An Enjoyable Weekend With Friends

This past weekend was the kind that left me feeling grateful and immensely happy by the end of it. Despite a fever for Sadie, a tornado warning in the middle of a baby shower, and Jamie drilling with the Reserve both Saturday and Sunday, it was still just the absolute sweetest few days.

On Friday night we beat the rain and met up with a friend/photographer to quickly shoot some pictures for an upcoming blog post reviewing our minivan (if that doesn’t have MOM BLOG written all over it, LOL). 😉 I just adore Holly and am so happy to work with her a bunch this year to shoot various posts.

This picture of Jillian is one of my favorites!

We headed home about 4:30 as the rain started to dump. The downpour couldn’t damper our moods though because our dear friends the Browns were en route to hang with us for evening.

We ate some store-bought pizza and quick salad I’d tossed together, watched the kids have a ball together, and just laughed until we cried all while knocking out a few things that needed to get done for the next morning’s baby shower. By 9:30, the only thing the kids had energy to do was snuggle up together and browse a dessert cookbook. 😉

By 9 a.m. the next morning, Erin and Campbell were back! Jamie had left earlier than morning for drill and I’d dropped off Sadie, Jillian, and Teddy at my parent’s house as soon as we woke up.

The shower was for our sweet friend Jenna who is due with her first baby next month, so we were busy knocking things out last-minute and getting ready to receive the guests. 

I was a bit of a stressball though all morning because the weather forecast was so daunting. The shower was supposed to start at 11 a.m., the exact time that a fierce storm was supposed to whip though. 

I worried that the shower was about to fall about, but thankfully almost every guest made it out. The storm also waited until close to 1 p.m. to come through, and though the winds and rain were fierce, it turned out to not be nearly as treacherous of a storm as anticipated. THANK. YOU. JESUS. 

Did you know that these balloon arches are so incredibly easy to make? I was helping my friend Erin do it, and she couldn’t believe what a cinch it is! All you need is this balloon machine, a big pack of balloons, and a roll with holes like this below. Hanging it is tricky though; You’ll need to use some ingenuity, but the final product is worth the head-scratching that’s required to hang it. 

Our dear friends Ellen and Michele also helped co-host, which was so helpful. We had a great couple hours showering Jenna before the majority of the guests hit the road. Isn’t this mama-to-be STUNNING?

Since the rain was still coming down pretty hard, Erin, Jenna, Ellen, and their kids hung around to help clean and then just hang and talk. By this time Sadie and Jillian were home (Jamie had picked them up from my parent’s), so the kids had a great time playing.

Resting in the living room with these women talking for a few hours was such a highlight. I spend a lot of time with these people, but it’s typically for some kind of specific reason or event, rarely just casually around a living room with no agenda. And it was AWESOME. Life-giving friends… that is what they are to me and to our whole family. 

After they left around 3 p.m., I grabbed a blanket and plopped my butt on the couch for the rest of the night. The house was clean, the laundry could wait until tomorrow, and the new Aladdin movie was calling our names. All five of us hung on the couch to watch about half of the movie until dinner time, which was basically just a bunch of stuff we re-heated from the shower. One of the best parts of hosting is all of the leftovers you have; Jamie likes this part. 😉

The next day we opted not to go to church since Sadie was running close to a 103 degree fever Saturday night. I loved Sunday morning though. Jillian had gotten up at 5:15 a.m., but I patted her little booty back to sleep. I then went back to sleep until Sadie crawled in bed with me at 7:15. A few minutes later, I heard the pitter patter of Hadley’s feet heading to my room as well. I had a girl in each arm in bed for a while until Jillian woke up (happy!) at 7:45. Easing into the day was so nice. Having three happy, rested kids first thing in the morning was a sure-fire way to start the day well. 

After hanging at home all day, Hadley and I got ourselves dressed and headed to meet some of our best friends Alyssa and Brinley for a Mommy/Daughter double date at Panera for dinner (Hadley’s choice!) We had a great time, said goodbye to them, and then headed straight for church. 

PS: Alyssa’s hair looked sooooo good at dinner! It was straight but silky and voluminous and just looked so good. She said that it was because she started using the Revlon blow dryer brush I’ve talked about a million times. Now is a good time to try it because it’s on major sale for only $35! I paid $50 for mine. 

The Sunday evening service was the conclusion to a week of prayer and fasting as well as an opportunity to be baptized. Hadley’s friend Campbell (aforementioned in this post) was being baptized, and Erin had asked her friends to come support her. We would not have missed it for anything! It was the best service, and watching Campbell publicly acknowledge her Christian faith and be baptized by her dad was THE BEST.

Hadley had a million questions about baptism when we got in the car that we talked about for the 15-minute ride home, and then right before we got home she asked if she could be baptized soon. I said “What does it mean to be baptized, Hadley?” Her response: “I don’t know.” Head smack. LOL. We’ve got some work to do and conversations to continue having. 😉

I crawled into bed quickly after getting home. I was tired but content. ‘Twas a great weekend filled with lots of things that make my life sweeter: friends, food, celebrations, lounge time, family, and Jesus. 

Let’s chat!

Do you have an easy way to hang balloon art?

How do you manage to sneak in one-on-one time with your children?