Darr Family Blog – The place to follow the Darr Family

Time’s Just a’Flyin’

Weekly Happenings: This week just flew by! Monday was a holiday, which is probably what made the rest of the week seem like it went by so fast. We didn’t really do too much out of the ordinary. Joseph did participate in his school’s annual fun run (a fundraiser) which he enjoyed doing with his friends. That kid ran over 30 laps (which is why I never do a per lap donation, haha), which equaled out to just over two miles. That’s a lot for little legs! We were also “boo’ed” which means someone left a Halloween bucket full of candy and trinkets as a surprise on our doorstep with instructions for us to continue the fun by “boo-ing” two other people.

The Weekly Weather: A mixed bag, as usual. Some cold weather, some warm weather, and some in-between (not to mention the cold mornings followed by the warm afternoons).

What Paul’s Been Up To: Work, home stuff, church stuff, etc. Our lives are pretty routine right now.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Taxiing kids around, typical home stuff, and typical church stuff. Not too much out of the ordinary for me.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: I already mentioned the fun run. I do feel the need to add that he is extremely patient and sweet with his little sister. He is such a good big brother!

What Abigail’s Been Up To: One of her new things is when she hands something to someone, she’ll say, “Here ya’ go, pal!” Maybe there is such a thing as too much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, haha. She has also taken to yelling, “No, ma’am!” at me when she doesn’t like me telling her to stop doing something…or even better yet, she’ll put her hand up and yell, “Stooooooooooooooooooooooooop!” (I don’t think I’m exaggerating the number of vowels in that, either…I have a hard time keeping a straight face when she does that, to be honest).

This Week in Pictures:

I went upstairs to fold laundry (I was gone for maybe 15 minutes). I came down and found this. 🙂

A friend of mine passed along some boots for Abigail.

To say she was excited would be an understatement.

If anyone can rock sparkly pink animal print cowboy boots, it’s this girl. 😀

I noticed a couple of slots were accidentally skipped (it’s sometimes hard for the parent volunteers to keep up with the kids) and one was marked twice…so I think he ran either 33 or 34 laps.

I found them these matching shirts when I was on my way up to Waco last week.

I love when my photos app does these then-and-now pictures.

I think I’ll caption this as “Serious Pokemon trainer and his sweet little sidekick”.

These fun glasses were in our “Boo” bucket.

A Girls’ Day and Some Family Fun

Weekly Happenings: A couple of fun things happened this week. One fun thing was that I got to go to Waco for the day with a friend of mine from college who was in town. Paul was able to stay home from work and take care of the kids. It was so much fun! Another fun thing that we did was take a family trip to the zoo this morning. It was nice and cool (more about that in a bit), so a lot of the animals were out, which was nice. 🙂

The Weekly Weather: It was warm for most of the week, but then dropped 40 degrees between Thursday and Friday…uh, yeah. Today was nice with it being in the high 50s for the morning and now it’s around 70. It is supposed to get back up into the 90s in a few days. It’s really all over the place!

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been mainly busy with the typical stuff: work, home stuff, and his calling at church.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I really enjoyed my outing on Wednesday. It was nice to get away (and know that the kids were in Paul’s very capable hands). I didn’t do too much out of the ordinary, otherwise.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He had a good week at school and had a great time at the zoo today. 🙂

What Abigail’s Been Up To: Mainly just keeping us all on our toes. One morning, I set Joseph’s pancake on the table to cool so he could eat it on the way to school (now, before you get too impressed, just know that I buy frozen pancakes…it takes 30 seconds to nuke one of those in the microwave which makes for a quick breakfast for the boy, haha). Abigail saw it sitting there, went over to the stairs, and yelled up, “Joseph! Come get your diiiiinerrrr!” I suppose she’s seen me do that a few times, haha.

This Week in Pictures:

When she saw her Halloween shirt on top of her pile of shirts that I had just put in her drawer, she was insistent on wearing it.

These had been sitting on the back porch (Paul had pulled them from the garage when he put the shelves up and hadn’t thought of another use for them right away, so he set them on the porch). When Paul thought of a use for them, he pulled them in and went to get some cleaning supplies to wipe them down with. He came back to find that she had climbed up here. He cleaned all the rest of the shelves and waited until she climbed back down before cleaning the last shelf. I made sure she had a good bath that night, haha.

Waco trip: Selfie with the Silos in the background! I teased my friend about not getting her whole face in there, but she said she mainly wanted to make sure she got us AND all of the silos. 🙂

We got someone else to take a picture for us. It’s only about 180 miles for me, but it’s about 1,240 miles for Milena!

A beautiful fall display outside of the market.

I loved this column with books actually incorporated into it. Don’t worry, most of them looked to be obsolete (out-of-date law books and the like).

There were several of these painted brick signs scattered around. I loved the black-and-white contrast.

Probably one of the most delicious cupcakes I’ve ever had. It was a lemon lavender cupcake. The cupcake was vanilla with a hint of lemon and real lavender and then it had lemon buttercream frosting.

The Dr. Pepper Museum (Dr. Pepper was started in Waco, TX)! Unfortunately, the museum itself was closed for a private event.

However, the girt shop and soda fountain were still open and they had a couple of cool displays. We both also got an old fashioned soda where they first add the syrup and then mix it with the carbonated water. It was so good!

I liked this vintage sign. Check out that phone number!

After we looked at the Dr. Pepper stuff, we drove over to the suspension bridge (which I forgot to get a picture of). It was built in 1870 and was even used to transport cattle across the Brazos river. This is a cool bronze statue of a vaquero (Mexican cowboy) as well as some bronze Texas longhorns.

Across from the vaquero was the American cowboy with some more longhorns.

My main souvenir from Magnolia Market: some colored glass and some (false) foliage.

Walking home from taking Joseph to school one of the mornings this past week provided me with a breathtaking view.

Thursday night, Abigail decided it would be good to be awake from 2:30-5:15ish. Consequently, she didn’t really want to be up and have to take Joseph to school.

She also fell asleep on the way to get Joseph from school.

They seemed to really enjoy the cooler weather.

There we go! They’re both looking at the camera AND smiling!

They brought back the bronze elephant! When they expanded the elephant enclosure (which was much needed), they had to take it out. That was a couple of years ago. We were happy to see it reappear.

We have so many pictures of Joseph on this thing. It was fun to be able to get a picture of Abigail on it, too.

The cute shirt I got from the Dr. Pepper museum. I’ve found that as I get older, comfort is a really important quality when it comes to clothing. If I find something cute AND comfortable, I’m pretty excited.

Bring on the Spooks!

Weekly Happenings: I am so excited that it’s October. I love the approach of the holiday season, I love that the weather is finally starting to cool down, and I love Halloween and all the fun things associated with it. I added the Halloween decorations to the fall ones that I already had out and Abigail once again has her beloved pumpkin buckets (she also loves Halloween, apparently). It’s so fun seeing all the holiday fun through the eyes of my children.

The Weekly Weather: It’s cooled down a smidge, but it’s still rather warm. I’m looking forward to the end of next week where it’s supposed to legitimately cool down to the 70s. 😀

What Paul’s Been Up To: Work, getting adjusted in his new calling at church, home life stuff (the lawns aren’t going to mow themselves), and the like.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Pretty much my typical things: kid chauffeur, house-tidier, keeper of kids’ happiness, piano teacher, and chef extraordinaire (ha!).

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He had another great week at school. He loves telling me stories about what his different teachers do or say (art, computer, PE, music, etc.).

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She has been her loveable self this week. There were a couple of nights where she woke up and I ended up on the floor in her room (well, one was her waking up at 4:30, so we were just up for the day and she ended up crashing for a bit in the early afternoon), but I think that what we thought were allergies was really a cold because just as she started feeling better (less sneezing and congestion), Paul and I both started feeling poorly. *sigh* Luckily we’re all almost better at this point (it didn’t seem to hit Joseph…maybe that germ-factory of a school he attends has boosted his immune system, haha.

This Week in Pictures: