Ahhhh…NOW it’s spring! The sun is shining, the air is warm, the days are longer (one perk about DST is that the evenings are now light again, so we can do stuff outside after dinner, when it’s a bit cooler)…spring in central Texas is kind of my favorite. It was spring break for the kiddos, so we hung around the house and just relaxed. Abigail lost yet another tooth (at this point, I’m seriously considering blending her food, haha), we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with some yummy food, and we went to our favorite BBQ joint so that the kids could play on the playground after we finished eating. Overall it’s been a pretty great week!
Joseph had some money saved up, so he decided to get this little Mario Kart themed Hotwheels set. Abigail was “taking pictures” of the race with her toy camera.She has so many holes in her mouth right now!Abigail spent the last of her saved up money on a baby Groot.Playing hospital. The last time they played this, Abigail decided Joseph needed some limbs amputated…so this time, Joseph came armed to make sure she didn’t go overboard, haha.One day, we walked over to the park and met up with friends to play. The walk back wasn’t as fun (it was quite a bit warmer than the walk there).The coat I’ve been eyeing finally restocked, so I bought it before it went back out of stock. I obviously won’t be able to use it for a few months, but at least I’ll have it when the weather cools back down.A nice picture always has to have a silly picture to follow. 😉For St. Patrick’s Day, I made shepherd’s pie and Irish soda farls (basically Irish soda bread but I cook it in my cast iron skillet on the stove as opposed to in the oven). This is the playground at B Daddy’s (our favorite BBQ place). We haven’t been (other than picking up food to go) for over two years!Going down the tube slide at B Daddy’s.They were pretending to be pirates.“Hard to Starboard!”She told him they needed to abandon ship because they were going to crash into an island.Exploring the “island” that their pirate ship crashed into.Sunlight and live oak trees…*happy sigh*
It’s not even April, but I was still fooled! I was embracing spring temperatures and the sunshine that comes with them…and then Mother Nature chucked a curveball, haha. Yesterday and today have been rather chilly. At least today is sunny…it was downright miserable yesterday: cold, overcast, rainy, and windy. I managed to squeeze in a walk in the morning (without getting rained on…too much) before the cold front fully moved in. Paul took the day off yesterday (he had some last minute things to get ready for a Libertarian conference that he’s at today), so Abigail hung out at home. Spring should be back by tomorrow afternoon, though…just in time for the kids’ spring break from school! I’m looking forward to having a bit of a break from the back-and-forth routine with school. The week did go well, though. I was kept busy with my routine of working out, taxiing kids around, running errands, and finally forcing myself to not just tidy, but actually CLEAN the house. I sometimes think I have to try to clean the entire house in one day (like I used to be able to do when we were living in itty-bitty apartments), and the thought of that is understandably overwhelming. The result of that overwhelming feeling is me sitting on the couch, looking at the mess, and saying, “Man…I need to clean this place…” and then not doing it! *insert eyeroll here* This past week I finally said that enough was enough and I broke the house down into zones. I tackled one zone each day. By the time yesterday hit, I had the house much cleaner than it had been on Monday. One other thing that I’ve started doing is getting up at the same as Paul and squeezing in some time to read and study Come Follow Me. I have been working at being consistent with this for a few weeks now and I really feel like it’s making a difference in my life. I’m more patient, not as cranky, and I’m just generally happier. It’s been a good change. Paul has been pretty busy with work, HOA stuff, and Libertarian stuff…and working around the house and yards. I appreciate him so much!! The kids had a great week at school, but are definitely ready for spring break (what kid isn’t, haha).
Here’s my clean kitchen! It took me waaaay too long to get it to this point, so my new goal is to be more consistent with my cleaning so that it doesn’t get as bad as it got.This was a fun sight. Joseph decided to not stick with piano lessons, but he does still like to fiddle around on the piano, making up his own little tunes (or picking out tunes from different video games). Abigail decided she wanted to join in, so she pushed a chair over there. Joseph did start learning recorder in music class at school, so he’s been pretty into that lately.It’s always a good sight to see the treat jars full. 😉This was a pretty epic pool noodle battle.Joseph heard us battling and decided he’d get involved. He made a marshmallow shooter at Primary activities, but he has modified it so that it can shoot Nerf darts (that kid!), so he brought that down and pretended the darts were tranquilizer darts…it was pretty funny. Since it’s breath-powered, the darts don’t come out very fast, so there was no way she could get hurt if he hit her with one (unlike when they come out of a Nerf gun…those things can be pretty powerful!).
This past week yielded some warmer, sunnier weather. I’m so grateful! I do not do well with cloudy, overcast, rainy weather. It makes me grumpy! This past week also contained a fun time for the kids (Field Day at school, which was full of fun outdoor activities; I couldn’t go, but a friend of mine went and was able to snap some pictures of Joseph) and a fun time for me and Paul (we actually got a babysitter and went on a date)! One funny story: Now that Abigail is in a booster seat, she can reach the control for her window. On the way home from school one day, she told me she wanted to put her window down so she could “feel the breeze”. Well, once that window was down, she proceeded to stick her head out of the window and squawk like a parrot at a huge group of parents and kids walking home from school. Seeing the looks on their faces (surprise turned into confusion which then quickly turned into laughing) made me laugh so hard I cried. I couldn’t even properly parent (tell her that something like that wasn’t exactly a polite thing to do). In fact, I was having a hard time catching my breath and I even wondered if I ought to pull over because I was laughing so hard. It was just so unexpected (for everyone involved), that it caught me completely off guard. She had been pretending to be a parrot earlier in the day, but I had no idea it had extended to the afternoon. That crazy kid! I love her so much.
When I got this soup pot, I had no idea that I would use it more often for things like holding a turkey while it’s sitting in its brine or (even more often): making rice crispy treats. The enamel coating makes it so much easier to deal with the sticky, marshmallow-y, buttery mixture, though. I was out watering my plants and couldn’t help but pause and think about how grateful I am for blue skies, warm temperatures, and shade from trees. 🙂One of my favorite sights: kids home from school (Abigail almost always changes back into pajamas as soon as she can) and snacking while the warm afternoon sunshine comes in through the windows. 🙂Her hair was still sopping wet after her bath, so I decided to attempt to wrap it up in a towel (it’s way harder to do that to someone else’s head than it is to your own, by the way). She was excited and kept saying, “I look just like you, Mom!” 🙂Field Day Fun 1: chalk. They both had chalk for the kids to play with as well as a part of the blacktop where teachers had ketchup bottles full of colored chalk dust that they would squirt at the kids. Field Day Fun 2: squirt bottle battles.Field Day Fun 3: He loves whenever they bring these things out.Movie time! We went to go see The Batman. I didn’t care for the language, but aside from that, the movie was really good. It was also really nice to be able to be out, just the two of us. My friend’s daughter babysat the kids and Abigail really loved her. In fact, she was a bit sad this morning when she got up and Molly wasn’t here.Paul was able to make the cross-pieces for the table and attach them. The table already looked great, but now it looks even better!Paul took these boards from where they were in the back area of the yard and made a bit of a bridge. This area has always been a bit of a tripping hazard because of the water lines, but now they run under the bridge, which is much better. It looks nice, too. 🙂
