Super Saturday Service

I do usually like to pull a picture that goes with the title up for the first image, but this week I just want to let things play out as they did.  We'll kick things off with some bookshelf progress. I got some of the front trim pieces painted and put up, which  means I was able to measure the size for three of them and get them cut.  We're getting close!

On Thursday I got a call from Monica while at work that the garage door wouldn't open.  One of the springs snapped!  This means she couldn't get the van out of the garage, so she wouldn't be able to pick up Grayson in a few hours.  I headed straight back for home.  I made it just in time for a bus (the train is not running this week, so there is a bus replacement) and the bus drove straight past the stop full of waiting people... so after a half our on the support line, I ended up having to take an Uber.  I made it home in time that I actually came and manually opened the door and Monica was able to go get Grayson, but we're currently "car in the driveway" people.

I believe I was taking a picture of Monica with Jelly as it related to the conversation we were having at the time somehow.  Jelly does look cute, so maybe it was just to get two cuties.  Well, it turns out that when you say "smile" my phone will take a picture.  You know, a nice hands free option so you can set down your phone and get a group picture or something.  Unfortunately, me saying "smile" was me telling Monica to get ready for the picture, and I got this sweet gem instead!

On Saturday there was a stake service down at Cedar Park high school to clear tree limbs, etc. off the cross country path.  There were lots of people there helping, and the kids did an amazing job.  They were having a lot of fun unloading trailers, and hauling branches over to the pile.

While we did all have a great time, it was very hot and hard work.  We drank lots of water, until we ran out. and the kids were very hot and tired after around 2 hours, so we headed home.  That's a lot of service for a 5 year old!

After a little lunch, we went to Jeremiah's to help cool off.  Yum!  I still stand by it, we've never had a bad time at Jeremiah's, and today was no exception.  Oh, and Monica was at a baby shower, so she missed out on all the fun.

On Sunday, I headed into the backyard to pick a very lovely tomato that was very high up, and saw Fatty-body on the railing.  That is the name the kids have given to this lizard.  We have 2 named lizards in our yard.  I think one is Lizzy, but the bigger one is Fatty-body, a truly great name!  Also, he doesn't spook easily, because I walked up and down the stairs within feet of him.  He was definitely watching me walk by, so maybe he would have ran if it looked like I was coming for him, but generally he seemed pretty nonplussed by the whole situation.

And that's a wrap on this week.  With school back in, and us not being on vacation, it does seem like I don't have quite as much to write about in here each week.  I'm grateful for that.  Sometimes it's hard to keep going through long post after long post, and it's nice to have a quicker week like this.  Phew!
 

Happy Birthday Monica!!

Happy Birthday Monica!!!  Her birthday was on Sunday this year, so the partying was a bit more subdued than usual.  We did have the Packers over for dinner and cake in the evening though.  And we all sang happy birthday and enjoyed Monica's cake!

Rolling back in the week, Brooke was eating some Milk Duds and lost her last baby tooth.  She took one chew and it came right out of there.  I finished her Milk Duds for her, just to make sure she didn't lose any more teeth.

Brooke made a fancy domino wall.  I think the most impressive thing about this is that she made it in the evening, and I didn't trip over it ever in the dark when I got up to go to the bathroom in the morning, etc. It was still there for her to knock down the next day (unless Grayson got there first...)

Oh, Monica and I did most of our anniversary celebrations over last weekend, but on Monday we did swap gifts.  I gave Monica a Ninja Creami, which is an ice cream maker.  And she gave me a new GoPro!  The one I had my eye on is a 360 camera, which means it shoots in all directions at once.  Then, with their app you can pick an object to follow and export a regular video from the 360 one, or, you can do full sphere photos/videos.  We had people over to play some Dungeons and Dragons on... Tuesday?, and I thought it would be the perfect time to try out my camera.  So here we all are sitting around the table.

Jelly was enjoying a soft pillow in our room, and I decided to come enjoy it too.  I try not to bug her too much since my goal really is to lay next to her, but I guess my presence warranted something this day, and she stuck her tail over my forehead to keep me at bay! It worked.

Saturday found me in the backyard tidying up the lawn.  I say tidying because it's been so dry that there hasn't been much need for mowing, though there are long spots here and there.  Right next to the planter beds things are doing fine.  I'm guessing it's the extra shade, and the extra water that leaks out the bottom.  Anyway, I walked around the lawn with the weedwhacker to take care of things, and along the planter bed I found a frog.

Sunday was the day of days.  It was Monica's day!  Just check out this amazing gift with that awesome candle.

The kids and Jelly went all out for Monica, and I scrapped through.  She got a cool purse, a Clue advent calendar, new pots and pans, travel laundry bags, and a hug.  Freaking sweet.

Jelly did her part to not cause chaos and keep things calm for Monica's birthday and just took a nap all afternoon.  Thanks for doing your part Jelly.

Along came the fun new camera for cake with the Packers.  I made fajitas for dinner and we all had a good time together.  Oh look at that, the ice cream came from the Creami too!

Sunday night Grayson also lost a tooth.  In reflection, maybe I should have pulled one of Winry's so she wouldn't be left out.  It feels like Monica and I are the only people in this house trying to keep our teeth. He left it out in the light of his dino lamp to make it easy for the tooth fairy to find it.  I believe this is the second tooth he's lost. 

And that's a wrap on the week.  Tune in next week!

 

Back to School and Anniversary Weekend

School started up again on Wednesday this week, and the kids were rip-roarin' ready to go!  Grayson, especially, was excited to get started at Valor and learn what his new school would be like.  As Monica has wonderfully done every year, we got out the first day of school board and snapped a picture of the kids.  Here they all are Wednesday morning.

For the first day, kindergarten had a special late drop off so that parents could get out of the cars with their kids.  We all went after Monica dropped Winry off at school, and got to snag a picture with Grayson before saying goodbye.  I believe we were the very last kindergarten family to get there, and as soon as they took this picture for us they started taking down the backdrop.

Grayson has been loving school, his new class, and his teachers.  He is all in and happy to be there.  Winry has been having an okay time, but has been bored by the slow start as everyone gets back into the swing of things.

Our anniversary is on Monday of next week, so we aimed to do a little celebrating over the weekend.  The Packers were gracious enough to watch our kids overnight, so after school we dropped them all off there.  I had put together a few plans for the evening, but in the end Monica's back was hurting a lot from all the school driving through the week, so we ended up having a stay-cation.  Friday night we went out to dinner, and then stopped at Randall's to get fruit roll ups for a dessert surprise that night.  We also saw a box of assorted clearance pastries, and grabbed those for breakfast.  That plus some other things we had at home made the amazing spread you see before us here.

The next morning we went and tried a new mini-golf placed called Pop Golf.  It's just new to the area, they have them other places.  It's like minigolf, but all the holes are designed to look like regular golf holes.  No windmills or anything crazy like that, and it was a lot of fun.  Also, they had misting fans everywhere and I think we NEED some of those for our back porch.

Monica scored our first hole in one for the day.

And I was able to scrape one out on the second to last hole.

There were actually 2 courses, and we played them both back to back.  It's like an unlimited play day pass kind of place.  We had a lot of fun, and I'd definitely go again.  They also had this jumbotron you could see from everyone on the courses, and the holes were supposed to have automatic hole-in-one detection and it would show your video up there.  I don't think it actually recognized either of ours though, as the hole-in-one's for the day didn't go up after we were there.  There was also a leaderboard, that frankly, I shouldn't have been on.

We picked the kids up a little later in the afternoon, and then things have been pretty normal since then.  Just church and getting ready for a new week of school.  See ya on the other side.
 

Emergency LAN Party

Welcome back, it appears everyone had a tiring weekend while I was gone.  They went to a garage sale and Grayson found a Stitch that he absolutely loves.  I'm sure that's what kept everyone going this weekend.  I'm sure you can only imagine from this picture.

I was doing some prep work for a LAN party on Friday night.  Michael, one of our friends out here, is moving to India next week, so we've been trying to get in some last minute activities with them.  I know he really loves the LAN parties, so I had to throw an emergency one for him before he took off.  I sent out a picture of the prize pins to build some hype!

Grayson has been absolutely loving Legos lately, and he's started getting creative with the mini figures.  He made a stack up taller than the castle.  Maybe it's this one, but it also fits on the shelf, so maybe I'd actually knocked some legs off or something.

Brooke went swimming with Kayla this past week.  I'll be honest, I feel like I have no information about this in my mind at all.  I'm going to guess I was at work or something.  Looks like they had fun though.

We went over to the Guerrero's house on Thursday evening for a goodbye party.  There were a lot of people there, and it was fun chatting with everyone.  We took pictures together, but I guess none on my phone... so none to put here.

I've really enjoyed having LAN parties, and I've been bumping the production value as I go.  Last time I did pins and lanyard, and this time I made a stage back drop for doing awards ceremonies.  These were our winners of the Super Smash Ultimate tournament.

I spent a lot of time thinking about games we could play, and I threw in Scorched Earth, which is a DOS game I played way back when I was just a wee child.  I was the only one who'd ever played it before, but I believe everyone had a great time.  I think the favorite game of the night was probably Killer Queen Black.  Everyone was very excited to play, and it was being demanded all night until we finally got to playing it.  It seemed like everyone had a good time, I know I did!

On Saturday morning Grayson had a preview thing at Valor.  The parents went into an information meeting, and it was fine.  And when we came out the kids were all having a great time on the playground.  Grayson made a new friend.  I don't know if she'll be in his class, and I don't know that Grayson got her name, but at least they had fun together.

One of the people I minister to fell through her deck on Friday morning and cut her leg pretty badly.  She got taken to the hospital, and when the news got to me I headed to home depot and got a new board to fix up her deck.  The EQ president came over with me to help out and give me some info for helping feed her pets while she's recovering.  The cut was pretty bad, I saw a picture.  I'm glad they were able to get her taken care of and hope she can recover quickly.

And I think that's all the news for this week.  I hope everyone is doing well!  Till next time.

 

20th Highschool Reunion

Saturday was my 20th high school reunion, and it was awesome!  I'm so glad I went.  Here's a picture of everyone from my graduating class who came, though I do know I saw a few people who I guess left before we took this picture.  It was a pretty good turn out, and I had a lot of fun catching up with so many people.  It was a great night to be a Wildcat!

Rolling back to the start of the week, Brooke had a cooking camp this week.  She absolutely loved it.  They made a wide range of foods, and she said a lot of the kids didn't want to be there and didn't want to help, so she got to be very hands on and cook all week long.  Sounds great to me!  I think we've got her on the dinner schedule for a night or two next week so we can try some of the stuff she made.

Grayson still loves his shark carwash car track, and it turns out Jelly loves it too.  I walked out of our room first thing in the morning, and Jelly walked up and started drinking water from the car track.  I guess it tastes better when you know a kids played in it, and dunked their hopefully clean cars in it.  Mind you, she almost never drinks from her water bowl, and greatly prefers the sink.

Friday was Harry Potter's birthday, and the library did a big party again.  Monica took the kids and they had a splendid time decorating wands, playing games, and dressing up to look so good.

It turns out there was an adults session later in the evening, and so Monica and I headed over for date night.  Technically we went out to dinner first, but then to the Harry Potter party.  We decorated wands while playing a trivia game.

After the party, we went to a dance at the church that the Spanish branch put on.  I would not say I'm an exceptional dancer, but we had a great time.  At one point we ended up in a circle and people were getting tagged in one couple at a time to go dance in the middle.  When it was our time, we busted out the floss, so, good thing I always have that one in my back pocket!

Saturday morning I headed to the airport and flew to SLC.  I didn't take any time off for my reunion, so I just tried to maximize time by heading out first thing Saturday morning.  I arrived just in time for my dad to wait for me to drywall Celeste's closet.  It didn't take us too long, though, I wasn't staying long enough that I packed extra clothes for getting dirty doing something like this.

Once I cleaned up a little, I headed to meet Jarom at an arcade to play some pinball.  I think we tried most of the pinball tables that were available, and Jarom was absolutely destroying these castles.  It was a Nickel-cade, and let me just say that you can play pinball for a LONG time when the rates are that cheap!  In the end we had to try to burn through the rest of the money on our cards so we weren't late for the reunion.

Back at home, Monica took the kids to Veteran's Memorial Pool.  It looks like it was pretty fun, but it must have been super fun.  Brooke keeps telling me how badly she wants to go back.  There were some floaty platforms under a rope bridge for the kids to cross.

And there were a lot of places to jump in.  A high dive, normal slides, and that slide that opens up higher above the pool.  It sounds like a blast, so we'll have to make our way over there one Saturday in the near future.

Meanwhile, on Saturday night I was wandering the halls of Woods Cross High.  I got to catch up with a lot of old friends, and then Jarom, Maren and I with a few others took a tour around the school to see how much it had changed.  For the most part they'd re-done almost all the school.  I really appreciated this spot in the hallway. On my left was all the newly redone classrooms, etc.  and on my right, everything exactly as I remembered it.  I'm actually really glad we had the reunion at the high school.

I flew back home Sunday afternoon.  My flight got delayed, so I did a little exploring in the airport and found this awesome dinosaur!

There was also a cool art exhibit of these birds at the end of the terminal.  It was really cool to walk under them, as they'd change between clear and colorful as you walked around.

I made it home a bit late.  I'm glad I had a chance to see so many familiar faces and catch up with all my old class mates.  I'm already looking forward to 30 years, but I guess I've got a bit of waiting to get there (fortunately).