Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day this day was a little different. For one, we didn't end up making our new recipe that we usually do (I kind of thought with the Super Bowl food we didn't need more in our fridge haha). Second, it was Friday movie night so we kind of had to rush doing "bingo for gifts" and did it while Larry was showering. I still had to finish dinner so we were on a bit of a time crunch. Lastly, instead of Bingo for gifts, we did Zingo for gifts, which made Pierce so excited haha.

For their gifts this year I got them each a craft (or something that'll go into the activity closet), a Tonies character, an outfit, and some candy. Pierce really wanted the candy, Cara immediately started putting the Tonies characters on the box to listen to their things, Gwen started playing with her craft, and Lucy just put on her cute little outfit. 

Larry surprised me with some Reese's hearts, which I felt bad because I didn't get him anything at all. But I think I'm feeling up for handling mornings on my own so I'll let him sleep in tomorrow morning as my gift to him (the first time he'll get to since my surgery). 

As a silly bonus, it was Larry's choice for movie night and he chose Stardust, so it kept with the romance feelings. Plus, Cara said it's now her new favorite movie haha.

So Happy Valentine's Day out there! It's a good day to feel loved.

Hitting My 6 Weeks of Recovery Milestone

So I've officially hit 6 weeks from my surgery date, which is a big milestone because they say recovery takes 4-6 weeks. Although, on the recovery group I follow, they mentioned it could be 6-8 weeks. I think I might be closer to the 8 week time. It's unfortunate it's taking a little longer to feel all the way better, but I have to take my time and not rush it with such a major surgery.

Luckily I've been making my little goals for each day/week. Mostly making sure I get my steps in, drink my water, do my stretches to help me straighten up, getting used to more time without my binder, etc. This really helps me focus on my progress rather than what I can't do yet. Each week I can do more and more and it feels like I'm getting closer to how things used to be/usually are. I can feel more and more of my old self coming through.

So nice that there aren't lumps under my shirt anymore!

I wore jeans, for the first time, on Sunday (for the Super Bowl) and it felt like such an exciting moment to get to. I made sure to wear ones that were stretchy (with my little bit of swelling and binder most of my jeans are still too tight). Now that I'm at 6 weeks I do feel MUCH better. I'm not 100% yet, but I can finally shower, mostly regularly. I can stand a lot more straighter. I'm getting a lot more steps. I'm doing laundry again (with help from Larry - he does the heavy lifting for me), and I'm feeling productive again, which is HUGE for me!

Unfortunately, I was supposed to have my 6 week follow up today, but the snow made it so they called to see if I'd want to reschedule (since the roads were insane!), so I decided to and it'll be next Wednesday. Bummer, but it's fine, I don't have any big concerns so it'll be okay to wait.

I'm really excited to see what these next couple weeks bring. I think once I hit March I'll be ready to do most of my regular stuff. I told Larry I'll probably start with doing workouts on Sundays at that point and then work up to adding in my other two (I definitely have to get used to getting up early in the mornings again, it's been nice to "sleep in"). I've also been concentrating on my calories each day because I'm not moving as much, but my belly wants to eat and eat, so I'm trying to make sure I don't overdo the eating until I can get back into working out regularly again.

Super Bowl 2025

Oh man, I swear each year I love the Super Bowl more and more. It's my second Thanksgiving where it's all about food, eating, and enjoying Football haha. I had decided this year I wanted to do a 6 foot sub and I was SO excited about that (I've always wanted to do a 6 foot sub for something!). Well after thinking about it, I thought instead of one large sub with the same stuff on it, why not get 6 1-foot subs from Subway and we can get 6 different sandwiches to try out? So that was the plan (we got a meatball one, a BLT one, a regular turkey one, a philly cheesesteak one, a spicy crunchy one, and a club one). You, of course, have to do chips and dip, and then I thought a salad would also be a good side. I wanted to do a dessert too, but it took too long for me to figure out what would be best, so I just decided to order some Crumbl cookies.

Wearing jeans for the first time.
Crooked still, but so happy!

This year, I also decided to order some fun decorations (mostly to cover the tables and counters I knew I wouldn't be able to clean properly, due to still recovering from my surgery). I also found some fun Football themed games for the kids to do (a commercial  bingo and a kind of pool questionnaire - like who would win the coin toss, what would the first commercial be, who would score first, that type of stuff) and then I had  to get some prizes for those games. 

Yesterday we did the cleaning, so I had Larry help the kids pick up while I cleaned the bathroom. The kids were even excited to help me clean the walls in the bathroom (they were looking pretty bad and I offered them $1 per wall, which was a nice incentive). They liked it so much that when we woke up this morning they were already up saying they had cleaned up even more so that the house looked good for Nana and Boomer (Cara was REALLY excited they were coming over haha).

With all the prep work and then getting the food out, the kids were really excited and kept asking when the game started. Once the game did start they all kind of checked out and played their own things. We enjoyed watching the game though. It was a REALLY good game! I kept saying I hope the Eagles win, but we all know the Chiefs will win. Guess I was wrong, huh?

Mom and Will left a little after half time (which we didn't really watch much of...I don't know much about that guys so it wasn't anything exciting for me). Then we cleaned the food up (which all turned out so delicious! Larry said he wished we had gotten two of the spicy crunchy ones because he really liked it). We have LOTS of leftovers, but I definitely don't mind that!

Larry took the kids to get washed up while I finished the game in our room (SUCH a great ending, even if you saw it almost the whole game through). We all celebrated the Eagles win after they were done and then we put them to bed. I've still got laundry to finish up (feels so good to be able to get that done again), but I'll get to that while I watch a movie (back to usual haha).

While I'm sad Football is over, it was a really fun season. Here's to hoping the Packers (or Cowboys, even) do much better next year and we get to see one of them get closer to the Super Bowl (if not actually make it all the way!).

I was telling Larry I loved hearing the kids get so excited for Football and he asked me what I'd do if they were into a different team than the ones we cheer for, when they get older. I told him it just gives me an excuse to watch more games so that's not a problem in my book haha.

Final Surgery

So I am 4 weeks out from my recovery journey and, let me say, it's been rough! I figured it wouldn't be a walk in the park, but I was told the first couple weeks were the worst and then it gets easier after that, which was not the same for me. I didn't mind the first two weeks, actually. I was on all the pain meds and just relaxing, heck the the day of my surgery I couldn't even stay awake for longer than 10 second. I hardly remember getting home and was confused by all the people that were there. I hear I had a hard time waking up from the anesthesia and it took a couple hours haha. Getting up to walk every hour wasn't my favorite (mostly because I was always so comfy on the bed and I'd just want to be sleeping instead), the breathing tube exercise thing I had to do was also rough at first, and the drains are the absolute worst to deal with, but overall it was manageable.

I was so happy to be down to 1 drain
Getting them both out was SO nice

The first weekend was really smooth since the girls had their sleepover at Nana's and Pierce got some good mom and dad 1:1 time, which I think he liked. I thought we wouldn't need that, but it ended up being really nice for us. 

My setup the first day with my
Leg Compression machine. Larry
Hated it because it was so noisy at night

One thing that made it nice is I took some ex-lax a couple days before my surgery and then stuck to the liquid diet for the first couple weeks so that helped keep things calm. I took Dulcolax to help for the next week or so. Those are things I'd highly recommend for anyone thinking of doing this surgery.

Another nice thing was the first week I'd literally just do whatever sounded good in the moment. If it was reading my book, I read. If I needed a snack, I'd snack on whatever snacks I had on my nightstand. If it was watching a show or movie, I watched it until I got tired. Sometimes I'd be in the middle of an episode or movie and get tired and I'd just pause and take a nap. It was really nice because I NEVER do that. By the second week a little bit of "the old me" would peek through and I'd start to plan which part of my day was for reading, which part was for watching a movie, and which was for shows. I crossed A LOT of movies and shows off my lists (most were good, some bad), and got a couple books read just within the first two weeks. I felt pretty productive in that area haha.

Another difficult part was showering. I took a shower the day of my surgery and straightened my hair so I felt I looked decent, but after a few days I really needed another one. I thought making a shallow bath and sitting in that would be the best, but it turned out that was a bad idea because I couldn't get into a sitting position in the bath and then I ended up freezing and it felt weird to shiver. So I found out (one my tummy tuck recover group on FB) that they make these shower caps that you don't need to wet your hair, you just put the cap on, massage into your scalp, and take off and your hair is clean. Unfortunately, it's just made my hair REALLY oily and gross so that hasn't been as useful as I had hoped. I tried different things with it to see if there's something that would make it work, but so far I'm like 0 for 4 attempts. I also had these bathing sponge wipes, but those dried up my skin pretty bad.

Another thing I didn't think about was how intense the first car ride can be. Each bump is so scary (especially when I'm not driving), but when we left the house and I realized it had been a full week since I left the house, it was kind of a weird thrill haha. 

A lot of recovery pages show people getting back to normal after a couple weeks and it's been so hard that I haven't yet. I'm not standing straight yet and then sickness hit our home that I caught the cough and trying to keep that at bay (because it HURTS so bad and I'm scared of popping a suture) has made being patient so difficult. I enjoyed the down time for a couple weeks, but now I get frustrated with the things I can't do. However, I feel I'm starting to turn a page. I'm finally working up to taking regular showers, but I use a chair and it's a little complicated keeping my stomach area out of the water.

Keeping pillows and water nearby to help
When coughs would hit

Luckily, my scars are looking much better than I expected. They are pretty flat and just look more like scratches. Also, watching Larry do laundry is pretty funny. The kids keep asking if I can go back to it yet because he has things all over the place. 

Feeling like I at least look normal with 
Mostly regular clothes on

Some things I've done to help my mental health is to make a list of things that I can cross off as I accomplish them that gets me closer to back to normal. I've also set little goals each day to help me focus on my progress. Goals like changing my clothes regularly, taking regular showers, making step goals each week, no matter how pathetic they seem (it started with 1,000 steps a day, then up to 2,000, and now I'm up to 2,500 each day). 

Yay for over 1K steps!

I think the hard thing was I thought "okay, I'll be out for 6 weeks and then I'll be back to my normal routine," I figured I'd have to work back up to my normal workouts, but that's the only thing I thought I'd have to start over with. What I didn't realize is you don't go back to normal immediately, you work up to it AFTER the 6 weeks, not throughout the 6 weeks so that you. When I can't do things I have to remind myself I'm still healing. I don't think I'll be anywhere near my normal by 6 weeks, but I'll keep working on my progress and hope it won't take much longer than that.

So anyways, right now I'm happy my surgery is done and over with, but I'm not to the point where I'm happy I got it done or wanting to recommend it to others. I'll be so happy to see where I am in a couple weeks. Wish me luck!

January Activities

-Prep for my surgery: we went out to eat at all my favorite places, I got all my medicine filled and ready (some of them I have to do the day of surgery), and enjoyed as much family time as we could before I knew I'd be down.

-Gwen is OFFICIALLY potty trained! She has been fully trained during the day for a long while now, but she's such a deep sleeper that night was a bit harder. She was doing good before my surgery, but we wanted to keep her in pull ups until after the Nana sleepover (just to make sure she didn't have accidents there, with it being a new place). She reported dry that whole weekend so we've made the switch and she hasn't had an accident since! We're so proud and happy to have 3 full time potty trained kids and just have one in diapers now (what a great way to start the year!)

-:Lucy got her recital costume and she's SO excited to wear it. She loves any chance she can to try it on. We're all so excited to see her dance!

-Finding ways to keep entertained while being stuck in the house was challenging. Good thing we got a bunch of games and crafts for Christmas. Pierce is obsessed with Zingo and asks to play it multiple times a day.

-One boredom buster is making homes out of boxes, which the kids have been overly excited to do. Cara even gave them addresses:

-One of the "Memory Makers" we did this month was letting the girls go to Parents Night Out at their Gymnastics. Really, it was because I felt bad keeping the kids inside on weekends (since weekdays they have school), so we saw the Parent's Night Out flyer and I decided to sign them up last minute. They went out on a Saturday, it runs from 6-9, and kept Pierce in for mom and dad time (you have to be potty trained to go).  They came back talking about how much fun it was and how they want to do it again. It is extra $$ to go, but I may just let them do that more with how much they liked it.

-We found out that Cara passed her A.L.L. test and gets to start taking honors classes next year! This will mean transferring schools, but we're so proud of her and cannot wait to see what this girlie does in life. It doesn't surprise us she passed, she's so smart and loves going to school.

- Another thing we did was hit up the dollar store and we found some fun shrinky dinks to have the kids do. I thought they'd get to color them, but turns out they came pre-colored so they weren't too exciting, but still cute.

- We had to hit up the dollar store to get some things for the kids big "100 days of school" celebration day. We got the kids some fun dress up stuff and they were really looking forward to dressing up. They all also looked so cute!

-Some other silly kiddo pics:

Even after the 100 days, she's
Obsessed with wearing the 
Glasses still

Making Snow Cream

So being cooped up in the house all the time can be a bit rough. Especially when it's been such a warm winter. The kids have been real troupers. This morning, I was feeling mostly good and it actually started to snow and I remember seeing one of my parenting influencer pages making snow cream and thought it would be fun to give it a try. I looked up a recipe real quick and saw we had all the ingredients so I sent Larry out to gather as much clean snow as our big pot would hold and we got to putting everything together.

It wasn't the best tasting stuff, but it was fun to make and the fact that it was spontaneous made it more fun. Lucy and Pierce liked it. Cara said it was too sweet and Gwen ate it, but didn't want anymore of it, haha. 

I love finding little activities, like this, to do with them. Right now it's harder to fully do things like I used to, so these easy ones really help ease my mind about that.

2025 Goals

I still love having things to aim for throughout the year and here are some big ones: 

-One day a month screen free: I had issues with being on my phone too much or relying on the TV for the kids this last year, so to challenge us a bit, I've decided I'm going to pick a random day (probably a weekend) each month that we will be completely screen free. The only exceptions are, if it's a weekday, that work is allowed. I'm going to do my best not to plan the day out, but to write a list of things we could  do and then we can just play the day by ear. I'm sure it'll be rough at first, but after a while we'll enjoy having a day we're more in the moment. I won't be doing this for January, though, since I'm sure we'll need to rely a little on screens while I'm recovering.

-Work on snacking less: I also had issues with snacking a lot this last year so I made a new plan. My new plan is when I want a snack (just want, don't need) I plan to wait 10 minutes (sometimes a distraction is helpful). If I'm still craving snacks I'll drink a bunch of water, because that helps me, a lot, to feel like my belly is full and I can't trick myself into thinking I'm hungry. If I'm still hungry at that point, then I can grab a small snack. I think that'll help me.

-Recover from surgery: obviously this is my biggest thing this year and I want to make sure I give myself as much grace to recover as possible. I don't want to rush into going back to normal if I'm not ready for it. I'm excited for this part though.

-Take more pictures with Larry, just us! I take SO many pictures of the kids, whether they are being silly or cute or we're out doing something. I've decided if we're out as a family and I start taking pics of the kids, I need to include pics of Larry and me too so I have ones to post for our anniversary or Father's Day or whatever else comes up.

-Instead of a family vacation we're going to focus on "Memory Makers". We knew this year would be weird with my surgery and so we decided we'd do more fun things closer to home, things we'd normally not do because of time or money. I definitely want to do Monster Trucks and Disney on Ice, for sure!

-LESS Social Media around the kids: this is kind of part of the no screens one, but I need to remember on regular days (not the "no screen" day) to not just go to social media because I'm bored or whatever. Try and do more with the kids.

-Home Projects! Oh man after going to Home Depot for my birthday day I'm going crazy wanting to do the fun home projects we have on our lists. I'm hoping we can get some good ones done this year. Larry wants to start with the basement, I'd like to do our laundry room and master closet. We also found some good flooring we'd like to do for our main level and some backsplash ideas for our kitchen and pantry (our pantry is just white on white). I also have lists of ways to get our home more organized throughout the year (but that one is always on the list).

-Game/Date night Wednesdays. These stopped when Larry was going to school. Then he graduated and I had a hard time feeling like I had time to do these, but they were fun, so I'd like to start those up. Pick one Wednesday a month and have us switch off who plans it each month. I think it'll be good for us (especially if we can do different things for our date nights). 

So that's what I have. Those are mostly year goals because they'll take all year to do (except for the less social media and surgery one) so I feel they are fitting as year goals. Happy 2025!

Celebrating A New Year: 2025

Near Years Eve was SO much fun this year! We stuck to our usual snacks and game night like normal. however, instead of watching the Times Square celebration (I was over that since I never know who the musicians or celebrities are and it felt like boring stuff), we decided to watch some fun movies instead. We put on We're the Millers and Without a Paddle (fun nod to one of our first dates!) since we had seen both of those and they weren't too distracting (although it has been a while so I was a little bit distracted haha). 

We had our sweets treats, or rather anything I found in the pantry that I wanted to get rid of because I wasn't going to have it after my surgery and this helped clear it out, played games, asked each other the fun questions we always do, and talked about stuff for the next year. We timed things just right and the movies ended about 15 minutes before the ball drop, so we switched over to that and then right before midnight we stopped to do the countdown and had our midnight kiss.

After that, we cleaned up a bit and I went to bed. Larry decided to stay up since it was his "party night" so he likes to stay up late. 

I really enjoyed doing NYE this way and being able to take the girls to the Noon Years Eve party earlier made it fun. I do look forward to having them stay up with us. I'm sure the older girls would be able to, but we'll enjoy our couple date night while we have it, for now. 

Happy 2025 everyone! Hope it's a great year for all!