Darr Family Blog

Weekly Happenings: This past week had a fun event: Joseph was able to take part in a musical performance with his class, the other pre-k classes, and the kindergarten class. It was about plants and the pre-k kids played the weeds. 🙂 He had a blast! The other fun thing happened this morning, when he discovered that the Easter Bunny had come for a visit. 🙂 Other than that, it was a pretty typical week.

The Weekly Weather: It was a mix of sunny and rainy, which is pretty typical for this time of year. It led for an adventure when I had to pick Joseph up from school and it started to pour down rain. I had brought an umbrella, but since the rain was coming down sideways, it only shielded us a bit. A friend of mine came along as I was trying to get the kids into the car and held her umbrella over me, which was greatly appreciated. After we got home, we ALL changed into dry clothes (even Abigail, who in spite of my greatest efforts, still got a bit wet).

What Paul’s Been Up To: Unfortunately, the day of the downpour didn’t turn out too well for his commute home. The person in front of him prematurely slammed on their brakes when the person in front of them was slowing down. Paul had to then slam on his breaks, which caused his car to skid (thanks to the wet road). He crunched it into the center divider. Thankfully he is okay! He has a rental car while the Honda is in the shop, awaiting the verdict from the insurance company. The other out of the ordinary thing that happened for him was that he attended the annual HOA meeting for our neighborhood. Wee, fun. 😉

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Along with attending Joseph’s musical performance, I also took him to a birthday party for one of his school friends. Paul stayed home with Abigail (I’m so grateful for him!). Other than that, it was typical weekly happenings for me.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He rocked it out at the musical performance, and had a blast at the birthday party (bounce houses are always a hit). He was also really excited to see the contents of his Easter basket (candy from the Easter Bunny, books and a new video game from Momma and Daddy), as well as the contents of the baskets of the rest of the family. I love how much he loves to see other people happy!

What Abigail’s Been Up To: A major development this week is that we’re moving her into a new car seat. She still technically fits into her infant seat, but we purchased one that she still fits into but will grow with her (even up to booster size). She also has discovered a new sound: a combo of “gooing” and producing an absurd amount of spit. The result is surprisingly close to a sound that would come out of Chewbacca, haha.

This Week in Pictures:

Weekly Happenings: We actually had a few out of the ordinary things happen this past week! 😉 Monday, we had a flooring company come and install laminate flooring in the living room and on the stairs. We had them leave the carpet in the loft and bedrooms. We like the feel of carpet in the bedrooms and thought it would be good to leave it in the loft since the kids spend a lot of time on the floor in there. We have plans to eventually replace it with a better quality carpet since the carpet that was here when we bought the house is kind of standard-grade (a bit on the cheap side). They had estimated the process would take two days, but they were able to complete it all on Monday. Paul had taken Monday off so that he could ferry Joseph around (to minimize foot traffic I stayed upstairs with Abigail) and ended up still taking Tuesday off so that he had a lot of time to work on his final projects for school. We’re really happy with how the floors turned out. The other out of the ordinary thing that happened was that yesterday we were able to go to the neighborhood Easter celebration at our park. There was an egg hunt for the kids, a food truck, and tons of kids for Joseph to play with. After the celebration, we headed out to the zoo and then to dinner afterwards to make it a complete fun family day. Abigail was a real trooper, spending most of the day in her car seat (in the car and in the stroller), only getting a bit upset right as we were almost home from dinner. She’s such a patient baby!

The Weekly Weather: It’s been typical spring weather for South Texas: some days warm, some days slightly cooler, sunny dry days, sunny humid days, overcast rainy days…there’s a joke that says if you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait fifteen minutes. It really seems true sometimes!

What Paul’s Been Up To: He finished up the last projects and tests for this semester of school. He has a short break (of about a week) before the next one starts up. I’m so proud of him for sticking to the schedule he lined up and for really pounding out the classes that he is. I know it takes a lot of his time and makes for a really tired Daddy after you combine it with work and spending time with me and the kids. He also ended up taking part of Friday off (he went in to help one student and then came back home) because Thursday night I got hit with a fierce 24-hour bug. Since he was able to take Friday off, I was able to sleep on and off all day while he took care of both kids. I think I would have been feeling bad a lot longer had he not done that. I’m so grateful for him!

What Sarah’s Been Up To: The only out of the ordinary thing was that crazy 24-hour bug that hit me. No fever or anything…I just got to feeling achy all of a sudden and then chills and nausea set in. This happened right as I was finishing Abigail’s bedtime feeding, so I got her into bed and then got myself into bed. Paul handled her middle of the night feeding and then (as I mentioned before) kind of took over so that I could crash all day Friday. I also strained my back (an old injury) by not thinking and picking up/putting down Abigail wrong (now that she’s somewhere between 15-20 pounds, I really need to be careful with how I lift her), but caught the pain early enough to be able to treat it with ice, Ibuprofen, and rest. Paul helped me out by doing all the heavy lifting (including anything with Abigail) so that I could rest it as much as possible this weekend. I think that since he was able to do that, I will be able to (carefully) resume life tomorrow when he has to go back to work. I just need to be mindful of how I lift heavy things (including our baby, haha).

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s still enjoying school and playing with friends there. He really had a great time at the Easter celebration and the zoo yesterday. He has also enjoyed how much Abigail loves on him with her smiles whenever she sees him.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: There was one random evening where Joseph did something (I think he started out dancing in front of her) which made Abigail really smile. Joseph was so happy that she smiled that he burst out laughing, inadvertently making a spitting/laughing sound. Abigail apparently thought the sound was hilarious and actually burst out laughing. He made the sound again and she laughed again. At that point, Paul got out his phone and he was able to get a bit of it recorded. We love all these milestones she’s hitting!

This Week in Pictures:

 

Bonus Video: Abigail laughing. Short, but totally worth it!

Weekly Happenings: This past week was pretty average. I feel like I say that a lot, but it seems like it’s pretty accurate. We are just sort of plugging away at life right now. March went out quietly and April came in relatively the same way (with the exception of a crazy rainstorm this morning).

The Weekly Weather: It’s been a mix between warm and sunny and warm and overcast. As I already mentioned, we had a crazy thunderstorm this morning that dumped a ton of rain. We were under a tornado watch (simply meaning that conditions were favorable for tornadoes to form, but no tornadoes were spotted) for a bit, but that has since expired and the skies are clear and sunny now.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Mainly working on end-of-the-semester projects for school and keeping busy at work. Oh, last Sunday he was called to be in the Elders’ Quorum (one of the men’s organizations in our church) presidency as the second counselor. This weekend he has spent some time getting the downstairs ready for the flooring company to come tomorrow to install the wood floors.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mainly just keeping the tiny humans in the household alive and happy…

What Joseph’s Been Up To: Continuing to work hard at school (he got his latest report card in and it looks great) and having a great time playing at home.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: Discovering her voice, haha. She has experimented with coos, “ohs”, and yelling, haha. As far as I can tell, she isn’t upset when she “yells”.

This Week in Pictures:

Bonus Video: Abigail “talking”. 🙂