The Journey of Parenthood…

Family Fun: October

October was a super fun month for our family! The weather was beautiful and we had a good bit of family time together!

We took the kids to a Blazer game! Zach and I both feel mega guilty for our lack of Blazer Game attendance since we graduated. I think it took us both awhile to accept that the football phase of life for us is over. Now that Kye is old enough to really and truly enjoy it we are hoping to be more involved with the VSU football program. We miss it! It was Tess’s first game and Britt’s first one since she was mega little (remember?). We haven’t been to a game since 2013! Zach and Kye went to the game when it started at 2 but I waited and brought the girls after nap. We got there right at the start of the 4th quarter which was just about right for their attention spans 😉

Proud Daddy!

Britt loooooved it. She could have probably done fine for the entire game. Girl cheered her heart out!

VSU doesn’t have its own football stadium but they share with a local high school team. Let’s just say the high school team wasn’t very considerate of the fact that they share with VSU when they built the stadium (side note but back in college Zach did some electric work one summer and actually helped to build the stadium!) and put their ugly yellow color everywhere. When Zach played in college the field even had a HUGE yellow cat paw print in the center of it. SO rude. I was super glad to see they at least had removed the paw print now!

We were mega losing but the kids still cheered for our team!

Our Little Blazers!

After the game we hung out for a bit down on the field. Kye had fun playing football with some of the other kids as well as players and it gave Zach a chance to say hello to some people he knows from his football days. The kids loved being on the field and it was super fun!

This month I also took the girls to “gymnastics camp.” Which is really just a play time at the local YMCA gym 😉 Britt LOVES it and so does Tess! We hadn’t been since Tess’s birthday and the girls were thrilled to get to go back 🙂

This cutie even came along 🙂

I thought Tess loved it before but man she REALLY loves it now! She was all over the place and just having an absolute blast!

LOVE

Britt seriously is just straight up in love with “gymnastics camp” I think she will really enjoy participating in the real deal at some point!

This month we were able to enjoy a family outing treat! We don’t eat out much (hello expensive) and if we do it’s always somewhere with a kid’s eat free night (CFA and Steak and Shake are our jams!) so it was an awesome opportunity to enjoy a nice meal out with our whole family! I’m so thankful to Bumbo for sending us the seat as well as the gift card to eat out 🙂

Britt with a knife…a dangerous site!

This month Kye’s school hosted a large fundraiser by having a Fall Festival. I’m pretty sure it’s a yearly thing and it was a blast! Each class had different booths set up with activities and such. We went out for a couple hours to support the school (hey it’s a LOT better than some of the random school fundraisers right?!?!) and to enjoy some fun family time! 

Tess looks like she has a straight up unibrow bahaha

Kye, of course, won the cake walk and picked an entire box of donuts as his prize!

We stayed for lunch and hung out with some friends from church for a bit then Zach took Tess on home for her nap. Originally we planned for Britt to go with him but she really wanted to stay and help Kye and I run his class booth so we let her stick around. She’s at a tricky age because she now understands when she’s left out of fun! 

Kye’s class booth was a ring toss and I legit didn’t need to be there. Kye took control of that situation. He kept telling the kids (many who were older than him) to scoot back haha. He also made sure they all paid and kept gathering up all the rings and made sure to tell them that “everyone wins!” The people who didn’t make it got candy and the ones who did got a prize…really the candy was the better deal! 

I had signed up for an hour but no one showed up to relive me. Thankfully they had some sorority girls there who went to the booths to help. I let the kids each have a turn before we headed out! We also went back to the bounce house (their favorite) for a little bit before going home. It was a super fun event!

Kye and Britt both had their dental cleanings this month and Zach wasn’t able to keep Tess for me so she had to come. Y’all. Bad mom move. I just hate to ask for help for stuff like that and assumed it’d be fine. She would be late for her morning nap but we’d deal. Um. Next visit I think I’m gonna have to get a sitter because Tess had just learned to walk and was EVERYWHERE for that visit!!! I kept apologizing over and over b/c I worried she was bothering everyone. She wanted to touch all the buttons and all the things. Whew. I’m thankful Kye and Britt do so awesome b/c it made it easier for me to watch Tess!

We had a new dentist this visit (our regular dentist passed away un expectantly about a year ago) and he was great. Very personable and went over everything very well with me. He agreed with the dentist from our last visit that Kye will continue to hold onto his baby teeth for a good 6 months more or so. He also agreed that it’s a good thing because Kye needs SPACE as he doesn’t have much room in there for those big adult teeth! Britt looked great, he saw no remaining evidence of her finger sucking and did mention how tight of a fit her teeth are as well. She has a HUGE mouth but not a huge jaw which is strange to me. Her top teeth have gotten close enough where they are touching now. So far it looks like both of our older kids have Daddy’s small mouth issues…we need to start saving for braces now! 

I also took all the kids along for my orthodontist visit. Awhile back Kye and I butted heads and it pushed my top teeth out some and, over time, has created some spacing where there didn’t used to be any. I got fitted for a retainer and had to pick it up so they all tagged along. They are all so well behaved and I do love getting all the sweet compliments from people about my babies 🙂 BUT it also does totally wear me out and stress me out in situations like that. There is just SO much to touch!!!

At this point Kye showers every night and the girls bathe together. We are more mindful about Kye and Britt seeing each others privates. However, I don’t think it’s a big deal to share an occasional bubble bath. The bubbles cover everything and they enjoy playing together in the tub with the bubbles. It’s a rare thing but I feel like we can get away with it for a little while still before it becomes inappropriate. Tess got to join in on her first bubble bath ever!

I love seeing our three swings filled with our precious babies!

I love that Toys R Us has a wishlist option where the kids can scan items they like at the store and have them available on a wishlist to use in store or online. I take the kids every year to make their lists. This year we made it a big kid club outing and did both of theirs at once and they helped me find stuff for Tess as well (super hard task though! Third kid and second girl?!? Not much to get her!). Of course Toys R Us was having issues with their scanners so we just walked around and I took pics of everything they wanted then added them online at home. 

It’s so cute to me how different they are. Britt loved EVERYTHING and enjoyed looking at it all but didn’t really want to own any of it. I had to coax her to pick out items she would like as gifts. Kye liked a lot of stuff and wanted a lot of stuff (boy stuff is SO FUN) and I had to keep reminding him that we have a set budget and can’t buy everything. So many boy toys are expensive and I would tell him “that is $150 and Mommy and Daddy only spend $200 so it wouldn’t give you very much left in your budget for other things” and I had to keep asking him if he really was sure he liked things before I added them. 

Of course we had to go get dinner together after our fun! The kids even got to get “colored lemonade” which made them super pumped (what the heck is the colored minute maid stuff?!?)

This month we also started working on our Disney Books. I really wanted to create something for the kids to remember their visits by, especially the character meetings. I did a Shutterfly book for each kid from their first visit but I wanted to do something that would cover all their trips. We decided to do simple scrapbooks! I printed off ALL the pics of anytime they have met any characters at the parks and we went to Hobby Lobby and picked out lots of cute paper and they have LOVED sorting through it all and glueing all the pics into their books. Now that we are getting character signatures they are adding those to the pages alongside the pictures from when they met that specific character! It’s SO much better than just a simple autograph book 🙂 

This month was the month of DEALS. A friend (coughKeelicough) introduced me to a place to find fabulous deals on stuff and I was obsessed. I knocked out majority of my Christmas shopping in just a couple of weeks! We had boxes upon boxes at our door…it was pretty awesome and so fun and Zach couldn’t even get over the deals I was getting!

Everyone needs 48 packs of lemon pudding right?!? 

The best deal of the month though was FINALLY shipping our luggage back to LLBean. Our parents got us luggage for our Christmas gifts the Christmas prior to us getting married (so 2006). LLBean has a lifetime guarantee on their products. Lifetime! Our luggage was def due for replacing and truly it didn’t hold up as I had expected it would. Our first time using it we flew to Maldives for our honeymoon and it took quite a beating. I was beyond impressed with how LLBean handled our exchange. We got a completely brand new set of luggage for FREE (actually they even sent me a $10 gift card so technically they paid me for new luggage!). How awesome is that?!? My dad is from Maine and I’ve always grown up super loyal to LLBean (do NOT buy me something from Eddie Bauer!) and this experience only made me love them even more!

Of course one of our favorite deals…CHICKEN! Haha!

Zach’s cousin Jake was the starting quarterback for his high school team and we did our best to go to as many of his home games as we could. He ended up winning state which is so awesome! He’s the last Parker to play football until our children’s generation! It is so awesome how much the whole family supports each other. We enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone at the games and cheer Jake on. Of course I especially loved my Big Daddy time!

One of the games was DOWNPOUR rain and we already had a sitter set up to come to the house (it works out great b/c our kids are all asleep so it’s an easy babysitting gig!) so we went on a MUCH needed date night! I don’t think we’ve been on a legit date in town since April?!? Long overdue for sure! We put some gift cards to good use and went to both dinner AND a movie. NEVER happens!!! We had a great time and it was kinda nice paying a sitter b/c we didn’t feel as rushed like we were putting someone out ya know? Although of course we still hurried as to not owe more money haha! 

As you can tell October was a great month for our family! So much fun together time!

Emily Parker
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