Darr Family Blog – Page 118 – The place to follow the Darr Family

525,600 Moments So Dear

Weekly Happenings: This past week was a fun one (as it ought to be, being the week before Christmas). There were parties (a Relief Society one and a kindergarten one), Zoo Lights, and a birthday, of course!

The Weekly Weather: It’s been a mix. It’s been mostly cool (and sometimes cold), but we had some dry days and some rainy days. It’s been nice to have a break from the heat. 🙂

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been enjoying having his evenings (and the weekend) homework-free. He installed both the baby gates that he made and has, of course, had a lot of Dad-and-son time with Joseph.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I attended my Relief Society Christmas party. It was fun to have an evening of relaxed conversation and munching on treats (it was a white elephant gift exchange and cookie bar). I also made bread bears for Paul’s home teaching families. It felt good to be able to continue on a tradition that Mom started many, many years ago.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He had a Christmas party for his kindergarten class. I didn’t go (Abigail was fighting a tiny tummy bug and really needed her nap), but I know he had a good time. He came home with some fun treats and presents from his sweet teacher.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She fought off what was luckily just a 24-hour bug just in time to enjoy her (insert drum roll here) first birthday! I am truly having a hard time believing that it’s been a year! We went out to eat (at IHOP so she could have one of her favorite foods: pancakes), went to the zoo to see the Christmas lights one last time, and then came home for presents and cake. It was a fun night. Her personality continues to develop. She has waving down (and will do it whenever she hears the words “hi” or “bye”), loves to dance (mainly bouncing) to music, and loves to scoot around to see what mischief she can get into. The other day, she caught sight of me as she came ’round the bookcase in our room (I was heading into our closet to hang some clothes up). I heard her shriek and turned around to see her peeking out from behind the bookcase. Every time I saw her face, I would say, “boo!” and she would laugh, pull her head out of sight and then put it back into sight. It was the funnest game of peek-a-boo, ever.

This Week in Pictures:

A present from our Relief Society presidency. The beads spell out the word “peace” in Morse code. The holidays can be a bit chaotic. It’s nice to have a tangible reminder of the peace that is possible if only we seek it out.

The cookies I brought to the Relief Society Christmas party. They’re a citrus shortbread cookie with candied cherries on top.

Abigail trying to figure out this set of wheels. 🙂

Paul said she was up on her knees at one point, trying to figure out how to get on.

Joseph’s kindergarten ornament: a plastic (thank you!) bulb with his hand print. The fingers were made into snowmen. The back has the year and his name.

His teacher gave each student a book with…

…a picture of their class the day after we got snow (so there was still snow on the playground) and a sweet message. I seriously almost started to cry.

The decoy boxes (usually she loves to play with boxes) are ALMOST as entertaining as trying to get to the ornaments.

She really loves blueberry pancakes (and puffs, which are pictured here…since she had already practically inhaled her pancake).

Bread bears and some strawberry preserves for Paul’s home teaching families.

We sat on a stationary bench. She loved the lights and animals…and taking pictures with Momma, of course.

Paul stayed with Joseph, who picked his favorite spot.

A while back, one of the hippos at our zoo unfortunately got sick and passed away. When we went to see the remaining hippo on Friday night, we found out that they had just gotten a new hippo (from a zoo in New Mexico), who happened to be the grandson of the hippo they still had. There was also a cute sign on the glass that said they got a hippopotamus for Christmas.

Opening her present from Uncle Jason, Aunt Saira, and Luna…

Joseph also picked out a different Minnie Mouse for her when we were at the mall earlier this past week.

There’s a sweet sister in our ward who is kind of like a surrogate grandma for the kids. She got Abigail this puppy that is interactive (and has different levels of difficulty depending on age).

Abigail’s cake. I found a mix for a mini cake (which was perfect for our family) and decided at the last minute to draw a butterfly on there.

“This plate can double as a toy, right?”

Playing with birthday presents is the best!

Another Big Development

Weekly Happenings: We didn’t do too much out of the ordinary this week. We just sort of puttered along, doing our routine stuff. We’re gearing up for the end-of-year festivities (Abigail’s birthday and then Christmas). It’s hard to believe that in a couple weeks it will be 2018!

The Weekly Weather: It’s actually remained on the cooler side (I think we wore sweatshirts/jackets every day).

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s finished up school for the semester and has a short break. He took Joseph to see the new Star Wars movie on Friday night. They both enjoyed the father-son outing immensely.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I’ve been chasing around a little baby girl who is able to scoot around rather proficiently. She’s never where I leave her for long. Other than that, it’s been pretty much the same routine.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s been enjoying school. His teacher has been doing a “Holidays Around the World” where they learn about all the different holidays that are celebrated around the world during this time. As mentioned before, he really enjoyed going to see Star Wars.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s decided that baby food in general (and being spoon-fed) is for the birds. This caused some minor scrambling to be done on my part to put together some foods that would be okay for her to feed herself. She seems to really enjoy the new independence. Another thing she’s started to do is to pull herself up on more things. Also, just as I was beginning to type this blog entry, I looked up in time to see her crawl on hands and knees for a little bit before transferring back to the “low-crawl” that she seems to favor. She’s getting so big! Oh, one cute story: I told her that I loved her and she (very seriously) answered with “Ah-rawr”. I guess she was channeling her inner-dinosaur,

This Week in Pictures:

All dolled up for church…baby boots are pretty cute!

She really loves to sneak into the cabinet and get at the video game controllers. She’ll never go for it if I’m watching her.

Paul has this fun feature on his phone that inserts graphics into pictures as you’re taking them.

I’ve lost count on how many years we’ve had this snowman. One of Paul’s former foster moms gave it to us. Abigail really likes it because it lights up and plays music.

The inaugural “I feed myself” meal: rotisserie chicken, rice, cooked apples, and cooked carrots (both which thankfully come pre-cooked…thank you, Gerber).

Discovering she can reach the train tracks.

Discovering that the train tracks come apart…it was so funny. She’d pull a piece off and look at it with a surprised look (almost like she was saying, “Wow, how did that happen?”) and then almost immediately give me a “This is okay, right, Mom?” look. 🙂

He still likes to hang out with me even if he’s playing on his tablet.

An {almost} Christmas Miracle

Weekly Happenings: This past week was kind of ho-hum until something amazing happened on Thursday…it snowed! Honest-to-goodness real snow. It wasn’t a whole lot (maybe an inch…at most), but it was enough. 🙂 I had seen the possibility appear on my weather app, but didn’t say anything to Joseph (I didn’t want to get his hopes up). Then, right before putting the kids to bed, I peeked out the window and saw big, fat flakes falling, We hurried up and got bundled up to go play. Joseph kept saying that his birthday wish came true (I had forgotten, but once he said that, I remembered that after he blew out his birthday candle, he told me he wished for it to snow…no specific time…just snow). It was pretty fun. It even stayed well into the next day before melting completely mid-afternoon. In order to preserve the Christmas-y feeling, the next night we went back out to the zoo to see the zoo lights again. It was fun to go when it was cold (the first time, we were practically sweating, which felt kind of silly, haha).

The Weekly Weather: We had the full gamut this past week. Warm weather (it was 82 degrees two days before the day we got snow, haha), rain, snow, and then slightly warming back up. Texas weather is a bit crazy!

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been busy finishing up his semester at school (the last day is this next Friday). It will be nice for him to have a short break.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Not much, other than my regular stuff.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He had a good week at school (including a fun reading party put on by the librarian that was for kids who had brought in a certain amount of completed reading logs). He loved playing in the snow (especially getting to have a snowball fight with Paul), and loved getting to go back out to the zoo to see the lights.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s swiftly approaching her first birthday in just a couple of weeks. She is starting to figure out how to wave, has experimented with “whispering” (sometimes she’ll babble at me in a hushed voice if I whisper to her), and is beginning to use things like furniture and boxes to pull herself up onto her knees. She’s also gotten pretty fast at scooting around with her “low crawl” (especially on the wood floor).

This Week in Pictures: