October

I got hooked up somehow with a random Chinese company on Amazon doing reviews and they keep sending me amusing items I might never buy in order to review them. I think it started with a pair of earrings I did pick, but now I've reviewed a selfie light setup, a couple gallon-sized waterbottles, and some other random stuff. It's pretty fun. The kids particularly love the selfie light. It has a bluetooth remote and I have a huge amount of funny pictures on my phone now. 

Bill and I couldn't be left out of the fun. But geez, Bill has a good smolder and I've got nothing. Hahahahah. I think I was post hat hair and just look tired. Oh well.

I discovered last week that we'd never spent our Costco dividend checks from February, so I happily went on a Costco clothes shopping spree and got something for all of us. Chloe adores these new PJs.

We've had several knock down punching fights over empty boxes this week, but I snagged this shot of my kids actually loving each other just for a moment. 

This was exciting to discover Friday night when I came home from picking the kids up from school. Thankfully this branch only took out a couple fence slats instead of our swing or our trampoline or the corner of our house.

Two trash bins full of debris later all that is left is to cut up the branch and let it dry out and we'll use it for firewood down the road sometime.

Fall is here

Fall hit us like a ton of bricks the last week or two.  It was 42 degrees at the bus stop this morning. Like three weeks ago lows were 20 degrees higher. Kind of crazy how fast it switched. I do love pulling out my sweaters and boots though. 

I hardly took any pictures this week. But, at long last we did finally get a bedframe for our bed.  I sold all the beds I had made like six months and and bought bunkbeds for the kids, a dresser for one of their rooms, and a huge dresser for my room. But I ran out of money to replace our bedframe and so we slept with the mattress on the floor since then. But finally this week I bought this beauty and I'm really happy with it.  It matches so well what I already have and I'm just a big fan. 

 Spencer is getting his cooking on of late. Last week he made mint brownies. This is him enjoying his first bite.

And here's him mid process. 

 And Genevieve is endlessly creative and she made this little unicorn out of legos one day. Fun times.

The time my body went wacko

You guys, I have had a nutso week. I woke up on Wednesday and my ears were itching. It seemed weird but whatever. Thursday I looked at my face and I had hives all over my cheekbones. And then it started itching more and I was like oh gosh, I think I'm having an allergic reaction. Better take some benadryl. I tried mulberries this week in a bunch of salads I made with some friends and I quickly figured that must be what was bothering me since I've never eaten them before. So I stopped eating the salads, took some benadryl, and figured I was good. Nope. Woke up Friday and the hives had spread and my face was swelling. I got into my doctor and am now trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Got on some prednisone and that's helping, but it's Monday now and they haven't fully gone away. I'm on a super restrictive diet for ten days to make sure nothing I'm eating can cause an allergic reaction, plus did a bunch of bloodwork. Still waiting on results. It's pretty crazy stuff. I still don't know for sure yet it's the mulberries. Might be just one contributing factor, but let me tell you, puffy hives all over my face is not really that pleasant to look at. Here's hoping things settle down. I have had so many weird health issues the last three years. I'm really ready to move on from this phase. 

In better news, we had a fun, soccer-filled Saturday plus a work service project. It felt really nutso at the time rushing all over the place, but the kids had good games. Aaron and Genevieve won theirs. Spencer's team plays some hard opponents and it's kind of stressful sometimes to watch them trying so hard and not winning, but I feel like it's really good for them. They're getting better every game and it's good to do hard things. But man, it turns out watching your kid play can be just as exhilerating as back when I was playing sports. 

And here's a cute picture of Chloe, just because. She's my little tagalong on my errands these days and it's fun to have just her at home.

Back to school, back to school!

School started this last week and five of six of us our delighted. Chloe is highly offended that she doesn't get to go as well. She's not appeased when I tell her she's only three. Sorry sweet girl, you have to wait a year to go to preschool. 

So far school is off to a great start. The kids love their teachers. Routines are mostly working. We're heavy into soccer as well this fall so practices almost every night and three games every Saturday.  I imagine by November when they end we'll be tired out, but for now it's super fun.

Last weekend of summer

I'm on the fence as to whether I like school starting after Labor Day or not. Today is the last day of summer for us. Spencer and Genevieve start back tomorrow and Aaron, who is starting kindergarten, starts on Friday. It's a little weird to be on a two or three-week later schedule than all my friends as they post first and last day of school pictures. But that being said, we've had a great summer and are looking forward to the new school year.

We had a good week. Swim lessons were fun.

 Genevieve turned seven this week. It feels like we've been waiting forever for her birthday. It's eight weeks after Aaron's, so it just feels like forever, but we had a great time celebrating her. She's in love with pandas at the moment so it was all panda themed. Panda stuffies, costume, string art. Panda cake. We even made little white and black cupcakes day of for her to blow out candles. We had a swim party for her again, just like Aaron's birthday. It was so fun the first time we had to just do it again. I didn't get a single picture there though. We were having way too much fun.

We got new soccer socks for the kids and they've been mixing and matching wearing them all weekend.

Here's hoping for a great first week of school and the kids do well and like their classes. 

Feeling good

I got my stitches out this morning and I'm so happy about it. They were getting really itchy and uncomfortable, and now I have a lot more movement in some directions without any pain. You guys, it has been two years. And I had carpal tunnel during my last two pregancies too that went away post-pregnancy. So this hand pain in some form or another has been going on for over five years. I am SO pleased to have so much improvement. My right hand isn't asleep when I wake up anymore. I feel like it has so much more blood flow. I thought my left hand felt much better than my right, but post-surgery it just feels mushy and not very touch sensitive. My right hand has a lot more range of motion and it's going to take some time to get all the feeling back in my fingertips, but I think it will come, or at least improve. It's been just 11 days since surgery and it's so improved. I'm already planning when this fall I can schedule my left hand. My deductible is met. Time to do all the things! lololol.

This is our last week of summer. I remember being a tiny bit jealous of folks that didn't start school until after Labor Day when I was a kid, but as a parent I'm ready to get back in the school swing of things. I've seen approximately a million first day of school pictures. We are starting things up this week. We're doing one last round of swim lessons. Going to ice cream with a former teacher and class. We haveback to school night this week. Should be a nice week to get in the swing of thinking about school starting.

Surgery Week

I've tried a million billion treatments to help the carpal tunnel I developed during my last two pregnancies that was aggravated about two years ago and has been a problem ever since. None of them really helped much. I had a few that had some positive results, mostly upper cervical chiropractic care and topical CBD oil, but nothing made it go away. So I finally got around to doing surgery on my right hand this last week. I'll most likely schedule the left hand later this fall. It's hard to do much without your dominant hand, but aside from that, the recovery has been remarkably swift and less painful than I expected. I never even took any of the meds. Took ibuprofen twice. It just wasn't too bad. I'm very grateful for that. I've got a pretty awesome wound with stitches in it for another six days, but otherwise every day I can do more with my hand. It's really nice! And hopefully as full healing occurs I will see a drop in the symptoms that made the surgery necessary. I'll spare you the surgery photos, but it is a gnarly wound. Good times.  2019 has been a year of working through medical issues and slowly finding solutions. The process is ongoing and I hope by the end of the year I'll be past most of them. Mid-thirties hit me like a ton of you're not healthy anymore bricks, so I'd just as soon move on from these last 2.5 years. Here's to better health!

And we're back

The last few weeks have been a total whirlwind of traveling to reunions and spending time with both sides of the family. It was fun and now I'm glad to be back home and settled in for a few more weeks of summer. Kids don't start school until Labor Day here in Washington, so we have three full weeks of summer left, plus the Labor Day weekend, and Aaron has a few extra days to wait because he's in kindergarten and they stagger start them the first few days.

So I'm sitting here watching all my friends' kids going back to school and happily not having any schedule yet. My kids are running around the house gathering every pillow and blanket to add to their ultimate blankeyland they made over the weekend and slept in the last two nights. And I'm grateful our family room has a door I can close so they can keep that blankeyland going as long as they want.

It's good to be summer. And we're having an incredibly temperate August. The high today is 80 and that's the highest it will be for the next 10 days. It rained the last few days, which is unusual in the summer. I'm just sitting here thinking this is the most ideal weather it could possibly be for the last few weeks of vacation.

And here's some fun photos from our trip.

A day at Rattlesnake Lake with friends before we headed out to Utah for the reunions.

We had a one-day reunion with Bill's extended family on one side, aunts and uncles and a plethora of cousins. It was in Provo Canyon and the weather was perfect, the kids had a great time, and we all ate great food.

 While we were down in Utah we picked up two kayaks that my grandma gave us. She and my grandpa had many, many amazing adventures with these and I even got out on them back when I was in college and before I got married. He's gone now and she doesn't use them, so she so generously gave them to us and we can't be more excited for our own adventures in them.

 Chloe has a deep, abiding love for apricots that we discovered on this trip. She ate so many from Bill's parents' tree while we were there. She also adored that yellow bow my sister-in-law let her borrow. She wore it the entire day and was oh so careful to make sure it stayed on. Since she never keeps anything else on her head and so I stopped putting bows on years ago, I was pretty impressed.

 Movies were watched with cousins. Grandma and Grandpa have their own popcorn maker in the basement and the kids pretty well lived on popcorn for a few days.

 Festive Bill.

 Grandma tye-dyed shirts with the kids and this was one of the cousin shots before we got the four other cousins out. Unfortunately we used water-based dye so it washed out like 90 percent of the color in the washer, so now my kids have demanded we do it again with more permanent dye. We might even do that. 😃

The kids are ready to get going in these kayaks. We built the stand to hold them the day after we got home and we even took the yellow one out over the weekend to test it out. As expected, it was fun.