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...

Snow Days!!

We got our first snow of the season a couple weeks ago!

I think we got about four inches early
Monday morning and then maybe a little more later on.

I was more prepared this year with snow boots for all the kids, a snow bib for Indie and
snow pants for Sol.

We don't have a sled so the kids used their boogies boards. The boogie
boards worked great until the biggest one got bent and broke after a couple days. It was
worth it though... they had so much fun with them!! We have a perfect hill right behind
our house that was perfect for sledding the first day or so. Then it started turning
to muddy slush so they went across the street to sled down the hill in the neighbors backyard.

Alex being goofy. He was out of school for three days that week with a delayed opening
on Thursday. I really think a delayed opening Tuesday and Wednesday would've been
just fine but they have their reasons, I suppose, and he loved being at home!

The snow was still coming down pretty hard Monday morning when the kids went
out for the first time. You can see Sol squinting up her eyes here.

Sol kept eating the snow ha! She loved it!

I meant to post these pics days ago. Since the snow we've gotten a lot of rain and some nice, sunshiny days. We're currently in Texas visting family for the holidays! It's great to be back! Lots of Texas posts coming up!! :)

Thanksgiving!!

Our town's annual Christmas parade is always held the Tuesday afternoon before Christmas. Schools
let out early and it's a big deal.

This year Mar walked in the parade with her American Heritage Girls group. Her Girls On The Run group was also in the parade again but since she walked with them last year she decided to go with AHG this time.

This kids was so cool! He was with a group of kids doing flips and headstands from Acrofitness. 

The parade was a lot of fun but kind of exhausting. Last year I had my mom and J with me so it was easy to get all the kids were they needed to be. This year I was the only adult which meant a whole lot of driving around and a lot of walking!! I didn't plan as well as I should have and ended up having to leave the parade early, walk all the way back to our van with Alex and the little girls, then driving to the end of the parade route to pick up Mar who was hanging out with some moms and kids from her AHG group.

We had some friends over on Thanksgiving Day and ate dinner around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Indie was just on her first round of antibiotics and seemed to be on the mend that day. She was feeling a lot better on Thanksgiving Day.

Alex and Mar filling up their plates! J prepared most of the food again this year! I was planning to make a green bean casserole but ended up rushing around cleaning last minute so J did that too. Ha!

 Our yard backs up into the woods and the kids love playing down there! The dog does too!

 We had a little fire on our patio once it got dark and roasted marshmellows. I like how my pics of the fire turned out ha! I was messing with my camera all day on Thanksgiving and trying to figure out different settings.

We had a great Thanksgiving filled with good food and good friends!!

We're currently wrapping up day two of being snowed in! I'm starting to go a little stir crazy! We have an appointment in the morning so hopefully the roads will be better!! Lots of snow pics coming up!!

life lately

We've been busy as always!! Poor L was sick for over two weeks. She was sick a full week before Thanksgiving before I decided to take her to the doctor (over-the-counter cold meds just don't seem to work for her). They gave her eye drops and a prescription for all her coughing and congestion. The prescription seemed to work for a few days but then she started getting worse. I made another appointment a week after the first one and I'm glad I did. At this point she was heading towards pneumonia! Her chest sounded bad but her breathing test was good. We got a couple new prescriptions and these worked great! She's so much better now! We had a follow up appointment as well as her 3 year check-up last Friday. S woke up that morning crying that her ear hurt so the doctor looked at her as well. It turned out she had her first ear infection either.. in both ears! So we have S on a prescription now too.

The little girls wore their little backpacks, filled with a few favorite toys, everywhere for a couple days last week. They cracked me up wearing them into Neighborhood Wal-Mart haha!

I had to get Starbucks a few days last week... just one of those weeks. L has been asking for a cup of water every time we go. She calls it "frappucino water" ha! 

 Just a funny pic of S wearing a monkey mask and holding a random football. 

L wanted me to take a picture during bath time. 

 Saturday morning J, L and I ran out for a couple errands. I saw the most perfect giftcard ever at Starbucks! I'd love a few of these for Christmas!! 

After Starbucks we went to Kid To Kid for Christmas pajamas. By December 1st their selection was pretty picked over but I managed to find the perfect American Girl holiday jammies for J and nightgowns for the little girls. I still need to find something for C. After Kid To Kid we went to Duck Donuts next door! I've been hearing about Duck Donuts since we moved here and pass it all the time when we're at Kid To Kid but we finally decided to stop in Saturday morning. These donuts are amazing!! Just a dollar something for any kind of donut topping you want and they add toppings as you order! The donuts are a little different.. yellow cake donuts.. but still delicious! 

 J ordered the chocolate drizzle with sprinkles, L wanted the "zebra" donut.. white with chocolate drizzle and I decided on the chocolate with peanuts and coconut... so yummy!

Other than being sick and running errands I've also been busy trying to sell as much as I can to help

fund Christmas and our upcoming trip to Texas! I love buying and selling (or curbside finds and selling ha!) so this is fun for me but also a lot of work! My entire front dining room is a disaster. :/ I've been thinking about starting an eBay shop but not sure right now. I'm so unorganized at the moment.. 

I'm still drinking Revital U coffee every morning. Honestly, the stuff is disgusting but I love the energy I get! I usually don't even need a second cup of coffee the entire day. I do go to Starbucks occasionally but generally I just drink the Retival U every morning and that's it for the day. I've heard of people losing 20 lbs with this stuff but I'm not so lucky. I think I've lost, maybe, 3 lbs. Ugh. This week I'm going to start working out every day and drinking lemon water. I think I'll continue Revital U for at least another month but I'm not that impressed and wonder if there's another "smart coffee" out there that would taste better and work even better.. 

Hope everyone's having a great Monday! I made a to do list this morning and want to stick to it! We'll see how that goes ha! 

November Day

I took these pics over a week ago when my husband and the older girls were still in Texas. I've been trying to take pics several days a week and I'm pretty happy with some of these. I love the photo above but I had to ask a friend of mine to edit out the boogers and goop on L's face. Poor girl was pretty sick that day! 

 Our cute puppy stood still long enough for me to get this shot.

I'm not happy with this pic at all. I tried to edit it and don't like the way it turned out but wanted to share because it captures C and the puppy hanging out in the backyard like always. C was doing something with a rope and a stick ha!! 

I think he was trying to throw the stick over a branch. I love this shot of him! He has always held his mouth like that when he's concentrating.

One of the big maple leaves he found in the woods behind our house. (We've found much bigger leaves since.)

L just looking cute but you can tell she's not feeling good. Poor thing. 

I have a lot of catching up to do. Still need to post the Christmas parade (It's held the Tuesday before Thanksgiving every year) and our Thanksgiving Day!