February

I have been thinking about blogging for weeks now.  I can’t bring myself to sit down and do it.  I don’t know why.  I just can’t focus my brain enough.  And when I do have a few free minutes (which are usually in the evening when all the kids are in bed) I want to read or take a bath or something.  Ryan is out of town this week, which means I don’t have anyone to hang out with at night.  And since Kaden has been wanting to go to bed at like 8:30 or 9 lately, I have a bit of time.  Not a ton of time, since I still have to clean the kitchen up and pack lunches for the morning and prepare something for breakfast as well because Kaden likes to wake up right during crunch time to get the kids ready for school.  I’m not sure if he just likes to wake up then, or if the crazy kids wake him up with all their noise.  Either way, he wakes up starving and I hate to make him wait to eat so I try my best to get things ready so I’m available in the morning to feed him when he wakes.

Anyway, I typed most of this up last week and realized I needed to organize pictures to go with it, so the timeline may be off but I’m too tired to try and fix it.  I’m sure it’s not a big deal.

We had parent-teacher conferences a couple weeks ago and that’s always a good time for me to sit down and do some updates on the kids, but I have wanted to snap a few pictures of them as well and I haven’t had my camera out, nor have we had time.  Time.  There’s never enough time.  I know we aren’t THAT busy.  My kids aren’t in as many activities as they were in the Fall.  Kylee has gym and piano.  Dylan has bball and piano.  And Sadie has dance and gym.  But it seems like there’s always something.  I spend a lot of time cooking, or shopping for food to cook.  It’s tricky finding time for errands when the day is broken up with school, preschool, meals, and feeding Kaden.  Kylee is always rushing trying to do homework and have a snack before she has to leave for gym every day.  The one day she doesn’t have gym is Wednesdays and the kids have piano and then we have Activity Days (only every other week).  Dylan has a lot of homework.  It takes nearly an hour every day.  And then he has to practice piano before he can play with friends or do electronics.  I know it seems weird to be so pressed for time, but I literally barely found time to have the kids address their Valentine’s cards.  And there has been a couple nights where Kylee is up late trying to finish homework.

Also the weather has been so great (SO GREAT!) that I have wanted to let the kids enjoy it while there’s still daylight so I have let them play before the work is done.  I usually end up regretting that because they do nothing but whine.

I guess I will do updates on my kids in separate posts.  So instead, let’s talk about the weather!  I can’t remember it ever being close to 60 in February.  For weeks in a row.  I think it may have hit 60 once or twice.  The sun is out.  We went for a walk with Kaden in the stroller the other day.  He was good the whole time.

This girl and her poses...

She sure loves kissing her little brother.  Like, too much.  Like, I have to try hard not to get annoyed that she is constantly wanting to kiss his head.  Love her sweetness.

Kylee and Ryan have been practicing on the Ripstick, which is pretty fun for them.  I haven’t done it enough to really get the hang of it. 

Grandma Cheryl came into town for a week and was able to spend a little time with my kids.  So I got to go on a bike ride in the middle of the day.  It was a little chilly, but not enough to be miserable.  I loved it.

Then last weekend I went for a run outside.  I was able to do six miles and felt great!  And then Ryan went golfing.  Did I mention it is FEBRUARY?  One of the two most miserable months of the year?  I don’t know what to think about this.  Is it possible that it will stay warm and we won’t have any more snow?  Or temperatures below zero?  I can’t imagine that’s the case.  But the forecast shows 40+ degrees.  One day 51, one day 37.  I am tempted to go out and dig in my flower beds.  The sunshine and zero snow is making me anxious to get out.  I’m afraid the waiting is going to be even harder now than it would be with crappy weather.

Despite the nice weather, it’s been a bad year for illness.  Ryan thought he was coming down with something, feeling run down and scratchy throat.  He took it easy and even tried drinking bone broth I made.  He never got really bad.  A little after that Dylan started coughing.  He coughed and coughed and didn’t feel great.  He never got a fever, but the cough was bad.  Shortly after that, Sadie and Kaden both got it.  Sadie coughed for a week or more and then she started complaining of an earache.  She wasn’t acting like her head was going to explode, just a little pain.  So I treated her with Motrin and Wally’s Ear Oil.  She did end up with a fever from the ear infection, but it wasn’t too high.  She was miserable for a few days and she was still coughing.  She is still coughing now.  It’s seriously been like three weeks. (She’s better now, since I wrote this last week).  Kaden’s little cough was super sad.  He would hack and his eyes would water and he would gag and throw up and gag some more.  It was a bit scary.  His breathing sounded rattly.  We had to suction out his nose with the bulb syringe quite often so he could actually breathe.  We worried about him.  But he never got a fever and he continued to eat and sleep well.  Finally, after it went through everyone else, Kylee got a sore throat.  That’s all she had for a few days and then woke up one morning with a pretty bad cough.  It’s been over a week for her too and she’s still hacking really bad.  I want her to heal so she isn’t coughing during her gymnastics meet this weekend! (Update: she finally listened to me and drank tons of water and she was doing pretty well for her meet.)  And me, well I got a scratchy throat about the same time as Kylee did.  I got a bit of a headache and my nose was acting up.  But I took it easy and drank lots of honey-lemon water.  I never got a cough or anything else.

(I've read how there's tons of benefits of drinking this on an empty stomach in the morning so I try to do it often.  Plus, it's nice to take a minute to myself in the morning and enjoy the warm drink.  Even if it is literally only a minute.)

So that was fun, having everyone sick, but at different times so I was just dealing with runny noses and coughing for weeks and weeks.  Let’s move on to something more pleasant.  Like emergency preparedness!  Ha!  Ok, so I read this book called Life as We Knew It.  I’m not raving about the book, it was just okay.  It was narrated by a teenager like a journal and I think the author did a good job of that, but since I’m not a teenager I found a lot of it selfish and juvenile.  But that’s not the point.  The point is this book, unlike most of the dystopian books I have read, started out with the earth how it is today, and then an asteroid hit the moon and knocked it out of orbit and it messed up everything, causing crazy tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.  Gas prices skyrocketed and electricity eventually went out.  Temperatures dropped even in June.  I’m not saying any of this is realistic, but I did like how they ran to the store and stocked up on food.  And then how they used what they had.  It made me think about what I would do in that situation and I re-evaluated our food storage.  Which is the point I was getting at.  I’ve had a lot of food storage for awhile now.  Though, I’ve not been great at rotating through things and restocking what I’ve used.  I had run out of oats, rice, sugars and chocolate chips, etc.  And I’ve never quite grasped the idea of 3-month storage.  They say “buy extra of the things you use often and stock them up.”  Well, I use fresh fruits and veggies and fresh meats more than anything else.  I try to buy extra meat for the freezer, but I can’t stock up fruit and veggies.  But this book helped me think in a little different way.  So I made a list and I went shopping.

I got pasta, rice, oats, sugars, cocoa powder (one of the things they talked about in the book was wishing they had chocolate and sweets), yeast (another thing they mentioned so they can make bread), baking soda and powder, corn starch, marinara sauce, sugars, organic mac n cheese (at Sam’s Club, score!), ketchup, beans, etc.  After shopping I then had to reorganize my pantry and cupboards.  I ended up throwing out foods that were years expired (I mentioned I’m not good at rotating things, right?)   But I was happy to have a better grasp on what foods I have at home and an organized kitchen.  I hope it lasts!  Now I just need to buy a grass-fed cow and store the meat in the freezer.  And I need to make room in the freezer for that.

Valentine’s.  I like to plan ahead for all holiday stuff because if you wait then all the good stuff at the store is gone.  Like at Halloween, I get toys to give out instead of candy and I start collecting things as soon as they are in the stores.  So I started planning Valentine’s early as well.  I ordered their little gifts from Amazon and let them choose what they wanted to give.  Dylan and Sadie both chose sticky hands and Kylee chose light-up rings.  I didn’t get any pictures of their actual Valentine.  Then I started looking at boxes we could make for them.  Kylee and I both thought the owl was adorable.  I thought the Lego box would be simple enough for Dylan.  And since Sadie is so little I figured she could re-use the monster I made for Kylee last year.

I’m glad I started planning early because I used Gatorade lids for Dylan’s box and I needed eight of them.  We don’t drink a whole lot of Gatorade so I had to go buy some and beg Ryan to help drink it.  I didn’t want to just give it all to the kids, though I did give them Gatorade in their water bottles for school a couple times which I consider a pretty cool treat.  Then I just bought green wrapping paper and cut out his name.  I thought it turned out pretty sweet.

For Kylee’s a used a cereal box.  I happened to have this brown paper I picked up for a project in Kaden’s room and it worked out perfectly to wrap around the box for the owl.  And I bought some foam and put it together by looking at the picture.

It wasn’t until a few days before Valentine’s Day that Kylee came home and told me they weren’t supposed to bring boxes.  They were decorating bags in class.  Nice.  So those of us who actually prepare ahead of time just wasted all our time.  And the poor kids who decorated their own boxes don’t get to use them.  Kylee could’ve done hers herself except she’s never home and I grew impatient.  So I did it, with a little help from Sadie.  Oh well, I will just save it until either Kylee or Sadie can use it.  It’s not like owls will go out of style.  Actually, they might.  They are mighty trendy right now for some reason.  Oh well.  Sadie’s teacher sent a note telling us we don’t need to send a box for them either.  I hadn’t really done much to her box, other than try to fix the eyes since they had gotten torn off at some point this last year.

The funny thing is that I remembered Mrs Davis from Kindergarten when Kylee had her, she didn’t have the kids bring boxes that year.  So I specifically asked her about the box and she said they will bring one from home.  I didn’t even think about the girls not being allowed to bring one.

So Dylan is the only one who brought his box.

Now I just need to organize all my thoughts about my kiddos!  There's lots to say, so it's a bit overwhelming but I know I will regret it if I don't sit down and do it!