Five on Friday

Happy Friday! I'm on my third cup of coffee after binge watching  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel last night.

Here's my Five things on Friday!

1. Soccer Saturdays are back! After years and years spending hours at the baseball field I am loving spending an hour at the soccer field for each kid and then having the rest of the day for ourselves. The boys still love soccer, although N says he plays to return to baseball in the fall. Last Saturday both boys scored their first goals (T actually scored 5). It was a big day. The weekend before both of the boys' teams had lost by 10, so this isn't like a super star in the making story. And just as last year, one of my favorite things is we can walk to both fields. This year the boys ride to T's and we walk to N's. There are playgrounds at each field too so the girlies are happy.

2. Chris and I had midweek date night and it was perfect. N had been begging for us to head out so their favorite sitter could come. It was completely last minute but she was free and Chris had to work late so I met him at the restaurant right across from his office. We sat outside for a couple hours eating, drinking wine, then coffee, and listening to music. We left after the musician. I wish we could do that every night.

3. I love when the girlies wear the boys' old clothes (and that happens a lot). Here's a side by side of my two blondie babes.

4. I need a good book to read. I finished Still Me by Jojo Moyes and loved it. I haven't picked up anything since finishing it. I might try Big Little Lies again. I started it after Katherine was born but never finished.

5. That's all I got for today! Linking up with April, Christina and Natasha - have a great weekend!

Coffee Talk

It has rained the past two days which has had me wondering what in the world we did to entertain the kids before spring. I'm up to three cups of coffee a day, two in the morning and one right before the boys get home. Seems excessive. 

 Before the rains hit we definitely lived up to the "playground" part of my blog name. Hours and hours spent on playgrounds. One thing I love about our currently location is there is a park or playground in every direction. The boys play soccer, the girls play on the playground. The boys want to shoot hoops, the girls (and sometimes T) play on the playground, after preschool, the girls play on the playground. I just need to start remembering sunscreen.

Last Friday it was so beautiful I decided we should all walk to N's soccer practice together and then order pizza for dinner. His soccer practice ends after Katherine's bedtime so it was a little risky. She had a blast until the last fifteen minutes. 

I had my first dentist appointment in forever yesterday. And I have a cavity. A big one. I get to go back next week to see if he can clean it out without a root canal. Ugh. While I'm so grateful for a dentist I trust and who is extremely kind, I just hate all of this. I also realized I really need to schedule all my appointments (doctors and hair) before the kids get out of school. It's coming up!

Our ice cream game is still going strong. I consider it self medicating for temper tantrums (mine and the kids). 

Happy hump day! I know this sounds silly but I woke up with absolutely nothing we have to do today. It kind of sounds amazing. Pretty sure a trip to the library story time is in our future.

Thoughts for Thursday

Random thoughts today...

Why is bedtime so miserable? I think I start dreading the whole night time process right about the time I start dinner. The toddler and the ten year old are easy peasy - just tell them it's bedtime and they're out. But 8 and 4 seem to be in the same "make everyone miserable" camp. I pretty sure I'm losing my mind each night, and occasionally losing my cool. Currently, we put the baby in her crib and she's out. We ask N to read to KC in our room, which is super nice and sweet. Then we direct all our attention to T because he's the hardest at bedtime. I wish I could list everything we've tried at bedtime with T and how nothing has changed. It's always a huge rant about how we hate him (because he has to go to bed) and it goes on and on. N hangs with KC until one of us can come snuggle with her because she can't fall asleep withouth someone (and sometimes N falls asleep with her... thank goodness for him). I keep thinking we will get past this phase but honestly bedtime has been hard for about 6 years now... so still waiting.

My two easy sleepers, N getting Katherine up from nap over spring break.

Moving on...I'm pretty excited the "like to know it - instagram relationship" is going away. When I first joined instagram it was people taking snaps from their day. Then slowly it turned into so many staged pictures one right after the other with everything linked. It got harder to keep up with friends. I really like that now you can just swipe through stories of people linking ten million items (and I love you can mute stories of certain people!). I hope instagram goes back to cute daily snaps! 

I ordered these cute suits for the girls from Target. 

T refused to take his lunch to school today because he said N always packs stuff he doesn't like. But I packed his lunch and it's exactly what he ate for dinner (noodles and watermelon). I wrote his teacher to let her know I'm perfectly fine with him sitting without a lunch. I don't play the lunch game.

I remember when I used to blog about how cute and sweet my kids were... haha. We handle our stress with ice cream. It makes everything better. 

Linking up with Natalie and Annie for Thoughts for Thursday. 

The Back-Burner Blog

If I could go back and rename my blog, I'd take this! It was so nice to a week off for spring break. We really enjoyed a break in the schedule and activities. That said we also had to be out of the house because we were having a mold issue remediated. Here's a lesson to learn from us - don't cram so much under your sink that you can't tell if you have a drip. I realized in November the water on our kitchen floor was not from the kids getting water and spilling it. Thousands of dollars later our house, especially the air ducts, are mold and spore free (well not totally free because most homes have mold spores since they occur in nature, but toxic black mold free). Good times. We also learned a lot about asbestos. Seriously, fun times. Can't wait to add that cost into our renovation in a few years. All that said, we still love our neighborhood and home, we just had a quick learning curve to follow on old houses.

A few more random life happenings these past few months:

Our sweet last baby is officially a screaming toddler. She is very vocal with "yes" and "no" which is honestly helpful, but it was even better when she just went along with everything. She eats more than any other kid in our house and everyone comments on it. She starts dinner when I start cooking and is usually still eating her dinner while the bigger kids have dessert. With all that food she's still in the 25% for weight - as of her 15 month check up. She's also learned to conquer the stairs. I remember our ped telling us with our first that we should teach him to go down the stairs backwards. I tried with every single kid to teach them and they never got it. Never even tried to teach Katherine, she just started doing it around 15 months. So she has full reign of the house, which is probably not competely safe but it is nice not trying to figure out how to gate three different stairways.

Basketball season always takes over the winter season in our house. The boys played in a new league this year that we loved and N fell more in love with Caroline basketball. When they announced the Heels were coming to Charlotte, Chris scooped up tickets for the three of us within thirty minutes. I surprised N by picking him up from school early that Friday to head to the game. The Friday game was so much fun (a little nerve-wracking in the first half, but we've grown to expect that from Carolina basketball). Returning on Sunday was definitely not as much fun when they lost in a blowout, but we stayed and cheered on the Retrievers who had knocked UVA out that same weekend.

Over spring break we headed to Lake Tillery with our friends (the same ones we went to Disney with, who also have 4 kids). It worked out well since we had to be out of the house. Neither of us had ever been to the lake but we thought it sounded like a fun adventure. We picked up our little ones from preschool (the older kids were already out of school) and caravanned northeast. N made sure to pack all the essentials - his robotic BB8, his NFL standings board and helmets, every stuffed animal he could find, his pillow, alarm clock, and the blanket from the couch. I edited his bag before it made to the van.

The lake trip did not disappoint. The kids were in love with kayaking, paddleboarding, and canoeing. We planned a hike and a visit to Indian mounds, but eventually scrapped the Indian mound visit to allow them more time on the water. Even after all the cars were packed up on the day we left T had to go out "one last time."

While we were there only 3 of our 12 fell into the lake, and those 3 all share my last name (insert face palm).

T had a birthday coming up over the following week and our friends surprised him with a cake and gift. He had been asking for months for a "dook" cake and of course we refused but our friends made his dream come true. And presented him with a "dook" shirt he has proceeded to wear every other day. Thus ending said friendship.

From the lake we headed to my parents for Easter. My group Easter shot leaves a lot to be desired but it was a fun day of candy, hunts and coordinating outfits.

We celebrated T's birthday (8!) while at my parents and he had a few requests. His first was to visit the Children's Museum. It has the coolest climbing structure outside that he loves. And all my other kids love the inside too. It is definitely my favorite Children's Museum to visit.

We spent the rest of spring break at home, with soccer practice and games resuming. It was a nice way to ease back into our schedule. And with the weather warming up the kids have spent as many minutes as possible outside and it's put us all in a good mood.

That's pretty much the highlights (and lowlights - mold - yuck) of the past couple months. We're definitely looking forward to school getting out, KC's birthday, and days at the pool.

Five on Friday!

TGIF~ I hope this week has been a good one for you. Everyone is on the mend here, thank goodness (although the full movie day Wednesday was a nice change of pace, if only it didn't come with sickness).  Chris brought back lattes this morning so it's off to a good start. I'm linking up with the Five on Friday ladies and sharing five things making my life easier right now, and maybe they will make yours easier too (and throwing in a couple pictures from our 1 year old photo shoot because they make me smile).

1. If you have a toddler, this is the best mat ever! I bought it thinking it wouldn't really work, but it works. It's so easy to serve, clean (yay dishwasher), and I even take it to restaurants (all my babies ate off restaurant tables, but I can't help thinking it's gross and this solves my dilemma)! It's called the ez-pz happy mat (we have the mini version). It even comes in a reusable bag for easy travel.

2. Have you used Amazon Prime Now? It's a separate app from Amazon Prime and it's such a lifesaver. This week with the kids sick, I ordered clorox wipes and beer and they arrived within 4 hours. If you spend over $35 delivery is free (unless you need it within 2 hours) - I threw a $20 amazon gift card in my order to reach the $35 (and totally felt like I beat the system). When we traveled to Disney, I used this to get a few staples like milk, diapers, and snacks. The order does include a tip for the driver.

3. Fresh Lotus Youth Preserve has been my new go-to in this cold dry weather. I think it's too late to "preserve" any youth, but it feels so good and really helps my dry skin. I love that it's light enough for  morning wear too.

4. My kids are not great eaters (except Katherine, she'll eat just about anything) and Chris is a vegetarian. This means our meals lack some important nutrients. I've started cooking eggs more often, but I've also added Bob's Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix. For some reason my kids eat it up. It has veggies and lentils and alphabet pasta. I always throw in whatever veggies we have for some extra vitamins and freshness. The lentils add lots of protein and the pasta makes it fun. They will yell out whatever they've found (doesn't really help with manners). I always add vegetable broth instead of water (or a mix of the two).

5. A sales associate at Pottery Barn mentioned this wrinkle release spray and it has lived up to the hype. We one of the kids puked allll over our bed, bed skirt and rug, I washed the bed skirt, pulled it out of the dryer and thought, it will never look the same again. But a few sprays and a couple tugs and it looks perfect! So much easier than steaming or ironing!

I hope everyone has a great weekend. My kids are so excited their cousins are coming, I just hope the bad weather doesn't affect their trip! We have a full Saturday of basketball games, a birthday party, and the kids are going to the Hornets game.

Thoughts on Thursday

I should be cleaning currently. We have family coming into town this weekend, we had two very sick kids two nights ago, and because of that I had to cancel our cleaners and reschedule for next week. Which means I need to get things done. Buuuuut, I'll do it later.

Tuesday it finally warmed up! After days of below freezing temperatures it hit the 60s! It was beautiful. After preschool the girlies stayed on the playground for almost 2 hours. We came home in time for the boys to get off the bus and shortly after that KC puked everywhere. Ugh it was so so sad.
A friend asked to take N to a Hornets meet and greet and I wrote her thinking I should cancel but she said she'd take him anyway. N had a blast, and poor KC spent the night with a bucket. We had to take the T to piano and basketball so KC didn't even get the benefit of sitting on the couch watching tv.

That night, N fell victim to the tummy bug. It was a rough night. We had some puppy pads left over from Dali and I dug those out and put them beside each boy just in case. They worked great! Highly recommend using them if you don't have kids with good aim.

We said good bye to our tree this week as well. I love having Christmas linger. The kids wanted one more picture with the tree before we took it down. I always hate seeing it by the curb. I know it doesn't take the memories with it, but it's just such a big reminder that it's over and next year the kids will be older and it will be different.

I received our pictures from Katherine's 1 year old shoot. They turned out so well. I'll share more later but look how sweet!

This little one doesn't often say "MAMA" anymore she straight up yells "MA" like she's a teenager (and she's currently doing that from her crib, guess she's done napping).

Linking up with two of my favorites today, Annie and Natalie!!