Darr Family Blog

Weekly Happenings: This past week held a couple of big events, both on the same day, oddly enough. Thursday was our fifteenth wedding anniversary (it’s crazy to think it’s been that long). It was also Meet the Teacher where Joseph got to meet his new teacher for this upcoming school year. She seems really great and we’re all excited for the new year to begin tomorrow.

The Weekly Weather: The week started out pretty normal. Towards the end of the week, we started seeing the effects of Hurricane Harvey. It pretty much ravaged the coast, around Corpus Christi, Rockport, and Port Aransas. Houston is experiencing some flooding. So far, we’ve only experienced some gusty and rainy days. Rain is in the forecast for the next few days as a continued result. Hopefully we won’t experience any flooding out here, but we’ll see.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Not too much out of the ordinary. He had a good week at work and even got off a bit early on Friday since they wanted everyone to get home before the storms hit.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Other than having a dentist appointment, this was a pretty average week for me, too. One fun thing I did was to put up our fall decorations. I know it’s early, but I couldn’t wait any longer, haha. I love the holidays!

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s enjoyed one last week of summer vacation and was super excited to find out that a couple of his pre-k friends will be in his kindergarten class.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s still fighting the effects of the antibiotics from her bout with salmonella, but seems to slowly be getting them out of her system. She’s pretty much her happy, smiley self again. She has been experimenting more with sounds (usually at an increased volume, haha) and has shown interest in playing peek-a-boo (though I’ve learned that if you hide for more than five seconds, she forgets you’re still there and is genuinely startled when you appear again). Oh, and she also officially hit the eight month mark. It’s hard to believe that in four months we’ll be celebrating her first birthday.

This Week in Pictures:

I’m breaking from my regular format for a blog post. We took a quick trip to California, because my dad’s health hasn’t been too great. We feel blessed to have been able to have a good visit with family and to have had some fun times as well. We mostly stayed at my parents’ house to visit, but we did take a trip to Knott’s Berry Farm (and Paul also took Joseph to go do some miniature golf). Right before we left, we found out that the tummy bug we though Abigail had was really salmonella (most likely picked up from the swings at our park…but it really is a shot in the dark as to where exactly she contracted it), so we were giving her antibiotics right before leaving as well as all throughout the trip. That was a challenge, but we made it through! One special memory from the visit: my dad was kind of floating in and out of lucidity while we were visiting, but right as we were getting ready to get on the road to go home, he told us he wished we were staying longer and then asked if we had prayed yet (I remember that all growing up, we always said a prayer for safety any time we went on a road trip). We hadn’t, so he said a prayer for our trip. He didn’t lose his train of thought at all during the prayer. It touched my heart so deeply to hear my daddy praying for our safety, as well as thanking Heavenly Father for the time we had been able to enjoy together. I’m so grateful for eternal families! Now…ready for the deluge of photos? 😉

Our Trip in Pictures (they are all mixed together since there were too many for me to feel like organizing):

 

Weekly Happenings: It’s surreal to realize that it’s already August. This year is just flying by! We didn’t do very much this past week. Abigail has been fighting a tummy bug, so we mostly stayed home. Towards the end of the week, when we felt she was no longer contagious (still icky diapers but no fever) we ventured out for a couple short trips to have dinner out and run some errands. It made Abigail less fussy to be out, so I’m guessing she was getting slightly cabin-feverish.

The Weekly Weather: It’s been mostly sunny. There was one big rainstorm that came through. The humidity and warmth stuck around rain or shine (though it did get a teeny bit cooler when raining).

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been busy with work and home life. His two big projects were draining and flushing out the water heater (a must-do every six months or so, with how hard of water we have out here) and taking down our pool since the grackles (similar to crows) were turning it into a birdbath. We had a cover on it, but the cover has small holes in it as part of the design (to let in a small amount of air, I suppose) and they figured out how to land on the cover to make their weight cause more water to come through the holes. They made a thorough mess. Dumb smart birds, haha.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I spent most of the past week tending to the sickie and making sure the well one didn’t get too bored since we were stuck at home.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He mainly spent this past week entertaining himself while I took care of Abigail. I’m so lucky he’s good at that!

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been pretty manageable, considering. I took her to the doctor to confirm that it was just a tummy bug and not an ear infection or anything else on  top of it. Here’s to hoping that we don’t have too much longer to deal with this thing! One thing we’ve discovered is that she likes to sit in the walker and look out the storm door. She also really likes to watch Baby Einstein videos. There was one evening when I was holding her and watching a show on TV. She started getting fussy, so I switched it over to Baby Einstein. It was an immediate reversal of behavior. Methinks she’s becoming quite the master manipulator. 😉

This Week in Pictures: