Last week was catchup week after being gone at Disney, and it was an exhausting one. We did have a beautiful weekend, though!
Monday, April 8
Monday, I woke up on the struggle. bus. Apparently, sleeping in on Sunday just hadn’t quite been enough for me to feel rested, so I headed into the week feeling like a hot mess. Haha.
First up, was grocery shopping, because we had nothing in the house whatsoever. I ran by Walmart first to get the bulk of our stuff because – way cheaper than Publix! – and then I went to Publix to grab the things that Walmart never has.
After that, it was back home to put everything away and then get to work on the blog that had been neglected for over a week. I worked on blog posts and picture sorting for the rest of the day, only stopping to eat a quick lunch with B and throw dinner in the slow cooker, and before I knew it, it was time to get in the car line. The day went by in the flashiest of flashes. (Name that movie – hehe.)
During the drive home, the eclipse was peaking, so we weren’t able to see it. We hadn’t gotten any glasses anyway, though, so we wouldn’t have been able to look if we had wanted to. We weren’t in the path of totality, so I wasn’t that interested. Jacob was able to look with his class right before pickup, but Olivia was a little sad because her class didn’t go out there. They usually don’t allow the littler kids to do that anyway because I’m sure they can’t be trusted 100% to not look at the sun without their glasses. Haha.
The kids both had great first days back, and apparently, the teachers went easy on them, because neither of them had homework Monday. Well, Olivia had something that took her all of five minutes, but that was about it.
I let them spend some time on their laptops to decompress after the day, and then I sent them outside to get some fresh air because it was a beautiful day. They stayed out there until dinner.
Meanwhile, I did my first Bible study in over a week, and I missed it SO much. Then, I headed downstairs to get dinner ready so we could eat early because we had somewhere to be at 6.
The president at the kids’ school who has been there for over a decade (and is also an alum like me) announced her retirement at the end of this school year, and we’re all so sad about it. I’ve known her for most of my life as her kids went to school there at the same time I was there, so we wanted to be there for her retirement Rosary that the school and church hosted for her.
The Rosary started at 6 at our church, so the kids and I headed there with our Rosary beads in tow. For all of you non-Catholics, a Rosary is just a gathering at church where everyone prays the Rosary together. It only took about 30 minutes, and then we chatted with several friends and teachers for a bit before heading home.
Since we were home by 7, I laced up my tennis shoes and headed out for my first run in over a week. Well, let me tell you something, after you’ve just completed a week where you’ve done nothing but walk nonstop, a run isn’t the greatest idea. Hahahaha. I was on the struggle bus. I was still feeling exhausted from the trip, and apparently my body was, too, because my run was a super struggle. I was huffing and puffing and basically felt like passing out by the time I got home. Haha.
After we got them in the bed, Brian and I watched some more of American Idol, and then it was bedtime for us, too. I was out like a light.
Tuesday was the Monday-est Tuesday ever. Haha.
The school did special dress-up days for the school president who is retiring, and Tuesday they were able to dress up like her favorite things (Georgia Bulldogs, tennis, etc.) so that was an easy one for Jacob and Olivia since we’re huge Georgia fans. I almost dropped the ball on reminding them to dress up, but thankfully I remembered at the last-minute. I didn’t remember to snap a picture of them, though.
I was also supposed to send in stuffed Easter eggs for Olivia’s class Easter egg hunt (per my own email instructions since I’m the room mom – LOL), and I almost dropped the ball on that, too. Hahahaha.
As I was driving home from dropping the kids at school, I realized I hadn’t sent an email reminder to the parents about the egg hunt, and then by the time I got home from dropping them off, I had completely forgotten about it again, so guess what email never got sent? Forehead smack.
I had also forgotten that one of the school administrators had asked to borrow my balloon inflator Monday, so I never dropped it off. Ugh. When I saw her at the Rosary Monday night I was like, “OMGEEEE, I’m so sorry I forgot to bring it this morning.” But thankfully, she told me they didn’t need it until Tuesday, so I promised her I’d drop it off first thing Tuesday morning. Thankfully, I did actually remember to do that! Whew.
After that, I headed home to work on the blog all morning until my appointment with my therapist. But first – a trip to Target to return a few things.
While I was working, I got the dreaded call from the school that Olivia was in the office, but thankfully, she just had a headache, so the school was just needing my permission to give her medicine for it. She’s been having lots of itchy eyes, runny nose, headaches, and dizziness for the last few weeks because of all of the pollen, so that’s all it was but – seeing the school’s number pop up on my phone always strikes fear into my heart. Hahahaha.
When I got home from my appointment, I made a quick lunch to eat at my desk, and I got right back to work. I got a text message from the school librarian late in the afternoon with this sweet picture of my girl. Their assignment was to draw a picture of themselves doing what they'd be doing during the next eclipse. Olivia drew herself as a singer. <3
By that time, Brian and Olivia were about to walk in the door from her late dance night, so I like to have dinner literally waiting on the table when they walk in, but instead, we had to start making breakfast when they walked in. Sigh.
We ended up not eating dinner until 8 and I didn’t have much of an appetite after that beef incident. It may be a while before I try to make anything with ground beef again.
After dinner, I had a million things to do still, and it was already nearing 9 PM. Olivia got in the shower, and I tackled all the things – watering the plants, removing my nail polish (that was looking RATCHET at that point), prepping for Wednesday, making lists and reminders for all the things, etc.
As we were just about to get the kids in the bed, my heart started pounding out of my chest and I had a wave of exhaustion wash over me, and I couldn’t get my heart to settle for the rest of the night. My resting heart rate is normally 65-70-ish, but it was ranging from 135-140. And I was feeling completely winded like I’d run a marathon. So, I took some time to meditate, and that got my heart rate down a bit, but not much.
We ended up getting the kids in the bed LATE, remembering at the last minute that Wednesday was a dress-up day, too, so they had to pick out what to wear. Thankfully it was “Dress like a retiree” day, so they both decided to wear PJs.
After they went to bed, B and I watched a short few minutes of TV, mostly just to appease Maui (since she has to have her nightly treat and lay in my lap for a while), and then we went to bed early.
Wednesday, April 10
Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling back to normal, but I still felt SO TIRED. The kids wore PJs to school for their “dress like a retiree” day, and Jacob was looking forward to hearing what the bell would sound like in between classes because all week they played their retiring president’s favorite songs as the bell between classes. So fun!
After I dropped them at school, I headed home to work until it was time to go back to the school for Olivia’s Easter egg hunt. Our school always does their Easter egg hunts after Easter since Lent (the period leading up to Easter) is supposed to be somber, and not a time for celebrations.
Since I’m the room mom, I was the one who had to scatter the eggs, and I arrived to this:
We did the egg hunt on the football field, so I wheeled my wagon that was chock-full of eggs down to the field and got to work. It took me about 30 minutes to scatter them – I basically just took armfuls and let them roll out of my arms onto the field so they wouldn’t bust open. I definitely got my workout!
The kids came down to the field at 11, and the hunt was on. Their teachers had them line up on the 50-yard line and then run to pick them up. For the first round, they each picked up ten. For round two, they each picked up eight. And then, round three was a free-for-all to get the rest of the eggs up.
The kids were allowed to eat two pieces of candy, and they took some time to trade as well. After that was done, I headed back home to work for the rest of the day.
After we dropped Olivia, Jacob and I headed home for the rest of the evening. We had some bad weather that was due to roll in, so I was happy to stay home. Sure enough, the rain started around 4 and didn’t stop until sometime in the middle of the night.
Brian and Olivia got home a little after 6, and I had sheet pan sausage and veggies + blueberry muffins ready to go for dinner.
After dinner, Olivia had some studying to do, so I helped quiz her for her Word Work, and then Brian helped quiz her for her social studies. After my job was done, I headed upstairs to get on the stair stepper, and then I finally got pictures from our Disney trip uploaded to Facebook.
Thursday morning, we woke to our seat cushions (literally) ripped off of the chaise lounges, the door mat tossed down the porch, trees down all over the city, power outages (not for us, thankfully), and debris everywhere. Apparently, we’d had really strong winds blow through in the middle of the night, and not a single one of us had heard it. I never sleep through storms, but this medicine they have me on for my vertigo makes me dead to the world, so I heard absolutely nothing.
Thankfully, the bad weather was gone by the time we had to leave for school, but it was soooo dreary and windy all day, and it rained pretty much all morning.
I had a Home and School Advisory Board meeting at the school first thing, and the six of us ladies who made it to the meeting ended up chatting and praying together for about 30 minutes before actually starting the meeting, so that was really nice.
After the meeting, I headed to UPS to drop off an Amazon return, I put some gas in my car, and then I headed home to cozy up and work for the rest of the day.
At 3, I grabbed the kids from school, and they’d just gotten back from an all-school pep rally for our president who is leaving at the end of the year. They were pumped up and all a chatter about everything that happened. I’d wanted to attend, but if I had done that, I wouldn’t have been in the car line early enough to get the kids to music lessons on time.
They both had lessons after school and Jacob completed another piano book. Olivia has started writing song lyrics, so she had brought her songbook in to show her voice teacher, and her teacher helped her start putting a couple of them to music. She told me she was really impressed with Olivia’s lyrics, especially since she’s only ten.
After that, we headed home. The kids did their homework and hung out while I did my Bible study, and then I got everything prepped and ready for Friday.
At 5:15, we headed to my father-in-law’s for one last birthday celebration for yours truly. I had requested pizza from a new-ish place in town that we’d never tried + Crumbl cookies for dessert. He had picked everything up and he had it waiting for us when we arrived.
The pizza was Chicago-style deep dish and it was yummy but it was rich. The Crumbl cookie I chose was cinnamon scone and OMG it was a good one. I love a scone and, somehow, it tasted just like a scone instead of a cookie.
While they did that, I headed out for a cold, windy walk/jog that also turned out to be drizzly. Sigh. Why we’re still doing winter in mid-April in Georgia is beyond me. This has been a really cold, rainy winter. And spring.
Friday morning, I dropped the kids at school and then I headed home to work all day. Right before I had to pick up the kids, I decided to download some new music, and long story short, I ended up having to download the Apple Music app to my computer to convert the music files to the proper formats (because I had purchased the music from iTunes instead of Amazon for the first time ever), and when I did that, my entire iTunes library (songs, play lists, and all) got completely wiped out.
iTunes is the program I have used forever to add songs and backup my iPhone since I have a PC, so obviously I was freaking out. Apparently, when you download Apple Music, it automatically moves all of your files from iTunes to Apple Music, but it didn’t give me that warning before I installed it so I had no idea that was going to happen.
After doing TONS of research about Apple Music, I discovered it doesn’t have
the same functionality as iTunes, and it’s also a nightmare for PC users… I went
down the rabbit hole about it on Reddit and Quora and OMG, the things I was
reading were awful. People were losing
their entire music libraries and all of their playlists when they were syncing,
and it was just not something I wanted to deal with.
I had to put it on the back burner while I picked up the kids, but when we got home, I came right back to it, and ended up not having a clue what to do. I found a chat that said that if you delete the Apple Music app that all of your files will automatically move back over to iTunes, but all of the responses in that chat were people saying that they tried that and it didn’t work. So, I had no clue what to do. So instead, I did a Bible study because I really needed it at that point. ;o)
When I got my second Apple Watch, we had a similar issue and I lost all of my data from my first Apple Watch and I’m still sad/bitter about that. The lesson from this story? I really need to get an Apple computer because iPhones and PCs just don’t play well together. I constantly have problems.
Anywayyyy, after all of that drama I was pretty stressed (and mad since I’d wasted hours with no resolution), but it was time to get dinner and get Jacob to his middle school dance.
Brian picked up Five Guys for dinner, and after we ate, Jacob and I headed to the school for his dance. His friend, Jack, was sleeping over afterward, so I met with Jack’s mom in the parking lot and got Jack’s stuff, so he didn’t have to take it with him.
After that, I went to run some errands until it was time to pick them back up. They both said that they didn’t want to stay the whole time, so there was no point in going home. First, I swung by our favorite local donut place to pick up breakfast for Saturday morning, and then I ran to the Walmart across from the donut shop to pick up a few odds and ends.
Once all of that was done, it was time to pick up the boys. When I arrived, the dance floor was packed, and the kids were all having a blast! I was sure they weren’t going to want to leave early as previously requested, but they were, indeed, both ready to roll.
The boys immediately pulled out Nerf blasters and chaos ensued for pretty much the next hour. They eventually settled in at Jacob’s keyboard for a bit to play music, and then they retreated to the playroom to play video games. Meanwhile, B and I watched some of American Idol and Maui snuggled up in my lap.
Saturday morning, Brian and I slept in. I don’t usually sleep in when we have kids sleeping over, because I like to get up and make homemade waffles and bacon or whatever for them, but I was still so exhausted from Disney World and playing catchup all week, that I had told the boys to feel free to raid the donuts for breakfast whenever they were hungry.
When we got up at 8, the boys and Olivia were all awake, but they hadn’t had breakfast, so we all had donuts, and then I wrapped up in my big blanket in my office for the next hour to catch up on blog reading and sip my cinnamon tea.
I gave up at 4 to get ready for church, and then we went to 5:30 Mass like we usually do. Afterward, we went out for dinner with my extended family at our favorite Mexican place, and it was nice to catch up with them since we’d missed dinner the previous Saturday.
When we got home, we got the kids in the bed right away. Jacob hadn’t gone to sleep until 1 AM, and then he woke up at 7, and Olivia had stayed up past 11, so both of them were dragging.
After that, B and I started watching The Chosen, and then he switched to something else when I fell asleep. I knew it was going to happen. I have been exhausted since we got back from Disney. I did make it through the whole first episode, though, and while it was a little slow in the beginning, it got good at the end.
Sunday, April 14
Sunday morning, we had leftover donuts for breakfast, and then Brian and the kids settled in to finish A Series of Unfortunate Events. Apparently, the end is not great, and the kids were pretty disappointed. They’re also not doing another season, so that was just salt on the wound. Haha.
While they did that, I got my planner ready for the week ahead, I listened to my Sunday morning sermon, and I did yoga.
All of our furniture, rugs, and throw pillows will turn nine years old in May, and our rugs and pillows have seen MUCH better days, so we went ahead and trashed all of them, and I ordered new ones. I cannot wait to see them in the space!!!! I loved our red rugs, but the red rugs with all of the red brick on our house didn’t offer enough contrast, so I’m excited to see the new look with the new colors we chose. Stay tuned!
After lunch, it was time to bite the bullet and try to fix my iTunes. I had read that you could uninstall the Apple Music app and all of your files would revert to iTunes, but most people said that didn’t work for them. Brian decided to be the guinea pig for me since he doesn’t have a million playlists to lose like I do, so he installed Apple Music on his computer, all of his data moved to it like it did on mine, and then he uninstalled it. His music and playlists did, indeed revert to iTunes, and all was well.
Since it worked for him, that made me feel better about doing mine, but you better believe that I Googled how to manually export copies of my playlists to my computer first just in case. I have nearly 60 of them in my iTunes library and they’re literally how I listen to music all the time. I have a playlist for every mood, every holiday, every type of event, and loads of playlists that are from previous years. Think of them as burned CDs or mixtapes. ;o) So if I were to lose them as so many people on the internet say they did, I would have been devastated.
Anyway, after Brian’s worked issue-free, I followed the same steps for my computer, and I was so relieved to see that it had worked!! All of my music and playlists were all right back in iTunes where they were supposed to be. Whew.
After that, I went to transfer all of my pictures from my phone to my PC as I do every Sunday, and y’all, my iOS had updated the night before, and the entire transfer process was broken. Somehow, when I connected the phone to my computer, instead of just finding the 120-ish new pictures that it should have found, it found 1,500. The process just to find the pictures took at least 30 minutes, and then when I clicked on the button to transfer them, I got an error message for every.single.file so I had to click “try again” for 1,500 files. SIIIIGGGGHHHH.
That process took probably close to an hour, and then when I opened the folder that all of the files had been transferred to, I saw that 90% of the files were broken and unusable. The ones that were there were old as hell and had already been transferred to my computer months ago. And the ones that I actually needed (the 120-ish I had taken from the previous week) were completely missing. There were files there with the dates for the missing pictures, but they were all videos from our Disney World trip. We obviously weren’t in Disney World this week, so how in the hell does a file with a 4/1 date transfer to the computer with a date of 4/12?! Ugggghhhh. It was so frustrating.
I ended up wasting nearly 2.5 hours of my life Sunday afternoon and got nowhere. I tried restarting my computer and phone and seeing if I could get the pictures to come off again, but the phone and computer knew that they had already been transferred, so there were no new files to locate. Which meant – I had to email 120 pictures and videos to myself to get them from my phone to my computer.
Y’all.
Well, by that point, I had gotten nothing done for Monday, and it was time to go to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner, so I washed my hands of it all and we headed over there with a bottle of wine in hand. I couldn’t pull the cork and fill my glass fast enough. Haha.
We spent the rest of the evening over there. Momma had cooked a new pasta recipe and made a Caesar salad, garlic bread, and strawberry cake for dessert and it was all soooo delicious. And it was a nice break from all of the technology drama.
When we got home, I still had to put away some dishes, sort all of the laundry, and prep a few things for Monday, and then B and I watched a little bit of American Idol before going to bed.
Happy Tuesday, y’all!
I lost all my itunes music and playlists when my old computer crashed. That was fun. Glad you got yours back!! Have you read the book Class Mom? I think you'd appreciate it being the room mom!
ReplyDeleteOh I would have been devastated. Yes, I did read that book but I never read the sequel! It's still on my list! I did enjoy the first one!
DeleteSorry you had so many technical issues! But I have to say having a iMac makes everything easier with all Apple products.
ReplyDeleteYessss. It sounds like I just need to get one of those next time for sure!
Delete