SNOWBALL!!

SNOWBALL!  Winry and I played in what was left of the snow yesterday!  It snowed quite a bit ago, but it's been really cold this past week so it's mostly stayed, at least in the shade.  That means most of our backyard is still good.  I guess Winry had really been wanting to go play, but no one ever took her out during the week, so at least we got there before the snow was gone!

Rewinding way back to Monday, Monica went swimming with Grayson and Brooke while Winry and I were traveling back home.  It's been a while since we went swimming, but she figured everyone would do great.  Turns out Grayson was not ready, which was surprising because he LOVES playing in the bath so much.  They slowly worked their way further and further into the water, and in the end Grayson had a great time!

Meanwhile, Winry and I were making our way around the SLC airport.  I knew they were redoing it, but this was my first time flying there since the update, and EVERYTHING has changed.  So it was cool to see the new airport, but it felt like I was flying into a new place.  On our way out, our gate was right by the Lego store, so we looked around a bit.

Grayson was glad to have me back.  We're bedtime buddies!  He loves Llama llama books right now!

On Saturday we spent the day playing around the house.  Grayson found a pen, and looked rather adorable. 

For snack time we gave him some cheese... like... all the cheese...  We cut him a piece and swapped out the block, but he did get a few bites off the block first.

Grayson is quite the inventor.  His water bottle doesn't have handles, so he found a solution.  He just tried to drop it into the snack holder, and then held them together.

Brooke had a birthday party that Monica took her to, and once Grayson went down for a nap it was just me and Winry, so we headed into the backyard.  Winry wanted to do some of everything, so we had to have a snowball fight (as seen in the first picture), I pulled her around on the sled, and we made snow angels.  Don't worry, Brooke didn't feel like she missed out or anything.  Turns out I forgot to put the sled back in the garage when we came in, so Brooke did a little front room sledding herself. 

And that's a wrap for this week.  Today was pretty warm, and we had stake conference.  I ended up listening to it on my phone while I walked around with Grayson cause he was having none of sitting quietly for 2 hours.  We're going to head out to enjoy the warm weather today!  Have a great week!
 

70th Birthday Surprise!

It's my Dad's 70th birthday!!  Winry and I flew out this weekend to surprise my dad!  All my siblings came out, and we did a great job keeping it under wraps because my dad had NO clue that we were all here!  It was a lot of fun, and we've been having a lot of fun this weekend.  I'll fill in more details when we get to the pictures.

Grayson has been loving this hat he found.  I don't remember where it's from anymore, but it's made it's way back out of hiding, and Grayson loves to wear it around.

Monday was, of course, Valentine's day.  I'm realizing that this post probably should have been titled something about that... but this weekend has been much more recent, and Valentine's feels like a last week thing at this point.  Anyway, Brooke had a Valentine's party at school and made a box to take to put them all in.  It turned out really awesome.

The kids all dressed in fun Valentine's clothes.  Here they all are together at the end of the day.  In other Valentine's news, we revealed secret Valentines in the morning and swapped some gifts.  I gave Monica flowers and got some treats for the kids as well.  We didn't end up getting a babysitter this year, so no other outings to report, but Monica made lasagna for dinner and it was DELICIOUS!  We definitely don't eat it enough.

A few days later we had some spaghetti, and Grayson loves to feed it to himself.  He's a bit.... messy, but at least he loves it!

Grayson loves to sit in Brooke's cheetah chair!  And the girls love to spoil him with ice cream!  I had an all day training for work, so I got home during bedtime and the kids were all up getting ready/playing together.

On Saturday morning Winry and I got up early to head to the airport!  Winry was super excited to be on our way.  I looked online before we left, and there was no parking available by the airport, but a shuttle lot was open.  They haven't had those open for a while, so out to the shuttle lot we headed.  When we got on the bus we were told there was "standing room only," but people were pretty willing to make space on the empty seats for Winry to sit.  Here she is riding to the airport!

We got to go through the precheck lane, so that was nice, and then it was on the train.  Winry loved it!  She climbed up on the end to sit and got to ride next to some other kids.  She loved the train, and tonight when I was putting her to bed asked if we could ride it again tomorrow when we head home.

We took the train past our gate and out to C so that we could get bagels from Einstein's.  In the end, Winry ate like... 3 bites of hers, so good thing we both got one instead of sharing.

Anyway, with bagels in hand we headed back to our gate.  On the train we found a shoe!  Poor kid/their parent!  Winry enjoyed watching this train ride out the back where she could see the tunnel.  Oh, it's also worth noting that in Winry's backpack she was carrying her portable booster seat AND her travel potty seat!

After a little wait, we got to board the plane.  While we were getting on, the flight attendants asked if we wanted to see the cock pit, and one of the pilots moved and let Winry "fly" the plane.  When she got in his seat I told her not to touch anything, and the pilot said "Nah, it doesn't matter, she can basically touch anything right now."

They let us take off our masks to get a picture up there as well.

The flight went well, and after it, we headed to Jerusha's house.  My mom found an excuse to leave so that she could come see everyone. After hanging around a bit we headed to Hire's Big H for lunch!  Here we all are sitting at the table.

Winry was having a great time singing songs with Oriah.

Meanwhile, back at home, Brooke decided she should take over doing laundry for the family.  She did all the laundry on Saturday, so she's taking her self appointed assignment to heart.  Looks like I'll get some laundry help when I get back!

This morning Grandma did Winry's hair after she got out of the tub, and then Winry was all ready for church!  After church we went to Niki's house for lunch and general hanging out.  When we got back to my parents house after, Winry needed a little time to do her thing on her own and played in the basement for a while before dinner.  We had a lot of fun out here, and we've still got a little time tomorrow morning before we need to head back home.

Meanwhile in Colorado, Monica took everyone to a park to burn off some energy (I tried to get Winry to a park, but she said no).  Looks like Brooke had a fun time playing with Grayson.   I know Brooke has been missing Winry while she's been on this trip.  The night before we left, Brooke was crying because she was going to miss Winry, and our first day out she even made Winry a present for when she got back.  Today we called and talked with Monica and Brooke and I could tell that Winry was really missing Brooke too.  It'll be nice to be back home, all together.

Oh, I'm glad I took a second to think if that was everything I had.  I was texting Monica pictures of Winry and my airport adventures.  After we got to our seats I sent a picture of us up in the cockpit, and Monica responded that she was cleaning pee of the floor.  She was changing Grayson's diaper, and he got up and ran away in the middle of it and ended up peeing all over the floor!  I responded that that was a hilarious story when you were on a plane about to take off for a few days!  The good news is that Monica said it was funny for her as well.

I think those are the main stories from this past week.  Hope everyone has a great week ahead!

Grayson's Week

Well, I didn't do this in purpose, but as I reviewed the pictures from this last week, they're almost ALL Grayson.  So I guess he gets a spotlight week, and I'll try to be a better picture taker next week!  I think it's funny that some weeks I put in basically one of every picture (i.e. when we get to the granola bars I took about 10 pictures, but put in my favorite), and other weeks I have so many pictures I completely leave things out!  I feel like the last several weeks have been slower on the picture front.  Things have been going well, just not a lot of really exciting things have been happening.  Anyway, our journey starts today, when Grayson didn't want to stay in the church building, so I was roving outside with him.  Here he is in his Valentines get up.

The girls both had make up dance classes this past week since their normal classes got snowed out.  Winry's was after work, so I was able to take her!  I brought Grayson and Brooke with me as well as Monica was at the chiropractor.  Anyway, there was a donation bin for a food drive at dance, and it was filled with granola bars.  After a while, Grayson didn't want to be in my lap any more, and in fact, was very interested in a granola bar!  I fed him all the snacks we had in the diaper bag, but it wasn't enough.  I tried to give him Pikachu, but he threw him in the granola bar box!  We managed to get through dance without eating any of their granola bars, but my oh my this little stinker!

I think I gave Grayson a few new foods this week.  One was at dance when I found a fruit leather in the diaper bag, which he loved.  Another day there was a rice cake out on the counter, he reached for it and I gave it to him.  It took him all day to eat it, but he eventually finished it with his dinner.

Since putting together my stance mat, I've been golfing a lot more at nights.  I'm also still working on my program that reads the Optishot data for use in other programs.  It's coming along very nicely.  I think I'll be at a pretty good spot in functionality this week, so maybe I'll post a video and pictures next week if I remember.  Anyway, Jelly LOVES my golf net.  Like, she immediately jumps into it as soon as I set it up.  This past week, she also started going crazy and trying to chew her way out or something.  Mind you, it's completely open behind her.  Anyway, I always have to close her in my room or the basement.  I did get her to sit in her cat hammock for a little by covering it in catnip, but then we progressed to this point, so I don't know that it was really better than usual.

Friday is "pizza" day and family movie night.  We actually had pizza this past Friday (it had been a while), and in honor of valentines day I heart-ed the dough! This was the second one, and it looked better than the first cause I got the top farther down.

That was a pretty long detour from Grayson, but fear not, we're back!  Yesterday we were all getting ready to head out, and Grayson needed his shoes on.  He walked over and sat on the bottom step of the stairs, and then Brooke put his shoes on him!  Monica told me that Brooke also got him dressed one day this past week. All by herself!! Monica thought Brooke was going to just pick his clothes, but they went into his room, Brooke closed the door, and when they came out Grayson was dressed for the day.  You know Brooke did a good job too, because I didn't put in a picture of Grayson dressed funny!

And finally, here's Grayson having breakfast this morning.  I just thought he looked really cute eating his strawberries.

Well, that was a pretty quick week.  I think that's all I've got though.  We've been doing secret valentines, so everyone has someone they do something special for each day.  It's been common to find a small pile of candy on pillows, or a made bed this past week.  We'll reveal who we've been serving tomorrow, and give them a gift, so you can at least look forward to that in next week's blog!  Have a great week!

Nolan came to play

Howdy y'all.  On Saturday Katie and Nolan came down to visit us.  Nolan has grown so much since the last time he came down and ate the leaves in our backyard.  The kids had a great time playing together, and Nolan LOVED Jelly.  He was very good with her, and mostly just wanted to give her toys to play with.

Grayson has been a super snuggler this past week.  He loves to lay his head down on basically any blanket he can find, and sometimes on my lap too.  He loves to climb into our blanket basket, which can be problematic because he hasn't figured out how to climb back out yet.  While we're on the topic of Grayson I want to share this video from the library!  They have a car there now where kids can play mechanic, and it looks like Grayson was lugging around the antifreeze can, and even filling the tires!

It's been pretty cold here this past week.  Naturally that means that Winry would still want to sleep in a night gown, but when she wakes up she's "freezing."  So one morning she came down with her hat on!  She looked SOO cute!

Winry helped Monica make some chocolate banana muffins this past week.  She got to lick her whisk and really seemed to enjoy it.  And once you've got that muffin batter in you what do you do? You DANCE!  The girls have really liked listening to the songs from Encanto lately, with the one in the video being their favorite.

It would appear we forgot to close the bathroom door sometime this past week, and that detail was not missed by Grayson.  It would seem he still loves to unroll some toilet paper.  I don't think he's done this for quite a while, but it appears to be a favorite.

Here's Jelly, blending in with the dinosaurs.  She was hard for me to spot as well at first.

While Katie and Nolan were here the egg of yarn balls got popped open.  Fortunately Grayson was in the mood to be a helper and put them away.  The balls were hidden in the egg because Grayson loves to bite them and rip them apart.

That's about all I've got for this week.  I hope everyone is doing well!

Snow Day(s)!

We had a few snow storms this past week!  Better late than never!  One of them was pretty big and kept getting worse throughout the day so Brooke's school became optional.  It was optional because everyone had already gotten in in the morning, but by afternoon they didn't want to make kids come in.  Brooke chose the high road and stayed home from school.  I think that's her first snow day ever!  All that said, the roads still weren't great in the morning.  Monica had to take Winry to the eye doctor, and the trip was much longer than usual.  Anyway, we didn't really get a good chance to go out until Saturday, and then I took all the kids out to play.  Good thing our back yard is mostly in the shade of our house, cause the front yard was cleared.  Grayson was a bit hesitant at first, but once he got going he loved it!

Grayson and I were busy playing on the floor on Monday.  There were some blankets out, and he would run over to them and bury his face in them, so I started to join him.  I was smart and put my hood on so he didn't pull my hair to get my head up, and we had a great time.

Grayson has learned a new direction lately, and it's backwards.  He crawls backwards, he walks backwards, but he doesn't look backwards...  Fortunately he's not gotten hurt yet (that I know of), and it's pretty fun to watch because he usually gets pretty excited.

Brooke continues to love reading, and loves to read to Grayson!  I love that the girls love to take care of Grayson so much, and love to play with him too.  Also, Grayson didn't like stories and reading very much even a few months ago, but he LOVES books now.  If he sees one he almost always brings it over to hand to someone so they can read it to him.

I had to go into work on Thursday so my computer could be updated.  They needed me on site for the update for some reason, and it was a long one.  It took about 3 and a half hours in total to get it done, and that whole time they were using and rebooting my computer, so I couldn't use it.  I was going to bring my laptop so I'd have something to do while I waited, but managed to forget it.  Well, the dock in the radiation drop-in desk is a USB C dock, so I figured I'd give my phone a try and it worked!  My phone has a "desk top" mode for when it's plugged into an external display, and the mouse and keyboard worked too.  Not exactly the setup I was going for, but at least I was able to get some stuff done on my phone while I waited.

Back to Saturday and we're out in the snow.  It snowed at least twice this past week.  Grayson isn't exactly at a stage where he can play on his own or be left alone in the snow.  He doesn't move great in his snow clothes, so if he tipped over face down... .well that would be bad.  So I had to keep close to him.  The girls still had a fun time, and when I couldn't, they pulled each other around in the sleds.  Also, it was cold enough and powdery enough that we couldn't make snow balls or snow men.  The girls had fun sledding and making snow angels.

I took Grayson over to the snow table to see if he'd like it as much frozen as thawed.  Good news, he did!  Specifically he really liked rocking one of these waterfall toys back and forth.  Eventually we started to get cold and came in for hot chocolate.  I was really glad to see that Grayson still felt warm everywhere, even his hands which were in the snow in what I thought were rather thin mittens.

Saturday afternoon I finished a golf platform I've been working on.  My Optishot is great, but it just sits on the ground which makes me worried about hitting it really hard.  Now I've got a platform the same height that it sinks into, so it's much less nerve racking to use!  I've also been working on some custom software for it, but I'll talk about it more later.  Anyway, last night I got my golf setup together to give it a try, and Monica even joined me.  We had a great time, and Monica really enjoyed getting back to the links!  We didn't have a lot of time, so we'll have to play some more this upcoming week.

Today at church when the sacrament came I tried to quickly grab a piece of bread for Grayson so he didn't stick his hand in to get one.  It wasn't that I wasn't fast enough, more that he just didn't care.  He ended up going for his own, and pulled the biggest piece out!  I know it was the biggest piece because it was about 4 inches long!  I couldn't believe it when he lifted it out, and I couldn't help laughing either!

Alright, that's all my cool news for now.  Till next week!

Winry's Birthday Party

We finally made it!  After a COVID scare turned false, and an over weekend trip to San Diego we were finally all home and healthy and ready for Winry's birthday party!  Saturday was yesterday (that's right, I'm writing this on time finally) so there's obviously other stuff to talk about, but not much.  Monica's and my phones had really important stuff to do in our pockets, so we didn't get many pictures this past week, but that's okay because we got pictures of Winry's party!  Here's almost everyone together!  Zoey (from our ward) and Aurelia (from next door) were feeling shy and didn't want to come in.  Thanks to everyone who made it, and I hope your kids had a great time!

Monica has been taking walks with the kids, and Grayson has been loving his blue car!  The girls really love to push him in it too.  Brooke will push him along for a whole walk, and yesterday Winry was pushing him back and forth in front of our house.

In other news for the past week, Monica got a yarn fuzzy ball (pom pom) maker from a gift swap on her San Diego trip, and so we've been making them all week.  However, Grayson got to them, and... well... let's just say he's not allowed to have them any more.  Fortunately he didn't actually swallow any of the yarn, just pulled it apart.  Grayson also caught the beat one morning and started dancing.  He was SO concentrated.  Stomping a foot is hard work.  Lastly, while technically after Winry's party, this just seems like a good place to drop my final video without a picture.  Jelly and I were playing together through her cat tower.  Jelly loves to play like this, and while I'm working if I get up to go to the bathroom she'll run to the opposite side of the basement so we can play.  I just poke my head around a corner so she can see me, and then if I stay hidden too long she'll come charging to get me!

On Saturday we started off the party with some coloring pages while we were waiting for everyone to arrive.  Once everyone was here we played a game where Monica wrapped a present a lot of times, and then while music was playing they passed the present around.  If you were holding it when the music stopped you got to open a layer, and eventually they got to the middle where there was a Pokemon card for everyone!  After that we had lunch, and a bit more coloring happened.

Then the kids got to play Pokemon Snap!  One at a time they'd sit in Grayson's little blue car, and I'd slowly push them around the room and they'd take pictures of Pokemon.  The girls had colored a bunch of Pokemon pictures, but the real game was that I had attached pictures to motors and the Pokemon would randomly pop out from behind things.  It was a big hit!

I gave the kids my actual camera to take pictures with, and the results were varied.  There are some pictures that look like they're kind of supposed to be of people in the room, some are blurry cause the camera was moving too much, and of course, a full set of finger tip pictures!  The important thing is they all had fun.

After Pokemon Snap, we opened presents.  Everyone was very excited to see what Winry was getting.  I especially like this picture because you can see how most everyone is watching what's going on, but Iris is behind Winry checking out the piano she just opened!

After presents, we all sang Happy Birthday to Winry.  Pikachu was singing along with us as well, though you can't hear it.

After we sugared all the kids up, it was time to shake and wiggle!  I think we did at least 4 different freeze dances.  The kids were having a blast and just kept dancing until it was time to head home.  It seemed like everyone had a great time!

To round out the day I went on a run, and the kids played in the front yard with the neighbors for basically the rest of the day.  Brooke lasted longest in the cold, and when I went out to check on her she was just chatting with Julia, Aurelia's mom, who was out working on her garden.  I think that rounds out our week!  Hope you have a great one coming up!