February

February felt like a month to get through.  It was filled with a lot of "adult" things, like filing taxes (when we itemized our deductions for the first time), recovering hard drives, and COUNTLESS doctor appointments.  Plus, Hyrum working late in preparation for deploying, packing (always last minute...) and the actual deployment.  Then adjusting to being the only parent at home.  And waiting for our next duty station assignment.

I'll start with the medical stuff.  Most of my trips to the hospital were for physical therapy.  I'm still going once a week, which I dislike because I don't find it useful to get child care for my kids just so I can stretch under supervision.  (My therapist acts like I haven't done any of this stuff before and could mess it up, and I not-so-nicely told her at my last appointment that I've been doing squats and bridges for as long as she has.)

Also, I had a referral for an orthopedic spine doctor.  It took about 5 hours on the phone with my insurance to get that sorted out.  Coincidentally, my appointment fell on the same day Hyrum deployed.  So we dropped him off in the morning, I took my girls to a friend's house, and then rushed over to the office.  The short story with my back is I have mild and moderate disc degeneration in my lower two discs, with some bulging.  (Other terms they used were dehydrated and arthritic.)  My big take away was that it's something I'll have to deal with for my whole life, do what feels good and don't do what hurts.  I've been taking medicine more regularly, and that's helped so much.

I took the girls in one morning for their 3-yr check up.  I made a huuuuuge mistake by not bringing the stroller with me.  (I never take the stroller out anymore.  The girls are fine walking.)  BUT-- after their appointment they got the flu vaccine, and were furious (and in pain.)  Mila refused to walk and so I had to carry her (and drag Siena) downstairs to the pharmacy to wait for their prescriptions.  They were screaming SO loudly that eventually the people behind the desk called me up before my turn.  I was grateful to be looking 'put together' that morning because otherwise I'm sure people would have thought I was an even worse mom for having such poorly behaved children.  I wanted to make a sign that says, "This isn't normal... they had vaccines."  Then after getting our medicine, I had to carry both girls about half a mile across the parking lot to our car.  :(  All with my awesome back pain.

Mila spent the entire afternoon laying on her bed saying she needed to rest.  I think the vaccine hit a nerve or something, because she was acting so miserable.  The other kids would occasionally bring her new toys to play with, but she mostly just laid there.

And while I'm on the topic of carrying hurt children... We went one evening to eat at the PX food court.  On the way out Tiago tripped on the curb and went down really hard on one knee.  He immediately started screaming and could barely breath.  I tried to calm him down, and it wasn't working, so I carried him (still screaming) all the way to the car, while trying to prevent my girls from getting hit by a car.  He literally wouldn't move, so I had to lift him up into his carseat.  He ripped his pants open, and had a bloody bruised knee.  I was a little worried he might have broken his kneecap or something, but we went home to calm him down.  I carried him inside, upstairs, to his bed.  (My back was killing me at this point.)  And then once everything had calmed down, he said, "Mom, I need to use the bathroom."  Ahhhhhh  Of course.  So I got clever, and put him on a rolling computer chair to push him to the bathroom.  I am SO glad he woke up feeling better.  He's been amazed over the last month to see how his knee has slowly gotten better on its own.  I hope I'm done hauling children for a while.  

Most of these pictures aren't in order, but here we go.

We spent several afternoons at the library.  Now that the girls are potty trained, it feels like every trip to the library includes at least 3 visits to the bathroom.  

One of the first Saturdays in February we went on a 'grand adventure' as a family.  At least that's what I told the kids. In reality, we were furniture shopping.  But while at World Market we bought a bunch of different flavored sodas, which were fun to try.  Then we drove in the direction of Amys Doughnuts and ended up pulling over to eat at a Mexican restaurant.  Hyrum and I enjoyed food, and the kids really enjoyed playing under the table with sugar packets.  It did end up a fun adventure, and I think the kids loved the doughnuts.  We loved watching them dance around the store.

Bath time apparently happened at least a few times in February.  I don't love bath time, usually because it involves a lot of bending/lifting and when my back is hurting it makes me so grumpy.  And washing the girls' hair is the worst!  Maybe it would be better if I did it more often, but throughout the week it just gets SO tangled and it impossible to brush.

This activity has been a winner.  I make sure to clean the floors before we start, and then I put all the beans and rice into the bins with bowls and utensils and let them play.  Tiago could really play by himself there for hours, and the girls last at least 30 minutes.  At the end we gather it all back up and put it back in a bag to use another day.  Then we vacuum up the left-behind pieces.  I've pulled it out at least 5 times in the last month.  Particularly on Sunday afternoons.

Hyrum had a dream of driving to the mountains, but didn't really have a plan.  So we meandered and ended up on a road along the side of the mountain that overlooked the city.  I told Hyrum that was as good as we were going to get.  So we pulled over, took a few pictures, and then moved on with our day.  That involved stopping at the playground before heading to a dentist appointment.

So at their previous cleanings, Tiago had 3 cavities.  We went back for this follow-up appointment, with the plan of filling a small one, seeing how he did, and then returning a second time for the other two fillings (which actually needed caps, because one was deep, and the other was on the outside and a filling wouldn't stay in.)  This dental office is great!  They gave him laughing gas to relax him, let him pick a show to watch on Netflix, and then they did all three teeth because Tiago was cooperating.  (I was thrilled to not have to return with all 3 kids by myself after Hyrum was deployed!)  Tiago didn't seem too bothered by the pain (injecting the Novocaine.)  He of course was confused by his numb mouth, but thought his silver "robot" teeth were cool and asked when he was going back to the dentist again.  Hopefully he doesn't inherit my hatred of dentists.  I've been meaning to schedule an appointment for myself for 2 months... if only I got to watch Netflix too.

I think this is what Hyrum will miss the most while deployed.  He loves carrying sleeping Tiago from our bed back to his own in the evenings.  (Sometimes that's where he goes to fall asleep.)  Once he's out, he doesn't wake up.

Now for the hard drive saga.  I was trying to get organized, so I pulled out our hard drive to organize all the pictures into folders by year.  It took several hours, and I was feeling great about finally getting to it.  My next step was to upload everything to Amazon photo storage.  That was a bit more difficult because it took about 24 hours to upload one month, and I had about a decade of pictures.

I think the kids must have ended up bumping the hard drive while it was uploading, but the metal piece that the cord plugs into came loose, on the inside of the box.  I could hear it rattling around.

I was feeling pretty tech savvy by taking the box apart and trying to put it back together.  It worked for about an hour, and then my computer stopped recognizing the drive altogether.

So I did what any normal person would do: I called my brother who knows a lot more than I do.  He told me to try a converter kit, and assured me I probably wasn't messing up the data on the drive.

About 5 years ago I had to recover a hard drive, so I already had a converter kit.  It didn't work.  I tried it on different hard drives (and it did work) so I was getting nervous.  I was searching the internet to figure out who can recover hard drives.  Office Depot said they might be able to help, so I took it in.

The first guy I talked to said they don't do that kind of stuff, and if anything, they'd have to send it out to an independent company, at the cost of $200+.  [I did a review of all our other storage devices.  The only pictures we didn't have duplicated anywhere else were the ones from before we got married.  I assumed most of the important ones were already uploaded to facebook or google photos.  It was just all the random stuff that was "lost".]  I already decided it wasn't worth it to pay that much to recover pictures we didn't NEED.

But luckily when I was about to leave another employee came in (who actually did some of the tech work) and he knew so much!  He told me I did have options to recover the data on my own: I could buy a new box/container for the hard drive (I didn't even know those existed) or I could take it to Best Buy and have them install the hard drive to a computer tower.  I wanted to pay the guy just for being so helpful.

I was skeptical of whether the new box would work, since it was essentially a fancier version of the converter kit I had.  But the Office Depot guy explained something about how the computer was trying to read the device (didn't quite understand).  After another phone call with Matt, and an hour looking around Amazon, I bought a device for $25, along with some flash drives to back up my files somewhere else.

Two days later it came. I plugged it in, hoping my computer would recognize the drive.  IT WORKED.  I was so happy to put the saga behind me.  First things first, I copied all the pictures that weren't backed up elsewhere.  And after taking off what I needed (and filling my two flash drives) it has been sitting on my desk for over a month.  I am so burned out on photos and storage devices.  My next step is getting everything on the cloud, but it can wait.

We had a parent teacher conference with Tiago's teacher.  At our conference last Fall his teacher told us he was defiant and liked to crumble his snack into a million pieces.  We were relieved to hear that his behavior the last several months has been great. I guess he got comfortable with the environment and doesn't try to challenge things anymore.  His teacher did tell us that he likes to tell on other kids when they're breaking rules, which my mom said was a sure sign he's my child...

Our biggest question was whether she thought he was ready for kindergarten, given that he's the youngest in the class.  She said he was more than ready, and knew all the letters and their sounds, and was socially ready. Unfortunately, we found out later that where we're moving has an earlier school cut-off so he won't be old enough for kindergarten in the Fall.  That's disappointing, but hopefully we can continue his learning so he doesn't get bored for a year.

This was another day at the PX food court.

We had some hand-me-downs from cousins, and I found this old school jumper.  (I think I remember pictures of my niece wearing it.)  It looked so cute on Siena, although problematic for a toddler who was potty training.

We had a lot of fun with the Olympics in February.  The best part was just having something to watch in the evenings.  Hyrum and I haven't had a good show to watch for a while, so the Olympics gave us a good option.  We watched a lot of ski jumping and snow boarding.  A little bit of ice skating, but not as much as I normally do.

Colorado Springs is actually nicknamed "Olympic City."  (We have the biggest training center.)  So there was a big event downtown on opening night.  We braved the cold and took the kids.  Overall we're glad we went, but there were some miserable moments.  We bought hot chocolate to warm up, and it was disgusting.  The kids went in a bouncy house, but it was so windy they came out quickly (after waiting in line for 15 minutes.)  They enjoyed the mini-dance party with strobe lights and music.  They actually got their picture in the local paper (at least online?).  (And unfortunately they really messed up Hyrum's name!)  We were so cold we eventually just found a pizza shop to sit in. The pizza was good, but the warm building was better.  Mila was miserable, so I entertained her for 20 minutes by taking selfies on my phone.

It snowed a few times.  Tiago really wanted to make a snow angel, so that wish came true.  One morning I wasn't feeling great, so I got all the kids snow clothes on and had Hyrum take them out to play while I 'relaxed' inside.  Literally 2 minutes later the girls came in screaming and crying.  So I got to deal with them while Hyrum had fun playing outside with Tiago.  That hardly seemed fair...

Hyrum and I went on one last date a few days before he deployed.  We are so happy to have babysitters around we can use!  We didn't have big plans, and ended up going out to eat, and then it started snowing on us.  (We planned our Colombia party and also tried to get on the same page before he went to Afghanistan.)

Around Valentines Day we decided to make cinnamon rolls.  We usually do it at Christmas, but I was out of commission in December and it didn't happen.  I like the Pioneer Woman recipe because it makes about 9 pans of rolls.  After they were cooked, they sat cooling on the counter.  I was shocked to walk by and see that Tiago had reached up and grabbed one, and just started chowing down.  We got a good laugh about that.  [He actually did the same thing last week. I made cupcakes, and while they were cooling on the counter he just grabbed one while I wasn't looking and started eating.]  

After delivering them to friends (in the cold) we came home to have a "hot chocolate party."  The kids get excited about anything we turn into a party.  It involves making hot chocolate and pulling out our German Christmas Market mugs.  Done.

Valentines Day was kind of a bust.  Some days the kids just whine SOOOOOO much.  I was trying to be a fun mom and have candies on the table in the morning.  The kids didn't touch the heart shaped pancakes and were so miserable. Hyrum left for work, and the kids continued to be miserable.  For dinner we made heart shaped pizzas, and they didn't really care.  It often leaves me wondering why I even bother... Hyrum reminded me multiple times during the day they're not intentionally trying to make me miserable.  The one redeeming part of the day is when Tiago brought home a picture from school with hearts on it, and he told me, "Mom, I made this for you because I love you.  It's yours, because I made it for you."  Sometimes kids are cute. 

Tiago started really enjoying some chores.  He is realizing that he's getting bigger and can do more.  He often says, "Mom, and I a big kid?"  As soon as he realized he could get out the vacuum and plug it in himself, he refused any help in vacuuming.

Around the same time, we were looking at toys in Target (a great way to pass time in the afternoon) and he really wanted a lego set.  I told him we could put together a job chart for him to earn it. So we did it! And it's working great!  He gets check marks for doing things like getting himself dressed, putting all the shoes away, and practicing the piano.  He's only half-way to getting the $10 legos, but he's looking forward to it.

[A side story about the job chart.  One day we were roaming around the PX, and he saw a light-up bouncy ball on a random shelf.  I took it to the register to see how much it cost and told him we might not be able to get it.  It was $3.50--way over priced in my mind, so I told him we weren't going to buy it.  When it sunk in, he cried and cried for about 5 minutes.  About 2 weeks into doing the job chart, we were counting his check marks, and he said, "Mom, I want to go buy a light-up bouncy ball at the PX."  I asked if he was sure, and he was.  So I gave him cash, and we walked through the whole toy section looking for them.  Luckily we found them, he picked a color, took it to the register and paid for it.  And he was THE HAPPIEST kid in the world.  He still loves it.  Ultimately I'm glad I didn't buy it the first time he saw it so he could work for it.]

Hyrum left on the 22nd.  We were happy that it had been pushed back a few days, but as always, there was still packing being done last minute. I think it's like a law of nature (I've confirmed with other Army wives that this is how it always happens).  So the weekend before he left I got to entertain the kids while he covered our dining area in Army stuff. In Hyrum's defense, he tried to do a lot of the packing while the kids were asleep.  

He took them out to play soccer.  (After he was in Afghanistan Tiago told me he needed to go teach me how to play soccer. I asked him why he thought I couldn't already play,  and he said, "Because you never come to play with us."  True story!  I never went because then I could have alone time!)

Another one of our "parties", this time it was a Sunday afternoon "Movie Night."  We made them take a bath and wash their hair in exchange for a movie (with popcorn) before bed. The whole process started around 3:30 pm.

On the Monday before Hyrum deployed he was in charge of family home evening.  He taught the story of Captain Moroni and got all the little people involved.  (He said he intentionally left the Mickey Mouse characters upstairs.. but Belle and Cinderella formed part of the crowd.)  The kids thought it was hilarious.  Then we had a treat. 

And Hyrum really wanted to go get matching haircuts with Tiago.

We also went on a family lunch date.  The kids didn't eat anything but drank plenty of soda.  And then we drove (through flurries) to get frozen yogurt.  I love those balls full of juice!  I could pass on the yogurt and just eat toppings.

We've been building a lot with these magnet blocks.  Tiago made a totem pole.

This might be my favorite picture of the month.  For the few days before he deployed Hyrum tried to get home in time to put the kids in bed.  He LOVES laying in bed with Tiago while Tiago falls asleep at night.  He's usually quite exhausted himself and I often have to come wake him up.  This particular night I was downstairs on the sofa, and I heard Tiago come downstairs.  He said he needed to use the bathroom.  I helped him, and then sent him back upstairs.  A few minutes later he came down and asked for bread.  I got him a piece and then walked him back upstairs myself.  Hyrum was completely asleep and Tiago was just crawling over him every 5 minutes to get out of bed. Roll reversal.

I don't remember taking this picture, but I can't believe I gave Mila free reign over my Cadberry eggs!

And here's the picture we took before Hyrum left.  Hyrum woke up early to finish packing, and ran into problems trying to get files off his computer.  (Their work laptops don't come with them, but also don't have flash drives so they have to burn CD's, which always leads to problems.)  So that had us both running around kind of crazy all morning before we dropped him off.  After Tiago got off the bus at noon we drove back over to his office to say goodbye.  For the soldiers there is a lot of waiting around. They finished packing, tied up loose ends, got all their bags in order, and then were transported over to the airport.  They stopped in Kuwait for a few days and then at another base in Afghanistan before arriving in Camp Dwyer.

One more thing from February that I didn't picture was we had my college roommate over (who lives in Denver) with her family.  It's nice to have best friends 'close-by' and catch up once in a while .