January Activities

January has been SO low key and we've absolutely loved it. I've decided after all the hustle and bustle of December/the holidays, we deserve a month to recoup and relax a bit more (and the kids agree). If we didn't have anything we needed to do, we just stayed home and played games/cleaned up/hung out together in a room doing whatever we wanted. It's been so nice and I learned you don't need to leave your house to feel connected and have fun together! So with that, here's some of our January happenings

-Unfortunately, we started the month with sickness. Larry got a bug on the 31st (NYE) and I thought it was his typical "little sick, but just needs rest" sort of thing so I didn't pay much attention (especially since he said he felt much better after a nap AND stayed up late and the next day he said he was just tired from being up so late). By the night of the 1st I started to feel iffy, Friday I just kept going downhill, and Saturday I ended up sleeping until 3 PM! It's slowly been going away, but it took until the 10th to feel like I was mostly back to normal (a little cough and congestion, but nothing that I felt I needed medicine for). 3 weeks of no working out and snacking on whatever sounded good (I didn't want to eat much, but I snacked a ton) really was the hardest part!

-On the 5th, me and the kids surprised Mom at work with lunch. It was her birthday and I thought she'd really love to show off the kids to her coworkers. Larry had work, but I didn't and it was the kids' last day of their Winter Break. She ended up coming out  as we got there and caught us. We visited for a while and had some of the pizza we brought her (to share with the whole office) and I gave her gift to her. I love being able to do things like that for people I care about, so I was happy we could do that for her (and she told me she absolutely loved it and it made her birthday a great one).

-I also had my 1 year surgery follow up on the 5th (before mom's birthday lunch surprise), where he confirmed I hadn't split anything (I was just nervous because I'd get puffy and feel some pain near the top of my incision), which was a relief. He mentioned that top part scar was thicker than he'd like it to be and more red and he said he could fix it really easily, so I decided to do schedule the scar revision on that part (which won't be until February 10th). Hopefully the revision will help make it disappear as well as the rest (which is really looking much better). I'm just really so glad to be on this side of the recovery process!

-On the 9th, Cara's school held a Parents & Pastries "event." They encouraged us to bring books with us, so I grabbed Cara's Harry Potter book and my book I was reading and headed over. It was a really weird occasion because the room was filled with chairs in random spots (nothing looked organized and there definitely weren't enough chairs for how many parents there should be), but I found two chairs to hold and waited till she showed up. They had the kids grab donuts on the way to their seats and so we ate our donuts, talked about books (there was a question on one of the donuts asking what books I liked to read when I was her age), and then just read our books. That's it. Just donuts and reading (so I'm not exactly sure what the point of this was). There were lots of donuts still on the table so she ended up grabbing 2 more donuts, haha. It was nice, but I still don't understand what this was for (to promote reading in kids? To give kids and parents a bonding moment (even though we barely talked)? I'm just not sure)

-One exciting thing, is Cara joined her school's art club, which started on the 12th. It's only held on Mondays at 8 and only for about 8 weeks (not counting Monday's they have off of school). Mondays are a little bit chaotic now, I have to drop her off early, come back to work for a tiny bit, then take Gwen and Lucy to school. I also take a break to play with Pierce for a bit after lunch on his non school days, so there's a lot going on on those days, but it's worth it. I'll always support my kids doing fun extra activities like this!

-Football is pretty much over (Cowboys didn't make it to the playoffs and Packers blew it in the Wild Card Round...typical, but SO disappointing), so now we can go back to scrub cleaning our house again (and hopefully keep up with that). The first weekend after the Packer's game flop, I decided to ease into it and we just picked up the house (there was a lot of stuff everywhere). We ended up getting so much done that I felt okay with being lazy the rest of the day. We did still watch the other playoff games, which was really nice (I kept wanting to walk stores, but knew I would end up spending money I didn't need to so we just let the kids craft and kept it low key). I found I enjoy watching the other playoff games and picking teams to root for. I tend to pick the underdog and then I'm surprised they lose haha. But, it should be an interesting Superbowl, I'm definitely excited for that day (I've already ordered the food we're having and getting ideas for the next two years already, haha).

And, as always, my favorite kid pics:

Putting magnets in her hair. She said if she
Pulled it down, it was like brushing it