Happy New Year!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grayson had a serious dance break during his snack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  We had a great Christmas, and a fun week leading up.  Here we all are in front of the Christmas tree after we got home from church.  It's not every picture you get everyone facing the camera!  Trust me, this was the only one.

We had a cold snap hit on Thursday.  The high was -5 for the day.  I don't really know what the weather was like everywhere, but I do know the crazy weather was pretty wide spread.  Anyway, I don't remember a day before that things got this cold here. The times I headed outside, it reminded me a bit of Mongolia.  I even had to head into work for some laser testing.  I really love our van's heated seats!

We made and decorated Christmas cookies.  Of course you can't make cookies and not eat them right then and there, right?

Here are all the cookies we decorated... maybe minus the one Grayson is eating, and maybe a few more...  Anyway, we decorated the cookies during his nap.

I took the kids out to play in the snow on Christmas Eve.  We went to a park that was on the trail because Grayson wanted to go on a walk by the creek as well.  There are two parks, one on each side of this bridge, so we headed across to play.

After playing on the playground for a little, we went to the other park and played in the snow in the field.  Winry made a snowman all on her own.

And I was trying to roll up a huge snowball.  I made it to this size before Grayson was bored and had to head home.

While we were out the Smiths stopped by and dropped off PEZ dispensers for the kids.  They were very excited about them when we got home.

Christmas Eve evening we headed down to main street to see the decorations and drop off letters to Santa.  Here are the girls heading across the park towards Santa's mailbox.

There was also a little Santa's Workshop there to look at, which was fun for the kids.  There were a lot less decorations on Main Street, I don't know if it's just because it was so close and companies cleaned up their decorations early, but outside the park there was not much compared to usual.

And then of course, Christmas morning.  The kids were VERY excited to come down and see what was out.  We all had to wait for Grayson to wake up before we could go down.

We spent the morning opening presents and doing typical Christmas morning things.

Grayson got a bag of freeze dried yogurt puff snacks, and he ate the WHOLE bag for breakfast.  They must have been tasty!

We brought a little Christmas present with us to Church.  You remember how I said the Smiths brought over those PEZ dispensers?  Well, we prepared a PEZ dispenser for him!  I 3D printed his head, and Monica painted it.  He LOVED it!

After Church Grayson took a nap, and once he woke up we headed to Tyson and Tina's house.  We stopped at the airport on the way to pick up my dad too!  We had a fun time hanging out together and stayed there until it was already bedtime.  Oh, and we forgot to bring the bag with the kids pajamas in it... oops.

And when we got home on Christmas night, when Grayson got in bed, he found his flashlight!  He doesn't stay up too late fortunately, so no problems here.

We had a fun Christmas and week leading up.  I feel like I should have had more stories... but missing writing this post for a week seems to have muddled my memories. :) Merry Christmas!

The Christmas Cool

Things were not quite so crazy this week as they have been the last few.  It's nice to have a more relaxed week every now and again.  There was still plenty of fun to be had, especially this weekend, but we'll come to that later.  But here's a picture of Brooke and Winry with their friends Eleanor and Clara at the Nutcracker!

Grayson has been NEEDING things in his crib when he goes to sleep lately.  I think a babysitter (or Monica) sometime recently let him have some books in his bed, which isn't useful once all the lights are off.  Well, eventually he wanted the firefly book in his bed, and it has a flashlight with buttons that play animal noises, and now he's "ready" for bed every night.  The real issue is that he'll cry and cry until you help him find his flashlight, but it auto-turns off and I don't think he stays up that late looking at things, so I guess it's not a big deal.  Here's a picture I took of him looking at books while I sang him his bedtime songs.

Grayson re-fell in love with peppers this past week.  He saw them while Monica was making dinner and had to have them.  He bites into them like apples, and was enjoying the SO much!

So much so that his dinner plate ended up looking like this.  It's kinda hard to complain when he's eating so many vegetables, and we just cut up the rest of them that he didn't eat, so it wasn't a big waste either.  He was very excited about his pepper feast!

I picked up the girls from school one day this past week as Monica wasn't feeling the best, or was worried about ice on the sidewalks, or something.  Doesn't really matter why, I'm always happy to go if I can.  Anyway, one of the girls in Winry's preschool class just got a new puppy, and the puppy came to pick her up, so we got to see it.  It was amazingly calm for the swarm of kids around it.

Grayson was playing music on the xylophone and singing "Jesus wants me to wear sunscreen."  It's one of his bedtime songs I alluded to singing earlier.  Unfortunately when I started taking the video he stopped playing the xylophone.

On Friday Monica and I went to a Handel's Messiah concert.  I, as you'd guess, was there to listen, but Monica was there to SING!!  They ended up splitting up the choir, and Monica was in the back.  Technically she's in this picture, but I was pretty far away from her, so the picture's not great.  Anyway, she did amazing, and the concert was a great listen.  I did tell her after that I wished it wasn't so many solos, unless of course she was a soloist, and it sounds like in the future her concerts won't be.

Monica took the girls to see the Nutcracker here in Parker on Saturday afternoon.  The girls were SO excited, and they absolutely loved it.  They were telling me all about it the rest of the day, and they even practiced dancing the rest of the night.  They really want to try out to be a dancer in it next year, so they're planning to work extra hard and dance every day until then.  After the mini Nutcracker we saw at the tree lighting a few weeks back I'm not surprised that they had such a great time, and Monica said there were not behavior issues even though it was a full 2 or so hours long.

Last night we drove around and looked at Christmas lights again.  The kids also watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in the back.  I really wanted to see lights, and Winry was saying no, so I bribed her.  She wanted to keep practicing dance.  Anyway, it was a fun time and I'm really glad we got to go out.  We've got a few things to tick off between now and Christmas, and some of it I'm pretty excited for so I'll have to try to document things well to share with you... next week-ish.  No promise I'll be writing this up on Christmas day!  Have a Merry Christmas, and don't forget about Christ!  The gift given to all man, who brings us salvation.  I am so grateful for our redeemer, and for knowledge of the gospel and of a plan which can bring me back to live with my Heavenly Father with my family!  Have a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Parties

Christmas continues to be upon us, and it's GREAT!  We've had a fun week, which included both of my work Christmas parties.  The children's Christmas party was on Wednesday, and was as terrific as ever!  They've actually done a sign up for pictures with Santa, and it staggers people arriving and there's no longer a huge line for pictures!  Thanks COVID, some of your after effects are great.  Anyway, the kids were so excited to see Santa, and Grayson even went straight up to him, which is a turn around from last week.  My work gets a present for each kid as well, and they were all very excited about that.  Grayson got a stuffed dinosaur, Winry got a toy bird that tweets and records your voice and plays it back, and Brooke got a design your own water bottle with a bunch of gem stickers.  We had dinner there too, and all in all it was a fun night.

Earlier in the week our new nightstands and bed frame came.  Grayson helped Monica put together the nightstands, and then after dinner I put together the bed frame.  We don't have any final pictures of our room, but our new bed has storage drawers under it, so we were also able to get a bunch of stuff put in there.

On Tuesday, I believe, the girls made paper snowflakes.  Brooke also woke up a little sick on Tuesday and stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday.  Anyway, I think this is the first time the girls have made their own snowflakes, and they did great.  They both made several as they had people they wanted to give them too.

And here's Brooke calling it in sick.  I will admit, she seemed fine in the morning, but she spent basically the whole afternoon laying on the couch and did end up with a fever, so in the end I'm glad she stayed home.

Grayson is such a stinker sometimes.  This is a perfect example, and this one bothers me quite a bit.  Whenever he gets the chance he LOVES to dump Jelly's food into her water bowl... grrrr...  So we have to keep him closed out of our room all the time.

Jelly comes and naps with me during the work day most days still.  It's unique to see her crossing her legs though.  Also, one day she stayed down there sleeping until like 9:30 at night!  I had to go get her before I went to bed because we don't leave her in the basement at night, especially because the door gets sucked shut when the air turns on.

At dinner on... a night this week.  Probably Thursday, we had a CRUNCH off!  Brooke was crunching her cucumber as loud as she could, and Winry came in to challenge her with a carrot.  I'll let you be the judge of who's loudest.

And Grayson had some tea!  That boy likes it HOT!

Friday was my off day, and after Brooke went to school we all went grocery shopping together.  The kids were really good, so we rewarded them by heading to Costco and letting them play some NFL Blitz!  Winry definitely doesn't understand how to play, but she was having a blast.

Grayson got his hair cut, and to help him sit still we got out the old clip in high chair, and gave him a sucker to keep him still...er...  The haircut went pretty well, except that I had to keep washing hair off his sucker!  He finished his sucker after, and even found a handy holder.

Friday night we had family movie night, and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Grayson snuggled up with Brooke on the couch to enjoy the show.  I'm glad our kids all get along so well together and love each other so much.

Saturday we got out my old Teepee!  My mom made this for me for Christmas, and I got it sometime around when I was Brooke's age.  I don't remember if I was 6 or 7, but right in there.

I took the kids out to a park Saturday morning.  It was... somewhat warm, and we had a good time.  We spent a lot of our time on the swings, and the girls eventually started getting crazy.

Saturday night was my work Christmas party.  Instead of having it somewhere interesting, they just had it at an event center, and it was... not great...  The food wasn't quite out when we got there, and they had a lot of stations.  It was a serve yourself, "standing dinner" event.  After wandering around and trying things we ended up leaving because... well... there just wasn't anything to do.  We stopped at Pinkberry on the way home because 7:30 at night was apparently still too early to get desserts out.  We don't have a better picture than this, but look, there's a person sitting on that chandelier behind us.

And today the girls sang in church.  It's always so much fun to get to hear the primary sing!

And that's all my updates for this week.  Have a merry Christmas!