November 2023: Another Month Down
Wow, this month flew by.
I don’t know that I have too much to update this month, especially since I got my October update out so late, but I’ll let my fingers do the typing and we’ll see what we end up with.
I heard November described as a month that you just sort of get through — it just sort of sits there between the fun of Halloween and the festivities that hit come December — but being as it’s my birthday month (!), I think its as good a month as any other.
So yes, that’s a not-so-subtle way of saying that I celebrated another birthday this year! It was…not a fun day, or at least not the morning part. But we’ll get to that in a minute. In the meantime, I do have some pre-birthday photos to dump, because there was a birthday party! (Not mine, ha.)
And there was also a Fall Festival! I won 2nd place in the chili cook-off, yes, my chili is just that good. (Never mind the fact that there were only three contestants total.) There was also a costume parade, and though neither of the kids placed in the contest, they did look very cute. Jarrod has a killer idea for next year, but until then, my lips are sealed.
And of course there are the regular, everyday bits of fun — Jarrod taking over on Monday evening and making the kids have a light experience with him, for example.(And let’s not even go into his 10 Punishments routine, the 10th of which is Getting Thrown Into the Lake…how are dads so much fun?)
Plus, we are always excited for football season! Even if we can’t quite get the OH-IO chant right…
And here is one of the most exciting happenings of November: Ambrose finally lost his first tooth! (Followed by a SECOND, as of just a couple days ago! Whatever comes next will probably be a long time in coming though, as there are no further loose teeth to speak of.)
It’s also sick season here. Something weird is going around campus, and so far we’ve mostly managed to avoid it, though yesterday and today I’ve had to deal with this poor sack of sadness down below.
Anyway — the Very Tragic Story that was my 37th 16th 21st birthday. Our poor Liesl had started acting strangely on Thursday, and by Friday I was pretty sure her issue was a UTI. (I’ve been so lucky to have never encountered a UTI in any of my kids up to this point, so the whole thing was a bit of a mystery to me.) So I got her in to see the doctor, who proactively prescribed antibiotics before I’d even managed to get a sample for them to test — just based on her symptoms. Awesome.
Not awesome was procuring said antibiotics. I waited and waited for the pharmacy to call telling me that her prescription was ready for picking up…nothing. When I finally got impatient and called them myself, the automated system kept telling me that the prescription was “processing”. By Saturday morning (my birthday), the situation was dire. The whole thing culminated in disaster when Jarrod tried to take the kids to buy me a cake. Liesl insisted on going along, and against my better judgement, I let her go.
As it happens, the bakery didn’t have a bathroom and of course poor Liesl started freaking out because she had to pee. The cake quest was abandoned by an overwhelmed Jarrod. Meanwhile, I was on the phone with the pharmacy doing my own freak-out, because as it happened, they didn’t have the antibiotic in stock (which would have been nice to know the day before, but I digress) and none of the other CVS’s around were open.
In the end, everything turned out fine. Perfect, actually. Some calling around to independent pharmacies in the area (thanks to my mother-in-law for coming up with that) led us to finding one that had exactly one bottle of the antibiotic in stock. Oh, and it was literally right next door to the bakery at which the failed attempt to purchase my birthday cake had occurred.
So in the end, you could say that I had my cake and ate it, too! And I ate more of it the next day, when I played hooky from church with Liesl, who was still a bit symptomatic. We ate this cake all the way up until the 15th, when the Nativity fast began and no more cake was to be had.
…at least, not until the pie of Thanksgiving! Jarrod’s parents drove in all the way from Kansas, arriving on Sunday before Turkey Day. We finally got ourselves into the city (woohoo!) and spent a few nice days wandering around doing all the touristy things we could cram in. (I had to work on Monday and Tuesday but I did at least manage to make it down to Dominique Ansel Bakery for a cronut. Yum!) We were out of the city by Wednesday evening, and on Thursday we had a restaurant Thanksgiving dinner so I could avoid trying to make a full spread in our tiny kitchen.
I still couldn’t resist making three pies, though — pecan, pumpkin, and a cranberry pie experiment that I’m apparently going to have to make every year from now on. It was that good!
And now we’re back in the full swing of the Nativity fast, and The Ghost of Jarrod is on the final push toward the end of the semester. I finally feel like we’ve got a good rhythm going on with our lives (do I say that every month? I really feel it this month), but of course now that it’s December that will all come to a (welcome!) halt with the end of the semester. And next semester we will begin anew!
As for this month, please pray for Jarrod as he studies for and takes his finals — he’s very nervous and still feels like he’s drowning in things to do and learn with the final couple of weeks ahead of him. We are looking forward to traveling to Kansas City to enjoy his break — and I’m excited about going back in to the office for a bit! I hope everyone has a wonderful festive season, a very merry Christmas, and a happy and productive New Year!
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Love hearing how you all are doing. Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!