The Journey of Parenthood…

Summer Recap: Week 4

Week 4 of our summer fun was from June 6th through June 13th. We left on Thursday the 11th for the Parker Family Vacation so it was a shorter week of hanging at home 🙂 

We kicked things off on Saturday morning with Carter’s birthday party! That afternoon I went to enjoy my spa day from my Mother’s Day gift. It was SO relaxing! I had an hour massage, extra time focused on my scalp (which is like my favorite thing EVER) and got a pedicure. I loved just relaxing and being pampered. It’s not something that I get to do often and it was such a thoughtful gift!

While I was gone the kids weren’t lacking for fun! They have such a great Daddy 🙂

I got home just in time for a big “picnic” dinner (we call eating outside in any fashion a “picnic”). I mean he took care of three kids and prepared a feast? Prodad! 

First time having corn on the cobb

Sunday was another great day starting off with church

and then Titus came over to play! Zach and Seth became friends in high school so we’ve known all his children their entire lives. It’s so neat to watch them grow up and to have our friends be friends together! Poor Titus has three sisters so he def needed the “guy time” with Kye! We let the girls nap and the guys just got to play rather than napping 🙂

Muscle Men!

I mentioned in another post about Sadie and her age. She’s a shih-tzu I got when I was 16. I’m now 30 so she’s 14 years old. I know small dogs can live a long time but she’s at the stage of life where when we can’t find her we think this is it. I mentioned in the post how embarrassing it is when she escapes. It’s embarrassing because she looks SO ROUGH at this point. She has a MASSIVE growth (that, yes, looks like a testicle haha) on her underside as well as one smack dab in the middle of her eyes. It’s disgusting. I don’t think it’s cancer but it could be. But at her age I’d rather not know b/c then I’ll just be sad and feel bad because obviously she’s too old to do any sort of treatments or anything. 

We had VBS at church this week! The kids LOVE VBS and I loved that Zach was in town this year so I didn’t have to keep Tess up late to pick the big kids up. Last year Zach was out of town so Britt went to every night of VBS even though I felt like she was too young for it (and she really couldn’t handle it. Whew. Child needs sleep). This year there was no way she could miss out! It was a big of a struggle with the late nights, but she had a blast and it was worth it! Here’s all our VBS pics from the week:

As people post them on Facebook I try to save any I see of my crew! Love getting to see what all they are up to! Water balloons were a hit!

I took Tess to drop off the kids a couple of the nights so she could take part in the singing before the kids went to their classrooms. We had some AWESOME songs this year that we are all still singing around our house. I love how into it my kids get and even Tess loved the energy and singing about Jesus!

One of my major summer goals this year was to make a lot of foods that could be frozen and used when I pack Kye’s lunch this school year. I’m the queen of freezer recipes. I love when I can make a large batch of something and then use it over and over again rather than just on the day that I make it. Baking is something I’ve always done with my children and it’s a great time for bonding together. They love being helpers in the kitchen and Kye is finally at an age where he’s pretty legit helpful! 

Cracking eggs

We made two different types of muffins to enjoy that day for lunch as well as freeze for future lunches. Britt’s job was to put the cheese on top! She rocked it!

Just another Muffin Monday 🙂 

When I try new recipes I also like to make sure I stick with ones I know we all like. We made my favorite breakfast casserole muffins and then also made some new ones we hadn’t done before: carrot zucchini muffins. The kids loved them both! Even with helping making the carrot zucchini ones (and knowing they had vegetables in the them) they were still a hit! 

We live in a relatively small town. I know it’s not SUPER small. I mean we have two Walmarts so compared to some towns it’s huge but compared to where I spent most of my life (outside of Atlanta) it often feels small here to me. That being said, even a smaller town can still be filled with many surprises and things to explore. I kept hearing on Facebook about some awesome ice cream at a “peach shed” so, duh, Casey and I had to check it out. It’s only about 20 minutes from my house and it’s straight up ADORABLE. Like they should film a movie here. It’s what you think the south would look like. I instantly fell in love with it and even though it was nottttt a good afternoon for the crew (Carter was randomly crying and even KYE broke down in tears. VBS y’all wears em OUT) Casey and I still left with smiles on our faces 🙂 

If you are semi-local here’s the Facebook page to Burton Brooks Peach Orchid 

No joke. It was THE best ice cream!!!

It was hot and there were bugs and omg Britt’s shoes got dirty because there was dirt. So I struggled with my patience. My #1 pet peeve is when kids act entitled. I cannot stand it. And here we were at a special treat and all my kids could do was complain. I let them know how disappointed I was and Kye instantly busted out in tears. Typical first born: disappointed parent = crying. Britt though? Didn’t care one bit that I was disappointed in her! 

I opted for a snow cone because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle eating ice cream while holding Tess. I about died when she grabbed a huge handful of it and shoveled it in her mouth. She LOVED it! I got this video of her 🙂

Carter cracks me up b/c he doesn’t like to touch grass!

I think Tess was the only happy camper that day. Carter is usually SO happy but we decided he must have gotten hot in the car seat or something on the way there. Snow cone cheered him right up though 🙂

As I wrote recently, I’ve been making HUGE strides (pun not intended!) with my foot. You can read the latest update here 🙂 This week I put it to the test by taking the kids down to our neighborhood playground and pushed Tess around the track in the stroller. It worked out nicely as our playground is in the center of the track so I could see the big kids playing while I walked.

I also got lapped by a 6 year old 😉

And this child cried because she didn’t want to play on the playground and then cried because she didn’t want to leave. She has it rough 😉

Even though it’s summer and even though I see my kids all day every day, I still feel like it takes extra effort to really connect with them one on one. I feel like so often Kye gets kinda “pushed to the side” because Britt is very demanding and Tess is a baby so she’s the most demanding right now. One afternoon this week I let Kye get up early from nap and we made some hot chocolate (totally fitting for summer right? ha!) and just sat and talked. We both needed that connecting time and I always leave our talks feeling uplifted and just so blessed to be his mom. I have some awesome kids!

Emily Parker
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