Chicago Trip

Well, my new company has a week each year where they'll fly everyone into the Chicago office, so I went!  I had a pretty great time, and everyone seemed to hold it together at home without me, so success!  I did get a very sad Marco Polo from Winry the first night as she was missing me at bed time, but otherwise everyone did well.  During the week I was working during the days, and there were random events some evenings, etc.  I stayed for Saturday as well, because the company party was Saturday night, so I had the morning to myself.  I walked around the city, and in the end I went about 10 miles in total.  I walked out to the end of Navy Pier and got this picture of the city back behind me.

Rolling back to the start of the week, the girls had a super dance to show us.  They learned it at an assembly they had on Monday at school.  They weren't at the assembly at the same time, but they both had the same one.

Brooke had been keeping Monica company out in the guest room for the last little bit.  WE got a new mattress for our room, and it was too stiff for Monica, so she was out there on our old mattress.  Brooke was writing in a notebook one night and it doesn't appear she finished!

I flew out to Chicago Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning I headed into the office.  Here's our building!  CTC doesn't actually have all of it, they have 4 floors together, and then another floor higher up.  The top of the building is also apartments or something like that.

Back at home, Grayson and Monica drew a temple together while the girls were at school.  Grayson's been into making temples lately, which is awesome!  Grayson also helped build some new shelves to put up in his room to hold books.

On Thursday evening I went to the Sky Deck!  It's at the top of Willis Tower, and you get to go up to the 103rd floor.  When I was up there I called home to show everyone where I was, and turned so they could see out the window behind me.  Then I lifted my phone up, up, up to show them I was standing on a glass floor!

I took of picture of the view straight down as well.

You only get to be out in the glass boxes for a short time, and then you have to get in line again if you want to go back out.  So I called home, and then took some pictures and called again to just show everyone the view from up so high.  While I was walking around I found this on one wall that shows you what you're actually out there on.

And here's a night view of the city!  My timing was pretty great as I was up there for sunset... except that it was cloudy.  So I got up at the exact time of day I was shooting for, but I guess not on the day I was shooting for.  It was still a lot of fun, and a really great view of the city.

Back at home Monica and Grayson went to a park by the Cedar Park rec center, and found a bridge nearby!  Grayson was in bridge heaven, though there hasn't been any flooding around the bridge here, so it's not as hot a discussion topic as the ones back in Colorado.

As I mentioned, Saturday morning I walked around the city.  The thing I knew of to go see was the bean, and unfortunately it's all under construction...  I also walked out to the end of the pier, and then back to my hotel, and passed a whole bunch of stuff in the process.

Grayson's always looking for a new place to get cozy in.  We don't have a little nook next to our fireplace anymore, so I guess the ottoman is the new cool place.

Saturday night was my work party, and it was at the zoo.  It was pretty fun.  A lot of the animals were hidden away somewhere, but there were a few buildings you could go in, and I found the rhino still out having a snack.

Sunday was the primary program, which I unfortunately missed. Grayson did his best to make Monica miss it too! But I hear that the girls did great. I flew back on Sunday, and we were all happy to be back together.  Sunday night a big thunder storm rolled in, so that was pretty cool too, you know, since my flight was already landed. :)
 

Big Rain Storms

Rain! Yay! We got rain this past week.  And we got some pretty big storms too!  I was woken up at 4:30 in the morning by thunder, and eventually went to check out the rain.  It was pretty fun to watch the rain and lightning.

I don't remember if we put pictures up of the guest room now that we finished working on it.  We're ready for visitors now! Come see us!

Grayson's been asking Monica to go to the children's museum, and they got to go this past week.  He got to pick everything they did and had an amazing day.  Monica said the balls are fun, but the problem is when there are other kids there, because Grayson just smacks the balls around into the other kids.

Our lizard friend has been chilling outside my office window, and Jelly's been loving it... Err... maybe not loving it, but she's been very interested in following it around.  I'm guessing Jelly wouldn't mind a little less glass...

Monica finished painting the mermaid scales in Winry's room!  It looks amazing!  Winry's been loving it as well.  The stencil was having a pretty hard go of it by the end, but Monica was able to get it all done.

Speaking of that big storm, when Monica was walking the girls to school the next morning they saw this tree, that seems a little... struck by lightning.

Monica... came home from something or other or something like that... anyway, when she walked in no one was home, but we had left several blankets on the couch...  The kids thought this was hilarious.

I started working on the office for painting, etc.  We're going to put shelves along one wall, but there was a light switch and outlet just in bad spots, so I cut some holes and flipped them to the opposite sides of the stud this past week.  The outlet was all gray in the background, so it doesn't look as funny or striking as the light switch did.

Grayson asked Monica if she'd help him make a temple with the magna-tiles on Friday.  They made quite the impressive structure together.  I think this is probably the neatest thing I've ever seen made from magna-tiles before, so bravo!

Speaking of bravo, Monica found a choir out here and practiced for and went to tryouts on Thursday, and she got in!  Yay!  So that's exciting for her that she'll get to be back into that again.  It does go until later out here, I think that's the only down side.

Yesterday we actually remembered to do nailed it for my family call.  This week was to make something with a peach, like Princess Peach.  Here's the princess peach that Brooke made.

And here's Winry's.  Also, she had just finished doing her hair right before she came down to make it.

I made peach fruit leather, and 3d printed a cookie cutter to stamp it.  It didn't quite turn out how I'd hoped, but it still worked.  The fruit leather got thinner and stiffer faster than I thought, so I didn't get to stamp it at the right time, but it still looks nice.

Grayson was crying this morning so I ran in to check on him, and he had had a HUGE blow out and threw up a little.  I think the throw up was incidental, because he ate a huge breakfast and has seemed fine since.  He has still had diarrhea, but has seemed pretty much fine today.  That's pretty Grayson over the last little bit that every time he's sick he runs around the house and plays like nothing is wrong outside of any specifically sick moments.  Anyway, he didn't go to church and we went on a walk this morning.  We saw this plant that was growing through the fence that I liked.

Anyway, I think that's everything I've got for now.  Have a great week.

First Day of Dance

The first day of dance finally arrived!  The dance studio the girls go to does not line up with the school calendar like E&E did back in Colorado.  I do think that was probably good for Winry to let her get used to school for a bit before starting dance.  The classes are done a bit differently here, and both girls are actually in the same class this year.  They had 2 back to back classes and had a great time dancing.  Sorry Winry's on the seem of the mirrors in that video.

Brooke was having fun with the wiki sticks last Sunday, and the build of choice was glasses.  She was even able to get her prescription right.

Our power here tends to shut off every week or so for a bit.  I actually bought a battery backed up power strip for my computer to help with this.  Well, we got a new fridge for the garage, however, it's a freezer with a fridge mode, and it does NOT remember what mode it was in.  It always comes back as a freezer set to 0 degrees.  This means it is a terrible place to store carbonated drinks we now know.

Several of the cans burst.  We actually still have several that just bubbled out on the top and bottom, and I'm not sure what to do with them.  They didn't burst, so they're safe... if they're safe to open.  Anyway, that was no fun pulling everything out of the fridge and cleaning it all up.  And I guess in the future we'll have to be very careful about what we choose to put in there.

We've got a friend of a friend staying with us on a med school rotation.  With Monday being Memorial day, Doug and I headed off for a run.  I honestly don't even know where we went.  He looked for a trail around here, and we drove about 30 minutes to get there.  It was a good run though, and lots of fun.  Also, small world story, his last name is Wirthlin, which was my professors name in college for my Masters.  Turns out, my prof. is his uncle!

We went to the pool in the morning and ordered pizza there for lunch.  We even met another family that lives in our ward that moved into the neighborhood about the same time as us.

Monica started working on Winry's mermaid scale wall.

It's looking really good.  It's far enough that we could move her bed back over and Winry can sleep in her room again.  I think it's at least half way done, though I don't remember the exact status as I'm writing this.

On Monday I may have been a little tired when I was putting Grayson down for his nap...  At least one of us took a nap. :)

Grayson suddenly got an ear infection Monday afternoon.  Monica took him to an urgent care, and I ran off to pick up his prescription.  He was VERY sad, and Tylenol didn't seem to work, but Ibuprofen did help, so that was good.  Monica slept with him to help him be calm, and in the morning he woke up like nothing had ever been wrong.  I'm glad he was feeling better quickly!

Saturday was such a day.  I ran 7 miles and mowed and weed wacked the lawn.  It was like 108, but I fortunately was done before it got that hot, though it was over 100 by the time I finished because I had to recharge the batter twice.  I went around the house and took out all the hanging nails, other than a few we were using.  It was significant, and some very odd.  I think there were 8 in Grayson's closet.

Winry and Monica pulled together an amazing snack lunch.  There were even pretzel bites!  It was super great.

In the afternoon Doug was willing to chase the kids around for a bit so Monica and I could run to Ikea.  We maybe had a few ideas of things we wanted, and ended up filling up the van.  We got a bunch of shelves for the office, some for the playroom upstairs, and a new office chair.  I rounded out the day with a cool 22.5k steps.  I was very tired when I went to bed.

And I was still pretty tired this morning, though generally I am feeling much better!  I think that's all the news I've got for now.  I'll likely have some updates on projects around the house for next week now that we have a bunch of furniture to build.
 

Sick :(

Oh my, poor little Winry got sick sick sick this last week!  She ended up throwing up Tuesday and Wednesday night, and didn't go to school from Wednesday on.  I don't really think she has a stomach thing, maybe just coughed too much in the middle of the night or something.  She had a high fever. She was obviously VERY tired, and spent basically all of Wed and Thurs sleeping on the couch.  Saturday she was doing a little better, and today I'd say is the first day she seems back to healthy.  I'm glad she's back!

Last Sunday a little bit of rain blew threw, and the weather suddenly dropped like 30 degrees in 30 minutes.  It heated right back up after the storm blew away, but since the weather was nice we had family home evening on the back patio!

There was a nice rainbow that night, and I also think this is the first time that it rained enough that the ground was completely wet.  Other rain storms the individual drops have dried up before the whole driveway looks wet.  There was also a nice rainbow!

Monica had some sewing she wanted to do, and Brooke and Winry wanted to help out.  Brooke learned how to sew all on her own!  I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about what they're making, it might be a secret...

Grayson is definitely our little snuggler.  Lately he's been all about Monica too.

With Winry being sick I worked from home in case things came up, and to make sure I didn't get people sick at work.  Monica and Grayson were looking for things to do around the house, and Grayson made biscuits!  They were delicious!

He was very excited when they were done, and even sent a picture of them  to Biscuit to show him some love!  He was being so crazy for this picture and I just couldn't help but laugh.

Our little green anole friend came back again, this time for lunch.  It looks like the skin on it's tail was peeling and it kept pulling it off.  He was chilling there for while a while too.  Also, Monica caught onto the pattern that they do a bunch of quick push ups before they puff out the red thing on their neck.

I finally made some headway on... wait.. this is a secret!  Well, I've got a secret project going on, and it's going quite well.  I think things will be finished up in a day or so, but I won't be able to say more for a while.  Hopefully I remember to come back to this once the cat's officially out of the bag (p.s. it doesn't have anything to do with Jelly or a bag).

I'm trying to think of other general things from this week.  My first thought is that I've been quite tired and my head hurts, and that all started because sports are back on, but in our new time zone everything is even later than before!  I watched a BYU volleyball and soccer game, and the soccer team beat UCLA who was ranked #1 in the nation!  I also attempted to watch the football game last night, but I did not make it long on the couch.  In other good news, we have a comfortable couch!  Oh, we also got a new mattress.  We got a tempur-pedic, and we'll see how it works for Monica's back.  We also worked on a lot of projects around the house, but I didn't take a picture of any of them... so hopefully I'll remember sometime soon to get some of these house updates on here!  Oh, and Monica put together her 1 second every day for August!  I think that's everything for now.