I’ve learned to really, really appreciate a good, quiet, lazy weekend, and because staying home is a lot easier than running around with a baby, we’ve had a lot of them the last year. Not complaining!
But this weekend. This weekend was not quiet, and it was awesome.
I started off Friday morning with a bang when a whole gaggle of mommas and their babes showed up one after the next for a MOPS playdate, a.k.a. some much-needed social times for us and a ton of play time for the littles. I got so excited every time the doorbell rang and a new mama showed up with her babes. I offered to provide a baked potato bar even though I’d never organized one before, but it ended up working out so well!
I meant to take a picture of the whole spread, but I didn’t remember to snap one until everyone had already served themselves. Oh well!
Considering how easy and inexpensive it was to throw everything together, I’ll definitely do a potato bar again when entertaining!
Thanks to some sweet mommas who stayed back to help me clean up, I was able to kick my feet up for a couple hours once they left and Hadley napped.
Later that night, the three of us headed over to some new friends’ home for a homemade Italian dinner. We had the best time! They were so patient as Hadley explored every inch of their living room and terrorized/loved on their boxer, her new BFF. Shanna had already beautifully decorated for Christmas, and Hadley thought her Christmas tree was the best. thing. ever. We definitely learned that we’re going to have to keep our ornaments on the top half of the tree this year!
After dinner, Jamie offered to take care of Hadley’s bath and putting her to bed so that I could go hang at my sister’s house for a couple hours. Between her work schedule and our Thanksgiving schedules, we’re going to have over a two week stretch without any real hang-out time, so we were glad to have some “chill time” together. Knowing that they’re moving in a couple months is good motivation to soak up every second together that we can!
Saturday. How do I talk about Saturday without writing a novel? It was quite the day!
We woke up bouncing off the walls with excitement to pack up quickly and hit the road. Some of our best friends from Fort Campbell, Jon & Hannah, were driving up from Fort Leonard Wood to meet us in Kansas City at 11:30 to kick off a little reunion weekend together before they move to Hawaii in two weeks. We hadn’t seen them since mid-March, so we were pumped!
After driving a few miles down the road, we noticed that our back left tire pressure was really low, so Jamie pulled over and noticed a nail. Awesome. After calling a few places to see when they could get us in, we found a local place that said they get us in immediately. Fist bump. So instead of switching our luggage and Hadley’s car seat to Jamie’s truck, we drove to the tire repair shop and crossed our fingers that it would be a quick fix. Funny joke.
Apparently patching a tire hole is not quick, so Jamie, Hadley, Teddy (!!!!), and I all waited in the dirtiest waiting area (and I mean dirty!) for over two hours while we watched the minutes continue to go by and see our plans with the Wilsons change. Of course they were completely understanding of our car trouble, but we were still bummed to be losing time with our friends.
Entertaining a curious toddler who wanted to touch everything was seriously a blast too. Baby selfies were shamelessly a go-to when she wouldn’t sit still! Seriously though, she was so well behaved considering she was totally missing her nap time. The mechanic walked back in with our keys around noon, and I almost hugged him. Onward!
Since our lunch plans with the Wilsons were up in smoke, we grabbed some drive-thru Chickfila instead and hit the road. I tried to feed Hadley some lunch in the back seat, but all she wanted to do was sleep. Me too, girl.
Then I spilled Chickfila sauce on my pants and almost screamed. Okay I screamed. I finally snapped out of my tire-induced funk as soon as “The Real Slim Shady” came on the radio, and Jamie and I jammed to XM radio’s Y2K station the whole way to KC.
Once we got to KC, we dropped off Hadley with Jamie’s parents who were so excited to babysit her for the weekend! We knew she was in good hands, so we gave our babe some kisses and flew up to finally meet the Wilsons in downtown. Our reunion was sweet! We immediately picked up where we left off and spent the entire afternoon walking around town, drinking yummy hot drinks, eating treats from the City Market, and talking for hours and hours.
For the night, we parked it over at Tannin’s Wine Bar and sipped wine (obviously) and ate appetizers until almost midnight.
We used the new taxi service Uber to get home, and I could do a whole post on that experience alone. It was kind of a disaster, a very, very hilarious disaster. I’m not sure we’ll be “uber-ing” any time soon!
We ended the night around a bonfire at Hannah’s best friend Colby’s incredible apartment and called it a night.
On Sunday, we slept in until nine. BIG, BIG DEAL! Jamie and I haven’t done that in a good, long while. After throwing some clothes on, we all ran down to a fun breakfast place before taking a little walk to the river.
Since Hannah and Jon didn’t get to see Hadley on Saturday because of our plan change-up, they drove 50 miles round-trip to Jamie’s parent’s place in Lenexa to see her. We were so touched! She lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw Hannah, and she loved showing her and Jon all of the fun dog toys around the house. 😉
We finally said our “see ya laters” and wished them well on their travels to Hawaii. We can’t wait to hopefully visit them later next year.
Later, Jamie and I took advantage of the free babysitting and decided to run around for a couple more hours to do some Christmas shopping and have a late lunch at Tom + Chee, a restaurant we’d seen on Shark Tank a couple years ago and couldn’t wait to try. It was, in fact, everything we dreamed it would be. Just go.
aaaaand that’s it! Sorry for the novel! In hindsight maybe there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that made this weekend so great, but I think just the combination of constant good company made the last few days exceptional.
I hope you had a fun weekend too and are prepping for some good eats in a few days!
Hi! I’m Erica, and I absolutely adore sharing my life on this website with you! I come here almost daily to blab about all of the things related to being a regular wife and mother in today’s ever-evolving society. I share about our new home, what’s on our kitchen table, what we’re hanging in our closets, where we’re traveling to next, my crazy 5 a.m. work outs, how I make time for girlfriends, our faith, and much more. We always have a lot of balls in the air and somewhat thrive on the chaos. I believe in the power of story-telling as a form of inspiration and entertainment, so I’m here to do both! I was born and raised in north Alabama and recently re-planted roots here again after my husband transitioned out of the Army (he is now in the Reserve and it’s going so well!) I’m a super proud mom to three little girls (ages 7, 4, and 1) who seem to be the stars of the show around here (for good reason – they’re pretty great!) I’m so glad you found me and are here reading! I hope we can get to know each other here on the blog as well as Facebook and/or Instagram. xoxo