Hello all! It’s been a while since I’ve updated you all. Last we left off, I had posted some of my goals for April. It honestly feels like a lifetime ago. But if you remember, one of my goals for April was to survive soccer. And it wasn’t a joke. In the fall, I was down town 6 out of 7 days a week, which was nuts! And while I’m not pointing fingers, but I’m fairly certain all that running around had a hand in putting me into an asthma attack.
So when I knew spring soccer was coming, I wanted to be able to still keep up with things around the house {I’ve been doing really well at this keeping up with the smaller stuff over the last 4 months}, and not put myself back into UrgiCenter or the ER. And if we’re judging my “survive soccer” goal by leaving me out of the ER, then we did a bang up job! If we’re judging it based on the rest of the family, we failed gloriously. So grab a cup of coffee and strap in, this is going to get LONG!
April
The beginning of the April left us microwave-less. It finally kicked the bucket 10 years after Hubs and I thought it would, and I was not about to traipse out to get a new one. Firstly, because we don’t use our microwave THAT often. Or at least I thought. But secondly, because the corner where it had been living looked so much cleaner! More counter space!
Now while I do use our crock pot for most of the soccer season, I had to switch to other methods to reheat some items, like canned green beans or frozen corn. Hey, you try making meals at 7pm and not having a fast method of heating something. But honestly, it was nothing that the stove top couldn’t handle. And sometimes I just skipped it altogether and went for more of the apple slices or baby carrot route.
But not only did I survive soccer this season, I’ve also survived what I lovingly dubbed as Fundraiser Hell. The end of the year We had band fundraisers, PTO fundraisers, soccer fundraisers, Teacher appreciation week items and so on, on top of year book orders and the spring book fair.
Now you’re probably thinking, just ignore the fundraisers. And while it does sound like the most budget friendly option, a lot of the fundraisers have a requirement of either a minimum purchase or a buyout simply to keep the organization going. This is especially true for soccer and band. Soccer fundraisers help keep the fields maintained, because they don’t mow and paint themselves, and band has a few field trips coming up that funds were needed for. Plus, it gave us an opportunity to get some end of the year teacher gifts, and take care of our minimum per child fundraiser purchase at the same time.
I also signed more permission slips at the end of April than I think I’ve signed in the last 3 years of the boys being in school. And by mid-April, these kids had filled up my May calendar.
There were some parts of life that I barely squeaked by on during April too… like forgetting my car needed an inspection this month until the very end of the month. Oops! And after I got my car in for inspection, I was informed that I needed new tire rods and an alignment before it would pass inspection. And while I was slightly bummed for a bit, it completely made sense why I’ve gone through a few alignments in the last 30 months!
May
May brought it’s own challenges, and this is where we started to fail a bit. May was an intense month where I did a lot of running around. By the end of the month, I was downtown multiple times per day, every day of the week. Remember, we have a good 35 minute drive, one way, to town. So just driving down and back twice a day has used up nearly 2.5 hours of our day.
May was also a month that was jam packed full. Four field trips, soccer practice three days a week, band concerts, chorus concerts, jazz band exhibitions, soccer games 2 times a week, kindergarten prep, and school field days. When we weren’t driving past ourselves on the road, we took some time as a family to enjoy one of our favorite family activity; hiking.
And it would have been all good from there, except after one of our hikes in late April, Bookworm and Lady Bug has both acquired ticks. Now, every time we go hiking, we do check ourselves over for ticks. And most of the time they’re easily noticed. Bookworm’s was exactly that… attached to his shoulder. We were able to remove it before it had been attached for an hour. And this is where I wish I could say the same for Lady Bug.
The only complaint she had the week after we went hiking was that her head hurt from hitting it off the wall. And this isn’t out of the ordinary for her. Her bed is against the wall that adjoins her room and ours, and every night when she rolls over, it results in a very loud THUD against the wall. Not out of the ordinary. But after a few days of the same story, I decided to check the spot while shampooing her hair and make sure that this “bump” would indeed heal itself. And folks, I was not ready for what I found.
This bugger had hid itself in her mass of curls, and had blended in for 6 days. Enter mass loads of mom guilt. And what makes it worse for me is that earlier that day, never mind the rest of the week, but just that day, we had braided her hair into two pigtail braids. And, AND, we put her hair into pigtail buns for her soccer game that evening. In both instances, I didn’t notice it in her hair. Lots of heebie jeebies, and TONS of mom guilt.
Since it had been attached for well over the vital 24 hour period, I took her to the doctor to get it removed. From there, she was put on an antibiotic twice a day for 10 days, which her peditrician had modified to a higher dosing twice a day for over 14 days.
As we were nearing the end of her 14 days, she had developed a fever passing 102, and had started vomiting. So I called it in to her doctor’s, who ordered routine bloodwork to see what was going on, along with a Lyme Titer that had to be sent out, as well as an appointment later that afternoon. All initial bloodwork had come back normal, and while we were at our appointment, the doctor discovered that her dosing and schedule were wrong. So we went back to square one. A third dosing of antibiotics, now three times a day and over an additional three weeks to make sure that any and all doubts over Lyme would have been gone should she develop the symptoms again.
{I am exceptionally happy to report that the titer did come back negative.}
But before I get to how June went, I do want to say that since this instance, we have been completely obsessive about checking each other over with fine tooth combs for ticks. In the last eight years, we had three instances of ticks being attached to our family. But just this year alone we’ve matched that number, and the summer isn’t even halfway through. Ticks weren’t a huge problem in our area before. You may occasionally find them on your dog or cat, but in the last two years they have become more and more common. So yeah, you can say we’re a tad freaked out about them now, and very obsessed.
June
June. Ahh… June. Early June brought the ending of our school year, the end of our soccer season, and an insane round of allergies. I had also developed a sinus infection right before we left for a family vacation to Hershey, PA. The day before we left however, Hubs developed a fever, joint pain, and had a huge bite on his chest. Something, most likely a spider, had bit him and his body was not reacting well, He was eventually put on an antibiotic, which has helped knock out any and all reaction within him, but it was a pretty scary time up until then.
After we got back from Hershey, one of the hoses for the pool broke. I had come home from a grocery run to a drained pool, which sucked, but thankfully the pump didn’t burn out while I was gone, and even better that it didn’t happen while we were at Hershey because we wouldn’t have known about it for three days. While he correct there, it didn’t help the sting of $15 for a new tube and $160 to refill the pool {because of course after this happened it was the driest 4 days we have had all June}.
And then we had another hiking mishap. Bookworm, being the goof he is, tripped while we were out hiking, and landed on his fingers against a rock. The next day it was still pretty sore and swollen, so we took him to MedExpres for some xrays to make sure it wasn’t fractured.
What about the garden. As many of you know, June is the start of our major growing season. It’s the beginning of some real warmth, and lots of sunshine for our area. It’s the main reason I cannot get my tender crops safely planted until Memorial Day weekend.
But this year I also wanted to change up our gardening style and do a more relaxed version of gardening. Basically the point behind it was to not bust my back to get stuff done, and to neglect growing some veggies this year to help reduce pest infestation {like cabbage loopers on every single one of my cole crops}. This past month I’ve spent some time at the local you-pick farm picking some strawberries and leisurely planting some more veggies in the garden.
But it has been so wet where we live, that our lawn is still squishy and wet as I’m writing this. The fact that our pool drained about 1500 gallons of water into our yard probably doesn’t help, but it’s not the sole reason. June in our region has been very cool, and very wet. I know Hubs is definitely sick of having to push the ride-on mower out of muddy spots, but it’s not like I can put a nearly 2 acre tarp above our yard and call it good when it rains.
Because of all the rain, I am doing a more relaxed style of gardening. I have delayed planting of quite a few items, like beans and zucchini, and some of my garden beds are getting really good at growing weeds. But the point to this year was to be a little more relaxed and not bust my butt, and I’m trying to keep that in mind.
June also gave way for us making big change in our budget, and I’m pretty excited about it and can’t wait to share it with you, but that will be later on this week.
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