Just a little ray of sunshine : February 26th - February 28th, 2021: A sick doggy, Greko's, & homemade custard

Last night I didn't blog because I was trying to finish my Come Follow Me study and also trying to decide if I wanted to join Jody Moore's coaching program to have her as my life coach. I decided to take the plunge because I need help working through my overwhelming fear of throwing up. It's taking over my thoughts too much and I don't know how to stop it myself. Something's gotta give though cause it's no way to live. Here's to hoping her coaching will make a difference! 🤞🙏 Anyway, now I have 4 days to update on, starting with Friday.

Friday was an asynchronous learning day for Maeve so she was at home with us. It's kinda nice when we have those days mixed in because then we don't all have to get up quite as early. (I used to wake up at 6am to get at least part of my workout in before getting Maeve ready for school, but it got really hard to keep up with that once it got colder and was SO dark at that hour. So those days are over, but let's be honest, waking up at 6:30am is still pretty early!) Also, I kinda love it because all the sudden the kids are obsessed with hanging out under their beds. 😂😍 They have LED lights strung underneath them so they drape blankets over the side and kinda pretend they're in a fort. They will facetime their Gram under there, do screen time under there, and just play too. It's kind of a dream for me to have more peace and quiet with just Nolan with me and know they're having lots of fun on their own. So Friday morning they spent a lot of time up there before Maeve needed to do her worksheets, and I was able to get my workout and scripture study done in peace. 🙌 Adam bought some more little planes for Rowan like the ones he got for Christmas since the 2 he got then both already broke. 🤦 But this time it was a 3 pack and they are not as big, so hopefully that will help them hold up better. They were both also playing with those on Friday morning and after taking a short break from them, Rowan said "come on Maeve, let's go planing!" 😂😂

After Maeve finished her worksheets and the kids were playing again, I snuck in a shower. Apparently though, while I was showering, Zoey threw up because I went downstairs and found a pile dark reddish brown goo. It looked pretty sketchy and she had been acting strange the day before and actually thrown up a couple times that day as well. She's never thrown up 2 days in a row and also never had throw up that looked like that at all, so I decided to call the vet and take her in. On our way to drop her off, Maeve asked why we were going and I said "just because Zoey's throw up looked really strange and we need to see what's going on" and Rowan chimed in, "Yeah, and because her butt hurts!" 😂🤔 Not sure where he pulled that one from. It was kinda nice because with Covid they ask that you just drop your pet off for appointments, so I was able to get some errands done while I was over in that area. So went to Walmart for a few things, I tried to sell some shoes at Plato's Closet (but with no luck - which is so annoying because there were some high end brands in good shape, but they said they were "too fancy" for their store 🤦🙄), dropped some stuff off at Goodwill, and then used a free coupon I had to try a healthy shake from this new restaurant near Goodwill. I got one that was supposed to mimic a reeses peanut butter cup, and it was decent, but definitely tasted healthy haha. Of course the kids wanted to try it, and then of course when Maeve went to hand it over to Rowan who didn't have a firm grasp on it yet and it fell and 1/4 of it spilled all over the place. 😫🤬 I can't stand messes like that, so it kinda put me in a bad mood and I feel a little bad about that because I know it was an accident. In my grumpy state, I immediately told the kids they could never try something like that of mine again. 🙈 I probably should have had a little more mercy.

Anyway, over $300 later 🙄, Zoey did some blood work which came back normal and then did a pancreatitis test which also came back negative, so that was good. Who knows what messed her up, but at least it was nothing serious, and they just sent us home with special bland food and told me to get some unflavored pedialyte to help her with her dehydration. Ever since Friday, she hasn't thrown up anymore, but her bowels have been out of whack cause she seems to be struggling to poop some and when she does poop it is like pudding. She has had a number of accidents in the house and especially in the middle of the night (we let her sleep in our bed again because we started to trust her more) - so she has been getting out of our bed like 2-3 times to do business and then whines to get back in. I would take her out, except I don't know when she jumps out since it doesn't really make much of a noise, I only hear when she whines to get back up since she can't jump up into our bed herself. 🤦 If only she was smart enough to just whine so that one of us would take her out, but nope. It will be nice when she's totally back to normal and hopefully that's soon.

Friday night we had potstickers for dinner and then the kids had screen time and then went to bed. Adam got busy with some paperwork after that and finishing taxes, so I did some jump roping and watched some shows until I went to bed, but he stayed up till 2am finishing taxes. 😳

Saturday morning Maeve had her trial Musical Theater dance class and luckily there were no mishaps for that trial and she got to experience the class as it should be. She loved it and decided it was her favorite class, so I will be signing her up for that one. They explained it as kind of a mix between hip hop and jazz, so definitely more upbeat than Ballet and I feel like she needs that with the kind of dancer she is at home. Should be fun for her! Maeve was really excited to eat her Life cereal, drink lemonade, and hang out under her bed when we got home. 😂 Cracks me up. She also changed her clothes after we got home and it made me laugh because she put regular pants on under a dress, instead of leggings. 🤔😅 Which reminds me of another Saturday, where she wore a fancy dress with tights, but with her jean vest over it and her sparkly gold tennis shoes. 😂🤭 Oh, and she also put tons of crazy necklaces on as well as her slap bracelet and that's how she showed up to our friend's house. 😬 I tried to get her to reconsider some of her choices, but the girl loves her fancy dresses and also really loves that jean vest. What can you do! I also let Rowan go out in Maeve's pink unicorn rainboots recently when he just insisted that's what he wanted to wear. Somehow they've softened me and I don't put my foot down as much. 😏🤷 Might as well let their little personalities shine through when they can.

In the afternoon I decided what custard recipe I wanted to make in our ice cream maker and realizing that it would take 4 hours to chill, I went ahead and prepped the custard before we left to go out to dinner at Greko's to celebrate Adam's promotion. He went there for lunch recently with his coworkers and thought it was awesome Greek food. Back to the custard though - while I was prepping it, Maeve asked me what I was doing and I said "oh just working on making some homemade custard in our new ice cream maker for us to have tonight" and she said, "Custard?? We already had so much junk. Why are we making more junk??" 😂🤦 And by already had so much junk, she meant that the day before she had some sour patch kids and m&ms. I assured her that she didn't have to eat any of it if she didn't want to, but of course she wanted to. 😉

Greko's was tasty - I always love good Tzatziki sauce and they also had really awesome fries that were seasoned and had some sprinkled cheese on top of them. Of course though because they were fancier fries, the kids weren't as into them. 🤦 Nolan was throwing food on the floor left and right, the little stinker. We made it out of there in the nick of time though, because it was downpouring our whole way home. We gassed up both cars once we got home and while waiting for them to fill up, Adam approached me at my window pretending we were strangers. That's how we spice up our marriage, NBD. 😂

Once we got the kids in the bed, we started thinking about the custard again, and it hit me that I hadn't checked to see how long the ice cream maker bowl needed to be in the freezer for before it would be ready to use. And that's when the sad reality hit that it takes 16-24 hours or until the liquid on the inside is frozen and you don't hear it move when you shake it around. We had only had it in there since the afternoon, but Adam felt like he couldn't hear any liquid moving so he thought we should just try it anyway. Buuuut that was a lost cause - it didn't work. 😩 Such a bummer! We were so excited for it, but at least there was no issue with putting it back in the fridge and waiting to make it on Sunday night.

Sunday morning we went to church with our whole congregation! We are back to having everyone invited to Sacrament meeting each week and we are also allowed to sing again too, which was so nice. On our way to church, Rowan had us laughing though when he went around a sharp corner and he said, just like his Daddy would, "Hold onto your butts guys!" 😂 I also hopped on our Zoom YW lesson and it was pretty rough. It was on repentance and the girls would not give any comments AT ALL. Literally us leaders had to just step up and say a bunch of comments so there wouldn't be radio silence. 🤦

We had a low key early afternoon until we decided to go to a playground at 3. We did all our research to figure out which one would have baby swings so that Nolan would be able to have fun too and then I put him in one when we got there and he lost his mind. 🤣🙄 It was honestly comical considering we tried so hard to make sure there were dang baby swings. He clung onto me so tight and acted like I was abandoning him by putting him in that thing. Must be an age thing, because he used to like them! I tried him on a slide too and that was also a bust. I guess he's not an adventurous one. The kids had a ball though until Rowan decided it would be fun to just let go of the swing he was on completely, so he fell flat on his back and head and got covered in dirt. Needless to say, he was not a happy camper and back home we went. It was dinner time anyway though, so all good. After dinner, we made our long awaited custard and it worked beautifully! It tasted JUST like Culver's chocolate custard and it was amazing. 😋🙌 So cheap too, so it was a major win! And the good news is, one batch makes just enough for us to not overdo it, cause heaven knows we would if we could. 😅

Before I took Nolan upstairs for a bath, I went to "change" his diaper because he was poopy, so I left him naked for seriously 1 minute before taking him upstairs. In that 1 minute, he peed all over the floor. Which really threw us off because at first we thought it was dog pee, not thinking about how he was naked, but it was such a big puddle it didn't make sense to be dog pee. After a minute of confusion, it dawned on us what had happened. 🤦😳

Maeve made me laugh at bedtime, because Rowan came into our bedroom where I was laying with her and asked me, "What are we going to do tomorrow?" She quickly plugged her ears so that she wouldn't hear me answer and could then ask me the same question herself. 😂🤦 Maeve has been obsessed with asking me that question for a LONG time and Rowan has learned from her that apparently it's an important question to ask. It kinda drives me nuts, and I wish the answer "whatever you want" would cut it, but I always have to get specific... 😒

For the sake of time, I'm going to stop here and give today's update on tomorrow's post. But before I share some pics, here are some other random laughs of the weekend:

~Rowan's favorite thing to do right now is cut paper up into a million tiny pieces if he ever gets a hold of scissors. Which isn't funny at all and instead very annoying.

~Adam told me that Rowan said to him one time, "You're like a thousand pounds! I'm like this *runs his hand down in a flat motion* and you're like this *makes a semi-circle motion with his hand like he's outlining a large watermelon*" 😂🙈 I'm sure he felt like a million bucks hearing that. 🤦

~I bought a few miscellaneous items including diapers at Walmart on Friday and forgot to bring them in the house. Maeve saw that they were still in the car later and she said, "There's one thing that we REALLY need to bring in though - the diapers!! Cause Nolan poops A LOT!!!" 😂

~This conversation with Rowan:
      Me: "Do you need to go potty?"
      Rowan: "No"
      Me: "Why are you holding your crotch?"
      Rowan: "Because I was feeling to see if there's pee coming out, but there's not" 🤔

And now for pictures!

Getting creative with how they flew the planes 😂

Sweet boy trying to play with sad sick little Zoey. This is right after she threw up and before I took her to the vet.

He was being soooo cute laying down hugging this hedgehog with the biggest smile on his face, but of course once my phone was out I couldn't recreate the moment 🤦