Darr Family Blog – Page 61 – The place to follow the Darr Family

Spring Break Chill

Weekly Happenings: Many people tend to fill their spring breaks with a ton of different activities while we tend to just…chill at home. Our normal routine is usually rather busy, so it’s nice to be able to just relax a bit. I did take the kids to the zoo one day, but other than that, we just hung around the house.

The Weekly Weather: We’ve had cool mornings and warm (but not too warm) afternoons. It’s been nice that it’s been warm enough to not need warm clothes but not so warm that we were uncomfortable being outside. I know that will happen soon enough. 😉

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s still working from home and has been squeezing in some yard work to try to get the yards ready for spring and summer.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: It’s been nice getting to sleep in a little bit this past week. I had a good time at the zoo with the kids as well. Oh, and I experimented with my cooking blender and made some yummy strawberry jam (more details in the pictures). I did have a set-back with my back. I was doing really good (not even needing Aleve to get through the day), but then yesterday I…sneezed. That was it. For some reason, it made my back seize up. I’m not sure why that happened, but I have some leftover medicine from when I originally hurt it, so I decided to take some to see if I could get ahead of it enough to avoid landing in urgent care again. It’s still rather sore today and I don’t have my full range of motion, but I think that if I’m careful, I’ll be doing better in a few days.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s been soaking up spring break to its fullest. Sleeping in, playing video games, hanging out in his room…typical 9YO boy stuff. 🙂

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s loved having Joseph home. It’ll probably be a little hard for her when he goes back to school on Monday. She’ll adjust, though. 🙂

This Week in Pictures:

In San Antonio, “fall” comes in the spring (when all the old leaves on our live oak trees fall off as the new ones grow in). Paul was raking up the leaves and Abigail was loving jumping in the pile. 🙂

The snow pretty much killed off the exposed mint. Paul trimmed it all back after we got back from California. It’s already growing back (yay!). We had brought the Mexican heather inside. It got quite a bit of frost damage (hence the lighter colored leaves) before we brought it inside, but at some point, it had put a runner down, so some new growth is happening there in the corner. It’s also got some darker green leaves underneath the lighter leaves, so I’m hoping it’ll come back okay.

Making jam. All it called for was strawberries, pectin, and sugar.

I put the strawberries and pectin in, set it to the jam setting, and hit start.

It ground up the strawberries as it started cooking them.

My blender stopped and told me when to add the sugar.

Getting the sugar mixed in as it started to cool down.

All done! It took a little less than an hour, I think.

It’s a freezer/fridge jam as opposed to a shelf-stable jam, so I didn’t need to sterilize the jars at all. I just poured in the jam and let it cool.

All done! I let them come to room temperature before putting the lids on. Then I chilled them in the fridge overnight before putting them into the freezer (except for one that I kept for the fridge).

The blender really, really blended it…so it ended up with the consistency of jelly. It still qualifies as jam, though, because it was made with fruit as opposed to with fruit juice.

This picture makes me happy. The beautiful benches that Paul built, the fun pillows, the warm light over the piano, the windows open to let in a cool breeze, and the glimpse of pretty plants out the window. I love being at home!

She’s been asking to play some video games, so Paul found some toddler-friendly ones for her.

Teaching her how to use the correct buttons.

Sometimes a challenging day (she’s cute, but she’s got a fair amount of sass, haha) is made better with a Dr. Pepper shake.

The zoo had a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs (complete with speakers that played roaring noises). The kids were pretty excited.

She was trying to get the bear to turn around and say hello to her. He wasn’t having anything to do with that, though.

For a while, now, all the climb-on statues have been roped off. They’ve taken the ropes off and the kiddos were pretty excited to be able to crawl around on them again.

Joseph using the komodo dragon to “surf”.

Sitting on the hippos before they got too hot.

The African porcupines were actually out and about. Abigail really liked their cute fuzzy faces.

The kids both really love this little elephant.

These miniature mongoose are another favorite. They were really curious during this visit…they kept sniffing at the kids.

There is a bird enclosure near the hippos. The birds are really used to humans, so they aren’t very skittish. I still made sure to keep my distance, though, and just used the zoom on my camera.

She was excited that she could see both the hippo and the giant fish.

Yay! It’s Spring!

Weekly Happenings: Okay, so I know that it isn’t officially spring, but it’s practically here in San Antonio. The freezing temps seem to be behind us (Hallelujah to that) and there is a warmth in the breeze. This past week, we didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary. We’re looking forward to this next week which will be Joseph’s spring break (yay for getting to sleep in a bit)!

The Weekly Weather: As I’ve mentioned already, the freezing temps have left and we’re in the wonderful in-between time that is spring in San Antonio. It isn’t cold, but it isn’t melt-your-skin hot, either. Every once in a while, a cold front will move through, but that just means it’ll be in the low 60s instead of the upper 70s-low 80s.

What Paul’s Been Up To: He was rather busy this weekend. He built himself a new workbench, planted some new plants for the side yard (more about that in a bit), and spread composted manure in the yards to help them wake up (they were already mostly dormant, but the snow made them go completely dormant).

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Pretty much the normal stuff: taxi-driving, piano teaching, feeding our brood, etc.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He had a good week of school and liked that they got to have pajama day this past week.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She has been getting better at playing on her own, using her own imagination (instead of wanting me to play with her all of the time). It’s fun to see what she comes up with. It also provides me a glimpse into what things she might be worried about, scared of, etc. (since she’ll often act out those scenarios with her animals and felt dolls).

This Week in Pictures:

Playing with her felt dolls. They had fun playing with their pets, had sleepovers, and fought over clothes. 😀

We took advantage of the beautiful weather to go to the park.

He used to be really scared to do this. Now he scampers right across.

One of the reasons we went to the park. 😉 We knew it would be there (they have an agreement with our HOA to be there once a month) and pre-ordered. I had a brisket grilled cheese sandwich that was…amazing.

This conglomeration of toothbrushes, toothpaste, and cups was kind of driving me crazy.

All it took was a couple of new containers to make it better. Luckily, Target still had the same stuff they had when I redid the kids’ bathroom, so I was even able to find matching stuff.

I also got Abigail some new shirts, since she really needs to be moved up a size. I was so happy with all the cute options that seemed to cater to her rather spread out tastes. There’s flowers, a llama, Frozen, Grogu (a.k.a. Baby Yoda or “the Child” from The Mandalorian), and Pikachu from Pokemon.

Showing me her Buc-ee shirt (Paul went through New Braunfels on his way to a convention and stopped by Buc-ee’s, so he grabbed shirts for the kids).

Abigail was excited that they “matched”.

They both have Grogu on their shirts (this was when Joseph had pajama day for school).

She loves it when her brother pushes her!

Somehow they never bonked heads (thankfully). I thought for sure that they would.

Dinner a few nights ago: roast and veggies (carrots and onion) done in my pressure cooker and fresh rolls (which I made that morning) with homemade honey butter. It was so yummy!

Playing with Play-doh…wearing an old marching band booster club shirt that used to belong to either my mom or dad (from my marching band days).

Paul’s work bench. He was able to get it together in just a couple of hours.

I love looking through the window and seeing green.

They’ll be even prettier when they bloom (they have little yellow flowers).

I decided it was probably a good idea to have more than one pair of glasses. That way, if something happened to one pair of glasses, I would have a back-up pair to wear until I could order new ones. I decided to stick with exactly the same frame shape, but get the tortoiseshell version. Since my black pair is older, it’ll be my back-up pair now.

Back To Reality

This past week, we pretty much recovered from our spontaneous trip to California, put our house back together (we had left it in a rather disorganized state when we left because we were trying to beat roads icing over and another storm headed our way), and got back into our routine. The weather has been warmer (it is almost March, after all), for which we are all grateful. I’ve had a taste of what a real winter is like and I don’t care for it much, haha. Bring on spring with its warmer temps, wildflowers, sunshine, and warm breezes!