Gone Camping

Well hello from sunny some guys property!  We had a ward camp out Friday night, and we even managed to dodge the thunderstorms!  Yay!  It really was supposed to be thunderstorms all night, but the closer we got to Friday, the later the storms got, until they weren't till Saturday morning.  The camping was great, though it was pretty windy at times.  I was in the advanced company, meaning Monica dropped Grayson and I off to set up the tent while she went to pick Winry up from dance.  I later went back to get Brooke, and in the end we all enjoyed a night together in nature with no ear infections!

Monica hosted co-op preschool this week, and the kids learned about the fire department.  Lots of fun.

Here's Grayson (and probably Lincoln) playing a fun game of kicking rocks down the slide.  Every kids favorite game.

As mentioned, Monica and Brooke are getting into birds.  I don't know what this one was, but maybe Monica will say when she proof reads this.  Also, it flies up and knocks on Grayson's windows in his closet sometimes.  I heard it once from in his room and went to take a look.

The weather has been warm, so of course the kids had to go to the pool.  My understanding is that the water was chilly, but manageable.  The things I miss at work!

Um... duck, I think you misplaced your egg!  Please go get it.

And check out this hawk!  I actually don't know which tree this is, but I think they kids said they saw a hawk carrying an animal around.  I'm guessing that's not this picture though.

Winry has been taking part in MCO in the kids choir and has been loving it.  Brooke went for a week or two, but it conflicts with dance so she wasn't able to participate in choir with Winry.  Winry really loves singing those songs and can often be heard around the house singing about George Washington.

I don't know where everyone is going, but Narly is secured and ready for the drive!

While we were out camping Grayson though it was really funny to see how big his head was in his shadow when we held the light just right.

We enjoyed spending some time sitting next to the fire and chatting.  Brooke and I were the last ones out there from our family, and I think we headed to the tent for bed around 9:30. (....10:15)

Here's Monica and Winry hanging out in the tent.

This is the picture that shows the most of the tent, and so I wanted to use it. But it's also Grayson, and he's the only one in camping pictures, so I just had to include some others.  But here's Grayson all snuggled up.

And Brooke snoozing away in the morning.  We got this tent quite a while ago, but it's got "dark" technology, so it doesn't get as light inside when the sun is up.  It does make it a bit easier to sleep in a little later.  Also, I don't think it was the light that got me up in the morning, but the wind all night long.  It was pretty windy, and I definitely woke up time and time again.  All in, it was a super fun night and I'm so glad we were able to go.

Brooke had a dance competition on Saturday!  It was about 20 minutes away.  She had two dances with her company team.

Here is the second one.  She's been doing so great working so hard all year, and it's fun to see all that work pay off.

She also performed her DUET!!  Grayson, Winry and I were all able to make it out and watch too.  We were only there for around 3 dances and Grayson was already at his limit, but we both got to watch and see the awards presentations!

And good thing we did stick around, because Brooke and Oliva took first place!  Yeah!  Winry stayed with Brooke and Monica to watch the older kids solos and duets, and Grayson and I headed for home.

I found this Zelda board game and printed out a copy and Grayson has been dying to play it.  We've been able to play it here and there, but now we finally had enough time to get all the way through.  It was a lot of fun, and Grayson loves to talk about it the adventure we went on.  I think we're definitely going to have to try out playing the NES game together some time.

At dinner Jelly was REALLY interested in carrots, and I thought she was going to try a bite.  I think she licked it once or twice, so it was definitely hers, but she didn't bite it.  We thought maybe a carrot sliver would be better, but she didn't go for that one either.

Brooke saw the most amazing sign for Thin Mint Frosties, and so we went out for a treat Saturday night.  There was a crazy rain storm that we braved, and we picked them up and headed to a park.  We ate them in the back of the van, which is a fun tradition we have going back to getting Kids Meals during COVID.  We even opened the back hatch and watched the rain, and fortunately the wind was calm enough we didn't get soaked.

And after all that weekend fun, it was time for Sunday afternoon naps, courtesy of Jelly!

And that's a warp!  Have a wonderful week.  Oh wait! I forgot.  We maybe have cardinal(s) living in our tree out front!  We can tell one is male and one is female because we're bird people now (thanks Toadstools). One of them lands next to Grayson's closet windows and taps it's beak on the window.  I'm sure it's just saying hello, but hopefully Jelly doesn't find out or she'll never hang out in the office with me!
 

Let the Dancing Begin!

This week kicked off dance competition season for real!  Brooke got to perform her dances at whatever this expo is that we went to last year as well.  Her company only did one of their dances, but they did a fantastic job.  It's also nice that it's local and only 10-ish minutes away.

Here are the planter boxes all ready to go in the backyard.  Now we just need to fill them.  Monica is looking for branches and leaves, etc. to start filling the bottom so we don't have to get quite so much dirt.

Here's Brooke at Toadstools.  I believe they made birds nests, though I believe the nests are actually meant to provide easy materials for birds to make their own nests.  Also, there's been lots of talk about different birds that live in the area and the calls we're hearing etc.  It seems like we're starting to become bird watchers here.

At activity days they did Olympics, and the kids won Oreo medals.  Yum!

The kids really needed to go to Bahama Bucks to get snow cones one night.  I think the reason why was because there had been a potty emergency on the way home one evening and they stopped there to use the bathroom there. Then the kids just couldn't get Bahama Bucks out of their minds and had to go back one day after dinner. So I took them.  We played a lot of connect 4 and enjoyed our snow cones.

Grayson got invited to a birthday party on Saturday, and I took him.  It was pretty apparent to me that most kids at his preschool go to the church it's associated with, and ALL the parents seemed to know each other and were having great conversations.  That said, the party wasn't about me knowing everyone, and Grayson had a great time playing with his friends and enjoying the festivities like the pinata.  We only stayed for about 2 hours, and the party didn't seem to be winding down.  I just thought maybe they planned too much, but when I got home I found out there wasn't actually an end time.

Sunday morning the kids were reading blog books while waiting to go to church, and I figured it was worth taking a picture.  It's nice to see my hard work writing this is being enjoyed, and they really do love looking back over the last year as soon as it's available.  They also really love looking through their birth years, or the year after as well and seeing themselves as babies.  It's definitely been worth the effort.

And that's all I've got for this week.  Here's to another great one ahead.