Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Life Lately! Or, The LONGEST Post EVER.

It's been a while since I've updated on our goings-on and I felt like I was doing such a good job of blogging in January! I felt like I'd sort of gotten my groove back! Maybe I'll get it together again!

Let's go all the way back to MLK weekend, shall we?

On Saturday morning James had a basketball game. This has been, by far, our best sport that we've undertaken. Upward is SO much more organized than YMCA sports have been for us. Plus, James is older and more focused which was a huge issue for us in the past. (See all those posts in May-June 2013 about James' first year of t-ball for evidence.) James has LOVED basketball. Grandmama and Eddie are both coaching, they have a great team, and it's just been lots of fun. We will for sure do it again! On Saturday at his game he scored his first basket during a game (made his first basket? made a goal? he got two points...). He was PUMPED. He's done it plenty of times in practice, but not during a game. And I saw it with my own eyes, which is a feat while watching basketball with Wild Will.



After his basketball game we went out for breakfast/brunch/lunch (depending on what you ordered...Kelly got a hamburger, I had biscuits and gravy)...and then the four of us and Cacky headed for our annual trip to the local museum where Poppy celebrated his 60th birthday. We've gone back three years in a row without him and I plan to do it every year. It's a fun way to celebrate his birthday for him.











On Sunday, Eddie fired up the Big Green Egg for the first time. We had ribs and they were delicious. It's going to take some getting used to and holy cow you have to be patient (I like a slow cooker in the house that you can just turn on and LEAVE!), but they were very good! We'll probably fire it up again this week. I think John has used his 20 times already, but we're slower to figure things out.



While the BGE was fired up, I thought it would be the perfect time to teach James to ride a bike without training wheels. We meant to work on this MONTHS ago but we just haven't done it. Whoops. I am SO not an outside person and I struggle to get my kids outside. I need to work on that. Anyway, we took off his training wheels and pumped up his tires and added the parent handle onto his bike so I could hold him steady and he and I took off. We rode down the street and back and realized he had a flat again. Womp, womp. We quickly realized he needed a tube replaced so we had to scratch the bike riding plans for another day.



James has te.rri.ble eczema on his scalp. It gets worse in the winter and it gets worse when using regular shampoo instead of dry scalp/dandruff shampoo. It had gotten VERY out of hand so he had to have a coconut oil treatment a few days in a row. He looked like a grease ball, but it did the trick! Eczema doesn't bother him at all, but it looks horrible. This is the life of a kid with major allergies. Ha!

Monday the boys were all out of school/work (I'm always off on Monday so I wound up NOT getting a holiday since everyone else was home!). James and I had a date to Hobby Lobby to pick up some crafting things because his class was celebrating the 100th day of school on Wednesday and we needed some things to make a t-shirt. We were instructed to put 100 things on a t-shirt and James wanted to make a bubble gum shirt with 100 gum balls.





Unfortunately, I spent the rest of the day with Mom, John, and Kayla as we had to make the decision to put our dog, Dixie, to sleep. She was fifteen-and-a-half and she was in the advanced stages of congestive heart failure. John found Dixie when I was a junior in high school and she was probably about six weeks old. She was a cranky old lady, but it will be weird not hearing her bark at us when we walk in at Cacky's.



Will had fun at school, too! He had Occupation Day on Friday and anytime we asked what he wanted to be he said a "worker man." Wellll....what IS a worker man to you? We finally realized him meant a construction worker so I pulled out his overalls and some tools. We didn't have a hard hat so I suggested his Mickey hat so that he could be a roller coaster builder. An Imagineer! BAM.



On Saturday we went to the CIRCUS! Ringling Bros! It was SO MUCH FUN. They go to Atlanta every year and we've just never found a weekend that worked. We checked Jacksonville instead this year and it worked out. We decided at the very last minute to go and we still wound up with pretty good seats! 






The pre-show was FANTASTIC. They invite everyone down on the floor to play along. One ring had a bounce house and the other two rings had various shows - clowns, juggling, dancing, elephants, dogs, contortionists. It was great! The boys walked right up to one of the rings and watched and AN ELEPHANT came out! 





The show was fabulous. I'd go back again in a heartbeat. SO fun. The cage of death was the only part I just can't watch. You know what I'm talking about? EIGHT motorcyclists in a round cage at once. No, thanks. LOVED the acrobats, the elephants, the big cats. If Ringling is coming near you, grab your tickets!
















On Sunday (we've made it to the 24th now!), James had a music concert at the high school. His school's Kindergarten and First Grade performed three songs at the high school's chorus concert. It was very cute but we were there for TWO HOURS. The high school chorus is well worth it, but I had a cranky Broncos fan with me who was trying to watch the game on his phone.





Tuesday night I had Book Club and we had a local author join us for discussion of her book. It was a unique experience. I can't remember ever having heard an author speak before, much less have I had to lead the discussion surrounding someone's book with them sitting in the room, so it was interesting! We were glad to have her join us, though.




{One WEEK of food for a child in our Backpack Buddies program. Our county has completely free breakfast and lunch for EVERY child in the public school system, but this is for nights and (mostly) the weekend. I've been packing these for two years but the other day I was just completely blown away by how little it is. These kids are picked by school counselors to be signed up for this program. They are consistently and legitimately hungry. Oh, my heart. If you're local and interested in helping, I can get you plugged in QUICKLY.}

Someone has been reading BIG kid books. He realized last week he can read to himself and not out loud {hallelujah!} and he has moved up to a Level J at school. We are so STINKIN' proud of him. That is a CHAPTER book. He isn't ready on his own, but he is reading it!



Saturday was James' LAST basketball game of the season. I know I've gone on and on about it, but it was seriously the best season of sports we've had. We're doing t-ball starting in a few weeks and it will be our first time to have BOTH boys in a sport at the same time (and on different teams!). It will probably be interesting, to say the least! We aren't swimming this year, which makes me SO SAD. James really had a lot of anxiety about the meets last year, but GOODNESS that's great exercise twice a week!

On Saturday night we had the pleasure of keeping a little Miss Merritt at our house. Much to the boys' disappointment, she came over after her bedtime so they could only look at her sleeping self, but they were so excited to have her there. She arrived around 7:15 and I held her while the boys watched tv until about 8:00. I put them to bed and they fell RIGHT to sleep. Meanwhile, Merritt had the need for a little diaper change (and Eddie informed me that he was only there to hold her) and it made her wide awake. She and I talked for a long time and then she lost her mind about being awake when she was supposed to be asleep. :/ Whoops! I'm sorry! We I got her calmed down and we snuggled on the sofa until her Mama and Daddy came to pick her up just before she turned into a pumpkin.








Anna texted me on Sunday morning and said I was responsible for Merritt every night from now on. She slept through going home and slept until 4AM. Then she ate and slept until 7AM. I told Anna that was great, but she killed me. I did something and ohmygosh woke up in horrible pain. I knew overnight that I wasn't comfortable, but I was able to sleep through it. When Eddie's alarm went off at 6AM (we are early churchers and Eddie is a snooze hitter, so that's the time it gets set for), I sat up in the bed and started crying. I know I scared Eddie to death. I just needed to be UP. A friend said I was just trying to get away from the pain and she's probably right. He got me up, put my robe on, and got me (somewhat) settled in the recliner in the den. I could get in positions that lessened the pain, but it never went away all day long.


So the first part of last week had me trying to figure out WHAT is going on with my neck and back. I got some pretty good advice on Sunday via Facebook so I took a very large dose of ibuprofen (yes, I've seen the articles floating around about how bad it is) and ice packed my shoulder every four hours for 20 minutes. Sitting took some of the pressure off so I spent the day upright on the sofa. We tried a tens unit on my shoulder, too, and while it didn't seem to be working while it was on, it would immediately knot back up once we took it off. It was a miserable day and I'm sure I was miserable to be around.

On Monday I woke up feeling a lot better, but still achy. I tried to continue resting, but I was getting ready for a Keep Collective social so I did have some work to do. By the afternoon I was hurting again, mostly from bending and lifting things. Do you know what I do as my "in real life" job? Pick up children. All morning long, four mornings a week. It is really the easiest job in the world (rocking babies!), but it is mostly bending and lifting. AND SO I called in a sub.


On Tuesday I took myself to the doctor first thing. I went to a walk-in clinic that I really treat as my general practice place but saw someone I had never seen. She was WONDERFUL. She said that my pain really sounded a lot like a muscle spasm to her and after some questions she ordered x-rays. In looking at those she could see some knots in my muscle so she confirmed it looked more muscular and she wasn't worried about it being skeletal. She gave me a steroid shot and two prescriptions and sent me on my merry little way. I improved over the next few days and went back to work on Thursday. I am still sort of achy. I'm supposed to work on my strength and flexibility. I see a lot of yoga and pilates in my future.


We celebrated (sort of?) Groundhog Day last week and James specifically prayed for fog the night before...



Ha! He was tickled. No shadow = no more winter?

On Friday, THIS girl was back in town. Yeehaw!


We enjoyed some snuggle time on Friday afternoon.

We went to a basketball game on Friday night and Will and I made it through the girls' game (and a double overtime!) before he and I had to make an exit. Poor buddy cannot sit still when he's sleepy. I drove him around for 45 minutes and carried a sleeping boy in when I got home. Eddie and James made it through the boys' game (they won, too) before coming home. It was fun!

We spent Super Bowl Sunday with our Dinner Club crowd. It had been a WHILE since all of us had been together. We had a great time and I didn't take a single picture. Eddie and the boys were HAPPY guys when the Broncos took the trophy home. Eddie has been a Broncos fan for a long time (he'd pull for them over the Falcons), but the boys just jumped on the bandwagon with their daddy this season. 

Will had an awesome day yesterday when he was invited to go home with his BEST buddy, Will. Those boys are TROUBLE together, but they love each other so much and have the best time together. They can destroy a house in a second, though. We are so thankful that he has this buddy. 


Ok! Whew! So that catches everything up since mid-January. Hopefully it won't be three more weeks until the next update!


1 comment:

Anna Catherine said...

I totally thought the Disney construction worker was James the whole time! I never think they look alike until I mix them up! Haha!