Weekly Happenings: This past week was pretty typical. We didn’t do too much since I was still trying to rest so that my back could get better. Towards the end of the week, I started feeling well enough to let the kids go out in the backyard to play. I trust Joseph to go on his own, but Abigail still needs a bit of parental supervision (she only listens to Joseph if she feels like it, haha)…so I needed to be out there.
The Weekly Weather: It’s been really nice. Kind of cold in the mornings and then nice and mild in the afternoon and evening. One of the perks of living in south central Texas. 🙂
What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been able to work from home, which was really nice as I was working on recovering. He’s been such a help while I’ve been laid up. I’m so thankful for him!
What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mainly trying to get better! I’m happy to report that I’m almost there! I’m still a little stiff if I’m getting up after sitting/lying down for a long amount of time, but my range of motion is almost all the way back to normal. Huzzah! It was pretty rough going there for a while, not being able to bend at the waist…and it would even hurt if I was walking or standing for a long time. I’m so grateful for the ability to heal!
What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s been so helpful. Picking up things I’ve dropped, running up and down the stairs to grab things for me (stairs were really hard), helping with Abigail…all while still going to school. He’s such a blessing!
What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been her typical awesome self this week. A little sassy, a lot sweet, and doing things to make us all laugh a ton. One night, Joseph wanted to play charades. It was Abigail’s turn (you can imagine how this turned out, ha). She started running/dancing around, acting all crazy. Joseph and I were pretty bewildered for a moment…and then Joseph asked if she was acting like herself. She said, “Yup!” 😀 Oh, and one cute “Abigail-ism”: she’ll sometimes say “shine-shine” instead of “sunshine”. She’ll usually catch herself and correct herself, but man, it’s cute!
This Week in Pictures:
On this episode of “Everything is a Hat”: boxes and packaging material. 😀I knew one way to get my back on the mend was to slowly start moving around. I decided that making rolls was probably a good way to do this, because I knew there would be plenty of time for me to rest in between the different stages.Break-and-bake cookies for the win! Fresh cookies done in about half an hour. This was another way we managed to get some yummy treats without it being too hard on my back.We got the kids punch balloons……I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them got one to the face. Luckily, they’re so soft, it didn’t hurt at all. She just laughed harder.Taking advantage of a mild evening after dinner to play.Gah! I can’t believe how big she looks in this picture!Spin! Also…that sky…I love it!She loves it when her brother pushes her!Pretty sunrise as Joseph and I got to school to drop him off.Joseph drew (and painted) this in art class. When they finish their assignment, if they have time left over, they’re allowed to use whatever materials are available to do “free art”. He used marker to draw the platypus, colored pencils to color it in, and then watercolors to paint the water.I put it in the “art gallery” in the loft. 🙂Story time: Thanksgiving night, I noticed that one of the smaller diamonds in my wedding ring had fallen out. No problem. We have a warranty. The next day, I took it to Zales and they said, “No problem. We’ll send it to the repair center.” EIGHT WEEKS LATER, they call me and say that they can’t fix it because the ring will fall apart. ?????? We got it back from them and took it to another jeweler, who said he could totally fix it…but in order to do so, he’d also need to fix all the other things wrong with it. I’ve only had Zales do repairs on it, so we were surprised to hear that. When he explained the different things required, we realized that the repair center for Zales is probably full of less-experienced jewelers who didn’t know what they were doing and who also took shortcuts doing repairs. 🙁 On the left is my repaired ring and on the right is the old gold. The guy pretty much rebuilt my ring.The last time Zales sized it, instead of adding gold, they just stretched it. You can see how much thinner the old gold is compared to the repaired ring. They had also reset my center stone crookedly, and had damaged the band when they soldered it to the engagement ring (that last one, we hadn’t noticed, but when the jeweler pointed it out to Paul, Paul could see exactly what he was talking about). I think we’ll be talking to Zales about how poor the quality of work is.Another pretty sunrise.One might think, at first glance, that this is the sun, but it’s actually the moon! It was almost set and it was huge!The sky was so beautiful that I needed to take another picture!Abigail’s puppet show.Buc-ee and Iguana couldn’t decide who got to hold Teddy…I think they ultimately decided they would both hold Teddy. I love a happy ending!Swings!She loves going super high.One of those “then and now” collages. I can hardly believe how much she’s grown!This one loves getting to come home and swing (the swings at school are closed off, so he loves that he can come home and swing).Someone was rather curious about just what is in the neighbor’s back yard. She makes ample use of the knotholes, which are just the right size for one eye. 😉I did my nails!Here’s a close-up of the color. I love the fading look.
Bonus Video: There is a father-daughter duo from Kaysville, Utah who have started making YouTube videos of themselves doing covers of all sorts of songs. They recently did a cover of The Beatles’ song, “Let It Be”. This has always been one of my favorite songs (especially after I learned that “Mother Mary” is actually Paul McCartney’s mother, who passed away when he was young). In a time of quite a bit of turmoil, sometimes it’s good to just…let it be.
I’m breaking from my typical format for this post mainly because we had a very atypical week. I don’t remember if I mentioned it in my previous post, but my back went all sorts of wonky, which landed me in Urgent Care (thankfully we have a lot of stand-alone UCs, so we were able to find one that wasn’t busy). I left with some muscle relaxers and some Ibuprofen 800…and hardly being able to move without being in pain or without having severe muscle spasms. It’s now been a full week and I’m just barely starting to be able to get around. Paul jumped right into the trenches and took over everything. I am so, so grateful for his willingness to do so and for the fact that he was able to take time off of work so I could focus on healing. I’ve still got a ways to go, but I think (fingers crossed) that by Monday I’ll be able to handle enough of my daily tasks so that he can return to work, because I know he’s really needed there, too. Since I’ve mostly been in bed, I didn’t take too many pictures this week, but I got a few:
Abigail was just soaking in all the extra “Daddy-time”.I mentioned to Paul that I wanted a better way to store my cooling racks/platters/cutting boards. I had found an organizer on Amazon that I thought might work, so I talked with him about it and he agreed it would work. I love that they are not all leaned up against each other anymore. I do still have a couple of things double-stacked, but because they are straight up and down (instead of at an angle), it’s still easy to get the things I need.Our favorite BBQ place set up a food truck at the park in our neighborhood…so Paul went and grabbed dinner for us one night. It was soooo yummy!I absolutely love sunset clouds……especially when they go all purpley-pink.
Weekly Happenings: Thankfully, this week was rather uneventful. Last week’s knocked out tooth incident was enough for the time being. 😉 I think the only thing that was out of the ordinary was that Paul took Thursday off (he had some use-it-or-lose-it time-off time) and the two of us took Abigail to the zoo. It was tiring (we’re trying to get her used to not wearing the puppy backpack/leash but still stay close to us) but still fun. I would add more, but there really isn’t anything else to add.
The Weekly Weather: The mornings have been really cold (30s) and the afternoons cool (50s-60s). Sunny for the most part (we did have a storm come through on Sunday, but that was about it).
What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been working from home, which was nice. I was able to leave Abigail at home quite a bit while I ran Joseph to and from school and ran other short errands.
What Sarah’s Been Up To: I went to book club, which was fun as always. I also managed to tweak my back yet again (I seem to do it about once a year, it seems), so a trip to urgent care to get some prescription-strength Ibuprofen, some muscle relaxers, and a steroid shot was what we did today.
What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s still plugging away at school. Wednesday was a half day (to let the teachers have some extra planning time), so he enjoyed the extra time off.
What Abigail’s Been Up To: She was her normal, cheerful, sassy self this week. One funny thing that happened this morning: she was playing in her room and the light bulb for her light happened to burn out. She told us her light needed new batteries. 🙂
This Week in Pictures:
A six minute breakfast, thanks to my breakfast sandwich maker. I scramble an egg, put it in the sandwich maker, put in an insert to hold a pre-cooked sausage patty, and put on the lid. Then I stick it in the microwave for a minute and a half. There is another insert for it where you would put the English muffin in (for the last thirty seconds of cooking) to get steamed, but I prefer my English muffin toasted, so I toast it while the rest is cooking. Then I just add a slice of cheese when assembling it and Voila!Watching Blue’s Clues while playing with her Blue’s Clues toys…she’s living the life!Sitting on top of the platform for the slide in our back yard. It was a beautiful day, so we made sure to get some outside play in.Zoo time!She started flapping her wings like a butterfly…she’s also wearing the only mask she’ll wear: her vampire one from Halloween. 🙂Looking at the monkeys (I just realized it’s hard to see the monkey…he/she is sitting on the hammock, right up on the edge of the fence…but it does look like just a big ball of fuzz, ha).It’s rare for the jaguar to be right up along the fence, but he was that day!She really liked the bright blue birds in this enclosure.Meal prep for the win! I love it when I can dice up things ahead of time so that when dinner time hits I can just dump it all in and go.
