Just a little ray of sunshine : October 5th-11th, 2020: A visit from Grandma and Grandpa

Goodness gracious. I'm slipping off the bandwagon and I refuse to let go completely. I have no good reason for why I haven't written at all for the last week, other than I was feeling unmotivated and I decided to give myself a break. The problem with that though is I also haven't been taking any notes at all so my synopsis of the last couple weeks is going to end up pretty brief and incomplete considering how quickly I forget things these days. 🤦 But I'm forcing myself to at least give some highlights so that I'm caught up again and this will go back to feeling less like a chore.

Soooo, October 5th - 12th Adam's parents came to our house and the kids just loved having Grandma and Grandpa around. Monday was a bit of a crazy day getting settled back home after our weekend at Rach's house that I didn't have time to go to the grocery store so that I could have a nice cooked meal ready for everyone at a decent hour, so we ended up going to Blaze Pizza for dinner after they got here. Delicious as always! Tuesday and Wednesday Adam worked like normal so the rest of us hung out at home for the most part. Jenni is so crafty though, so she brought a bunch of stuff to do some fun craft projects with the kids and so they spent a lot of time doing crafts on those days. I even joined in for some print making leaf stencils and was reminded that my artistic abilities are lacking! Honestly, one of Maeve's prints looked cooler than mine.... 😂😅 Hands down though, the coolest activity they did with them was decorating all these tubes and arranging them on the wall like this 👇 so they could run marbles through them.... Such a cool idea and they were totally loving it!! My kids are definitely spoiled by extra fun grandparents!!

Wednesday night, Adam got a bonfire going on our back patio and we had fun making some s'mores. Which for Rowan just means plain graham crackers and chocolate, but he still puts them together like a sandwich... 😂😂 Cracks me up! In other exciting news, on Wednesday night we had a Rover dog dropped off at our house that spent 5 days with us, so that was nice to make some extra cash!! It had actually been a long time since I'd gotten a booking to dog sit, so it was exciting to get a request again. 🙏

Adam took Thursday and Friday off of work so we were able to get out and do some fun stuff those days. On Thursday, we went over to the Parthenon and instead of touring it, just enjoyed the grounds outside. We played frisbee out in the big grassy field and it was the kids' first time trying out frisbee so that was kinda fun - they kinda picked it up just in the amount of time we played and certainly had fun trying to figure it out! We also walked around the grounds for a bit and there was a pretty pond full of ducks - now we know we should bring bread over there if we go back. It was pretty cute though because along the path there was "story time" - basically they took a children's picture book and made each page fit a a big sign that stuck into the ground and every few feet there was another sign with the next page that you could read to your kids. Maeve was into it and it was fun to have a book to read along our walk to keep her more excited about just walking around! Smart thinking to set something up like that. After leaving there, we headed downtown to check out the pedestrian bridge and walk across it and then catch a glimpse of the major strip downtown. Originally, Adam and I had planned on spending Friday and Saturday on our own for a little early anniversary getaway - we hit 8 years on October 27th! Hard to believe. Unfortunately though, we had decided on going to Huntsville, Alabama but then found out that those days were supposed to be rainy and the main appeal was outdoorsy stuff, soooo we decided against going. 😔 Instead we all spent the day together and then Adam and I at least got away on our own for dinner at Cheesecake Factory to celebrate. During the day, we drove an hour away to do a little hike to a waterfall. It was nice to get out of the house, but it honestly wasn't awesome enough to really make it worth the hour long drive cause the hike was pretty dang short and we couldn't get very close to the waterfall with the kids with us. We still had fun though - luckily there was also a cute general store with some tasty ice cream that we got and there was campground area that had a playground so the kids had fun playing there for a little while after we ate our ice cream. During these outings though on Thursday and Friday, I did learn that Nolan refuses to sleep in the car anymore, so he missed a nap both of those days and was pretty cranky for all of those drives. During our long ride home from our hike, I had to let go of my need to avoid messes at all costs (when it comes to food) and fed him animal crackers for literally the entire hour. 😳 He got so messy and animal cracker remnants ended up all over the place, but at least it kept him happy and it was nothing a bath couldn't fix after we got home!

It was honestly sooo nice to get have a night out on the town by ourselves. We basically got the kids in the bed and then were able to go out for a late dinner, which we haven't been able to do that in a long time!! Usually if we get any sort of date, we are taking the kids to a friend's house and still picking them up in time for them to go to bed, which makes it feel less like a true date night. So we were loving it!! The food was so great and we had lots of fun conversation and it brought us back to what it felt like years ago before we even had any kids and going out like that was normal! Life is so different now, but also so great. We were just grateful for the opportunity to get out and reminisce and think about our love story! 😊❤️ I sure do love the family we've created, but we don't get enough time together just the two of us, so it was a much needed few hours of uninterrupted quality time. 🙌

Saturday and Sunday were so rainy so we stayed in both of those days, but the kids did surprise us by wanting to play in the rain at one point during the day on Saturday. They pretended to clean our cars and just had a ball getting soaked in the rain. We also all played pictionary together,, which ended up being really fun, probably because it's a different version of the game where you don't have to draw the pictures yourself, but instead use different picture cards that are already drawn to help you put together your own picture with those cards. It's honestly super helpful for people like me who cannot draw AT all - without it, I wouldn't stand a chance. 😅 Sunday was also a lazy day at home - we did home church for one last time since Mic and Jenni are older and we figured it was best for them to not be around that many people in our building (but yes, regular sacrament meetings have started back up again after a 7 month hiatus!!) The other most exciting tidbit about Sunday was that I found a copycat Cheesecake Factory bread recipe and decided to make it and it did not disappoint!! 😋 It was pretty spot on and we all devoured almost all 6 of the mini loaves after the kids went to bed that night. Which brings us to Monday morning when Mic and Jenni left! We were sad to say goodbye, especially to our nights of playing games together after the kids went to bed. That's always my favorite part of being with family - having enough people around to play some games!! We played Code Names, Cover Your Assets, and Bananagrams and shared lots of laughs!!! Always a party after the kids are in bed. 🥳

Well that's that, but here are some pictures from the week:

Courtesy of Nolan on Monday while I was trying to get settled in and ready for company. I should have known he was up to no good when he was quiet in there!! 😏 Nothing but trouble, that baby boy!!

I love getting cute pictures of my kids sleeping - she just looks so peaceful here. 😍

He even smiles during cheek squeezes 😂

I don't know what it is about their little faces when their cheeks are being squeezed, but I find it too cute and funny!! 😍

The Pedestrian bridge

Rowan's face here 😂 - totally nailing it!

We tried hard to get a solid picture, but you know... real life! 😂

At least they're all looking here!

On our hike

The waterfall overlook!

Sometimes you take selfies and get sweet smiles on the first try! 😍🥰 Love these cute kiddos of mine.

Cute sibs! 😍😍😍

Looking cute with Grandpa! 😍

We certainly don't document our own faces enough 😊

Oh my heart 😍

With my hot date in his sweet ride on our way to Cheesecake Factory 😂🙈 - don't worry, somehow the door to my Hyundai Accent that he now drives to work totally fell apart a while back. It's a little rough around the edges right now, but this guy likes to fix everything himself when he can and hasn't gotten around to figuring it out yet...

Just a little mishap with the window -- I couldn't stop laughing pretending what it would have been like if this was a real first or second date and that had happened! Just keeping it classy. 😅😂