4th of July 2016

Oh hey there! Remember me? Yea, I'm the crazy mom-of-two who still can't seem to get her head on straight!  I'm hoping to get back into a swing with blogging at least somewhat regularly...but we all know I've said that before! We've been so busy and have been having so much fun, there's much to catch you all up on,  starting with this past Monday - the 4th of July! 

We've started a tradition with my family every year that's so much fun! We start the day on Lake Minnetonka cruising the lake and enjoying the sunshine {though this year was a tad cloudy}.

  

This year's boat highlights included my brother jumping off the moving pontoon while the rest of us acted panicked in an attempt to scare my mom...which was hilarious. And also, meeting up with one of my besties and her lil family for a bit.

Kenley, however, would say the highlights were all the snacks her yia yia brought her and feeding cheese to the fishes with her Auntie Nat.

  

After a great morning on the lake, we went home to regroup. My little family of four ALL slept for 3 hours which is unheard of! It was glorious and we all woke up in an awesome mood! That evening we went to the country club for fireworks and a super fun kid's festival they put on every year. Nolan was a champ and Kenley had a blast feeding the ponies, playing with bunnies in the petting zoo and getting her face painted. 

    

    

 It was another great fireworks show and even though Kenley was nervous about them at first ended up loving them {just has she has every year}. She had some pretty great commentary, my favorite being "ya know, fireworks kinda sound like toots." And Mr. Nolan was very unimpressed and fell asleep about halfway through them. 

It was a wonderful first holiday as a family four and I'm excited to introduce Nolan to more and more family traditions throughout his first year!

I hope you all enjoyed your long holiday weekends as well!

Holly Jolly

Hey, remember Christmas? Ya know that holiday that was A MONTH ago? Yeah, I'm just now recapping it because I am that awesome of a blogger. I contemplated just passing it by but I have some really cute photos of Kenley that I just can't resist sharing. Christmas around these parts, to be frank, is exhausting. We have 8 parents between the two of us so the movie Four Christmases is true life for us, except we like our families and actually had 7 different Christmases when you add in extended family. It's fun for us and important to us to see our families on or right around Christmas but it means a lot of running around, poor Kenley was so excited to open all of her presents but then didn't have time to play with anything because we'd have to pack up and move to the next one. OK, I shouldn't say poor Kenley, homegirl was spoiled. I just mean she didn't get to tear into every new toy and play with it, but I suppose we're teaching her patience.

Even though we were spent when it was over, this past holiday season was an awesome one. We had so many fun things planned and it was so magical with Kenley. This year she really understood it all and was so excited about every last thing. She even cried when we told her Ralph the Elf had to go home to the North Pole. The spirit of the holiday truly is revived with a little one, putting her to bed on Christmas Eve and waking up with her on Christmas morning was absolutely the highlight of my holiday. 

Along with your typical gift wrapping and cookie baking we also met Santa and decorated cookies, went on a real life reindeer sleigh ride, Kenley had her very first Christmas program at school where she spent more time making sure the other kids were performing than performing herself, spent lots of time with family and friends, enjoyed our friendly elf Ralph and got the best gift in the entire world...a baby brother! 

 

T'was a wonderful end to a wonderful year. It is so surreal to me that next Christmas we will have an 8 month old baby boy with us! 

Merry Christmas!

Hi friends. I am taking today and the rest of the week off from blogging so that I can catch up on work, get ready for Christmas and maybe even rest a bit. Oh, and of course celebrate the holiday with the ones I love most.

No matter what your religious beliefs or weekend's itinerary, I am sending warm wishes for a happy and healthy holiday weekend filled with love! 

I'll be back next week! 

Favorite Things Holiday Giveaway

Tis the season my friends! Hooray! I am teaming up with a couple of my all time favorite bloggers to give one of you lucky readers some holiday cheer! Erin, Pinky, Kayla and myself got together some of our favorite things to create one pretty-stinkin-awesome gift {if I do say so myself} that you can win!

From me, you won't be surprised to learn you'd be winning a super cute and festive holiday coffee mug, some reindeer nose chocolate candy and a Starbucks gift card.

From Erin, you'll get a super adorable notebook, fun colored pens and Post-It flags. That girl is after my own organizational heart!

From Pinky, you'll get a foxy {no seriously, that's the brand} pair of gold earrings {can I just keep these for myself?} and some festive lip gloss!

From Kayla, you'll get the new Adele CD! That is if I actually pack it up {that one may just get lost at my house}, super cute holiday socks and fun hair ties!

All you have to do is use this fancy little tool to earn your entries!!! We'll be announcing our winner this coming Monday the 7th, so don't delay, get your entries in ASAP!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Halloween '15

Halloween is my favorite holiday, though you'd never know it by how much I slacked this year! I watched maybe half of Hocus Pocus, I didn't decorate, we got pumpkins but never got around to carving them, and I think I had one Apple Cider in the month of October. #fail

However, I think Kenley's little lemon costume made up for all my slacking. She decided sometime in August that she wanted to be a lemon. We don't know why, don't know where it came from or how she got this idea. I personally have never seen a child dressed as a lemon, so I don't think she saw it somewhere. We thought maybe it was just a funny response to our "what do you want to dress up as" question, but nope, she stayed firm and committed to dressing as a lemon. And, so, I scoured the internet and found ONE toddler lemon costume. 

I will not disclose how much I paid for this costume but I will say that it was worth every penny, plus she was able to wear it three other times outside of Halloween. So I consider this costume my one Halloween success. 

I also dressed up, for work at the coffee shop on Friday morning. I was all excited about my Poison Ivy costume and then no one knew what I was. I shouldn't say no one, because there were people who got it but one customer asked if I was leprechaun! 

For Halloween, Kenley and I met up with friends for a night of fun and trick-or-treating {J was holding down the fort at the Gopher game for me}. We had so much fun {despite the horrific Gopher loss}, however, my child needs a lesson on trick-or-treating before next year. She was so dang polite she took ONE piece from each house and nothing more and didn't get her mother a single Reese's Peanut Butter cup. The little lemon had the time of her life and was up partying until 11:30pm - so despite the small candy haul and major lack of preparation on my part, it was a great Halloween! 

Our Thanksgiving {2014}

A few months back, I had the brilliant idea to run a Thanksgiving 5k. At the time it seemed like a great way to start the holiday off on a healthy foot but as Thanksgiving grew closer and closer it became apparent that thanks to unpredictable Minnesota weather, running a 5k was in fact one of the dumber things I've decided to do. ZERO degrees, people. I ran a 5k in ZERO degrees. But somehow, the weather worked to my advantage {still trying to figure out how} because I finished with my best time ever by 5 whole minutes!!!! A major thank you to my step-dad who picked me up before the sun came up, hung out in the cold and walked the 5k, had he not I was definitely going to bail and just run on the treadmill in the toasty warm gym.

After the race, we headed to my mom's for brunch. It's become a Thanksgiving tradition and I love it because it allows us to pack in time with as much family as possible. We watched football, drank champagne and snacked on bacon {among other things, but the bacon is the highlight}.

From there we were off to Jason's Aunt & Uncles on his dad's side. He has a HUGE family, but this years group was smaller which was actually really nice because we got to spend some quality time with everyone there. Kenley made a new bestie in her cousin Erin who helped her looked for "meow meows" and loved spending time with her Great-Grandma, she wasn't so sure of Great Uncle Brent though!

Our last stop was my dad's house where we ate, played games {I remain the reigning Clue champion}, watched movies, ate, drank, napped and ate some more.

It was a great Thanksgiving....now bring on Christmas!