Jury Duty! (and Grayson Starts "Crawling")

Why hello!  It's nice to have a week between me and all that car riding.  Honestly, when I look at this first picture it brings back feelings of not wanting to be in the car anymore, even though I made everyone get in the car to go play there.  Last Sunday after we unpacked the car and relaxed a bit I really wanted to go for a walk.  I think that makes sense after being in the car so much.  Then I thought it sounded really fun to walk down to the creek and play in the water, so we got everyone back in the car and headed over.  This meant my desired walk turned out to be really short, but we all had a lot of fun.  You don't get a grin like that without stuffing your mouth full of dirt, no sir!

Winry was a party machine out there!  Check out this water dance!  Anyway, we weren't there for too long, so we should go back again soon.  Everyone did have a good time though.

When we went to find something for dinner we found a surprise from our sweet potatoes.  I am quite sure that ALL happened in the past two weeks while we were gone.  Yikes!  Guess we know the potatoes were still alive...I'm thinking we should have cubed them and planted them...

Grayson started crawling this past week.  We've been encouraging him, and he's started to get his scoot on!  It's only a matter of time till he heads for the stairs, so I think we'll have to get the baby gates out this week.  We bought Grayson some gates for Christmas, he'll be so excited to see them again!

On Tuesday I reported for jury duty!  I was also selected!  All in all, I was pretty interested to see what jury duty was like, and I would say I enjoyed the process, and it was fun to be a part of.  It was a pretty straight forward case and only took Tuesday and Wednesday.  I grabbed a picture of me attempting to stare into the sun on my way to the car after the first day.

Grayson had his 9 month check up on Thursday.  He had to get a shot, and from the look of his toe he had to get blood drawn as well.  He slept during the 15 minute drive there instead of getting a proper nap, but Monica said he didn't even cry when he got his shot!  He was healthy, but decently behind developmentally.  Well, until Monica came home and tried all the things she said no to on the questionnaire and he did them all... all caught up! Because of covid they don't give you the questionnaire until you get there now, so we hadn't tried a lot of the stuff on there before.

Grayson has been looking for more efficient ways to get around the house, so naturally he headed over to Dobby...  Dobby mostly just  struggled to get away while Grayson clung on for a free ride.  In the end they finally separated (though Monica may have had to intervene).  Grayson hasn't forgotten his dream to ride the vacuum, and  Dobby's battery ends up being near dead at the end of each day from getting knocked off the charger.

Yesterday I was playing with Grayson and Brooke while Winry took a nap and Monica was grocery shopping.  I was sitting on the couch and put Grayson down at my feet.  When I woke up, he was at the back door looking out into the backyard.  His crawling has improved immensely over the last week.  I lured him back with a tiger toy that he really loves!

On Saturday we put up boards on our wall for board and batten.  I think this picture is before Monica painted everything, so we'll have to do another picture next week once it's all done.

Those are the highlights from last week.  It was a bit of a slower week, but it was nice after all the craziness of vacation.  Grayson is busily army crawling around the house showing us all the things we need to hide or protect from him...  I don't think we've ever had to really baby-proof  that much for the girls, so we'll see how things go.  Grayson's also started trying to pull himself up on the couch, so I'm sure we'll have some good stories next week, but don't hold me to that.

Vacation to Kan-sour-ill-indi-wa-bra-gan!

Well.... I got all the pictures ready for this blog post in a timely manner... and then forgot to write the post all week!  Oops.  Anyway, we went on a two week road trip and had lots of fun as a family.  We also went to many new states for our family.  Here we all are in the car driving.  I don't remember which state this was in, but I took the picture joking that it would be for our state map just in case!  Fortunately we got a non-car picture for each state we visited.

We started the trip off with a bit of drama. Shortly into the drive, I noticed my shirt was on inside-out!  This was not something I could easily remedy while driving, so it was like this for much of the day.

Our first day we drove out to Kansas City.  When we got to the hotel we brought everything in real quick and then went swimming!  We found out that the air conditioning in our hotel room didn't work...  When we went to bed it was 78 in our room, which was not great, and all the next morning it was 81.  Not only did the air not work, but the room seemed to be unable to cool off despite it being much colder outside.  We ate breakfast in the lobby where the air was working properly, and that felt very nice.  Needless to say we were out as quick as possible the next morning. 

Turns out there's a Lego Land discovery center in Kansas City, so we stopped  there the next morning.  They had a bunch of fun things to do, like building a tall building on these earthquake platforms that would then shake it down.

There was also a station to build a car, and tracks where you could race them.

And of course they had a bunch of lego statues built all over the place.  There was even a mini-figure land where they'd built part of Kansas City!  That was really cool to look at.

Monica and I got our build on at a little station for making little pictures.  There was also a ride that Brooke and I went on 2 or 3 times.  All in all everyone had a lot of fun.  It was all inside, and very much focused on building things with Legos, so I believe it was quite different than the large Lego Land parks.

We left Kansas City for St Louis to visit Melanie, Monica's sister.  Of course that means we got to see Anaya and new baby Jett as well, and the girls all played together all day long.  Grayson struggled real bad at sleeping one night that we were there, because he was getting sick.  I ended up holding him until 3 am when Monica came out and took the next shift.  It was a long night...

After Melanie's house, we left for Casey Illinois, which is a town full of giant things.  I think the most famous one is the giant rocking chair, but it wasn't my favorite picture.  I liked the girls in the giant mouse trap.

And we also let Grayson get teed off!

After touring Casey we headed to Effingham where our hotel was.  Monica ran to the store to get something for dinner and I took all the kids to the pool!  Pools were a favorite spot during the trip, and fortunately all of our hotels had one that was open!

The next day we headed to Gary Indiana where our family vacation was.  On the way, we stopped first at Michelle's house (another of Monica's sisters) and had lunch there with them. We then proceeded on to Costco to get groceries for the week.  Monica had the food cart, and I had the kid cart.

We headed the rest of the way up and arrived at Gary Indiana.  We were staying at a place just a few houses in from lake Michigan.  We got there Saturday evening, and here we all are seeing the beach for the first time on Sunday.

I had Grayson duty which meant dragging a stroller through the sand.  Not the easiest thing I've ever done, but also not the worst.  I understand why beach wagons have those really big wheels now.

While we were out there Winry, Monica and Grayson got sick.  One night Winry refused to put on pajamas at bed time (honestly, probably not related to being sick...).  Fortunately Monica found a great solution, and Winry happily wore one of Monica's shirts as a night gown!

I'm a bit ashamed of my photography here...  I don't know how I got my hand in this picture.  This was taken with my water proof camera, and that screen is a lot harder to see the preview image on, but still... that's a pretty bad palm shot... Grayson loved the beach though.  He liked to sit on the edge where the waves could come up over his legs.  He'd also grab sand and suck on his fingers... which is pretty gross.  Especially when a HUGE dead fish washed up on shore... that was the end of our playing in the water that day.

On Tuesday we headed to Michigan City. The rest of the family went to Chicago, but since we were still recovering from being sick, it was too much for us that day. We went to a burger chain called Schoops for lunch, and it was really good!  We also got there a bit after typical lunch time (we tried not to shift to the new time zone, so 1 there was noon for us) and got to eat with all the old people.  They ALL LOVED our kids!  There were some grandmas in the booth across from us and we even turned Grayson around to say hi to them at one point.  A bunch of people told our kids they were so cute on their way out.  Also, Winry at first wouldn't order anything, but when food started coming wanted something.  We asked the waitress and she even made Winry a peanut butter and jelly sandwich which was not on the menu!!  That was so nice of her!  After lunch we headed to the zoo in town and had fun seeing all the animals.  We only had about an hour till closing when we got there, but it was small so we were still able to make it around to everything.  They had a spot where you could feed the goats, and the cow moo'd really loud and it scared Winry.  She told everyone about that for the rest of the week!

On Wednesday morning we headed to the dunes for a hike.  I took Brooke and Winry with me.  Monica wasn't feeling great and Grayson needed a nap, so they stayed behind. We hiked the first two dunes of the three, and then took a short cut path back to the main building to meet up with the fast group that did all three.  Here are all the cousins at the top of the first dune.  The final approach to the tops was sand and pretty steep, so it was a pretty challenging hike for the girls.  That said, they climbed the whole thing all by themselves.  I held their hands at times, but they did all the walking on their own!  I was very proud of them.

Since the hike was supposed to be pretty short, I left our water in the car (I didn't have a backpack to carry it, and I figured there was a good chance I'd be carrying kids).  Fortunately their cousins were willing to share in a pinch.  Winry was NOT a fan of water being poured into her mouth...

Here's our reduced group at the top of the second dune.

Grayson stayed at home with Monica, presumably taking naps.  We set up a little station for Grayson and he played there all week.  People came by to play with him all the time as well, and he's been craving more attention since we've returned home...

In the place we were staying there was a book called 100 things to do in Gary and Northeast Indiana, or something like that.  I'd looked over it for things to try to do while we were there.  That's where I found the zoo in Michigan City as well as Schoops.  There was also mention of a gas station chain called Family Express and their square donuts.  We needed gas, so I maybe went a little out of the way to get gas from Family Express.  The donuts were good, but I'd still take Donut House here in Parker over them.  They were square though.

On Wednesday afternoon Monica and the girls headed to the beach while I stayed back to wait for Grayson to wake up from his nap.  On the way Winry wanted to stop and get a picture with these flowers.  What a cutie!

We saw a bunch of frogs around, and on Wednesday night Sam was even able to catch one!  We didn't keep it for too long and released it back out into the garden in time for fireflies!

Yes fireflies!  The girls got to see them too.  I was able to get three in the same container.  There weren't a ton of them, but they kind of hover in place, so they're not too hard to catch.  In fact, Winry also caught one in her hand!

On Thursday we went to St Joseph, Michigan.  We were about a half hour from the border, so it seemed a waste to not get one more state in.  Also, it was a really cool beach town!  They had stair cases painted with some fun things down by the beach, and all the kids climbed onto the floaty frog!

Up on the hill they had a cannon from an old battle ship in the civil war (I think) and some replica cannon balls.

We went to the Chocolate... Eatery... (I forgot the name) for lunch and it was recommended by one of Monica's college roommates who lived in St. Joseph.  While we were waiting for our food, Audrey started slapping her mask on the table, and Grayson though it was hilarious!

After I finished eating Grayson was getting a bit grumpy, I so walked around downtown with him.  We found these chairs hanging on the wall.

And on the way back to the beach I tried to run the stroller down some train tracks.  Semi-successful.

On Wednesday at the beach in Gary there were some seagulls and Winry tried to run up and touch/pet/grab them.  She was sad that she couldn't get to them, so at the end of our beach day in St. Joseph I let her feed them some pretzels.  She absolutely loved it!  I'm sure the seagulls did too.

There was a pier and a lighthouse, so we walked out to see it.  Here's our family!  Thanks St Joseph, you were fine!

Friday we had to pack up and leave the beach house, so it was time to start the trek back home.  We stopped in Ankeny, Iowa, and that night we watched the Olympic opening ceremonies.  Good thing they were on, as Monica later discovered that the hotel pool was closed for maintenance. 

The next morning before leaving town we went to a farmers market.  We got some cookies, cucumbers, yellow green beans (are they still called green beans if they're not green?), corn on the cob, an eye spy bag for the kids in the car, and some cat toys for Jelly.

We continued on our way from the farmers market to Winter Quarters!  We went to the church museum thing there and it was pretty cool to see and learn about the pioneers more.  The girls got to spin a wagon wheel to see an odometer in action, and they got to pull a handcart.  We got to try out the bunk beds from the ships that crossed the ocean as well.  I came away thinking that we don't talk about pioneers in church nearly enough, and I'd love to have a pioneer lesson quarterly or something.  Also, things worked out just right that we came through on Pioneer Day!  The missionaries doing tours got to dress up as pioneers for the day, so that was fun too.

We finished the drive home on Sunday.  We stopped for church in Sterling, and then headed for home after.  By the last day, driving was no fun anymore, at least for me, even though we only had 4 hours the last day.  But we made it!  And Jelly was VERY excited to see us when we got home.  She loved the toys the girls got for her too.  All in all we had a lot of great times, but it was nice to finally make it back home.  The front half of the vacation felt like a full vacation itself, and when we got to Gary we commented that it seemed like we should be getting home at that point.  It's nice that we were able to have a trip like this, and get to see our family as well!  It was definitely a wonderful trip!

Appendix A:

As I went to write the blog for this week (yes, it is the same day as this one was posted) I realized I missed some good pictures from last week.  So instead of going back and editing the post and possibly having to change wording, etc. I'm just stuffing them down here to be quick.  Welcome to the very first blog post appendix!

Exhibit 1 - While at the pioneer museum they had recreation beds from the ships.  I think I even mentioned these beds, but didn't put in the picture.  Anyway, this was the amount of space a family would have on the ship.  They didn't say anything about family size, so it sounds like you bought a 2 bed ticket and just put everyone in.  Our lodging lasted all of a minute, so we're still happy.

Exhibit 2 - In good ol' That-Place Nebraska the dinosaur at the gas station was dressed up!  Winry loves these dinosaurs, so there's a decent chance she'd have wanted a picture any way, but this time we couldn't pass it up!

Independence Day... and the Following Week...

Hello!  Well... last week I wanted to wait until the end of the day to write a blog post as I knew we'd have some good pictures from fireworks, etc. and I ended up waiting until the next Sunday... Oops.  Maybe it's a good thing though because not so much happened this past week.  Here we all are on the 4th of July over at the Cammack's house ready for some fireworks!  We had a great time, and as you can see, made new tie dye shirts!  America!

The girls have been getting into their old dance costumes and Winry has been loving it.  Let's just say we've had a LOT of dance recitals over the past two weeks!

Grayson has started sucking his thumb more.  It's not a ton during the day, and I guess I don't really know how often at night, but I do know he still doesn't put things in his mouth, so if he's doing anything it's his thumb.

I gave Grayson his bath and we had a great time together.  This is the first bath that I have given him I believe.  Post bath I had to make sure Grayson was very dry, which was a lot of work.

On Friday (July 2nd) my work had their 4th of July party.  We were all very excited to attend.  The girls brought a bike and scooter for the bike parade and were excited to roll into the party in style!

Speaking of style, look at Brooke's pose!  We had a lot of fun.  The girls got balloon animals, we had BBQ for dinner and we played around outside while waiting for it to get dark.  The festivities included riding bikes/scooters around SEAKR, a giant inflatable slide (Brooke loved it but was very wary to go down, Winry climbed up once and Monica had to go get her down), and playing in the grass.

Grayson had a blast with Monica's water bottle pulling the straw in and out.

When it got close to dark, I took the girls to the car to change into pajamas, and when we came back there was a firetruck (like, actual truck size) that was letting people look around at it and sit in the driver seat.  I took the girls over to see.

They both really liked it, but Winry didn't want to get all the way in.  She just stood on the little side thing.  We also got to see the helmets and suits and stuff packed in the back of the truck.

At 9:30 the firework show started!  Grayson woke up like a minute before, so I took him out of his car seat to see if he'd enjoy watching.  He seemed very mesmerized by everything, and enjoyed the fireworks very much.

Winry enjoyed the show, though it was too loud for her.  This was her first time seeing real fireworks since she was a baby, and when she was a baby she got the earmuffs.  We may have to invest in a second pair for next year.

Brooke had a wonderful time watching the fireworks, and also was somehow in much better lighting than the rest of us.

On Saturday (3rd) we wanted to make some tie dye shirts, so Monica headed to the store and Brooke really wanted to join her.  Winry wanted to do yoga, so I got to watch along with her.  I was pretty impressed with some of the poses she could do and how well she kept her balance.

I also made a trip to Walmart to get a new pool for the back yard.  I moved our play set over so the girls could slide in to the pool.  The hope with this little guy is that it's a lot easier to set up and clean up, so hopefully we won't leave it out for months and have it get all nasty inside.  Currently it's cleaned up in the garage, so we're already heading in the right direction.

On the 4th we got a picture together as a family after church.  I don't think I realized how matching and patriotic we looked until I saw this picture today.  Go us (and U.S.).

The plan for the day was to head to the Cammacks' for a BBQ, but we had to do some preparations before then.  When we got home Grayson was in a terrific mood, and couldn't stop laughing at Monica!

We wore our new tie dye shirts of course, and the whole family matched again!  Also... I like this picture... and I don't know what to say... the end.

There were lots of water balloons, which meant lots of water fun!  The girls had a blast with their friends.  Also, it rained off and on that afternoon, so things were a bit wet and cold when we started off.  Everyone had a lot of fun though.

Clara absolutely loves Grayson.  When we headed out for fireworks she came over to give him a big hug.  As you can see, Grayson went straight for her eye...  She didn't get hurt, so all's well that ends well.

All the kids got to do a sparkler.

And Monica helped Grayson!  I was able to get a pretty cool slow motion video of one of the fountains as well.

On Monday morning (5th, also, phew, finally made it to this week) we headed out for breakfast and went swimming at the outdoor pool.  We went to The Egg & U.  Swimming was fun after, though I did spend probably half the time rocking Grayson to sleep.  At least I got to be in the shade :).

One night I was laying on the floor in Grayson's room and Monica asked me to get him a diaper.  Standing up seemed way harder than blindly reaching into the drawer with my toes and trying to learn how to pick up a diaper, so naturally that was the path I chose.

Thursday was playgroup at the park, and Monica took the Cammacks' kids with her (it was her turn in a babysitting swap).  Here's everyone on a swing.  I think the most impressive part is that all the kids are swinging simultaneously despite there being only one pusher.

Grayson is a bit poundy lately, so we gave him a turn on the piano.  It took him a minute to get going, but then he was set!  Sweet, sweet baby music.

Grayson ate a strawberry this past week.  He's really trying to put his teeth to good use.  Oh, which reminds me, he has been sleeping TERRIB LY!  Worse than the last post.  I was up for like 3 hours one night walking around the basement with him before he calmed down and went back to sleep.  We've since started some sleep training, and it seems to be going pretty well.

Yesterday I was tossing a ball around for Jelly and she ended up on Winry's shoe.  The ball wasn't particularly close, so I'm not sure how this happened, but she just laid there hugging it, occasionally rubbing her face on it.

I spent most of the morning doing chores around the house, and then in the afternoon I went golfing.  I went 18 holes, so it ended up taking the rest of the day.  I had a lot of fun, and it was really beautiful out on the course.  I also learned that right now I'm a 9-hole kind of golfer.  While I did have fun the whole time, 18 holes was a bit too long for me, so I'll have to revisit the full course some time after I've gotten back into golf a bit more.

Phew, caught up!  I'm glad I didn't forget again this week, I don't know if I could handle a 3 week post.  I hope everyone has a safe and happy week ahead!  Till next week!