Stairs to the Top Bunk

Woohoo!  The bed is finished!  Yes, yes, the "bed" was finished last week, but now there are stairs and I don't have to lift Brooke up and down every time she wants in/our of her bed!  Also, it had to be me, because Monica can't lift Brooke that high right now.  I told her to just think of it as lifting for two, but that didn't seem to help...  Anyway, I was diligent and out in the garage every night to get the stairs done quickly.  You'll also notice they double as a bookshelf, and now the girls have a spot to store a bunch of their toys where they are more accessible.  It's been great!  The only remaining problem with it all is that the bed is awfully close to the ceiling fan... like, there's a corner of the bed that's a guaranteed whack on the head if the fan is on, and Brooke gets decently close on the stairs...  Fortunately things are cooling off here as fall approaches, and so we haven't needed the fan on like we do in the summer.

On Monday while Brooke and Monica were at dance class, Winry and I played the Pikmi-Pop game.  I let Winry choose.  The game came with a "sweet surprise".  I kid you not, it came with a scented, key chain size stuffed animal.  And even though we've had it for a few years now, it still smells.  While I would definitely call the scent sweet, it would not call it pleasant.  Anyway, we had a bunch of fun playing.  In the game you move around the board collecting lollipops and doing challenges, such as doing a crab walk, naming constellations, naming 5 blue things in the room, or telling a secret.  You wan't the juicy gossip?  Well, unfortunately for you, I got the tell a secret card, and I am no longer bound by the game.

We bought an extra bag of apples this past week to make apple juice!  I feel like it's been a while since we've used the juicer.  Brooke didn't want to help, but Winry sure did!  Monica cut up the apples, but Winry juiced them all!  She had a great time, and Brooke even joined for a picture with the juice.

Once the stairs were done, I headed up with the girls to see what was so great about playing on the top bunk.  Let me tell you, it's everything.  Also, I'm making that up.  The girls have been having tons of fun up there though, and love to go up and down the stairs.

Yesterday morning Winry really needed her Frozen art set out to do some art!  She drew pictures for quite some time.  This was before conference, so none of the quietness applied when it counted.

We typically make cinnamon rolls for conference, but this time Brooke really wanted to make monkey brains.  Okay, okay, I know it's really called Monkey bread, but here's a fun story for everyone.  I distinctly remember my mom making monkey brains for us on Sunday morning when we lived in the blue house (first house we lived in in Utah, while my parents current house was being built.  Named such because we painted it baby blue).  I was 5 or 6 at the time, and I 100% remember calling it monkey brains.  I sent around a few texts yesterday, and was promptly told that our family calls it monkey bread.  I even got my mom to send me her recipe card which definitely said "Monkey Bread" at the top.  I quickly developed a theory, which was that Spencer told me it was monkey brains in hopes I  would think it was gross and he could eat mine.  Nope, Spencer also genuinely thought it was called monkey brains when we were kids.  Oriah, however, knew it was monkey bread.  So, my theory is still the same, just that Oriah was trying to pilfer two siblings monkey brains!!  Fortunately, the thought of monkey brains didn't gross me out, and I happily ate it then, and yesterday.

Last night Brooke and Monica went on a mommy daughter date.  Monica wants to get out with each of the girls individually before the baby is born, and last night was Brooke's turn.  Brooke picked to eat Panera, and they even stopped at Target on the way and Brooke got a little stuffed animal.  Once they picked up their food they went to Cottonwood park to eat.  

Meanwhile, Winry and I had mac n cheese for dinner, and listened to "All Aboard with you" from TOTS on repeat while we cooked.  Winry was really into that song last night.  She even made up her own dance for it!  While we were listening to it I asked her if she wanted to dance, and she said "We haven't done this song in dance class!"  So I told her that her teachers make up dances for the songs, and that songs don't have dances that go with them (mostly true, I'm looking at you electric slide).  Once she knew that, she was ready to choreograph her own dance.

They had a great time together, and when they got back we all had donuts (Brooke's request for their date) and Brooke and Monica watched the women's session of conference while I put Winry to bed.

Jelly continues to be our baby while we wait for the real one to come.  I will say, I hope our baby is a bit less hairy... :)

This morning Winry did not want to get dressed, but in the end could not escape the allure of overalls.  As I put them on her she said "are we going to the zoo today?!"  The last time she wore them we went to the zoo, so obviously they're now zoo pants.  I had to inform her that we were not, and she took it very well gratefully!

The kids have been really good for conference this year.  I've been able to listen to just about everything minus the occasional moment of loud talking.  The first speaker is about to start, so it looks like I'm finishing up just in time!  Have a great week.  The prophet is great!

 

New Bunk Beds!!!

Welcome to the week of new things in our home!  Obviously the biggest deal is that I finished the bunk beds this past week.  The girls LOVE it! And that's even still an understatement.  I'm currently sitting in their room with them while they play on Brooke's new bed.  It's just where they always want to be now.  Last night both girls slept in here for the first time, and they did great!  I haven't finished the stairs yet, so Brooke was stuck up top, and Winry was on the bed on the floor.  Brooke had the monitor up with her so she could talk to us if she needed anything, but they both slept until around 7 am when I came to check on them.  When I peeked in they were both awake.  Winry was still relaxing in her bed, and Brooke was waiting for Winry to get up before she asked us to come get her so she wouldn't wake her up!  Brooke is AMAZING at being considerate with things like that. It was also Winry's first night sleeping in a bed rather than a crib, and she did awesome! She only came out a couple times right after we put her to bed, and then slept great in there the whole night!

I've got more pictures of the bed, so we'll talk about it more later, but let's get to the rest of the week.  I made bagels last Sunday.  I imagine that made it in the blog since I wrote it so late.  Anyway, we had bagels for breakfast on Monday, and Winry helped feed Brooke.  I'm pretty sure they were using different names too, but I don't remember who they were playing. The easy guess would be that Winry was KC from TOTS (she takes care of the babies) and Brooke was one of the babies.

Last Monday (the week before this past one) Brooke's room was littered with stuffed animals and blankets at bed time.  We asked her to clean them up and offered to help, but she wouldn't.  She was super tired and occasionally when she's really tired she gets in a super stinker mood.  In the end we put all of her stuffed animals and blankets that were out into bags and in the garage for a week.  She was super about not complaining the whole week and making the most of the few animals she had left.  Anyway, Monday she got everything back, and when we came back to check on her after putting her to bed she had made a bed on the floor with all of her blankets and surrounded herself with all of our stuffed animals.  She was VERY grateful to have them all back, and she's been great about cleaning them up since then too!

After dance class on Wednesday Winry got in her construction outfit.  How do I know this was after dance?  Well, that's her leotard she's wearing around her waist.  She was like this for most of the rest of the day!

On Thursday my new office chair (aka my first real office chair) came!  I'm now officially moving to full time working from home.  In fact, I need to go in sometime this week to clear out my things from my old desk so that another member of the rad team can move into it.  Anyway, my previous chair was not working out for me to sit in all day every day.  Brooke helped me assemble my new chair and was excited to try it out.

Everyone was excited to try out my new chair!

And by that I mean EVERYONE!  While I was looking at chairs online I decided I wanted to get one with a tall back so that it fit my height.  This had the tallest back of all of the ones I looked at and was also pretty cheap.  I'm glad I picked this one, it's been very comfortable so far!

This past week we got out a few baby things from the garage to make space for a box, and one such item was the bouncer.  Jelly was thrilled to see her old friend again and has been in it for probably half of each day since we got it out.  To be fair, Jelly is probably about the size of a 6 month old, so baby furniture is also cat furniture!

I finished up the top coat on the bed Wednesday and Thursday evening, and Friday when I finished work we brought it up to Brooke's room.  I didn't have the extra pieces ready, so it wasn't ready to be slept in, but the girls still enjoyed playing in it.  You'll notice in the first picture that there is a rail on the front so Brooke won't fall out, and a divider underneath for Winry's mattress.  I finished those Friday night, so we didn't attach them till Saturday morning, and hence, Saturday night was the girls first night in their new beds.

But back to Friday afternoon, the girls had a great time playing.  They touched the ceiling, and we threw stuffed animals back and forth.  All the normal things you do in new bunk beds.

Saturday night we had Friday night, meaning we had pizza for dinner and had family movie night.  We just ran out of time Friday because we kept playing in the new bed.  Anyway, Saturday was as good a day as any.  The pizza was just amazing!  So good it deserved a spot in the blog this week!  Monica's getting really good at making dough for the crust!

Saturday night everyone was excited for bed!!  It's a bit hard to see, but you can see the girls both in their beds.  Winry got out a few times initially, but after I rocked her for a minute or two and got her some stuffed animals from her crib she stayed in, and they both slept like champions!

Today as soon as church was over Brooke ran upstairs to put on her new Ariel costume!  That's who Brooke wants to be for Halloween!  Since Brooke was a mermaid, naturally Winry wanted to put on her Ariel costume as well.  I believe they both want to be Ariel for Halloween, so imagine some fake cob webs in the background, and a jack o' lantern and we can use this picture again in a month!

Those are the highlights from this past week!  I hope everyone is healthy and safe!  Don't forget to mask up! Have a wonderful week.
 

Gaming with the kids

Hello again!  This past week the girls and I have been having a great time together.  Brooke and I have been playing Stuffed Fables for the last few weeks, and Winry decided to join us this past week.  It was a bit rough with Winry, she wasn't a great listener, and she kind of always sought out things to do when it wasn't her turn, resulting in her playing with all the pieces and making a half mess, but we got through!  She has played with us again since, but she usually now plays for 30 seconds to a minute, then goes and does something else, and sometimes comes back to take a turn.

Anyway, Brooke has been loving it.  The game is about a girls stuffed animals, and the adventures they go on when helping her.  The first story was about her first night in her big girl bed, and we just finished the second story which was her first night without a diaper.  Brooke likes the game and likes when I read the story parts to her, so it's been a lot of fun, and I finally have someone to play my game with!

One night, I think Tuesday, Brooke was having a rough time going to sleep.  We tell her that if she isn't tired she can do things in her room, like puzzles or read a book.  This typically means she'll do one of those for 5 minutes or so, and then climb into bed and go to sleep.  However, Tuesday she did puzzles for at least an hour.  She was struggling doing them on her carpet at first, and wasn't getting enough light from her lamp.  I brought her a board from the garage and helped tip her lamp over her rocking chair so she had more light.  The plus side was she stopped coming out, however, she did end up staying up quite late doing puzzles.

Wednesday morning Winry had dance class.  Here she is heading in!  She continues to be the best listener in class, and is loving it every time!  Brooke and Winry dance together sometimes at home, but I feel like it's less now that they both have a class than it was before.  Anyway, Winry is loving it, and is doing an excellent job too!

Wednesday night at dinner I somehow came into possession of an unused straw toward the end of dinner and started flicking it.  The girls thought it was super great and laughed, so I taught them how to do it too.  It seems like a decision I might have regretted, however there's been no repeat since then, so dinner's have resumed as usual.

On Friday, the girls were reading stories together and cuddling up under a blanket!  Just look at them!  It looks like Brooke was reading to Winry.  Monica took the picture, so I don't know if there's more to it than that, but still a great picture!

I believe Thursday night, I grouted the tile around the fireplace.  Here's a picture Monica took on Friday.  Now I just need to replace the baseboard and everything will be done!  One item checked off my to-do list.

On Saturday I ran the So Long to Summer 5k.  They didn't do the 10k this time as they simplified the event due to COVID.  I think they did a great job of keeping people spaced and safe.  The starts were staggered over an hour or so, and there were just over 100 people who signed up.  They even still had their pancake breakfast, but they were all packed to go so you could pick it up on your way to your car after your race!  Monica got a screen shot of my live track (there were no spectators allowed, so they had to follow along from home), and I totally forgot to take a picture after I finished.  I ran a 20:53 and took 2nd in my age group!  It was a lot of fun, and I think I might want to go back to running 5ks.  They're just not as long and painful as 10ks...

On Saturday, Katie and David came to visit us with baby Nolan!  We played in the backyard and had lunch.  The girls and Nolan played in the leaves together, and everyone piled leaves up around Nolan!  He had a pretty good time exploring our backyard, and really liked our pool, though it had water in it so we had to keep a close eye on him.

We are notorious for forgetting to get a picture with Katie and David when we get together, and have gone so far as to photoshop pictures together in the past.  Well fear not, I remembered to take a picture as they were climbing in their car!  Can't you feel the camaraderie? 

Winry continued the self nap trend this morning.  It honestly looks like she just fell over on her floor...  I never heard a thud, so I'm sure the process was more graceful than that.

This afternoon Brooke and I made bagels together!  We're going to have them for breakfast tomorrow, and everyone is very excited!!

That's about all I got this week.  It was a more subdued, laid back week, but we all had a good time.  You can't have snow and a trip to the zoo every week in September! 

Snow Day

Hooray!  The first day of winter!  It only came just over 3 months early this year!  We had a bit of crazy weather at the start of the week.  Labor day was hot, with a high in the low 90's, but Tuesday the high was in the low 30's and it snowed!  Here I am with the girls ready to head out Wednesday morning and take advantage of the snowfall!  The weather has steadily warmed back up since then, and yesterday the high was in the 70's, so it's looking like we'll have a little more summer before fall starts, and possibly we'll get a fall before winter.

Last Sunday Winry helped Monica make enchiladas for dinner!  I believe she helped with putting everything in the bowl and mixing it, and she scooped the filling out for ALL the enchiladas!  Much better than the other 2 year old cooking video circulating this week.

On Monday morning in honor of Labor Day, we went to Kneaders for breakfast and had a "picnic" at the park.  We also let the girls play on the playground for a little bit since we were the only ones there.

Here's Winry and I enjoying our breakfast.  Monica and I got french toast of course, and the girls split pancakes.

That day we also got a package with some bedding for our new bed.  Once it was installed, a nap party ensued.  Nap parties are a bit different from naps, or even group naps, in that during a nap party no one actually ends up going to sleep, to kids delight, and mothers sorrow.

Labor day evening we had a hot dog roast in the backyard for dinner.  We were also going to play in the pool, but the girls didn't want to get on their swim suits.  That's fine, we just played in it on Saturday.  Dinner turned out great, and we all had a wonderful time and enjoyed some s'mores too! Also, Brooke took this picture below!

Tuesday the storm rolled in.  The forecast said we could get anywhere from 5-7 inches of snow, but the temperature dropped to 35 and held there... for hours and hours and hours.  We got a bunch of rain, and there were times it turned to snow, but basically all day Tuesday nothing stuck.  We still enjoyed the change in weather and played tag in the back yard.

Fortunately it did snow some over night, though not nearly as much as we had hoped or anticipated.  Wednesday morning we headed out right away to play in the snow!  You can see we didn't get full coverage in the front yard, and the trees in the backyard caught a lot in their leaves and there was even less back there.  We made the most of what we had and had a great time sledding down the front lawn.

The girls were even able to carry the sled back up the hill by themselves.  After a bit of playing, a lot of the snow had been displaced/melted/was gone somehow.  Fortunately there was a car nearby where we could restock! 

We used the snow we gathered to redo our sledding track, as well as to start a snowman.  Here you can see Winry rolling one of the balls along the yard to help it get bigger.  Brooke and Winry both helped, but it seems like I didn't get a picture of the finished snowman... oops.  It's a good thing we headed out in the morning, because by the time I finished work all the snow that remained was our snowman, and he wasn't looking too hot.  Working from home has been pretty nice as it makes it easy to flex my schedule for special occasions/days like this.

And from Wednesday we jumped to Saturday.  Of course great things happened in the mean time, but captured I have Winry crying, and Brooke making up a song about being healthy.

Saturday we went to the zoo again!  This was probably our last chance to go before the baby is born, which means this might be the last time we go this year.  We had an awesome time, and Winry brought her lion to show to everyone, especially to the lions!  The lions are at the very front of the zoo, so you get to see them both first and last!

I remembered to bring our nice camera with us and was able to get some much better than usual pictures of the animals.  Here was a lion we encountered when we first arrived.  He's looking straight at us!  Probably in appreciation of Winry's lion she brought.

In the monkey area we stopped for a snack break, and I got some pictures of the girls together!  What cuties.

Winry was LOVING the penguins, and probably could have stayed there for an hour.  They, of course, got to see her lion, but we also enjoyed watching them waddle around.  One of them kept opening it's mouth all the way, as if it was begging for food from the visitors.  After we'd been there a few minutes a worker walked out to do feeding time!  The zoo has stopped doing animal shows for the time being to avoid large crowds, however it seems they still do similar things with the animals.  They still feed the penguins out where the guests can see, and when we went by the sea lion they still did the usual "show" checkup thing, so my guess is that they're varying up times and making things more unpredictable.

The hippo was having his pool refilled, and loving every second of it!  He even looked at us and opened his mouth all the way, like ALL the way!  It was crazy huge, and it scared Winry a little bit.  We totally missed it because it happened when we were about to leave, so I didn't have my camera up, and Monica just stopped her video and was putting her phone away!  Anyway, I feel like the last two times we've been to the zoo the animals have been incredible!  I know this past Saturday the weather was great (high in the 70's) and more conducive to the animals being active, but I feel like the smaller number of guests there is helping too.

We got some giant pretzels and stopped in a grassy area to eat them.  This spot is right across the path from the Mongolian animals like the Tehi (wild horse) and the camels.

We tried out sting ray cove this visit as there wasn't a line to get in.  You do have to pay extra to go in, so this won't be a typical part of our zoo trips, but it was fun to go see.  You get to touch the sting rays, and with each admission you get food to feed them too!  It's a pretty weird feeling, kind of like having a vacuum pass over your hand, but a vacuum that can chew you with it's gums.  It definitely doesn't hurt, but I can't think of anything else quite like it.  Also, the food definitely leaves a smell in the water because after you feed one they swarm in front of you for a little bit.

There were also some sharks in the water, but they were all at the bottom and mostly not swimming around, so we never got to pet one of those.

We stopped by the other side of the lion enclosure to close things out and found the moms and babies!  One of the babies was in the back having a bath, and when he finished started to give his sibling a bath!

Winry also made sure they knew she was one of them as well by giving them the sign of the lion!

And in the last viewing spot we could see the males again.  I'm not sure if they keep them separate, or if they naturally separate a bit on their own.  I know I've seem them together, but I don't think I ever saw the two groups mixed yesterday.

As for today, well, we attended church!  The girls actually did amazing!  Winry has been very loud and rambunctious during our family church calls and family church, so I was a bit worried, but she did wonderfully!  We went today because it's likely our last chance for the year.  We're going to start into extra conservatism mode here soon with the baby coming, and after the baby we'll give a healthy amount of time before heading back.  It was great to be back and have a more normal church experience.  The talks were wonderful, and even though we've been watching the zoom call of the last few, it's just a different experience to be at church!

In one of the speakers talks he shared a story of a time in the past when he was looking for spiritual confirmation of the gospel.  He said he already had confirmations that the Book of Mormon was true, and that as a keystone that meant the rest of the gospel was true.  He really wanted a confirmation of Jesus Christ, and was struggling to know what a good foundation would be to build his testimony of Christ on.  He went into General Conference with that question in mind, and a talk by Elder Christofferson answered his question.  He taught that if Christ was resurrected than He must be a God.  He must have power to do those things, and if that is so than what He said must be true.  I really appreciated the insight he shared, and want to go read that talk this week.  It was a good testimony building moment.  I want to share my testimony that I know the Gospel is true.  I know that Christ was resurrected, and that He has all power in heaven and earth.  I know that the church was restored through Joseph Smith.  I know that we have a prophet leading and guiding us today.  Like the Nephites received signs of Christ's birth in their day, we too are receiving signs through our prophet.  Our home centered curriculum has helped to prepare us all for a time when we could not attend church, and has allowed my family to stay immersed in the gospel and remain strong through these trying times.  I am truly grateful for a living prophet, and know that President Nelson leads and guides Christ's true church today.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.