It’s been a week, y’all. I’m literally counting the days until Spring Break. It cannot get here fast enough for me. I need a break and I need to blow through this to do list so we can get our house on the market within the next 2 weeks! ugh. 

1. Little Miss Sassy Pants here had a birthday party last weekend and she wanted her hair in the top knot “just like mom”. I’m so proud. She rocked that top knot and had the sassy attitude to go with it. Ha!

2. On Sunday Zoey had her best friend over for a playdate and they had the best time. They watched a movie, drew pictures, played Minecraft, and took a dip in the hot tub. A good time was had by all and Zoey was so tired after her friend left that she slept for 4 hours. That’s a win!

3. Tyler did his promposal this week. It was adorable. He’s taking the sweetest girl and I’m so happy! He did the whole thing himself. He bought the donuts and sweet tea (her favorite), made the poster, bought the paint and recruited some football and basketball teammates to help out. And a good friend of his videoed the whole thing so I could see it. I love this school. 

4. We love Spring. And we especially love the first day of Spring when Dairy Queen gives out free ice cream cones and Rita’s italian ice gives out free italian ices. Win! We hit both up on Tuesday night despite the fact it was freezing cold and raining. We don’t pass up free dessert at our house!

5. And on Wednesday I woke up not feeling great. By Wednesday afternoon I was so sick that I had to hit urgent care. What I thought was just a sinus infection ended up being a very serious sinus infection, an ear infection with a perforated ear drum, and the infection had spread to the lymph nodes under my jaw. Sigh. So I’m on heavy duty antibiotics and feeling like death right now. 

1. So we pretty much have a revolving door of kids in our house every weekend. Maliah has a handful of friends who rotate sleeping here most Friday and Saturday nights. Mason has his best friend here fairly often. Zoey and her bestie take turns having playdates at each other’s houses. And we never know who or how many friends Tyler is going to show up with. It’s awesome and I love it. I love knowing their friends and what is going on in their lives. 

2. I shared this picture on IG and captioned it “How you know offseason football training is starting back up this week” haha! Tyler has weights several afternoons a week plus field work several afternoons and on Saturday’s. He also has a combine coming up at the end of the month so he’s working hard to get back into peak shape and shed his winter body. I’m still not pleased that he wants to go back to football but at this point he’s been cleared by his sports medicine doctor and the neurologist has given his tentative approval. Tyler’s completed another round of concussion specific physical therapy that concentrated on brain function and his grades have come up. Still….it’s scary. 

3. We spent last weekend cleaning out the garage. Holy clutter. We threw away or donated several car loads full of stuff. Some of it I’m still trying to figure out where it came from. I don’t remember buying it. But it’s done. We were hoping to get the garage painted this weekend but of course the weather isn’t cooperating. We’re supposed to get torrential rain both Saturday and Sunday and temps are COLD. Maybe next weekend. 

4. Have I mentioned how much I love our charter school? Maybe a time or two? Or a thousand? I get pictures all the time from teachers, parent volunteers, and on the Facebook and IG feeds. I love seeing my kids during their day. The pictures of Tyler at the varsity basketball playoff game were posted on IG. He was so so bummed to have to miss basketball season this year due to the concussion but he’s been at every game supporting his teammates and friends. The pictures of Maliah were taken on the 7th grade trip to Washington DC and posted on Facebook by a parent chaperone. The pictures of Zoey were taken by a parent volunteer during her STEM class and the pictures of Mason were taken by his teacher and sent out to parents. I really love this!

5. Maliah has had such a rough transition to school this year. It’s so hard to jump into middle school not knowing anyone, especially when it’s a smaller school and most of the kids have been together for years. She’s made friends and her grades are fantastic. But recently she’s been dealing with a mean girl situation. This girl is someone Maliah considered a friend so to have her all of a sudden turn on Maliah and start some false rumors has been hard. Mean girls suck. Maliah seems to be handling it well. There were some tears and then she got angry. She introduced this girl to the definition of slander and let her know that bullying will not be tolerated. It helps having an older brother who is uber popular and known by everyone…including the mean girl’s older sister. That helps a lot. 

1. I finally got to Zoey’s room this last weekend. Oh my gosh. My sweet little hoarder. I pulled so much stuff out of her room. So Much Stuff. More than I even knew she had crammed in there. But she was a good sport and helped me clean out probably 75% of the stuff she didn’t need. We packed up 3 bags of clothes to donate to a friend. She got rid of a bunch of stuffed animals and dolls and toys that she hasn’t played with in a long time. We got rid of her art desk because it was too small for her. Then I painted. The trim got painted a brighter white, the upper walls are a pale gray and the lower walls are a darker gray. Then we rearranged her furniture to make her room more functional. It looks fantastic! I haven’t done any decorating yet but the change is just amazing!

2. Maliah has been doing so well lately that we were able to cut her weekly therapy down to once a month and she’s holding steady on her current dosage of her anti-anxiety medication. She continues to get great grades and spends a lot of time with her friends. I think she’s finally turned the corner. We like all of her friends so much and their parents are great too. It’s a joy to have a pack of giggling teen girls in the house. They love to hang out here….I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with the large amount of varsity football players who also love to hang out here. ha!

3. The donate pile has taken over our living room. It’s stressing me out but I need to have all the donate stuff in one location. I just keep adding to it every single day. I look at all this stuff and I don’t know where it all came from! This is too much stuff! And we’ve already taken 2 loads to Goodwill, y’all!

4. Once I finished Zoey’s room I moved into Mason’s room. His whole room needed to be painted also. I used the same paint from Zoey’s room to make it easy. And it looks fantastic! I cannot believe the difference it’s made. Mason got rid of a bunch of stuff too and we rearranged his room to give him more space. I took out his desk because it was just a clutter catcher and moved 90% of his toys to his closet because he had a ton of extra space in there. I pulled out a huge bag of clothes to pass on to my nephew and it felt so good to simplify!

5. I had a warning light come on in my 2 year old Honda Pilot this week so we took it in for service yesterday. I was hoping it would be a simple quick repair but that’s not how things roll in this house. It’s the ECM- the engine computer module- that controls every main system in the car. Awesome. So it’s still at the dealership getting fixed and I’m in a rental car until further notice. I know it’s not that big of a deal, especially since we aren’t having to pay anything to get it fixed thanks to our bumper to bumper warranty, but it just feels like one more thing right now on top of all the other things. I just keep taking deep breaths and channeling all my frustration into cleaning out this house.