Friday Faves

Happy Friday, Friends!  I hope it's been a good week at your house.  We're enjoying our last weeks of Summer and trying to do all the fun things.

The highlights of our week were:

1. We had a great 20th anniversary!  We stopped by the chapel where we got married and Olive snapped our picture.  That was after we dropped my van off to be serviced, shared a ride to work and then ran all the errands.  But we ended the night with my parents babysitting so we could go out to dinner.  That pretty much sums up 20 years of marriage.  We're so thankful to hit this big milestone together.

One of my favorite pictures from our wedding day.

Lucky to love this crew!

2. Crumbl cookies!  Last year we got Crumbl cookies on our anniversary so I got them again.  I wish I would have gotten all chocolate chunk cookies.  They were so good.  The kids love the Reeses cookie and everyone wished the Snickerdoodle didn't have cream cheese frosting on it.

3. Pink flowers.  Kevin always picks out hot pink/light pink just like on our wedding day.  And they're always from the grocery store because budget flowers and superior.  

4. Longhorn is our favorite.  We had delicious drinks, bread, salads, seafood for Kev and parmesan crusted chicken and loaded baked potato for me.  I'll be dreaming of this meal.  And then we strolled through the grocery store to grab a few things before heading home.  Very on brand - practical and fun!

5. Teacher gifts!  I've gotten some really sweet teacher gifts and cards from friends in preparation for returning to the classroom this Fall.  Look at this darling basket!  I can't wait to use all this cute stuff in my classroom.  The love and support is so appreciated.

6. You're never too old for treats from your mom.  My mom watched the kids so I could work in my classroom and she sent me off with fresh Butterfinger cookies.  Comfort food at its finest!  This is probably why I'm always eager to share cookies with others - my mom has been baking for others my whole life.

7. We had lunch with this cute cow!  The kids and I have been going to all the appointments, running all the errands and grabbing some meals on the cow.  They picked Chick-Fil-A at the mall and this was Leo's kid's meal prize.  He wore his cow mask all through the mall and mooed at anyone that complimented his mask.  I love fun prizes like these.  4 year olds are hilarious.

8. Seeds! We have really enjoyed planting flower seeds this year.  Look at these Cosmos!  They're as tall as Leo and have been so happy in our full sun yard.  We have big dreams of a wildflower garden for Summer 2025.

We saved marigold seeds last year and it's been so fun to watch them grow.

I love this pretty pot cluster.

9. Leo has been asking for extra snuggles at bedtime and I'm happy to say yes.  I know he won't want to fall asleep with snuggles forever so I'll soak them in.

10. Do you want a sneak peek at my kindergarten class theme for this year??  Happy colors and smiley faces!!  I keep finding them everywhere and it makes me so happy.  I'm still working hard to pull my classroom together.  Stay tuned for a classroom tour in August.

We were driving home from Wisconsin - Kevin driving and me riding passenger.  And Fletcher spotted this smiley face on a semi truck.  I loved it!

I hope you have a great weekend!  See you back here next week for some fun Wisconsin posts.

Linking up with Momfessionals

Cheers to 20 Years!

Happy 20th Anniversary, Kev!

We make a great team.

He's fun and spontaneous.  Adventurous and dependable.

I'm careful and organized.  Detailed and dependable.

Our family runs smoothly because we are different.

The past 20 years have played out differently than we imagined back in 2004.  God had great things in store for us and I'm so glad to be doing life together.

Thanks for all the adventures!  All the love!  And all the kids!

Love you LOTS!

Kindergarten, Here I Come!

I have some exciting news to share with you today: I will be teaching kindergarten this Fall!

Leo and I will both be going to Evansville Christian School.

He tells everyone that he can't wait to go to school with mom and be an eagle.

It's the neatest opportunity.

I can't wait to return to the classroom to this dream job.

God took care of every single detail to make this amazing opportunity happen for our family.

It's a good story.

Stay tuned for that :)

We have been EXTRA busy this Summer trying to have the best Summer while also preparing for my return to teaching.  This all came together so fast.  I've been to new teacher trainings which feels weird and exciting after all these years.  My classroom has the cutest theme.  My coworkers have been wonderful so far and every single person I talk to loves working at ECS.  See what I mean about dream job??

In case you're new here - I taught 2nd/3rd grade in Utah for 9 years before we had kids.  I loved being a teacher.  And I have loved being a stay at home mom for the last 11 years as we followed Kevin's job around the country from Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi, Terre Haute, IN and now Evansville, IN.  It is exciting to return to a career that I loved and I am thankful for Kevin's support and encouragement to go for it.  Balancing work life and home life will require some great team work this year.  

We would appreciate your thoughts and prayers for a great school year as we all adjust to lots of new things.  I will still be blogging and you can still find me on social media, but it might take a bit to figure out the perfect balance of teaching, momming, blogging and life.  I've been blogging since 2011 and it's still one of my favorite hobbies.  Thanks for being here - some of you have been my blog friends since the beginning!  Thanks for reading and thanks for your love and support!

Friday Faves

Happy Friday, Friends!  I hope this week has been a good one for you.

The highlights of my week were:

1. Candy Salad!  The kids have had so much fun making these candy salads this Summer.  We head to the store to grab several bags of several gummies.  They usually grab favorites and a few new thinsg to try.  Mix them all together in a big bowl and make treat bags.  They love to do this with friends and for road trips.  I bet you people would love doing this!

2. Chicken Salad Chick.  It's my favorite lunch ever.  I love the Olivia's Old South (egg and chicken salad combo) and the Fancy Nancy (fruit and nut).  This is my go to order with broccoli salad, scoops of chicken salad and crackers and a cookie.  Best trio ever.

3. Date night!  I booked one of our favorite babysitters and we headed out to dinner for Kevin's birthday week.  We ate at a new to us hibachi restaurant and had a great time.  We always do a mix of errands and dinner out.  Practical and fun.  Typical parent move.

4. Fun snacks.  I like to pick up fun snacks like this for Summer travel.

5. Photo by Leo.  Leo has figure out how to take pictures and it cracks me up to find pictures like this and 100 more on my camera roll.

6. We celebrated Kevin's birthday with family.  His grandmas are all of our favorites.  Plus pizza for dinner and homemade birthday cake.  We did a few sparklers, but the weather was too stormy for any fireworks.

7. Can you jump your own car?  I can now say yes to that question.  My van has some strange glitch that we are trying to sort out and occasionally the battery dies despite being a perfectly good battery.  So Kevin talked me through how to jump it when I had the van loaded up with kids to go to dentist appointments this week.  It was stressful, but I'm glad to know how to do it.

8. After an hour of waiting in the dentist office the wheels were falling off the Leo wagon.  He did great, but waiting is hard for four year olds.  He was putting on dance shows at this point.

Have a wonderful weekend!  We're traveling so it'll be a few days before I check back in again!

Mesker Park Zoo

We have had a zoo membership since 2022 and it has been a lot of fun!

It's open year round and we enjoy going year round.  Some of our most fun trips have been in winter when we bundle up and stroll the zoo.

If you ever find yourself in Evansville, we love our little zoo.

The zoo is small-ish and hilly.

It's rarely crowded and about 20 minutes from our house.

We love the penguins, the playground, the turtles in the lake, the carousel, the otters, the red pandas, feeding the birds, the flower garden and going through Amazonia.

No zoo is perfect.  We wish we had cool animals like polar bears or pandas.  Or big cats, elephants or really exciting attractions, but we can always go visit a big zoo when we're in a big city.

Just avoid Boo at the Zoo.  You pay to trick or treat and you barely get to see any animals.  Live and learn!

Amazonia is the coolest buildling.  Very jungle like and lots of neat things to see.

Olive introduced us to axolotls and she's always excited to see them.

We splurged and paid to feed the penguins this trip.  It was fun, but really fast.  It's $5/person and you get one fish.  You drop it in the penguins mouth and you're done.  I'm glad the kids got to do it, but we probably wouldn't do it again.  They really love watching the penguins swim and dive.

You pay tokens for everything in the zoo so stock up at the token stations if you want to feed giraffes, ride the carousel, feed penguins or birds.  Don't make the mistake of waiting in line with cash because they won't accep it and your kids will be bummed.  Ask me how I know!?

Feeding the budgie birds was so cool.  It's $2/person and it was awesome.  We did it for the first time and we would definitely do this again.  The birds are hungry and friendly.  Everyone loved this activity.  Your $2 stick with birdseed on it actually lasts a long time.  And anything that brings your big kids this much joy is priceless.

We are still cracking up over Leo feeding the birds.

He grabbed his stick, held it up and yelled I WANT A BLUE ONE.  He thought you could just call our your bird order and a bird of your choosing would land on your stick.  It was HILARIOUS.  The birds did come see him once he stood still and quieted down.

It really was super cool to feed these budgie birds.

We can see lots and really enjoy ourselves in about 90 minutes.  We like to go first thing in the morning.  Of course you can stroll, pack a lunch and stay longer, but we go regularly and 90-2 hours is perfect for us.  I do still bring a stroller for Leo because the hills are so big.  He walks a lot of the time.  It's just nice to have a stroller for him to hop in when he needs a break from all that walking.  Spring is busy with field trips during the day, but the rest of the year the crowds are low.

Let me know if you have any zoo questions!

Banana Brownies

Do you ever look at a recipe and just know that you'll love it?

I knew I'd love these Banana Brownies with a few changes.  And I always have ripe bananas ready to use.  I made these with the kids last week and they were DELICIOUS.  It was the easiest recipe that I almost always have ingredients on hand to make.

The original recipe added icing to the brownies, but they were totally delicious without anything on top.

Banana Brownies Recipe:

2 ripe bananas

1 stick salted butter

a sprinkle of salt

a sprinkle of cinnamon

1 t baking soda

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 t vanilla

1 c sour cream

2 eggs

1 cup chocolate chips

Mix everything until well combined.  Pour into a greased 9x13 pan. 

Bake at 350 for 25-230 minutes in a 9x13 pan.  Let cool and serve warm.  These were delicious warm and delicious the next day.  I'll be making these again very soon.

Make these ASAP!