food over to the church to drop off for a food drive, and when they came back Winry wouldn't come inside.  She was busy looking at the rolly pollies.  In fact, Monica said she only got Winry in the car by saying "Winry, do you think there's a rolly polly in the car?" and then when Winry came over "Winry, maybe there's a rolly polly in your car seat, better check!"  After seeing a bunch of "mommy" "baby" and "Winry" rolly pollies we headed inside for a hug and a scavenger hunt.


While I was on my run, Brooke hid these candles all around the house, along with clues for where to find the next one.  Each candle was double sided and said something that someone in my family loves about me, including items from my parents and siblings.  Monica wrote everything down and Brooke cut it all out!  Here I am with all the candles found and attached!  Thank you everyone!


After the hunt it was lunch time, and then Winry was too tired to stay up to play Mario Kart so I put her down for a nap.  Once Winry was down I showed Brooke Mario Maker and she played Mario for the first time!  I made some levels for her and for Monica, and Brooke even picked everything for a level of her own!  We also played a little Mario Party and Mario Kart and had a great afternoon playing together!


That afternoon, mother nature even cooperated and rained!  What a birthday!  Oh yeah, and the impending rain made my run so nice!  It was pretty cool, no sun beating down on me, and it hadn't been raining yet so it wasn't humid or muggy yet either!  Weather, you nailed it!


In the afternoon, Monica made my cake.  The girls, of course, cheered her on!  Also, little sneaker snatch Winry looking for anything she can find sweet on the counter!  She had been sticking her hand in the frosting and licking it off until I moved it.  Here's the completed cake.  It's themed this year as my family started doing a "Nailed it" competition this week.  This week it was both mine and Celeste's birthday, and so the cake design was supposed to have Pikachu (for me) and a basketball (for Celeste).  I told Monica she could just make her typical cake and we'd make it work for a picture.


Once the cake was ready it was time to eat it!  Monica finished frosting it after we had dinner, which was take out from Maggianos.  I already went over the 3 candle debacle, so then it was on to singing Happy Birthday.  We're starting to get enough voices to be a mini choir!


And of course, time to dig in!  The cake was chocolate with peanut butter frosting, and I had mint cookie crunch ice cream to go with it.  I know there's a lot of mint/peanut butter nay sayers out there (aka everyone but Alex), but I think they're just fine together and thoroughly enjoyed it.


After cake, the girls hurried into their jammies and brushed their teeth so we could play a little Mario Kart all together before bed.  Winry missed out before, and she loves playing too.  We all had a wonderful time, and grabbed a family picture before bed.


Once the kids were in bed, Monica and I played Draftosaurus, a new game I got for my birthday.  It was a lot of fun!

Thank you to everyone for your birthday wishes.  I had a terrific day, and at dinner when we did our best part/hardest part of the day the only hard part I had was that the cinnamon rolls took longer than expected to rise this morning for breakfast!  So I had to eat some cocoa pebbles while waiting.  It's pretty hard to complain when that's the worst part of your day!  I hope you are all safe and well!  Have a wonderful my 32nd year!

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