Stephen's busiest time for work is the beginning of the year, so we never see much of him January through April/May. But this busy season was exceptionally busy and it was rare that he was ever home before midnight. He worked through the weekends as well and I really don't know how he survived it, but for the month of February we were in the thick of it and the memory of having a spouse at some point seemed like a distant memory. Which makes the following story all the more hilarious to me.
Stephen usually got home around 1 or 2 am this month, which was way too late for me to stay up to see him, and then he was often up and leaving for work before Rory and I woke up. Well one night I had a dream, and in the dream someone was holding me down. I have dreams like that a lot and they usually end with me needing to scream but not being able to and tossing and turning in my sleep. Well in this dream I grabbed my captor's arm and bit into it as hard as I could and it was SO SATISFYING. I vividly remember thinking, "I get it Rory, that's why you like to bite so much." and I'm pretty sure I had to be smiling in my sleep because it felt that good to finally be able to accomplish something in a stress dream. As I was still clenching my captor's arm in my mouth I was jolted awake to the sound of Stephen screaming out in pain. He was disoriented, as was I, but I said something about it just being a dream and we were both able to fall back asleep. In the morning when he woke up, he had this big bite mark bruise on his arm and I don't know if I've ever laughed so hard. I know I should feel at least a little bad about it, but I still don't. And I needed to write this down because I want to remember it forever.
February gave us a couple of great rainstorms and Rory quickly realized a deep of love of playing in the rain. I mostly let her strip down and run around in the backyard naked (because how awesome does that sound to get to run around naked in a rainstorm?) but I did insist she put the ducky towel on so I could capture some pictures of how happy she was. After a chance to play in the rain she would talk about it for days and days.
Since Stephen was out working so much Rory and I got a lot of girl hang out time. Needing a pick me up one weekend, we decided to do a special "Whatever-we-want-to-do" Saturday instead of trying to do anything productive. We went to Einstein Bros and got special bagels for breakfast, which was delicious. After that Rory wanted to walk over to the Dollar Tree so we did. I always let her go completely wild in Dollar Tree because I never feel judged by anyone there and I can afford anything she might break in the store. When she was finally tired of playing with the toys there we walked over to PetSmart who just happened to be hosting a cat adoption day. We petted and played with some very cute kittens and sent Stephen lots of threatening texts about which one we were going to pick out. He was genuinely surprised when he came home from work to find that we were still a pet-less household. I love days when I throw away my to do list and just get to be a cool mom and I love hanging out with Rory which is probably one of the coolest parts about being a mom.
The second week of February President Nelson and President Oaks and their wives came to Phoenix to give a message to the members. Each ward was given a certain number of tickets and because I am on the ward council Stephen and I made the cut. Our stake president rented a bus for each ward in our stake so Stephen and I were able to leave Rory with the Bartons and take a long bus ride with our fellow ward members to the stadium for the talk. It was a great meeting and an extra special treat to get to spend so much time together in the midst of busy season.
For Valentine's Day, Sarah and I planned a little girl date for us and the girls. The toddlers ate McDonalds while we ate Kneaders and then after some play time we let them paint little heart frames. They LOVED it! Celebrating holidays is one of the best parts of my mom job so far.
Since January we have been deep in Girls Camp prep, especially for our fundraiser. We decided to hold a dinner and auction night on March 1st, so for most of February my house was a non-stop crafting zone. We did paper fans and paper mustaches for table decor and put them in mason jars filled with uncooked noodles. In an attempt to delegate and teach responsibility we had the girls help with the paper fans one night for mutual, but after their solid efforts there was a lot of fan redoing and starting over with new paper so it ended up being quite the task even though it seemed so simple in my head. For my auction items I made little girl headbands and they turned out so cute that I had to document it for forever. I also made strawberry lemonade cupcakes with a lemon curd in the center and I was extremely excited that they were delicious and cute.
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