Valentine's Day 2017

We had a fun week celebrating Valentine's Day! Nathan had a great party at school with his friends the Friday before Valentine's Day

He has the sweetest friends in his class this year.

We didn't do much as a family on Valentine's Day since it was a school day and a church night. I tried to be a little festive at breakfast and we had heart shaped pancakes for dinner.

The kids were ready for a fun day at school!

Elisabeth and Samuel had Valentine's parties at school. They both got to exchange Valentines and have an ice cream sundae party. One of my favorite parts was Elisabeth going to her party. She doesn't go to school on Wednesdays but she got to go to her party, and when I dropped her off, all these little girls just flocked to her and starting yelling her name and hugging her. It was so sweet. I had no idea she was Miss Popular in her class. She said they were hugging her because it was love day, ha! She talks about the friends in her class a lot. Girl friendships are so different than boy friendships. She actually knows all their names, ha!

Samuel had fun at his party too. He was the very last one finished eating his ice cream. He enjoyed every last drop of it, ha! He's thriving in Pre-K this year. He loves his friends and his teachers and has learned SO much! Pre-K is such a fun year!

We had our family Valentine's celebration a day late. Two years ago, I made a little treasure hunt for the kids to find their Valentine surprises and it has become a fun tradition. Nathan still remembers the clues from last year's treasure hunt, and they all have been talking about the treasure hunt for weeks. I felt some pressure to make it a good one!

We also have a tradition of fondue for dinner (or yellow dip as the kids call it). It's one of all of our favorite meals and we only have it on special occasions. At dinner we all shared about what we love about everyone in our family.

As soon as dinner was finished the kids were ready for their treasure hunt!

VIDEOS

It was so much fun to watch them work together to try and figure it all out.

After they found their treasures we had dessert fondue

SO MUCH SUGAR

I laughed at this picture of Samuel because he is hard to please! But apparently chocolate is his love language. I cut his sandwich in the shape of a heart on Valentine's Day and his teacher told me he cried because it wasn't how I usually cut it. And then on Thursday I cleaned up his room for him, and he got mad at me, because he wanted to clean it up by himself. Umph. So I was glad at least chocolate made him happy.

I'm loving these fun family traditions and I love those five people so so much!

A Day in the LIfe- Tuesday

So I had planned to do a Day in the Life post on Tuesday, just to remember a typical Tuesday this year, and it turned out to be a very different Tuesday evening, but since I had already taken a few pictures and planned it in my head, I'm going to go ahead and do it. It was a pretty typical Tuesday until after dinner.

6:00am- Katherine wakes up. I feed her and she goes back to sleep

6:30- I get up, shower, and get ready for the day

7:15- the kids are all awake and downstairs. I make breakfast for them- Nathan has yogurt and granola bars, Samuel has cereal, and Elisabeth has toast with cheese and cut into a heart. They watch their kindles while they eat.

7:30- I feed Katherine, get her dressed and pack my bag and diaper bag for the day and I make and eat my breakfast

7:50- the kids get going for the day with chores, getting dressed, etc.

8:20- the kids are ready for the day, so I let Nathan play Minecraft until it's time to leave for school. He's been obsessed with that game lately!

8:40- I have my MOMS meeting at church this Tuesday, so we have to leave about 15 minutes earlier than other days. We get loaded up and in the car.

8:45- I drop off Nathan at school and head to the church

9:00- We make it to the church and head upstairs for the meeting. I'm in charge of the registration desk where moms check in and pay. The kids play hide and seek until I can sneak away and take them to their classes. (I forgot to take any pictures during the meeting)

11:30- MOMS is over. We stay and help clean up for a bit and make it home about 12:00. I make lunch for everyone. Samuel has bagel pizzas and Elisabeth has mac and cheese. I let them watch their kindles while they eat.

1:00- We go upstairs to play before nap. The kids play a game they got at Chick Fil A and Katherine  eats her shirt, ha! Katherine eats while we're upstairs playing too.

2:00- I put Elisabeth down for a nap. She gets up and plays in the bathroom sink before I put her back to bed and she falls asleep (with a wet shirt on, natural consequence for the win) about 2:30. Samuel plays with a bin of dried beans during nap time. I think he likes cleaning them up the most. I try and get a few things cleaned up during nap time, but I don't think I actually did much, ha!

3:45- I wake  up Elisabeth and change her to get ready for gymnastics. Nathan is planning to go home with a friend from school, so we have a few extra minutes to get ready, since we don't have to pick him up from school

4:00- We leave the house and head back to the church for gymnastics. I feed Katherine and actually read a little bit of a book while Samuel and Elisabeth are in their class.

5:00- Gymnastics is over. We head to pick up Nathan and then get home about 5:30. I make an easy dinner (grilled cheese, soup and grapes). Matt gets home just as we're starting to eat.

6:00- The kids ask for popsicles for dessert that they had made the day before.

6:15- the kids play together, I feed Katherine while watching Wheel of Fortune, and Matt finishes our taxes.

7:15- Bath time. Matt watches Katherine, while I bathe Samuel and Elisabeth and Nathan takes a shower downstairs.

This is where the night veers off course. Typically, the kids have kindle night on Tuesday nights where they get to watch a show or two in bed. So we would have finished bath time, brushed teeth, read books and then sent them to their rooms with their kindles for about 45 minutes. Then I usually clean up for a bit while Matt watches Katherine and then we watch a show together, I feed Katherine again and put her to bed and then we go to sleep. That's not what happened this Tuesday though. Samuel had been complaining that his tummy hurt for most of the evening, but he seemed to be acting/playing fine. After he got out of the bath though, he threw up all over me and him, ugh! So I  put him back in the bathtub and washed him again and did an extra load of laundry. He seemed to be feeling better so we went on with our evening, but as I was checking on him about 8:00 in his room he threw up again, ugh! So I brought him downstairs to sleep on our floor. He fell asleep watching a movie about 8:30, but woke up two more times throwing up. The rest of the evening was sort of a blur, taking care of him, doing laundry, and still getting Katherine to bed. Thankfully, he stopped throwing up about midnight, but I felt like I was up all night checking on him every time he coughed or moved. It was a long night but he was fine the next morning, thankfully (other than being sad he had to miss PJ day and a pizza party at his school).

So that was a somewhat typical Tuesday with our crazy family.

Week without Daddy

Matt had to travel to Miami last week for work, so the kids and I were on our own. We survived and managed to have a pretty fun week even without one of our favorite people.

He left early Sunday morning and I took all four kids to church by myself for the first time, and we made it mostly on time, ha!

We took the boys to see The Greatest Showman a couple of weeks ago, and Samuel made his own costume like the movie. They've been playing "circus' pretty much non stop.

Nathan has been saving his money for months for a big lego set, and he finally had enough to buy one. He spent all weekend working on it.

After church on Sunday we grabbed lunch and headed to meet some friends for a picnic. Corey was out of town too, so Brooke and I tried to keep the kids entertained as long as we could before going home The weather was beautiful and all our kids play so well together. We stayed at the park for 2.5 hours. We all had a great time!

While Matt was gone I let each of the kids have a special night with me where they got to sleep with me and stay up late watching a special show/movie. Elisabeth was first. She asks to sleep with me every.single.night, so she was thrilled!!

She stayed up WAY too late. It was too exciting to sleep. At least she took a good nap the next day, ha!

Nathan finished his Lego set Monday morning. He was so proud we had to send a picture to Daddy.

Katherine was her four month well check on Monday too. She was smiling and talking to the doctor the whole time. Our pediatrician said she won the happiest baby award at least until the shots came out. Poor baby.

Monday afternoon, Nathan had a friend come home with him after school. They had so much fun playing and the little kids kept trying to tag along with whatever they were doing.

I also let the kids each pick a dinner for the week and they got to be dinner helper for their special meal. Nathan chose pizza, and he and Kamryn helped me make it, so of course we had to have Kamryn stay and eat with us. They were laughing at each other's knock knock jokes during dinner.

Then we dropped her off at home and headed to basketball practice. Out of the whole week, his basketball practice was probably the most frazzled I ever was playing single mom for the week. I'm not even sure why it seemed so stressful, just wrangling the three little ones while he practiced.

Samuel got his special night on Monday, and he wanted to watch Cars 2 in bed with me.

Katherine had a rough night on Monday. She ran a pretty good fever from her shots and did not rest well. Poor Baby. I finally gave her some Tylenol in the middle of the night and that helped her feel good enough to get a good stretch of sleep. She was all smiles the next morning, while I was yawning, ha!

Tuesday morning the kids and I ran some errands and went to the library. They asked if they could see the little boy that had a basket that you can put sticks in. I was so confused. I finally figured out they were talking about this little statue, ha!

While Elisabeth napped on Tuesday Samuel built a garage for his Hot Wheels. I love that kid!

Tuesday night was Elisabeth's special dinner night and she chose her favorite meal, spaghetti and meatballs. She was so excited!

The kids spent the week working on a special poster for Daddy. They each had their own "jobs' and were so proud of it.

Tuesday night was this boy's turn for his special mommy night. He wanted to watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for his special movie.

Wednesday was the 100th day of school, so he got to dress up as a 100 year old man. He's pretty cute for an old man!

We had pancakes and eggs for Samuel's dinner choice on Wednesday night.

Thursday afternoon my grandparents came up to visit and help me with the kids. They are such a big help. They pretty much just took Katherine and never gave her back, ha! It was super nice to have their help in the evenings when I'm trying to get the big kids to bed and in the mornings when I'm rushing around trying to get everyone ready for school.

We had pizza and a movie night on Friday night. It wasn't the same without Daddy though.

Nathan read a book to Granny and Grandaddy before bed too.

The finished poster, just waiting on Daddy to get home to see it!

Saturday morning we got ready to go to Sarah's birthday party Love these cute girls in matching outfits!

 Matt got home on Saturday afternoon and we were so glad to have him home! We went to Chick Fil A for dinner Saturday night to celebrate and kept celebrating on Sunday too with the girls' first trip to the movie theater. We watched Paddington for the first time for movie night a few weeks ago, and thought it'd be fun to take them to see Paddington 2.

Elisabeth loved the popcorn and only had to go to the bathroom twice during the movie, ha! And it was Super Bowl Sunday so the theater was pretty much empty. I think we might make it a new Super Bowl Sunday tradition.