Still Here

I've tried unsuccessfully about 10 times now to upload pictures from Spring Break. I'm officially giving up for the time being.

I'm still here, still staying offline for the most part (and loving it). Even after the forty days is over, we're committed to keeping the internet and tv off except for designated times. The kids haven't even missed watching tv. We're allowing for Clara to watch her Friday night movie and we're instituted Saturday morning cartoons, but other than that, it has stayed off for the kids. Chris and I have turned it on in the evening once or twice. I'll admit there have been a few frazzled Mommy moments where I just about caved and put something on for them, but we all endured.

And I hardly miss getting online anymore. There are lots of sites that I don't even mess with going to and I don't even feel out of the loop not visiting Facebook multiple times a day. I'm thinking of deleting my account entirely. I've got to get Clara up and ready for school, so no more internet for me today!

Playroom Makeover

I purged and painted the kids' playroom last week. I've wanted to paint it for some time now,but the task was daunting with kids in the way. So when they spent a couple of days at Grandmaand Grandpa's house during Spring Break, I jumped on the chance to get it done.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I'm reading a book called "Simplicity Parenting" and I used some ideas for inspiration. The book is great and is all about simplifying all areas of a child's life, environment, schedule, rhythm, and the adult world. The bluish-gray is a much more soothing color than the polka dots, wouldn't you agree? I never actually like the polka dots to tell you the truth, but after you put that much work into something, it's hard to paint over it.

I whittled the book pile down from 4 shelves to 2 and brought the comfy reading chair down. There are only one or two toys per shelf instead of shelves being filled to overflowing. The kitchen has a new home with a friend and the train table was moved to the middle of the room so there is complete access to it. I also pulled out all of the cars that were parked underneath and gave them homes on the shelf. I brought the table and chairs back in, too. I set aside a few things to be rotated in and out, but not too much and I plan on re-hanging the artwork on a different wall so the big wall isn't as cluttered.

Another Year

Chris and I celebrated 14 years of wedded bliss yesterday. As always, we didn't plan ahead and weren't planning on doing anything to celebrate. Yesterday morning I decided we shouldn't let another anniversary pass without doing something, anything, so I called up Crystal to see if she could watch the kids for us. She obliged so we went for a nice dinner at P.F. Changs.

The logistics of just getting kids to babysitter and us to the restaurant was ridiculous. Between five o'clock traffic, rain, and Chris' hour long commute, it was such a pain. This is why we don't go out. It's just so much easier and so less stressful to stay holed up in our cozy house. I'm glad we went though. We had a very lovely time and it's always such a pleasure to enjoy a meal without the little ones. Chris was very good to humor me and let the waiter take our picture. It did take some convincing though.

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it was cute. I couldn't get a good picture of all of the balloons. I took a balloon for each year of marriage and wrote just a couple of the highlights from that year on a piece of paper and attached it to the balloon. Turns out fourteen is a lot of years. It was hard to remember what happened some years. Chris said we're boring; myself, I'm grateful for some non-eventful years.

More Allergies

I got Robert into the doctor yesterday because I wanted to know if his rash was contagious. When he woke, it had spread all over his body and looked much worse, but he still didn't seem bothered by it.

Turns out it was an allergic reaction. So now we're trying to think back over the day or two prior to its onset to figure out what could have caused it. The only thing I can think of is we tried to get him to try shrimp for the first time at dinner on Friday. I can't remember if he even touched it. But even if that's all he did, it could have caused the reaction. That would round out our family's severe allergies. We don't have a shellfish allergy in the family yet. Yay!

He had a couple doses of benadryl yesterday and a a dose of steroids and he just woke up and it looks much better.

ETA: This picture is from Monday morning. His back was a little worse and he had more spots by the time I got him to the doctor a few hours later. After a couple of doses of steroids, they're mostly gone. The ones on his face are being stubborn, but even they have almost completely faded.

See, This is Why I Can't Have Internet

This morning Robert woke with a couple of spots on his face. As I was passing him off to a nursery worker at church, his shirt came up and I saw that his torso was covered in them. So I quickly left Clara with a friend and loaded up Chris and Robert and brought them home. Chris had been waffling back and forth as to whether he should even go to church this morning because he was feeling a little "off" on his pain meds. So it worked out fine.

I just took a nap and as I woke I thought, "I should check on google and see if I can figure out what those spots are", and then I remembered, "Oh, wait. I can't get on the internet. Boo." But then I remembered I had to cheat last night because I needed to burn a cd of songs for my Sunday school class for this morning and I thought, "Hmmmm. I wonder if Chris remembered to disable the internet." So then I checked. And sure enough, he didn't! Yay! So now, instead of just checking the one thing I needed to check, I've checked Facebook, and email, and now I'm blogging. I've yet to google "red spots". I cannot be trusted.

Busyness

Our church has a wonderful theme this year. It's all about going deeper in our faith. Deeper in prayer, giving, serving, fasting, studying, etc. It's about challenging yourself to actually think about what you're doing daily to praise and honor God and striving to dive deeper. It's been awesome.

This week started a church-wide 40 day fast from busyness. The goal is to pare down our schedules of all the busyness that keeps us hopping so fast from one thing to the next that we get stressed out and worn too thin and forget that the most important thing in our lives is living for God. It's about putting our focus back where it belongs.

Well, if you know me, you know that I purposefully do not schedule too much for our family. I simply can't handle too much stress and I just shut down if there is too much on my plate so there really wasn't much in the way of busyness to cut out.

There is a huge time waster in our family though. In recent months, our time spent watching tv and on the internet has gone way up. The internet has become such a huge distraction for me. It's just a bad habit, but my computer stays logged in most of the day and I check my email, facebook, blogs all day long. It's ridiculous. If I need to look up a recipe, I look it up and then get sidetracked and end up spending way too long on the computer. I sit the kids in front of the tv waaaaay too much too. And Chris and I watch it after the kids are in bed while on our computers, me on the internet while he plays Minecraft.

Sooooo, we've cut way back. I can get on the internet from midnight to 7:00 a.m. and we've taken Netflix off of the tv in the living room. (It's been on this week while Chris was home sick though. There's only so much reading one can do when one is loopy on pain meds.)

I just wanted everyone to know why I won't be around much on here or facebook. I haven't yet had the motivation to consistently get up early enough to post. And my internet is about to cut off so I gotta go. I don't even have time to reread what I wrote. Hope it makes sense!

Dr. Seuss Had One Too

A birthday, that is. We share our big day, actually. Us and Sam Houston. And Texas.

Anyway, Clara got to dress up as a Dr. Seuss character at school. I put together a Max costume (the Grinch's dog) and she loved it. I just attached a cardboard antler and felt ears to a headband. To my surprise, it actually made it to the end of the school day and she was wearing it when I picked her up in the car line.

I Had a Birthday

And didn't take any pictures of myself. I did, however take some pictures of Robert enjoying one of the scrumptious chocolate covered pieces of fruit that Linsey sent to me for my birthday. Thank you from the three of us, especially Robert!




My birthday was pretty uneventful due to Chris being sick this week. He was complaining about back pain earlier in the week and by Tuesday night he was in a lot of pain and had planned on getting into the doctor on Wednesday. During the night, the pain became unbearable and he was unable to breathe deeply or move very easily, so he decided to go to the emergency room around 1:30 am.

It turns out he has pleurisy, a viral infection of the lining of the lungs that you get following another virus. (He had a virus that he had a really hard time getting over a while back). It's extremely painful but not cause for worry. Because it's a virus, it just has to run its course. His pain meds weren't working very well the first few days, but as of yesterday, he's doing better. Today he's just been exhausted and has slept most of the day.

He was up for dinner last night, so I asked to go to Saltgrass for my birthday. It was yummy. And that was the extent of the birthday celebration.