Tales of a busy, messy, at-times-chaotic, but happy family
Hello there! I hope you all had a nice Mother's Day weekend. Our weekend was a good mix of busy and relaxing. On Friday night we had some close friends drop off "build your own pizza" kits for our Meal Train and the kids had a blast making their pizzas.
On Saturday we went to Bluey Live,
and now today, (Sunday as I write this) we are taking it easy!
Today I am sharing a little bit about our experience spending 1,000 hours outside as a family.
Oh hi there friends and happy Friday! Just like many of the rest of you, I am READY to get into Christmas mode. Devin used to be really big on "no Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving," but over the past few years he has realized that we spend way too much time putting the decorations up only to enjoy them for a few weeks. We are of the mind that if you're going to go through all the effort of putting them up, you might as well put them up earlier and enjoy it a little longer.
But before we move on to the next big holiday, I want to show you what our skeletons were up to in the month of October. If you don't already know, we have a family of skeletons that we put up in our front yard every October. Every single day we change them so they are doing a different activity. We have a lot of fun with them!
Come and check out what the Skelly family was up to this October:
Hello friends and happy Memorial Day weekend! I hope your weekend plans include some time outside, enjoying good food and the company of people you love. Our plans are to do exactly that in Wilmington, NC this weekend with Devin's family. My plan is to whip up some festive but also healthy recipes. Maybe something like this:
Good morning and happy Monday! I hope you all had a nice last weekend before Christmas. We missed a week of all the Christmas season fun when we went to Disney so I feel like we have been trying to pack everything in since we've been back. We've baked cookies, made Christmas crafts, made homemade ornaments, went to a Christmas market, went on the Polar Express, and LG went to see the Nutcracker with her grandparents. We've been keeping busy, that's for sure. 😅
Hello friends! I am back today to share a little bit of our trip to Disney. We had SO much fun on this trip and I think the kids were at such great ages for it. LG is 4 and everything was still so magical and real to her. Liam was 2, and while technically this was his second trip, this is the first time he really knew what was going on. 😆 He was only 3 months old the last time we took him! It's funny to remember a time he was that little.
Orlando is only an 8 hour drive from Charlotte, which we felt was reasonable for our family. We thought about flying, but honestly with the amount of stuff we wanted to bring it was just easier to drive (not to mention cheaper). We left Friday afternoon and began our drive to Jacksonville, FL (roughly 6 hours).
Hello hello! Last year when we moved out of our house for the renovation, we moved about 20 minutes outside of the city to a town called Matthews. We were living there during the month of October and one of the houses down the street had skeletons outside who did something new every day. Our kids LOVED the skeletons and got so excited to drive by and see what they were doing. Even on days we didn't have anywhere to go, we still made an adventure out of going to see the skeletons. About halfway through the month Devin and I said "we should do this at our house next year. The kids/families in our neighborhood would love it." So fast forward a year and guess who the new crazy skeleton family was?? US!
We had a blast doing this! Our house is the neighborhood bus stop and it brought me so much joy to see the bus pull up and all the kids pull down their windows to see what the skeletons were doing. We had such sweet, positive feedback from our neighbors, the mail carrier, UPS drivers, and even random people who don't live in our neighborhood but drove through just to see them. It was a lot of work but was 100% worth it to know that we brightened people's days.. even if just for a minute!
Today I am sharing with you our 31 days of skeletons! I'd love it if you left me a comment telling me which was your favorite! Maybe we will do that one again next year. 😉 Oh and for reference, their names changed a bit but we finally settled on Grace Skelly and Scary Grant. So if you see me use those names, you'll know who I'm referring to!
Good morning friends and happy Friday! Earlier this week I shared that we had our fall family pictures taken and received our proofs back. We were finally able to narrow down the pictures we wanted and I am happy to share them with you!
Good morning friends and happy Friday! Today I am sharing something I've made several times over the past few weeks for the kids as an afternoon snack/lunch board-- we call it the char-boo-terie board. 😊 The idea for this initially came from the Fresh Market magazine, but theirs was mostly desserts/sweet treats:
Good morning friends! I hope you're having a great week so far. A few weeks back Adrienne posted her fall bucket list and I thought "Oh-- I need to do that!". Well, true to form, I made a mental note of it but then completely forgot about it an hour later. I swear this is the story of my life-- if I don't write it down immediately, the thought is gone. Anywho... I was browsing Pinterest the other day and this picture popped up:
Hello hello and happy Monday! I hope you all had a nice weekend! Ours was crazy busy but so much fun.
On Saturday morning I was running in the Cooper River Bridge Run 10k in Charleston, SC. I originally signed up for this race in December 2019... before COVID spread around the world and changed all of our lives. The race got delayed, delayed again, then delayed again to this September. They had put a lot of measures into place to keep the runners safe from COVID, and I was READY! Running an official race is something I will never take for granted again. I love the atmosphere of the music, the crowds of people cheering you on, the energy of all the other runners... the excitement is contagious to say the least.
We had plans to head to Charleston early Friday morning but we were having our lawn aerated & overseeded and there was a delay. We technically didn't have to be here for it but wanted to water the new seed after they put it down. So we didn't end up getting to Charleston until mid afternoon. We headed straight to the Charleston Convention Center for the race Expo.
Good morning everyone! A couple weeks ago we booked a local photographer to take our fall family pictures. I know this is something many families do at this time of year, and figured many of us have "Fall Family Pics" on the brain. A few of the Charlotte family photographers have been posting some tips and tricks to help make family pictures go more smoothly and I thought I would share. These tips are NOT my own, so I take no credit for them. Also, for the kids tips, you know your own kids... some of these may apply to your family, some of them may not. Pick and choose what makes sense for you!
Family Pictures 2020
Hello and happy Monday! I hope you had a nice weekend. We had another great weekend at home and were able to do something really fun together as a family.
Early last week I took the kids to Discovery Place, a kids science museum in our city's downtown. They had fun at Discovery Place, but had a surprising amount of fun on the walk from the parking deck into the museum building. There was so much for them to see and watch in the downtown area. After visiting the museum for a few hours, Lily Grace asked if we could drive around and "see more of the city". This honestly blew my mind. In my mind, I thought "umm.. there's not a lot to see? It's just buildings and cars.. but okay whatever, why not." But after driving around for a bit with them and seeing it through their eyes, the busy city is pretty cool for an almost 2 year old and a 4 year old.
We saw:
- the train (our city's version of a subway is called the Lightrail, it's an above ground train)
- people on Segways (my kids loved this, I hadn't even thought of how odd/unique/fun this would seem to them 😂)
- people on electric scooters
- MANY cranes and construction vehicles
- a tunnel
- stadiums where the Hornets, Panthers, and Knights play
- some unique statues/art
That night I got home and Devin asked how the museum was. I said "you know, they liked the museum but honestly I think they liked just walking & driving around to see the city more." And then an idea was born... we decided on Saturday morning to take the train into the city and have a "city day" together as a family.
Hello hello and happy Monday! I hope you all had a nice weekend and are looking forward to a nice week ahead. This week we have no summer camps on the agenda, so we will be filling our days with play dates at the pool/park/playground. It'll be nice to get to spend more time with LG after her week at camp last week.
This past weekend we were lucky enough to have very little on our schedule. We woke up without plans and were able to do whatever we were in the mood for. We haven't had a weekend like that in what feels like forever! Despite not having official plans, we actually somehow ended up doing a lot of activities together. The kids were worn out, took GREAT naps, which meant for some great relaxation time for Dev & I. All in all, a great weekend! Let's have a look:
Hello again! Time to finish up the rest of our beach recap. If you missed it, I recapped the beginning of the trip on Monday. Right around where I left off, Devin had to leave us to head back to work and my older sister and her family had to head back before they left for a camping trip out West. So now it was just the kids & I, my parents and my younger sister holding down the fort.
