This post covers all of our family fun from the month of November!
We spent two weekends in November taking our separate trips with the big kids! Zach and Kye had their camping weekend first so that meant the girls and I had some girl time 🙂
Steak and Shake is ALWAYS my go to! Fun hats, fun kids meal stuff, free kids meals on weekends…and MILKSHAKES!
Let her try a cheese fry…instant fan of course!
Tess is starting to get interested in coloring! Yay for meal entertainment!
Our favorite froyo place (The Mix) had a Frozen themed day and I was excited to surprise Britt! We went to one there before and she LOVED meeting Elsa and Anna so I knew she’d be mega pumped!
Is this an excited face or whhhhat?
Bless this girls heart! I felt so bad for her in the ice cream costume especially when all the kids were focused Elsa and Anna!
The girls and I had a fun weekend together! I LOVE that they are truly starting to play together, it’s precious!
This month Inside Out was released on DVD. We haven’t taken the kids to a legit movie theater movie since we saw Frozen (I took them over the summer for one of those $1 days things to see Rio 2). It’s just SO expensive. I actually heard somewhere that our local theater is THE most expensive one in the STATE which doesn’t surprise me. It’s the only theater around so they jack up the prices. I’d love to have the money to give them some competition! Anyway, since the theater is so expensive we have started buying movies when they are released on DVD and having family movie nights with popcorn and candy. It’s $15 for a new DVD vs the ticket price of at least $32 for the 4 older ones in our crew to see a movie in theaters. And we have the advantage to watch it over and over 🙂
Zach didn’t like Inside Out. He said it was just very negative through the whole thing, which I do agree with. It wasn’t an overly positive movie. It affected Kye on a BIG level. He cried multiple times and he just really empathized with the character. Britt loved it and I was a mix between everyone in my opinion. I cried and did enjoy it but it’s not a favorite by any means!
One afternoon Britt woke up with a high temp which is not like her. I waited till the next morning and ran her and Tess up to the walk-in clinic. It was my first ever bad experience up there! The lady we saw was someone we’ve never seen before and she told me Britt was FINE. Child had a high temp and was miserable yet she was fine? At least tell me you think it’s a virus, right?!?! Her temp didn’t drop and by the end of the day Tess had a high temp too. So I took both of them back up there the following morning and was pretty hardcore about seeing someone I already had a relationship with. Which I will be requesting from now on. He said he could literally smell the sickness on Britt and that he was glad I brought her back. He gave them both some antibiotics even though they tested negative for strep and flu. Britt missed an ENTIRE WEEK of school which has never happened for my kids! Her fever just wouldn’t fully go away! I do think it was viral and just had to get through her system. I felt so bad seeing her so pitiful and it’s really the sickest any of my kids have ever been. Usually things pass quickly for us!
Trying to manage a wild toddler while sick…
When we talked on New Years Eve about our year and some of our favorite memories Zach said that the night we had a family football game in the living room was his favorite memory of the entire year 🙂 The big kids got their gear on and we moved some furniture and had a little game before bed. It was random and unplanned and just FUN!
Last year we didn’t buy Wild Adventures passes. With Tess being so young and requiring a strict schedule I knew we just wouldn’t use it enough. The cheapest time to buy passes is in October b/c you can use the pass through the end of the year as well as the entire next year and they do free upgrades to Gold pass (which means free parking and other perks). I went ahead and got them for us and told Zach I wanted to be sure to use them a couple times before the end of the year to take advantage of it! It worked out where we could go the Saturday after Thanksgiving for a couple of hours. The nice thing about having passes to a theme park is that you don’t feel pressured to stay all day! Man how I’d LOVE to trade in our Wild Adventures passes for Disney ones 😉 I’d love to go to Disney for just a couple hours on a whim 😉
It was the day of the FSU/UF game so we had to show our support!
This dancing Christmas tree was awesome. I loved it!
Frosty is Britt’s favorite and she wanted to dance with him 🙂
SO GROWN!!!!
Someday maybe I’ll write a post where I don’t say something negative about Wild Adventures. But today isn’t that day haha Their rules for rides are ridiculous. The little kids could ride the spinning dragons and go up in the air for the bees but couldn’t ride the little kid choo choo?!?! It makes ZERO sense!
I am a bit worried about how I will handle all three kids at the park without Zach. I will probably always need to go with friends so we can divide and conquer! It’s tricky b/c my kids are so spread out in ages that they aren’t allowed to ride the same rides. Again this is where Disney has an advantage…they let everyone ride just about everything and only have height restrictions on stuff that little kids shouldn’t be riding anyway!
No getting dizzy in this dragon!
Tess and Carter look like straight up teenagers!
We had Kye ride in his own dragon so he could spin himself as much as he wanted and not make anyone else puke haha
Again….can’t ride in the choo choo but can ride on this that is in the air?
Casey being the first time mom was nervous about this situation…I’m all like “eh what’s the worst that can happen? She falls out?” 😉 Third timer!
I’m not quite sure if she was clapping b/c she loved it or b/c she wanted it to end 😉
We went to ride the choo choo and were turned away. So we were told we could instead ride the bees that go WAY up (think Dumbo). But that each child had to be with an adult and only two people per bee. The boys were off riding roller coasters so Britt had to ride in a bee solo. She was NOT happy about it but I amped up the whole big girl thing and made a big deal about waving to her and stuff during and she ended up loving it 🙂
One area that I am SO thankful they have is the big playground. It’s one of the few things that ALL my kids can both do and enjoy!
The only negative of the playground is that the little toddlers can’t go solo…Uncle Jordan to the rescue 🙂
None of us have ever seen the tigers awake!
My must-do for Wild Adventures is the safari. Again it’s something we can ALL participate in and it’s the “crown jewel” of the park. It’s also pretty hilarious and makes you really appreciate how authentic Disney is about everything b/c Wild Adventures ain’t no Disney when it comes to trying to make things look legit!
Not too impressed haha
She waved bye bye to everything the whole ride!
I LOVE that Zach takes pics of him and Kye doing the guy thing with the roller coasters so I don’t miss out 🙂
Tall enough!
I’m SO glad I wasn’t there to see Kye that high…I would have freaked!
Coaster time!
I LOVE this!
We had an awesome morning! So glad Casey and Jordan came with us…I hope they will get passes for this year so we can go together more in the future! I really want Z and Jordan to have a guys day and go out there together and ride all the “big kid” rides b/c let’s be real…they are both big kids and I feel like amusement parks are good “guy time” right?
Carter turned 18 months old on Dec 4th so we wanted to get some 18 month pics of him and pics Casey and Jordan could use for their Christmas cards! We went to Mrs. Charlotte’s to celebrate my bday and went out to Big Daddy’s barn to take some pics. His barn is an awesome location and the lighting was flawless! Carter is at SUCH a cute age too! I’m glad we snapped some good ones!
A friend we go to church with (who is also related to us by marriage through cousins somehow…it seems like everyone at our church is related to us in one way or another haha!) is a big FSU fan so he and Zach have become friends through their common interests and our close proximity with our favorite pews 😉 He invited Zach to go with him to the FSU/UF game! Zach and I went to one together a few years ago at DOAK and it was an awesome experience. I was REALLY excited for Zach to get the opportunity to see them play at UF especially during a season where it’d be a good game and I thought it was great for Zach to have some guy time! I am ALL about time with my friends! Zach does better making time for himself than I do (playing basketball and golfing) but the things he usually does for himself aren’t hanging out with friends really? So it was good for him to do something different than his norm and he had a GREAT time! Plus we WON!
While Daddy was at the game I let the big kids stay up a bit to watch some and help me wrap Christmas presents. Britt didn’t last too long but I let Kye stay up until half time. We had SO MUCH FUN watching together! We were cheering and really into it 🙂 Usually Z and Kye watch games together so it was fun for Kye and I to share in that, plus it’s typically the only FSU game I watch haha
Over Thanksgiving break we got together with Robyn’s crew for some CFA lunch!
We also spent time working on some of the crafts from our Be Kids boxes over the break. It’s hard to always find time for the projects during the week but I LOVE that they incorporate Jesus into everything and even though the activity may not have matched the week we were currently on in our bible study, it was still fun!
Kye’s motorcycle!
While I’m not in a hurry for Tess to drop her morning nap…it will be nice to go and do more with friends! Casey and I met up for lunch with the girls and Carter and it was so fun!
This month continued to be a month of deals for me 😉 Our UPS man must LOVE deliveries at our house hahaha
My best deal had to be the Kohl’s blankets. They were the gift I gave out most this year b/c they are AMAZING. I kept half kidding that they are life changing…but legit they kinda are! I sent this to Casey to give her blanket envy 😉 All three of my kids LOVE IT! (It’s the Kohl’s Big One) And don’t worry for those of you who didn’t get one from me this year, I made a list of who I still have left to buy one for in the future 😉
I took all three kids grocery shopping and it was Tess’s first time riding in the car part of the buggy. Kye took the reigns of pushing the buggy and it was just one of those outings that will always be memorable to me and one day when I’m an empty nester and I’m grocery shopping alone I will see a Mom with her kids struggling the way I was that day and I will smile 😉
The buggy with the car is taller than a regular one so Kye couldn’t see all that well to push it. I had to be constantly telling him to watch out, to turn, to stop, etc. It didn’t last long until I had to take over!!!
We had something happen that embarrassed Kye. He was upset about it and I don’t think it helped that my natural reaction was to laugh. Kye gets embarrassed when people laugh at him when he makes a mistake (which I am that way too so I am usually good about being mindful of my reaction but this time it was all just so crazy I forgot and laughed). He was upset as we walked through the store and Tess was SO SWEET with him. She kept rubbing his back and kissing him!
We survive the store and when we got to the car I ran into a sweet friend from church who is one of the older ladies in my women’s bible class. She was so sweet and said a comment regarding every outing being an adventure for me. I laughed and told her about what had happened with Kye. I got in the car and Kye told me he was very upset with me because I had told her about what had happened. He was concerned that she thought he was a “joke” because she laughed at him.
Wellllll I decided right then to go ahead and tell him about this blog. I mean not that I’m a HUGE blogger or anything but on average I get about 5,000 hits a day. That’s a good number of people who know a LOT of info about him. I never, ever want him to be embarrassed about it and I realized in that moment that it was time for him to know. When I explained it to him he said “oh great now the whole world thinks I’m a joke.” Of course I told him that is FAR from the case and explained how much he loves the books we have from the blog and that he will enjoy looking back on these memories someday. He told me he does NOT want to remember the grocery store incident.
I told him that I will never ever put something on the blog that he doesn’t want me to. I did go ahead and tell him that up until this point I’ve put pretty much everything on the blog. The first example I thought of was about potty training haha I feel like it’s something that I VERY important for me to be honest and open with him about b/c it could be something that gets brought up in the future for him with his peers. I am nervous about how that will all play out, especially b/c of his personality. Britt will probably love any attention she receives, whereas I can see it bothering Kye. Zach and I have always said we wished our parents had something like the blog when we were growing up and I do think the kids will all appreciate it when they are adults, but it’s the in-between years I’m a little worried about! Since that day Kye has had other moments where he’s said “please don’t blog about this” and I’m respecting those wishes 🙂 I’ve seen other bloggers who don’t blog much about their older children. While it makes me sad, I can see Kye wanting me to take that route as he gets older! We will see how it pans out!
This month was the LAST Hunger Games premiere night! SO bitter/sweet. While there are still more movies in the Divergent series…let’s be real. It’s not on the same level as Twilight and Hunger Games! This tradition started with the first Twilight movie while I was pregnant with Kye. The crew has changed over the years (let it be noted that, as always, my Katie is my constant!) but the tradition is the same: Steak and Shake and premiere night. I am hoping a new series comes out so we can keep it going! We’ve talked about doing a sorta book club but where we read a book that’s being made into a movie then go to eat to talk about it before seeing the premiere! I at least know that Robyn and Katie will legit read the book, I’m pretty sure we can get Casey to read too! And Kori did read Gone Girl so maybe she will too 😉
These premiere nights may not have started with Crissy but she always added so much fun to them. They will just simply not be the same without her and always make me sad now because her presence is just so missed.
I’ve had a good bit of female issues since having Tess. My junk has just been wacky every month and this month I was like over a week late which never happens. I kinda got nervous and decided to take a pregnancy test just to make sure! It was negative but I found a super old one (I think from when I found out about Tess) and couldn’t resist playing a little trick on Casey 😉
Real results:
Text I sent Casey 😉
Just a little foot update to end the month! I bought my first pair of Toms this month! I looked into them and felt like they would be supportive enough for my foot issues and they are! I LOVE THEM! And it’s exciting to be in something cute rather than in Crocs all the time!!! I’m so, so thankful for how far my foot has progressed! I’m continuing to ice it each night and so far, so good!
Another great month with our precious blessings!
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