Happy Birthday America!

Hello everyone!  I hope you all had a great 4th of July!  We had a fun time here!

Winry has been doing great with solids.  She is definitely getting better at eating.  Today at dinner hardly any food came out of her mouth!  Clearly that would not make for a great picture, so here's one from early in the week instead.  Such a happy eater!

On Independence day in the morning the ward had a pancake breakfast at a nearby park and games after.  Brooke and I did the water balloon toss!  Fortunately I did not get wet, and, probably more fortunately, neither did Brooke!  We got a few tosses in, Brooke did a good job catching, but the balloon bounced off her hands and popped when it hit the ground.  We both still had a lot of fun.

After the activity we went over to the pool at a friends apartment complex.  Swimming pictures are a little hard to get without a water proof camera.  Maybe I'll have to get one of those sometime...  Anyway, Brooke had so much fun and even wanted to swim by her self (with her floaties of course).  Brooke also had a lot of fun jumping into the pool!

When we got home it was nap time, but after nap time it was back yard fire time!  Monica made potato salad and we had a watermelon all cut up!  Jelly wanted to join in the party too!

Brooke got to eat a Popsicle while I was getting the fire ready since it was hot outside!

Here's everyone chilling in the back yard, getting ready to eat!

I got the fire up before everyone else was ready to come outside, so I grabbed some roasters and cooked hot dogs for everyone!  It went pretty quick and I feel like it actually turned out really well.  I may just have to be the open fire cook from now on!  The only downside to the fire was that it was so HOT outside already, so I was trying to stay as far away as possible!  It was quite toasty!

After dinner we of course had s'mores.  Again, I made marshmallows for everyone, though this time I did them one at a time.  It was pretty warm outside, so the chocolate was pretty much pre-melted when we put everything together, and Brooke may have gotten a little s'more on her face!  When everyone was done eating we got a family picture together.  We're all wearing shirts that Monica made!  Brooke's say "Let Freedom Ring" because she really liked that.  Monica's says "Stars and Stripes" and Winry's says "littte firecracker."  Mine says "BOOM ya'll!"  Classic!

 Brooke and Winry even spent a little time playing in the grass together.

That night at bed time Brooke wanted to sing to us.  She's started to do that the last few nights.  It's fun so have her sing us songs, though we still sing a few to her as well.  Well I decided to get a video of her singing.  I will warn you, it is about 4 minutes long, so a little lengthy, but I really like it!  She sang us several "important songs."

On Thursday Monica took the kids to the zoo with another family in the ward, the Asays.  I think everyone had a great time, though Monica did let me know that it was super hot all day long, and quite humid at the zoo too.  On the plus side, the okapi was out and right up next to the fence, which Brooke LOVED!

Also, later that day on Thursday Winry invented her first method of moving around the house.  For the sake of her head I hope she comes up with something else soon!  She hasn't moved across the room like that since, but you never know when the next time will be!

On Friday Brooke and Winry got to go swinging together!

And as you can see Winry loved it!  I don't know if she's swung much before this in a real swing, but at least she was having a great time at the park.

Saturday afternoon we were going to go swimming in our back yard.  I was cleaning up some stuff in the garage, so I pulled out the pool and filled it so the water would start warming up while I was working in the garage.  Well, just as I was finishing up it started to rain.  I don't think there was rain in the forecast... but it came anyway.  It rained for quite a while too, so we totally missed getting to swim in the back yard!

I have a pair of shorts that the button fell off of quite a while ago.  Well, Monica remembered to look for buttons this past week when she was at the store with Brooke, and here is the button Brooke picked out!

Today in Elder's quorum we talked about small and simple things.  As an object lesson the teacher showed a picture of a cracked sidewalk that had been broken by a tree root, and talked about how the tree exerted the pressure and grew little by little, but those small changes eventually made a powerful impact on the cement.  It was a great lesson about how doing the little things, reading scriptures, saying our prayers, can really help shape our lives.  I know I have seen it in my own life.  I even find a big difference between reading my scriptures in the morning versus at night.  Starting off the day on a spiritual foot just helps me to be happier and have a positive outlook on all that happens.  I know that our small, sometimes seemingly insignificant choices can change our lives.  It is important that we make good choices daily.  I share this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Pool Party!

Hello all!  Summer has come upon us!  This past week it's been up in the 90's and I even heard it got over 100 one day, so it looks like summer finally came...  Fortunately we were ready to beat the heat with our pool!  We also got a little pop-up shade tent at Costco so we could keep Winry safe from the sun while out in the back yard, and Brooke really liked it too!

Here we are getting all set up for our pool party!  I'm glad we got this little pool.  I think we used it three times this past week, and Brooke has finally even started to use the slide!

A recurring story in our house is everyone climbing into mom and dad's bed after they wake up in the morning (morning being any time from midnight on).  This is typically accommodated by dad having to get up.  One morning this past week Brooke was holding Winry's hand and singing to her!  Another morning I was up there with Brooke after I got out of the shower and Brooke started singing Book of Mormon Stories to me!  She was doing all the actions before I took the video... sorry you didn't get to see them all...

Also this past week while having dinner Brooke's fork got stuck!... in her elbow...?  I'm not really sure where this came from, but it gave us all a good laugh!

Monica had had enough this past week and decided it was time to chop off her hair!  She knew she was going to take a lot off, so she asked me to get a before picture for her, and here it is!

... oh wait... wrong one... here it is!

And here is her after picture... er... she actually just asked me to take an after picture as I was writing this post... but you can still see what her hair looked like yesterday!  AND, I already needed to use a picture of us making mochi so I could talk about that!

Yup, we made MOCHI!  Mochi, I believe, is actually the rice dough stuff on the outside of the ice cream, but these ice cream balls are also called mochi.  We made these for date night and it was a lot of fun.  

In a comparable showing of skill I also made some cat ice cubes.  Pretty fancy, eh?

Well, I think that wraps up this week.  I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Brooke's New Room!

Hello everyone!  I hope everything is going terrific for all of you!  We had a good week here.  Winry is starting to get more and more difficult to keep a bow on, as you can plainly see.  Usually she pulls it down into an eye patch to be a pirate, but this time she wanted to have a real big mustache!  Look at that joy of pretend facial hair!

I go through Monica's pictures each week to see if there's anything I need to grab for the blog, and I found this.  I really don't know what the story is, but maybe Monica will add it here => (Interesting because Alex was when I took this! Brooke fell asleep while we were out running.... All of us were out running...) when she proof reads this post.

The time finally came this past week for Winry to start eating solids!  She's been watching us closely as we've been eating dinner, etc. the past few weeks, so we figured we'd let her have a try.  We started with rice cereal, but she was pretty fussy the two nights we gave her that so we don't think it goes well with her stomach.  We've been doing bananas for the past few days since and she's been LOVING it!  I think we're on to a new food tomorrow, but I don't know if/what we picked yet.

Also from the archives of Monica comes this picture of Winry with a pony tail sticking straight up out of her head!  This has not become a daily thing, but more of an experiment I would guess as it wasn't like this when I got home and I haven't seen it since.

We've spent a bunch of time this past week getting Brooke's new room ready!  Originally the plan was to wait until the basement is finished, but since the basement is going super slow (I just never seem to have time to get down there) we moved a bunch of stuff into our room and into the garage and got Brooke moved in!  Tonight is her first night sleeping in there, and it will be Winry's first night in her own room too!  Now she might not wake us up all night long kicking down on her mattress!  One can hope, right?  Anyway, Brooke's been loving her new room and I think it's great for her to have some space to play.  We're going flamingo style in her room, and Brooke is very excited.  Also, I know the title made it seem like you'd get to see more of her room... I'll try to remember to get some pictures of it for next week :).

Jelly even helped us get everything ready by doing things like checking the stability of Brooke's new dresser by jumping on and off of it over and over.  She love's to lay on Brooke's dresser!

This past week when I was getting ready for work one morning I heard some loud  talking outside and then a bunch of bangs.  Turns out the SWAT team was raiding a neighbor's house.  We looked to see if we could find a police report about it, but nothing has really come out yet.  We're guessing it was a drug house, but hopefully some information is released soon!  Anyway, that was a little bit of a surprise!

On Friday afternoon we went to Costco and it was samples galore!  The best one you ask?  Definitely the Octopus Salad!  Ok, not really...  I couldn't believe this was 1) a product at Costco 2) a sample.  I did try a piece, and I thought it was gross.  It wasn't actually the octopus though (or at least I think) but instead whatever the liquid that turned it into a "salad" that I didn't like.

Saturday morning we headed to the zoo!  Monica's friend Katie met us there too!  We had a lot of fun.  I was trying to get a picture of the Okapi with it's tongue out.  They have tongues like giraffes, but every picture I took had not tongue...  Dang.

While there it eventually become time for Winry to eat, and we happened to be by the "how far can you jump" spot.  Brooke had a great time hopping across over and over!  I gave it a try a few times and I'm still just shy of 9 feet...  I'll get it some day though.  It was interesting to see all the people that stopped by and tried it out.  It was mostly kids, but you'd have the occasional parent who wanted to give it a try, just to chicken out at the start line and just jump a foot or two and pretend like they were playing with their kid.  Not so random parent, I saw the look of determination in your eye when you walked up to the line!

Anyway, we had a lot of fun jumping, and then this parade of animals came by!  I have never seen these animal costumes before, but they were really cool!  I don't know if it's a traveling thing or if they'll be at our zoo to stay.  They walked past us and a little later we caught up to them stopped in an opening for people to take pictures with them.  I asked Brooke, but she said she didn't want to.

The animals above stopped at the entrance to the monkeys, so we made a loop through.  The monkeys are pretty cool right now because the orangutans and the gorillas both have babies. 

We eventually got to the flamingos, which at some point became Brooke's favorite animal, and so we took a picture with them!  This was basically the last thing we stopped to see.  We also saw the grizzly bear on our way out of the zoo, and they were the best they've ever been!  They were both out walking around the whole time we were there!  All in all everyone had a fantastic zoo day, and I think we'll have to go again soon!

There was a really bad hail storm this past week.  It missed both the building I work in and our house, so Monica and I didn't see it but I heard up to tennis ball size hail.  The sister missionaries in our ward were not as lucky as we were...  Their car has a bunch of dents, and the windshield had to be fixed!  They said one of the elder's cars actually got a hole all the way through it, and I saw some pictures of cars at work who's back windows got punched all the way through!  It was a fierce storm!

This morning we went on a family walk over to the park.  We were going to get everyone out, but when we got there |Winry seemed like she was falling asleep, so she stayed in the stroller and Monica pushed her around while I chased Brooke all around.  We had a blast, and I guess Brooke's new thing is jumping.

Church today was great!  In priesthood we were talking about Lehi's dream, and I really liked Brother Bell's comment about likening the scriptures to ourselves.  He said that we typically do a good job of likening the scriptures of prophets and heroes doing great things to ourselves, but do we ever liken the scriptures of Laman and Lemuel murmuring to ourselves?  How often do we act like the "wicked" in the scriptures?  Do we try to learn from their mistakes, do we look for ways we can avoid the same pit falls that they stumbled into?  I'll be honest, I haven't had much time to think about it yet, but I thought it was a good insight into trying to get more out of scripture study.  I know the scriptures are the word of God, and that we can truly come to know Him and Jesus Christ through sincere study of the scriptures.  I encourage everyone to study daily, and to liken the scriptures to your life in order to gain a deeper understanding of the messages being taught.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Trip to Utah and Father's Day

Hello everyone!  Oh boy did I pick a bad week to miss posting, there is a lot to cover here.  I guess most of it really is from last week when we were out in Utah, but still, I feel like I've got a long ways to go.  While we were in Utah we headed to my Aunt Alyson's house on Monday night for FHE and went swimming!  It was a blast, and it was the first time for Brooke to go swimming with floaties (at least with me) and she even swam around a little on her own!

Being summer it was naturally Popsicle time Monday morning!  Everyone had gone to the park that morning and needed a treat to cool off!

I think Brooke loves popsicles...

The park they went to was pretty cool.  It had a little zip line at it that you could ride on.  I think Brooke really liked it.  Sadly I wasn't there as I was working back at my parents house, but when everyone got home they told me about how fun it was!

While out at my parents house I started going through old pictures and scanning ones with me in them.  I back up all my pictures on Google Photos, but I don't really having anything from before 2005-ish time frame, so I wanted to scan some pictures while we were out there.  I got through a lot (7 photo albums I think), but I know there are a lot more somewhere and I'm hoping to find them sometime on a future trip.  Here's an old family photo!

And here I am as a tee ball all star!  These are pictures I haven't found dates for yet, so they're still up by all my new pictures until I approximate a year and month and get them closer to when they were taken.

As mentioned, Monday night was FHE at Alyson's house!  Before we swam we all got together to have some pizza and pass around babies!  Look how happy everyone is!

Brooke had a lot of fun swimming with her cousins in the pool!  Jonathan and Cameron are a lot braver/willing to take risks than Brooke, but Brooke never cried so they did a great job not being too extreme for her!

While at my parents' house Brooke got to start sleeping in a big girl bed!  She loved it, and once we put her in she would stay in it until we got her in the morning.  She hasn't been back in a crib since, and not until the last few days has she gotten out of bed on her own.

Since both mine and Monica's parents live within an hour of each other we split our week between families.  On Wednesday we headed down to spend time with Monica's family.  While we were there Brooke even helped clean!

On Thursday we had Audrey's (Brooke's cousin) birthday party!  It was unicorn themed, complete with a rainbow to go under when you went from room to room!  Brooke had a lot of fun at the party.  There was pin the horn on the unicorn, and making glitter bottles, and decorating cookies!  Lots of fun!  I'm so glad we were invited and in town so we could attend!

Thursday afternoon Monica's friend Christine came down to visit from Idaho and we headed to the paleontology museum at BYU.  I had never been there before, and while it isn't huge, it was awesome!  We even got to take a family picture under this skeleton.  It's probably related to a giraffe somehow, so this fits in with my pictures from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!

Brooke even took a picture with Camden sitting on a dinosaur leg bone!

Winry got eaten by this giant alligator like thing!

But she wasn't enough food, so Brooke got eaten too!

We even found a dinosaur egg to point at!  It was pretty impressive just how much stuff they have there.  Some things are the actual bones, etc. and others are copies made from the originals.

After a few days sleeping on a boring old mattress at Gram's house Brooke wanted to upgrade to the tent she kept seeing!  She got so excited the first time she got in!  She did a great job sleeping in there too, and not letting her excitement keep her awake.  Also, because I'm just remembering right now, I'm pretty sure that Brooke had no accidents over night while we were out in Utah, and we even got up one night to use the potty!

Here we are getting ready to go visit campus on Friday.

We headed to the BYU Store and got a picture with Cosmo on his bench.  We did a bunch of looking around, but we couldn't find the things we were looking for there.  We did find some pizza bagels and the world's best chocolate milk though, so we got them to take with us while we walked around campus!

After walking around campus for a while it was time to go to the MOA for lunch.  We of course stopped by the stuffed cougars on the way, and Brooke also noticed the deer (look on the left, behind the rock wall)!  She was even more excited for the deer and instead of yelling "GO COUGARS" she kept yelling "GOOOO REINDEER!!!"

The MOA had this cool art exhibit going on right outside the cafe!  It was a lot of string in all colors to make a rainbow!  After we had lunch we went to visit my old professor, Dr. Wirthlin and see how things were going in the lab!  It was a lot of fun to be back and see how things are going.  Also, they're building a new engineering building that will attach to the Clyde, and we got to see the outside of that.  It opens later this year, so we weren't able to walk through it, but that gives us something cool to look forward to next time we visit!

Saturday was Jack's baptism.  It was great!  He seemed really excited!  At the baptism Jack and all his cousins got up and sang "I am a Child of God!"  The day before they had practiced it and I asked Brooke to sing louder so that we could hear her with everyone else.  She did an amazing job, and I (and everyone else) LOVED the musical number!

On Saturday night Ron (Monica's dad) got us tickets to go see the Circus.  There was one that had set up for about a week or so in Provo, and we got to go opening night!  On the way, Brooke was unsure, but once we got there and she saw it she loved it! And Winry loved it and even took a nap for a while during it!

Here we all are as a family!

Sunday morning we headed back for home.  We stopped in Parachute to go to church on the way, and there was a TON of traffic on I-70 for about the last 150 miles of the drive.  A lot of people head out to the mountains from Denver every weekend it would seem.  Google put together a pretty nice slideshow/video of the whole trip too! 

When we got home Brooke was done with sleeping in a crib, so we pulled out her mattress.  Obviously a mattress alone would not be enough, and fortunately I have a teepee!  It fits just perfectly around her mattress too!

One day this past week when I got home Brooke was putting on Monica's pumping bra.  I don't think anything I write could top the video, so we'll just leave it there.

Today Brooke wanted to wear her Easter dress, and Winry is just getting big enough to wear her matching one!  We headed down to Colorado Springs to go to our friend, Trisha's baby Isabel's baby blessing.  We were able to make it back in time for second hour in our ward where I had to teach.  It was great that everything worked out just right, and it was fun to get to see the Klatts again.

For Father's Day Brooke got me this awesome shirt!

We also grabbed some 5 month pictures of Winry today (she hit 5 months 6 days ago)!  What a cutie!  I love this little girl so much!  She is so great and brings so much joy to our lives!

And, I can ALWAYS make her smile!

Phew, that was a lot!  Thanks for sticking with me through it all!  I hope everyone had a great week (or two...), and thanks for stopping by and catching up with us!  Have a great week!