- Darr Family Blog - https://darr.org -

Hello, 2018!

Weekly Happenings: I can hardly believe I typed that year. It’s a little surreal when I start to think just how long ago certain things (high school, getting married, etc.) were. Next year, Paul and I will mark our 20th high school reunion! O.o Anyway…this past week marked ringing in the New Year (with a lot of noise from our neighborhood, as always) and the end of the winter break. We tucked all the Christmas stuff away, started back to school (for Joseph, at least…Paul starts up again tomorrow), and tried to stay warm, haha.

The Weekly Weather: As I eluded to, it’s been downright cold. There were a couple days there where we barely made it above freezing! Thankfully it’s starting to warm up a bit to more average winter temperatures (50s and 60s). This SoCal-transplanted-Texan couldn’t handle it when I would go outside and the air would actually make my face hurt, haha.

What Paul’s Been Up To: He soaked up his last week of his break from school by keeping busy with work, family time, and taking down all the Christmas decorations at all the entrances to our neighborhood (luckily take-down always goes a bit faster than putting them up).

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Not too much, other than getting back into the swing of things (mainly that 5:15 alarm). I did get to play the piano for a baptism yesterday (which is always a fun experience).

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He started back to school, attended a friend’s birthday party, and (drum-roll, please) lost another tooth!

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She continues to improve on crawling on hands and knees (I think I noticed some calluses developing on her toes…it took me a bit to realize what they were and how they got there), loves to bounce up and down whenever there’s music of any type playing, is really into growling (this week, anyway), is figuring out waving, has started to “sing” when she hears other people singing (mainly at church), and has figured out how to clap. It just might be one of the cutest things she’s done so far. She gets the biggest grin on her face when she does it!

This Week in Pictures:

[1]
She likes to empty the dress-up box one item at a time. This stormtrooper mask is probably her favorite thing to look at, though.
[2]
One last shot of one of my favorite Christmas decorations before it got tucked away with the rest. I don’t know how long ago my mom gave me this lighthouse, but I’m so grateful it has survived our multiple moves!
[3]
Photographic evidence of just how cold it got!
[4]
And yet more photographic evidence, haha. Yes, that does say 21 degrees on there…brrrrrr!
[5]
The smile makes up for the mess. 😉
[6]
Paul was holding his phone in just the right way so that it looked like the kids were taking their own pictures. This was on our “family date night” to IHOP (because Abigail really, really loves pancakes). 😀
[7]
Joseph loves to ham it up for the camera.
[8]
I sure do love his fun personality!
[9]
Every once in a while, I get a hankering for chocolate chip cookies. Thanks to some advice Paul gave me a couple years back, I always keep the ingredients on hand. 😀
[10]
A new gap! His tooth had been loose for such a long time (to the point that he’d show us how he could move it just by pushing air out from behind it, haha) and yesterday it literally fell out on its own while we were sitting and watching TV (he was probably mindlessly wiggling it back and forth with his tongue). We were just relaxing and all of a sudden he got a weird look on his face, reached into his mouth, and popped it into his hand.

Bonus Video: This is not a video I took. It was taken by a person who had a drone that recorded the crazy fireworks that go off in our area (in this case, a neighborhood that’s just a couple miles from ours) during New Year’s Eve.