Darr Family Blog » One Week Closer

Weekly Happenings: We’ve made it through another week! We’re now one week closer to my favorite time of year (I love, fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas). It was another typical week in the Darr household. Distance learning, toy playing, family time, chores, and the like. Oh, and we also celebrated Paul’s birthday. 🙂 It was a small family celebration (as they have been due to the pandemic). I made cheesecake (Paul likes it better than regular cake), we grabbed food to bring home from one of our favorite burger joints, and had him open his presents (a new vice and an angle grinder). Even though we didn’t do our normal celebration with friends, it was still fun.

The Weekly Weather: It’s been slightly cooler than last week, which is nice. Fall in San Antonio isn’t like fall in other parts of the country, but it does cool down a smidge, at least.

What Paul’s Been Doing: He has been busy with work and the like. He does have a training to attend for work, but luckily, it’s virtual, so he’ll be doing the training at home (thank goodness he has a dedicated office space).

What Sarah’s Been Doing: I had a full week of piano students, helped Joseph with school, kept Abigail entertained, and even managed to do a little bit of cleaning every day so that by the end of the week, the house is pretty clean (I tidy every day, but it had been a little while since I’d really cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, etc.).

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He got through another week of school. He’s been doing so well with everything being on the computer. I was just thinking that if there had to be a situation where kids couldn’t go to school, at least it happened during this generation. The technology we have has made it possible for kids to still get their education, even if they can’t be in the classroom. Oh, and he was so excited that his Halloween costume came in the mail that he wore it all day yesterday, even during his Zoom meetings (his teacher was fine with it and his classmates got a big kick out of it).

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been quite the ham this week. She’s got some new catch phrases: “Oh, brother!” “Alright, alright, alright” (in an exasperated tone), and “Oh…my…gosh”. She has also started pretending a lot more with her toys. Just this morning, she told me how Mickey had to save Minnie from a witch (her stuffed bear), and that Snoopy and Woodstock had to fly in their rocket (she has a Happy Meal toy that is Snoopy and Woodstock sitting on a rocket) to help Mickey save her. This age can be challenging, but it is also so much fun!

This Week in Pictures:

I really had to zoom in to get a good shot of this guy (he was probably between 2-3 inches long). I left him be since he was probably cleaning out any bugs on my plants that I don’t want there anyway.

Showing me the grass she picked, haha. I was fine with it because it was actually a weed and not grass.

Enjoying the fact that now our trees are big enough to actually give off a good amount of shade.

I can’t believe how high my tomato plant decided to get. I had thought about trimming it back (Paul had already trimmed back most of the rest of the kind of dried out branches from when it had gotten really hot during the last bit of August and we’ve found that if he does that, we usually can get one more round of healthier, fresh growth before it completely dies over the winter), but it had 6-7 tomatoes on it!

One morning, I went in to wake her up. As I was picking out clothes for her, she got out of bed, dragging her favorite blanket behind her. When I came out of her room, I saw this. She told me to go away because she wasn’t ready to get up yet, haha.

Normally I make a cheesecake that is twice this size, but since it was just us this year, I cut the recipe in half.

We got him a new vice and an angle grinder.

I’m pretty sure these are in the same family as morning glories, but I find it hilarious how they’ve decided to grow through our neighbor’s fence and up and around the stake that we keep next to our compost bin (we use it to smash down plants and other compost materials and then to also stir the contents of the bin so that they can better break down into soil). We probably won’t be able to keep these ones around, though…they spread like crazy and will work to take over our yard before too long.

Joseph’s costume for this year (built in mask…take THAT, stinkin’ pandemic). Abigail is still going to be Vampirina (she was rather emphatic about it), but Paul was able to find a kid mask with vampire fangs on it (he also got an adult one for me to wear when I take them trick-or-treating in the hopes that if we match, Abigail will want to keep hers on…we haven’t had much luck with her keeping masks on). They should be here by the end of the month.

Striking a cool ninja pose. He also really liked the fact that the costume came with all sorts of weapons. 😀

Bonus Video: Abigail’s primary teacher dropped by with a note and some Pop Rocks candy. Since neither kid had ever tried them, I knew I needed to film it. After I finished recording, Abigail decided that they were okay one at a time (as opposed to trying a lot at once, which she did in the video). Joseph really liked them, though.