It’s been such a long while since I’ve done a proper update. As the title may suggest, I’ve been having a literal pain in my neck which has kept me from doing much on my computer (other than work) for 
quite some time. Starting in February I started to experience a dull ache between my spine and my shoulder which was keeping me up at night but honestly wasn’t too terrible during the day. I mostly ignored it for a couple weeks before getting some tingling in my right hand. Thinking it felt like last summer when I had a rib out of place, and wasn’t getting better on its own, I scheduled a physical therapy appointment to get it straightened out. Physical therapy was a 2 week wait due to scheduling, so I scheduled physical therapy and also made an appointment with my chiropractor seeking more immediate relief. In a terrible comedy of errors my chiropractor had a personal injury the day after my first appointment putting him out of work for a few weeks and I later had to cancel my physical therapy appointment due to our 36 Hours of Covid (you can read about that here). When I called again to reschedule physical therapy they were still 2 weeks out…you know the drill. Essentially my first month of seeking relief did not go so great. In the 6 weeks after starting physical therapy no matter how diligently I did my exercises, everything was feeling the same (if not worse) most days. The ache was awful, keeping me up at night and causing transient arm tingling and finger numbness. End of winter, our false alarm Covid scare, constant pain, and poor sleep led to my anxiety ramping up worse than it’s been in months. Essentially I’m telling you I had a very trying spring. The good news is I gave the chiropractor a 2nd try, switched pillows, rearranged my ergonomics for work and have managed to mostly get rid of the pain I was experiencing. I also started therapy again to deal with my anxiety and am feeling much more on top of life than I was a few months ago. The bad news is I do have some spinal issues around C5-C7, but hopefully with management they won’t flare up again for a very long time. Apologies for the absence, but that’s where I’ve been.
Enough about me, let’s catch up! It’s been so long, I think this summary would best be tackled by months.
February: In anticipation of a kitchen remodel when the boys go back to school in August, a good chunk of February was spent interviewing kitchen remodel contractors. We did 5 contractor interviews, and a few of those guys also sent in their preferred plumbers/electricians/cabinet companies for additional bids. It felt like a parade of masked appointments all month. In the end, we made our selection and so far have been pretty happy with our choice. Our bids were wildly different and in the end I guess we’ll know we made the right decision if we like the way the remodel turns out. Lots to get ready in the upcoming weeks in order to have everything on hand for our August start date. Also in February Jason took the boys to a trampoline park to celebrate good parent teacher conferences at school. We picked a weekday morning when the boys didn’t have school, and they all diligently masked and washed to minimize risk. I second guess every outing we take with the kids and will be much more relieved when they too can be vaccinated. February also brought the only snowfall worth mentioning this winter and a tangent where I spent a lot of time sending my family photos of Theo looking like a tiger. I can guarantee I’ve never looked at so many tiger photos in one month in my life. I think my dad found it especially irritating, so I made sure to keep the photos coming.
March: The month of birthdays in our house! William turned 9 on March 18th, Andrew turned 5 on March 22nd and Theo turned 1 on March 23rd. We celebrated everyone by having a small, socially distanced, family gathering in the back yard at the end of the month. Spring was starting to be in the air and man if felt nice. I got the J & J Covid vaccine on March 8th and Jason got his first dose of Moderna on March 24th. Not to be forgotten, for 36 hours we thought we had Covid which caused me a great deal of anxiety. In better news, I spent some of my Covid stimulus money and got our Roomba (Norm) a friend. We now own a Litter Robot (Hank). Litter Robots are ugly as heck, but it has significantly reduced my frustration towards having Theo’s litter box on the main floor. He took to it almost immediately and now takes great pleasure in watching it run. (For those unfamiliar, a quick Google search for Litter Robot will show you what it is and how it works). 
April: All the boys are reading/love books like crazy, and this month, like many, brought endless trips to the library. I don’t often take all 3 boys along, but this time we all went together and hauled off all
the books we could carry. Love seeing these boys read! In April Christopher turned 7. His birthday happened to fall on a Saturday, so we had our long awaited birthday party for all 3 boys at Jump Around Utah on his actual birthday (April 24th). We invited friends of all 3 boys as well as their daycare friends. It was the biggest gathering we’d been to since before Covid started and admittedly I questioned whether or not we should do it more than a few times. Thankfully by this point I was fully vaccinated and Jason was well on his way to being there also. I polled all the mom friends on whether they would feel comfortable attending and let them know I’d be requiring mask wearing even if the business did not. I was careful to take some precautions (masks, sanitizer, nobody blew candles out on the cakes) and as far as I know, nobody got so much as a cold from the party. Whew! In the month of March most of our immediate family members (in Utah, Iowa, and Wisconsin) gained access to the Covid vaccines and were able to get vaccinated. It was definitely a happy moment each time we could tick off another family member who became fully vaccinated. If you haven’t figured out my stance on vaccines that this point… 🙂 Seriously, if you haven’t already, go get vaccinated before a worse variant creeps out of someplace and we’re back where we started. Protect yourself and those less healthy or with less access to the vaccines. They are safe and effective. End rant.
May: May was a month of constant appointments: the chiropractor to figure out my neck, William’s last appointments to get his braces off (no cavities!) Appointments for me to start Invisalign. A word to the wise: if your permanent retainer falls out, don’t wait 10+ years to get a new one. Appointments with house remodel people and the bank to finish paperwork for our refinance. Mixed in were the last weeks of school, Andrew’s preschool graduation, and Jason working a ton. We also completed a major plumbing project that was years in
the making. It was busy. It was stressful. I went back to therapy. 🙂 All joking aside, getting a handle on my stress and anxiety again has been on my to do list all spring. Now that I’m finally getting there, I’m finally in the mood to write. About that plumbing project. When we moved into this house 8 years ago there was retired back yard galvanized pipe sprinkler system that was still somewhat functional and had several faucets around the perimeter of the yard that were still usable. One by one those faucets have failed over the years as well as the pipe itself. A few years ago we found a marshy spot in our lawn mid-summer and decided to turn the water to the system off whenever it wasn’t in use. Along with this, we also switched to running our garden through a hose from a back faucet on the house. This spring we turned the old galvanized pipe system on to top off our little goldfish pond and water ran across one corner of the patio. We decided it was time to retire that system completely. Within the same timeframe, the faucet on the back our our house decided to go caput and started giving us trouble when trying to turn the water off. Not a good problem to have! A plumber was called and scheduled and we trenched a new hydrant faucet to our back fence and replaced the back house faucet as well. The galvanized system is no more and I have water at my garden without running a hose across the whole lawn. Huzzah! Seriously a project I was super happy about. Hopefully with some luck and TLC our lawn will recover next year.
Andrew and his friend Jim Mark at preschool graduation.
William before and after braces.
Whatever it is Jason does at work, he makes this face. He made this face a lot in May.
June: We flew to WI (and back) but I’m going to save that for another post. We returned and promptly sent the kids back to Debbie’s house (aka daycare) in order to set up our pool for the summer without extra “help”. It’s going to be 100 degrees this week so the pool was excellent timing. Summer has begun! I realized recently I really like the month of June. There’s so many things to celebrate: June Dairy Month (thank you farmers!), Pride (Love is love!), Loving Day (recognizing interracial marriage becoming legal in the US), and Juneteenth (recognizing the emancipation of slaves in the US). Starting to have all of these conversations with my boys in the hopes of raising well rounded, thoughtful, educated young men.
Happy summer everyone! Get vaccinated, lather on some sunscreen, and HAVE FUN!
