This week of our summer started on Saturday July 18 and went through Friday July 24th. Basically this week was “prepare for Tess’s party” week. Really it was NOT too bad on the stress factor, I did so much in advance and spread out everything I had to accomplish that it wasn’t too much all at once. I did miss having free time and it was a good lesson to me to plan it even sooner next year. Tess’s birthday is just about as badly timed as Britt’s. Britt’s is hard because it’s sandwiched in-between Thanksgiving and Christmas and Tess’s is hard b/c it’s so soon after our big beach trip, it’s during summer when kids are home all day with me, it’s right around back to school time and it’s so close to Zach’s birthday.
When we first moved into our house one of the biggest issues we had were dealing with the fans in our living room. Like I have some serious bitterness about these dang fans! THIS is what my husband has to do in order to change out the lightbulbs. I seriously freak out and it’s hard for me to even watch. (Like seriously Mrs. Charlotte cover your eyes and keep scrolling haha) We found out on this day that one of our fans is completely shot. Light kits don’t work at all so since then I’ve been on a super fun hunt (sarcasm) for new living room fans. At least the ones I’ve ordered should make it less dangerous to change a light bulb!!!
Kye and I finished up reading James and the Giant Peach
so Zach and I thought it’d be a fun weekend treat to watch the movie. Several years ago we bought this set of 180 dvds for $199. It was a TON of Disney dvds and a bunch of random ones. And yes, they are all pretty much in Chinese so we are 99% positive they are bootlegs. But we didn’t know it when buying them so we don’t feel bad about it and they serve their purpose 😉 Anyways one of the dvds in our set actually is the movie version of the book so it worked out great to watch it that night. The last movie we saw in theaters as a family was Frozen and I just don’t see us going to another movie anytime soon. Y’all. It’s SO expensive and just not worth it! You can buy the movie for cheaper than the cost to go see it once in theaters! Anyway…we like to watch movies with some popcorn. The kids LOVE it!
We watched the movie as a family and I didn’t do any research prior to watching it b/c I assumed it was based off the book. Um. I didn’t realize it was Tim Burton? Or that it went way way away from the original storyline? Oops. Both kids didn’t like it and had some fears after watching it. Parenting fail for sure!
This “cool dude” face phase is pretty classic!
Tess got to watch for a few minutes too!
Kye has really been all about using my camera lately. Since it’s always laying around it’s readily available for him to practice with. On this day we were prepping for the party and Zach was painting our coffee table (we are cheap cheap and decided to just paint it rather than buy new even though it’s 8 years old and was already cheap when we bought it new) so the living room was basically a disaster zone. It was after church and I was down on the floor playing with the kids and Kye asked to use my camera and I didn’t even realize at first that he was taking pictures of me. I’ve read several articles lately about how our children will remember us and I think these are some pretty good pics Kye captured of how my children will probably remember me. Even if there is a mess around me, I’m gonna be done on the floor with my babies 🙂
Even though it was “party prep weekend” we still made sure to have some family fun! I’m kinda hardcore about our weekends being FUN. That’s what weekends are about am I right? We hadn’t had smores all summer so it was about time we busted out the fire pit!
I love the love my husband has for our children!
We ate s’mores and told silly stories (we decided scary stories are just too scary) and they ended up evolving into embarrassing stories. Kye’s embarrassing story was when I pack him sweet potato fries in his lunch during the days he eats lunch bunch and all his friends say “ew” haha. I took that moment as an opportunity to tell him that Mommy loves him and wants him to eat healthy. I also made a mental note to pack him carrot sticks for lunch more often in the fall 😉 We were all cracking up at our embarrassing stories and it was a fun moment and I think it was a good thing for Kye to experience. He tends to get upset when people laugh at him and by sharing our embarrassing stories and all laughing at each other I hope it helped him to see that it’s okay to laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously all the time 😉
Something on our summer-to-do list included going to the movie theater. I mentioned earlier how DANG expensive it is to go to the movie theater. I think part of the reason it costs so much is because we only have ONE theater in our town. No competition to help drive down prices. Anyway in the summer they have a deal on movies where you get in for $3 and popcorn is $1. I was hoping to go to a couple of the movies but when I did some research on them I found out that most of them just weren’t appropriate.
Sidenote but have you ever taken the time to look up the movies geared towards kids?!?! I LOVE the site plugged in as it gives a breakdown of the content of the movie. As I looked up each summer movie I got so ticked at the ways these “kid movies” push political agendas on our children. No. Thank. You. So many of the moves had an underlying agenda that directly goes against our beliefs as Christians and is an area I’m not even comfortable discussing with my children at their young ages. I could handle The Lorax as it’s pretty easy to talk about how cutting down trees for profit is not all bad. But some of these deeper topics are something I don’t want to have to explain to my children until I’m ready.
In the end I felt the most comfortable with the movie Rio 2. We didn’t see the first one (confession: we try to only see Disney movies haha) but the 2nd one was really fun. Lots of cute songs and, over all, pretty appropriate content. Nothing major that I had to worry about explaining! It was a super fun morning with friends and it made me wish they offered a better selection of movies so we could have gone to more of them this summer!
After the movie we had to run to the library. I got to add to my embarrassing story collection. We were standing in the library waiting for Robyn and the kids said they saw her so I turned and walked directly into a large man. Bahaha. Pretty classic moment. Another classic moment was the Kye suddenly HAD to go to the bathroom. I’m talking one of those 20 min session types. So Britt and I took pics in the bathroom while we waited 🙂
That evening Zach had an early basketball game so I decided to get daring and take Tess to the game with us rather than have her go to Mrs. Charlotte’s. Tess is VERY easy going but I’m always afraid to test those limits with her. I figured it was worth a try to just see how she did and worse case we could always leave!
Practicing before the game
Kye made a special sign to hold up during the game that said “Go Dad Go Dad Gooooo Dad!”
We didn’t get home until close to 8 and Tess hadn’t even nursed yet for her final feeding. I had taken a bottle with me to the game but it was so noisy that I figured I’d just wait until we got home and nurse her. And she did AWESOME! My sweet girl was so smiley and slept fine and it was a good experience and a good reminder to me that it’s okay to be flexible and that Tess’s personality is one that does FINE with some flexibility in her schedule!
Even though it was party-prep week and I had a TON to do I became mega obsessed with reading The Girl on the Train
. Y’all. A lot of people have compared it to Gone Girl which I don’t understand the comparison because it’s not the same thing. Or really all that similar? But it’s still so, so good! I loved it and couldn’t put it down and haven’t read another book since b/c I’m afraid I’ll get obsessed again and lose a lot of sleep haha. I have very little self control when it comes to page turners!!!
Waaaaaay back when Britt was first born Zach made Kye a house out of boxes. Kye loved it and it occupied him a lot at age 2 ½ when he had a new baby sister at home. Since then the box has been broken down and stored in the garage with plans to throw it away. For some reason that never happened and randomly this week it got pulled back out. Kye is now 6 and guess what? He was equally inthralled with this box house. We had it on the back porch and both big kids had a blast with it!
He said it was a house for Smyrna to enjoy!
Mr. Rusty has some farmland and this year grew watermelons. He and Kye had discussed Kye selling some. I mean this kid is alllll about turning things into a business 😉 He and Zach set up shop on the corner of our street to sell some watermelons. I believe they were selling them for $3 a piece? And they all sold within an hour or so. And Kye made some mega profit on that deal! Big Papa was nice enough not to take a cut 😉
This was THE strangest thing. The day after the watermelon sale I found this just laying on our front porch. Of course a note with cash and little hearts draws some questions?!?! If Kye was older I’d be thinking she had a crush but since he’s 6 I figured the crush must have been on my husband right?!? Zach and I still can’t figure out the story behind why this girl brought this much money to Kye! The kids did remember her and she was a young teen who talked to them a lot (and didn’t flirt with Daddy surprisingly…I think at 30 we are kinda out of the young teens finding us attractive age bahaha) and who only had some change in her car. So maybe she felt bad? But still $20 aint no joke! It took Kye’s earnings from just selling some watermelons to over $40. Score for him!
You can’t let summer pass by without a proper tea party! I love how Kye got dressed up for the occasion 🙂
And this girl drank like 10 teacups of water!
This week since Zach was gone a couple of nights I decided to make a family favorite treat for dinner. We LOVE this recipe for Pizza Bites. They are SO GOOD! We made them the night Zach was coming home and saved him a couple to enjoy once he got back 😉
This week was a hard emotional week for me. On top of the emotions surrounding Tess turning one…Ashleigh also passed away this week. It was heartbreaking and I’m so thankful they did a livestream of her funeral. The service was amazing and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. My big kids and I were snuggled up watching it together and they both got to witness the part where a friend of Ashleigh’s shared the Gospel. How amazing is that? It was so neat to think that Ashleigh’s story helped my babies hear God’s Word and who knows the way that may touch their lives in the future. It was a great opportunity for lots of questions about death and what happens when we die and a chance to show them the pain we feel here on earth when people we care about pass away. While it’s so sad that Ashleigh is now gone from this earth, how amazing is it that she’s with our Heavenly Father? Thankful for the life she shared with us and pray that her walk only continues to inspire others!
One night we were getting ready for bed and I had just tucked Tess in when we heard that sounds familiar to all of us parents: the ice cream truck. The kids had never heard it before so they didn’t know what it was. They FREAKED OUT when we ran outside and they saw it. Britt kept saying “a truck came to our house with ice cream inside!!!” Simple pleasures 🙂 You know I’m all about that cheap cheap so their choices were pretty limited but it was an awesome experience and one of those random special moments that stick out because it was just good timing and very unplanned and unexpected.
A big kid special treat 🙂
Get ready for all of Tess’s birthday party fun!!!
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