Happy Birthday Winry!

Happy Birthday Winry!  This little girl is already 5!  She's such a delight to have around.  She's full of crazy energy and loves to be silly, dance, and have fun.  We had a great week celebrating with her, and I'm so glad she's part of our family!

Last week at ward choir Winry got to hold the Packer's new kitten!  She was very soft and gentle and loved holding and petting him.  I bet Jelly was super jealous when she smelled another cat on her hands!

Monday was the final day of Christmas break... that's just weird, three weeks after Christmas.  Anyway, Monica took all the kids out to a park to play, but I guess they forgot Grayson's coat.  Fear not, Brooke had a second jacket in the car, and Grayson loved wearing it.

Winry got a book of things to cut out for Christmas and has really enjoyed it.  One page was full of mustaches to cut out, and once they were cut out the kids taped them on so they could have mustaches.  This happened when I was at work, but fortunately Monica at least caught Grayson with his on.

Wednesday was Winry's birthday.  We of course opened presents in the morning.  She got an extra special present from Brooke.  To go on her present, Brooke made Winry a card and two stuffed animals.  A sea lion and a cat.

Here are the stuffed animals.  Brooke made these all by herself.  She asked for the craft bin, got the stuff out she wanted, and next thing I knew she was walking in to my office to show me what she made for Winry.  Winry loves them, but we generally have to keep them up high so Grayson doesn't get them.

On Wednesday night I finally took Winry to that cooking class I gave her for her birthday last year.  One of the things we made was chicken noodle soup, and here's Winry chopping up the vegetables to put in.

We also made biscuits, and Winry measured out the flour for the dough.  She did a great job with all her kitchen tasks, and we didn't make any big messes or get kicked out early!

The soup and biscuits were delicious, and we very much enjoyed them.  We also shook some cream into butter to put on the biscuits.

We made chocolate lava cake for dessert, and when it was ready I asked if they had any candles.  They gave Winry a big pink one, and everyone there sang Happy Birthday to her.  We had a lot of fun at our cooking class, and it's definitely something I would do again with our kids.

When we got home it was time for cake and ice cream with the family!  Yay, double dessert day!  Monica made her a  Frozen themed cake per her request. All in all Winry had a great birthday, and had a lot of fun all day long.

And here's Winry with Monica at bed time, holding her new owl purse.

On Thursday, Niki and Jerusha came out to visit.  They both came out to help after Monica's back surgery, and Niki's trip happened to fall on Grayson's birthday.  So while she was out, Winry asked if Niki was going to come to her birthday as well.  The details of the trip let them make it the next day, but still in time for her birthday party.  The kids have been having a lot of fun with their aunts ever since.  Here they're all doing yoga together.

And of course all suitcases double as transportation when your aunts are around.

I've had my share of fun as well.  On Friday night Monica went to a party, but we had a party of our own.  We pulled out 13 Dead End Drive and had a great time playing it.

Saturday was Winry's birthday party, and we had it combined with Clara as her birthday is this upcoming week.  The party was at the Cammack's home, which was nice because we left our house in quite the disarray with our morning of preparations.

The kids played pin the nose on Olaf, and Winry totally nailed it!

We sang happy birthday and had cupcakes.

In the morning before the party I got the idea to make Grayson a Brozen shirt, since the party was Frozen themed.  I was able to pull together a design and have time to run to Walmart to get a shirt and iron-ons, and was able to make my vision a reality just in time.  Niki's modeling the shirt because 1) Grayson wouldn't ever hold still so I could take a picture, and 2) We took Grayson's shirt off while he ate his cupcake.

There was of course present opening, and both kids opened their gifts at the same time.

And here's a picture of everyone together at the end.  The kids ran around and played a lot of the time too, and I was also part of the "Brozen" who trekked out to pick up the pizza, so I feel like the whole thing just flew by!

And here are the birthday girls together.

We had to hurry home to let Winry change before we all headed to the rec center for basketball.  They did more dribbling, but they also worked on shooting, passing and even played a scrimmage at the end of practice.  Winry had a ton of fun again, and was all smiles and dancing around out on the court.

Last night when I was getting ready to head to bed I started trying to look for Jelly.  I hadn't seen her since the morning before we went to the Cammack's for the birthday party.  I searched the WHOLE house and couldn't find her anywhere.  I was even walking around shaking her treats and calling to her, but nothing, no meows or anything.  No one really knew of a time when she  could have gotten out of the house, but we also didn't know where she was.  Well, the search went on for 30 or so minutes, including going outside and calling for her.  One of my sisters went in the garage, and when she came back in Jelly heard the door close and come down the stairs to see who was home.  I think she must have been sleeping in the girls closet, but honestly, I have no clue where she was as both Monica and I looked through their closet.  We're just glad she was safe.

I think that covers at least most of the highlights from this past week.  Have a wonderful week ahead.

Game Face!

Winry started basketball yesterday!  She had a TON of fun and is really excited to go back again next week.  At one point they played a monster and hero game.  Most everyone was dribbling a basketball, and you had to dribble it as you moved around.  Winry got to be the monster, and if she tagged someone they were frozen.  The hero would tag you so you could move again.  Winry LOVED being the monster!  Though she did spend a lot of her time tagging her coaches... :)

We leant out our Grinch costume for a Christmas party, and it came back with a mask!  The girls really enjoyed being the Grinch, though they had to hold it up as it was a little too big to fit them.

We sang "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" for our song for family home evening at Grayson's request.  It was a very popular song!

Monica was doing her back exercises this week and Grayson thought it looked like great fun, so he joined her.  You can tell that's a baby who isn't going to herniate a disc!

I had Friday off, and school doesn't start until next Tuesday, so we went to the children's museum on Friday.  We had a lot of fun there all morning.  We started off in the ball room.  There are a bunch of vacuum tubes that suck the balls up into the top of different plinko type machines.  There were also these ramps, which Grayson built a fort in and hunkered down.

There was a rocket area, where you could make a paper rocket and then launch it with an air launcher.  I helped both Winry and Brooke make a rocket, and we all had fun launching them.

We went out into the winter area and Grayson had a great time playing with the dogs again.  He even took a ride on one for a bit!  I took the girls over to go sledding while Monica and Grayson took care of the dogs.

There was a also a mini Christmas tree maze, which everyone enjoyed wandering through.  Grayson really loved it, which makes me think he'd love a corn maze.  We'd have to be really careful though, because if he ran out of sight... it might take a LONG time to find him again.

Next to the maze there was also a fun car that the kids loved to pretend to drive.  I think we did a good job seeing most of the things we missed the last time we went, and it was a really fun morning.  There was a fair deal of dismay when it was time to leave.

That evening Grayson was showing off his sommersault skills on our bed.  The problem is that he doesn't check if he's by the edge, and I did catch him once when he put his head right on the edge and would have flipped himself off.  He also tries to do sommersaults on the recliner in his room.  These usually turn into headstands against the backrest, but I did catch him once when he flipped over the arm rest... This kid is in a dangerous phase.

And back to Saturday and Winry at basketball.  From my observation it looks like Winry's probably the only kid who's brand new to basketball.  Everyone else seemed to be able to "drivle" a little, but Winry did a really good job working on it and improved a lot by the end.  The most important thing, she had a TON of fun the whole time!  I was a little worried she'd get frustrated trying to learn to dribble, but she had a big smile and was running and dancing the whole hour!  I'm really excited to watch her keep learning.

And I believe that's a wrap for this week.  I'll try to get Monica to read the blog more frequently than monthly in the future so these stop going out in batches.  I'm hopeful we'll get all 3 of the ones I have written out today!

Happy New Year!

Oh hello!  Pretty crazy busy week out here.  This week Nicole's family came to visit us, which meant adventures galore.  They came to visit from Arizona, and picked a great week because we got a big snow storm.  Once the snow fell, the kids were out in the snow forever more.  But coming back to Monday, I set up Grayson's rings he got for Christmas.  Grayson LOVES to find things to hang from.  He hangs from the kitchen cabinet handles, the car door handles, etc.  Anyway, it's good to have a safer place for him to hang (and now swing).

Later Monday morning we headed to the Children's museum.  We got a family pass for the year for Christmas, and cashed it in immediately!  The kids all had a lot of fun, and there are a LOT of things to do there.  We maybe went around to a fourth of the things or so.  There was an outside winter adventure thing.  There was dog sledding, curling, and even sledding.  Fortunately there was even some snow on the hill, so I took Winry down a few times.

The girls spent some time painting, and I worked on a stop motion video right outside the door with Grayson.  Even if it's washable, painting just didn't seem like the best activity for Grayson who was already on his second shirt (the first one was sacrificed to the water room).

We made gingerbread houses last week, but didn't get a picture of them all together.  Here they all are, from left to right it's me, Monica, Winry and Brooke.

Monday night the Halberts arrived.  On Tuesday morning everyone went to the park, and I went to grab some groceries before coming to visit them.  The park didn't go well, so they all ended up getting home shortly after me.  I was looking forward to spending some time outside, so I asked Grayson if he wanted to go on a walk to the creek.  We ended up out walking for almost 2 hours!  I really like this picture I got there.  We ended up walking to a bridge to throw sticks in, and with about a quarter mile left to home Grayson got REALLY tired and I had to carry him the rest of the way.  He almost fell asleep on my shoulder. 

On Wednesday we went to the zoo!  The vultures were back!  So the bird flu risk must be back down.  Winry was VERY excited to sing them happy birthday.  I asked if she wanted a picture with them before we took off, and this is the pose I got.

Grayson was all crazy about the fishing cat, per usual.  One was even taking a nap on display, and looked right at us!  The other one was pacing around, which when I was downloading this picture Brooke said "wait... there were 2 of them?!"  There's usually only been one visible.

And the tiger, OH MY!  I have ALWAYS wanted to see the tiger up walking on it's high walkway.  When we were walking up it was roaring, or whatever it's called when a tiger does it, and then it sprayed at the people watching it (fortunately not us).  Then it jumped up the stairs and onto the walkway.  My real worry was that I was going to get peed on standing under it.

And here are all the kids on the way out.  Emotions seem... mixed.  I had a great day at the zoo at least.

We headed straight from the zoo to the Giving Machines and met up with Tyson and Tina's family.  We let everyone pick a thing to give and then headed for home.  The girls were a little sad that they didn't get to pick more things.

We got a good amount of snow Wednesday night to Thursday.  The total as measured in our front yard was a little over 7 inches, so I'd guess the snow fall total would be 8 to 9 inches.  Pretty nice for our visitors from Arizona.

And how can you tell you have Arizona visitors?  When you find snow covered flip flops on your doorstep in the morning!

Anyway, Thursday morning we all got ready and headed to the park to sled.  We had to all pile into the back of the van.  We used the driveway to get out, but Nicole couldn't get her car away from the curb in the snow.

We had a lot of fun sledding.  The group ended up splitting after a little bit and I stayed with Brooke and Luke to keep sledding.  I stumbled upon my snow skate sometime in the last few months, and we had a lot of fun trying that out.  I don't think I've used it since I was a teenager.

Grayson had a serious dance break during his snack.

And it was in and out of the snow all day (and Friday too).  Everyone tried the snow skate around the yard too, and they all loved it.  Also, come the end of the day Thursday there was a LOT of snow eating going on, so we pulled out some of our snow cone flavors!

We all got giant swaddle blankets for Christmas from Jerusha.  On Friday night I swaddled Grayson in his.  I thought he'd go crazy having his arms stuck, but he was surprisingly okay with it.  I think he's the only one to be properly swaddled in their blanket... so far.

The Halberts headed back home on Saturday.  Winry spent some time with her hand painting set she got for Christmas and had a good time.  She made a fish and a turtle, and got some paint on the door :).

Grayson went to bed at his normal time, and then the staying up began.  The girls played twister a bunch of times, and then we watched a movie.  Winry picked Elf, everyone's favorite New Years movie.  Winry ended up making it until about 9:30, and then was falling asleep on the couch, so I carried her up to bed.

When Winry went to bed a Kindle party broke out on the couch.  Brooke made it later than Monica into the night, but only by 15 minutes or so.  I took Brooke up to bed at around 10:30, and Monica headed up to bed a little while later.  I stayed up till midnight on the couch playing Stray on my Steam Deck, and got cued to midnight by the fireworks... and Grayson's crying after he got woken up.  I waited downstairs with the monitor for about 20 minutes until I thought he might be back asleep before heading up to bed, but he kept crying and woke Monica up.  Oops.

We were all able to make it to church on time today despite staying up late and church moving to 9 am.  It was pretty crazy to be done with church at 11, and be getting home around the same time we used to leave.  As I'm finishing this up it sounds like Grayson is waking up from his nap, so I suppose now's as good a time as any to wrap up. Happy New Year!