Darr Family Blog

Weekly Happenings: It is crazy to believe that we’re already in March. It seems like it was less than a month ago that we were in California for Christmas. Yet, this Saturday night we’ll be moving the clocks ahead an hour. Craziness. We spent most of this last week recovering from the cold bug that hit our home pretty hard. Joseph and I had it two weeks ago and then Paul got it at the start of this past week. It’s one that just seems to hang on (especially the cough), so we had a LOT of down time because I was too tired to do anything else. It seemed like the most common of tasks (such as cleaning the kitchen) completely wiped me out. I finally feel like I’m on the tail end of whatever it is, so hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to ease back into our routine. We did venture out of the house to do grocery shopping, a trip to the zoo, and to the repair shop to have some repairs done on the Honda.

The Weekly Weather: At church today, someone said they felt like we’ve experienced all four seasons over the past couple of weeks, and I have to agree with them. It has been crazy. We had an arctic cold front come through, then it warmed up (though not anywhere near summer temperatures, so maybe more like three seasons) for a few days just in time for another cold front to move in. We’re supposed to be warming up a little and then cooling down again. It’s seriously a roller coaster.

What Paul’s Been Up To: He had his normal work and school. He also taught his portion of his class for Pathway. Luckily he was feeling well enough to do so, after getting our cold at the beginning of the week. He took Thursday (the day of his class) off so that he could get everything ready. He was able to finish that by early afternoon and since my students for that day had canceled (thanks to a nasty flu bug going around), we went to the zoo. Since it was the middle of the week, it was pretty empty, which was great! Yesterday he took the Honda to the repair shop to have them replace part of the breaks.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mainly resting and making sure that Joseph got his antibiotics and eye drops all at the right times. Most of my students were able to come this past week (between illnesses in our household and their households, there were a lot of cancellations over the past few weeks), so that was good for our bank account. 🙂 I have also gotten completely back into ward choir. We’re getting ready for Easter, and an Easter fireside that is being put on by our stake (each ward in the stake will be performing a piece of Easter music, followed by all the choirs singing one piece together, followed by all the children singing a Primary song), and ward conference (coming up in April). I have a really great music chair who is keeping me on my toes. 🙂

What Joseph’s Been Up To: Besides totally flipping out every time he needed an eye drop in his eye to treat the pink eye (so that was twice a day for seven days), he’s been his pretty happy self. He only fought the antibiotic for the double ear infection once or twice and we finished up that round today. Here’s to hoping that he can stay well! He’s got a follow up appointment next week to make sure everything has cleared up. He is exploring his new-found freedom (no longer being in the crib) by getting up early each morning to read books (in fact, he insists that I leave a book right by his bed so that he can read it when he wants to) and play with toys in his room while waiting for me to get up. The past couple of days it’s been a bit too early, though. Saturday he was up at 5:45 and today was 3:45. Yesterday, Paul ended up getting up with him, but today was a different story. I heard him, opened his door, was greeted with a “Good morning, Mommy!”, and given a sad face when I told him he needed to go back to bed. I snuggled him for a bit, explained that it was still the middle of the night, and told him that he needed to try to go back to sleep. He complied and was still heavily asleep when I went to get him at 7:30 so that we could get ready for church. I think tonight I will have to remind him that if it’s still dark in his room that he needs to stay in his bed and leave the light off (hopefully meaning that he’ll fall back to sleep). He did make a transition of sorts on his own. He insisted that I take the pool noodle that was under his sheets (keeping him from rolling out of bed) out. He seems to have a pretty clear concept of where the edge of the bed is and hasn’t fallen out. Finally, he has declared himself my little helper in all things. Friday, when I was making pizza, I decided to call him my sous chef since he was taking things and putting them in the trash for me. When Paul got home not too long afterward, Joseph ran up to him and told him that he had been my sous chef. I was pretty impressed that he remembered the words. He sure is one smart kid.

This Week in Pictures:

 

Weekly Happenings: Monday, Paul had the day off, so we headed out to the rodeo. It was freezing! We still had a fun time, though. We saw a lot of animals, visited the petting zoo (and got to pet deer and a wallaby…oh, and llamas, too), saw a bunch of reptiles and local animals, ate some yummy food, and window shopped. The rest of the week was kind of a blur because Joseph got super sick. I took him to the doctor who said he had a double ear infection and pink eye. So now he’s on antibiotics and has to get eye drops in his eye, which he REALLY doesn’t like. I got a milder form of his cold which has been aggravated by my allergies. Luckily; so far at least, Paul has dodged the sickness bullet. The antibiotics and eye drops have been working for Joseph and he is feeling a lot better. The other big thing that happened this past week was that our new swing set arrived, so Paul put it together on Friday. Oh, and yesterday, we went to the park and cleaned up trash. Paul organized the whole thing and we had quite a bit of neighborhood support. We cleaned up more than two large trash bags full of trash in just under an hour. I’m hoping that people will see how clean it is and leave it that way!

The Weekly Weather: Bipolar to say the least. As I mentioned before, it was freezing cold on Monday. It warmed up a bit during the rest of the week, and Friday and Saturday were really nice. It’s cooler today, but we are expecting freezing rain some time over the next couple of days. I guess Mother Nature has decided that since it’s still February, we can have some more cold weather.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Work and school, as usual. He also spent a lot of time on Friday after work putting together Joseph’s swing set. He even set up a spot light as it got dark so that he could continue to work. I helped out a bit, holding things in place, mostly. Joseph was super excited to see it and play on it yesterday. Paul also organized the clean up at the park event. You can read more about it here. He created an event on the neighborhood’s Facebook page so that other neighbors could see it and come help. We had probably close to ten people there, which was great for a first turn out. Coming up this week, he’ll be doing his turn at teaching his Pathway class, so he’ll be prepping for that.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I had kind of an empty week. I ended up canceling about half of my students because Joseph was sick (and I wasn’t feeling too hot, either). One fun thing was that choir started back up again. We had a really good rehearsal today. I took some pointers that I learned at the stake music training and implemented them at the rehearsal. It ran much more efficiently which was great.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: Mainly getting over being sick. The rough part was that he started feeling better half way through the week (right before he got pink eye), so he didn’t understand why I wanted him to rest (since he still had a fever). One night, he woke up screaming because his eye was stuck shut thanks to the pink eye goop. We got him cleaned up and settled down (I ended up spending the rest of the night sleeping on the floor in his room), but I’m grateful for how quickly the drops are clearing it up. A funny story from this week was that Paul asked him to put his (Paul’s) shoes in the closet. Joseph willingly did so, but on the way, he said, “Whew! It smells terrible!” This is only funny because I know for a fact that Paul’s shoes do not smell, lol. He also had a pretty bad nightmare early on in the week. He said that the “tickle man” was getting him. Poor kid! Oh, and he declared that his nightlight that projects a picture on the ceiling was scary (he called it the orange face with one eye), so we ended up finding him one that is free standing and projects stars onto the ceiling. He likes it much better.

This Week in Pictures (be prepared for a lot of pictures from the rodeo):

 

 

Weekly Happenings: We had a few more outings, now that more of our friends are no longer sick (and the weather has been gorgeous). Joseph and I met up with friends a couple of times for breakfast and lunch, went to a Valentine’s-themed story time at the library (and then played with friends at the park afterward), played outside, had our friends from across the street over for a play date, and just had a grand old time. Friday, Paul surprised me with some flowers and chocolate (a day early for Valentine’s so that it would really surprise me). Yesterday was Valentine’s itself, so we made it a fun family day. In the morning, we needed to run by Lowe’s to get some metal for a project Paul was doing (attaching it to the wall in our kitchen so that Joseph has a space other than the fridge door for his magnetic ABCs and numbers) and since it happened to be the kid craft day, we stuck around so that Joseph could do a craft. He made a little wood and metal picture frame (the type that has pieces of wood stuck to metal sticks and then the wood pieces have grooves to slide the pictures in). It turned out great! After that, we headed home so that Paul could put up the metal. While he was doing that, I kept Joseph busy by picking some pictures to send to Walmart to print up (you can order them online and then pick them up in the store), since he wanted to put some pictures in his new frame. After that, we went to eat lunch at one of our favorite places, Logan’s Roadhouse (we had a gift card) and then we stopped off at Walmart to get the pictures we ordered. Finally, we decided that since it was such a beautiful day, we’d head out to the zoo. It was crazy busy at the zoo, but overall an awesome day!

The Weekly Weather: It was gorgeous, sunny, and warm all week. It was hard to remember that it was February and not April. It started cooling down today and even rained a bit. It’s supposed to be quite a bit cooler this week with more rain in the forecast.

What Paul’s Been Up To: He planted some tomato seeds in cups so that we can transplant the seedlings later into our garden patch (he also has plans to do blackberries in another part of our yard). He also ordered the new swing set that we’re getting for the back yard. It’s coming this week, and we are pretty excited. Joseph doesn’t know about it at all, so it will be a total surprise. We can hardly wait! Paul also worked on the aforementioned metal project.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Not too much out of the ordinary, other than the fact that I added another piano student. Choir will be starting back up next week, so some time this week I am going to go through my music and pick out stuff for the next couple of months at least (especially since we have Easter coming up).

What Joseph’s Been Up To: We’ve switched him over to Pull-ups (next step in potty-training), and Paul took the front off of his crib, transforming it into a toddler bed. He’s been really good about it. He goes right to sleep at night and then in the morning, he either gets up and plays with the toys in his room or just lays in bed waiting for me (even though he can get out on his own). Sometimes he’ll get toys and bring them back to bed with him. We did stick a pool noodle under his sheet, next to the edge of the mattress so that there’s a bit of a barrier (so he doesn’t roll out). We’ll eventually take that out when he’s more used to not having the extra side up. One funny thing that happened this week was that when we were at Chick-fil-a with friends, he decided to strip down completely to his Pull-up while in the play-place. A friend brought this to my attention, so I went in to see what on Earth was going on. Apparently he knew he needed a diaper change. (?!) Well, we’ll just chalk it up to adventures in potty-training, lol.

This Week in Pictures: