I called home on Friday afternoon to say hello to my parents, at which point my Dad kindly reminded me that I hadn't blogged since July 25th. Consider me shamed.
To say that the end of the summer flew past us is a huge understatement. Somewhere between a whole lot of running around, there was more running around and not enough time to blog. But here I am, trying to dump the contents of at least one camera into some semblance of a blog post.
So.....August. Let's see.
We have begun plans for a little project here at the house that is turning into more of a big project slated to start in the next couple of weeks. It was started by the fact that Lauren went out onto our current deck and grabbed hold of one of the side rails and pushed it right off. We had known and dreamed of a deck renovation since we first looked at the house before we bought it, so it appears that now is the right time to make good use of that space. The back of our house really is just like another front of the house since it is what you see when you first drive up, so I think our two-tiered deck renovation will be a welcome change to the rickety deck that is there now. I'll keep you posted on progress. It is slated to be about a two week project set to begin at the end of the month.
That had absolutely nothing to do with August, except for the fact that this picture of Lauren was taken the morning that we met with the contractor to talk about the deck. Oh dear...this post could be disjointed. Better buckle up.
August involved a whole lot of chasing for this little one. She has decided that she wanted to learn to conquer the stairs this month, and boy, has she ever. She is up and down more times than I am in the course of a day (and that's a whole lot). She is gaining in confidence in just about everything by the day it seems. She is bold and fearless, sometimes a drain to every ounce of patience I possess, and the parenting challenge I had always hoped to avoid. But I adore her.
The first weekend of August we had a special trip planned for the kids to Pittsburgh and to Nemacolin for a few relaxing days of swimming and just being together. The pictures from that trip must be on my other camera, and I will search those out for a post this week. What, you don't believe me? Well just watch.
Just after returning home from our journey westward, we got the devastating news that we had lost my Pap. And that set the next week into a twirling spell of a gajillion trips to Lewistown, more babysitting juggling than I care to repeat, mental and emotional exhaustion, and a whole lot more craziness than I can explain. We are so sad, still, at his loss. And really, I could dedicate an entire post to him. Whether I can do that, though, is doubtful. Just suffice it so say that the Richards are desperately missing him. And I doubt that's going to get any better anytime soon.
After that week was our scheduled trip to Women of Faith in Washington DC. I had been so excited about this trip, and Emily and I had been looking forward to it for literally months. No kids. No responsibilities other than to have our hearts filled with blessings from a whole lot of Godly speakers. Angie Smith was one of them, and we were beside ourselves with the chance to get to hear what she had to say. However, on top of the week that we had had with Pap's death, I was feeling more than a little torn about whether or not to go. It was involving a whole lot of babysitting help from Mom and Judy since Jason was on a business trip to Tampa, and I had already felt like I had been dumping the kids off on anyone who could arrange their schedule to be here over the previous week. In the end, I decided to go. And I'm glad I did. I don't have a lot of pictures from that trip, but it was a really good one. I was most definitely ready to be back home when I returned, but it was a blessing to be able to be there.
The combination of my late nights back from Lewistown during the funeral week, as well as my first overnight away from Mara signaled the end of our nursing relationship. I was more than ready to be done, and had a very difficult time getting her to agree to our mutual breakup. I had been working my way out of that for months, but couldn't get her to let go of our night time before bed nursing. Luckily for both of us, she has done fine.
We had one week in between Women of Faith and the beginning of the school year, and I think I did nothing more productive than try to get organized and recover from the way August seemed to spiral out of control. The kids were beside themselves excited about school starting. Orientation on Monday night, the 26th, went very well, if you don't count the fact that Mara was suffering from some kind of stomach bug during the day on Monday. She had been fine all afternoon, eating and drinking with no throwing up, so I opted to take her with us to the school for orientation. In case you didn't know, I have a thing with letting go, and I really didn't want to miss out on Joshua and Lauren's orientation. Well.....apparently she was still dealing with some sickness, evidenced by the fact that she barfed all over herself, her carseat, and the inside of the van on the way to the school. Which meant I was outside trying to clean her up, clean up the car as much as I could, and clean up the carseat at least a little bit, while Jason had the kids inside. I did manage to get there for the tail end of Lauren's session and the meeting in Joshua's room, but it was pretty much a disaster all around. Should have just stayed home with Mara. And trust me, when I was out in the garage ripping her carseat apart, cleaning out the buckles with a toothpick and Q-tips, I learned that lesson the hard way.
But on Wednesday morning, I had two kiddos who were more than ready to start this school year. It was a big one for both of them as Joshua would be staying the whole day this year. This has created a whole new level of vigilance with his peanut allergy that has created some challenges, but we have managed to work through all of them so far. The hard part now is that safety of our son is dependent upon the choices that other parents are making for their kids. So it has definitely layered the complexity for us in terms of managing his situation. There's a whole other post on that that I should do. And yes, I'm making a list. Not only do we have a first grader this year, but Miss Lauren started in Nursery School too! She was so excited! We are sincerely hoping that we made the right choice for her in starting her in the nursery school class instead of putting her right into K4. It is a three day per week program instead of 5, and there is a whole lot more play time and social development than in K4 where they are at desks doing a lot of heavy duty learning. Lauren is definitely the oldest in her class, but we're waiting for the teacher's assessment of how she is doing. So far she absolutely loves is. There was absolutely no hesitation for her about going into her classroom, and she has been all smiles when I pick her up. We are so thankful for the kids' school for so many reasons!
The only bad news is that the stomach situation appeared to travel quickly, as Lauren was throwing up by Wednesday evening and Thursday, and Joshua came home from school on Thursday and started his spiral into it. He ended up missing school on Friday because of it. Thankfully everyone was fine by Saturday, but we could have certainly done without that on the first week of school!
And so, that puts us to today. I have a whole bunch of pictures to share from this weekend, and I'll work on that for tomorrow. In fact, I'll upload them right now while the camera is hooked to the computer. Hope you have all had a great Labor Day weekend!
1 comment:
I hope they both have a great year at school!
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