Don't Even Know Where to Start

Life has been so incredibly busy for the last 5 weeks and I don't even know where to start.  I wrote about my sister's family's visit in my last post but I skipped over our trip to the Quad Cities area over the  first weekend of March.  One of Rob's best friends is a musician and recently started touring with Luke Bryan.  Swoon.

When Rob told me that, I said, "Well anytime you want to go see Jason and go to a Luke Bryan concert, you just let me know and we will be there!"  The closest they got to our house was the Quad Cities area so arrangements for tickets and hanging out were made.  One issue- our children.  There is no one to babysit that far away from home and so I ended up staying at the hotel with the boys while Rob met Luke Bryan.  Argh- my plan totally backfired!  Oh, and he also met everyone from Thompson Square and Florida Georgia Line and ate and drank for free all night.  The boys and I ate Taco Bell and watched Cars on our little tiny dvd player we brought with us.  Yeah.  Exciting trip- for Rob.  I got to see the Mississippi River for the first time so that was good, I guess?  I did have a good time getting out of town, it just wasn't quite as fun as I was hoping for.  Oh well.

After that was my sister and family's visit then Rob went to race in California and was gone 5 days.  We all missed him a lot and was so glad when he got back.  We both have iPhones now though so being able to do Facetime and talk and see each other helps a bunch.  Two days after Rob returned, my parents arrived for a week-long visit.  We honestly didn't do too much while they were here.  The weather was really cold and crappy.  Over the weekend though we did go to Des Moines to visit the West End Architectural Salvage store- if you are an HGTV fan, you may have seen their show before.  I have been wanting to go to their store for years but it took my mom seeing the show and suggesting it to finally get me there.  I knew it wouldn't be something the boys would like or a good place to take them (lots of breakables!) so I just never made it there because the boys are always with us when we go there.  This time though, Rob stayed home with them while my parents and I took a little trip.  I even got this badboy.

I have been wanting a library card catalog like that forever- probably since I first saw it in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment.  Can you see it way in the back there, near the "window"?

Well, I've never seen one anywhere to buy and when I found this little 10-drawer part of one, I took it.  Actually it ended up being a birthday present from my parents (thank you mom and dad so, so much!).  I have plans to put some legs on it and find a new top and use it for a side table in my living room.  So that trip was kind of my highlight of their visit.  Not just because of what I got, but because I got to spend the day out with them and have my full attention just be on them and not trying to be a mom first and then give them whatever I have left after that.  It seemed like their visit went really fast and I was very sad to see them go.  The boys keep asking about them, and Uncle Jim, Aunt Megan and Olivia so I think they miss all our visitors a lot.  Me too, boys.  Me too.

So that brings us to the past weekend which I knew would be a busy one with Saturday being my birthday and then Easter on Sunday.  The birthday started off great- I actually got to go to Des Moines by myself in the morning to pick up the card catalog and do a little shopping.  After being gone about 3 hours though, I was notified that the fridge at home was having some difficulties.  I ended up skipping the last few places I wanted to go so I could come home and see what was happening there.  We got some over-the-phone advice so Rob could try to figure out what the problem was and see if he could fix it since guess what? No one wants to come out and fix your fridge the Saturday afternoon before Easter.  Rob worked on it a lot over the next day and a half but we still ended up needing a repairman to take a look at it.  He came on Tuesday and will get the part he needed today and be back tomorrow to install it.  Crossing our fingers that solves the problem.  My birthday did have some bright spots though-

 They are both going through a no-shirt phase so I'm just thankful one of them at least had their shirt on for the picture.  In more good news, we decided to save a bunch of money on cable by getting rid of it. And for some crazy reason, when I called to cancel that but told them I wanted to keep internet service with them, they gave me a big price break on that by agreeing to a 2-year commitment.  Uh, okay!  It's not like we could give that up and there is no other decent provider around so that was a no-brainer.  We bought an Apple TV box and got Hulu Plus and are trying out Netflix right now but I think we'll probably keep both.  Since they are each only $7.99 a month, we are still way ahead financially on that.   No HGTV or ESPN but for the amount of money we are saving, it's okay.  I was a little skeptical on how well it would work and if it would stop and start a lot but once we moved the router to the middle of the house, it works like a charm.  I also had a tech guy come out yesterday to verify we got it all set up right and he took care of a few other things I couldn't figure out computer-wise.  Definitely worth paying him for 30 minutes of his time to get all my tech questions answered.

I think there was more I was going to share but my brain is all tired now from trying to remember everything about the last month.  And it is just about time to go pick up Rex from preschool so I better end this here.