If you’re new around these parts, this monthly series is an exercise in brevity as I try (but not very hard) to summarize each day of our month in one sentence. (Also, I’ve been taking a picture of my daughter – and now my son, too – every day since they were born, and this is a GREAT place for me to share several of those photos!). Although I’ve almost always included the photo at the top of its corresponding day, the daily captions of what we did and the photos often do not match. (Just to clarify!)
Thanks to the wonderful Rebecca Jo for the post idea!
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Friday 3/1 – We did our once-a-month Sam’s Club run, complete with a quick lunch with Matt while we were there.
Saturday 3/2 – Matt and I had been invited to participate in the baptismal service of one of the girls we taught all last year in Primary, so I led the music at that and Matt gave the closing prayer. Baptisms are always such special occasions, and it was a great way to start off our day.
Sunday 3/3 – I had soooo many meetings this Sunday (I was basically at the church from 10:00 in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon), but we covered a lot of ground in that time. After, we packed up the kids and went straight over to our friends’ apartment to celebrate Katie’s birthday with homemade pizza, salad, and chocolate souffles (oh, how I love our friends!). We ended up staying longer than planned (don’t we always?), but it was just a really good night of talking and spending time together. Worth every bit of missed sleep!
Monday 3/4 – Because it was Katie’s birthday later this week, we moved our usual weekly McDonald’s play date to this day rather than on Wednesday or Thursday. While I totally love how having our play dates at McD’s allows us to actually get in a decent amount of adult conversation, both of us are excited for it to finally be spring so we can start doing these weekly play dates at parks!
Tuesday 3/5 – A day of getting stuff done! I’ve been trying to actively spend a bit more time working on personal projects (including blogging), so a large portion of this day was spent doing that (it helps that Raven goes to preschool on this day every week).
Wednesday 3/6 – My mom came up in the afternoon to spend the night at our place so that Matt and I could go on a little date night to the temple and then out for ice cream after. It’s taken us a LONG time after having kids to get into more of a regular habit with going out on dates, but it has been wonderful!
Thursday 3/7 – We took advantage of my mom being here and gave her a huge list of house projects to help us on, ha ha. We (and by we, I mean she) finished sewing the covers for our downstairs throw pillows, hemmed our new curtains, fixed a mirror that we got from Matt’s parents, cleaned up our kitchen, and helped rearrange the furniture in Raven’s room so that we could have space to move the crib in (sometime in the near future). I’m always amazed at how my mom can accomplish in one day what most people can accomplish in about a month.
Friday 3/8 – We invited some friends over for our weekly Pizza Night, which was a bit intimidating because one of them is probably one of the best cooks I know IRL, so it was pretty intimidating to cook for her! It did give me a chance to try out my perfected homemade pizza on someone other than Matt, though :). This is also the night where, after our friends had left, Matt and I talked it through and decided that I should go ahead and enroll in Elite Blog Academy before the window closed, which I’m super excited about (but which gave me MAJOR sticker shock because of the price!).
Saturday 3/9 – With my enrollment in EBA, I spent the majority of this day totally immersed in the first module of the course, and I emerged a bit bleary-eyed but feeling VERY excited about this next chapter for my blog! Raven also had a princess-themed birthday party to go to on this day, which she came back veeeery excited from.
Sunday 3/10 – We went to the monthly family party with my side of the family, where we enjoyed a “Green Feast” (courtesy of the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day holiday) and where my sister (who’s a massage therapist) gave me a much-needed massage for my back.
Monday 3/11 – Raven got invited to a neighbor’s for a play date, which gave me some good time to work on blogging stuff and housework (since the baby was down for his nap). When she got back, I don’t know if it was from exhaustion or Daylight Savings or that she’d accidentally bonked heads with one of the girls she was playing with or what, but she was kind of out of her mind and basically screamed and cried and freaked out for about two hours straight. So that was fun.
Tuesday 3/12 – Because EBA has me all fired up about all things blogging (even more than I usually am), every spare second this day (like during naps and while Raven was at preschool and when both kids went down for bed) was spent trying to figure out some technical and visual issues with the blog design. Whenever I’d get frustrated, I’d just read or clean for about 10 minutes, then return right back. I didn’t get anything totally figured out, but I did at least make some headway in the direction I want to go (plus I finalized my first blog newsletter, which went out the next morning!).
Wednesday 3/13 – I decided to reach out to the friend I’d made back in January (a fellow mom who also happened to be at McDonald’s taking advantage of the PlayPlace that day, just as we were). She’d forgotten to change one of her clocks, so she ended up being over an hour late, but she and her kids did end up meeting us at the McD’s again for a little lunch play date, and it was fun getting to know her and her kids better.
Thursday 3/14 – My friend Katie and her kids came over to our house for a play date, which wasn’t quite as conducive to adult conversation as meeting at McDonald’s has been, but it was still really good nevertheless. After having three big play dates in the week, however, and after she’d basically had some kind of tantrum/meltdown after each one, I decided that we’d better just stick with one(ish) play date a week from hereon out…(either that or schedule none the week after Daylight Savings, when the whole universe seems to just be a bit off).
Friday 3/15 – Raven had preschool in the morning like usual, and I used that time (plus more) to work on blog stuff. That night, we did our usual Friday Pizza Night, which was more hectic than normal since I was trying to take pictures of the process for the blog post I wrote later in the month on perfecting your homemade pizza AND we got ambitious and made two very different kinds (each requiring their own sauce, ingredient list, etc.). Good thing it was all worth it in the end!
Saturday 3/16 – A day of getting things done! We had talks to prepare, Matt had a haircut to get, I had to do some stuff for my church calling, we had a house to clean…basically this was a day to do All The Things.
Sunday 3/17 – We ended up speaking in church this day because whoever was originally supposed to couldn’t (we did at least have a few days warning!). After church, we spontaneously decided to drive down to visit my in-laws (gotta take advantage of any time with them that we can before they leave on their mission!), which was fortunate timing because they were having a little impromptu St. Patrick’s Day party with some of Matt’s siblings that live closer than we do. A fun day all around!
Monday 3/18 – We ended up getting invited to a birthday dinner for one of Matt’s coworkers, so we bit the bullet and had two back-to-back later nights to enjoy the evening out with them 🙂
Tuesday 3/19 – Matt had his last woodworking class of the semester, but since he didn’t end up finishing the big project he’d chosen to work on, he ended up needing to sign up for the class again. This was the last night of the first semester of the class though, and it’s been a really great thing for him so far! He’s been yearning to get more into woodworking for years, and so this class has been right up his alley.
Wednesday 3/20 – I had my book club group on this night, and even though I hadn’t finished the book (I’d only gotten about halfway through the month’s pick–Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys), I still had a fun time catching up with friends I haven’t seen for awhile there.
Thursday 3/21 – We had Mathias’s 9-month appointment with our pediatrician, and much to my horror, I basically had a total meltdown in front of the doctor. I’ve been really worried about a lot of things with Mathias, and I’ve also been incredibly sleep-deprived, which is not a good combination. Luckily I left the doctor’s office feeling a little more hopeful that things might get better soon, especially when he gave us a referral of an Ear, Nose, and Throat Specialist that will take our insurance that was able to get us in the following week.
Friday 3/22 – On a bit of a whim, we decided to take the kids to the Home and Garden Show on this night, which ended up being pretty fun. There were bounce houses and games and balloon animals for the kids (mostly Raven, but Mathias liked watching the balloons), and Matt and I got some good contacts for some upcoming house work we have going on.
Saturday 3/23 – Because Matt’s whole family (almost, anyway) was in town for his parents’ mission farewell the next day, his parents treated us all to an AMAZING day of fun—we all went to the local rec center and went swimming for several hours (it was Mathias’s first time in a pool, and he totally loved it, and Raven had soooo much fun…so much so that she threw a tantrum upon leaving…), and then they followed it up by treating us all to an early dinner at Chuck-a-Rama. What a great day!
Sunday 3/24 – My in-laws spoke in church for their official mission send-off/farewell (they’re leaving to serve a mission in Hawaii in mid-April), so it was a packed day full of family and food!
Monday 3/25 – I went to the doctor to check out some troubling symptoms I’ve been having (near-constant nausea even though I know for a fact I’m not pregnant) for the past 7 weeks or so. He took a bunch of blood tests, and I was thankful that a neighbor took Raven for a play date at her house so I just had to worry about bringing the baby with me. (Spoiler alert: all the blood work didn’t turn up too much, so I’m now being referred to a GI specialist. Yep, I’ve been down this road before…)
Tuesday 3/26 – I was able to go to my first mid-week activity with the youth of my church since getting my new calling in the Young Women organization a couple months ago. They did an “Iron Chef” competition, and we were one of the host houses, so I was even motivated to clean my house to boot, ha ha 🙂 It ended up being a super late night though, as I had a meeting about some administrative stuff with my calling after that lasted until 11, and then I was working on some of the more pressing things until one in the morning. Busy busy!
Wednesday 3/27 – We went on a play date in the morning in the town over the canyon, with my friend Kayla and her boy who’s just 6 months younger than Raven. Kayla found this awesome toddler-friendly park that neither of us had been to, and we just had an overall fabulous time enjoying the 60-degree weather, our little picnic lunches we’d brought, and a LOT of uninterrupted adult conversation. There’s a reason she and I have been such good friends nearly our whole lives!
Thursday 3/28 – We met with the Ear, Nose, and Throat Specialist that our pediatrician recommended to us on this day, and we found out that you only need to meet one of three conditions for them to recommend ear tubes, and Mathias met all three. We immediately scheduled surgery, and I’m feeling MUCH more hopeful after my consultation there that a lot of the things I’ve been worried about will be resolved with this surgery!
Friday 3/29 – Preschool was cancelled on this day, so I let Raven watch a movie so I could get a bunch of stuff done for my church calling that I couldn’t put off anymore.
Saturday 3/30 – Every quarter or so, the realtor who sold us our house puts on these awesome free community events, so we drove out to the other end of the valley to catch the free showing he was doing of the new Mary Poppins movie (complete with complimentary popcorn and candy and a real-live Mary Poppins for the kids to meet!). On our way back, we stopped by our friends’ house because they’re redoing their whole yard and were getting rid of a bunch of perennials/bulbs that we’ve been wanting, so we picked up a TON of stuff from them and spent the rest of the night getting all that into our garden beds. I ended up having to come in after a couple of hours to get both kids in bed, and Matt was out there until almost 10:00, I think! We both felt very accomplished at the end of the day, though!
Sunday 3/31 – After our usual two-hour chuck block, I had the longest church meeting of my life (4 hours long, baby!), which meant that by the time I got home around 6:00 p.m., I was SPENT. Luckily the kids got into bed pretty quickly after dinner and Matt and I were able to relax with the latest episode of Relative Race, which was just what I needed after my long day 🙂
March was kinda crazy, but April’s looking like it will be even more so (mostly with fun things, though!). The fact that it’s finally spring makes a lot of stuff–especially the harder/more stressful stuff–seem a lot more manageable, so this sun-lover sure is relieved we’re finally over winter.
How did March treat you? And do you have any experience with the ear tube surgery? Any reassurances for my anxious mama heart?