A Fast-Paced Celebratory Weekend

This past weekend was a good one – the type that makes your heart hurt a little bit once it’s over because you wish that days like these were the norm. But you know what? If they were the norm, would we appreciate them as much? Because it’s so true that you always want what you sometimes can’t have. Regardless, I’m immensely grateful for a super sweet several days.

Jamie left Friday afternoon to drive up to St. Louis to meet his dad to watch a Cardinals game and have a little father/son weekend, so the girls and I reverted back to our old ways and made do without him. 😉 My brother David was driving up from Birmingham to spend the weekend with our family, so on Friday afternoon I had everybody come over to our neighborhood pool to kick off a celebratory weekend.

We had the pool to ourselves since our neighborhood is still so underdeveloped, which was so awesome. I’d picked up a ton of food at Kroger ahead of time, so we all chowed down and swam for around three hours. It was a ridiculously gorgeous night, and having everyone together was simply wonderful.

I obviously don’t have many pictures because we were barely out of the pool. The girls are doing so well (Hadley is swimming 100% on her own), and Jenn’s kids were having a heyday swimming around with all of us. My dad joining us a little too late to swim (he had to work extra since he flew back with Jenn to Germany), but we still celebrated him with a delicious cake for dessert. We love any excuse to celebrate with cookie cake!

On Saturday morning, Hadley had her first t-ball game! I was running around like a nut getting ready to throw my best friend Amberlee a Sip-N-See, but my mom was a saint and came over bright and early to grab the girls to take Hadley to her game. She even took Teddy back to her house so that he wasn’t barking like a nut job during the shower. 😉 My good friend’s daughter Emerson is on Hadley’s team, and she took so many pics and videos for me without me asking! I love her, and I love that our girls are becoming such good friends like their mamas. <3

Meanwhile, we sipped mimosas and held Carson and mingled with lots of Amberlee’s loved ones who popped in to hug her and see her babe. Such a sweet morning!

The girls passed out cold during nap time, which gave me time to clean up the house and rest my feet a bit before we headed out for a late afternoon adventure to Chuck E. Cheese! Ha! We asked our dad a few days prior where he wanted to celebrate Fathers Day on Saturday considering it would be the first time in five years that he had all of his kids (plus all of his grandkids) together, and he said Chuck E. Cheese.

Oooookay! Do you remember when we went there for his birthday in March? He loves pizza, he loves to see the kids play, and he loves to have everyone together.

We loaded up game cards, grabbed food, and had two hours of complete fun. Our local Chuck E. Cheese is very clean with excellent games and rides, which makes for a very comfortable, fun family experience. My expectations were very low back in March when my dad first said he wanted to go there (I was a little grossed out at the idea), but I was proven wrong. It’s a cute place!

Would you believe this is the best picture we got of the four grandkids throughout our whole three weeks together? Trying to get four young kids to take a “good” picture together is 100% impossible, so we gave up early on during Jenn’s visit, haha.

Jenn, the kids, and my dad flew out around lunch time Sunday, so the girls and I said our goodbyes on Saturday night. It was hard, so we made them super fast because the goodbyes are so dang painful. Jenn and her family are doing something most people never get to do, which is live in a foreign country, see the world, and experience some incredible things, but dang… we miss them like you wouldn’t believe. They have one more year over there, so I hope they live it up and do a zillion amazing things, and then hurry back to the states so that we can resume being together a bit more often. Her kids have my heart!

Sunday was a fun day. 🙂 We skipped out on visiting a new church since Jamie was out of town, so I lathered up the girls in sunscreen and we spent the morning outside. They played in the hose while I mowed the grass (trying to be a good wife on Father’s Day, haha!) and cleaned up the backyard a bit. The worst part about a new house with new sod is that the dead grass breeds for month, so we’re constantly having to blow it off the back porch. Such a mess.

Anyway! After a morning that was actually really enjoyable outside with the girls, my mom and David came over to eat lunch and swim with us for a couple hours.

They left around 1 p.m., Jamie got home around 2, and then we spent the afternoon lounging and hanging as a fam. They played t-ball out back, I cooked a pretty simple dinner, we ate out back, and then called it a night early. The girls had been wound up all day and we were toast by 6 p.m. We put on The Greatest Showman to get us until bathtime at 6:45 p.m., and they crashed pretty quickly afterwards.

Jamie and I ended up the night rocking out front like the old married couple we are, sipping wine (me)/beer (him) and catching up on our weekends in peace (a.k.a. without two kids screaming for our attention).

Such a good weekend!

Oh, hey!

I was about to sign off this post and remembered something I’ve been meaning to share for about a week now! A reader emailed me to let me know about this super awesome giveaway that I’m not sure how people would find out about otherwise?!

Brightly and Melissa & Doug have teamed up to offer your family the chance to win the ultimate summer fun pack. Inspire your kids to read all summer long with 50 brand-new books handpicked for them, then encourage imagination-based playtime with $1,000 worth of Melissa & Doug toys!

Um, heck yes! I’ve entered for sure. You should too! Here’s an affiliate link to do so. Worth a shot, right??? It would be very remiss of me not to share something like this! Thanks for sharing with me, Jacqui!

See y’all tomorrow!! xo