Climbing the Stairs

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a superb week!  Things have been going great here.  Brooke has really started taking to the stairs.  To the point that we have to put up the gate most of the time when she's awake now or else we'll randomly find her half way up the stairs!  Our molding doesn't allow the gate to go all the way down, so sometimes she tries to get under the gate!

And speaking of stairs, she now will take her self up to bed!  That's also a reason we need the gate, if we talk about when she needs to take a nap, she just hears nap and tries to get up to her room!

She also loves to play with the pictures around her, and especially tries to touch animals like dogs and cats.

She's started to play with magnets on the fridge.  We'll probably have to get some good ones for her to play with soon.  She loves to pull them off, and then usually tries to hand them to someone.

She also really loves to drink out of Monica's water bottle.  As you can see she gets frustrated with it really easily.  She knows she should get water, so if she doesn't she'll get mad.  Just today I figured out how to get her little cup with a straw to flow water without having to suck so hard your lungs collapse, so now she even has a water bottle of her own that she loves!

In adult human news... we played with Brooke and... ate food...?  I don't think anything too exciting really happened.  Just the usual work and church and what not.  Well... I suppose that's all I have to report on for this week.  I hope everyone is doing fantastic, and I'll see ya here next week!

Standing Up

Hello everyone! I hope all are having a great week!  We sure are out here.  Brooke has started trying to stand and drinking out of Monica's water bottle.  I also had to head back to work, but that's not so bad.

I had Monday off, and we had gotten to the point where we basically had to find something to do whenever Brooke was awake.  With being sick we just spent far too much time at home at the start of the past week, so at the end we were always looking for places to go to entertain both Brooke and ourselves.  The same board book is only interesting for so many reads...  We decided to head out to Target cause... I don't know, it's surprisingly fun to just walk around Target. (we also needed some shelves) They've got a little of everything too so everyone can be entertained.  For example, Brooke found a little kitty toy that was on clearance because some other kid had opened the package some, and we even got it for her.  We also got super discount christmas lights.  They were 90% off, so I think we spent...$1 for 6 strands of lights.  Not too shabby.  Brooke also got to meet the Target dog-she was pretty unhappy when we made her let go of his ear.

This week Brooke has also started to take to standing.  She prefers standing on the couch, and I think mostly just likes falling over.  When she stands up if she stands too well (and doesn't just fall over backward) she'll sit down after a second or two to force the fall.  It's pretty fun to watch.

We also undecorated the tree.  It's been looking a bit sad... It even had water the whole time.  When we took it out of the base it had mold or something growing all over the bottom, so it hadn't been absorbing water very well for some time.  We'll have to try putting in a little bleach or something next year.  Also, being dried out it got a LOT of pine needles in a lot of places!

During the week this little beggar would come over while Monica and I were eating if she didn't eat at the same time.  Some meals she would eat her food really fast and finish before we even started.  Since she was refusing to take more food from us, we'd put her on the floor to go play.  As soon as we'd eat though, she'd be back for more!

And more!

One of my resolutions for this year was to design 2 new games.  I took a real jump start and I'm almost done with one.  It needs a few more modifications, but it's coming along nicely.  I'll post more about it when it's closer.

I think that's about it for this week.  Hopefully Brooke will be standing and walking soon!  We'll keep you posted!  Have a great week everyone!

Christmas and New Years!

Here's a wonderful picture of Brooke from Christmas morning!  She sure was happy to get some great new toys!  A lot has happened this past two weeks, so we'll just jump right in.

Well, two weeks ago was my last week of work before the Christmas break.  I worked 10 hour days so that I could take off Friday without using vacation so we could drive out to Utah.  Sadly, the weather didn't cooperate, so we ended up at home over the break instead.  We still had a good time, but it would have been nice to be out and see family.

Sometime recently Brooke has decided to make a sour face when she eats any ol' random thing.  I was fortunately able to capture it!

Well, since we were at home we decided to do some cleaning.  We went through everything we had in the basement and started throwing things away and setting aside things we thought people in the ward might want and putting it up on Facebook.  It didn't take as long as we thought to go through the stuff in the basement, but we needed a place to put things we wanted, so we ordered a shelf to hang from the garage ceiling.

Also, our advent calendar/christmas card holder slowly fell off of the wall.  I taped up the string, and here it is in the process of falling, it eventually was completely on the ground to Brooke's delight!

Brooke also loves to help with the dishes!

On Christmas Eve we made Santa pancakes!  Brooke would only eat the beard, but it's hard to blame her.  The part with whipped cream really did taste a lot better...

Christmas Eve was also the day I got sick, which is really lame.  If I get sick, it always seems to be on the weekend, so of course I had to be sick on Christmas as well.

Then came Christmas morning.  The first picture up top was also from Christmas.   Brooke woke Monica and I up around 6, and then went back to bed.  I convinced Monica to not go back to sleep but instead go see what Santa brought us!  When Brooke finally got up she checked out the contents of her stocking.

And played with her new snack holders.

And tried to immediately eat her orange.

And played with all her toys!

Church was great and filled with lots of music.  When we got home we called our families so they could see Brooke and we could open the presents we gave each other together.  One of the families in our ward invited us over in the event we weren't able to make it out to Utah, so we went over to their house for dinner.  It was SOO GOOD too!!  They also do a preschool at their house so there was no shortage of things for Brooke to do.  Everyone had a blast and we are very grateful they had us over!  Thanks Crystals!

Ah, this picture was taken several days too late.  One day we watched Elf and made paper snowflakes.  Here they are hung up in our house.

We also snagged a riveting Christmas photo!

Google put together this slideshow of the Christmas festivites for me!  I know many of those pictures are already above, but it's definitely a good watch.  And you get to see Brooke dance too!

Brooke got a little tape measurer for Christmas.  It took her a little to appreciate it, but she loved to play with it!  Well... until she whacked herself with it and we put it away.  She can have it back when she's older.

Brooke has also started to learn to crawl up and down the stairs.  She is pretty good at coming back down, but it still worries me a little.  She made it all the way up the stairs this week though!

On Tuesday I was finally starting to feel better so we took advantage and got out of the house!  We went over to the new library so Brooke could play and get some more books!  Here she is reading in her stroller on the way out!

Unfortunately me getting better coincided with Monica getting sick.  And sickness is worse for her because she can't take most cold medicines (due to nursing Brooke).  She's finally starting to feel better today, but Brooke got sick on Friday, so then I had to try to take care of everyone!  And I'm still not sure I'm 100% better yet...  It made for a little bit of a lame week off to have everyone be sick at some point or another.  Especially when you consider that it would have been a week at home anyway because I was sick!!  Fortunately we're all looking to be on the mend, and Brooke was sick the shortest of us all thanks to a Priesthood blessing.  She couldn't fall asleep one night because she was so congested, and she was just sooooo sad and crying, so I gave her a blessing and she went to bed right after and seemed a lot better yesterday and today she seems mostly fine.  She's coughing occasionally today, but she's recovering very fast!  It was a wonderful blessing.

Our garage storage shelf came and I put it up.  We haven't gotten everything stored up on it yet, but it will be nice when we're done because our cluttered "storage" spaces (such as all of the basement) will be cleaned up and much more organized.

While Brooke was sick we had to wipe her nose frequently.  One time the tissue ripped and got stuck to her face!  It was very cute.

For New Years we decided to have Fondue, and we think we'll make it a tradition.  We got a fondue pot for our wedding and we hadn't used it yet, but after going to the melting pot we knew we had to!  Also, we didn't have space for it in the kitchen till our house cleaning over haul!  But now we do and it's out and ready to be used.  It turns out fondue is much easier than we had expected.  Here was our dinner.

And here is our dessert!

And here we are ready to indulge!

We had a great night, but I didn't quite make it till midnight.  I fell asleep on the couch, and Monica stayed up!!  That is the opposite of every other night of our lives!  Monica tried to get me up at 11:51 so I had a few minutes to prep, but I just went back to sleep.  She woke me up at 11:59:30, and I was able to stay awake for the next 30 seconds until the new year!  PHEW! It was hard.

Church moved to 9 today, which really won't be hard to get there on time, but it was a little hard to get up this morning after staying up late.

Well, I think that's the condensed version of the things that happened here for the last two weeks.  Thanks all for stopping by and catching up.  Have a great week!

Winter Wonderland

Hello all!  Well this week things were a little slower than last week, but sometimes it's nice to not have to run around all the time.  We did get a snowstorm Friday night/Saturday morning and the temperatures plummeted.  I think the high on Saturday was 4 F, but there was plenty of snow so we couldn't stay inside!

Earlier this week we started working on Christmas treats.  Monica made fudge and toffee to take to people, and we made some ginger bread cookies together.  We of course decorated them!  Here's a tree I made:

And here's the cookie Brooke decorated!  The hardest part was definitely getting her to not just shove candy in her mouth!

And like good parents we let her take a few bites!

On Saturday morning while Brooke was having breakfast the neighbor was in their back yard clearing snow off of their hot tub, and Brooke thought it was amazing.  She totally zoned out for a minute or two.  No noises, didn't look at us when we talked to her, didn't care about food, just stared as the neighbor cleared off the hot tub.

Later that day we headed into the winter chill to play in the snow.  Brooke loves to be out in the snow!  She doesn't do much playing yet.  I tried to hand her snowballs and such but she'd just kinda tap them in my hand and that was it.  So I had to help her throw them at Monica!!!

Teammates!!

Saturday night we got invited to a tamale party!  It was at the Robinson's house (I helped Joe with math last year).  The food was great and we had a lot of fun.  We let Brooke down to roam and she had a blast!  Which is good because we were there till 7 and she usually won't stay up past 6:15!  I believe I heard her say she made 120 tamales!!!  Crazy!  And all the ones I ate were very good!  Robinsons, if you read this, thanks again!!

Well, I think that covers everything for this week!  I hope everyone is doing great out there!

Christmas Parties!!!!!

Welcome back everyone! (Or just welcome if it's your first time...)  I hope everyone had a splendid week!  We sure did.  And I got a lot of pictures of Brooke after getting chastised for last weeks post.  First, Brooke put on her work out clothes this last week and did some exercise with Monica!  She did lift that 2 pound weight a few times, so she's getting swull!

Last Sunday Monica and I had our own Thanksgiving dinner, also known as "dinner" on nights that are not Thanksgiving.  We did this because we didn't get to bring back any leftovers!!  It was a very successful first go at it.  The stuffing came out a little dry, but other then that it was terrific!

On Wednesday SEAKR had their children's Christmas party, complete with Santa!  They had a great dinner of pizza and chicken fingers, all kid classics.  Brooke got to meet Santa for the first time, and was immediately interested in coming back to us.

They also had a present for each child.  Brooke got a Paddington bear!  She really does like it, she was just feeling the stranger danger!  We had a lot of fun at the party and it was fun to see everyone there with their kids.  I don't much get to see co-workers kids.

On Friday night we went down to downtown Parker to see the decorations.  The shopping center had inflatable decorations out again, such as this bear.  They also had a big Mickey that Brooke really liked, but there wasn't a good way to take a picture with it.

There was also some sidewalk chalk out on the street.  I'm not sure what event that came from, but it was really cool.  It unfortunately wasn't complete, but here's an octopus:

And a... design with fish:

And some turtles!!  They were very impressive.

Oh yeah, they also had this whack-a-penguin.  It was motorized and the penguins would go in and out.

After our initial walk around we went to dinner at Indochine, which was terrific.  Brooke was waving at everyone that walked by too!  I let her try my lemon that was in my water, and she was going crazy for it!  That girl loves sour!  Well, after dinner it was dark, so it was a good time to go see the lights.  First here's an old historic church that was across the street from where we ate.

And here's the big main tree in the park!  They do more sparse lights and the snowflakes in a lot of other trees, but they always do the big tree in the corner the most.

And here we all are at the park!  They had a more standard Christmas tree that we tried to put in the background, but it was really tall, so that never worked out.

Saturday night was my work party at Mile High Stadium.  We got a babysitter so we could go again this year (we missed last year since Brooke was so recently born).  We got to go down to the field and into one of the nice VIP boxes.  The dinner was also very good again!  But the desserts were not near as good as two years ago...

Today Brooke wore her Christmas dress to church, and I was instructed to take a million pictures until I got it right!  Here's Brooke chilling at the base of the tree.  I was trying to get her to reach for an ornament cause I thought it would be cute, but she just kinda half pointed instead.

Then I moved an ornament down for her to get, which led to her no longer looking at me or sitting up.

Finally she grabbed a very Christmasy random book from the floor and without ever smiling looked at me.  BOOM! Nailed it! I also need to note that this is the first time Brooke's hair has been long enough to put a barrette in it!

What a busy week!  A lot happened around here.  I think things are going to calm down a little this next week.  I hope everyone is doing fantastic!  Till next week!