Girls Camp and Frivolities

Back on schedule!  Well, if I finish this post today :).  Monica is off to ward choir, and the girls went with her to play with other kids there, so it's just me and napping Grayson.  Personally, I think Grayson has the right idea, but if the time presents itself I better take it, as I feel I've been struggling to get the blog posts written lately.  We had a pretty crazy week, and for the most part the whole family wasn't home together. I was out on my work trip, and got back Wednesday afternoon.  And Monica took off first thing Friday morning for girls camp.  While Monica was out I took the kids to the zoo, and while we were there we rode the train.

Grayson has become a master of peek-a-boo, though in his version he's hiding and then calls out "here he is!" to help you find him.  He apparently does this with stuffed animals over his face in his crib, or for me we usually play it behind the blanket basket downstairs.

Meanwhile, I was out in Texas.  To finish off my foreboding comments about Sunday night, we ended up being at the facility working on our test until after 4 in the morning.  Turns out we thought we fixed something, but the fix actually broke things, and then we spent a few hours trying to figure out what the "new errors" were that our fix brought to light... Eventually we reverted and things were fine again.  When we got back to the hotel, I hopped on the treadmill for a run so that I could make it up until breakfast started, grabbed some food and went to bed.  Why stay up so late?  Because our shift the next day went from 4 pm to 8 am!  Our time went well, and we were able to collect more data than we originally planned.  I'm not sure that's a good thing, as it might create unhealthy expectations for the future, but at least things look good for now.  After our time ended, we headed to the hotel to sleep, came back to the facility to pack, and out for food.  We were heading for the airport at 7 am the next day, so in less than 24 hours from our shift finishing we were on our way back home.  I think in total I had 3.5 hours of time away from work where I wasn't sleeping, and 1.5 of those was on a treadmill.  It was a very intense, tiring trip.

However, when we went out to grab dinner on our final night, we also went to Smoosh for an ice cream sandwich!  I got mine on a donut, and was very happy.

There were enough hours on the trip that by the time I got home I  was done with work for the week.  Generally the day after a trip is considered likely for a member of the trip to take off, and my work just started 9/80, and Friday just happened to be my first Friday off.  Thursday morning is play group, and this week it was at the pool.  Of course I came along.  We had a great time, and Winry is doing so much better in the pool!  She even went on some of the water slides and climbed up through the spraying water by herself!  The only thing I wish we would have done while we were there was for Brooke and I to go on the big water slides.  She went earlier in the week while I was out of town, and we talked about going, but ran out of time.

Grayson's crib is starting to get a bit crowded.  It started with that big kitty, and now keeps wanting to bring in more and more.  I think secretly he knows that if he gets enough stuff in there he'll be able to climb out the top.  He probably could already, except in his sleep sack he can't get his legs far enough apart.

Friday morning we actually beat Monica out of the house by a few minutes.  There was a big scramble in the morning as she packed everything up for girls camp, and we got everything ready for a day at the zoo.  We of course stopped to see the vultures.  Honestly, I love that Winry loves them so much and that we go see them every time.  When we went by this time there was no one else anywhere near their exhibit, and it is a little out of the way from everything else.  The pen next to them is currently empty, and the next one over was closed for maintenance.  I'm sure the animals don't care if people come see them, but I love showing up and listening to Winry sing Happy Birthday to them every time!

When we arrived, the kids told me they wanted to see the sea lion show, and the elephant show.  We were able to make it to both!  I got a slow motion video of the sea lion hitting the ball, I wish I had started it just a little sooner, but it's not like I really had a lot of warning, and the super-slow mo videos on my phone can only be 0.4 seconds long, so you just gotta guess it right.  All things considered I like what I got.  We missed the very end of the show where the bigger (the one in the video weights 200 lbs, the big one weighed 700 lbs) sea lion jumped up and touched it as we were off to find a bathroom.  I did see the large splash though.

At the elephant show they had the elephants go down in the water around the platform.  I don't know that I've ever seen them down in the water before, so that was pretty cool.  I think Winry would be disappointed if I didn't mention that one of the elephants pooped in the water as it was climbing back out.  She talks about it like it was her favorite part of the show.

Right next to the elephants is the fishing cat.  Throughout our zoo day, there were definitely times when you could tell when Grayson saw an animal.  His eyes would light up and he'd usually get a little excited and point.  Well, when he saw the fishing cat he got REALLY excited!  When we first got there, the fishing cat was laying down, but it got up and started walking around it's habitat.  The water was drained because it has a hurt paw, and whenever it walked away Grayson would call for it to come back.  We were here for quite a while watching.  Like, at least 4 other groups came and went through the whole building before we went on.  But I know that everyone had a wonderful time, and got to see something that was special to them.

Meanwhile, girls camp!  I'll let Monica say anything she might want to say about Friday's hike, or activities here: Camp was really fun! We had 10 girls come. We did a service project and then went on a hike on Friday and it was SO hot outside! Then we went to camp, set up and had dinner. We started a craft and right after, a thunderstorm rolled in! It only lasted for about an hour and then we were still able to make s'mores and sing camp songs and have our evening devotional/testimony meeting.

Friday night is movie night, and while the girls were watching their movie I was getting Grayson ready for bed.  When I got back downstairs Jelly was laying on Brooke's lap and Brooke was petting her.  This still doesn't happen too often, but hopefully Brooke's getting old enough that Jelly isn't as worried about her.

I shared a picture of our kitchen chair flipped last week, that trend continues.  Grayson is getting more comfortable with the arrangement, however.  He brought over some stuffed animals to pad his own chair to sit on.

On Saturday, we went to the Highlands Ranch library so the girls could play in their market.  They had an absolute blast the whole time.  Brooke and Winry really liked filling baskets and then checking each other out at the checkout counters.

Grayson just walked around with some toy food, probably looking for trouble.  He was pretty attached to the two yellow peppers for a while.

We had to use the bathroom while we were there, and it sure is nice that places have family bathrooms now.  It was a life saver at the zoo too.  There was a kids seat on the wall, so I put Grayson in and he seemed to really like it.

Eventually Brooke wanted to read some books, so while Winry and Grayson continued to play, Brooke browsed some of the children's books on display and read a few.

Around the time we finished at the library, girls camp was wrapping up.  They did a ropes course on Saturday, and again, I'll let Monica fill in any details she'd like to add here:  The ropes course was pretty fun and now my muscles are sore! We got up early and made breakfast and packed everything up so we could go do the course before thunderstorms rolled in. I'm really glad we got to do it and it helped us better visualize our camp theme of Trust in the Lord. 

When Monica got home there was all sorts of camp items to unpack, and Grayson was quick to find things to play with.  I don't know what it is with him and mustard, but he'll snatch it out of the door when the fridge is open too.  Also in the video, Bye Bye Bye by N'Sync is really popular in our house right now.

Saturday night Brooke offered to put Winry to bed.  For the most part this was great, as they put on pajamas, brushed teeth, sang songs and read stories together.  However, when it came to actual time to go to bed... well I had to go in anyway.  Took about 45 minutes to get everyone calmed down, but once they were they drifted quickly off to sleep.

Monica got a catnip plant for Jelly a little ago, and for the most part it seems like Jelly ignores it.  I think she actually just gives it attention in the middle of the night, because around 10:30 last night she came in for a snack!  She ate several leaves off of it, and I was a little worried she was going to chew up the base of the stem and bring the whole thing down.

This morning Grayson was running around in a backpack.  I ended up putting some toys in there for him at church and he carried his own activities to church.

Phew, I made it in time!  The girls haven't gotten home quite yet, so as I wrap this up I look forward to the nap I'll try to take.  Inevitably the garage door will open right as I lay down.  Maybe next week I'll write a little quicker!  Hope you're doing great!