Top Five Friday!

5. Spinach lasagna roll-ups {HERE}
My friend Lauren made these for us after Hadley was born, and we quickly put the recipe into the regular rotation of meals at our house! It's now one of my go-to recipes to make when I need to deliver a meal to someone. The Goins & Gallimores both received this meal this month. ;)

4. Blog book!!

At the beginning of summer, I made a short list of our "summer goals." One of the things on the list was to finally get our 2014 blog book printed. I was waiting for a coupon code to use to get a better price, and a deal finally popped up in my inbox a couple of weeks ago! I'm not going to lie, it was quite the ordeal getting this book printed! I use the Blog2Print website for our blog books, and usually I feel like their site is super user-friendly...but this time around, I just kept running into glitch after glitch with their website. It was beyond ridiculous! I finally ended up placing my order over the phone without actually seeing the final draft of the book, which definitely made me more than a little nervous! I was incredibly relieved to finally receive it in the mail this week and discover that it was perfect!! And of course, the girls have already spent an extraordinary amount of time with the new book! I always thought these books would be appreciated one day when they're older, but never in a million years did I think they would be enjoyed so much now!

3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
As much as Shelby loves reading, she really hasn't been all that interested in chapter books. I would occasionlly try to point out a chapter book to her here and there, but she wanted nothing to do with them so I just left it alone. Well, wouldn't you know the books that finally hooked her in were chapter books that I had saved from my childhood--Chocolate Fever and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Shelby adores these two books, and we're now reading the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Derek apparently watched the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory move a lot growing up, and he had the best time introducing Shelby to it after we read the book! It's so fun to see your kids experience the things you loved as a child!

2."Mama, can you back downstairs now?"
I haven't 100% decided if this should be included in my "favorites" list or not, but here we go! This house had an extra bedroom in the floorplan, so we made into a little playroom for the girls when we moved in last summer. However, it never really got used all that much b/c the girls spent most of their time playing downstairs in the living room. It was just easier to keep them close to me (which is where they wanted to be anyways), so I could get up and switch out the laundry or unload dishes while they played and then I could quickly come back to join them. We really just used the playroom as a change of scenery sometimes. Well, fast-forward to this summer...and the playroom is like their little oasis. We suddenly went from me trying to entertain whiny kids while I put groceries away to them disappearing upstairs while I get to put groceries away & organize my pantry in peace...WHAT?! In the past couple of weeks, the girls have just randomly been disappearing upstairs to play together for longer & longer blocks of times without needing me to jump in and referee every two minutes. It's the strangest feeling in the world to just be in my kitchen alone and the girls be completely content without me. Yesterday the girls again disappeared upstairs while I was cleaning up from lunch. When I got upstairs to join them, Hadley greeted me with this: "What are you doin' here?" Quickly followed by this from Shelby: "Mama, can you go back downstairs now?" WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING?! I went downstairs and truly didn't know if I should cry or jump up and down in celebration for their independence?! Either way, this is what these two look like in their element--they live to dress up and play in their little kitchen!

1. {THIS} article: Cargo Shorts for the Win!
This article was written just for Derek, seriously! I love it so, so much!


Happy Friday, Everyone!! :)