Grayson Turns 5!!

Happy birthday Junior!  This seems like a good moment for a tangent.  Grayson, when asked what his name is, has recently been responding "Junior!"  Don't know where it came from, but part of me wants to let it stick because that'll be great fun for him to explain when he's older.  Anyway, here he is dancing to a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" in the candle light!  Most of the pictures he's just smiling, etc. so I had to pick this one because it was just so much more fun!  I can't believe Grayson's already 5.  I remember for at least the first year we lived here in TX thinking that it never seemed like Grayson had changed much.  Looking at this picture, and thinking of the 2 year old that moved here, it's crazy to see how much he's changed!  I hope he still spends some time looking at the acorns out his closet windows...

Jelly stumbled upon a really good bag this week.  Can you believe she'd jump out at me too?

Grayson's birthday was on Tuesday, and he opened presents first thing.  We even took Winry to school a little bit later than usual so she could be there while he opened them. She was still on time to school, she just usually gets there at the start of drop off and instead got there at the very end! He got Luigi legos, dinosaur rockets, a glow in the dark marble run, Snack-o-saurus, and a ghost pillow.  It was non-stop excitement as he opened each present, and he has been having a blast ever since!

When Monica got home from dropping off Winry at school, there was a roadrunner on our driveway and we followed it a few houses down trying to watch it for a bit.  I'm slowly ticking off my Texas animal watch list.  I've seen a roadrunner, armadillo, and opossum.  I may be missing some others, but those are things I've only seen once, so they've felt more special.

Here is Grayson with Snack-o-saurus.  It's a board game, but the dino comes off and it's pretty fun to shoot out his tongue.

Grayson took donuts into school for his birthday, to everyone's delight, and it looks like he got to wear a birthday crown as well.

He wanted a strawberry cake, but then also threw in the curve ball that he wanted Toothless, from How to Train your Dragon, on his cake.  I think Monica did an AMAZING job drawing it on there.

Ok, I'll be 100% honest, and say I don't actually know what I took a picture of, but knew this would at least serve as a placeholder for the following story.  One morning, Monica saw a lizard up high on a wall in our house.  I went to try to get it, but it had run off and hid somewhere in the meantime. I had to go into work, so I didn't have a lot of time to look around for it.  A few days later when I got home from work, I was greeted by Monica who had found the lizard again, but not until after Jelly had found it... It was on the door mat to the backyard, so I took the mat out and shook it off.  This is maybe a picture of it after it fell into the garden, I was trying to hide it from the kids.  I guess we know Jelly's hunting instincts are still good.

Grayson's marble run has a lift in it.  He really loves the lift, and one night I helped him make a new marble run that actually used the lift to loop the marbles back.  He really liked that.  We also spent some time using a flashlight in the dark to get parts of it to glow nice and bright too.

Grayson had his 5 year checkup as well, and everything looked good at the doctor, including his sweet clothes.

The girls got to show us dances at the end of dance class this week. Either Monica or I made it to all of them.  Here's one from Winry.

And here's Brooke doing one of her Halloween dances.

I liked this picture of Grayson at preschool.  All the kids worked together to try to flood the slide with rocks.  There was a picture of Grayson being the holder at the bottom of the slide, but it's from a different angle and you can't see how full the slide is. So I went with this one as I thought it looked more fun.

And here's another dance for Brooke.

And afterward, her class all took a picture together with their teacher.

On Saturday morning, Brooke had a volleyball game, and it was CRAZY!  We dropped her off at the door, and I circled the building 3 times before finding a parking spot.  There was a big cornhole tournament, so I'm guessing that was why because it's usually not hard to get a spot.  We missed her first game, but she did great in the second and third.  Afterwards we headed straight to Grayson's preschool for a fall fest/Halloween party.  Here are all the kids in their costumes as we arrived.

They had cutouts to let the kids look extra spooky!

There were lots of activities for the kids to do as well.  They had bingo, and a cake walk, and tossing games like ring toss or throwing a pumpkin into a bucket, etc.  There was also a silent auction and Grayson REALLY wanted me to get some stepping stones, so I put a bid on it and he kept trying to pick them up and take them with us.  I've since found out that we did win them! Yay!

A little while after we got back, Winry had a birthday party for a friend from school.  I took her and she had a lot of fun playing at the park with kids from school.

In fact, she had a lot of fun with a girl named Macy.  AND they were both cowgirls!  I was able to swap phone numbers so they can get together sometime.

We spent some time Saturday out in the garden, and Monica decided to check how the sweet potatoes were doing.  She ended up pulling out 15 lbs., and they were HUGE!

Also, we woke in the middle of the night to a loud sound.  Looking around it would appear that Jelly got on the counter and knocked some stuff off, scared herself with the loud sound and knocked several plants over...  I think the fur clump in the potting soil says it all. She scared the heck out of us!

And that's all I've got for now.  Have a good week.

Texan Mounties

Well howdy do, I saw mounties downtown when I headed into work this week.  I guess I headed out for a breath of fresh air at just the right time!  There were two of them, and I just can't imagine it's very fun riding a horse in all that traffic.  I think it definitely caused some confusion for drivers. Though there's a Formula 1 race here this weekend, and I do believe there was some random traffic and processions through downtown for that.  I definitely saw a train of Barilla pasta cars, and I've never seen anything like that before.  And sure enough, when I watched the sprint race, there were Barilla ads along the track, so I don't think it was a coincidence.

It's kinda crazy to think that at the start of the week the family was still out in Utah, but they were.  I guess it's been a pretty long week.  Fortunately, things were prepared for Rainbow, and his bouncer was waiting for him!  Seeing this actually reminds me of how much Grayson loved his bouncer when he was a baby.  In fact, we even threw it in the back of the van once for a trip out to Utah because he loved it so much.

Monday was a final hoorah for fun, and everyone went out for a good time at the park.  I'll be honest, I'm sure I've missed some stuff from the trip, but I also wasn't there, so Monica may add some good stories if she chooses.  One such I just heard yesterday was that Grayson was asking to sleep in the same bed as Monica and snuggle, and asked about if he could next trip.  Monica told him that I'd be coming along for Christmas, and Grayson asked if I could just stay home!!

At work, we order breakfast each day we're in, and one day is from a pretty fun donut shop.  They stopped carrying my favorite Samoa cookie donut... but they replaced it with a pumpkin cake roll donut.  My review is that, it was good, but I'll probably try another new donut next week.

I got some pretty important texts from Niki Thursday night.  She was at the airport, and who walked into the Delta lounge, but Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell)!!!  WHAT!! Coconuts!  That's one of the main characters from Modern Family, the best TV show around.  They live out in Salt Lake, and Niki just happened to see him traveling with his family.  She did get the up the courage to go and say hi a bit later, but only snagged this picture.

On Saturday night, I took Brooke to Vivian's house for her birthday party.  She really likes to do it Halloween themed, and the two we've been to they also do a big haunted house in the backyard.  They played some games in the front to start off the evening, came in for cake and a scary story, and then the haunted house.  Brooke didn't want to do the haunted house, which I think is good for her for knowing what she's comfortable with.  I spent the evening chatting with some of the other dads, and I believe we both had a pretty good time.

On Sunday, we snatched away Lewis, and the girls were very excited to have him join us.  We did have to get his cheerios passed over or he would have scampered away. Eventually he left us as we were deep into nap time and he was looking for his mom (who has to play the organ, so Connor had to take him out in the hall at the very end of Sacrament meeting!).

I vacuumed out Jelly's bed and set it back up next to the window.  She was hesitant at first, but then I dumped a bunch of catnip in it and she's been interested in sleeping there since.  She does usually hang out in the office with me on work days, I just thought it would be nice to have her bed back.  She also likes to look out the windows for lizards. Though whenever she's been laying in there, her head is always tucked down, so maybe sleep is better than hunting.

And that's all for this week.  It's a bit of a quick one.  I feel like a lot happened, because it seems crazy that everyone was gone so recently, but maybe that's just because we fell back into the normal routine.  Also, as I'm writing this, I tucked my feet under my chair and am reminded I did something to my right knee last weekend and it was really swollen.  It maybe happened when I biked last Saturday, who knows...
 

I Got Left Alone!!

Everybody done got up and left me!  And look, Brooke's even happy about it!  They just went away for the extended weekend for fall break. We had a pretty travel heavy summer, so I had to sit either this one out, or Christmas, and Monica wouldn't let me stay home for Christmas!  Monica and the kids flew out to Utah Friday morning to spend time with her family, and we'll come back to their fun once we get through the week.

How do you know if a kid was raised in Texas?  Well, one way might be that they put things in the freezer they want to snuggle with.  It's not too uncommon to see Rainbow, Grayson's snake, chilling in the freezer these days.  We're not even in the hottest part of summer anymore.  Rainbow goes in there basically daily, and his blanket finds it's way in anytime he has a reason he can bring it out of his room.

Grayson had firefighters come to preschool this week and learned all about fire safety.  I'm really glad they do this at schools because Grayson has been telling us all about it, and it makes me realize that he's definitely old enough to know and understand things like this, but I've never thought to talk to him about it.  He had fun getting a look at the firetruck, and I think he said they got to go up on the ladder even, but maybe it was really just that a firefighter was on it and they extended him out high.

Brooke has been enjoying homeschool still.  I'll be honest, I don't know a lot of what's going on.  I know we got some curriculum books, and she's been enjoying it greatly.  Hopefully Monica has as well...

I thought this was a really cute picture of Grayson so I decided to throw this one in too.  I feel like he's much happier with holding pens/pencils/makers correctly and drawing and coloring this year.  That's great, because last year he really resisted drawing because he didn't want to draw if he couldn't draw it well.

Volleyball is still going well for Grayson and Winry, though Grayson isn't enjoying it as much as before.  He likes bumping, but he doesn't really want to try new things. So as they're trying to move on to serving, etc. he doesn't want to participate.  I think if we play more at home it'll help, so long as he wants to.

On Friday morning, Monica and the kids headed off bright and early for the airport, and then on to Utah.  They went out for fall break and to spend some time with Melanie and family, who has moved back from India.  Here they all are making haunted houses.

They went for a hike in the mountains, and oh my goodness!  There is nothing like this in Texas!  So pretty.  It's not even fair.  It looks like Grayson had a great time climbing over these trees!

And here's Brooke and Winry with Anaya, just enjoying nature.

And the sisters reunited once more!

Friday night I had a LAN party at our house since everyone was gone.  It was a ton of fun.  Six people ended up being able to make it, and we played a slew of games including Smash Bros. and Halo.

On Saturday, everyone went to a BYU Volleyball game.  The kids absolutely loved it.  They were dancing their hearts out to try to get on the jumbotron, and were so excited when they did!!  Also, Cosmo came right up to see them.

After the game, the kids got to walk around campus a little, and they got snacks from a vending machine, which included BYU's own chocolate milk!  Yum.  I'm only super jealous!

But guess what they missed out on?  Jelly sniffing something on the bottom of a chair...  Not sure what was there, but she was standing like this for quite a while.

On Sunday, the kids missed the (second) primary program AND the linger longer, but I planned ahead.  Homemade bread seemed like a good call, because I still wanted to make some, but I wasn't going to eat a whole loaf all on my own!

I've been really tired this weekend.  It could be staying up late Friday for the LAN party and Saturday for the BYU game. So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, but I am drained.  In fact, when I got home from church, I sat down for a second and immediately fell asleep, and woke up around 6 to find out that I missed my family call AND missed getting invited to dinner!...  I'm not sure my nap was quite that good...  The rest of the family gets home on Tuesday, so I just need leftovers to make it a little longer!  Unintentionally, I haven't actually had to cook at all, other than Saturday morning breakfast for those who spent the night, and it doesn't look like I'm going to have to either.  Pretty easy going.

 

Split Chin Chronicles

Oh my poor sweet Winry!  On Monday at school she slipped at recess and hit her chin and split it open!  The school called and Monica went and took her to the ER.  They thought she might need stiches, but they were able to just glue it back together and put on a few strips to help hold it together.  Monica said she was a champion the whole time and handled everything so great!  Monica did take a picture of it because she knew I'd want to see it, but I won't post that here because I'm sure not everyone will want to.

For being so great through it all she even got to stop at In-N-Out on the way home after, AND got a milkshake.  For that, I'd consider splitting my chin!  Winry has said that her chin hasn't hurt much since, except during history. So she just doesn't like history that much that she can't think about anything other than her chin hurting.

Everyone went to Brooke's volleyball practice, and Winry and Grayson are often looking for something good to do while there.  Winry found out that, since coming back from Australia, she's become part koala!  I'm actually pretty impressed with the climbing, especially because she's definitely above where she could reach from the ground.

Grayson usually wants a toy in his room at night, and one night asked for the fort building set.  In the morning he'd made this little tunnel from his bed to his closet.  He said it's there to remind him to get dressed in the morning.  Since he made it, he comes down dressed every morning.  Here he is demonstrating it for me when I asked about how it worked.

Here's Grayson and Lincoln hiding in the trees after school.  The really good news here is that Grayson actually remembers Lincoln by name.  I'm not sure why, but Grayson super does not remember people by name at all.  We talk to him about friends and he recognizes names, but probably cannot name most of the kids in the co-op preschool.  But he finally remembers Lincoln.

Here's Grayson at volleyball this week.  They were working on serves, and he had a few good swings at the ball.  He was having a hard time balancing the big ball on his little hand though.

And Winry was doing great at overhand hits over the net.  Of course the one I got a video of didn't go over, but the few I watched before this all went over.

Brooke has really been wanting to make cake pops, and so I helped her out.  It was a several day process with making cake one day, and then making the balls and freezing them, and Monica melted chocolate and helped to coat them.  I'm not gonna lie, I don't consider myself a cake person, but the cake we made was CRAZY good, and I think I actually liked it less with frosting.  They turned out good in the end, though they didn't want to stay on the top of the sticks.

On Fridays, there's open gym at a gymnastics place nearby.  We went several times last year, and Monica has taken the kids a few times this year as well.  They always have a lot of fun, and it's a good chance to burn some energy in ways they probably won't usually get the chance, like a rope swing.

Grayson loves Rainbow, his snake from Australia, and takes him everywhere around the house lately.  One day I walked into the kitchen and found Rainbow in the bag of grapefruit!

I took Brooke to her volleyball game on Saturday.  She did a great job, and had some really good serves.  They, unfortunately, didn't win. But Brooke did a good job cheering and high fiving her teammates which was the big thing we were trying to work on with her this week.  And she had a ton of fun.

Between conference sessions, Brooke wanted to go play some more volleyball. So I went out to play with her and while we were out there a huge butterfly came flying through our backyard.  I was trying to get a good picture without getting too close and scaring it away.

The kids were pretty good for conference, all things considered.  In the afternoon they enjoyed having a tray of snacks and listening for words to get to eat them.  That one always seems to work pretty well, and it didn't hurt that there were jelly beans, m&ms, AND candy corn this time.  Oh, and I don't have a picture, but Monica made cinnamon rolls as she always does for conference!  She's the best.

On Saturday night, for date night, we played Geoguessr, and I found this wonderful sign outside an elementary school.  I really appreciate when things happen on the 23th of the month.

On Sunday, a family from our new ward, the Lasky's invited us over to watch the Sunday morning session with their family.  They have 4 kids, but all ages right around our kids.  We had brunch before, which was fabulous, and the kids were pretty good through most of the session.  There were quiet things to do downstairs that kept them occupied most of the time, and then some of them slowly trickled their way upstairs to play, lead by Grayson.  We had everyone come down for the last talk, and stayed and chatted for another hour after conference ended.  The kids all seemed to get along well, so it looks like we've already got new friends!  And, great news (for Grayson), they live by the pool with the big bucket, so they can probably get in with their HOA.

Conference was so wonderful, and I took a bunch of notes on my new kindle scribe.  I've been wanting a digital notebook for a while, and finally got one a few months ago.  It's been really great for church notes as I like to take them hand written.  I still need to go over my notes and write out actions/goals I need to take, and then I think I'm going to leave a "follow up" section where I can write about how my experiences go.  I think I want to start doing that with church each week as well.  It was sad to not have President Nelson there at conference, but I'm also really excited to have a new prophet.  It's always fun to see the new emphasis and direction they take things.  I'm so grateful that we are able to hear from so many church leaders twice a year!