Mother’s Day 2019.
Every year for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day we celebrate as as family the day before the holiday.
We devote that entire day to celebrating the parent and do all sorts of fun family activities together.
As our kids get older, this becomes tricker and tricker to make happen!
Y’all know. LIFE IS BUSY!
This year the day prior to actual Mother’s Day was Britt’s gymnastics exhibition as well as our niece and nephew’s birthday parties.
The weekend prior to Mother’s Day weekend was also busy for us with our yard sale and a birthday party Kye was attending.
But we decided to make it work the best we could and celebrated Mother’s Day as a family on Saturday afternoon of May 4th.
We kicked things off with gift opening. And y’all the gifts were SO PERFECT.
Rather than a physical present, my sweet babies gave me the gift of quality time with each of them.
Zach was so, so sweet to plan out each individual date with each child for me to experience with them. He took into account our plans and schedule and worked with the kids on coming up with things that they enjoyed doing with Mommy. SO SWEET.
Britt LOVES to match with me so we styled our hair the same for our celebration 🙂
Tess is in a hardcore emotional four year old stage so she was randomly upset and was in her room when we did the card opening (I got a picture with her later on!)
Here are all my sweet cards! Each child picked out their own (Spear shared with Kye!) and Zach got one from him too 🙂
For our celebration we went to an early dinner at Chicken Salad Chick!
We also swung by McDonald’s on the way because the kids don’t love CSC and why throw money away on
We had a GREAT time. The restaurant closes at 6 so it was pretty dead and we had the room to ourselves and had a little dance party 😉
It was such a nice little celebration!
Yay for a happier Tess and some mommy and kid photos 🙂
After dinner we walked over to Smallcakes for the girl’s to get their May reward for filling out their calendars.
Each child is working on a goal each month and if they achieve the goal we have a little reward. Britt’s is reading 30 min a day. Tess’s right now is not crying about going to school or going to bed.
Kye’s goal was to enter in some writing contests but he didn’t do it and I was proud of him for NOT being upset that he was left out of the treat!
When we got home we did a little family swimming time to officially open our pool for the summer!
Butttt it was still too cold haha so we swam for like a minute 😉
We ended the night with some big kid game time! We played a new family favorite: Hoot Hoot Owl!
My first date was the next day! Britt and I went out after church for lunch and then our date was a shopping date together!
She talked about wanting to go to Olive Garden so we went there for lunch and y’all the chicken gnocchi soup is SO AMAZING.
We enjoyed our lunch together and had fun talking and working through the kids meal placemat activities.
We went to Target and when we got home Zach asked what all I bought…
I wonder if I’m alone in that? I see moms on IG sharing their try-
Right?
But then I thought more about it and maybe I SHOULD have had her sit there while I tried on things. Maybe I should have made the outing more about ME than about her…since it was Mother’s Day. Like MY DAY. Right?
I truly hadn’t even considered shopping for myself during our time together and I kinda regret it.
It’s an issue as a parent in our generation…I feel like it’s always about the kids which
ANYWAY.
We had a blast at Target! She picked out a Mother’s Day gift for Zach’s mom and gifts for her cousins and got a little something for herself too 🙂
I guess these Twisty Petz things are “the toy” right now. She was SO PUMPED!
Once we shopped it up we went by The Mix for some dessert and so Britt could spend a gift card she’s had for
I loved having
My second Mother’s Day date was with Kye on Tuesday for a fancy dinner. We got dressed up and ate at one of the nicest restaurants in town!
Kye ordered a legit steak for the first time (no kids meal!) AND chose the side salad! Whhhhat?!?!
Def big kid status!
We had SUCH a great time talking. Talking has always been “our thing” and it’s nice that we still have that bond, even if it has gotten a tad trickier to navigate.
He’s growing up and becoming a little more reserved so it takes a little more effort to get
Kye has a girlfriend this year (no names here!) and it cracks me up how serious they are about things. They both are very mature and realistic about the future and likeliness that they won’t get married or anything like that.
But they still talk through their plans and hopes for what they want in adulthood. Which I think is GREAT.
They both agree they want two children and both agree they want to work outside the home. Kye
Um. Nope.
It’s SO IRONIC that this is a thing he’s bringing up as it’s something I just recently was telling Zach will be a conversation I’m SURE I’ll have to have with my children someday…I just didn’t think it’d be in the dang 4th grade haha!
I know many grandparents keep their grandchildren and I’m sure it’s often a great situation but pretty much every situation I personally know about where that is the setup, there are issues.
And I just want to set up our family for success. So I told Kye I will GLADLY be the emergency contact or keep the kids one day a week or something but I will not be fulltime childcare for ANY of my kids. Not. Gonna. Happen.
He understood my points and reasoning…I mean he’s 10 going on 40 😉
After dinner we went downtown to a new ice cream place where they roll up the ice cream.
We’d had something similar in Savannah and liked it but we weren’t HUGE fans of this. Kye said
It was such a special night together! I even enjoyed the car ride. I love how different
A mother of a teen once told me that the car is THE best place to get a teenage boy talking. And I think that’s def true. Kye opens up a LOT in the car.
I love Kye’s maturity and deeper thinking and understanding and love sharing our thoughts and hearts together.
My last date was the next day (Wednesday) with Tess! Zach arranged to be home from work at lunchtime so I could pick up Tessie from school and go have lunch and then get our nails done!
The original plan was for us to eat lunch at Chicken Salad Chick…but, again, I wanted to take her somewhere she loves.
As a
When they grow up I want them to know ME as ME and not just as Mom. And part of that means doing things I enjoy too!
So we hit up Chick-Fil-A for lunch and Tessie brought along a gift card she had for a free ice cream cone.
Out of all the individual dates Tess seemed to soak up this time the most. I think as the third kid and having SUCH an outgoing older sister she tends to shy away a bit from the spotlight but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t still love it 😉
Having this one-on-one time was allowing her to shine and she loved it! My girl LIVES for some french fries!
We had such a fun lunch together 🙂 And yes, I planned our coordinating and I loved it!
After our
Britt and I have a tradition every year of getting our nails done before our beach trip and it was really sweet of Zach to think of Tess and I got to have this experience just us before Tess is added to our tradition this summer!
She was very, very decisive in her nail color choices. She wanted us to match and we went with
The whole experience was very relaxing and it was just more evidence about how different all my kids’ personalities are. Tessie just sat there. She didn’t do a whole lot of talking. We sat in a comfortable, enjoyable silence much of the time and just RELAXED.
It was great and she was so content and enjoyed it! And so did I!
I loved our time together! It was so fun and makes me excited that I now have TWO big girls to do fun girly things with! Britt is PUMPED for all of us to get our nails done too!
During the week of celebration dates poor Spear was pretty pitiful with pink eye so we didn’t do anything just him and I during week.
Since we did SUCH a big, amazing, wonderful celebration this year I ZERO percent had ANY expectations for actual Mother’s Day…but my amazing husband went even more above and beyond 🙂
Can I just say how blessed I am by this man and these sweet babies?
More than any other year my heart just really did need to be poured into this year. As moms, we give and give and don’t get to receive from our children very often.
Which is 100% how it SHOULD be. It’s my JOB to love them and pour into them it’s NOT their job to pour into me!
However, it is also such a gift to just feel loved and appreciated and it meant the world to me to have so much thought and care put into making the celebration special.
I woke up to breakfast in bed of one of my favorites: Zach famous pancakes and strawberry milk!
I was surrounded by all of my favorite people in the world and given such sweet crafts and
from Britt from Britt from Tess from Britt from Kye from Kye from Britt
We had church and it was a great opportunity to get to wear another one of my Easter dresses that didn’t make the cut for actual Easter 🙂
Out of all the dress options (you can see them all in this
The kids and Zach were so sweet to make sure I got a good pic together after church 🙂 Y’all know that’s the gift us mama’s really want most on Mother’s Day!
For the past few
Zach worked SO HARD on the backyard and it looks INCREDIBLE! We will be LIVING at the pool this summer for sure and it was a great way to kick it off!
I love having a backyard where we can just send the kids out! They love having time away from the grown-ups and I remember those fun times with my cousins growing up and love that my kids are having those same experiences.
After the get together with Zach’s family I took Spear on our little date together.
We went to McDonald’s and Spear had his first McFlurry. He was a fan!
I loved having that one-on-one time with him and making a memory together “just us.” So often I feel rushed in the moments I have with him and it was nice to just relax and savour that time together!
Plus he made quite the handsome date 😉
He even walked me to the car like a true gentleman 😉
My sweet baby boy – forever the BABY 🙂
After our little date we headed back to church for evening services where the young boys of the congregation shared something about Mothers.
Whew. Y’all.
My son. He just amazes me. He always does such an incredible job speaking and preparing things to say to the congregation. But this time? It was about ME and it just filled my heart so much to hear his sweet words.
The one that had me holding back some BIG TEARS? When he mentioned my strength.
I fail a
Parenting is something I’m passionate about and work at – because I have to. I’m working towards being the BEST me I can be for my kids and to hear him say he sees strength in me? That was SUCH an encouragement to me to keep going and keep working and keep growing.
You can see the video of his precious words here:
We finished out Mother’s Day with a little game time with the girls with another favorite of ours – Eye Found It (Disney version of course!)
I mean if this super long post didn’t make it clear enough…I’m about 99.9% sure that this was officially THE BEST MOTHER’S DAY EVER.
Yes. I’m calling it.
And Zach is already nervous about how to live up to this next year haha
But legit. It was AMAZING. It was everything I could have ever asked for and more.
Quality time is my love language and I had so much amazing quality time with each of my children and felt so celebrated as a mother.
I’m blessed by each of these incredible children that I get to call mine and especially by their incredible father who appreciates me and showers me with his love too!
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