Day 1 On A Schedule

Just like everyone else this is our first week being stuck at home for who-knows-how-long. We were super lazy Monday and Tuesday. I slept in WAY too late and there was total chaos around here. I decided I had to put a schedule of sorts in place if I wanted to keep my sanity. So today is day one of being on a schedule. 

I wrote out a schedule last night and the 3 older kids woke up before me and were super excited to start on the scheduled day while L and I slept in again. Ha! I did wake up earlier today than I did Monday and Tuesday so that's a start anyway. 

This morning after breakfast the three older kids had Bible time. J and C have some Bible workbooks they've been working through off and on so they did that. And my mom helped S start learning a Bible verse. 

After unloading and loading the dishwasher we took the dogs on a walk down the street then came home for "school" time which turned into drawing lessons from YouTube while I updated Instagram and my blog. 

C and S both drew a pizza guy from this Art For Kids Hub YouTube lesson. I think they both did great! Art For Kids Hub has tons of other fun art lessons!

J wanted to work on something a little more realistic looking. I think her drawing looks great but she was getting frustrated with it and wants to work on it again later. 

 Even my mom draws pretty good! 

 S drew another pizza guy from her own imagination. :) 

And L is starting to draw better and better! She said this was her and our puppy. :) And she wrote her name. She got all the letters of her name right.. just wrote them in the wrong order. I was impressed but we'll have to work on the correct order. :) 



All my kids LOVE art so much so I think daily art lessons will be a great idea while we're stuck at home! Since I'm already planning to homeschool all the kids this fall this is giving us a great head start and I actually love having everyone at home all day! 



After lunch we need to go pick up school work for the two older girls, then we'll come home for quiet time, outdoor time, chores and maybe a little more "school" time.. maybe a virtual fieldtrip or something. I guess real school work will start for the girls tomorrow and I think we'll be picking up school work for C on Friday. 





I'm linking up to Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop today.

Weekend Wrap-Up

Linking up with Hello Monday again today.

Our new puppy loves for my husband to hold her. It's so sweet!

She also enjoys relaxing and sleeping like this lol! I walked in the room to tell

J good night and the puppy looked up at me but stayed in the position the entire time I was in the room. Cracks me up! She does this a lot too. 

J and S didn't have school on Friday. We stayed home and cleaned house most the day.

Then our friends dropped off their 4 kids for us to baby-sit while they went out on a date night. On Saturday we switched. We dropped our kids off at our friends' house and my husband and I went out for a date night. We ate at Red Rocks Café, walked around Birkdale and then went to Home Depot ha! Not super exciting but it was fun and nice to get out together. We haven't had a date night in forever. 

My husband brought me tulips and flowers for all the girls on Valentine's Day! 

So sweet! I didn't get pics of mine. 

I happened to see this broom closet on Facebook today and decided I absolutely have

to have something like this in our new house! Right now we just lean our broom 

in the corner for convenience. It would be so much nicer to have a little closet to keep it in.

We had to pick out a color for our new house (for the third time!) on Thursday. Our first two options are out because our future next door and across the street neighbors chose those colors. So our third option is this tan color shown on the lower part of this house above. We picked a linen (white-ish) color for above the garage. Besides the tan color the front of our house is completely different than this one.. I just wanted to show the color we chose. 



I'm sure I'll be blogging about our new house A LOT in the months to come! We are so excited!! 

Busy, busy and lots of changes

So much has happened in the last several weeks! 



The three older kids started school in early August, S and I flew to Texas for a few days to visit family. My mom flew back home with us and ended up staying almost 3 weeks. 






All the kids' fall activities have started up. C turned 9 in mid August and I had a birthday in late August. Then the day after my birthday.. the day my mom was supposed to fly home... my husband had a heart attack! He is okay for now (more on all this later) but our lives were turned upside down during the week he spent in the hospital and things are just starting to get back to normal (new normal) around here. My mom ended up staying an extra week.. I don't know how I would have managed without her. We also decided to move back to Texas to be closer to family... although we probably won't move back until May. 



So, things have been crazy!! Our weeks are busy, busy, busy with three kids in two different elementary schools across town from each other, Girls On The Run, baseball, choir, soccer, American Heritage Girls, working at church and much more!! We had to cut out dance this year with everything else we have going on and may cut out Trail Life. 



Our first Disney trip is coming up in about 6 weeks! The kids are super excited and I'm having fun planning everything! Any and all Disney tips are welcome! 



I've gotten so far behind... I'll try to catch up on everything in the next few posts.

4th Of July Fun!

The Sunday before July 4th. This was the most patriotic-ish looking pic I got of all of them together this year.

We joined half our town the evening of July 3rd and set up along a main road to watch fireworks from the YMCA. This year we were right down the street from Bruster's Ice Cream and got cones before the fireworks started! 

We were planning to go to a parade the morning of July 4th but we all slept in instead. The kids weren't too disappointed. We headed the mall later that morning. My mother-in-law was in town for the week and wanted to look for a few sovernirs. We almost never go to the mall and the kids love to go so they had fun! L's face cracks me up here. She's getting a little too big for those toddler rocking animals but she still loves them ha! 

I saw this mug at Books-A-Million. Describes me to a tee lol! 

 All the girls had fun looking around Claire's! 

The three younger kids had pizza for lunch while JG and I split Chinese food and my MIL and J  got chicken from Popeyes. That's the beauty of a mall food court.. everyone gets what they want.

The kids with J and my mother-in-law. L is sooo attached to her. It's adorable! My MIL speaks almost no English and L speaks toddler English but they manage to understand each other and get along great. :D 

We stopped by the Bass Pro Shop to see the aquarium before we left. The kids love it and the waterfall sounds so peaceful! 

Our life group friends had a cook-out the evening of July 4th! It rained a little but not too bad. The kids had fun with sparklers and running around the backyard! Their neighbor's set off several fireworks in street so the kids all enjoyed watching that too. 

The kids with kids from life group. They all have a TON of energy!

Sweet sisters in their red, white and blue!



Back at home our neighborhood was full of fireworks going off until late at night. We sat outside and watched for a little while before going to bed. 



We had a busy, fun day! Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!! 

What's Up Wednesday

What We're Eating This Week - Lots of yummy food but lots of carbs. :/ We're on vacation and not eating the healthiest...

What I'm Reminiscing About - Past Christmases when the kids were babies

What I'm Loving - Being with family and friends in Texas!

What We've Been Up To - Traveling

What I'm Dreading - The 15 hour + drive home

What I'm Working On - Blogging more and staying consistent!! I was working on exercising and eating healthy right before we left NC but that's all gone out the window for the time being...

What I'm Excited About - A few more days in Texas!

What I'm Watching/Reading - I've been watching Friends, again, lately. I haven't been reading anything.

What I'm Listening To - At this very moment I'm listening to the movie "Elf"

What I'm Wearing - Lately I've been wearing leggings every single day and long tunic tops

What I'm Doing This Weekend - Spending time with family on Sat. and driving home Sunday

What I'm Looking Forward To Next Month - Celebrating Sol and Mar's 5th and 10th birthdays! My mom will be flying out and surprising Sol for her birthday!!

What Else Is New - Nothing I can think of...

October happenings

Another busy week around here!! 

 My mom came into town last Thursday evening! You can see how excited the little girls

were to see her!!

 We went to Cracker Barrel for dinner afterwards. We always love looking around the shop

at all the toys and knick knacks!

 I thought this platypus was just adorable with the sparkly beak and feet. I guess it's

a platypus lol?

The miniature toys were really cute too!

  Alex loved the oversized lollypop!

I thought this rocking swan would be adorable for a baby girl photo shoot! Izzy's 

a little too big for it though haha! 

Friday morning Indie Grace had her last, in home, OT visit with her awesome

therapist, JoAnne. Indie turns three later this week and will be aging out 

of therapy through the state. 

Friday evening my mom, the kids, the puppy and I all walked down to the neighborhood

pond and playground. This was our first time walking around the pond. The kids and

puppy loved it! Since we moved here in the summer it's just now cool enough to get out 

and explore a bit. 

 We love having my mom here but I think the kids may be wearing her out a bit.

Saturday morning my mom, Gabby and I went to Nest Fest and got a signed copy of The Nester's new book, The Cozy Minimalist. Here's Gabby sitting in the tiny trailer that's currently on the cozy home tour. The trailer is adorable! It was raining off and on at Nest Fest but we had fun! We visited all the booths, bought a few things and thought about getting something to eat from the food trucks (everything smelled delicious!) but decided we would rather sit down in a cozy restaurant so we went to Macaroni Grill instead. Macaroni Grill was yummy.. as always.. and perfect for a cold, rainy day.

Sunday morning we were excited to have friends join us for church, then J and I worked in Alex's second grade class for second service. Sunday afternoon we hosted life group at our house. We had a big crowd.. it was noisy but fun!

I think we stayed home all day Monday...

Tuesday morning Indie Grace had her first OT visit with the private therapist. (She had her evaluation with them over the summer so she was a little bit familiar with their office when she went in yesterday.) She had a great visit and will be going back every Tuesday! Tuesday evening Alex had Trail Life and all of us girl's browsed around Target. I bought one tray from the dollar (five dollar) bin. And went around collecting ShopKicks ha! I just started doing ShopKicks again and the kids love helping out and scanning things!!

I had my yearly check up this morning (fun, fun!). The girls have dance this afternoon and then Gabby goes to American Heritage Girls right after dance. The rest of us will probably do a little shopping and browsing around while Gabby is at AHG. The kids like to hang out at Pets Mart and I think I'll go back to Target for a couple things that caught my eye last night.

Tomorrow (Thursday) should be a pretty lazy day until afternoon when Gabby has Girls On The Run and I pick up the neighbor kids and bring them home for a couple hours. Honestly, last time they were here it was QUIETER with 6 kids in the house than it normally is with just my 4. Not sure how that happened but it was nice ha!

Indie Grace turns THREE on Friday! I can't believe it! Time has flown by. It's hard watching my youngest grow out of the baby stage and so bittersweet for me. Three is officially "not a baby" any more. She's super excited to go out to Starbucks with her daddy Friday morning for a little birthday breakfast! We'll have a cake and presents sometime later. With Alex going to school early and J working late it's hard to get the whole family together for birthday celebrations but we'll figure something out. She wants a Minnie Mouse cake and but I haven't been able to find Minnie Mouse cake topper so we settled on these little squishy Minnie keychain faces ha! I guess they'll have to do.

We've been planning to go up to Asheville for the day on Saturday. But it's looking like there might be a chance of rain on Saturday so we may just skip it and stay close to home. Our neighborhood is hosting a kid friendly, haunted Halloween walk around the pond Saturday evening so we may just 

do that instead.

Alex was really excited to be one of the first viewers to email and respond to 

the "Axel & Daddy" YouTube show last week. He'll be getting a piece of real

silver in the mail and gets to a be a special "Secret Agent" for their program. 

Exciting things for an 8 year old boy! :) 

Hope everyone is having a great week! I have another fun review coming up soon and my first giveaway coming up too! :)

You can see my past reviews here, here and here. 

Real Kids Shades

 The kids are really enjoying their new sunglasses from Real Kids Shades!

Each pair of sunglasses came in a reusable pouch and each child received a cute little plush emoji

they can attach to a backpack or book bag. 

 The little girls both wanted to try the Breeze Kids Sunglasses For Girls.

Even though Indie isn't quite 3 yet she's big for her age so I went ahead and ordered
her the kids glasses,for ages 4-6, instead of the toddler sunglasses, for ages 2-3,
and they fit her perfectly!

Sol chose the aqua & pink while Indie wanted the cherry pink & lime! 

Both girls are thrilled with their new sunglasses! They stay on very nicely,

 have nice dark lenses and have held up very well! 

 Alex chose the Storm Polarized Sunglasses For Youth, in red. He loves them!
He says the lenses are darker and the glasses fit better than other
sunglasses he's had in the past!

  Mar chose the awesome color changing Switch Sunglasses For Youth in
pink/light pink! She really loves the color changing aspect!! The glasses
are light pink indoors and turn darker pink in the sun. She also says the
 lenses are nice and dark and the glasses fit better than other 

sunglasses she's had in the past. 

I was able to try out the Screen Shades For Adults (pictured above)

and absolutely LOVE them! I chose blue for something fun and different 

and I'm actually wearing them right now. They make a HUGE difference.

I didn't realize how much I was squinting and straining my eyes while looking

at the screen until I tried these glasses. As a migraine sufferer I think they may even

help reduce the amount of migraines I get, in the long run. They also work
great when I'm using my phone for a long period of time. My husband loves
them too and wants to get a pair for himself. Honestly, I just can't tell you
how much I love these! I had no idea what I was missing until I tried them!
Eventually I'd like to get a pair for each of the kids, as well,
 to help protect their eyes while they're young.

We would definitely recommend Real Kids Shades for kids' sunglasses and Screen Shades!

*I worked with Real Kids Shades on this post but all opinions are my own 
and not swayed by outside sources*