This is a recap from our 11th week of summer! July 23rd – July 30th!
Originally we had planned to go to Atlanta over this weekend. I was hoping to hit up Zoo Atlanta (Tess hasn’t ever been and we like to go each summer) and visit my dad and meet up with a bunch of friends from high school at a mini-reunion. My dad ended up having major work plans that weekend and wouldn’t be able to see us and I just couldn’t justify taking that large of a trip if we couldn’t see him during that time too! I was super bummed about it but it worked out anyway, we had both a visitation and a funeral over the weekend for a long time family friend of Zach’s (Walter) and wouldn’t have been able to attend the Atlanta stuff anyway as that took top priority.
We had a pretty lazy weekend overall, we did the typical pancake breakfast followed by pool time!
He may be 7 and an almost-2nd grader but boy will still NAP solid when the time is offered to him!
Zach had to go out of town for work the first few nights of the week and the big kids and I decided to have a sleep over! They have both been begging me to let them sleep in my bed with me one night while Zach is gone and summer is really the perfect time for it!
Back in May we went garage sale shopping and found an old time popcorn maker for $5. Kye offered $4 and they accepted! We’ve been excited to try it out and were happy to find that it works perfectly!
Sleepovers totes require popcorn, candy and a movie!
Our plan was to go NIGHT SWIMMING! We’ve never done it before (hello, it doesn’t get dark till like 8:30 haha) so I thought it’d be fun. Of course it finally starts to get dark and we get our suits on and BAM storm rolls through. It worked out though b/c Zach said he really wanted to be part of the night swimming fun so I’m glad we weren’t able to partake!
Instead we played a round of night checkers 😉
We had our “midnight snack” before bed!
Zach and I sleep in a queen bed, I know that’s random but we like being close 🙂 I was pretty nervous about how the night would go but the kids did good falling asleep pretty quickly!
We face-timed with Daddy before sleep time!
SUPER loose tooth!
Snuggles, cuddles and giggles in Mommy’s bed!
Usually my fit bit tells me that I sleep SOLID each night. I VERY rarely have any lines saying I’m awake or restless. I like my solid sleep 🙂 These little munchkins made that hard…crazy amounts of restlessness for me!
The next morning we hit up Target nice and early to tackle SCHOOL SUPPLIES. Whew. I dread it each year as it’s so tough to get it all with all the kids in tow. I also feel bad b/c it’s just not FUN for the kids. They don’t get to pick out many individual things. Pencils are plain, folders are plain, it’s just boring school supplies! We got it done though!
While I checked out I let the kids go up and down ONE aisle that I could see in my clear line of vision. It got wild fast so it won’t be happening again!
After we finished up at Target we headed over to church. We were SUPER EARLY which I felt bad about but it was an odd amount of time that would have been tough to fill so I just went ahead and headed over there. Kye was asked (along with the other young boys of our church) to prepare something to say to the ladies’ class that meets on Tuesday mornings. It’s a class of mostly more mature ladies and I used to love attending it prior to kids! I’m hoping to get back at some point 🙂
Kye chose to prepare a lesson rather than just tell his favorite Bible story or favorite Bible verse. He practiced really hard and was SO prepared for it! I had suggested to number the notecards to keep them in order but no one listened to me and it ended up being the one hiccup for him in his presentation! Out of order notecards will get you every time!
Mrs. Liz does SUCH an AMAZING job decorating and making each even special!
The kids helped Mrs Liz set up and Tess ran off some energy before having to sit!
Kye did his lesson, which you can watch here, and said a prayer afterward, which you can watch here. I’m SO proud of Kye! He decided on his own that he wanted to prepare a full lesson and chose what lesson he wanted to discuss. He often talks about how he always eats his healthy food first (even at school!) because it’s just like how we need to put God first before the “sweets” in life. It was a great lesson and I’m SO proud of our big boy! I know it’s the first of many times that he’ll be speaking from God’s Word to others!
ALL the boys did FANTASTIC! I was blown away!!!
How blessed are our children to have SO much family support? Our family filled an entire table!
It meant the world to me, and to Kye, to have so much love and support in that room!
Little Mama
Aunt Casey
Aunt Courtney
You know I wasn’t gonna miss it 😉
And neither would G-Mama!
Aunt Karen (is it just me or do they look SUPER alike here?!)
When we buried Sadie we put her on our property but outside our fence line. I wanted to get something to mark the spot to remember her by and found this VERY affordable custom stone. I love how it turned out! Simple and gets the job done 🙂
Both the visitation and funeral service over the weekend went wonderfully. Walter was remembered in such a beautiful way by so many who knew him and loved him most. Mr. Rusty spoke at the funeral and did an amazing job. He had that perfect blend of funny stories mixed with kind words of remembrance. Travis, Walters’ son, lives in Canada so we RARELY get to see him and while we all wish it was under better circumstances it was SO GREAT to get to hang out!!! And the cherry on top was finally getting to meet Ty!!! They came over with Katie after the visitation Saturday but I didn’t get any pics. I was hoping that my lack of picture taking would help insure future plans to be made before they headed back home but no such luck. And instead Katie sent me this pic because SHE got to eat lunch with them BOTH. I’M SO BITTER.
Kye pulled out his second tooth while riding in the car!
Right away he wanted to text G-Mama and send her the pic 😉
On Wednesday Zach and I devoted the entire day to CLEANING. We wanted the house to be spotless for our home study and I’m so appreciative of Courtney, Casey and Mrs. Charlotte for helping take care of the kids (poor Carter got sick that morning so Mrs. Charlotte took over with Tess for the rest of the day). Not only did the kids have a BLAST but we got SO MUCH DONE. It took me a total of 7 ½ HOURS to completely clean my house from top to bottom and that’s without kids there and doesn’t include the time I spent the days prior cleaning the walls (is that not a thing? I thought it was a thing but people act like I’m crazy for cleaning my walls?).
During my cleaning mission I FOUND DAVID. My dad traveled a lot for work when I was growing up and we had this statue of David in our house for a long time. I’m not sure when/how I ended up with it but Zach did NOT like it (because, hello, naked man figurine). It turned into a joke where I’d hide David in random spots to surprise Zach. Well he didn’t play along so well and would hide David in places that were REALLY hard for me to find. In my cleaning I cleaned the top of our storage cabinets in our bedroom and found him there. I was SO PUMPED. Immediately I hid him in an obvious finding spot (Zach’s underwear drawer because, hello naked man figurine in underwear drawer is funny) and Zach was not pleased hahahaha. I’m hoping Zach will play along better now since we have seen the legit statue of David and all 😉
Tess got home to us before the big kids did and we enjoyed some solo time with her! She was SO FUN. We played hide and seek and read books and tucked her in. It’s RARE to have both of us alone with just one kid so we soaked it up, and so did she 🙂
After our long day of cleaning and prepping the house we had a “treat yo self” night and got Moe’s and watched Big Brother!
Awhile back I mentioned that Tess played houdini on my table runner and broke ALL of the vases I had as a centerpiece. I had no choice but to go get some new stuff 😉 I love the new items I picked up (all from Hobby Lobby) and think it’s a good update to our table!
Home study visit ready with my killer sweet tea, coco-no-bakes and some fresh choc chip cookies!
“It’s getting real!”
We had the kids eat lunch at the bar to keep things easy for clean up and had a lightbulb moment. WHY IN THE WORLD HAVEN’T WE BEEN USING THE BAR?!?!? I mean for real. SO much less mess. SO easy to clean up. So much easier to get things to them during times that I’m not eating at the same time. We’ve started using the bar for breakfast and lunch and just use the table for dinner time as a family. It’s been AWESOME.
Waiting for our case worker!
I talked in more detail about the home study visit in this post but it went GREAT! It was short and sweet and the kids were a bit wild but I’m sure she’s used to seeing that 😉 It went so great that we were all BEAT after and sweet Kye fell asleep on the couch for a good couple of hours!
We prepped for home study Wednesday, Thursday was the actual home study, then we prepped for Tess’s party all day Friday and her party was Saturday! It was a CrAzY busy week but we got it all done and her party was adorable and a blast (posts to come!). I am always SO appreciative of Zach and how he jumps into the party mode with me. He always has great ideas and helps me make my ideas come to life. I love that we’re at a stage now where the “party stress” doesn’t lead to arguments and instead we have FUN putting it all together. I think learning myself and my limits and getting a good solid schedule down for preparing for the events helps me minimize my stress levels and allows me to have more fun in the process rather than feeling bogged down at the last minute!
Look at all our helpers 🙂
The kids watched Finding Nemo in prep for the party!
A big week of accomplishments this week! So proud of Kye for his speaking and thankful our home study visit went so well!
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