Security, Mystery, St. Nicholas, and Krast-mit

Hey all!  I hope you're all doing great!  We had a pretty crazy week out here!  Brooke turned 3 and had a wonderful birthday!  And my phone just suddenly froze, died, and wouldn't turn back on again...  Here's Brooke with her cake, and she even blew out the candles all by herself!

It snowed on Monday, and Brooke and I took some time to go play together in the backyard in the morning.  While we were out the neighbors saw us out the window and got really excited, and I saw them pulling on snow clothes so I figured they'd come bursting out into the back yard any second.  However, when I left for work they'd shoveled our driveway!  Thanks Carruths!  I hope my kids love helping others that much!  Brooke really liked that idea, so she decided to finish shoveling our front walk way!

It's started to become Brooke's and my bedtime ritual to have her ride on my back everywhere we go, including from one side of her room to the other.  Winry really liked this, and decided to take her moosie pacifier around on her back too!  Ok, maybe I really put it there. 

Also, I think somewhere in here was when my phone died.  I was using it and the screen froze, so I held the power button and turned it off, and it never turned back on.  This meant I was back to my previous phone, and without a SIM card, so I was WiFi only...  Also, you'll probably be able to tell what pictures I took with that phone because they just don't look as nice.

Wednesday we had dentist appointments, and we brought Brooke and Winry along.  The dentist looked in Brooke's mouth and counted her teeth, and we even set up her own appointment for May!  She's really excited.  Also, they had a huge stuffed tooth brush in the kids waiting area, so she quickly brushed her teeth before going back.

On Thursday the kids had to get flu shots, and they did great.  Brooke didn't cry at all, and she was very excited to go to the doctor.  We've been doing checkups and giving each other flu shots for a month or more!  Winry cried when we laid her down before anything happened, so she did as good as expected.  Also on Thursday my new phone came!  Here it is!  Also, it's an international phone, so it came with a UK charger... but it also came with an adapter and it works great!

Thursday was also our house-iversary!  We've lived here for 4 years already!! Wow how the time has flown!  In typical celebration fashion we got Japanese take out, and I like to branch out and try a new sushi each time.  I'm slowly getting more adventurous.  We got these salmon sushi this time, and I think this might be as far as I go, and in fact, I might step back to rolls for a while.  It was fine, but I didn't like it as much.  Also, one of these got a bunch of ginger on it or something, and I don't really like the taste of ginger...  I'm still glad I tried it though! (P.S. it was smoked salmon, so this isn't actually raw)

Thursday night when we were getting ready for bed I was helping to keep Winry happy.  I was blowing on her toes.  She'd lift her feet up and wait for me, and once I blew on her toes she'd kick her legs down and kick me in the face.  She LOVED it!!

On Friday Brooke decided she wanted to make some Thanksgiving turkey cookies for our next door neighbors!  What a sweetie!  We tried to take them over, but they weren't home when we went by, so we saved them to try again later.  We ended up taking them over as soon as we got home from church today. She may have also eaten some in the process!

On Friday night after Brooke went to sleep we blew up a bunch of balloons for her birthday.  We threw them all into her room.  In the middle of the night we woke up to hearing her breathing really heavy/laughing with excitement over the monitor.  Then she started to say "It's so exciting, it's so exciting!!"  Fortunately she also went back to sleep on her own! She did tell us in the morning that she got up and kicked and kicked a balloon!

Saturday morning Brooke woke and came down the stairs to see PRESENTS!!  First and foremost being her new, awesome bike!  She even got to ride it around in the house a little.

Brooke really enjoyed opening presents, and I feel like this gif is a pretty good representation.

We let Brooke pick what she wanted to eat for all of her meals on her birthday to make it as special as possible.  For breakfast, fruit loop pancakes!  They were pretty good really, but the fruit loops get a little weird when cooked.  Brooke really liked it, and that's what was most important.  I liked them too, and I'm sure Monica loved them.

Brooke got a Sophia the first princess dress, as well as a book reader thing that can read the books it came with out loud.  She was having a lot of fun with them all morning.

In the early afternoon we had a birthday party!  It was Goldie and Bear themed!  We made fruit loops necklaces, did a ring toss, played pin the bow on goldie, had macaroni and cheese sandwiches, played a fishing game, sang happy birthday, and had cake and ice cream.  All very Goldie and Bear things!  Thank you everyone who came, Brooke had a wonderful time!

Winry was also having a great time during the party, and even donned a party hat!

And here we all are as a family right before we went to dinner!

For dinner Brooke wanted mac and cheese, and picked to go to Panera bread.  The food all comes with a baguette, and Brooke was really excited that Winry was eating a "bag-it."  Brooke has been "teaching" Winry about bag-its a lot lately.  This means that she says "I"m going to teach Winry about bag-it!", goes around a corner, then runs around right up to Winry and yells "BAG-IT" and then runs back behind the corner.  Winry LOVES this.

Also Brooke kept getting "cold" in the restaurant and had to go over the the fireplace to get warm.  She did this a lot.

You may have been wondering what the title of the post means.  Well, it's finally story time.  So Brooke has been calling Winry security for some time now.  We're not sure where it's come from, but it's her nick name I guess.  Sometime during dinner she decided to call me mystery and after dinner while we were walking to the car she decided that an appropriate nick name for Monica would be St. Nicholas.  So we asked her what her nick name was, and she said "Krast-mit..."  We were laughing so hard.  We're guessing she was shooting for Christmas, but that's not what she said.

Today Jelly took full advantage of all of the tissue paper from the presents.  She tried to dig in and sleep in the middle of it all, but knocked all of the paper above her off the table.  I wanted to clean up the tissue... but... nap time.

Also, today at church I set Winry down and she escaped!  She crawled straight over to another family we're friends with, and quickly found the phone!  What a sneak!

This past week being Brooke's birthday I've been thinking a bunch about how grateful I am to have her!  She is such a wonderful little girl!  I love her so much!  I'm so grateful for how helpful she always is, and how much fun we always have together.  I'm grateful to be, in her own words from today, her "best friend!"  I love her so much, and as sad as it is to see her grow up, I am so excited to watch her continue to grow and develop and can't wait to see where life takes her!  Thank you for being so wonderful Brooke!  I love you most, I love you more!

Uhh... We made sushi!!

Hey all!  Hope you're doing grand.  It's been a pretty nuts week, and I guess not picture-intense week.  We do have several cute pictures of our kids, but no real story to go with them, like this one of Winry, she's just being a cutie and playing in Brooke's room!  Also, this girl is (hopefully) mass teething this week!  I think both of her teeth broke through today, and I kinda hope we get a break before the next few come in.  She's been really sad and crying a bunch, mostly at night (also during the day, Alex just isn't home for it!!).  She'll get happy at various times during the day, but we haven't slept well for about 4 days now, and it's really starting to add up...  or maybe subtract down, I don't think this ends as a positive!  Anyway, she's doing great, and she went to bed no problem tonight, so hopefully her teeth pain is over for now.

Tuesday was election day, and Monica and I did our darndest to figure out who to vote for.  I think Monica said we lost all the big elections, but I don't actually remember, but at least we voiced our opinions.  Ah democracy, it's rather complicated, everyone seems to have something weird going on, and as soon as you feel good about someone, they lose... JUSTICE!  ;)

So, this past week Brooke put flamingo to bed in her bed, which you can see here, but really I got a picture of Brooke's new bed because I forgot to take a picture for like the last month!  I made this for her, and Monica painted and decorated it!  She loves her new bed!

On Friday night we had over some couples in the ward and made sushi!  It was a lot of fun!  Here's a caterpillar roll that Monica made!  I think everyone had a great time, and I think Monica and I definitely need to make sushi more, and probably experiment more with different kinds, etc.  After we'd all eaten our fill we then played Sushi Go Party!  Super great night!  Thanks for coming Cammacks and Dubois!

And that's basically the week.  Yeah, it was a pretty down week.  Lots of stuff happened.  Oh! I built a TV stand and wall mounted our TV to it to go in front of the treadmill.  That's been nice this past week as I did 3 of my runs down there at night.  Maybe I'll take a picture of that this next week.

Today was a little crazy at church.  Monica taught Gospel Principles because it was about family history (and that's her calling) and we had Winry and Brooke in there for a while.  Eventually I got Brooke to try out nursery if I stayed in there with her, and eventually I even got out too.  Anyway, in addition to all of that I don't know if my metabolism has been going crazy or what, but fasting is SO hard right now.  By 11-11:30 this morning I had no energy and even got dizzy a few times and had to sit down.  I was able to make it through church, but I had a pocket full of almonds just in case.  Anyway, with all the running around with kids and lack of energy church was kind of a blur this week, so I unfortunately don't really have something to report. 

In ward council today, which was one of the earliest things I did, we talked about the new Come, Follow Me program that is starting next week.  It was really great to talk about, and I am really excited to start the new curriculum.  We've been trying to make some changes to prepare, and I've been telling Brooke scripture stories at night before bed.  For the most part this has been going well, but it did have a rocky start.  The first night I told her about Daniel and the Lions Den.  The next night she didn't want to say her prayer at bed and I just figured it was because she was really tired, so I let her skip for the night.  The next night she said she didn't want to, and I told her she had to and she started crying.  I asked why and she said it was because she didn't want to be thrown into the lions den!  I felt so bad for her!  She was so worried she'd get thrown in like Daniel!  At least she was paying attention.  I explained that we don't have lions dens anymore to throw people in, and she's happily praying every night again and I'm being more careful with my story telling!

That's all I've got for this week.  Have a great week and we'll try to do something interesting so long as Winry sleeps well at night!

Trick or Treat

"You're welcome!!"  The islands and seas are doing well.  This past week we did some star navigating and island hopping to collect treats!  Brooke wanted to be Moana for Halloween!  It's a little hard to see since it was about 30 degrees when we went out trick or treating!!  So Brooke was in her winter clothes to stay warm the whole time.

Rewinding a few days we were all ourselves, so we went to Casa Mariachi for dinner!  Winry got to observe and try some fajitas and salsa and bean dip!  We also clipped her moose on to try to keep it off the floor.

On Tuesday  morning I Was trying to do some exercises and attracted a little bit of attention...  Everyone was having a lot of fun, and it sure made things more difficult.  I am a little surprised Jelly only watched instead of joining in the fun.

On Tuesday night it was finally time to clean up our leaf pile, and Brooke came out to help!  We got out there just a little too late as it started to rain just a few minutes before we started.  It didn't rain hard, but it was enough to make all the leaves stick to us a ton.  Also, Brooke kept jumping into the pile right before I could starting putting it into the bag, but in the end we got them all cleaned up and Brooke got to help smash down the leaves in the bag.

Wednesday was Halloween, and I started off with a picture of our costumes.  It was cold but we had a lot of fun, and Winry only came out for maybe the first 10 houses we went to, then Monica took her home.  Brooke and I again only went around the short loop of our neighborhood, and we still got all of this!!  Brooke's bag was full all the way to the top!  Also, we ended going down our street which cuts a loop in half, and I guess most people DON'T go down our street, so people were just emptying their bowls into Brookes bag!  It was intense.  Oh, and we also skipped all of the scary houses.

Monica needed to put in an order with Norwex this past week, and decided to add a special something for Brooke.  There is a deal going right now with a pink pig towel, and every time Brooke sees Monica's specials ad for it she asks if we can get it, so Monica tacked one on, and Brooke was ecstatic!  So that's of course up in the bathroom now, though Brooke does worry about where her bear towel will go.

On Thursday when I got home from work I walked in and Brooke said "Hi, King dad!"  Turns out she was giving Winry a crown earlier (recreated below) and they were being princesses and queens!

In other big news I took Brooke to the park today, and she went down the twisty slide on her own!  I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but the last time we came to this park she wouldn't go down the smallest slide by herself... and today she went on the biggest one!  She was having SOO much fun too.  It was awesome.

Today we had a stake conference, and they shared President Nelson's tweet from this past week.  If, like me, you missed that, he said "We are witnesses to the process of restoration. If you think the Church is fully restored, you’re just seeing the beginning. There’s much more to come. Wait until next year, and then the next year. Eat your vitamins, get your rest. It’s going to be exciting!" Wow... I just don't even know what to expect...  In our conference they talked a lot about the new changes, both the benefits that have been seen in ministering as well as the up and coming change to 2 hours of church.  Elder Holland made the point that there are 168 hours in a week, so if you're in church for 2 or 3, it's not much of a difference in the whole week.  What's more important is what you're doing with the 165 other hours.  Times are definitely changing, and it would appear there are more changes to come, so it's definitely time to step up and strive to make the most of every minute we have!  I encourage you to set a goal of something you will work on to better remember Christ and follow his gospel throughout the week.

Everyone have a great week!

Dinosaur-itis

Hey everyone, I hope you all are doing well.  I am VERY tired and want to go to bed, so this will probably be a rather quick post.  Anyway, Monday we all headed off for Dinosaur ridge!  We got a free pass from the library and thought it would be a fun outing, and it's not that far away.

We got to take the guided tour.  It goes along a 1.2 mile long road, and you can also walk the path if you don't want to pay for the tour.  Basically in the 30's they blasted out the mountain to put a road in, and then realized there were a bunch of dinosaur footprints and bones and stuff in the mountain, so they closed the road and now it's walk only or take the tour.  At the first stop there was a big wall covered in foot prints.  They were painted in so they were easier to spot.  Here's Winry checking her foot against a dinosaur, almost the same size!!

The second stop was more dinosaur footprints, but from below.  It was pretty cool to see.  They were from large dinosaurs, like brontosaurus.  The final stop had dinosaur bones.  They were still in the rocks in the mountain, and we got to touch them.  In this picture we're sitting next to a vertebrae, pelvis, and mystery bone.

As we were driving back to base camp we drove past this little wire door thing, and I asked the guide what was behind the door.  The answer? Just a velociraptor foot print.  Oh wait, it's the only one in the US and one of three in the world...  I'm really not sure how he didn't mention that when we drove by the first time!! 

We had a great time, and definitely want to go back!  We think next time we'd just walk it since that's always free and not that long of a walk though the whole thing.  Also, then we'd get to see that velociraptor footprint!  If you were going for your first time I'd definitely recommend the tour though!

We've spent several days playing in the leaf pile at home.  I know I shared some pictures and videos last week, but I got a really great slow motion video of Brooke jumping in this past week!

In other big news, Tuesday night Winry got sick... VERY sick!  She (and we) were up most of the night and she had a fever around 102-103.  We took her to the doctor for fear of an ear infection and they said she looked fine.  On Friday she still had a fever of 103, so we called and took her to the doctor again, and they checked her and said everything seemed normal, but her throat was really red, so they said probably just viral pharyngitis.  I'm happy to say she's starting to seem more normal again, but she's still been sleeping terribly the last two nights even though she seems fine in the day...  Hopefully she'll do better tonight, but last night we literally couldn't rock her to sleep and after about an hour had to just let her cry herself to sleep. :(  Hopefully she does better tonight.

Thursday was Brooke's dance class.  She told us in the morning she didn't want to go and didn't like it.  After a bit of talking we eventually got the root of the issue.  They do a song/dance each week with the lights off and glow sticks, and Brooke doesn't like that part, so we told her to go stand in the part of the room with a light, and she LOVED dance class this past week!  Look at her go!

Preschool got moved to Friday due to one of the kids being sick, and this week was crazy hair day!  Brooke had cupcake hair!  Also, the picture behind (in front of?) her is her outline, and then she drew herself in!  It's a great picture!

On Saturday Brooke and I headed to the leaf pile yet again.  Almost all of the leaves have fallen off our trees, so I warned her it would soon be time to clean up all the leaves.  Anyway, on Saturday she wanted to help rake the leaves in to a big pile!  Basically mission accomplished.

Today (Sunday) Brooke put Elmo down for a nap in the swing, and Jelly just couldn't handle not having her spot.  It was actually really funny to watch her get in there as she kept laying down and then squirming around to push Elmo to the side, but eventually she got her fair share.

Today the weather was very nice, so we took the kids to the park.  Brooke wanted to swing right away, and the other swing was taken so I pushed her.  I also had Winry bump her in the back when she swung back, and Winry LOVED it!!  Hopefully you can hear the laughing.

Also, while there we put Winry down the slide.  This may be her first time, I"m not sure.  She was... iffy about it I would say. 

Well, I think those are the highlights from the week.  I think it's off to bed in case I get woken up hourly until 6 am...  I think at this point I'd rather risk sleeping too long! ;)

Leaf Pile

Hello everyone!  I hope you are all doing fantastic.  We had a pretty great week!  We got to do a lot of fun things together, and Brooke and Winry got some cuddle time in Brooke's new bed!

Brooke and Winry continue to be best friends, and Brooke still wants to help Winry with EVERYTHING!  We even let Brooke feed Winry sometimes, and this past week Brooke took it upon herself to feed Winry breakfast.  What a great sister!  I took Monday off for some recovery with the family after my trip, and we just had to go out for a family activity.  As we left we realized that we would need to get lunch while we were out, so we went to Mod Pizza.  It's a build your own pizza place, and we had a great time!  Also, Brooke took a nap in the car on the way out, so no wonder we had such a great time!

Our real destination was the Butterfly Pavilion, which was approximately across the street.  Winry and Brooke got a chance to be twin butterflies while we were heading in.

And it took some coaxing, but I got Brooke to be spider food as well.  The coaxing wasn't because it was scary, it was because Brooke wanted to play on the computer next to this picture spot instead.  But for you, fine blog readers, I persisted until I prevailed.  They also have an "outdoor" area with lots of plants and butterflies EVERYWHERE!  That was pretty cool, and you basically get butterflies landing on you whether you want it or not.  That was pretty cool, except we couldn't see the turtle because he was in his house, so Brooke cried because she was super excited to see him.  We all had a lot of fun though, and that was Brooke's first choice of place to go for the day.

On Wednesday when I got home from work we decided to go running.  Our jogging stroller had a flat tire I had to patch before we could leave.  5 holes... yup... guess I went through a thorn garden and didn't notice.  Anyway, the patches didn't actually completely fix it, but it at least stays inflated for an hour or more, so that's good enough for a run!  Brooke was pretty tired when we went on our run, so when we got home she was asleep.  Also, she just HAD to wear Monica's socks all day!

Friday was the long anticipated leaf pile day, so as soon as I got home from work we headed into the backyard for that!  I raked up a huge leaf pile, and then Brooke and I jumped in over and over!  Brooke also wanted to slide on the leaves, which you can see below!

I got a good video of Brooke jumping into the leaves, and Monica came out to play with us too once our leaf fight started!  I'm pretty sure Brooke won.

Winry even came out to join us.  You know what they say, a family that rakes together, jumps in leaves together...etc.

Anyway, Winry has continued her crawling ways, and recently has fallen in love with our Norwex sweeper mop thing.  She loves to chase it around while Monica cleans the floors.  Monica informed me that my video is actually a pretty substandard mop chase, so maybe one day I'll get to see the real deal.

Saturday was our ward Trunk or Treat, and we showed up in style!  Brooke really wanted to be Moana, and she picked everyone else's costume too.  I'm Maui, Winry is Hei Hei, and Monica is
Te Fiti.  We all had a lot of fun at the activity, and we were even able to stay all the way to the trunk or treat part.  I took Brooke and Winry on a long drive at about 3 pm to help them get a nap in so they could stay up extra late.  It was still walking a fine line for them both, but we made it through without any major issues, and Brooke had an AMAZING time trick or treating!  I'm really excited for Halloween.

Well, I think those are the highlights for us this past week.  I hope everyone  is doing well!

Winry's first Crawl!

Hey everyone!  I hope you are all doing great!  It was a pretty exciting week last week with grandma out to visit, me in Texas doing radiation testing, and Winry decided to wait until dad left to start crawling.  What a stinker!!  As you can see, radiation testing is very rough, and takes a lot out of you.  Let it be known that I did not bring this cot, and I only laid there for what FELT like 30 seconds.

On Monday back at home it was supposed to snow, so Brooke insisted on putting on her snow pants first thing in the morning.  She basically wore them all day, and sadly, the snow didn't come.  It did rain later in the day, but Brooke was more than a little disappointed she didn't get to go play in the snow.

Meanwhile, literally the day after I left Winry decided it was OK to start scooting forward!  She's been getting up into a crawling position a lot lately, and we knew it would be soon.  She loves to scoot all over the house now, and she sure likes to get into trouble!  Brooke didn't really get into things, but Winry wants to get into EVERYTHING!

Meanwhile (again), in Texas it was pouring rain!  This rain storm didn't seem too bad because I was stopped/going slow for all of it.  But when we were leaving the airport we were on the freeway and drove into a storm and I couldn't see anything.  It didn't help that the car in front of me was silver and blended into the rain perfectly and refused to turn on their lights...  Anyway, I've never been in Texas for these storms before, and it's pretty crazy.  There's usually only a few minutes of really intense rain with a lot of light sprinkling on either end.

Coming back to Colorado, Winry wore this hat, because Halloween.  It's supposed to go on a pumpkin, but babies will do too.

In Texas this trip I got the day shift, which was great!  That means that I was awake and able to call home every day!  It was great to talk to the kids every day, and I even got to call in for Family Home Evening!  Also, for some calls Brooke got to hold the phone, and I typically got to see some astounding views, like this.

On Tuesday we started our first rotation in the beam.  Here's everything all set up!  The testing went well all throughout, and nobody got irradiated, so another successful trip!

I ran over to CVS with one of my coworkers one night to get him some medicine, and when we walked in I saw this right at the front door.  I guess it makes sense being across the street from campus, but still, scantrons in a pharmacy?  It's a little weird.

I came home on Saturday, and while driving to the airport a building on a truck pulled out in front of me!  I got stopped at a light, and it took the entire green light for him to get through the intersection... fun times.  Fortunately once we got over the bridge he was able to pull far toward the side of the road so that we could squeeze by in the other lane.  I ended up getting to the airport about 6 hours early, and tried to move my flight up, but I guess Southwest changed policy and won't move your flights any more, so I got to sit in the airport for 6 hours waiting for my plane...  Some good came of it as I ended up getting Brooke and Winry a stuffed armadillo, which they were both very happy about.  I haven't gotten a picture of them with it yet, hopefully for next week.

Meanwhile in Colorado on Saturday was Megan's baptism.  It's hard to believe she's 8 already!  She was just a little older than Brooke is now when we moved to Colorado.  Here's Brooke with Megan on Saturday at their house after the baptism.

On Sunday it was time to relax and recover from my trip.  Jelly jumped up on the couch next to me and burrowed under the pillow...

And, Saturday night and throughout Sunday it SNOWED!  This was great news for Brooke!  So after church we of course headed into the back yard.  We had a blast out there.  We made snow angels, and I pulled Brooke around and around in the sled.  Then, Brooke got an amazing idea, what if she pulled ME on the sled!...  It was definitely more tiring to be pulled than to pull Brooke, and I had to spend the rest of the day trying to convince her to let me pull her...  But at least we had a great time together!

I think that about wraps up this week.  Sorry for being late with this post, but at least I didn't just skip this week!  Have a wonderful week everyone!