Brooke Turns 7

Well hello!  Brooke turned 7 this past week!  That also means I've been writing this blog for 7 years! Whoa!  Anyway, back to Brooke, she had a great day, and we topped off the day the same as her party, with mint brownies!  I've got some pictures later, so we'll get into the details there.

Our first real snow happened this past week.  I'm not sure whether or not it snowed small amounts already this year, but this is the first time we've really had snow on the ground in the morning.  The kids were VERY excited and had to get out.  Unfortunately, Brooke was at school, so it was just Grayson, Winry and I.  Monica got them all ready and then I popped up and went out to play with them for 20 minutes or so before lunch and heading back to work.

Jelly came out to see the snow too.  It took her a while to finally get out into the snow, but she didn't really seem to mind the cold.  Good thing she was shaved a while ago so her fur has had time to grow back in.  Anyway, you can kind of see his legs come flying in, but Grayson went down the little playground slide and flew into the water table, etc. and scared Jelly right back into the house!  Hopefully she'll give the snow another try.

Grayson wanted to join the snow angel crew, and did his very best, meaning he laid down!

And of course we had to have a snowball fight.  I got ganged up on, AND I had to make all of the snowballs.  Not the most fair snowball fight I've ever been in.

Artemis I finally launched this past week!  This is the one that I worked on when I first started as SEAKR.  I did all of the FPGA design in the VPU (Vision Processing Unit) for the crew module, so all of the camera feeds should be going through that to be processed and stored.  It's also set up as a back up flight computer, and who knows what else they might use it for.  Anyway, the great news is it didn't explode!  

Grayson has been helping Monica get in and out of the car and walk over to drop Winry off at preschool.  Someone's gotta hold her hand and get her places while she recovers.  He never did the seesaw when I was there, but Monica said he would have stayed there forever if she let him.

We had our house-iversay this past week as well.  We always get Japanese food, as that's what we did our first night in our house.  The weather even cooperated and I had to drive out in the snow, though it wasn't as bad as our first day here.

Here's Grayson and I... doing something... while Brooke opened her presents on her birthday.  We had a good time.  Also, Grayson is sick.  He's been sick since at least Thursday.  That's the first day I remember giving him medicine before his nap.  He's still been crazy full of energy until maybe today.  We went on a walk this morning and he seemed really tired, but insisted he walk the whole way.  He probably walked about a half a mile, and then I had to carry him back.  Oh, and I helped him have some vitamins this morning, he likes those.

Brooke woke up a little early so she'd have time to open her presents in the morning before school.  She was very excited for them all.  She got a bunch of books, and Winry gave her some cross stitches, and I'm sure there was some other stuff too.

As an added birthday greatness, Brooke and Winry got to go to the book fair.  They were very excited about it, and got some great books.  Oh, in addition to all of this, Michael was also out here staying with us.  He headed to Colorado Springs during the day to take care of things at his dad's house, and the girls loved to play with him in the evenings.  Anyway, here's our family together at the close of Brooke's birthday.

The next evening we found out Brooke's primary teachers sent her a card, so I wrapped Winry in a blanket and carried her to the mailbox to get it with me.  It was like 8 degrees outside.  Good news, we retrieved the card.

And that's about everything for this week.  Hopefully Grayson doesn't get the rest of us sick, or else I might have a rather subdued Thanksgiving post next week...