Izzy's shoes

Izzy put her sneakers in Tank's bed right after he died.  I wasn't sure why she did it and I didn't ask her.  I just let them stay there.  Tonight she spontaneously picked them up and put them away.  She says she misses Tank almost every day.  We all miss Tank.  I constantly hear phantom 'Tank' sounds.  It took a lot of restraint not to look at the adoption doggies at Petco today.  I knew I couldn't do it without bringing a dog home, so I shielded my eyes.

Lots to do...but

We have a big to do lost this weekend, but life got in the way.  We had soccer early.  Izzy did fantastic.  Super happy and excited to be playing soccer.  She scored all but one of the goals for her team.  She never gave up on defense and was so fun to watch.  She does so much better in the 2nd half of the game.  Each week she takes a half of the game to warm up I guess!  Her team got absolutely destroyed by the other team , but nobody cares.  The other team has also been playing together for a year.  I think Izzy's team did, and is doing, great. They all improve so much from game to game.

Logan had soccer starters today, but I had to leave for a hair appointment I had made 2 months ago.  Brian said he did better than last week and made it until 10:40 when he and izzy had to go potty.  Big improvement from last week.

After cleaning up we headed to Zilker to meet up with old friends who had moved to Houston.  The kids played so great together at the playground for almost 3 hours.  We road the train, watched the clown make balloon animals, got snow comes and played hard.

Logan LOVED the train!

So that led to about 0 time for cleaning out the study, painting the door, TV stand and speakers and doing things for the party next weekend.  Oh well.  There is always tomorrow!

House stuff

First some cute pictures of the children's museum.  I took the kids and Maddie Friday afternoon.  It was slightly challenging taking two 4 year olds and a 3 year old by myself, but we had fun!  It was actually a lot of fun until we pushed it too far at the end and Logan decided to push a baby.  Oops.  After the museum I took the kids to chipotle.  That might have been a mistake.  Sorry to everyone eating at the chipotle in the mueller complex last Friday night!

Like a boss Logan climbed right up to the top!

This was adorable.  He kept trying to help other kids 'come on guys.  Just grab onto this rope and you can climb up!'

He was not happy that he couldn't paint anymore after his pushing incident.  So I took a picture.

My 'I'm exhausted' selfie.

We have neglected things around the house for a while.  It's just so hard to take the time to do time consuming tasks around the house on the weekends when the kids and I haven't spend much time with Brian during the week.  The kids see him for about 20 minutes in the morning (sometimes) and about 15-20 minutes at night during the week.  The weekends are so sacred.  We just want to hang out as a family.  With spring arriving and Isabel's party coming up we knew we really needed to start checking things off of the to-do list.  I started by pulling weeds a couple of weekends ago.  Not a small task.  I also picked up mulch last week and managed to get 1/2 a yard put down in the 1 hour and 45 minutes of kid free time on Thursday.  I was working!  It felt good!  Logan's bus driver is always joking with me about yard work/flowers/etcetera.  He told me I need to hire someone.  I guess he's not impressed with my work.  Ha!

Last weekend Grammy and Papaw came into town for a visit.  We let them watch the kids Saturday for most of the day while we did other various jobs around the house.  Sunday Brian cleared out the little area next to out back door that is fenced off but doesn't have anything in it except weeds.  He put down a ton of crushed granite.  So nice that we were taken out to a nice breakfast.  Brian needed the energy!

Helping with dinner Saturday night.

 She really wanted to sleep in our bed.  So we let her until we came up to sleep.  She wasn't happy when she had to move!

We needed up putting the kids' little table in the crushed granite area and they love it.  I let izzy pick out a flower plant for the table at the nursery.  We also bought a couple of tomatoe plants and some seeds for the garden.  I put down compost and we planted the garden.  Crossing my fingers we have growth!

Hard at work.

Enjoying dinner

Sunday night I remembered that I had signed up to make dinner for Brian's best buddy in Austin.  His wife just had baby #2.  So I went to the store in my glasses and basically PJs to get all of the ingredients.  Of course I see everyone I know there.  I even saw my spin instructor.  She goes 'wow I didn't recognize you in your glasses!'  I said 'yeah, but I'm still in my gym clothes, sort of.'  She said 'yeah, even in your cheap clothes.'  Hahaha...  She's from China, so I have a feeling she didn't mean it to sound like that, but it awesome.

Dinner was finally finished after 9pm and I crashed.  Hard.  Sleep after being physically exhausted is so awesome.  Brian got a text that dinner was awesome, so that made me feel good.  I made The Pioneer Woman's 'Best Lasagna. Ever.'  I know I've talked about it before, but it is damn good.  A sometimes treat.  I also made cookies, bread, and salad.  My family had something frozen for dinner.  I've tried to make a double batch of the lasagna before, but it's almost impossible.  I didn't have dishes big enough for some of the steps.  So I just made one.

The door for the master bedroom is in at Lowes.  Can't wait to finally get it fixed.  I almost had a repeat broken down door last night.  Logan has decided that he likes to lock the door when he goes into his bathroom.  I had the bath water going and the door was locked with him in it.  I can VERY close to breaking the door.  It was scary.  Ugh.  I need to have keys above all the doors, I guess.

Isabel is going in to see the allergy/asthma doctor tomorrow.  She's been using her rescue inhaler almost nightly (not because of distress, but based on peak flows) for the past month.  I thought she would start getting better readings once whatever allergen was in the air cleared up, but it's been the same.  So we need to reevaluate her maintenance meds.  I've been doing research on the side effects of her daily meds and they aren't nice.  I know almost all drugs have side effects.  Long term use of her inhaled steroid typically causes a loss of growth height-wise of an inch.  Her singular (her saviour drug) has more concerning side effects.  Many many many of the parents I keep in contact with via Facebook groups of kids with allergies/asthma have noted very drastic mood changes and aggression when there kids are in singular.  They've almost all said that after stopping the drug it goes away.  Isabel is very moody and quick to cry, but she's also 4.  Sometimes I do wonder if the drugs are affecting her mood.  The one time we took her off of singular for 5 days she ended up in the ICU with a collapsed lung.  Pretty sure I'll take moodines and aggression over the ICU any day.  But, I do get concerned when she's been on these drugs without a break for so long.

Have to add Isabel's beautiful creation she made.  All by herself .

What better time?

It's 8:25pm on a Wednesday night and Brian is changing the oil in the truck.  I wanted to pick up mulch this week for the weekend and the only time I could do it (the kids can't ride in the truck) is between 9:15am and 10:30am on a Tuesday or Thursday.  So hopefully I'll be able to pick up a ton of mulch tomorrow morning.  The truck leaked some oil after the last hard freeze, so hopefully it's nothing serious.  It happens when you have a 21 year old truck.

Speaking of things getting old...my silly ankle that I twisted about about a month ago is still giving me problems off and on.  Not enough to see a doctor about or anything, just enough to be annoying.  Getting older I guess.

I have someone coming over to buy Isabel's rocking chair.  I sort of feel a little sad about it, but I honestly used the thing about 5 times total.  I would keep it, but there just isn't enough space in Izzy's room.  I think I'm going to double my money on it!  Well, minus the time and money Brian spent sanding it and painting it white.  The glider in Logan's room will be there forever.  That sucker was used to nurse and rock all 3 of my babies and I've put hundreds of hours on it.  We still read books to Logan in it!

She's Elsa.

Haha...we just added some new hardware to the fence gate and the door to the garage.

Ready for Summer

I know, I know.  I'm not at all ready for the 100 degree + weather every single day, but I had a little sneak peak of what Summer will be like over Spring break and it was pretty nice.  Again, I know it was only a week, but it was so nice not to have to get everyone up and out the door by 7:30am.  I liked letting the kids stay up later than normal and sleep in (if I got lucky).

I'm especially loving the 70 degree weather we have going on right now.  There have been many bike rides, trips to the playground and evening backyard play going on.  I'm typing this watching the kids in their underwear sitting in the sensory tub squirting each other with toys.  It's 82 degrees.  Almost too warm! Life is pretty good right now.

Oh, we also got confirmation that we've been approved for ABA benefits for Logan.  Now he has to go through evaluations with the ABA lead and her recommendations have to get approval before we begin therapy.  But, good news!

Weekend of fun!

Last weekend I went to Houston....wait for it....alone!  Alone, as in no kids!

I turned up the radio, drank my lovely iced tea and had a glorious drive to Houston Friday.  It was my mom's birthday!  After some unpacking we sat down and watched some TV with wine and a fire in the fireplace.  So nice!  I didn't have to tell the kids to shut up (kidding!) or break up any fights!  After I went to bed I was out.  I haven't slept that well in years. 

 We woke up early Saturday morning for more unpacking and packing paper drop off at the recycling center.  I was treated to a lovely dinner at Perry's Steakhouse Saturday night.  It was delicious!!!

The famous porkchop.

Dad's steak.

My dinner.  The special.  I can't remember what it's called.  It was SO good.  I didn't have to chase kids or stop random screaming!

Sunday we all slept in.  Did someone unpacking and furniture rearranging and unloaded boxes at a family friend's house that needed them.  Then I headed back to the chaos in Austin.

End of Spring Break.  The beginning of the end of the school year!

Happenings

It's been a while little blog.  I won't try and play catch up.  Here's a brief recap of the last few weeks:

1.  Great visit with Jennifer, Greg and Lila

2.  Logan's appointment with the neurologist.

3.  Deep searching and researching ABA options.

4.  Field trip

5.  Daylight savings time (shaking my fist at you!)

6.  Gramma and Grampa moving

7. Spring Break

Last weekend we went to Houston to help out with a few moving details to help Gramma and Grampa out.  They are moving to a spectacular new home very close to their previous house.  It's a one story with no pool. Perfect for taking the RV out and not worrying so much about the pool, etcetera.  The new house is a dream house.

So sweet!

Posing in the new house.

Last time playing trains at the old house.

I'm not sure how much help we actually were.  I was expecting to seal grout and stuff but just ended up moving electronics and art.  This week they have the packers, movers, etc hitting things hard.

I forgot about this little project!  Hahaha.  The 9 hour workbench.  Taken apart at least twice and delivered to new house in the pouring down rain at 9pm.  Good times!

Today we had Maddie over for a long time.  She ate dinner with us and we played outside in the beautiful weather.

He might just need a bike for his bday!

Soccer

The kids have both started soccer!  Logan is in 'soccer starters' and Isabel is on a legit uniforms-and-everything team. Isabel has practice during the week and games on Saturday.  Logan has a training session on Saturdays.  They usually do 1/2 of the session practicing skills and the other 1/2 scrimmaging.  Logan is really not into it.  There are a ton of kids and trainers yelling out directions all the time.  If Brian or I stands next to him and demonstrates what he's supposed to do he might do it.  Or not.  The scrimmage is hilarious.  Kids going in all different directions.  I think Logan is one of the youngest, so that makes it more challenging.

Isabel's team, the mustangs, is fun to watch.  They don't keep score and it's very informal.  It's supposed to spark a little bit of competitiveness in the girls with the main objective to have fun and hopefully cultivate a love for 'the beautiful game.'  Izzys first game and practice were ok.  She loved it and never wanted it to end, but she wasn't very aggressive and just sort of followed her friends around the field.  The second practice something clicked and she really showed improvement.  She did great at the game too.  I'm just happy that she really loves it and wants to play.  She asks almost every day if she has soccer.