To Utah and Back

What a week.  Not only did we wake up in Utah to start it all off, but when we made it back to Parker it was time to get through our to do list of places we had to go again before leaving!  We even stopped at our favorite places on the drive, such as Little America for ice cream!  There's a chance we may never drive that way again... That's just crazy to think.  We got lunch there, and of course topped it off with ice cream, which everyone enjoyed.

While we were at my parents house I happened to poke in a drawer and find this!  I never did any document searching, I was just playing with Grayson next to it and happened to open it up.  It's from mother's day when I was 6.

On Monday mid-morning we went for a hike in Mueller Park Canyon.  It was super pretty, and a lot of fun.  We made it about a half mile, and then there was a snake on the side of the trail.  I got a stick to move the snake away so we could continue on, and it got it to turn around, but it was pretty fat looking, so I'm pretty sure it had recently eaten and didn't want to move at all!  Brooke didn't want to walk by it, so that's where we turned around.

On the way out, Grayson and I went down to check out the creek again.  It's a bit more fierce than the creek by our house here...  More on that later.

On Monday evening my sisters took Monica and the girls out to see the new Little Mermaid.  The girls LOVED it and have talked about it to some extent most days since.  It also looks like they got to go to one of those cool recliner movie theaters.

You may be thinking "did Grayson and Alex do something comparably awesome?"  And the answer is a resounding YES!  We... got out those pigs from the day before... :)  The important thing is that Grayson was having the time of his life with them.  Also, we turned on the NBA finals game and watched Denver win it all!  While we've lived here Denver has won a Super Bowl, a Stanley Cup, and an NBA championship!  It was really nice of the Nuggets to not let us down!

Oh, Grayson also started doing headstands that evening as well.  And no, he was not trying to sommersault over, he very much wanted to be up on his head.

On Tuesday we drove back home.  We wanted to get back for activity days that evening, as it was Brooke's last before we moved.  As mentioned, we stopped in Little America, and we ate on the grass next to the dinosaur.  We all had our fun on it.  Winry slid down the tail, and Brooke and Grayson had a snuggle ride together.  We also had to get ice cream, as they advertise that along the freeway, so it must be one of the big attractions.

Once we got back, Monica and the kids were busy all week making sure they got everything in one more time.  So Wednesday they headed to Monkey Bizness.  It's an indoor playground of sorts, with inflatables, and playgrounds, and all kinds of things to keep the kids busy.  They always have a super great time there.

On Wednesday afternoon they went to the Centennial splash pad!

Grayson... was not so much interested in the splashing.  But he was interested in floating a rubber lizard down the gutter in the stream of water.

Wednesday night Grayson walked up to bed on his hands!  I mean, I might have helped a little, but it was still pretty impressive.

On Thursday everyone headed to the museum of Nature and Science .  I'm just realizing that I never really heard anything about this trip.  I'm sure they had fun, and it looks like they got to spend some quality time in the kids play area!

  I went golfing early on Friday morning, and here we are finishing up our round just after 8.  I had a pretty good round of golf for the day, and it was pretty lovely weather.  No rain this time, but it was definitely threatening.

Saturday morning we all went to Poulette after breakfast.  We got all kinds of things to everyone's delight.

Once we got back from Poulette we had to eat things quickly because we had a birthday party to get to.  It was Halloween themed, so the kids all dressed up.  Winry was Ariel, Brooke was Anna, and Grayson was Buc-ee.  When it was time for cupcakes Grayson... got aggressive you could say.  Afterwards some of the younger kids there were over splashing around in water, and Grayson made his way over to get wet too!  It's kind of funny that he HAS to play in the puddle, after not wanting to go in the water at the splash pad.

Grayson also made sure he found himself a great lunch, and then carried it a safe distance away so his parents couldn't immediately take it from him.

Brooke was loving the zip along thingy.  Heck, I really enjoyed playing on it too!

Saturday evening we had a karaoke party with the Packers and the Westbroeks. It was a lot of fun.  Winry sang "Let it Go" and she really went for it!

Meanwhile, Grayson and I were in the basement playing.  We were upstairs for the first bit.  And we tried to pet their cat for a while.  Eventually we had s'mores in the backyard, and after that I had to go in the basement with Grayson for the rest of the evening.  We played many things, but eventually we found this big tube and started rolling a little ball through it, and Grayson did that on loop for the rest of the evening.

The girls went up to sing for Father's Day on Sunday.  They were wonderful!

Monica spoke in sacrament meeting.  Grayson did a good job sitting with me and being calm for most of the meeting, but towards the end he just had to go sit with Monica.  You can see the top of his head up there.

When we got home I got to open my Father's Day presents.  Winry made me a WHOLE BUNCH of awesome stuff.  She made a bunch of cards, and pictures, and crafts.  They were absolutely wonderful!

Brooke wrote a story for me.  The Girl with Laser Eyes.  It was pretty funny, and there were some really good lines in there.  Maybe I'll have to post pictures of the whole thing sometime, or a link to a pdf or something.

Saturday afternoon we all headed to the creek.  Winry really wanted to ride her bike, and she is getting really good on the balance bike.  I think she'll be able to learn to ride without training wheels pretty quickly once she wants to.  Here she is, rolling down by the creek.

Here are the girls standing out in the deep part of the creek.  There's been a ton of rain lately, and the creek is much higher than normal.  It was a lot of fun to go play there, but the only downside was that with the heightened creek the water was much more brown, so you couldn't really see in the water much.  When we were leaving I happened to notice two crawdads in a shallow part, but they swam away pretty quickly.

Grayson kept claiming to not be interested and wanting to go off somewhere else, but then he'd throw dirt in the creek and put his hands in and stuff like that.  He's also super in a "need mom" phase right now, so Monica always had to be the one to follow him around.

When we got back to the car people were pretty hot.  I think the high was 86-88 that day.  That's pretty warm, but in Leander it's 105 feels like 115... I am not prepared for that.  It is abnormally hot currently, but that's not really a consolation if you still have to be in it.  Hopefully it blows over by the time we move.  (I just checked... it won't)

And back at home we took in a haul from the garden!  Yay, our Strawberries are already coming in!  I'm glad we're at least getting something from the garden before we move.  That said, we knew early enough that we didn't plant most of the things we normally would have, so our garden right now is mostly things that came back from last year, plus some cold weather things Monica planted.  But still, free strawberries!

And that's a wrap for this week.  One more week until we move.  There's lots to do this next week, with the house getting packed, etc.  Should be busy, crazy, and hopefully good...