Happy March!

Happy March!

Well, I sure have missed being here lately. I only posted 4 times last month! That is one of the smallest number of posts in a month since back in 2009 when I started blogging and thought you should only post when something monumental happened, lol. 

These last 2 weeks have been terrible. I'm just now getting to where I feel human again. I still do not feel great, but I know I'm getting there. 

I'm not going to lie, though. This has been very hard on me. I always seem to have a very rough time during the late winter months. When you mix sickness with snow days on end, it's just tough. I have felt like a terrible wife and mother. I haven't felt well, so I haven't cooked, cleaned, or wanted to do anything fun with the kids. I know that I can't help that, but it doesn't stop me from feeling guilty. I can't remember a time when I was ever down for this long. I have had periods of health issues, but I always seem to still be able to function through most of it. This time, I have been just completely worthless. It's amazing that your ear can cause so much havoc.

I just feel like I have been home-bound for too long! I'm longing for sunshine and warmth in a way that I can't even explain!

 I think we all are dreaming of spring time!

 I'm so thankful that we can watch our church services on LiveStream when we have to miss.

 This was leftover snow from February that had not melted last week. So dreary!

Last Tuesday, I saved up my energy to be able to go to my hair appointment. A girl needs her hair done even when she feels bad! I think it was the first time I put on makeup in over a week at that point.

Last Wednesday, we got another winter storm. It started with this layer of sleet.

 And then, huge puffs of snow began falling.

 At one point, it looked like a blizzard outside!

Alas, this caused us to be out of school on Wednesday and Thursday last week.

 C Girl and I did some coloring though! I find it so relaxing!

We did get out of the house on Thursday afternoon to take me to a follow up appointment about my ear. The doctor said that in all, this infection will be a 3 week ordeal. I am at a little over 2 weeks now, so hopefully this week will be a huge improvement. I went to see him on Monday last week as well. At that appointment, he had to drain my ear. If you are not sure what that means, he had to basically cut a hole in my eardrum that had ruptured. It had healed and fluid was bulging behind it. It was extremely painful until he was able to drain it. It is still draining now, thankfully. I will be so ready when all of this is behind me!

 On Friday, I went to lunch with some friends at the Wooden Spoon in Gentry. We mainly go for the dessert. That my friends, is a yummy bread pudding swimming in a bath of butter sauce. Oh, it was so good! It was so nice to get out of the house and visit with friends, but it exhausted me. I spent the rest of the day/evening laying on the couch. I cannot believe how tired my body gets!

 Saturday morning, we headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. It has been a long time since we have went out for breakfast. We love us some CB pancakes!

 B Boy had his first baseball practice that afternoon! He was actually supposed to have soccer practice as well, but it was cancelled. It was the 3rd soccer practice that has been cancelled due to the weather. We haven't had 1 practice yet! Hopefully, we will on Thursday evening. It is going to be a busy spring with both of these sports going on!

The baseball fields were still wet, so they had practice at a batting cage. Tim said that B Boy did pretty well!

The Razorbacks played LSU at Bud Walton Saturday afternoon. The Hogs are No. 18 in the country and are going to be in the NCAA tournament this year. I cannot wait! Sadly, we lost at the buzzer for this game. They have played so many games down to the wire this year. It's exciting, but very stressful!

This boy is COMPLETELY obsessed with the Harry Potter series. He just finished the 4th book this morning. He is constantly telling me about what he is reading and pretending to be Harry Potter. It's so fun! I remember reading these books and how much I loved them!

So, it's Monday. 

C Girl has the PARCC test this week. They only test until 10 am everyday, but I know that it's not fun to have to go to school and take a standardized test.

This girl of ours is something else.

I'm always so proud of her. She is super independent, smart, and tries new things, which is something I used to think would never happen.

On the flip side, she is super independent and wants everything to be done/go her way. 

It can be very tough dealing with that. I know she is on her way to becoming a "tween," and to be honest, I'm not real excited about that. 

I can already see things in her attitude that she is picking up from other girls. I know it is completely normal, but it means that things are different now.

I'm trying to learn how to teach/discipline her without doing it constantly. I don't want her to feel like that is all I do. I know that she needs lots of my love and support right now. 

That is so easy to say, but way harder to implement when you are dealing with attitude.

Pray for us!

I am trying to catch up on things around here, but I can only do so much before I am tired. I know it will all get done eventually, but I hate not being able to do everything that I normally do. I also hate sounding like such a complainer!

So, happy March! it is the month of spring! Flowers, sun, and warmth!

a ROUGH week and more snow days

The Sparacino house has had it rough this week. 

I started getting sick last Friday and went to the ER super early Monday morning with incredible ear pain. I can't even describe how bad the pain felt. I got antibiotics and pain meds and nothing improved. 

I have had constant pain and drainage from that ear. I saw my PCP on Tuesday and he referred me to an ENT. The ENT examined me and ordered a CT scan (!!!) to make sure I did not have mastoiditis or other worse infection. I have a ruptured eardrum and very bad infection. I have new antibiotics and better pain meds. 

Tim got a terrible stomach bug Wednesday night and has missed so much work this week. He's been sick but taking such good care of me. I married up and I thank God for him continuously. He loves me selflessly. We have some good kiddos that have been troopers at all of these dr/hospital visits.

I was really worried about the infection because Humira can cause you to get infections easier and make it harder to get better after getting one. I was literally pretty close to having to be admitted to the hospital and be on antibiotics intravenously. 

I have not eaten much at all in a week and I'm still having lots of pain and drainage from that ear. I do think that I am getting a tiny bit better everyday.

The first few days, I did not get out of bed at all except to go to a doctor appointment.

The last few days I have been able to camp out on the couch. However, I have not felt like reading or blogging or anything. Today, I seem to be doing a bit better.

Yesterday, we got some unexpected snow. Tim left work early but he still had trouble getting home. He had to run and get us some groceries and a normal 6 minute trip home took 35 minutes. The roads got bad very quickly! Thankfully, it was a teacher work day, so all kids were home.

It has been snowing the entire day here. We probably have around 4 inches of snow. The kids went outside and played in it earlier. I snapped a few pictures from the back door. Those pictures are below, along with a few from the last week and a half.

A beautiful cardinal visiting our bird feeders during the snow we had a week and a half ago. I believe this was from February 18th.

I cleaned and organized by "office."

My sweet kitty bear has been keeping me company.

A beautiful sunset on my way to a baby shower.

A baby shower for our friend, Jen who is having a baby girl very soon!

Beautiful cookies made for the shower by my friend, Robin!

I have been a pitiful sight!

 Having fun playing in the falling snow!

 Tim enjoying playing some Solitaire

 I love how much fun they have together and what sweet childhood memories they will have!

snow days

Well, it did end up snowing here. We got about 2 good inches of snow. However, we also had freezing rain and sleet underneath that snow.

Due to that complication and really cold temperatures, our roads have been terrible and we are on our second snow day.

We have cleaned, watched Little House on the Prairie and Fixer Upper, the kids have played outside and sledded in our flood ditch, we have baked cookies, played Phase 10 and Tim even taught B Boy how to play solitaire. Tim was able to be home yesterday, but had to go in to work today. 

The kids can now put on all of their snow gear themselves and it is amazing! 

I organized our "office armoire" today and it looks so great!

The sun is shining now and I'm praying that the roads will be clear enough tomorrow for school to be back in session! We do have a chance of a little more winter weather tonight but hopefully it will not cause the roads to be worse.

It really has been a nice couple of days!

Aerial photo of our square by Jimmy Harmon

Spring..... wherefore art thou?!

Well, we are still in the throes of winter here. Yes, it is March here and I suppose it actually is not officially spring until the 20th, but still.

We received a couple of inches of sleet and about 3 inches of snow on top of that Sunday. 

School was out today and is out again tomorrow. 

I feel like our routine has become every other week having multiple snow days and then I spend the next few days trying to get the house and life back in order after being snowed in. 

I'm really kind of ready for warmth, sunshine and routine!

Come on Spring!!!

Being snowed in makes me feel like last week was forever ago! 

Thursday, I watched a friend's 1 yo for a bit so she could go to an appointment. It was so fun! You do forget quickly how busy little ones are! 

Thursday evening, Tim had a basketball tournament at school, so he took the kids to that. They love going to ball duty with him.

Friday morning, I did a little shopping. I was mainly going out for groceries, but I did make a stop at Target. 

I always want everything in that store. I don't let myself go there much because of that!

Friday evening, our poor girlie got sick. It's so sad when your kiddos get sick.

Since C Girl was not feeling the greatest, our Saturday was very low-key. 

We relaxed, but we were able to still be pretty productive! 

We got ready for the winter weather moving in, I gave B Boy a haircut, I finally started our taxes, we did laundry and cooked, and watched a GREAT Razorback basketball game!

The winter weather did come on Sunday so we decided to stay home from church and hunker down. 
C girl was still not feeling the best either. 

We watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Indiana Jones movies are some of my favorite of all time! It was so fun sharing that with the kiddos! They became fans after we saw the Indiana Jones show at Disney World!

Sunday night was Oscars night!

I had not seen any of the movies except Captain Phillips and Frozen :-)

I do now want to see Dallas Buyers Club, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Her.

I just love watching award shows, especially when the host is great!

I really thought Ellen did a great job!

There were a couple of awkward moments, but overall she is funny without being mean.

She also took this selfie and broke Twitter.

Love.It.

I believe it has become the most re-tweeted photo ever.

It currently has over 3 MILLION retweets. Crazy.

I need to add in real quick that Blogger does not recognize "selfie" and "retweet" as words. Ha!

I woke up this morning with a terrible crick in my neck.

It has been super painful all day and I can barely move my head.

I've been trying really hard to rest it.

C Girl is still feeling puny today :-( I'm not sure what is wrong because she doesn't seem to have any symptoms besides not feeling well.

We are out of school again tomorrow.

It makes snow day #13 for the school year.

We've had snowy winters before, but I cannot remember a winter that had so many storms and that spanned December, January, February, AND March!

Usually, we get the heavy stuff only in January and February.

 We have had tons of birds lately. We had some beautiful cardinals visiting yesterday. They were eating like crazy before all of the bad weather came!

I just finished a book about Kate Middleton(the Duchess of Cambridge) and between that and Downton Abbey, I am now officially obsessed with the royal family!

Are any of you as obsessed as I am?!

Perspective

Perspective.

This word has came up in many places in my life lately.

One of our pastors used this quote in church recently- "Our problems aren't our problems sometimes; sometimes it's our perspective that's our problem."

Oh, how true that is.

Perspective is an outlook and an attitude.  Sometimes, we really need a good dose of it.

There are so many times that I want to complain about things.  

Sometimes, I do complain (maybe a little more than sometimes.)  

But, when I step back from a situation, there is always something I can find to be thankful for.

There are times when I hear someone complain, and I want to say, "yes, but you can be thankful for...."

I know that it is not always easy.  I've had to learn the art of perspective.

I want to complain about IBS from time to time.

It's not fun having intestinal issues and not being able to drink a coke when I so badly want to.

However, I'm thankful that I don't drink them everyday.  I know they are not good for me and I know I don't have the will power to resist them.

I want to complain about snow days sometimes.

However, these are wonderful "extra" moments that I get to spend with my kiddos.

Also- How happy will we be during those first spring-like days?!

There is nothing like the cold and snow to make you appreciate a beautiful spring day in all of its glory!

I want to complain that I have felt like poo during the past 4 days.

However, I've had the luxury to lay around and rest because we've been snowed in!

See! It's all just perspective!

A good perspective and thankfulness are key to a happy life in my opinion.

We all can find big things to be thankful for, but try searching for the small things that you can be thankful for.  You will find so many things to be thankful for 

and that just might change your perspective :-)

First we had snow.  Two days later, we had sleet on top of it.  Today, we had sheets of "ice snow" that the kids were playing with!

They decided this morning to build a fort.  Who am I to complain about that?!

These happy little faces are going back to school tomorrow!

how to spend a snow day