When my parents divorced my mom became good friends with a fellow mom who had twin girls my age. I grew up with Katie and Toni from elementary school and went through all of school together. As most friendships do after graduation, we all lost touch but it’s been good to touch base now and again through Facebook over the years. Childhood friendships never leave your heart and I was so sad to hear the news of Toni’s passing in February. We were at Disney when I got the news and it’s just so heartbreaking to hear that she’s gone. Too many people from our high school have passed away from drugs and my prayer is that through this tragedy others who may be struggling with addiction will seek the help they need. Toni’s family has continued to be in my prayers and I’m thankful for the memories we shared together. She was always making others around her smile and brought so much fun to any situation!
(Toni is on the far left)
(Toni is two kids over from my awesome Mickey wearing self)
*****
Zach and I have been on fire for our marriage, especially the last six months or so. I mentioned in this post how we have really loved Marriage 365 and especially their webinars! The great thing is that you don’t have to watch them live…they are recorded! We will take our time working through one of them and that takes off the pressure too. We were SO PUMPED to learn that we WON a prize pack they gave away recently!!! I never win contests!
We won a Date Crate! I got to choose from any of the dates and decided to go with the Glamping one 🙂 I wanted to do something we wouldn’t ever do on our own and I was really excited to see what all was included. You know me and my cheap-cheap mentality. I was thinking “$35 for a bed sheet?!?!” But Zach and I were both super impressed with everything the kid included! We won the pack for free, but we will be purchasing additional kits in the future. We saved by not having to buy a sitter and the pack included TONS of stuff well worth the $35 price tag. Plus a date night is a lottttt cheaper than divorce right? 😉 That quality time is so valuable!
Everything in the kit!
I loved that they gave detailed instructions (duh I love me some rule following) and we did them as instructed!
I also LOVED the questions we asked each other! A lot of them we already knew but we got to learn some new stuff about each other too 🙂
Building our tent!
We decided to boost the night by watching some of a Marriage 365 webinar in the tent. 🙂
Love my man and our time together!
I especially loved how the Glamping questions ended with a Bible Verse 🙂
The little hibachi set included for our s’mores was awesome. And the s’mores were the BEST either of us had ever had. The “crackers” were some sort of delicious cookie and the marshmallow was coated in sugar! YUM.
We ended the night with a classic card game…WAR. It was the FASTEST game of War I’ve ever played. Zach murdered me haha
Of course the next morning the kids all thought the tent was there for them 😉
Zach and I had the RARE opportunity to have a DAY date together this month! We HAD to get our taxes done for the year and also desperately needed to get legit wills drawn up (our former wills were just done online using some easy form format) along with getting our conceal and carry licenses. We were able to make time in the busy day to grab a quick lunch at Chicken Salad Chick and were able to both attend Kye’s Valentine’s Day party at school together (more on that in Kye’s monthly summary post!).
Whoop whoop! So pumped about this! Now I just need a GUN! I have one in a safe at the house for protection but it doesn’t have a safety and I don’t feel comfortable carrying something that doesn’t have one…any ladies wanna share your go to gun?
I have never blogged about the BAD wreck Zach was in back in MAY 2014. I like to blog about things once we have CLOSURE on them but we STILL don’t have any on that situation. I don’t want to go into too much detail b/c we have had to file a lawsuit but Zach’s back was badly injured in the wreck and he’s had a LOT of issues since then. It really sucks. He went and got an epidural this month to help with the pain…I love that he’s so crunk about it haha
Casey and Jordan live near us and we’ve been trading off babysitting for each other so we can have date nights! Zach went to put Carter to bed and hang out at their house so Jordan and Casey could have a V-Day date. He had some mega Carter bonding time (JEALOUS) and he entertained Casey and Jordan while on their date by sending them videos of him reading to Carter. HILARIOUS. Here’s the first one and the second one 😉
I had a few bits of sad news for Young Emily this month…Zach saw on IG that my college dorm from FSU was TORN DOWN. Omg SO SAD!!!
I also had the tragic day arrive where my TI-83 calculator bit the dust. I’ve had this thing FOREVER and I legit still use it regularly. I love it. And nothing can compare. I’ve downloaded some graphic calculator apps but they just aren’t the same…if anyone has an old one they want to donate I’ll gladly take it off your hands b/c I’m not shelling out $80 for one haha
I also spent MAJORITY of this month dealing with MEDIACOM. Ugh y’all. We have two options here: ATT or Mediacom. And Mediacom has only been an option for about 2 years. As soon as they came to our area I jumped at the chance to switch b/c it’s about the same price I was paying at ATT but it’s 50 times faster internet. It’s been GREAT until this past October. It just started quitting on me. I’ve had over 8 service calls to our house and have called the company many, many times. I finally lost it when the lady told me to SWITCH COMPANIES. Zach went to our local office and that was the ticket to getting some answers! I now have one of the head guys personal number and he’s been AWESOME in trying to help solve our issues. It was a happy day when I saw a ton of Mediacom trucks lined up in our neighborhood!!! It’s currently mid-April and I just had to have someone come out last week, but I’m hopeful that MAYBE soon we’ll have reliable service!
Casey and I love shopping together and usually have decent luck…but we DIED when we tried on these denim dresses. YIKES.
I then saw this post on IG and was so bitter…I mean look how adorable she looks in it!!! Why can’t it look that cute on me?!?!
This month was LL’s 7th birthday party. Robyn planned an adorable theme! We had to attend some of Zach’s Hall of Fame stuff and were pretty late. We missed out on riding horses but still had a great time! You can see all the details of the party here 🙂
Not gonna lie…I get some mega “mom anxiety” around fires!
Messy (but yummy!) S’mores!
And even fireworks and sparklers!
Zach had Tess inside for most of the party. She ate her dinner and it was just TOO cold for her to be out there. Plus the fire made me nervous 😉 We came in to open presents and she was HILARIOUS. There was a little boy that she was instantly drawn to (yes, we are in TROUBLE!). She kept going super close to him and looking up at him and saying “hey.” It was so random!
Love birthday parties with my bestie!
(And I love that my toddler is helping herself to cleaning supplies when no one is looking…)
The cookie favors were adorable!
Buddies!
I love this! Kye and LL have been friends since they were like 7 moths old!
The kids had a couple days off school which I didn’t realize also fell on the same days that swim started for Tess (post to come on her survival course!). Britt also took some lessons on Mondays so Kye had to tag along and watch 🙂
I will mention this again but when Tess swam Kye was SO ADORABLE. She was upset and he immediately got tears in his eyes and said “I can’t watch this” so I let him go inside for her lesson! Sweet, sweet brother!
Reward for first day of swim…meeting up with friends at CFA!
There is ALWAYS a story when you’re friends with me haha. Robyn and Kori got to CFA earlier than we did b/c of swim so I stayed later and let my kids play a bit. We went to leave and Britt put back on her boots and they were MASSIVE. We realized that someone had TAKEN her boots instead of theirs. Seriously! I left the big kids playing and carried Tess around from table to table asking people if these were their boots. Finally a lady said they weren’t hers but she knew who’s they were and she contacted the rightful owner. I had to wait in the parking lot for almost 40 min until they came to switch them out with me. It was well into nap time before we got out of the parking lot! I was tempted to leave b/c we got the good end of the deal…Britt could have boots that will fit her for a good couple of years to come 😉 When the lady came she did feel so bad! She was the grandma and said her granddaughter kept complaining that her shoes were too tight but that she ignored her haha!!!
Over the school break we didn’t do a whole lot since we had swim but I wanted to still make sure the kids had fun! We decided to let them have a “sibling sleep over” Kye slept in his top bunk and Britt slept in the bottom one. It went great and they had a BLAST! It was adorable because we listened to them talking on the monitor and they were talking about the different kinds of treats they wanted to get at Disney 🙂
I’ve done a variety of things for the kids Valentine’s Day parties at school. This year KYE said he wanted to do something that would save money. HE thought of the idea of counting out how many packets of Smarties we had and using them to give out to their classes. I found a cute, free printable card that had a spot to attach Smarties and even had a Bible verse on it. Kye was all about that! All we had to spend money on was the washi tape and we were good to go!
Colt has been really into sports for a long time and we never could make it to a football game last season so we wanted to make sure to get to at least one basketball game! Kye got to play a little with the team while they warmed up which he enjoyed and both Kye and Britt loved watching Colt in action. Britt mostly played with the toys she brought but Kye paid close attention and would call out and clap and such. It was really sweet to see him so proud of his BFF cousin!
After the game we went to the park and it was hilarious b/c it seemed like half the town was there! We ran into several friends!
We sent Daddy icee pics to make him jealous 😉
Toys R Us had a free Lego event! You know we can’t pass up free 🙂
Daddy got some quality time this month too! They ordered pizza one night and had a picnic at the park!
I’ve been SUPER proud of how much Kye and Britt have enjoyed serving others. Our church hosts a Soup Kitchen lunch the first Saturday of every month. We are trying our best to make it a priority to attend and offer our helping hands. Kye LOVES to take the tickets and he doesn’t play any games. Everyone eating is allowed one red ticket and they must give that ticket up when they get their food. Kye will straight up say “where is your ticket?” if someone passes by without first handing it to him. He doesn’t care how much older they are, he won’t let someone get a plate without that ticket! I love that he takes it so seriously! He doesn’t want me to help him and wants to do it all on his own (of course I’m nearby keeping a watchful eye). We did have a fight break out recently and I was thankful I could move the kids to the kitchen before they saw (or heard!) too much of it! Overall though it’s been a very positive experience for us all! Tess is just too young to take part so Zach has been keeping her at home while I take the big kids!
The Ticket Man!
Britt loves taking the tickets for desserts and helping hand them what they want!
We are SO blessed with AWESOME youth at our church, I’m thankful our kids have such positive, Godly role models to look up to!
I had a total friend fail this month. Seth planned a birthday party for Olive at a local park. He sent out invites via Facebook. I saw that it was a park and assumed I’d just get there via Maps on my phone like I do everywhere else in town (directional skills aren’t my thing haha). We live like 8 min from Seth so I didn’t even leave that early for the party. I figured it’d be a BREEZE. Until I showed up where Maps took me. Straight up dirt road. I sent Seth this picture with the caption “clearly not the birthday party”
I then had to use my brain to try to figure out where the heck this party was. I knew there was a park RIGHT by the house he and Crissy and the kids used to live at (we’d visited the park many times with them) and I was pretty proud of myself for being able to remember where it was. But I pulled up and the name of that park was not the same as the name of the park on the Facebook invite.
Finally I did some google searching and figured out where the park was. I showed up 45 minutes late. Literally they were wrapping up opening gifts and cleaning up when we got there. I felt SO BAD. And felt even worse when it turns out Seth had put DETAILED directions ON THE FACEBOOK INVITE. Ugh. Friend fail to the maxxxxx. At least it’s Seth and he knows I adore his kids and he found my mishap pretty hilarious 😉
It was pretty much freezing out which is why the park party didn’t last long. My kids were bummed. I guess 45 min in the car isn’t exactly fun (which by the way the party was literally 5 min from my house!). I decided to take them for a treat and we visited a local little coffee shop for some hot chocolate!
For Christmas Zach’s parents got us the Disney Headbands game! We LOVE it! It’s so funny how differently sized all of our heads are (yes, my headband has to be the biggest ha!). Britt is randomly AWESOME at the game! We love our game time together in the evenings after Tess goes down for the night!
This month Zach and I decided it was time to start on the next big project he’s been wanting to do: an outdoor kitchen. I’ve been reluctant to get it rolling but we had several free weekends and we wanted to get it done before the weather got warm enough to enjoy it! We tend to start a project and then also want to do several other things at the same time haha. We added fresh mulch to the playground, bought a new sandbox and a new swing! We had one of those old school green turtle sandboxes FOREVER. My dad bought it for Kye for his first birthday! The lid never would stay on and we’ve had to replace so much sand because of it. We have a perfect spot under our playground and the new sandbox fits perfectly, looks great, and has a lid that fits much better!
Our playground came with a rope ladder and over time it’s just gotten junky. I’m very anti stuff being junky so I looked for something to replace it and decided a disc swing was a win! Especially because our swing set only has enough room for 3 swings and someday we’ll need a spot for a 4th kid to swing 😉
In outdoor news…we have this MASSIVE mushroom that we can’t get to go away. How gross is that?!?!
Having sisters is so fun! I don’t buy them matching outfits except when I see stuff on mega clearance that happens to be in both of their sizes…I mean how can you pass that up?
One of our Disney traditions is taking ALL of our Disney plushes with us on our trip! Britt was making her pile and she and Tess had so much fun playing in it 🙂
Tess is in LOVE with her siblings. She will chase them to hug them over and over…
…as well as attack them with kisses…
…and constantly want to sit on them haha!
I love love love my babies 🙂
Sibling life 😉
We had such a wonderful month capped off with an amazing trip to Disney! I’m so thankful for lots of quality time with my husband, quality time as a family, and making memories together. Toni has been on my mind and in my heart. If you know anyone struggling with addiction reach out and help them get the help they need.
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