Our Week - The One with New Phones, Valentine’s Day, a Hockey Game, and a Birthday Celebration for Brian

Last week started out a little rough (all silly things in the scheme of life), but the weekend was fun, so we’re focusing on all of the good things and letting go of the bad.  The only lingering issue today as I type this is Maui’s health.  She is still not doing great and we would appreciate your prayers – specifically that she will start eating more so she can get her strength back.

Monday, February 10

Monday morning, I dropped the kids at school and then I ran by the school office to drop off the key I’d borrowed Friday night for the dance.  I had to swing by Publix after that to pick up some treats for Olivia’s teacher’s birthday, and then I went home to work on the blog and projects all day + tackle some of the laundry that had piled up.

After school, I knew it was my last opportunity to get in an outdoor workout for a while because we had a ton of rain rolling in + a cold front behind it, so I got in a good walk. 

Just as I arrived home, Brian and Jacob were walking out the door to go to a golf meeting since Jacob’s spring golf season will be starting soon.  While they were gone, I made sausage, peppers, and onions tacos for dinner and then we ate when they got home an hour later.

Brian and I had ordered new iPhones (long overdue) and they arrived on Monday, so I pulled mine out of the box after dinner and started the process of moving everything over from one phone to the other.  Every single time we do this, something goes wrong, and I end up having issues, so I was pleasantly surprised that everything went smoothly… it took about an hour for the data to move from phone to phone, but it was easy and everything was exactly as it should be on the new phone after it was done.  This was the first time I was able to move the data from phone to phone via wireless connection rather than having to restore a backup from the old phone to the new phone via iTunes, and it was much easier. What a relief!!

I was a nervous wreck the whole time the data was moving over so I got lots of laundry put away because I couldn’t sit still.

Little did I know, there were big problems down the road… you know what they say – if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.  More on that later.  Sigh.

After we got the kids in bed, I spent the rest of the night going through every single app on my new phone and making sure all of the data was there, that nothing had been compromised, and logging back in to all my apps.  After comparing everything to the old phone, I was relieved to see that everything was perfect.  And gone are the days of having to clear off storage space on my old phone every week because my old one was too full. 

Brian watched an episode of Severance while I did that, but I hardly paid attention.  It was just not my jam… until we got to the second to last episode later in the week and it finally started picking up.

 

Tuesday, February 11

Tuesday morning, it was rainy, dreary, cold and gross outside and I had a bunch of errands to run all day, unfortunately. 

After I dropped the kids at school, I ran to UPS to drop some Amazon returns, and then I ran into Publix next door to grab a three-ring binder for Jacob’s sheet music.  I normally wouldn’t go to Publix for something like that, but it was the only store nearby and I had a few minutes to kill, so I figured… might as well!

After that, I still had a few more minutes to kill before my 9 AM GYN annual checkup, so I grabbed a peppermint mocha from Starbucks (they do them year-round!), and it hit the spot on that cold, gloomy day.

My appointment went well at my GYN’s office and I was cleared for another year.  Always a relief!  After I was done there, I headed to the library to grab a book that was finally ready for me, and while I was there I looked around for some books to grab for the kids as each of them are finishing up the current series they’re both reading and they’ll need something new for AR reading. 

When I got home, I had just a couple of hours to eat lunch and get some work done, and I also did some more laundry.  While I had a few minutes, I downloaded a few new songs to add to my music library and then I decided to sync my phone with iTunes for the first time since getting my new one.

BIG. MISTAKE.

For starters, the syncing defaulted to cloud storage (which I don’t use), so halfway through I realized that and stopped it, but by then, the damage was done.  I saw at the top that it said it was getting album artwork for 2,000+ albums and I was perplexed because I never asked it to do that, and that’s not something it ever did with my old phone, and by the time I stopped it, it had already corrupted hundreds (thousands?) of my albums' artwork. 

For example, the Taylor Swift Folklore album now shows the album cover for Trolls, Gracie Abrams shows a Frank Sinatra cover, and many others show album covers for albums I do not own nor have I ever even seen before.  Sigh.

Naturally, I started panicking a little, but it was time to get the kids from school so I couldn’t try to sync it properly as a backup to my computer, and I ended up spending the entire hour researching the issue in the car line.

Brian also did some research after I called him in a panic, and it turns out that it’s a widespread issue.  Most people speculate that Apple is aware of the situation and they refuse to do anything about it because they want people to use their streaming services, but that’s not something I’ll ever do as I create my own playlists and listen to those all day. 

While I was sitting in the car line, it rained the whole time, and then one of the high schoolers backed out of his parking spot (he left school early) and he almost hit me.  I had to honk at him, and he still kept backing out, so I had to honk multiple times and I felt terrible to have to do that, but it was either that or get hit.  Thankfully, he stopped.  And then the person in front of me was able to move up a bit to give him some more room to get out.

Jacob had Velocity right after school and Olivia had a followup appointment with the dermatologist, so she and I headed there next.  Our dermatologist is usually the fastest place ever and we’re able to get in and out within 15-20 minutes every single time, but the one day I needed them to be quick, they were, of course, behind, so I had to call Brian at work and get him to pick up Jacob from school.

It was a good thing we did, too, because we ended up getting out at the dermatologist just as we were supposed to be arriving to pick up J, and the traffic was gridlocked due to the major construction that’s going on, so instead of taking us 12 minutes to get home like usual, it took us 25.

That meant Olivia had to rush to get ready for dance, and then she and I headed straight back out into the rain to get her there.  Thankfully on time!

I headed back home after that, and I had just enough time to do my gratitude journal, my prayer journal, and my devotional (but no Bible study) before Jacob and I had to leave to get him to a makeup piano lesson at 6. 

He and I headed out into the rain, went through his lesson, and then headed back home.  I usually pay 100% attention at Jacob’s lessons, but I was zapped (and behind on lots of things) at that point, and instead, I caught up on the text threads with my girlfriends and my family while I waited. 

When we got home, Brian was just heading out to get Olivia from dance, so I started on dinner while Jacob went to shower.  I made a new meatball slider recipe for dinner + some steamed broccoli (gotta get a green in there – LOL), and it was a huge hit!  I also paired my dinner with a glass of wine because it was a nice little treat after a crazy day.

After dinner, I wrapped up the last of what needed to be done for the day, I got Olivia’s teacher’s birthday gift ready and photographed to send to the parents, and then we got the kids in the bed.  Brian and I watched an episode of Severance, and then we went to bed, too.

 

Wednesday, February 12

Wednesday morning, I dropped the kids at school and then dropped Olivia’s teacher’s gifts off in the school office, and then I headed home to work all day.  It was rainy and cold again, so I spent the whole day under my heated blanket.

I ended up putting all of my focus on my phone situation and my goal was to get the thing synced and backed up on my computer.  The first sync took two full hours and at the very end it informed me that it couldn’t be synced because there wasn’t enough storage on my computer – OMG – so I cleaned out my recycling bin and tried again.  After about an hour of the second round of syncing, it stopped abruptly saying that my phone had been disconnected from the computer (it had not). 

For the love.

After that, I realized that I still probably didn’t even have enough storage available on the computer, so I spent some time moving my backlog of videos off of the computer and onto my external hard drives and uploading them to Amazon, and then by the time that was done it was time to pick up the kids from school.

After school, we headed home.  Olivia got some homework done and then I took her to dance.  When I got home, I went back to my computer to get my phone synced YET AGAIN and I was sure this time that it would work because I had freed nearly 80 GB on my computer.  While that was doing its thing, Brian and I made breakfast for dinner, and then nearly two hours later, I went back upstairs, and the computer had given me the same error that there wasn’t enough space on my computer to back it up.  

Honestly.

At that point, Brian and I just decided that it was time to back my stuff up on the cloud instead of on the computer even though I’d prefer a “physical” backup, too.  But what can ya do?

After the kitchen was clean, I got in a strength training workout – mostly legs and glutes as I’m still trying to be really careful with my arms/shoulders as that’s a trigger for my dizziness. 

After that, Brian left to get Olivia from dance, I got into my PJs, Jacob got showered, and then Jacob and I worked on the Lego puzzle together until Olivia was home and out of the shower.

It was time to get the kids in bed after that, and then B and I watched another episode of Severance before heading to bed.

 

Thursday, February 13

Thursday morning, Olivia ended up in our bedroom around 3 AM due to a big storm that had moved through, and then we all got up and headed to school.  I had nowhere to be Thursday, so I worked most of the day, although begrudgingly.  For some reason my energy was sapped on Thursday, and I was exhausted, unmotivated, and uninspired. 

After I ate lunch, I decided to remove myself from the computer and get up and do something, and that’s just what the doctor ordered.  The sun finally started shining Thursday afternoon for the first time in nearly a week, so that helped a bit, too.

I got my dresser and my nightstand cleaned out and I got some laundry put away, and then it was time to leave to get in the car line.  I read for a bit in the car line, and I also chatted with our resource officer for a bit since he was making his rounds.

We had music lessons after school… Jacob worked some more on a Minecraft song + started a new song in his lesson book.  Olivia worked some more on strumming, and then Mr. Steve told her that he reeeeaaaalllly wanted her to pick a good strumming song with only a few chords so she could get some good practice under her belt.

Steve and I were hoping she’d go with Landslide, but she just wasn’t feeling it, and then out of the blue, she suggested I Love You, I’m Sorry by Gracie Abrams.  PERFECT CHOICE.  I am obsessed with that song right now, and it’s a beautiful (and easy-ish) guitar song, so Steve found it online and wrote the chords down for her. 

He’d never heard of Gracie Abrams, but he said that he was digging the song choice, so I told him that he had homework, too – to spend some time with her album (it’s fabulous from start to finish… and you must get the extended version with the bonus tracks!) – and I texted all of the best songs to him in case he wanted to skip to the best ones.  As you can see, I looooveeee talking music with people and introducing new music to others.  I’m pretty sure that there are, not five, but SIX love languages and that mine is music.  Haha.

We all left excited for Olivia – Olivia because she loves that song, me because I’m obsessed with that song right now and I’d love to hear here play it, and Steve because he said it was perfect for what she needs to work on right now + he was intrigued since he’d never heard her music. 

Music lessons success!

When we got home, I had a little snack and some hot tea while I worked a little more (since I’d bailed early in the day).  I’d already done my Bible study and quiet time before picking up the kids, so that was already done.

Olivia had to play catchup on homework, studying, AR reading, tidying, and a few other things since Tuesday and Wednesday had been so busy.  I could tell she needed a break about an hour into it, so she and Jacob went outside to get some fresh air, and they ended up staying out there playing basketball until it was time to come in for dinner about an hour later.

I made parmesan chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuits for dinner, and then afterward, I helped Olivia study for her two tests on Friday and gather all of her Valentines for the next day.  Thursday was definitely a catch-up day for all of us.

Our local library had done a “Paint Your Partner” night Thursday night that Brian and I had put tentatively on our calendar, but sadly, we just had too much to catch up on and we had to miss.  I’m hoping they’ll do another one again sometime so we can go because it looked really fun!  Jeannine, put that in the suggestion box!  :o)

While Olivia and Jacob got ready for bed, I got in a stair stepper workout and finished putting away the rest of the laundry, and then Olivia and I worked on tidying the house together.  It was such a mess.

By the time all that was done, it was time to get the kids in the bed, but Olivia wanted to show Brian what she’d practiced in guitar lessons and Jacob wanted to show us both a new project he’d made in Scratch (a computer coding game) and then they headed to bed.

Brian and I started episode 9 of Severance, and it finally caught my attention… it took an entire season for me to get into it, though.  Haha.

 

Friday, February 14

Friday morning, I dropped the kids off at school.  They were out of uniform for Valentine’s Day.  Olivia wore her Taylor Swift candy hearts tee with a pink and red skirt and Jacob wore a red Georgia shirt.  Hahahaha. 

When I got home, I wrapped up in my heated blanket and worked all morning.  It was freezing again Friday morning, but at least the sun was finally shining!  I also texted these to Jacob and emailed them to Olivia (since she doesn't have a phone) to tell them Happy Valentine's Day and they both got a kick out of it!  (They're from Bark that we use for security for both of their phones.)

Before getting the kids from school, I swung by the mall so I could make a stop at Dillard’s for some shoes.  My cousin had the cutest gold flats at church last week and I have been looking for something like that forever.  I ended up finding them there – they only had one pair left and they just happened to be one size up from my standard size – but they worked, and they were marked down to just $27 from $79!!  Woo hoooo! 

After that, I headed to the kids’ school, read in the car line for a bit, chatted with our resource officer for a few minutes, and then grabbed the kids.  My Aunt Joy also sent me a picture of something I drew for her when I was two years old!  Not bad being able to write your full name (maiden name blurred for privacy issues) and drawing people like that at just two years old!

 

They’d both had a great day!  It was Olivia’s last time ever exchanging Valentines, so she was all loaded up with cards and goodies, and one of her best friends had given her an axolotl stuffie.  So sweet!  Two of Jacob’s friends had brought him treats, and I thought that was super sweet, too.

When we got home, we had nowhere to be – PRAISE!!!! – so the kids spent an hour or so outside playing basketball and getting some fresh air… the weather had warmed up to about 60 (which is still chilly for me – haha), but it was perfect for them.  While they played, I got my Bible study done, I got a couple of tiny, annoying tasks off my plate that I’d been putting off for literal months, Olivia and I got her party favors ordered, and I bought Olivia a couple more small birthday gifts.

Around 5:30, Brian left to pick up takeout – Olive Garden!!  Say what you want about chain restaurants and OG not being authentic Italian, but I don’t care, because it’s always soooo good.  While we would have preferred to grab takeout from our favorite local Italian place, they were doing a fixed menu with no takeout for Valentine’s Day, so that didn’t work.  OG never lets us down, though!

While Brian was gone, I got the table all festive for Valentine’s Day, I laid out the cards and treats we had gotten for the kids, and I mixed up some Moscow Mules for Brian and me.

When he got home, we had a yummy dinner in our PJs, and it was so nice to not have to rush through anything to finish.  After dinner, the kids had to get showers, and between OG taking longer than expected with the food and us lingering longer at the table, by the time the kids were done showering, it was already getting late-ish.  We had planned to watch a movie, but since it was late, the kids were happy with finish The Unlisted because they’d been waiting to see what happened. 

That show doesn’t interest me in the least, so I promptly fell asleep curled up on the couch with Maui by the fire and I have zero regrets.  Haha.  My tiniest Valentine always and forever...

After the kids finished their show, they started a new one, and then I woke up and let Maui out.  She hadn’t been eating much for a couple of days at that point, so when she went to the bathroom it got stuck to her, and we ended up having to give her a bath.  Bless her heart.  It was so cold outside, and she was freezing after her bath.  I dried her off as best I could, but she could not stop shivering.

We got the kids in the bed after that, and then I put Maui in my lap covered up with a blanket with my microwavable heating pad over her body since she was so cold, and it still took her 30 minutes to stop shivering. 

Brian and I started season two of Severance after that, and then we called it a night!

 

Saturday, February 15

Saturday morning, the boys got up early and left to play golf before I was ever even awake.  I got up around 8:30 and at that point, Olivia had just gotten up, too.  She and I went downstairs to make homemade waffles together, and then I headed to my office to catch up on a few things while she worked on cleaning her room and the playroom. 

The rest of the day was suuuuper productive.  I FINALLY took the time to list all of our clothes and home décor for sale.  I listed every single clothing/home item for sale in a local Facebook group and many items sold right away.  We have literally had a giant pile of clothes behind our bedroom door for over a year that I’ve wanted to get listed (I forgot to take a picture at the beginning so what you see below is only about 1/3 of what was behind there), and I finally tackled the whole thing and got it done!  All I have left now is to list some books and toys.  And whatever items don’t sell locally, I’ll probably put on Poshmark eventually.  Whatever hasn’t sold by the end of this year is getting donated.  I’ve been saying that for years, and I haven’t ever actually done it, so we’ll see how that actually goes.  Haha.  So far, we’re off to a good start, though!

In addition to that, I also bagged up another big bag of clothes that we’re donating, I got all of the “for sale” stuff organized in our spare closet, I stripped our bed and got the sheets washed, I got the kitchen tidied, and I gathered all of the towels around the house to be washed.  

After the boys got home, we had lunch, and then I finished up with all of my sale stuff.  Then, I grabbed some hot tea and a couple of leftover cookies from our Super Bowl party, and I got a little bit of work done in my office + did my Bible study.

Late in the afternoon, I decided to get outside for a jog… I got dressed and ready, grabbed my phone and earbuds, and stepped outside only to realize that it was raining.  Boooo.  It wasn’t a regular rain… it was that thick, hard mist that’s so yucky, and it was way chillier than I thought it was, so I changed into a sweatshirt and went out anyway.  I did a couple of miles, and by the time I got home, I was soaked.  I listened to Gracie Abrams the whole time, and between that, the rain, and the chilly, grey February day, it was probably the most emo workout I’ve ever done.  Hahahaha.

When I got back home, I took a long, hot shower to get the chill out of my bones, and then it was time to get ready because we had some fun plans for the evening.

Our city has had a professional hockey team since I was young and I used to go to the games frequently in my teenage years, but I hadn’t been in years, and we’ve surprisingly never taken the kids either.  It’s been on our list forever, though!  My friend, Jeannine, arranged for a big group of us to go together Saturday night and we had the best time!

We were able to get 19 seats together (two rows back-to-back) and the kids had a blast.  We all grabbed hot dogs and popcorn at the beginning and then the kids spent the rest of the game cheering and dancing and yelling.  They have a contest during the second break in the game where you can throw pucks down on the ice (they’re made of rubber so it doesn’t hurt if you get hit in the head with one LOL) so we all chucked our pucks, but none of us won anything. 

We ended up staying until the very end, and we won 4-1.  The kids LOVED it and they’re both already asking when we can go back.  I loved it, too, because it brought on so much nostalgia from my teenage years when I loved the Mighty Ducks movies so much.  Fun fact, I used to play street hockey on roller blades with my neighborhood friends and we would bring somebody’s boombox outside, put in my D2 soundtrack CD, and blast it while we played.  Hahahaha.  I have always loved hockey.

By the time we got home, it was after 10 PM, so the kids went to bed and then B and I watched an episode of Severance before calling it a night.

 

Sunday, February 16

Sunday morning around 4:45 AM, Brian’s and my phones started putting out an emergency alert saying there was a tornado warning and then a few seconds later the tornado sirens started going off outside.  Ugh.  Ever since our home was very narrowly missed by a massive tornado that bulldozed 68 miles of homes and businesses back in 2019, killing 23 people, I have been petrified of severe weather, and it’s even worse when it happens in the middle of the night. 

I ran straight to the kids’ rooms to wake them, and poor Olivia started panicking even though I stayed calm for her.  We hadn’t prepared our safe space (the closet under our stairs) so it had stuff stacked on the shelves from floor to ceiling, so instead, we all huddled right outside the closet which is also a fairly safe space.  Brian turned on the news and they said that rotation was radar indicated which, thankfully, meant that it wasn’t necessarily on the ground.  The wind was INSANE, though, and they said that they were gusting up to 70 mph.

Within 20 minutes, the rotation was past us, and we were told we were in the clear as the tornadoes were only a threat at the front of the line that went through.  We all headed back to bed and then ended up sleeping until 9 Sunday morning.  Brian left to get donuts, and I got up to let Maui out to find that a huge portion of our fence had fallen in the storm.  There was tons of damage around town from the wind – lots of downed trees, lots of power lines down, and power outages that lasted for days, so we were pretty lucky.

After breakfast, I did my usual Sunday morning routine – sermon, yoga, planner, Bible study – and Brian went out to investigate the fence damage.  Unfortunately, he said that the fence is insanely heavy, and the support beam cracked in half, so the two of us wouldn’t be able to fix it.  It’s currently laying in our neighbor’s yard (because of course the wind was blowing in the direction that would make it fall in their yard rather than ours LOL) and Brian is working to get a few people over here to get it off the ground.  He thinks it’s going to take several people because of the weight of it. 

The kids played outside for a while to get some fresh air, and then we had lunch.  Brian headed off to tennis Sunday afternoon because, yes, it was sunny (but cold and windy) all day even though we’d had severe weather during the night.

I spent the afternoon getting some work done in my office and spending some time with Maui.  She has not been eating much this past week (really the past couple of months) other than a bite or two here and there, and she was really weak on Sunday.  She is still drinking tons of water, which is good, but we don’t know why she won’t eat.  Although, we were able to get a couple of banana slices in her on Saturday and Sunday, and she also ate one of her treats Sunday afternoon, too.  At this point she is just skin and bones and it’s so sad to watch her waste away like this.  She has lost a ton of muscle because of it, and her lack of muscle in her hind legs was causing her to slip a lot (on the hardwood floors… she does okay on carpet) on Sunday afternoon so I was pretty upset about it.    

When we got to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner, I gave her some small pieces of French bread and I tried giving her a couple of pieces of plain chicken and she gobbled them right up.  We’d given her plain chicken and rice a few weeks prior, but her stomach was super upset the next day, and she was lethargic, so I haven’t tried giving it to her again because of that.  She did LOVE the chicken, though, so at this point, I’m just going to start cooking some chicken for her to try to get protein in her body. 

She seems to be fine other than being weak from not eating, and we don’t think she’s suffering, but I know if her leg strength doesn’t improve soon, the vet will probably tell us that we need to say goodbye. 

At my parents’ house, my Momma had made Brian’s favorites since his birthday is this week – fettuccine alfredo bake, some good crusty French bread with olive oil and spices, and this new no-bake strawberry cheesecake dessert that she’d made a few weeks prior that we all loved – and then we sang happy birthday!

When we got home, Brian and Jacob worked on the Lego puzzle some more while I snuggled with Maui on the couch and watched Olivia practice guitar, and then Olivia wanted to do Snapchat filters for a bit to end the night.  They were off Monday, so it was nice to not have to rush off to bed when we got home.

Once they were in bed, Brian and I watched the first episode of The White Lotus (because season three just started!) and then we watched a little bit of the Saturday Night Live 50 year anniversary special before heading to bed.

And that was our week!  Happy Tuesday, y’all!