2024 Day of Love

This week was Valentine's Day.  This is always one of my favorite holidays to celebrate with my family.  I love all the pink, I love the heart shaped foods, I love the "love hunt" scavenger hunt tradition we have.  All around it's a great day.

Elsie started us off feeling the love with a special V-day themed sidewalk chalk drawing.  She got a little assist from Carrigan in drawing the hearts, but she colored them in and wrote the rest of the words herself.  She was pretty proud of her accomplishments and want her picture taken with her work.

As I mentioned, one of my favorite parts of Valentine's Day is the themed food, it always comes back to the food for me.  This year, we have had a lot on our plate and I didn't really plan a special breakfast.  I got up to start working bright and early like I always do and I had the idea to make heart shaped breakfast cookies.  I was able to pull it off in time before the girls had to leave for school.  They were a hit.

Dinner also had a heart-shaped component with heart-shaped homemade soft pretzels.  Soft pretzels are a favorite around here and are often requested for holidays and special occasions.  I was happy to accommodate with a Valentine's Day version.

As for the love hunt, it was a good one this year.  As the kids are getting older, I tried to make the clues more challenging so they would have to put some thought into them.  The funny thing was that I routinely stumped the older two, and it was Elsie who figured out the clues each time.  It had Jeremy and I both cracking up.  In the end Merrick got an AirPods  case, Carrigan got a dice game call Left, Center, Right, and Elsie got a Barbie crafting car.

All in all, Valentine's Day was another memorable one.  Maybe someday Jeremy and I will actually get a chance to go out on a date and celebrate too.

Fun times

 It's been a quiet week.  We are all just keeping our heads down and plugging along until the crazy hits.  This week Merrick got his cousin Christmas gift in the mail.  They had ordered it well before our cousin gift exchange in Arizona, but it didn't end up arriving until shortly after our plane took off back to Oregon, so they had to ship it up here to us.  It's call Boxbollen, and it's a ball attached to a headband by a string.  You punch the ball repeatedly as it moves towards you.  It is supposed to improve hand-eye coordination.  Since it's arrival, it has provided many hours of entertainment.  Merrick is rocking it with a high score of 84.  I have a score of 35 and Jeremy is at 45.

Friday night, the girls' school has a PJ movie night.  Despite the fact that they were showing a movie that we have seen a million times, Elsie was super stoked to go.  Carrigan was less excited and didn't go initially, but once I got there and told her that her friends were there and wanting her to come, she had Jeremy bring her down.  Elsie thought it was hilarious to be at the school at night in her pajamas and wanted me to take her picture in front of the sign to commemorate the occasion.

Today is the Superbowl and we are doing it super low key style this year.  I can't remember the last time we didn't go to some kind of Superbowl party, but this year we are just kicking it at home.  The girls are into it in a way they never have been before with the possibility of Taylor Swift being there to support her man.  My crafty C.C. girl even crafted a Superbowl lunch for herself with football shaped beans to eat with chips.  That girl never misses a chance to craft.

Next week is the last week before all the crazy happens.  We are trying to soak the normal while we can.

Life

 I saw a meme the other day that said "Whew, January was a long year, but we made it through".  That pretty much sums up my feelings about January and I'm afraid February is going to be even worse.  It feels like we just got back from a basketball trip in Arizona and now Jeremy and Merrick are off at a basketball trip in L.A.  I also, just yesterday, booked our trip to Bend for basketball in just a few weeks.

If it was only just basketball making our life crazy, that would be one thing, but that is just the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately.  A few weeks ago, we got word that while Merrick's surgery was successful at resolving his PVCs, he is now having a different type of irregular beats, originating from the upper chamber of his heart, called SVTs.  These irregular beats have been more erratic and causing a lot of anxiety for Merrick.

After discussion with the cardiologist, Merrick has, yet another, ablation scheduled for February 21st.  In the meantime, he has started medication as a bridge to control symptoms until we have the ablation.  To say that Merrick's heart journey has been a wild ride would be the understatement of the century. We would, once again, ask for your faith and prayers on his behalf.

I look ahead to February with a lot of anxiety.  We have all the normal stressors, plus Valentines Day, Elsie's birthday, Merrick's surgery, Merrick's currently scheduled to get braces (we may end up postponing this), and, just because life is terrible sometimes, I have jury duty.  Can someone please just wake me up when February is done?

Back to present day, the girls and I stayed behind from L.A. so that Carrigan could participate in Honors Choir.  They had a performance yesterday.  I was so proud of her, and the group as a whole.  They worked really hard and sounded AMAZING.  She is now really looking forward to middle school choir.  I just wish all future choir performances could be as good as this was.

Elsie has also been a busy girl with birthday parties almost every weekend and sometimes two in a weekend.  I usually don't end up getting many pictures from these parties, but last weekend's farm party was a rare exception.

I think that just about catches us up.  Assuming I make it, see you next week.

Arizona 2024

 I apologize for two things right off the bat today.  The first is that there was no blog for last week.  We were in Arizona for Merrick's basketball tournament and too busy partying for me to get a post in.  The second thing that I need to apologize for is that this is going to be photo dump.  As I said, we had tons of fun in Arizona, and I have the photos to prove it.

Before tryouts for the basketball season even took place, there was a rumor that the "A team" would be traveling quite a bit, including a trip to Arizona.  Even before tryouts and schedules being finalized, my kids were sure we would be going to Arizona, and they were adamant that we would all be going.  Luckily for them, the stars aligned, and we did, in fact, get to use a basketball tournament as a reason to take a family trip to Arizona.

While Saturday and Sunday were pretty basketball heavy, we used every bit of extra time to play with all the family.  This includes two new baby girl cousins that we hadn't gotten to meet before.  We had a pizza party, went to multiple parks, including one with rides, spent a day at a trampoline park, and learned to cross stitch.  We also had Clifford Cousin Christmas.  We crammed a lot of fun into just a few short days.

We had such a great time.  We are back to reality now but made memories that won't soon be forgotten.  I'm so glad basketball gave us a reason to visit.