The Journey of Parenthood…

Park Day, “Date” Night

Okay before I begin this post I have to give a QUICK Oscar recap from last night!

I haven’t watched LIVE tv in YEARS and I enjoyed it so, so much! I cuddled up in the bed with my ipad and during the boring parts and commercial breaks I would check Twitter (Live tweets were so awesome! Made the show even better!) and browse Pinterest. I was overall really happy with the show. The Les Mis cast was phenomenal. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Adele song? I mean she’s great and all but that song was pretty boring to me? I’m not a big Bond fan so maybe that’s why? I thought Seth did a good job hosting, the boob song was pretty funny! I thought there was a GREAT mix of winners from all the films. Happy for Anne Hathaway. Wish the little girl would have won Best Actress but I adore Jennifer Lawrence and her speech was precious. Glad to see Life of Pi so well recognized. Knew Daniel Day Lewis would win it and I didn’t really want him to but his acceptance speech was awesome so I’m glad he pulled out the win! Michelle Obama about ruined it all for me. Ugh. 1st of all I don’t get WHY the heck she was presenting?!? I like to live in a fantasy world where I pretend movies aren’t political…she ruined that dream for me. Then it’s like she went on a rant and got confused about the fact that she was PRESENTING an award, not giving an acceptance speech!!! Blah. Thankfully, Ben Affleck’s speech saved the night and was BEYOND adorable. Love him. Loved Argo. Glad it won (thankful it wasn’t Lincoln…if anything other than Lincoln had won I’d be okay!). Again, I think I picked a FABULOUS year to see all the Best Picture nominees! It was a year where they were all well-deserving as was reflected in the spread of the award winners…I think every one of them won at least one during the show last night? I prefer that than when one movie takes them all, ya know? Anyway…I did enjoy it so much that I kinda think I may try to do it again next year 🙂 We’ll see! Also during the In Memorium portion of the show I decided to try out one of those 2 min brownie recipes going around on Pinterest. It was SO YUMMY!!! I enjoyed it all by myself curled up in the bed 😉 You can find the recipe for it here 🙂 

*****

We haven’t been on a family vacation since LABOR DAY. I know. That’s SUCH a long time for us! But we had a low-key holiday season and just haven’t had anywhere to go. I really wanted to take the kids to see legit snow so we planned a weekend in Jan to take them up to Gatlinburg and stay at one of Mr Rusty’s and Mrs Charlotte’s condos. We had it all worked out where Zach was working up in Atlanta that week then I was going to meet him with the kids and we’d drive up as a family. I was pretty pumped about it then Mr Rusty found out they had the condos rented 🙁 I was BUMMED. Glad for them to have that money coming in, but selfishly bummed for us! 

We tried to make the best of it and planned a really fun family day together that Saturday! That morning the guys went and did guy stuff (went to Big Daddy’s house to get some wood of his for a project Zach was working on) and I chilled while Britt napped. For lunch the boys picked up Subway and we went to the neighborhood park for our first picnic of 2013 🙂

SUCH a cutie!

Attempts at pictures of them together seem to be TOUGH lately!

We all had to look cool in our shades 😉

Haha I love how Britt is trying to sneak and grab his sandwich…homegirl will STEAL some food!

We tore up some sandwich for her and she LOVED it. She loves being a “big kid”

We have a playground at our house yet they STILL choose to swing whenever we visit another one!

Kye wanted to teach her to play the music!

Look how SKINNY he is!!! Post on our 24 Day Challenge results coming up!

First time climbing up this thing by himself. I tried not to have a heart attack.

Miss Adventurous wanted to do everything Kye did

That afternoon we planned to go out as a family and run errands then go eat dinner. Well, Britt had a fever 🙁 We were worried that she was sick for the first time in her life but it ended up that she was cutting TWO molars at once!!! Bless her heart, she was miserable 🙁

Instead of our family going out together, just Kye and I hit the town! Zach had been gone all that week to Atlanta for work (he still had to go even though the Gatlinburg trip was canceled!). When he’s gone for a good chunk of time we’ll often tell Kye that if he doesn’t get any spankings while Daddy is away then he’ll get a prize. He behaved very well but Zach forgot to get him a prize so he gave him $3 he found in his car hahahaha! What the heck is the kid gonna do with $3??? So we hit up the dollar store and he got to choose three things to spend his money on.

He chose Peeps as his first thing. I wanted to say no, but I had told him he could spend HIS money on whatever HE wanted so I let him get them. He’d never had them before and they were pink so he was excited haha

What made me MOST proud was that he wanted to spend some of his money on Britt. 100% HIS idea and he picked out these Valentine’s themed shaker noise maker things. He was super pumped to give them to her and she seriously LOVES them! It was so precious 🙂

The kid was def pushing my limits with his spending…first the candy, THEN the toy gun. Ugh. I’m not a fan of toy guns as it’s natural for kids to point them at each other and I do not want to deal with having to discipline him over doing that. Luckily the gun he chose barely even worked. All the balls have gotten smushed and or lost. I’m anal about keeping up with toys and taking good care of things…unless the toy is one like this where I HOPE pieces get lost and broken 😉

We had originally decided to get Longhorn for dinner that night as a family as it’s Zach’s favorite AND I love it too so it’s a great win-win place 🙂 Kye still wanted to go there which surprised me! When we got there we waited for over 30 min for a table and didn’t even have our food for 30 more min. My kid is awesome…I’m sure most kids his age would “need” to be playing on a phone with some kid app or something but he was GREAT. We visited and talked and met some strangers who we talked all about Disney with 🙂 He never misbehaved or got antsy. We didn’t have any entertainment stuff for him to do but we just enjoyed each other’s company 🙂 It was a wonderful time with my boy! 

During that meal Kye discovered his new love…honey mustard! They gave it to him with his chicken fingers and I didn’t think anything of it but on his own he tried it and loved it! He also learned something else that night…anytime we eat out he asks if he can put “the sprinkle things” on his food (salt and pepper). We tell him no. Well that night he didn’t ask me but just dumped a TON of salt and pepper all over his piece of bread before I could stop him! I told him to go ahead and try it (learn a natural lesson, right?) Sure enough, it was DISGUSTING and now he never asks to have it on his food anymore 😉 

Since he had been SO patient that evening and we had waited SO long for our food (poor kid was starving…we usually eat at 5:30 or 6 and it was like 7:15 when he finally got to eat!) I told him we could share a dessert. We saw so many yummy ones pass by us since we were sitting by the kitchen and we took up some of our waiting time by looking through the pictures of the dessert choices. He chose a s’more brownie that had marshmallows on top. I ate a little bit of it and it was pretty good, not as good as the cake they have their though for sure! 

While our weekend wasn’t as exciting as a vacation to see snow would have been (which, btw, it LEGIT snowed up there that same weekend too…darn it!) we still had a great time as a family and it helped remind me that we DON’T have to go away to make great memories…as long as we’re together the fun times never stop 😉

Emily Parker
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1 Comment

  1. Robyn Mullican
    February 26, 2013 / 2:51 pm

    I always LOVE our first picnic of the year! We haven't had ours yet, so I'm still looking forward to it. You're very lucky that you have a park so close to your house!!

    Reply

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