Most of the pictures in this post are a few weeks old, but I wanted to post them before they got lost in the abyss that is the camera roll on my phone. ;) Life lately has been good, just a little bit busier than usual! I have started serving in the 3-5 year old class at our church a few Sundays a month & I joined a ladies' Bible study that meets one evening a week. Derek & I are also hosting a parenting group at our church on Wednesday evenings, which has pushed us out of our comfort zones a bit to say the least..but it's been great so far! We actually have two fellow Air Force couples in our group with young kids that just moved to San Antonio recently, so it's been fun to connect with them! And on the homefront, we have been meeting with different companies to get our sprinkler system repaired after all of the damage caused by the pool excavation/construction, and Derek has turned our garage into a little woodshop for himself! He is hard at work building us a new dining room table & benches. I can't wait to see how it all comes together! We have a few fun visitors lined up in March, so hopefully we'll be able to get a lot knocked out before then! :)
We had a chilly Saturday a few weeks ago, and the girls had the best time observing the fire and trying to realistically illustrate it. Then when we baked cookies, they were observing again and trying to illustrate the different stages of the baking process. They had the best time!
And last but not last, a quick look at what I've been reading lately! I absolutely loved all six of these books and would definitely recommend them!
We went to Houston over Presidents Day Weekend to attend a Family Field Trip with Shelby's gifted program. We drove down Friday evening after school & work--it was a late night for us! Bright & early on Saturday morning we joined Shelby's classmates & their families on a private NASA tour & then on Sunday we went to the zoo on our own before heading home. It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun! And since Brady had only been in underwear for about two weeks leading up to this trip, that was about all we could handle! ;) But he did AWESOME!!
First up is Hadley making herself at home in the hotel. Our kids love traveling & staying in hotels, but Hadley takes her packing for these trips VERY seriously! ;) As soon as we got checked into our room, Hadley immediately set to work getting her nightstand organized.
On Saturday evening after we finished up at NASA, we found a fun little park to burn some energy and then did what the kids wanted most for dinner & dessert--Panera & then ice cream! :)
On our way home from Houston, we randomly decided to stop off at Steak N Shake for a late lunch. Almost as soon as we pulled off the highway, I remembered we ate lunch at that very same Steak N Shake when we were making the trek from Biloxi to San Antonio for our move five years prior. How crazy is that?! I even remembered the exact picture I took of Hadley that day, so I tried to recreate the image with her. ;) Our table definitely looks a little different five years later!
A couple weeks ago, on the very morning I was registering Brady for preschool, Google randomly created this little video montage of him. Cue the tears! I mean, the timing was just uncanny!
I still can't get over the fact that this video just randomly popped up hours before signing him up for preschool. I was having all these thoughts about is he too little for preschool {even though I know he's not, and there's still another 8 months to go before he begins}, and this video was just such a stark reminder of how quickly it goes. It's also worth mentioning that when I showed this video to Brady, he was so confused watching it and kept asking me whose house we were at in the video. He recognized all the people and our furniture in the video, but a lot of the video clips were from our house in Las Vegas which was so hard for him to understand.
Speaking of Brady, he randomly woke up a few mornings in a row with a dry diaper and then just started going potty on a dime! We were 100% unprepared and had no underwear for him at all! We quickly pulled out the girls' old princess potty chair and potty seats, and we were good to go! I had literally just said to Derek days prior to this that I had no idea how we were ever going to get Brady potty trained before preschool began b/c he's just so two. The girls didn't potty train until about 3, but with the way their birthdays fell they were much older starting preschool so that was never an issue. With Brady's July birthday, it's a completely different situation. I never in a million years would have thought we'd be potty training him right now, but he was clearly ready. Despite some two year old defiance at times, it has gone far better than I ever could have imagined! We are just so proud of him! {And I'm proud of me too if I'm being honest! ;) Potty training is no joke!}
Brady is the absolute sweetest, but he's also the absolute worst. ;) He's definitely two through & through! As hard as my days are with him sometimes, there's no place else I'd rather be. It's just so crazy to think that the girls' school year will be wrapping up in less than 4 months and then that will be the end of my days with just Brady home with me all day, every day. In the fall, he will start preschool two mornings a week at Marvelously Made, which is where Shelby went to school when we lived in San Antonio previously for fellowship. With all of our moves over the past few years, we've been a part of multiple schools and we have truly loved them all. But Marvelously Made is one of a kind, and I am just so tickled that we get to be a part of it again in this season of our life. And I am just beside myself that for the very first time in our kids' school ages, the youngest is in school so I will actually get to volunteer on a regular basis and feel more plugged in to their schools! I will of course be sad that this chapter is closing, but I'm so genuinely excited for what lies ahead!
It's been a while since I've done a Top Five Friday, but I thought I'd do a little birthday edition since I turned 35 earlier this week--eek!
5. Date Night!
I wanted to celebrate my birthday at home with the kids on my actual birthday, so we scheduled a sitter for the evening of the 30th. We went to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner {hooray for gift cards & Slices of Joy!} and had planned to go to Top Golf afterward. Top Golf randomly ended up being closed, so we went bowling at Main Event and had the best time!!
4. Timehop Birthday Memories
When I checked my Timehop memories for the day..looky what we were doing 13 years ago to celebrate my birthday in good ole Athens--bowling!!! We had a big group of friends go out to dinner at Aqua Linda and then go bowling together! Such fun memories! Timehop is the best!!
3. Dress-Up Fun!
This is how Hadley and Brady greeted their babysitter before we headed out for our date night! :) They had the most fun, energetic sitter ever, so they had a blast while we were gone!
2. Birthday Cupcakes
Brady was a big fan of my birthday cupcakes, and every time we would sit down to eat {it didn't matter if it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner!} he was sure to ask for a cupcake even if he knew the answer would be "no." And whenever he did get a cupcake, he always thought he had to sing "Happy Birthday" to me again b/c that's what happened the first time he got one of the cupcakes. ;) Two is relentless and exhausting, but it sure is cute sometimes!
The pictures below would depict how I would find Brady every single time we walked into the kitchen. ;)
1. Birthday Love!
I got so many texts, phone calls, and fun surprises in the mail on my birthday, which was such a treat & made me feel so loved. But weekday birthdays as a stay-at-home don't typically feel very birthday-ish..especially when you live far away from all of your people. I mean I don't know about you, but walking your 2nd grader & Kindergartener to their classrooms with a 2 year old literally kicking and screaming in your arms doesn't exactly scream birthday to me. {Thanks, Brady!} But thanks to my sister posting about my birthday on Facebook, my sweet friend who typically joins us for storytime on Tuesday mornings {which just so happened to be the day of my birthday} realized it was my birthday and somehow scrounged up the time to put together a little birthday surprise for me at the library..which made my regular Tuesday feel much more birthday-ish! What a blessing to have so many people love me both near & far!
