Happy Friday

Happy Friday, friends!  I hope you've had a nice week.  I'm off toay on a field trip adventure with Fletcher.  The best parts of our week were:

1. Dollar Tree Haul!  Olive loves a good run through Dollar Tree.  She found a scrunchie for her Crocs.  And we both found some new lip products.  She loved the gloss.  I loved the juicy cherry lipstick.  It's really long lasting and the color is so pretty.  I was shocked and will be repurchsing.

2. HomeGoods is my favorite.  We have some fun events coming up this Spring.  Graduations.  Birthdays and more.  Collect it when you find it at HomeGoods because the cute stuff goes fast.

3. Kindergarten is so much fun!!  I'm working on a really cool end of the year project.  Stay tuned.

4. We braved Costco the day before Easter (wouldn't recommend that) and tried the famous hot dog.  We kept laughing becuase it was HUGE.  It was tasty.  The bun was amazing.  I think we all just prefer a more well done hot dog.

5. Date night on a week night. Yay!  I helped Kevin with some work stuff.  We grabbed dinner at our favorite spot and then we stopped by the grocery store.  Practical + fun.

6. My mom made me the yummiest chicken salad this week.  I'd 10/10 recommend having your mom make your lunches when you are an adult.

7. Mr. Mittens is the cutest.  He's a rascal, but we all love him.

8. Give me a bracelet stack always and forever.  They are my favorite souvenir when we travel.  I got this set from a boutique in Wisconsin.

9. I joined a book club!  My neighbor friends invited me and I'm doing it.  We had a delicious dinner on the patio and picked our first book to read.

10. We had chapel this week and I love seeing Leo with his class.  He's so excited to see me.  We do our chapel service with him looking over smiling and flashing me the love you sign.  I got assigned the closing prayer role this month.  I'm not used to praying for a large crowd so I had to step out of my comfort zone.  It went great.  I can't believe we only have 18 days of school left.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Linking up with Momfessionals

5 Things Your Preteens will Love

I have five fun ideas that your preteens and teens are sure to love!  

The are simple and always a hit with my older kids.

1. Let them give you tips and advice.

Try their products.  Let them talk to you about skincare.  They'll be thrilled to get a chance to be the expert.  Olive has been reading my blog lately and is quick to help me with edits when she sees a mistake.  Sometimes I'll ask for help with my outfits or accessories.  Olive usually says my clothes are too loud, but she likes to talk through outfits with me.  And I've noticed that if I model asking her for help, it helps her to feel more comfortable coming to me for help with outfits and other things.

2. Love what they love.  

Pay attention to their playlists, their current favorite songs and listen to what they listen to.  I don't always love the songs they love, but they are so excited to have a kid playlist for our drives together.  Some days it's my spotify list and some days it's theirs.  Either way it's fun to know what we are all listening (teens: and dancing) to.  The same thing goes for sports or shows or movies.  Find out what they are loving and enjoy it with them.  Olive loves picking out our shows and Fletcher gets so excited for someone to be interested in the games he's playing.

3. Walk around the mall or their favorite stores.

They loves to try samples, try on clothes that they might think they would like, try on popular shoe trends and try out sports equipment.  

4. Try new food together and find new favorite foods.

This can mean cooking together, grocery shopping together or picking out recipes online.  The kids have gotten so much joy out of sampling all the things at the Costco cafe.  They are ranking foods and making plans to try everything on the menu.  The same is true for trying Crumbl flavors of the week or maybe trying a new restaurant on Door Dash.

5. Buy the silly things that they want.

We were standing in line at Old Navy and Fletcher was so excited to see this package of Pickle Roulette sour candies.  He loves pickles and this sounded like so much fun to him.  I said yes and we got a lot of laughs out of him trying pickle candy.  Olive likes to add things to my Walmart cart and it's fun to surprise her with them - press on nails, shampoo, new socks, etc.

I hope this little list gives you some new ideas on how you can love your teens a little extra this week!

Easter Weekend

We had a really sweet Easter weekend!  We did all of our favorite traditions and the weather was so nice.  That doesn't always happen in the Midwest for Easter.  I think that it helped that Easter was so late this year.

We celebrate Easter at school with our classes.  My kindergarteners participated in a Passover meal and the boys learned all about Jesus's death and resurrection.  Leo even drew it all out for us.  As always, we edited our traditions to work for us this year - no photos with the Easter Bunny, Olive passed on most Easter egg hunts and opted to help Leo instead and Saturday night church for Easter.

Olive wanted to do a photo shoot for Mr. Mitten's first Easter.  He LOVED it and now thinks all Easter baskets are for him to sit in.

We dyed eggs.  I decided to use Solo cups for our egg dye.  That was a game changer!  No more dyeing our cups funny colors.  Just dye eggs and toss the cups.

Give me all the deviled eggs and egg salads.

The tomb.  Stone rolled away.  Jesus is alive.  He also drew out the scene of Jesus riding into town on a donkey and the crowd shouting Hosannah as well as Jesus dying on the cross.  He's learning so much!

Easter best.  Give me all the matching polos and pastels for Easter.

My goal for our Easter baskets every year is to do a mix of practical (new water bottles, Spring pajamas, new shirt and new Bibles) + fun (Squishmallows, knife, fairy garden houses and games).  And everything must fit inside the basket!  The kids loved their baskets so much.

I love this crazy crew.

Full disclosure.  Olive and I decorated our mantle for Easter on Saturday.  I'll leave it up this week and take it down.  There just wasn't time to do it sooner.

Mr. Mittens really had the best first Easter ever.

We made Resurrection Rolls for Easter breakfast.

We did an Easter egg hunt in our backyard.  Spring is in full swing!

Olive helped me bake the cutest sugar cookies!

Classic Leo.

He survived on Reese's eggs and sugar cookies all weekend.  Throw in maybe a roll or two.

My MIL put together an Easter feast with every food you could possibly want.  And a bunny cake.

Olive didn't want to hunt and Leo was happy to have the help.

Fletcher's "He is Rizzin" shirt was a big hit all week.  9 year old boys are so fun!

Kevin and his brother loved hiding the eggs in hard spots for the kids.

Nanny picked out the yummiest candies.

Then my parents did an egg hunt just for Leo since he's the littlest.  He loved it.  He found the eggs quickly and his day was made when he found cars in his eggs.  All the kids got Easter treat bags from Mimi and Papaw.

The cousin crew is growing up!

I hope you had a great Easter weekend!  And if it didn't turn out so great, I'm wishing you a wonderful week ahead.  We've had those years so I'm extra thankful when we have a sweet holiday weekend.

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday, friends!  It's been the longest week ever.  On Wednesday, I was convinced it was Thursday and that makes the week feel extra long.  The big kids had several activties this week, it was Teacher Appreciation Week and Kevin mowed the yard for the first time.  It feels like Summer is just right around the corner.  We've got 24 days of school left with tons to pack in each day.

The best parts of the week were:

1. Rec Soccer.  Fletcher has been working so hard with his rec soccer team.  He loves playing with his school buddies and we're so proud of him for trying something brand new.

2. Cutest laundry helper.

3. These two always want to stop by the mall.  It's funny how every single item in Sephora feels like it's $20.  Olive found lip gloss that was $25 and Fletcher got some Touchland hand sanitizer for $10.

4. Costco and Sams trips with these two are always a favorite.  They love to try samples and stock up on good food for the week.

5. A new spring Stanley in your school colors is always a good idea.  Add in a handwritten mom & kid thank you note and my day is made.

We had yummy catered lunches and snack buffets.

The Spring decor was so cute!

My name was picked to win a beautiful hydrangea plant.

Isn't it lovely??

6. Olive's Mathletes team had an out of town tournament.  We road tripped there with Olive's BFF and her mom.  The questions were hard.  The competition was stiff.  But she did it!  Their team came in second losing by just a half a point on the very last question.  They were all so proud.  One of her all time favorite teachers runs the group and it was bittersweet to see their season come to an end.

7. I found this handsome guy on the playground.  They earned extra recess time after finishing their standardized testing.

8. My grocery store bouquet needed to have an Easter vibe thought Kevin and the big kids.

9. Sunset bike rides through the neighborhood are my favorite.  Sometimes we invite the boys and other times we sneak out solo.

10. I'm SO ready for the weekend!  I hope you have a wonderful Easter.

Linking up with Momfessionals