Darr Family Blog

Weekly Happenings: It’s hard to believe that August is almost over. I’m looking forward to it, not just because we have the “fun” part of the year approaching (birthdays and holidays), but because fall temperatures are now on the horizon. Luckily the mornings have been a bit cooler so we were able to get out of the house to play a bit. I have forgotten how much Joseph loves the park. I need to be better about getting him out there to play. We also had a fun visit with our nephew, Shawn, who was in town for business. He was pretty busy, for obvious reasons, but we did get to have him come for dinner one night. 🙂

The Weekly Weather: It’s been slightly cooler this past week, especially in the mornings. We’re at about the mod-70s in the mornings and then mid- to upper-90s in the afternoons.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Work has been good for him, and he spent quite a bit of time this past weekend getting the yard looking extra good since we’re having a birthday party for Joseph tomorrow (nothing too crazy, just some of his little friends coming over to play outside and have lunch, with cake and presents to wrap it all up).

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mostly getting ready to have all my students starting back up now that school has started again. Also, getting stuff ready for the ward choir to sing, making sure all the visiting teaching slips have been passed out, and getting birthday stuff finalized. I also got my first (and unfortunately, probably not my last) fire ant bite. That little punk of a bug bit me while I was pushing Joseph on the swings at the park. It bit and then curled around the bite so that I couldn’t just shake it off, I had to pick it off. The bite started swelling up quite a bit, but one of my friends gave me an alcohol wipe, which helped a lot. A few days later it was still bothering me, so Paul got out some cream that he got from some sort of Army training. It helped a lot.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: Perfecting his imaginative play. He was playing with two of my little stuffed bears. One of them was laying flat on the floor and he took the other one and walked it up to the one lying down and then said, “Get up, Captain Kirk!” It made me laugh quite a bit. Yes, he’s seen quite a bit of the original Star Trek, lol. He’s also much more into the idea of his birthday. He keeps talking about his birthday bike. Oh, and Jason sent him some play tools for his birthday, which he thought were awesome. He kept saying, “It’s for my birthday!” Finally, he has just recently started wanting to make sure that everyone we interact with knows what his name is and also knows that Paul and I are his mommy and daddy. It’s pretty cute.

This Week in Pictures:

Weekly Happenings: This past week was another low-key one at home. I kind of welcome them because I know that with the holidays approaching, the days will get busier. The main things we did were on the weekend. Paul and I went out to dinner on Friday (a friend of mine was able to watch Joseph) because we wanted to celebrate our anniversary a bit early (since our anniversary is today). It’s hard to believe that it’s been twelve years! We’ve survived a combination of five job changes, two degrees, one teaching credential, two deployments, four moves (one of them cross-country), two apartments, one rental house, our “forever home”, one pregnancy (and currently surviving the toddler stage), countless church callings, and even more countless opportunities to learn, grow, and love each other more than the day we were sealed! Saturday was a great day, too. We took Joseph to the zoo and then had friends over in the evening to play games. 🙂

The Weekly Weather: I’m not sure why I keep putting this in, since it hasn’t really changed. We did get a smattering of rain, but for the most part, it has been the warm, humid weather that is expected in South Texas in August. 😉

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s gotten some more information about the Pathways program that he’ll be starting soon. He also has been continually working hard to keep our yards looking great (which is no easy feat with all of the heat and water restrictions) as well as working hard at his day job.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mostly the same as last week. I’m gearing up for school starting because that will mean that all my piano students will be starting up again (about half of them took the summer off). I’m also going to be getting busy since my church choir will be starting up again. It’s time to finalize music choices for fall and the holidays!

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s been testing his boundaries at times, but for the most part has remained our super-sweet, mellow, happy little guy. He has also been spending a lot of time pretending to be different things. There was one day where he had been pretending to be a dinosaur. When Paul picked him up and set him in front of his dinner, he said, “This is not food for dinosaurs, this is green beans!” Luckily he decided that dinosaurs like green beans after all. Finally, we’re getting ready for his third birthday, which is swiftly approaching. We ordered his big present (a balance bike) a bit early in case it took a while to get here. It came sooner than expected, so he got it early. He calls it his birthday bike. 😀 He keeps asking me where its pedals are (balance bikes are small bikes without pedals that help the kids learn to balance before having to worry about pedaling), but really likes it. He also liked going to pick out his first helmet (even though he was bummed that we didn’t go with the one that was green camouflage with a green rubber-spiked mow-hawk down the center…???).

This Week in Pictures:

Weekly Happenings: This past week has reminded me what the weather is really like during the summer in San Antonio. I am now realizing how mild the rest of the summer has been compared to what we’ve been experiencing. Due to that, we spent most of the week at home or in other air conditioned places. Hopefully with fall approaching it will at least cool down a bit! It doesn’t really cool down a whole lot until closer to Halloween, but I’d take even a ten degree drop right now. One super-fun thing we got to do was have lunch with my cousin Kelli and her family. They live up in Houston, but came down to take the kids to Six Flags. They met up with us yesterday and we had a good time chatting and visiting.

The Weekly Weather: hot, hot, HOT and rather humid. I think I’m going to leave it at that. 🙂

What Paul’s Been Up To: Most of the past week the poor guy has been fighting either a major allergy attack or a summer head-cold. He’s on the mend now, but it really wore him out.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Just the regular stuff, mainly. I was able to have “girl time” a couple of times this past week, once at a Relief Society activity and once at lunch at Chick-fil-a with friends (Joseph played in the play place the entire time). One bummer thing that happened was that someone somehow got a hold of my debit card number and made a couple of large purchases (almost $1,000.00 worth of stuff). Luckily the bank caught it, called us, and we were able to start the process of getting the money back. I’m still waiting for my replacement debit card, but that will come soon. Until then, I can use cash or we can use Paul’s card or the credit cards (luckily we just finished paying them off). *sigh* Why do people have to be so dishonest?!

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He had the “play-date of his life” this past week. When I went out to lunch with my friends (to celebrate one of their birthdays), he got to play in the play place the entire time (I learned a while back that he won’t eat at Chick-fil-a because the draw of the play place is too strong, so I usually try to feed him ahead of time). I decided to stay as long as Joseph was happy, which ended up being almost three hours. He was happy the entire time (except for needing to be comforted after bonking heads with another kid)! We also had to switch out his clothes from his 3Ts to his 4Ts. This kid seriously needs to stop growing so fast!

This Week in Pictures: