A Balanced, Enjoyable Weekend

I remember piddling around the kitchen with Jamie Friday morning as we both got ready for the day and discussed our shared enthusiasm for the quiet weekend coming up. Between traveling, his drill schedule, and other various commitments, we hadn’t had a weekend to lay low at home together in a hot minute (at least it felt that way), so we were pretty pumped for a couple days with very few commitments.

But somehow, per our usual, we filled up our weekend quickly but with all really, really great things: a little bit of family time, a little social time, a little tidying up in and around the home, and a whole lot of time outdoors to enjoy the warm sunshine. Hallelujah.

We kicked off Friday afternoon by making a minor purchase: a used (but still so pretty!) Chrysler Pacifica minivan. Whoop!

We’d been working with a close friend of ours to find the right vehicle, and we found this one right before we left for Grand Cayman. Friday afternoon looked like a good time to head to the dealership to lock her down, so my mom came to play with the girls around 3 p.m. while Jamie and I signed a zillion documents at the dealership, making this van our own for hopefully the next 10ish years. We’d love that!

When we were leaving the dealership, we thought it was funny that our old car (my beloved Jeep) and our new minivan were nose to nose. That crimson Jeep had been my dream car since I was 15 years old, and waiting until I was 25 to buy it myself was worth the wait.

We gave her a good run, but we are both pretty excited to move on to the simplicity of minivan life with our trio of little women.

After we left the dealership, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at The Cuban Cafe with our friends Jenna and Cody (the ones who helped us out with the car), which was a super fun, spontaneous double date. Jenna actually sat with me the entire three hours while we were getting the car, which made all of the boring paperwork much more enjoyable. 🙂 Local friends, go see the Brady family at University Kia and tell them Cody Brady’s friend sent you. 🙂 They sell way more than Kias and are so helpful and reasonable!

We were out the door on Saturday by 8:30 for Hadley’s first soccer jamboree! Any excuse for us to bring Sadie’s pink fold-out chair makes her SO happy. And she’s still wearing these glasses 24/7. Oy.

Two of my girlfriends also have daughters playing soccer, and though I know them from separate places, it turns out that they know each other anyway! We had a ball talking nonstop for an hour (our husbands too!) while our girls kicked some serious booty out on the field. It’s fun to watch Hadley turn into a little athlete instead of just a kid running around aimlessly on the field. I love watching her grow.

After soccer, we ran over to Cabela’s to get some more pellets for Jamie’s smoker. The girls looooove this store because of the faux animals, waterfall, and how “it smells like cookies!” (a.k.a. roasted nuts), so they were happy when we pulled up.

One more stop after Cabela’s: Walmart for food to grill that night, a gift for a birthday party we were going to that afternoon, and then two spontaneous ferns. The weather was nice, and I figured I’d go ahead and grab them so that my annual April flower haul isn’t so huge!

After scarfing down lunch at home, the girls laid down to watch a movie while Jamie and I started straightening up the house and cleaning the back porch furniture. We were prepping for a spontaneous cookout with some neighbors, but were also looking forward to a last-minute neighborhood hang. My girlfriend and I decided to turn the dessert portion of our cookout into a spontaneous neighborhood event since the weather was going to be so great (70 degree high and cloudless), so I posted the following message on our neighborhood Facebook page Friday afternoon and hoped we would have some participation on Saturday.

So we went to a dear friend’s son’s first birthday party (Jamie stayed back at home to prep food), grilled out with friends + my mom for dinner (my dad was flying back from Germany), and then moved to the driveway around 6pm, hoping that some neighbors would roll in.

Sure enough, we ended up having about a dozen families stop by and hang with us until close to 9! There are probably only 40 houses in the neighborhood right now, so we were pleased! There were around 20 young kids who were having a ball with chalk, and we adults enjoyed some good hang time too. Win win for the whole fam. Safe to say that our kids passed out hard that night.

Sunday was well spent. We both had to serve in various capacities that morning, so we spent a handful of hours up there before coming home and eating lunch. Both girls had a solid quiet time that afternoon while Jamie worked outside all afternoon doing the first mow of the season (getting off the dead grass), washing his car, etc. I worked around the house finally putting away the last of the laundry from vacation, working on blog stuff, cleaning out the office/future nursery, etc. We ate leftovers from Saturday’s cookout for dinner and honestly were all in bed by 8:15.

My belly is really popping now, so people have been asking me a lot how I’ve been feeling. Right now my energy is sky high and I feel great, but I also know that I’m just two weeks from my last trimester, and that it’s also about to get really warm really fast too! So I am totally embracing the “cherry” trimester (especially after such a difficult first trimester) while it lasts before I turn into a whale for the summer. 😉 Hence my willingness to embrace a suddenly full but great weekend with others.

Come on, July! We are all starting to get very excited for you!

Let’s chat!

If you live in an active neighborhood, what are some of your favorite ways to get everyone together?