Brooke got her Ears Pierced!

Well looky here!  Brooke got her ears pierced on Saturday!  She was wanting to for her birthday, however, she is supposed to wear earrings for company, and if we waited till her birthday she might not have been able to switch her earrings at that point.  She's been doing a really good job taking care of her ears since, and loves her little butterfly earrings she's wearing right now.

On Monday the rest of the family found themselves on a plane.  They came back so I didn't have to keep talking to the kids stuffed animals.  Probably a good choice.

We keep getting pictures from preschool each week.  Here's Grayson with all the watering cans!

I'm putting both pictures in this week because I really liked them both.  Here he is doing some color matching.  Good times at school.

On Thursday at the end of the school day there was a teddy bear picnic.  Grayson doesn't have school on Thursdays, but they invited all the kinds to attend.  They also have a pumpkin patch right now, and Grayson really wanted to get some.  He picked out a kinda blue one, and a bumpy one, and a few others.  He was very interested in different looking pumpkins.

I took Winry to basketball practice on Thursday evening.  She did great listening to the coach, and worked on her shooting.  She made some good progress.

On Friday night I had an excellent date night idea.  I ordered a Tech Deck that came with some skate park features, and Monica and I made a skateboarding video.  I thought it turned out pretty well!

Saturday morning I took Winry in early for pictures before her basketball game.  There were only 4 kids there in time for pictures.

That said, there were only 6 kids there on time for the basketball game, and 9 eventually came in total.  The games were actually pretty long.  4 8-minute quarters, and they subbed every 4 minutes of game time.  It was a lot of fun to watch, and I recorded 3 of the times Winy was in, if you wanna watch one.

Winry and Grayson were playing... sit on Winry... I guess.  I dunno, but they were happy the whole time, so it was a win.  The girls sure like to encourage Grayson to do things like this, but probably 70% of the time they get sad/mad when he does it, because it comes without warning...

All of Grayson's love of marble run finally clicked in my brain, and I got down Fireball Island to play with the kids.  As we've tried playing it, it turns out the rules are actually really simple, and everyone loves to play it.  Grayson needs a little help because he can't read, but helping him know what and when he could use his cards, he actually won by a fair bit when we all played together.

On Sunday Grayson was having a really hard time at church, and we ended up outside for part of Sacrament meeting.  We started playing kitties and it was just cool enough that I wasn't super hot out there.  Phew!

And that's it for the week.  We had to set up Fireball Island before church so that it'd be ready for us when we got home, so it's a pretty hot commodity right now.  Good thing I've been having fun playing it!
 

Tale of Two Weeks

A little pre story before we get into the split weeks.  One night when Brooke was going to bed, she called Monica up because her finger was kind of numb.  Random places on her hand were kind of numb feeling, and there wasn't really a reason why so we told her to let us know if it got worse and keep trying to go to sleep.  In the morning she told us her hand was feeling worse, and it looked swollen, so I took a look, and under her scrunchy she had like... 7 hair bands that were just TOO tight to be on her wrist.  If you zoom in you could count and see if I got the number right.  So we won't be wearing those anymore, and may be we'll buy some bigger ones, cause I know Brooke loves to have one on for just in case.

The week split on Wednesday, when Monica and the kids left me for Utah.  Looks like the pilots needed help taking off, so good thing we've trained our children for moments like these.

After landing, they stopped to get dinner at Noodles & Co. on their way to Gram and Pop's house, and got in in time for bedtime.  The next day they went to BYU, or as Brooke calls it "my future school."  They had a lot of fun at the book store on the slide, and of course shopped for some new BYU drip.

After, they went to the MOA for lunch, and this seemed the best picture to bring up the fact that Melanie was visiting from India!  That's the real reason why Monica went out on this otherwise random week.  Also, I think the kids have Monday off school, so a 3 day weekend is also a good reason too.

While on campus, they reached out to the most recent Harding cougar, Emilee!  I don't know what all they did together, but I know they walked the pedestrian bridges up by the Marriott Center, and it looks like they were all excited to see each other.

Friday they headed to the aquarium up in Salt Lake City.  It's apparently a super awesome aquarium.  I haven't been to it since it moved several years ago.  The kids all had a lot of fun.  We talked on the phone that night, and they told me all about the animals.  There was a tube you could walk through at the bottom of the shark tank, and a UV light with some jelly fish, and all kinds of other things I'm not remembering.  There was also this cool rope bridge that at least some of the kids crossed.  I asked Winry if she felt like she was in a Magic Tree House story.  She said no...

There was also a Komodo dragon with a sculpture.  There were several animal sculptures, all of which were climbable. 

Turns out that Friday was also Gram's birthday.  This was a pretty good weekend to go out, eh?  Everyone had mint brownies and sang happy birthday!

On Saturday everyone went out for a hike.  Grayson found a very good walking stick, which came in handy mostly to hold in the air from step to step.  Definitely made his hike easier.

They found this nice clearing, and it looks like some of the trees were even changing colors.  Monica said the weather was perfect for the hike as well, so that's lucky, because I was having second summer here in Texas.

They came upon this tree that was bridging the creek.  It took some convincing from Monica that it would be safe, but everyone, including Grayson, crossed it.  Grayson crawled across with Winry.  Once they did it once it was fun, not scary, and they were all VERY excited to tell me about crossing this log. Everyone wished they could stay there all day long.

Saturday night Monica, all the kids, and many others went to the BYU volleyball game.  They were worried beforehand about Grayson getting bored and causing problems, but everyone had an amazing time!  Volleyball is a pretty good one for younger kids, because there's a lot of stops in the action and they play music all the time.  The kids loved getting up and dancing.

Here's Brooke and Audrey watching the game.

And here's Grayson and Winry.  The good thing about sitting up high is that there was free space for running around.  Also, usually the volleyball games are packed, but there was a football game shortly after the volleyball game, so I think that kept the attendance lower at the volleyball game. After the game, Brooke was very excited to walk through the Richards Building, home of the dance department. She hopes to spend a lot of time there someday!

Oh, and does this tree look familiar?  Yup, this is the tree "house" at the church building from when we were all out a few weeks ago.  Looks like Grayson shared the secret with Jett.  Who knows if they ever made it into church...

So after that action packed week, I'm sure you're all dying to know the amazing adventures I went on back at home.  I spent the first few days eating leftovers to try to not let anything go bad, and Friday night I finally had to cook for the first time.  I kinda made pasta in a pot, except I made it in a pan.  It was great!!

On Saturday I had a few things to do on my computer, like get caught up writing blog posts, and work on my lesson for church, etc.  Jelly likes to join me in the office, and a lizard came by too!  I think that's really why Jelly likes to come in here, she usually sits on the windowsill looking out at the bush.

Saturday night was the BYU football game, and since I had the house to myself I got some buddies together to tailgate and watch the game together.  Literal party going on right here.

And here we are at game time.  It was a late night kick off, so we turned the lights off, and there's no way anyone fell asleep before the game ended...  I was awake long enough to see that we were going to win at least, and it was a pleasant surprise in the morning to see we didn't lose our lead!

And now that you've seen what I've been up to, I'm sure you're all grateful that my family is coming back to me tomorrow.  I am too!

Flood of Children

WHOA! 8 KIDS!!  What a weekend!  Our friends, the Ellers, went on a trip to Hawaii, but conveniently forgot their kids.  We helped them out over the weekend and had a pretty full house.  Fortunately, we all had a great time together and the kids loved having friends over all the time.  On Saturday there was even time for haircuts for those who wanted one.

Grayson's school sends us a few pictures each week.  Most of them are random moments.  Sometimes him playing with other kids we don't know, etc.  I liked this picture because the class is all learning together, so I picked it this week.  Also, because I don't have an accompanying picture, I'll stick this video of Grayson teaching us how to use the exercise station at the park right here.

Brooke and Winry's school has been doing their fundraiser the past few weeks, and if their classes earn enough they can unlock various rewards.  Brooke got a crazy hair day and was rockin' Easter eggs!

Grayson conned Monica into buying him this fish one day while grocery shopping at HEB and he absolutely loves it.  He's been taking it all over with him.  They're inseparable best friends.  It's convenient that the fish eats acorns, because Grayson's been collecting them his whole life.  Now we know why.  The fish also ate Grayson's grapes because he didn't want them anymore.

Our bed has pull out drawers under it, and I'll semi-often find mine pulled all the way out against the wall.  I initially thought it was because Jelly sleeps under our bed between them, and maybe someone needed to get her or something.  Nope, Grayson pulls out one of Monica's on the opposite side and crawls under our bed!  What a crazy lad.

Speaking of crazy, he started shoving stuff in his pajamas on Saturday.  One time he got it right so it just looked like he had a HUGE belly!  I wanted to get a picture of him walking around, but things got shuffled before I did, and it didn't look as good, but he seriously looked like the Grinch with his big body and super skinny legs!  This sitting picture is good, but it was even better when he was walking around.

Since we had so many kids in our house, Saturday was a day for manual labor!!  Monica had been wanting me to put up some boards on the wall in the laundry room so we could put up hooks for backpacks.  I used the allure of power tools to attract my helper.  Seth and I measured, cut and nailed up boards.  In this picture we're still trying to figure out the exact design we wanted to do.

It's hard to not have fancy hair parties when there are 5 little girls in the house.  It also helps that all these things are kept in a bin together, though there are definitely some clips from dance recitals that I didn't think were supposed to go in there...  Anyway, once they get started it's easy to get carried away.

Saturday is sports day, or at least it is for the Ellers.  Monica took Lois to her volleyball game in the morning, and then actually picked them all up after that to come to our house.  Megan had a soccer game around noon, and Monica dropped her off, but then I went over and watched the game.

In the afternoon, we all went to the pool and swam.  I think everyone had a great time.  The girls really like floating out on the big dragon floatie, and then I "shark attack" them by swimming under it and bumping it with my head and trying to knock them off.  It was lots of fun.

That evening I made a rushed attempt to cut all the wood before it got dark, and still ended up outside with my headlight on.  But I got the rest of the boards nailed to the wall!  Now just a little caulking and painting and we'll be ready for hooks!  So, just... 2 more months.

Alrighty, that's all I've got for now.  A bit of a crazy weekend, but fun to have friends over with us.  Sunday was a bit crazy because there were too many of us to fit in one car, and I had meetings after church, but we got it all figured out.  We also had crepes for lunch, and they were a huge hit!  That's great news because the Ellers used to live in Europe, so they know a thing or two about crepes.

Oh! and Monica put together a 1 second every day for August!  My thought watching it was I can't believe we did so much in August!  It's been a crazy past 2-ish months with traveling, etc.
 

Jus' Chillin'

Why hello!  Things were pretty laid back this week, and we're definitely getting into the groove of things now.  We enjoyed having Monday off from everything, and had a great time with our visitors.  Here's Grace cuddling up with Brooke.  She was probably trying to hide from me.  She just kept pretending to be nervous the whole time, but I could see through it!

We went to the park, and had a great time there.  It was supposed to rain in the afternoon, and I believe rained over night before, so it was a little cloudy and MUCH cooler than it's been recently!  May this, PLEASE, be the start of fall.  Anyway, the kids all had a lot of fun playing together at the park.

A fun idea Jessica brought was to go get some cheap pictures/paintings at Goodwill and then paint on them to make them Halloween-y.  Winry really wanted to pain this castle, and did a really good job!

Grayson's been not wanting to sleep by himself in his room lately, and has started asking to sleep in Winry's room.  He's been sleeping on the bottom bunk, so that works pretty well, though it makes getting only Winry up for school trickier.  It's been going alright though.  Anyway, Grayson's enjoyed finding blankets, etc. and getting cozy.

I went into work on Tuesday and... the door was broken.  I was able to get in still and they came and fixed the door same day, so that's good too.

Grayson got a taste of Bledsoe park, and he's dying to go back now.  I think he's wanted to go every day.  Monica took him first, and I took him another day after dinner.  He really likes this slide, and I feel like it's the big talking point, but I can't blame him because it looks pretty fun.

I thought dance started last week, but maybe it started this week... :)  Here's Winry with the 1st day of dance sign.  Brooke's class specifically asked for us to just drop her off and not come in to help with traffic flow, so I think that's why she's missing a similar picture.

Jelly found a new friend this past week.  This grasshopper stayed there all afternoon as well, so Jelly had a lot of time to introduce herself.

On Sunday morning while I was at ward council, the kids and Monica found an inch worm!  Actually, they found 2.  We were talking about it, and think they came from our tomato plants, which Monica was out in that morning.  I had one on me after helping her get some tomatoes one day, so that's how we made the connection.

And Monica was feeling kinda sick as well.  She didn't go to church, and I had meetings right after, so I dropped off the kids, and while I was gone they made her lunch!  What an amazing bunch of kiddos we've got!

And that's our week.  Hopefully Monica will be back on her feet and feeling great soon.