New Site Design + a Slice of Life: July 21st, 2017

Did you just double check to make sure you’re at the right site!? It looks a little different today!

What you see is the culmination of many months worth of researching exactly how I wanted my site to look and operate. I’ve known for over a year that Fran from Freeborboleta would be my girl who could get inside my head and make my visions a reality, but I needed my visions to become a bit more clear before I invested in this kind of change.

I hope you like the fresh new design and that navigating will be a bit easier for you as the reader. If you’d like to follow along on your favorite social media channel, those buttons are easily found at the top, along with a search bar and email sign up. (I’d love your help getting to 10k on Facebook and 2k on Instagram – we’re so close!) There’s also BlogLovin too, which is my personal favorite way to easily keep up with my favorite blogs. Also, have you ever explored the categories right below the logo? If you’re new around here, I hope you’ll play around and snoop through older content. 🙂

Now, on with regular programming! I have a handful of happy pictures from the last couple weeks that I’d love to show you! I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and stay cool! (We’re planning to stain our deck this weekend if we don’t melt from the 105-degree temperature first!)

I shared this picture of Sadie and her “twin” (my dad) on my IG stories recently, and every time I see it, I smile. Everyone says Sadie looks just like him, and I know it makes him proud. My MIL is so cute and always says “Oh hi Ron Olsen!” to Sadie. Genetics are such a funny thing! It’s crazy that Hadley and Sadie come from the same parents but look so different. Hadley looks much more like Jamie and his side of the family and Sadie looks more like me.

Speaking of my dad, he made all of us roar with laughter last week. He came home from work last week asking if anyone noticed anything different about the family portrait on the wall (circa November 2014). We all got up to look at it a little closer and fell apart laughing! He’d cut out pictures of Sadie and Carly (my niece) from their most recent Christmas card and taped it onto the picture the night before. Our whole family likely won’t be together for another year or two since my sister’s family lives in Germany, so Dad figured this is as good as it’ll get for now. Ha! PS: You can see more pictures from that spontaneous snowy photo session here. Sweet memories!

Another picture of my dad and Sadie soaking up time together last week before he went to work. They adore each other.

Last week while I was at Ashley’s bridal luncheon, my mom took the girls to , a museum in downtown Huntsville. My mom had no idea beforehand that the current theme revolved around dogs, and she said Hadley about flipped her lid when they walked in and saw dozens of stuffed dogs. When she texted me these pictures, my heart about exploded. I knew my girl was in Heaven!

They even met Rubble from Paw Patrol! How adorable.

Last week we had dinner with our friends Amy and Cole, and we caught Hadley plopped on the floor reading a book to their one year old son, Ben. It melted my heart! I’d never seen her do that before with Sadie, but since then she’s done it a couple of times. So sweet! Hadley can be so feisty at times, but she is seriously the sweetest kid.

I love going home to Alabama and spending time with my long-time best friends (though it always feels like there’s sadly never enough time to see everyone I want to). Amberlee and Emily were in the bridal party too, so we got to spend much-needed time together. Jamie has gotten to be such good friends with my friends’ husbands, so he always enjoys himself just as much. While we were at the bridal luncheon, he and Amberlee’s husband spent their morning at the shooting range. Ha!

When you get home from a big trip, do you unpack everything right away or relax for a bit before diving in? Jamie and I are totally those crazy people that pull into the garage and immediately unload and unpack as much as we can. After being away for two weeks, you can imagine that our car was a hot mess after traveling with two small kids in tow. We even took the car seats out to deep clean those, something we haven’t done in probably eight or nine months. So many unidentifiable crumbs in Hadley’s seat. Gross. Jamie is crazy about keeping our cars clean, so he did a nice little detail when we got back. Love him for it because deep cleaning the car is not my favorite thing (nor do I really have time!)

Oh, my poor Sadie and her thick feet. She’s 15 months old and still only wears shoes half the time. It’s not that they’re wide; they’re just so puffy on top. It makes finding shoes super super super difficult. I can’t wait for fall because I think her mocs will be perfect until her foot thins out a bit. I snagged these Mini Melissa’s (a brand we adore) on Prime Day, and so far they’re the best-fitting shoe she’s worn in months. The struggle is real!

Two of Hadley’s new favorite things: Her new book light from my mom and this 48-piece puzzle she picked out from Tuesday Morning. I think it’s the coolest thing in the world to see your kid master new things. Parenting is so wild, but standing around the table with Jamie cheering for her as she figured out piece after piece was so fun for both of us.

Another one of Hadley’s obsessions this week: Magna-Tiles! Remember a few weeks ago how I talked about our system of rotating toys? She hadn’t played with her Magna-Tiles in about a month, so we put them up. Sure enough she recently started asking for them again, so we grabbed them from the basement and gave them to her. Now she’s been playing with them nonstop for four days! I’m talking sun up to sun down… obsessed!

Wanting to end with a couple pictures of my Sadie girl. She is so loud and clingy and independent all at the same time, and she makes me laugh all day long. Sadie is downright hilarious and totally herself.

She is so different from Hadley in a million ways, and it blows my mind to see her unique personality reveal itself more and more every day. She eggs Jamie, Hadley, and me on constantly, and her favorite thing in the entire world is to make us laugh (especially Hadley). She has been giving me a real run for my money this week, reminding me how it’s impossible to reason with a one year old and how hard toddlers can be to raise sometimes. My prayer has been for patience and the ability to just breathe and make it until Jamie walks in the door. 😉

Let’s chat!

1. How are your kids different from each other? Right now it seems we have one super sweet kid and one rebellious comedian. 🙂
2. Do you still keep up with your childhood friends? How do you prioritize spending time together?
3. What do you think of the new blog design?! 🙂