PI Day!!

As you hopefully all know, this past week was PI day!  We of course celebrated, and Brooke joined in too, but more on that in a moment.

Brooke fell asleep while out on a walk with Monica this past week!  What a tired little girl.  She hasn't fallen asleep in her stroller in a looooong time!  So maybe this a good sign and she'll start falling asleep when she's tired and we're not home.

Brooke loves to look in mirrors.  She found Monica's little makeup mirror and loves to hold it up over her head and look at herself.  She would also use it to look over at me.  Whenever she sees herself in the mirror she always points and exclaims "baby!"

Now that we have those minor events out of the way we can get back to pi day.  Monica usually makes little pies in a muffin tin.  This makes it a lot easier to share pie with Brooke.  I guess it also helps ensure we don't eat too much too... which is unfortunate.  We had key lime again this year!  Pi day also fell on mutual, so I went to the store and grabbed a pie to take for the boys to eat.  They really enjoyed that!

Monica took Brooke to the park while I was at work one day.  Typically Brooke just sits in the swings, but she can stay there for up to an hour and be happy!  Well, this time she got to try out the wood chips as well.  It looks like she's having a blast, but she got them everywhere and was very dirty when I got home!  Luckily it was already bath night anyway.

Brooke really enjoys reading books.  Most of the time that she's not reaching up to us and complaining she's sitting on the floor looking through a book.  It's great!  Especially when she'll do it on her own.

Brooke also managed to get to a box of plastic forks and a pack of plates.  When I came home from work they were scattered all over the kitchen!  A little later she grabbed a box that was near by and started putting all the forks away!  What a great helper!  Once she got all of the ones in arms reach in the box, she reached in with both hands, grabbed them all again, and threw them back out!  That's ok, cause she'll just put them back away again, right?  Not this time...

So... I'm not sure what it is with Brooke and sitting in boxes.  Maybe it's just a baby thing in general, I don't know.  This is a much smaller box than she usually sits in.  For perspective, a pair of shoes came in this box, so it's basically shoe box size.  She pulled over blankie and her water bottle and started trying to climb in.  I helped her a little, and then she sat in there and enjoyed herself.

When we pay tithing at church I like to give the envelope to Brooke to hand to a member of the bishopric.  Brooke enjoys holding just about anything, and I think they like getting it from her more than from me.  Well, that backfired a little this week.  Right after I handed the envelope to Brooke she looked at it and then suddenly sneezed!  We just had a change in our bishopric a week ago so we took it to the new guy as initiation!!

On Sunday night Monica and I attempted to make sushi after Brooke went to bed.  I know this is a little weird, an activity without Brooke... but I think we'll be OK.  First we had to assemble everything together.

Next was rolling it, then mastery, then this!  It's a little hard to take pictures AND make sushi, especially since I kept getting rice stuck to my hands.

And here we are with our dinner.  Lesson from our first attempt: Either the ingredients need to be cut smaller, we should have used less rice, or we needed to push everything harder when we rolled it up.  It tasted great, but everything was very large!

And of course you can't have sushi without dessert, and what would we be having for dessert?  Well, for Monica it was frosted lemonade, made one bite at a time!

I finished up most of the card art for my new Egypt themed card game.  I just have one or two more cards to go.  Then I'll just need a name and I think I'll be ready to order a prototype of the cards!  Hopefully I'll be able to finish that up this next week and I'll have more to report next week.

Well, I think that's all I've got for now.  Have a wonderful week!

Colorado Springs

Good day everyone!  We had a fabulous week here.  To start things off, here's Brooke trying to show us her belly!  Jokes on her cause she was wearing a onesie-dress, so when she pulled it up the onesie was still there!! And then she kept trying to pull the onesie off!

Brooke also crawled under the coffee table this past week to read a book.  Unfortunately as soon as I started to pull out my phone she decided to back out and I got the picture just a second too late, drats!

Brooke has also started jumping!  It's really cute and a lot of fun.

On Saturday we took a trip down to Colorado Springs.  We headed out early in the morning to go to the zoo!  We really like the zoo down there.  They have an Australia section that has wallabies that wander around and can be pet!  When we got there a trainer was working with one of them and giving it snacks, so it just stood there in the middle of the path and let Brooke pet it!  It's hard to beat a zoo experience like that!

We also got a little lucky with the tiger.  The tiger cage is really big, and usually the tiger chills in the back and is hard to see. Brooke definitely didn't see it the first time we went by.  The zoo has VIP packages you can buy where you get to go do animal encounters, and someone was there for an animal encounter that day and picked the tigers!  They're not super easy to see in the picture, but there are people on the other side of the fence from the tiger.  There's a zoo keeper or two, and a few people with them, and they were feeding the tiger through the cage!  It was especially great as a tiger is very possibly Brooke's favorite animal, and she got to see one so close!

They also had some bald eagles which I assume cannot fly for some reason or another as there was no top to the cage.

And Brooke said hi to them!  What a patriotic baby.

And here's a meerkat watching out for his colony.

We went down to the giraffes toward the end and were planing to feed them, but there was a HUGE line to buy lettuce.  We learned our lesson, we should have gone there first as no one was at the zoo when we first got there.  Anyway we didn't have time to wait in the line, so we just went over and watched some other people feed them and got an up close picture!

We also took another picture under this giraffe.  I don't know how many of you know of the old picture from last time, but it started raining while we were at the zoo so I took shelter under the giraffe and Monica got a picture.

And here's my taking shelter!

We finished up our trip by visiting the monkeys.  Brooke liked them, and she waived at them all!  Sadly none waved back...

And we remembered to get a picture with the zoo sign on our way back out to the car.

Now the thing that really took us to Colorado Springs was that Niki's lacrosse team, the Westminster Griffins, had a game!  We went to support and cheer!  They were fortunately able to squeeze out a victory, so that made it even better.  After, Brooke got a chance to go talk to aunt Niki and ask for a scholarship.  Unfortunately, I guess there's some kinda NCAA nonsense so Niki said not yet... but she did still give Brooke a cookie so win-win!

After that we drove home and I was wiped out!  We put Brooke down for a nap and I fell asleep on the couch.  I think it was sitting in the sun at the lacrosse game that did me in.  When we were at the zoo it was cloudy and not very hot, but the sun came out at the game, and even though I'm sure the temperature was low it just took it out of me.  My head would throb and I'd get a little dizzy when I stood up, but fortunately after my nap I started feeling better!

Then that night Monica and I tried out a new board game I got off Kick Starter.  It's a game called Vast: The Crystal Caverns, and I had heard a lot of great things about it.  It's a really fun game, and every player plays a very different character, so it's almost like everyone is playing a different game.  That made it very interesting, and we had a lot of fun playing it.  We're excited to play it again and see what the other players are like to play.

I also spent a few nights this week working on card art while Monica was out at random things.  It's for my new Egypt themed game.  I have 3 more cards to go, so I'll hopefully finish all of the art this week.  It needs a little more work, and the game still needs a name, but I'll provide more details as the work continues.

Well, I think that's all I've got for this week.  I hope everyone is doing well!!  Have a wonderful week.

Tsagaan Sar

Shine Jiliin Mend hurgii!  This past week was Tsagaan Sar, which is the Mongolian new year celebration.  It's on the first new moon after the lunar new year.  To celebrate we get out my Mongolian clothes and have Buuz (pronounced like bodes)!  Buuz are the traditional Mongolian food for Tsagaan Sar, but more on that later.  Here's Brooke wearing my hat!

Brooke has the unfortunate tendency to pull her hamstring!  She'll be crawling around and then sit up, reach her hand behind her leg and start scooting around as pictured.  Every time she does it I say "Oh No! Did you pull a hammy?!"

Well, with that detour out of the way we're back to Tsagaan Sar.  As I mentioned the traditional food is Buuz, so I made some for dinner.  First you have to make some dough and roll it out thin, kinda like a mini tortilla.  Then you scoop some meat/onions into it and pinch the top closed.

Then you steam them for about 15 minutes, and they're done!  We got a new steamer we could put in a pot for this year.  We had a little steamer with our rice cooker, but it was small and could only do a few at a time.  I know, there are only 4 in this picture, but those were the final 4, I did 16 before that!  They cook much faster this way!

And here is our table all set up.  You an see we have our Buuz, and our sauces.  We have a tavgiin idee, and even a sheep!  Just like Mongolia!

And here's a picture from Mongolia for reference!  Practically Identical!

Here's a close up of our tavgiin idee!  I don't think I've ever made one of these before, so I was happy to have this addition.  It has to have an odd number of layers, with an odd number of... well, we used Belvita crackers... on each layer.  Then you top it with candy, and put uncooked rice in the bowl at the bottom.  I think we'll be making this in the future as well.

And here I am ready to chow down, Mongolian clothes included.

And here's Monica showing off.  Unfortunately when I was on my mission I did not think about buying a whole family's worth of clothing, so we had to share.

We even let Brooke try them on!  The jacket was just a little big!  We took several pictures, but the following are my favorite ones.

This week Brooke got sick.  She got a cold with a bad cough.  We toughed it out for a few days at home.  It seemed to keep getting worse and her throat started hurting form coughing so much so we gave in and went to the doctor.  They said everything looked good and it was just a normal sickness, nothing to worry about.  Then of course the rest of the day Friday she seemed so much better!  So the good news is that she's on the up and up!  When she's sick she usually just wants to sit and be held all day, so those are the few days she's allowed to watch TV.  This is only the second time.  The only movie she likes is Frozen, and she has to have the remote!

This weekend my nephew, Nathan, got baptized, so my family came out to visit.  This means that more Christmas presents made their way out.  Brooke was not shy and dove right in!

And with that we conclude the highlights of the week.  I hope you all are doing wonderfully!  Have an amazing week!

Blankie Pile

Hello to all!  It's been a great week out here for us, and I hope you've had a similar week.  Brooke has started taking to her 2nd room again.  It had been a while since she played in the box, at least when I was home, but on Saturday she wanted back in, and no amount of stuff was too much to have in there with her.  She said she wanted a book, which I soon found out meant she wanted all the books...

She's also started to enjoy climbing on things.  The couch downstairs is still a little too high for her to climb up on her own, but she can climb on the couch upstairs.  She also likes to climb on us when we're on the floor.  So now she'll climb into our laps, or sit on our faces as demonstrated last week.  She's also started to climb on her Unicorn that she got for Christmas.  I knew she'd eventually like to play with it!

We have a basket down in the main room full of blankets.  It's nice to have so that if we ever are cold we can go get one.  Well, Brooke has made the breakthrough of blankie no longer being one item, but every blanket she sees.  She was trying to pull them all out, so I kindly gave her 4 to play with.  She loved having all the blankets, though it was never enough if she could still see the basket...

Brooke really likes to look at the neighbors animals, and her favorite is the cat that sits on the hot tub behind the house.  The cat was out this morning, and Brooke was very excited to see it!  It's a little hard to see the cat in the picture, but it's there.

Also, Brooke enjoys playing with my dino.  The significance of this toy is that it's the first thing (that I remember) that I ever bought with my own money.  I got it at a neighbors garage sale when I was 5 or 6, and I've had it ever since.  When you push it's head down it drives away, and Brooke loves to chase it around the house!

Well... I believe that's all of the Brooke news.  Monica and I are also doing well.  This past week I officially started a company and put together a webpage in preparation for a (hopefully) soon release to my card game I talked about a few weeks ago.  The website is AshLoreGames.com.  Just as a note, the form on the contact page doesn't get email to me yet... I'm not sure why, but if you try it I won't see it.

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing great!  Have a wonderful week, and thanks for reading!

Valentine's Day

Why hello everyone!  I hope you are all doing super dandy!  This has been a great week over here.  Or... as good as it can be when you get down on the floor to play with your baby and she crawls up and sits on your face!!

It was so funny!  Brooke really enjoys climbing on us whenever she can and loves to sit on our laps most of the time now.

She's also been teething again.  She's getting another 2 molars.  Hopefully they'll both be in and done soon so she can have a little break!  Here she is eating something...  A lot of time when she eats it will hurt in her mouth, and she'll put her finger in her mouth and say "ow"!

For Valentines day we drew secret Valentines.  That means you get a person and you do nice things for them during the week, and then on Valentines you give them a present.  I had Brooke, and I gave her a stuffed kitty (now named Meow) which she loves!  They were inseparable until Monica and Brooke went to the zoo on Friday and on the zoo map there's a picture of a tiger, and now Brooke and her zoo map tiger are inseparable!

One day this past week Monica was feeling sick, so I worked from home.  I put the pack and play in the office and had Brooke with me as well.  She has lately become very good at playing on her own, which was excellent as it allowed me to actually focus on work during the day!  Here she is standing up playing peek-a-boo with me!

Brooke had a couple incidents on Sunday all in rapid succession.  She was sitting on the ground and fell backward and hit her head on the table.  So I picked her up and we gave her some graham cracker bunnies and she was feeding herself and shoved a bunch in and started choking.  I quickly picked her up and helped her get them out, but that started some additional crying.  So sometimes the solution is also the new problem.  Then I tried to set her back on the ground and she immediately started to fall back, I caught her but she started crying again.  So at this point I just held her in my lap until she was calm again.  What a Sunday!!

Our ward is also doing an indexing challenge this week. so Monica and I did some indexing when we got home from church on Sunday.  It's a lot more fun that I remembered it being!

Well... I think those are the highlights from this week.  I hope everyone else is doing well!  Till next week.

Love 'em or Leave 'em

Hello all!  I hope everyone is doing great!  We sure are around here!  Looking over my pictures from this past week it seems to be a little run-centric, but that's probably not a bad thing.  Before we get to that though, we have to do the customary best picture of the week.  Per usual, it's of Brooke.  We got some Valentines candy from Brooke's great aunt Alyson, and she was soo excited!  Just look at that smile.

A couple weeks ago we started all running together as a family again in preparation for an upcoming town 5k.  It was the Valentines Love 'em or Leave 'em race.  Of course that means training runs, and here's Brooke, back in the jogging stroller and ready to go.  I forgot to take a picture like this earlier, so instead of getting a picture of us training, and then another on race day, you just get them both together.

We really like running in our town races, and to be honest, after this past Saturday I wish we had more races each year we could run.  I think they do 3 or 4 currently.  I didn't place this race, but instead pushed Brooke and ran with Monica.  She even beat me!  Everyone had fun, Brooke included, and we got a free pancake breakfast after!

Brooke still enjoys playing with our rugs and door mats.  We recently got one to go by the sink.  I guess we're still giving it a try, so the tag is still on.  You know, in case it isn't as stain resistant as we want or something, then we can go return it.  Anyway, Brooke found out that she can not only peal up the edges of this one, but she can lift and move the whole thing!  I'm surprised it's stayed in the kitchen so far!

Brooke has also started to enjoy feeding herself more.  In fact, sometimes she will stop eating at meals until we let her feed herself.  Usually we just drop pieces of whatever on her tray, but she's started trying/learning how to use a spoon!  She usually puts it in her mouth and then sucks hard to try to get everything off, which works pretty well for things like apple sauce and yogurt, but less well for more solid things, like carrots and apparently ramen noodles.

Anyway, things are going great in these parts, and I hope everyone is looking forward to a great week ahead!