Monthly Family Recap: November 2019

Monthly Family Recap: November 2019

This post is all about our month from November!

November was a great month for our family! We had our BIG Disney trip and my birthday and Spear’s party which all had their own posts 🙂

Our weekends at home were spent with Zach working on the kitchen!

When we built our house in 2010 we went with builder-grade for just about everything in the house. (you can see the full tour of our house here)

Zach is EXTREMELY handy and really talented with home projects so we knew when the time came we’d be able to upgrade our home for much cheaper than it would have cost to have the house exactly how we wanted it when we moved in.

A couple years ago our formica countertop started to buckle so we knew the big project we needed to tackle was the kitchen.

We got our new flooring in Jan and Zach has been working on making concrete countertops for our kitchen!

The toughest part of the install process was when there was a bit of a mess up on the sink portion of the kitchen so we ended up being without a kitchen sink for a week. It was rough!

But pretty flowers helped 😉

We struggled HARD with choosing a backsplash but finally found the exact one we wanted and we LOVE IT.

I still need to make a decision on some new lighting but here’s the finished, for now, kitchen:

When Zach was working pouring the countertops he had to transport them into the house and, duh, they are crazy heavy.

Thankfully his cousin, Jake, didn’t mind coming over and helping.

Sometimes unexpected wonderful surprises happen when you least expect them and Zach needing Jake’s help with the counters was def a big one.

Jake would come help and hang out and it was so great for Zach to get to spend that quality time with his cousin…and Jake also started hanging out with our kids and it became the most precious thing to watch.

He would be out back swinging the girls for literally two hours. This early 20s dude spending his Saturdays hanging with his 35 year old cousin and his kids? So. Sweet.

The kids ADORE Jake and it’s been such a special bond to watch form and we love having him over and now that the counters are done we have to find new reasons to invite him to hang out 😉

We are so blessed with so many people who pour into our babies and I love that our kids have so many special bonds!

Now that the kitchen is finishing up Zach is moving on to the next home project…painting the exterior.

This is one DIY project that makes me SUPER nervous…

Disney+ came out this month and we are ALL ABOUT IT.

I LOVE that they are slow releasing The Mandalorian as it’s our very first family show that we watch together every week and it’s so fun that we all get to see each episode for the first time together each week!

Katie and I also kicked off our Oscar movie watching this month which is always fun!

We also had Book Club and read My Lovely Wife which is FABULOUS and I highly recommend reading!

Big Daddy is 92 years old and he is starting to have some of the things that just come at that stage of life.

He spent a couple times at the hospital and the kids made him cards and we also went to visit him as a family to cheer him up.

I adore this precious man – he’s one of my top favorite people in the world.

Yes I’m posting all the pics b/c I just love his SMILE!

We had our family pictures this month (post to come!). I always LOVE getting to work with Linsday! I had my hair done that day and my stylist did AMAZING:

We had a family outing night and randomly decided to go out to dinner which is NOT common for us and was so fun!

We also had our first s’mores night of the season!

Kye made his s’more completely on his own for the first time.

Tess had been home sick and asked if she ate a s’more if she could still be sick haha.

Spear did really well – the fire yall makes me so anxious and nervous but he did SO great with it!

Pro-mom status: have your kids run in and get pizza 😉 Our Little Ceasars knows Kye at this point hahahaha

I love that our local schools do a Veteran’s Day parade and honor the local veterans. The kids all wore red, white, and blue for the occassion

Here’s a bit about each child this month:

Kye helped a TON with the counters. He never complained at ALL about it and spent many weekends working with Zach on them.

Zach wanted to give him a thank you gift and let Kye choose a new video game for his hard work:

Kye is really thriving in 5th grade. He’s made some great friends, loves his extracurricular activities and is doing great academically as well.

He was excited to have all 100s on everything for the week 😉

The girls really have a special sister bond and often Kye can feel on the outside of that.

He and Zach had a dude night by the fire and played laser tag and Kye was in HEAVEN.

The girls also went to lunch after church so Kye got a special treat lunch with Mommy this month too 😉

Love my handsome boy!

The girls love doing everything together.

They had a girls only sleepover this month (it was only girls-only b/c Kye opted out haha) and when Tess got invited to go out to each after church, Britt had to be invited too. I love the bond they share!

We also had some girl time and I took the girls to get their hair cut.

It’s been A LONG TIME. Britt got her’s cut in August of 2018…and Tess was like Jan 2018 I think?

They just wanted trims but it helped a TON for them both!

After their hair cuts we met up with the boys at Chic-Fil-A for family night! It’s been so long since we’ve gone that I forgot how to order haha

It was great timing b/c Tess had to have a disguised turkey project for school so she colored the hedgehog at CFA and used him to disguise her turkey 😉 Homework – DONE!

Britt enjoyed her last full month as a seven year old!

She is getting more picky about her clothing choices and is LOVING wearing her glasses still as well as her scrunches…gotta have one for the hair and one for the wrist 😉

Britt is working hard to save her money for Hawaii (in case you missed it…Zach told her if she saves $500 she can go to Hawaii!) and does her chores with a happy heart! She is hoping for more chores, and a raise, in 2020.

Britt started coming home from school with some really great drawings! Turns out she’s quite the little artist and def has a talent in that area.

She is also still quite the actress with her British accent and this month she started working on her “facial expressions” which crack me UP. And she wrote about a Martian who “speaks English-Britsh like me mum!”

She works hard at school and is a very, very good student as well as a huge helper – she says she’s “teachers pet” and I believe it!

Always so proud of our oldest girl and love our “coffee” dates together:

Tess had her Thanksgiving lunch at school this month which was my first time attending this event.

Kye didn’t go to kindergarten at this school and Britt, I guess, didn’t have it?

I assumed it’d be a cute Thanksgiving program or some songs or something but it was literally just the kids sitting (no seats for adults) at lunch tables…eating.

That’s it.

She looked adorable and I loved seeing all of her crafts but it was kinda silly to have the parents all come up there just to stand and watch our kids eat!

The school called me to tell me that Tess had a 102.7 temp.

I just had that feeling – high temp? FLU.

I took her straight into the dr and it was such a waste of time.

Two hours later and they said she had NOTHING wrong with her. Throat fine. Flu negative. Ears good.

She woke up completely fine the next day…just a crazy high random fever!

Tess also had an embarrassing moment at school.

Bless.

She was walking into the lunch room and waving hi to Britt and slipped and busted her lip on the floor.

It was pretty gnarly looking which had me nervous. Britt busted her lip a TON as a toddler and actually has scar tissue built up on her bottom lip in a bit of a bubble looking scar.

It’s not noticeable b/c Britt’s lips are MASSIVE but Tessie has little lips and I was nervous it’d scar!

Thankfully it healed just fine!

Tess is fully adjusted to school but also still gets pretty emotional when she’s tired.

She struggles with getting very upset over simple things. She is tender hearted and quick to cry and then slow to calm down and be okay again.

Luckily it’s easy to be pretty patient with her in those moments as she prefers to go to her room and be by herself so I just let her do what she needs to do. Sometimes when I talk to her and try to help her work through it she gets more upset.

Reminds me of how she was as a newborn and how going in when she’d cry would just wake her up more and cause her to get more worked up than if I just let her be. Tess is just a cryer!

Tess is doing super great with school and comes right home and practices her site words and is mastering them!

I love my big girl!

A video should automatically play in this post with a little recap of our month 🙂

Emily Parker

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