Family Recap: May 2020
Our stay at home orders ended at the end of April and life instantly returned to normal!
…just kidding…
Zach continued to be unable to work until about mid-May and I have NEVER felt such a sense of relief as I did the day he was able to start back working!
Life is still not normal by any means but we were in a grove and able to go and do a bit more and May ended up being a pretty busy month even with mostly staying at home doing pretty much the same things over and over 😉
Family Fun
We celebrated May the Fourth with some Star Wars details 🙂 I didn’t plan anything in advance and just rolled with what we had and it ended up being a “force filled” day!
The kids did some decorating and we had blue milk and star crunches as well as “light saber breadsticks” and different colors of milkshakes with cookies!
The kids and I had fun dressing up to play the parts of a variety of characters. That porg though sure is a cutie 🙂
We kicked off summer with a visit to get snow cones with the Hall crew!
WHEW. Last summer Spear wasn’t even walking yet. It was a wake up call for me at just at tough this stage is with a wild man! It’s been a LONG time since I’ve had a toddler in toe when going and doing, and an even longer time since I’ve had a wild one (Tess was SUPER chill and easy).
I’m glad we started small with a short outing…I worked up quite a sweat keeping him from running into the parking lot, let alone attempting to social distance from other customers! Glad I had Tiffany along to help me haha!
We also had a big outing to a new-to-us animal farm experience called Fifth Farms. I had heard a good bit about it and wasn’t sure what to expect…then we arrived and it was literally in the backyard of someone’s house. AND cost $10 per person, including parents. So I paid $40 for us to spend 90 minutes with animals. Most of which I was dealing with my toddler throwing a tantrum haha.
Live and learn right? It was for sure a one time thing for us BUT it was one we all did truly enjoy!
The animals were so cute and I LOVE hands-on experiences (although I was super mega careful about animal poop since the last time I visited a place like this…)
Hadley, Maddox and Tiffany came with us and it was so fun seeing SO many animals all in one place! They were all SUPER friendly (especially the turkey that wouldn’t stop following us!)
The kids were ALL into it. I was so pleasantly surprised by how much Kye enjoyed it! He kept saying how cool it was and was really into interacting with the animals.
Spear was mostly interested in the farm equipment. I was smart this time and brought his “leash” but he still struggled until I realized I just needed to solely focus on HIM. He’s at an age that requires a LOT of attention and I just have to sacrifice right now and give him my full attention and be okay with missing out on the older kids doing things. It’s just a season!
Once I adjusted and focused just on Spear it all went WAY smoother!
The staff was super sweet in encouraging the interactions with the animals and offered to let all the kids hold them. Pretty sure Tess dropped every single animal she held. She’d just say “I’m sorry!” and then drop it again haha
These chicken pictures make me laugh out loud every single time. The sweet girl said “do you want to hold the chicken?” to Spear and then he immediately proceeded to squeeze the chicken’s head. In the picture of Tess holding it you see the smushed feathers from Spear on the poor chicken’s face hahahaha
We all loved the adorable goats – especially the one that kept trying to eat our clothes. Spear was just SO HAPPY to sit on the tractor. He literally just wanted to sit there for over 30 minutes!
We packed lunches and had a gorgeous picnic in the front yard under a large tree with lots of shade. It was super hot but super fun and an experience we won’t be having again any time soon either haha.
We hadn’t gotten to celebrate a birthday since Kye’s birthday in March so the cousins were excited to all be together to celebrate Colt’s birthday with a fun water slide at their house.
It’s precious to me how close all the kids are to their cousins and it’s neat how God works. Kye and Colt are about a year apart, Tess and Carter are about 6 weeks apart and Spear and Cam are about 6 months apart. Britt and Payton have been the only two cousins without someone super close to their age (they are 3 years apart) and now that Ella and Elizabeth are joining the crew they fit SO perfectly. Ella being very close to Payton’s age and Elizabeth being very close to Britt’s!
Zach has been working on a ton of projects around the house and decided he wanted to have one of his corona-memories be building a tree house with the kids.
They’ve talked about it for AGES and now it’ll be a reality! Our house is located where a good bit of wooded area is just behind our property and there is land that isn’t really owned by anyone – just woods back behind all the houses.
They found the perfect set of trees and came up with a plan and Daddy is making it come to life. His rule is they have to built it together and I know this will be a memory they all share and cherish!
We also will always remember Britt’s first bout of poison ivy…thanks to her tree house building. The child must have SAT in it because she had it all along her panty lines. Fun stuff!
I’m sure, just like all of Zach’s projects, the treehouse will be epic!
Zach and I went away for a couple of days for our anniversary and the kids enjoyed time with Big Papa and G-Mama!
They also got to meet our cow…we’re splitting a cow with Mr Rusty and are excited to have a ton of meat coming our way in the next six months.
We have been LIVING outside! Yes, even in the heat. One of my big goals during the pandemic has been to get the kids outside as much as possible. Fresh air is good for us all. I love me some vitamin d. And it helps wear ’em out too!
Plus I feel like childhood memories are made outside, ya know? I love our morning walks and daily swims and so do they!
We hunt for earth worms, look for wildlife, make up crazy pool jumps and just soak up those simple summer moments.
I’m especially taken back to my childhood with Britt wearing MY CLOTHES! I had this track suit from LLBean that I’d saved and she loves it 🙂
We have made some visits to our neighborhood playground as well and it’s been great for the kids to see other kids for a change! I also love that our community has local food trucks come in regularly – the donuts in the mornings are a special treat!
The pool, naturally, had some issues this month with a leak but we were still able to enjoy it as much as possible.
I worked with Spear on his survival swim but man he just was NOT taking to it well this summer. It was such a God thing because the day I realized I needed to get him some help I was able to connect with someone local who offers survival swim type lessons and they had a spot to get him in for a refresher! I was SO THANKFUL!!!
We’ve also been loving the golf cart and going on lots of rides – out of all the outdoor activities Spear loves the golf cart best for sure!
Mortimer, our quarantine pet turtle, has been such a joy during this time! We all love checking on him everyday and he’s become so sweet to us all!
He’s so stinking cute – we’re def “turtle people” now haha!
Our schools continued to offer digital learning review this month and it started to wind down towards the end of the month as summer approached.
The kids all did great keeping up with assignments and Tess loved all the random learning apps I found for her as well as her learning workbooks (she completed this entire workbook!).
Both girls have been LOVING their Osmo kits and I love that they are an interactive screen time activity.
I tried to keep the digital learning fun and casual. Sometimes they skipped it. Sometimes they sat together to do it. Sometimes they even sat outside! I was very proud of how well the coped during all the crazy and how well they adapted to seeing their teachers and classmates on a screen rather than in person.
So much time at home gave us a chance to really go through and find items that aren’t often played with.
The girls enjoyed doing all the craft projects Spear’s preschool teacher had sent home for him to do (I let her know I appreciated it all but wouldn’t be even attempting any sort of school with him ha!). We also enjoyed getting out the train track and finding forgotten gifts from years past (hilarious how exciting a fairy garden became during lock down!).
The kinetic sand from Easter has been a HUGE hit for ALL four kids which is always a mom win! We’ve also been loving Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza as a fun card game we can all (minus Spear of course) enjoy together.
The big kids were supposed to have their six month dental check up in March but obviously it got canceled so as things opened up they called to get them in. It was a weird experience having their temps taken and then waiting in the car for their appointments. But the kids LOVE the dentist so they didn’t mind the changes and had a great experience – and great reports too!
Tess has her 6 year molars in and will get them sealed soon. Kye is still holding onto a LOT of baby teeth so they said for him to start wiggling to help things along.
Along with Zach getting back to work I was able to get out and about a bit too! I had my hair done on March 12th. Talk about lucky timing! I got it done the day before everything started shutting down and then had my next hair appointment on May 4th, just as things were opening back up!
No roots for me 😉
I also was able to meet up with my book club crew! We had to socially distance at separate tables but were thankful to be together to celebrate Megan as she enters the “Mommy Club” soon!
Zach worked on refinishing a couple end tables from the Disney House to redo the front sitting room and they turned out awesome (you can see all the Disney House updates here!).
I also had my own corona project to work on – blog books! I was able to order all of the books from 2017! Getting a bit closer to catching up (and it took 22 books to cover that year. WOAH).
I was also super excited to hear about the UFO confirmed sitings and how Tom Delonge from Blink 182 was involved in getting the videos released. This year is just CRAZY. Am I right?!
I like to document all the corona stuff that I can as I think it’ll be really neat for the kids to have to look back on someday.
This was the month that we FINALLY got NEWS about Disney! A lot of it was frustrating (which I shared more about that here) but at least it was NEWS! I even watched the entire press conference of the announcement.
Kye
It started to hit Kye more this month that his elementary school career is over and that he’s missed out on a good bit of that big milestone. He took awhile to really miss “regular life” but it hit him this month.
With all the Disney craziness we discussed alternative plans for him to celebrate his birthday. He was supposed to have his Disney birthday in early April. And honestly celebrating his birthday wasn’t a top priority item as we DID get to celebrate it on the actual day AND he got to have his Christmas ski trip AND we did the Atlanta boys trip. So I didn’t feel as concerned about his celebration as I have about the girls and the cruise!
We did come up with a pretty epic alternative and he LOVED it. He had been to play paintball for a birthday party and had loved it so we decided to put together a crew for a fun paintball day in honor of his birthday. He had Colt, Davis and Maddox come and the dads got to play too (Zach and Steven). Colt even spent the night the night prior and had pizza, video games and night swimming. Then they all went down to Tallahassee for the day and had a super fun time!
So much so that he’s already asked to not have a Disney birthday in the future and do paintball instead.
Every year the upcoming 6th grade gets to tour the middle school and unfortunately Kye wasn’t able to do that this year with school being canceled. The 6th grade staff at his middle school did a virtual tour so we watched it together. He is very excited for middle school but my mama heart isn’t quite ready!
It made me so happy to see him still enjoy playing with his wooden train set – that little boy isn’t gone yet 😉
Britt
I’m so proud of Britt for how well she’s adjusted to life at home. She had the hardest time with school ending and has been the most “plugged in” to all the online meet ups with her teacher and classmates.
She’s missed having her gymnastics and was SO excited when we found a new local gym for her to begin classes up again.
She’s continued to practice her skills and has enjoyed quality time with her siblings, loves riding her bike, and of course baking!
Britt has had quite the corona-growth spurt and is now wearing a size 10/12 in shirts which is insane to me. She’s growing up so fast and we’ve had to start swapping out her baby clothes hangers for adult ones now.
Her daddy made her a cool necklace from a special piece of wood she found on our camping trip and she also dealt with a pretty rough bout of poison ivy for the first time.
She has done such an awesome job with all the many disappointments she’s faced during all of this. My heart breaks for her the most out of all of my kids and her smile makes my heart full!
Tess
Tess woke up one morning saying her eye was puffy. I assumed at first that it was a bug bite because the kids had been outside at the treehouse a lot with Zach and Britt had the poison ivy already so I was like “blame the woods” about it.
I shrugged it off as that and moved on as it wasn’t bothering her or anything. But it didn’t really go away and seemed to get worse so I asked on Insta and people were quick to say she needed to go in as the eye isn’t an area you play around with.
So of course at 4:30 on a Friday I made the call to take her in. Isn’t that how it always goes? It was her first time wearing a mask and she did awesome with it. It didn’t bother her at all!
The doctor said it was too early to know for sure what was going on but that he assumed it was an early sty and prescribed some drops to help. She only ended up needing a couple days of drops and she was good as new!
Her room is coming along SUPER fast thanks to corona 😉 Gotta take the perks when we can, right? The walls got mudded and the carpet got installed and she was SO pumped. The big kids spend a ton of time hanging out in her new room!
Tess truly amazes me at her positivity and ability to find joy in the moment. She’s easy going and just is along for the ride and will be a happy passenger the entire time. Man I wish I could be more like Tess!
She has been super content to be at home and has been very easy to please in all areas. She didn’t mind wearing a mask at the doctor and didn’t complain or worry about it and said if she needs to wear it again she doesn’t mind.
She also didn’t shed a single tear when I told her that there was just no way her Disney birthday would be happening this year. She was fine with whatever we decided to do instead.
She’s SO chill that it stresses me out. I was like TESS I WANT TO GIVE YOU A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?!?! She was all “it’s fine, whatever is fine” and I’m like OMG NO TELL ME WHAT YOU REALLY WANT.
It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around her truly not caring! She finally did let me know that she’d love to ride a water slide so a water park it will be! It was a learning lesson for ME that Tess is just very genuinely happy with whatever and I don’t need to overthink or over stress it so much!
She continues to adore Spear so much and loves snuggling with him and playing with him and their bond is just so precious to watch! I’m so proud of my sweet girl!
Spear
Spear hit a BIG milestone this month – he no longer uses a high chair! I know he’s 2.5 and I just now moved him to a regular seat but dude did best while contained 😉
He had NO interest in booster seats and wanted to sit like the big kids just in the chair so I think I’m going to just quit even trying with the booster and call him table trained and roll with it 😉
Speaking of being trained corona has been wonderful for his potty training and he’s fully day trained! We did have a few accidents when he has room time but he quickly stopped having accidents during room time when I started giving an m&m for staying dry the whole time! Sometimes bribing works 😉
He had his allergy testing done this month and you can see the results here.
Overall he’s LOVING the time at home with his siblings and out of all the kids he’s benefited from this time the most. Not only with getting potty trained but with his behavior as well. I’m able to better focus on him without being rushed out the door all the time! He’s truly thrived and I’m so proud of him!
A video should auto play in this post showing some favorite moments from this month 🙂
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