Oh what a month!

We FINALLY got over our collective sicknesses mid-month. I had to go to urgent care to fully kick my crud (though based on what I was prescribed, I’m not sure it wasn’t just that I was already on the downhill). It all worked out just in time for our visitors to come!

My father in law came mid month to help the Mister with the driveway. He brought his tractor and got it all dug up and cleaned out. They added some railroad ties along the edges as well and those help a lot. We should probably add a bit more gravel now that the rain has packed it, but that’ll be another project for another day.

During that visit, my parents decided to come down as well, since Dad’s team lost at districts and Mom was on spring break. We had a full house, but it was a nice time. Little Man got lots of time to hang out with everyone.

Little Man had a busy month with all the visitors and two holidays celebrated at school. He also had spring preschool photos.

I finally got our fire table put together and am looking forward to using it on the back porch this spring/summer.

After all our visitors left, we spent part of the weekend at Cheekwood for the Holi celebration. We had never been before and really enjoyed our time! I really love taking Little Man to these festivals to celebrate other cultures and traditions (and Cheekwood does an excellent job making them as authentic as possible).

The next day, Little Man was invited to his first birthday party for a classmate. They held it at a gymnastics center and the kids loved it. He had a good time but was so worn out by the end.

The following week at school was Easter themed with a class egg hunt.

We returned to Cheekwood for their annual Great Spring Art Hop the last weekend of the month.

We trekked all over the gardens in search of painted bunnies, participated in an egg hunt, and did some cute crafts the gorgeous, sunny weather.

We came home exhausted but still made time to dye our own Easter eggs, since the Mister had staff duty on Easter. We decided to have the bunny wait until Monday to come so we could all be home to celebrate.

We spent Easter Sunday (dang, was it early this year!) hanging out just Little Man and me. We watched It’s the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown, and I got the kitchen picked up so I could cook after the Mister comes home from staff duty tomorrow. We are planning to do our own egg hunt in the backyard, and Little Man will get his basket from the Easter Bunny — We talked about the bunny coming late since daddy had to work.

April miraculously doesn’t have anything actually planned adventure-wise. My birthday is days away, and I legitimately didn’t realize just how fast it was coming up until I saw the date on a jug of milk. Craziness!

I’m looking forward to finishing my planters and hopefully having a relaxing month since we’ve been constantly on the go or sick recently. We’ll see if that’s how it plays out.

Until then,

Another month kicked off with illness. This time respiratory/sinus-based and the adults of the house were the recipients! We never felt bad, but the drainage wreaked havoc on our throats. I lost my voice for a few days and our noses were stuffy. Thankfully, that was all it dealt out and Little Man was unscathed.

Little Man’s recovery from surgery was uneventful. We kept him home from speech and preschool for the week, though he probably would have been fine. You’d never know he had it done based on how he acted. The only thing that suggested he was on the mend was his rough time sleeping on about the 3rd night and some excessive whining. He requested medicine, so I knew he wasn’t feeling well. Luckily, it was short-lived.

We were thrilled to have the Mister home for the week, too. He had staff duty the day before surgery, so he went straight from there to home, then right the surgical center. He took off Wednesday and Thursday and was lucky enough to have Friday be a DONSA. It was awesome having him home during the first week or recovery, especially with me being under the weather worse than he was.

Despite the sickly start, we still made it to Home Depot for the monthly workshop.

As we got into the month, we struggled a bit to get back into our normal routine. But we managed. The weather was warmer so getting out of the house was easier.

We packed the 2nd weekend of the month with a busy Saturday. We started with the Lowes workshop.

Then we headed to Nashville to attend the Chinese Arts Association of Nashville’s Chinese New Year festival again this year. It was pouring down rain, but they moved it to the fairgrounds where the whole thing was under a roof in an arena, so it was a pleasant day.

We also checked out McKay’s Used Books. I was so looking forward to checking it out, but came out bitterly disappointed. It was a huge, gymnasium-sized bookstore with records, dvds, and, of course, books, but it was so disorganized and full of people that it was an overwhelming and frustrating experience. It didn’t help that I couldn’t find any of the books I was hunting. It was very much an Instagram vs. Reality moment.

The next week kicked off Valentines Day festivities. Little Man had his party at school.

The Mister and I actually made dinner reservations to try a restaurant we’d never been to before on Valentines Day.

And of course, we did Valentine photos for Little Man with Bri (The Lovely Rose Photography and Design Co).

On the 15th, we celebrated Indie girl turning 5.

The rest of the month was calm, though the sickness bug came back during the last two weeks. Little Man brought home a rattly, wet cough from preschool and started running a fever. It seemed like it would be short-lived. His fever only stuck around for a night, though his cough stayed around. Preschool called me on the last Tuesday of the month to tell me he was crying from coughing so much and wanted his mommy. I should have known it was coming back to bite us when half of his class was out sick the last week or so.

We kept him home from speech again on Wednesday and I decided last minute to go ahead and keep him home from preschool Thursday. The first week of March is his spring break, so I’m hoping all of the sickness clears out by the time he has to go back to school.

The Mister and I are slowly but surely declining. Our coughs are terrible and my nose is so stuffed up, I can’t smell or taste anything unless I really concentrate. With the stuffy nose, of course, comes horrible nosebleeds for me. I am so beyond ready to feel better (or at least feel slightly less congested/coughing my lungs out).

Guess I’d rather have it now than late next month when we have lots of activities planned.

Next month will see our workshops and Easter. We are returning to Cheekwood for their egg hunt and this year we’re also attending the Holi festival. The Mister has staff duty on Easter (because why wouldn’t he?), so we’ll deal with that by either celebrating early or late (not that we do much other than eat and dye eggs).

We are looking forward to a visit from my father-in-law mid-March, and we’ll see if my parents will swing a visit during their spring break. Busy month ahead. Come on, sickness, scoot!

Until then,

Boy, this new year did not start off kindly.

While we enjoyed having Nana able to stay with us a few extra days, we were not thrilled to have her get super sick on the 1st! Not sure where we picked up a stomach bug, but it hit her first and then came for me. So much diarrhea and yucky feeling.

Thankfully, this didn’t dampen the excitement of seeing Lindsey and Darrell for a few days.

We were able to see the whole new Zoolumination lanterns at the Nashville Zoo again while they were visiting.

And we had a nice final Christmas of the holidays.

We celebrated the Mister’s birthday on the 7th, complete with cake and presents. That was the first day we started feeling somewhat back to normal.

Despite the sickness making its rounds, Little Man was lucky enough not to get it. He did, however, have some sinus drainage cause a vomiting episode, but thankfully, it was a one-off experience.

We originally had his adenoid removal scheduled for mid-month, but the cold weather finally found us, and we got some snow, shutting down everything for the week.

Despite the bitter cold, we took advantage of the white stuff and tested out the sled.

The dogs enjoyed the snow as well (we think this was Roxie’s first time seeing it).

We rounded out the month with almost back to back staff duty for the Mister and the Lowes workshop.

In other news: Little Man was so talkative and really impressed Alexis at speech the past couple of weeks. It was nice getting positive feedback for a change.

We met with the ACC rep about getting a talker tablet for him for the words he struggles with. It was informative, but I still don’t like the idea of using it. That said, there have been a few times in recent weeks where Little Man is getting frustrated when we can’t understand him. We are going to hold off a little longer to get one; we want to see how he does after adenoid surgery before throwing more at him. I’m not expecting miracles, but if his adenoids were causing some issues speech-wise, we want to give him time before he absolutely has to have the tablet. I don’t want him saddled with it if he doesn’t use/need it.

Adenoidectomy was rescheduled for the 30th. It was a really quick surgery. From the time they took him to anesthesia until we went back to recovery was about 20 minutes. He did great and charmed all the nurses/anesthesiologist.

He took a little bit to wake up (we didn’t go to bed very early and had to be at the surgery center by 0630) and asked for a rainbow popsicle when he started coming to. We’d never given him one before so it was surprising he was so adamant about it. We stopped to pick some up and he got as far as seeing it in person to decide it was too cold and he didn’t want it.

We came home and played with our Lincoln Logs and ate half a cup of jello and half a cup of pudding before deciding he wanted a piece of the banana bread we made the night before.

The Mister is staying home for a couple of days to make sure we’re OK before going back to work, which is extremely helpful. The plan is to keep Little Man home for the rest of the week then start fresh Monday.

We don’t have much planned for February. Weekend workshops, Lunar/Chinese New Year festival (if the weather stays nice), and Little Man’s Valentine party at school is all we have on the books. With all the excitement in January, I’m fine with keeping February low-key.

Until then,

And just like that, it’s another year in the books.

We have had quite the year! It all seems to have gone by so incredibly fast.

December has been quite the month.

We kicked off the month with our busiest weekend. We started with a Home Depot workshop, had our annual Santa photos with Bri, took the dogs to Petco for their Santa photos, and finished off with the Lighted Christmas Parade.

We finished the workshop and hustled to our 10 minute session across town.

Then we hustled home, picked up the dogs and hit Petco.

They gave us a Polaroid photo but my cell phone photo came out better. Don’t mind Indie looking like she’s in trouble. Right before this photo, she slipped her collar and sprinted out the automatic doors towards traffic. She took 3 Petco employees and my screaming like an idiot at her to wrangle her. In the process, I dropped Roxie’s leash and she took off toward our car, but as soon as I called her, she came back to me and sat down like “oh, mom won’t leave me here, I’ll wait”. Needless to say, no trips without harnesses ever again. I could have murdered Indie, but I’m so very thankful she didn’t get hurt and equally thankful the Mister wasn’t the one to catch her. Yikes.

Then we turned and burned one more time, dropping the dogs at home and heading back to the downtown area for the Christmas Parade.

The following week, Little Man got to see Santa again at preschool.

We finished the week with the Mister’s unit Christmas party and a visit to the German Christmas Market.

We got home early afternoon and the weather turned dangerous. It’d been raining all morning and was a windy 65°, so tornado watches had been in effect for the day. We decided to put Little Man’s loose toys away and bring in the inflatables just in case.

It wasn’t long before we heard the first tornado sirens. Being the seasoned Nebraskan I am, I watched the skies from the porch for a while before it got eerily still. That’s when the second siren went off, and I decided everyone needed to go to the basement.

Apparently, an EF3 tornado ripped through town on the other side of Ft Campbell Blvd (a few miles from our house) and very close to the old neighborhood we used to live in.

Our neighborhood didn’t see any damage, and we didn’t lose power, thankfully. We are very lucky and have been doing our best to stay off the roads so clean-up crews can get through.  The above photos were grabbed from the local news site.

School was canceled for the week following the tornado, so Little Man sadly missed out on his Christmas party and didn’t get much time to say goodbye to his classmates before break.

He still had speech and got to see Santa again!

He also had his paperwork put in for the AAC tablet. I’m not thrilled about him getting one but I’m hopeful it will help him during times where I don’t understand him, all while not making him rely on it entirely. We’ll see how it goes.

Even though school was closed, they decided to go ahead with the Christmas program as the community definitely needed some hope and light during this time.

We polished off the week with a visit to the ENT and the Lowes workshop.

The ENT referred us to the local hospital for x-rays on Little Man’s adenoids. We only saw him for about 5 minutes, so I asked for a second opinion from Tricare. I felt like we were brushed off during both visits and would like a pediatric ENT to actually take our concerns seriously — we just need confirmation that everything physically is fine so we can focus on other speech delay causes.

Unfortunately, a second opinion ended up not being an option. We could see another doctor but the 2nd doctor would have only been able to agree/disagree with the first, not continue with treatment. Isn’t universal health care great?

In this case, the x-rays revealed Little Man’s adenoids are enlarged and obstructing his airway. We had two options: steroids or surgery. Since the steroids were only a 50/50 option, we decided to schedule the surgery for January. I’m hopeful this will help him sleep better at the very least.

The next week of the month was nothing but speech and cleaning/decorating for the holiday. I struggled this year getting sorted enough to even have my decorations out. Having a busy toddler who is constantly going going going has proven tricky! Even with the Mister’s forced two week leave and half day work schedule, accomplishing anything seemed to be impossible for me until I lit a fire under myself to get picked up for company. One of these days, I’ll stop letting it get so out of hand to begin with. Maybe in the new year, ha!

We had a quiet Christmas day at home. We attempted to do our Christmas jammies photo, which was extremely difficult with a very uncooperative Indie.

Everyone was spoiled rotten.

The last week of the year brought my parents down for a much needed visit. This is probably the longest time between visits we’ve gone since Little Man was born. It still didn’t last long enough (not that it ever does).

We went to the Speedway to see the drive-through lights again this year. There were a lot of new additions. Little Man seems to be all about Christmas lights, so he really loved it.

Dad left on New Years Eve to get back for basketball practice, but Mom is sticking around and will be heading home with Lindsey and Darrell. We’d love her to stay through Little Man’s surgery date, but that’s a big ask with her being in a cast and needing a scooter/crutches. We’re just happy with a few extra days.

2023 was quite the year. We traveled (albeit not terribly far), hit some major milestones, added a new pack member, and spent so much quality time together.

Let’s hope the next year will bring just as many new adventures. Happy New Year!

Until then,

I’m sorry, HOW is it already almost December? This has been a year for sure.

Before I get into it, we finally got our family photos back! Oh, they turned out so great (not that I had any doubts).

November was calm(er).

The first full week saw Little Man and myself flying solo since the Mister was in Texas for the 2nd annual Save Our Soldiers Disc Golf Tournament hosted by Bogey Free Club. This is the same trip he took last year, so we knew he’d have a great time.

While gone, they did a lot of yoga, potted plants, glass blowing, toured Baylor University, played pickleball, and, of course, disc golfed.

We were thrilled to have him home again — even though we kept ourselves busy with preschool, speech, and a trip to the vet so the pups could get their updated vaccines.

We also took advantage of the warm early November weather and played out in the leaves quite a bit.

We celebrated Roxie’s first birthday on the 15th.

This dog has been such a ride in the short few months we’ve had her. She is too smart for her own good and has moments that are just infuriating…followed by the sweetest snuggles. Despite her obnoxious behavior at times, she is such a great addition to the pack.

We started to get into the holiday spirit (or tried to in preparation for our annual Santa visit) with a mini Christmas village sensory bin from Sunny Day Studios.

These weren’t done at the studio, so I get to sweep a lot of sand in my house now – ha! He’s pretty good about keeping it in the bin, but sometimes, he forgets to be careful. He really loves this one.

Sunny Day also had a construction make-and-take that unfortunately took place on a preschool morning. But I was able to pick up a kit to surprise Little Man with.

Little Man had several DIY workshops this month. Home Depot offered 2, and Lowes had their usual one. Lots of running on the weekends but he enjoys them so we don’t mind. Daddy had to miss the 2nd Home Depot workshop because he had staff duty on Black Friday and needed to sleep. But Mommy and Little Man still went, and we did pretty well, I think.

Little Man had his Thanksgiving party at preschool and I made mini brownies for it. It was a bit of a learning curve with the mini brownie pan, but they only sent home a few so they must’ve been a hit!

He’s been super busy at school. There’s a huge stack of crafts from the past few weeks and we’ve seen so many cute photos from his classroom.

We do have a new possibility in the speech department. We saw a different therapist for a few visits and she suggested that maybe Little Man’s adenoids might be causing some issues that could affect his speech. We’ve all been battling sinus issues for what seems like weeks so I didn’t think anything of it. But the way she explained it made a lot of sense and if they are causing problems with hearing/ breathing/speech, it’s definitely worth checking into.

His audiologist did say he had pressure behind his ears that could be making things sound muffled, so when the therapist said that could make things sound like you’re underwater, it all kind of clicked. At any rate, he is scheduled for a follow-up visit to the ENT next month. At this point, I’m looking at all the possibilities and trying to get him the help he needs. He’s a chatterbox and I don’t want anything holding him back since we’re already playing catch up.

We’ve also broken out the inflatables for the holidays. I didn’t want to put them up just yet, but the boy insists on having them all up and running.

We started with the small Bluey and then saw the Bingo. Since our Walmarts didn’t have them in stock/wouldn’t ship, my cousin Michele found us one in Kansas City and mailed it to us.

I didn’t look closely enough at the dimensions. So when Bingo arrived we had to try her out…only to find she was WAY bigger. Since we can’t have Bingo being bigger than Bluey, I was lucky enough to find the matching sized Bluey at one of the local Walmarts.

Do we need 3 inflatables? Absolutely not. But it makes Little Man happy and that’s worth it. Holiday magic is something I want him to hang on to as long as possible so we try to do extra special things this time of year to hopefully give him great memories.

Thanksgiving was fairly low-key. Usually, my mom comes, but this year, she went to my sister’s in Colorado. I still cooked too big of a meal for the three of us, but it’s what I do.

The last week of the month saw us back to a more normal routine of speech and preschool. The weather also suddenly remembered it was November and the temperature dipped to a more seasonal feel.

I seriously can’t believe December is so close. This whole year seemed to go really fast and excruciatingly slow at the same time. While I’m not at all prepared for the holidays, I am looking forward to them.

We don’t have a whole lot set in stone for December, though. The Mister isn’t taking a lot of time off (maybe 4 days), so we won’t be traveling.

We have the annual Santa photos for Little Man (and hopefully the dogs) and the German Christmas Market at Christ Lutheran Church for sure, along with Lowes/Home Depot workshops.

We will try to see Zoolumination at the Nashville Zoo again as well as check out the lights for Christmas on the Cumberland, but I don’t have specifics figured out yet since I’m not 100% sure when/if my parents are coming and they’d like to see those I think.

Little Man gets quite a bit of time off from preschool; his last two days are nothing but Christmas parties and their Christmas program.

Ugh, just thinking about all the prep work is making me antsy (I haven’t even started gifts for his teachers/speech therapist), nevermind getting my house picked up enough to get the tree up! But I’m already planning activities. Good grief. Haha.

I suppose I’ll manage. One day at a time, right?

Until then,

Holy cow! We are already in the final couple months of the year.

It’s been another busy month, but luckily, not as overwhelming as previous months.

We finally got Little Man’s school photos back and boy are they cute! His class photo was not great, but I imagine it’s difficult to get eleven 3 year olds to cooperate.

We started October with staff duty, followed by a long weekend. We didn’t do too much over Labor Day, but we took a short drive to Talon Falls Adventure Park in Melber, Kentucky.

It was a beautiful day and not very crowded. Little Man had a blast and we were able to take our time and let him lead the way.

The rest of the long weekend, the boys did yard work and of course, we did the Home Depot workshop.

We capped off the long weekend with a visit to the ENT. The doctor said he didn’t think Little Man’s tongue tie was causing issues with speech as its placement was fine. His speech therapist thinks we might need a second opinion just to be sure, but is now looking at other options for him, such as an AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) tablet. I’m very hesitant to agree to him using that as I don’t want him to rely on a device to speak when he is doing so much better.

Ms. Alexis also thinks we may need some speech apraxia testing, which has me terrified since it’s something that will not be able to be “cured.” Speech apraxia is basically, as I understand it, the brain’s inability to create the movement of mouth/tongue muscles needed to form words correctly.  It’s fairly rare as only 1-2 children out of 1000 are diagnosed. Needless to say, I’m not ready for that possible diagnosis.

The next week brought our Lowes workshop and a bunch of cleaning for our company to come.

The 3rd week brought a visit from the in-laws. The Mister even took off almost a week so he could spend more time with them. We packed the visit with shopping, family photos, and pumpkin patch fun.

It was such a nice visit. We hope it won’t be so long until the next one.

The Mister has had some excitement over the last month. He finally dropped his retirement packet! It still needs to be approved, but it’s in and that (sort of) gives us a timeline for when his military career will be over. Can hardly believe it’s so close to happening.

He also received his Associates Degree diploma in the mail. He’s feeling all sorts of official now. The light is at the end of the tunnel now. Civilian life is speeding towards us.

After all of the excitement with a visit from the grandparents and big life changes, Little Man had a pumpkin picking day at preschool. They had time to play in the gym, painted pumpkins, played in shaving cream, fed animals at the petting, and got to bring home their very own pumpkin.

Little Man brought home a pumpkin, but as it turns out, it wasn’t the one he picked out originally (mama didn’t realize they had names written on the bottom and Little Man said he picked that one, so we ended up bringing a classmate’s pumpkin home). This gave us a great opportunity to talk about not taking things that aren’t ours — and it made mama double check everything before leaving. Little Man brought the pumpkin back to school and told his classmate he was sorry for the mistake. All got squared away.

The last weekend in October brought one of my favorite weekend festivals – El Dia de Los Muertos at Cheekwood.

The boys were struggling to sit still, so they went to see the train sets instead.

The weather was entirely too hot for the end of October, so we called it an early day.

We wrapped up the month with Little Man’s  Halloween Costume Parade at school and some alternative trick or treating for the first time at APSU’s G.H.O.S.T. event — which turned out to be great because the weather did a 180 with rain and a freeze warning for Halloween.

G.H.O.S.T. at Austin Peay State University was the perfect way for Little Man to trick or treat safely, without having to go door to door.  It’s put on by the various student activity groups/teams/Greek life as well as members of the community on campus. They have different tables/booths all around the main quad with food trucks and kid friendly activities.

We carved our pumpkins the night before Halloween. Little Man actually seemed to enjoy helping this year.

Halloween saw a party and the costume parade at preschool, which both the Mister and I were able to attend.

We took a few photos on our porch like we usually do before the cold chased us back inside.

As a final bit of news for the month, my baby sister got engaged! She celebrated her birthday on the 30th and Bryan proposed on Halloween. We’re so happy/excited for her!

Next month is already November. Yikes!

I don’t have anything major planned (for real this time!). We have a handful of workshops and the Mister is going back to Texas for a week for disc golf with some of the soldiers in the SRU.

Then it’s Thanksgiving and before we know it, it’ll be Christmas. This time of year always flies by.

Until then,

Another one in the books.

The first will likely be tough for me every year. My sweet Audie would have been 10.

I always told him he if he could live forever, I’d be fine with that. I guess, in a way, he is living on through these posts. One of these days I’ll do something special just for him.

This month started off promising.

We started with a long weekend (that the Mister actually had off in its entirety!) and the Oak Grove Butterfly Festival.

Personally, the Butterfly Festival should have been a nice time, but….it was a huge disappointment. First, it was HOT. Like 90°, no shade, 70+% humidity hot with no hydration stations or ways to cool down.

The lines for all the vendors were already super long by the time we got there, about an hour and a half after it started. We stood in line for food for over half an hour and then had to wait another 15 to have it ready. The coordinators definitely didn’t plan for the huge influx of people.

With the massive crowd came a ton of missing kids and people passing out from the heat. We ended up not even staying for the release. It was slated to start at 4pm, so the whole field was full of people by 3pm. Then they pushed the release back 10 minutes to “allow more people to attend.” (and this was never announced, but posted on the Facebook event page). That’s when people started passing out, which, of course, delayed the release even further. We were sick of waiting and our experience up to that point had been pretty negative, so we took the loss and left.

Apparently, that was a blessing in disguise. All the parking was overflowing and people were parking on both sides of the 4 lane divided highway, with no one directing traffic. From what I heard, people were waiting hours to get out of that area. Yikes!

Later in the week, my aunt and uncle stopped for a quick overnight visit on their way to West Virginia. I didn’t get any photos then, but they came back the following week on the way back home.

They hadn’t visited us here before, so it was nice to see them twice in such a short amount of time!

The second weekend in September brought our favorite weekend: the Middle Tennessee Highland Games. Unfortunately, our kilt order was canceled, so we didn’t get to wear them this year. We WILL have them for next year’s games. 

Once again,  we had the best time. The weather was a little warmer than last year so we all ended up with ridiculous tan lines, but the experience was still an excellent time. Awesome food from The Scottish Cottage, great pipe/drum bands, dancers, and vendors. It was significantly busier this year, but the location cannot be beat!

We also hit the Trail of Tears Pow Wow that Sunday. We try to go yearly but with the two events on the same weekend, we had to pick and choose which days. Sunday was a shorter day for competition, but we still got to have delicious frybread and enjoy some awesome dancing.

Little Man had a busy few first weeks at preschool. He has been doing well and already seems to be speaking more clearly and frequently. We are so fortunate to have photos from his teachers every week.

He also had a hearing test that week. Both Ms. Alexis at speech and his preschool teachers had recently asked if he had had a hearing test. He tends to hyper-focus and ignore people when he is locked in, so for this mama’s peace of mind, we went ahead and requested one be done.

Thankfully, his hearing is well within normal range, so we now know he just ignores us sometimes. Haha.

The third weekend of the month was our rare down weekend. It was unexpectedly rainy and a lazy weekend. We only went to Lowes for the monthly workshop and did our grocery shopping. We also got Little Man’s  hair cut so he wouldn’t look like a shaggy dog for school photos.

The 4th weekend of the month was another busy one with Oktoberfest and Barks & Brews.  Why these events always seem to get stacked on the same weekend, I don’t know.

The girls did pretty well with the crowd at Barks & Brews. The weather was pretty nice and wasn’t ungodly hot like it was last year.

Indie was a bit of an anxious mess, but Roxie did excellent. She had no issue with other dogs checking her out and didn’t yank on the leash.

Oktoberfest was a good time, but I feel like last year’s was better from a band and food standpoint. Regardless, we enjoyed our beer and even got into the spirit with lederhosen and dirndl!

The last week of the month was filled with school pictures, speech, and the monthly potluck. We’re still waiting on the school photos to come back.

I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone. October will likely be another jam-packed month with pumpkin patch visits, Halloween, our yearly family photos, the El Dia de Los Muertos celebration/Harvest Festival at Cheekwood, and a visit from the in-laws. Despite how busy we tend to get, this is really my favorite time of the year!

Until then,

Cheers!

Anyone else feel like July went by too fast, but was incredibly long as well? Just me? Cool.

Needless to say, July was weird for us. We didn’t do much, as planned, but we had a few things pop up.

We started off with celebrating our oldest pack member’s birthday. Our sweet orange boy Jack turned 13!

This cat is far and away the best kitty around. He’s still as spry and ornery as they day we brought him home from the Beatrice (Nebraska) Humane Society at 6 months old. I hope he out-lives us all.

Then, we celebrated the 4th of July with sparklers and fireworks on post. We even got to hear/see Lynyrd Skynyrd perform.

The next day was an unexpected trip to the vet for Miss Independence. I noticed her licking her rear end that morning and noticed she was bleeding. Since she’s been fixed for years, I knew something was up. $200 and 10 days of medication later, we learned she ruptured one of her anal glands (gross!).

Thankfully, it didn’t require surgery and seems to have healed up without complication. The biggest hurdle was keeping her from licking (which she didn’t really do much). She was truly unbothered by the whole ordeal.

Luckily, the rest of the month was slightly smoother.

We really didn’t do much of anything for the remainder of the month. The Mister had 2 days of staff duty, so it was Little Man and mommy for the Lowes and Home Depot workshops this month.

Roxie went on a shoe eating rampage and shredded 3 different pairs of Little Man’s shoes.

Normally, it’s not a huge deal as we usually have backups for the next few sizes, but this took out all of the shoes he currently can wear. So we had to make a trip to Once Upon A Child for some spares (kids shoes should not be so expensive new!). Roxie unfortunately snagged those two new pairs from the counter as well. Since then, she has been good — we gave her some beef hide rolls to keep her chewing on something positive.

The Mister had some stressful few weeks of work. His new command SgtM has been getting on his case and being an absolute dick about stuff at work. He even told the Mister to get his act together in 30 days, or he’d fire him, but never told him what he was doing wrong or how he could improve. Needless to say, the Mister wasn’t very happy about that. Even his squad leaders were upset about it and kind of blindsided the new Lt Col with their unhappiness. The SgtM apologized to me at the monthly potluck but still got his backhanded compliments in. Had I been feeling more fiery, I would have called him on his bull, but…I didn’t want to cause more issues for the Mister at work. Apparently, the new Lt Col must’ve reigned in the SgtM as it’s all blown over now, thankfully.

The biggest change of the month is potty training is in full swing! Little Man has to be ready for preschool in a few weeks, so we got a jump on it.

He is doing pretty well with his big boy undies and doesn’t seem to mind the toilet. He doesn’t like to let us know he needs to potty yet, but he does do the potty dance and has finally stopped fighting us about trying when we ask if he needs to go.

We had a lot of house cleaning and laundry to be done there for a bit, but it was definitely needed as my mother-in-law stopped for an all too short visit on her way to Michigan the last weekend of the month.

We went to one of our favorite antique shops (which is getting new owners soon) and hit Kohls for the back to school sales. I didn’t get any photos but it was a nice visit.

The whole house has come down with some summer colds. Little Man and I have been coughing our lungs out for about a 4-5 days at this writing. We thought it was allergies at the start, but since then, everyone has gotten some type of sinus issue going on. The coughing is far and away the most annoying part. Mucinex seems to have dried me out entirely, but my throat is now super dry and scratchy. I’m ready for it to all to take a hike!

August is going to be the start of a huge change for us.

Little Man starts preschool two half days a week! I am excited for him to be around kids his own age, but I sure am nervous as well. His speech delay will hopefully improve as he gets to be around more than just me.

Speech therapy will also hopefully see a change. His new speech therapist Alexis has left the practice, so we are in the middle of getting all the paperwork in order to hopefully follow her to her new clinic. It’s been such a rough transition with all these changes and the current clinic he goes to has not made me feel very confident in their abilities.

I’m just ready for him to have more of a routine without all the disruptions to his care. It’s been such a debacle since Ms. Sydney left and seems to be an ongoing problem now. There’s been scheduling issues, poor communication, and with his most recent visit, I felt brushed off, so I’m eager to wash my hands of this place.

Despite all that drama, Little Man has been improving greatly recently. He is more willing to use words and imitate what you ask him to say. He’s started using short sentences and is doing well. Being sick and trying to potty train have somewhat slowed us down, but I feel like we’re making so much progress.

Since preschool doesn’t start until the end of August, we will likely spend the first couple of weeks practicing using his lunch box and putting on his own clothes with less help. I’m also looking forward to getting him into a regular sleeping routine. Everyone needs a bit of help with a better routine around here.

Here’s to hoping we can continue to recover and get settled in the next month.

Until then,

Cheers!