13 Favorites

Happy 13th Birthday, Olive!  She's been the easiest, best first born.  We traveled and moved SO much when she was little and she was always just happy to be along for the ride.  

I thought I'd celebrate her by writing out our 13 favorite things about Olive.

1. She's always been decisive, confident and knows what she wants.  She is okay doing her own thing and might just make you Google slide presentation when she really wants to get your attention.

2. She is a very hard worker.  She loves her teachers, loves school and works so hard to do her best in every class.  We're so happy with her effort and drive to do her best always.  She manages herself, her school work and her schedule so well.

3. Olive loves to go to concerts with me. She researches the set list ahead of time, makes us a playlist to prep for the concert and then we have the best time enjoying concerts together.  She has a fun concert tee collection.

4. Pasta has always been her favorite food.  She's a salty snacker so goldfish, Olives, popcorn and such are always her favorites.

5. She loves to host and party plan.  She gathers her friends at holidays, arranges gift exchanges and knows that if she loops me into the planning that I'll be happy to host her friends.  Her group of friends has been close for years so it's fun to see them sticking together.

6. Olive is crafty.  She likes to learn new crafts and then make the crafts for friends and family.  She's working on key chains, bedazzling things and knotting fleece blankets right now.

7. She is the best babysitter.  She is always happy to babysit when I ask and she takes great care of her brothers.

8. Olive has loved Jellycats since she was a newborn.  Her first stuffed animal was a bunny named Bun Bun and while Jellycats are making a comeback, Olive has loved them for 13 years.  It makes me smile to still see them on her birthday wish list now.

9. She throws a crazy good football, watches football, has a favorite team and understands the game of football well enough to do a presentation on it at school with a guy in her class.  Maybe this will be the year that we go to a college football game in the Fall?

10. Reading is her jam.  She got a cool new bookshelf for her room for her birthay and is filling it with her favorite authors.  Sprayed edge books.  Pretty covers.  She's going to have such a fun little library.

11. Olive has her own font.  She has combined print and cursive to make her own very distinct handwriting.  I love that she's practiced and come up with a signature handwriting.

12. She adores cats, bracelets, earrings, a cute top and Vera Bradley bags.  You can find her playing volleyball with her friends or LOLing on group calls with her buddies.

13. Her favorite days are when she gets to spend alone time with her parents.  Her goal this year is to grow taller than her mom!  We shall see.

Happy Birthday, Olive!  We're so proud of you!

Gorgeous Garden Center Haul

Leo and I headed to the Meijer Garden Center over the weekend to grab some flowers for our patio.  He was so sweet and helpful picking out the best flowers for me.  He even learned about sun/shade plants.  He would ask me - can these take the sun or do they need shade?  He's going to be a great little gardener.  We remulched our landscaping, too!  Our yard is looking great!

Our yard is FULL SUN so that was our only requirement - grab flowers that like the sun.  I love lavender, lantana, marigolds, asparagus fern and sweet potato vine.  The rest just found us!

We filled one cart with flowers.  I always spend my Mother's Day gift money on flowers!  And the other cart was filled with bags of mulch.

I prepped my pots a week or two earlier so planting was so easy.  I did matching pot arrangements on the corners of our patio.  I placed one side and Leo made the other side match.  When I asked him to help me plant he said - I was hoping you'd ask me to help!  It was so sweet.

This petunia is new to us!  Leo said it looked like the solar system to him.  It is called a Night Sky Petunia.  I think it'll look so pretty in my pots.

I can't wait to watch these containers fill in.  I also make sure to strategically place the planters in spots where the sprinkler system will hit them each morning.

Have you planted your flowers for the season yet?  I'm a little behind this year because LIFE, but I'm thrilled to get them planted in May.  That way they can take root and really have a chance to grow before it gets too hot.

Last Days of K, 4th & 7th

We all wrapped up our school years last week and are thrilled to be on Summer break.  

Let's do a little recap of the year for each of us.

Olive // 7th Grade

Olive worked so hard for straight As all year.  She has the sweetest friend group.  She advocated for herself.  She won awards, did some really cool projects, earned awards and great compliments from her teachers and managed the deadlines, workload of honors classes and fun so well.  We're so proud of her! 

Fletcher // 4th Grade

He worked hard, learned a ton of history, projects were his favorite, made some new friends, ended up on the honor roll, excelled at Chess club and is beyond excited for Summer.  His favorite things are all outside of the classroom - fishing, traveling, trying new foods, making new foods and researching the best fishing tips.  We're so proud of him!

Leo // Kindergarten

Leo had an awesome year of kindergarten!  He finished the year with top scores, has become a great reader and writer, lost a lot of teeth, loves to do so many things on his own, is a great artist and has some good buddies.  It was so fun to be in kindergarten together this year.  We're so proud of him!

Whitney & Kevin // Ready for Summer!

I finished another fun year of kindergarten.  My new assistant was wonderful and I can't wait to work with her again next year.  We navigated lots of challenging things in our room this year and loved working together.  A favorite part of my job will always be going to school with my boys.

Kevin hit some exciting milestones at work, is waiting on some big news for his program and is welcoming his fourth group of graduate students into his program this Fall.  Exciting things ahead!

Hooray for Summer break!

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday!  The boys are done with school and Olive and I are finishing up the school year today.  It's been a wild week at our house with high highs and low lows.  I'm going to recap the highlights for you.

1. I got the nicest assortment of teacher gifts to wrap up the school year.  Look at that monogrammed bag!  Plants!  Cute bags.  Cookies.  Gift cards and the kindest notes.  I save those forever.

I can't wait to use this bag all Summer long.

2. A student brought in smiley face graduation cookies for our whole class.

3. Fletcher has his own trumpet!  He's SO excited for 5th grade band.

4. We made kindergarten memory books.  I was walking around helping students and did a double take at my portrait.  Wowza.  Field day is rough on Mrs. Jordan.  haha

5. A tiny bouquet of joy from one of my students.

6. Kindergarten program night!  Leo looked so handsome.  I loved seeing him on stage.

My assistant and kindergarten BFF.

7. Field day was fun and exhausting!

8. Pumpkin has a new favorite spot.  He loves the view.  Mr. Mittens isn't so sure.

9. I love to run errands with these two on the weekends.  She loves to pick up new books.  He loves to look at fishing gear.

10. Our favorite grandma turned 88 this week.  We loved celebrating her!

11. One of my kindergarten besties is retiring.  We are sure going to miss her!  I'm glad we could find several times in May to celebrate her with our team.

And then she surprised us all with gifts at the end.  We are going to miss our fearless leader!

I hope you have had a great week!  I'll check in next week :)

Linking up with Momfessionals

Olive Celebrating with Friends

Olive turns 13 at the end of the month. I can hardly believe it.  She found a date that worked for all of her friends and we planned the perfect sleepover to celebrate her a little early.  

Pasta bar, volleyball, crafts, candy, treats and a fun night together.

Olive and I made to do list of tasks, the menu and the activities.  Then we got busy.  She is old enough to be really helpful which was wonderful because I worked all day and came home to help her throw a party.  She reqeusted pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and cookie bars.  Her colors are pink and red with some cute mice decorations.

We ran by Dollar Tree to grab all the blue candies we could find.

She set the table.  I added the bows.

I got home at 3:30.  The girls arrived at 5:30.  We did one pasta, one sauce, meat, two salads and sour dough bread.  The girls loved it.

Everything was so sweet.

I'm always excited to host.

The gift giving was one of my favorite parts.  Each girl hand picked things they knew Olive would love.  They had stories behind their gifts and plenty of things with inside, friends only jokes.  Olive felt so loved.

Volleyball in the street, side walk chalk, a walk and chatting with neighbors. I'm so thankful Olive has such sweet friends.  Some of them were the very first friends she made in 3rd grade when we moved to Evansville.

Olive planned a really fun craft - name key chains, rubber duck key chains and a Fuggler for each girl.  I helped a little and then they planned and beaded out their own key chains.  They have big plans for matching key chains the last week of school.

Hosting the girls is always a good time!  Everyone went to bed early - May seems to be wearing us all out and we had an assortement of cereals for breakfast.

Trader Joe's Haul

I have a really yummy round up for you today!  We visited Trader Joes when we were in Louisville.  I brought a big cooler to stock up on all of our favorite things.  This is our closest TJ - 90 minutes from home.  We make it here a few times a year.  What a treat!  Kevin found some great deal on TJ beer and we found a lot of fun new foods to try.

These were amazing.  I love them even more than Reeses and they are way cheaper.

Best. Caesar. Salad. Kit.

If you like a salad with a spicy kick, my boys love this one.

The kids inhaled this bag of chocolates.

Pretty good, but I probably wouldn't buy them again.

The Mandarin Orange Chicken was yummy!  We cooked it in the oven and bought two bags for dinner for our whole family.  I'm excited to try the potstickers.

The kids said these were fine, but would like to try a different flavor next time.

I can't wait to try these cheese curds.

The frozen rice was so good!

I won't tell you how many boxes of these I bought.  They are my favorite fancy treat.

The pizza dough is amazing.  I always wish I could buy more or make it last longer.

These looked yummy for pasta night.

Lots of pasta!  It has all been delicious.

I think I'm most excited to try this Lemon pasta with the lemon pesto sauce.  Grill some chicken.  Add some parm.  It has to be delicious, doesn't it?

I enjoy the apple mango pouches.  Leo does not.  The sauce are yummy!

We put together a yummy snack gift for Kevin's grandma.  She was thrilled with these choices.

And I ended the trip feeling all sentimental.  This quote.  Shopping with my kids.  Enjoying a weekend out of town.  I loved it all.

Have you tried any of these Trader Joes items?  Tell me about it!