March 2015

Like I said earlier, February's quietness prepared us for a bit of craziness in March.

I forgot to mention in February's post that Aubrey went to see a pediatric ophthalmologist. She had been complaining about her close up vision for a while and said when she was reading up close, letters looked blurry. We asked for a referral from her pediatrician, but that doctor was booked out 2 months and I didn't want to wait. I did some more research and found a doctor near our house that could see her sooner. He said it was pretty uncommon for kids her age to have poor close up vision, but getting reading glasses for her wouldn't hurt. He said hopefully she'll outgrow them as she gets older. Unfortunately, we couldn't go to the drug store and buy OTC glasses because they would be too big, so we had to order glasses from the doctor's office. She picked out some cute glasses, but I almost had a stroke when I had to pay for them. But, it was worth it because she said they are helping her and that's what's important. They came in at the beginning of March and instantly, she looked so much older.

Aubrey surprised me again this month and announced she wanted a hair cut. I told her I wasn't going to spend the money at the salon to have .25 inch cut off, but she insisted she wanted more than that taken off. I've been on her for the past few months to get a hair cut because the ends were getting scraggly and knotty and a general pain to brush, but she wasn't having it until then. So, I took her to the salon while I was getting Mason's hair cut and let her make the decisions in the chair. I was pretty shocked when I saw she let the stylist take about 4" off her hair. It looks so much healthier, even though she thinks its "too short."

Another milestone for Aubrey this month was letting us take her training wheels off her bike. The first day didn't go well, but we praised her a lot for taking such a big step. She still isn't able to ride very long without them yet, but we hopefully as she gets more confident, she'll be able to ride longer.

After months of talking about it and planning for it, we began our biggest home improvement project to date. We've hated the carpet in our house since, well, we moved in, but have never really been able to do much about it. We considered replacing the carpet when we moved out or even giving a carpet allowance when we sell it, but since moving has been placed on the back burner for now, we knew we had to do something soon. So, after a lot of research, we decided to put down laminate flooring in the majority of the downstairs. We would really have preferred hardwood, but our house just won't support that value in this neighborhood, so laminate made more sense. We considered hiring a friend to install it, but Todd was actually pretty excited to learn how to do it so we decided to DIY it instead. We ripped up the nasty old carpet, but left the linoleum in the kitchen to serve as another barrier. We started demo on the old floor on a Thursday, fully expecting to have the entire floor done by the end of the weekend. Hahahahahahahaha. Completely wishful thinking. Todd, my dad, and his dad busted their butts for 3 solid days and only made it to the kitchen, leaving us with no flooring in the hall, entryway, and dining room for a week. It wasn't hard work, it was just time consuming with all the cutting that had to be done. Unfortunately, I was out of commission since so much of the work required being on your knees and I started physical therapy for my knee in February. So, I was the gopher and assistant for the weekend instead. The guys were able to get the rest of the flooring in the main areas finished the next weekend and finished the quarter round after that. We still have the playroom left to do, but that is a simple (hopefully mostly square) room so we should be able to knock that out next weekend. I am so happy with how it all turned it. I'll post a few more pictures next month of the final project once everything is all together.

60 boxes of pretty new floor

Todd starting the demo work

This before photo of the carpet makes me sick because of all the dirt.

Update photo after day 1 of work

End of day 3


End of weekend 2

End of weekend 2

During the middle of weekend 2 of floor work, I took the kids to our neighborhood's Easter egg hunt. It was a beautiful day, but freaking cold for the end of March. That didn't stop the kids from having a blast, though.

So, March passed by quickly because of the big project, but I am so happy with the results of the month.

February 2015

Yeah, I'm a few months behind now. Better late than never.

February was a breeze compared to January. It was nice to get a break once the birthday chaos settled down. The only big activity for the month was Aubrey's school spirit week. We had a blast planning her daily outfits and as much as I love that she wears uniforms, it was nice to have some variety in her outfits.

PJ Day

Wacky Tacky Day

Throwback Thursdays (And I am pretty sure I wore an outfit very similar to this in the 80's. Sigh....)

As part of Spirit Week, the Varsity MICS cheerleaders had a cheer camp for the lower school girls and surprisingly, Aubrey decided she wanted to participate. She's never big on being in front of a crowd, so I figured she wouldn't want to do it. But, that's what I get for assuming because she was actually really excited about it. After 2 days at cheer camp, the girls got to perform at the Varsity boys 'basketball game at MICS. She was so excited and seemed to have such a great time. Now, she's convinced she wants to cheer more, which I'm pretty excited about since I cheered until 10th grade.

Another school event for Aubrey was the Kindergarten-First grade music show. They performed a little skit/musical for the parents and it was so cute to watch. I give major props to the music director for getting 160-ish kids to cooperate for the show. The only thing that made me sad was that I forgot my big camera and we sat too far back to take decent pictures with my phone. But, it actually made me pay attention more to the show and that was a good thing.

February's exciting event for us was the "big" snow. We had a day with just a dusting of snow, so it was hardly worth even writing about. But for the second round, were so excited that they were forecasting around 8" of snow for us. I've lived here my entire life and should have known better to trust a forecast because we only ended up with around 3". That didn't matter to the kids, though. They had a blast.

My favorite picture of the day


(Click for the video)

Eating snow cream after lunch

We did get a bit of cabin fever, but nothing homemade cookies couldn't fix.

The fun did take a yucky turn, though. Todd was trying to be nice and help me cut some cucumbers with the mandolin for cucumber water and ended up slicing a huge chunk off his finger. We couldn't get the bleeding under control and thought he might need stitches, so at 9:00 pm, we trudged off in the sleet and snow to the ER. They didn't think stitches would hold the way he cut it, so they sent us home with a bandage. That freaking bandage and a tetanus shot cost us over $1000 so I was not happy. But, I would've felt terrible if we hadn't gone to have it checked out so we just paid our bill and moved on.

So, that was February. It turned out to be a quiet month, which we were glad for because March more than made up for February's quietness with craziness.