Graduation Road Trip

Kevin and I set our alarms for a 5:00am wake up on Saturday morning so that we could head back to our old city to celebrate our friends graduating.  We considered bringing the kids, but it just seemed like too much to ask of them for a quick trip.  Thankfully my parents also set a 5:00am alarm and came to hang out with the kids for the day.

We hadn't been back to our old city since we moved in December of 2021.  

I had mixed feelings.  Would it be sad?  Would it be fun?  Would it feel homey?  I am happy to report that we had a great day there.  It was sweet, nostalgic and I think it'll always feel a little like home.  We lived there for 6.5 years.  Both boys were born there, we renovated a house that we loved and we still have lots of good friends there.  I'm so glad we go to go back for the day.

 

We zoomed 2 hours north, switched time zones and I dropped Kevin off at the door to run in to line up for graduation.  I hurried inside to grab a seat just as the ceremony was starting.  Fletcher made me the sweetest blue bracelet to wear.  He asked to see my outfit for the day and then made me a bracelet to match all on his own.  He's the most thoughtful guy.

The ceremony went well!  Kevin got to hood his two PsyD students - Ari and Cara that graduated.  It was an exciting milestone for all of them!  Remember when we went to all of their weddings last summer?  It's so fun to be able to continue to celebrate big milestones with them.

We loved visiting with their families, chatting with former colleagues, snapping pictures around campus and reminiscing about life at Indiana State.  We grabbed brunch with the big group and then did a little tour around town.  We visited our old house.  Thankfully it's being well taken care of, but it looked different and not like ours anymore.  We grabbed our favorite snacks and just enjoyed the view!

 What a fun graduation day at Indiana State!

A Birthday & A Wedding

Kevin turned 41 last week!  We had a fun time celebrating him with family and friends.  We had a BBQ with his family and then we headed out of town on his actual birthday for a wedding.

We divided up the menu and I decorated with red, white and blue since his birthday is so close to July 4th.  Everything turned out great!

We arrived early and Kevin's mom left the cake decorating up to the kids.  Kevin's Grandma Sharon supervised and Fletcher put on as many candles as he could fit on the top of the cake.

We think these two ladies are GREAT!  Our kids are so lucky to have great grandparents.

Presents, cake and cooling off inside.

Pre-dinner fireworks.  Leo is telling Grandpa that he doesn't like loud fireworks I'm sure.

Fletcher was very proud of this candle situation.

Time for fireworks!  Kevin loves fireworks more than anyone I know.

Leo prefers fireworks from inside - air conditioning and not so loud.

It stormed big time that night and then we woke up the next morning to head to a wedding.  One of Kevin's former students and our favorite babysitter was getting married in Illinois.  We took the whole crew and headed about 5 hours away.  We did a quick gas station clothes change and headed right to the wedding.

Congratulations Cara & Carter!  The kids adore her!

The kids loved the bubble send off and the candy bar at the reception!

Happy Birthday, Kev!!

We spent the night in IL and headed North to Wisconsin the following day.  Busy birthday weekend!

December Highlights

December really was a blur of Christmas festivities, school, packing, moving, buying/selling houses and all of the chaos that comes with relocating.  We had plenty of fun times in the midst of all of that and I didn't want them to go undocumented.

The memorable moments of December:

I got to visit Kevin's new office and meet some of his colleagues.  We got to pick out his office location, visit the bookstore and enjoy being on campus before we closed on our new house.  My parents had our kids for the day so we could get as much done as possible.   This was also the same day we closed on our new house, did walk thrus and toured the kid's new school.

Olive's hair is growing nicely and she's so thrilled to have longer hair.  She's seeming so much older lately with big thoughts, opinions and ideas.

Fletcher is such a funny guy.  He had so much fun playing with rolls and rolls of masking tape this month.  I had a huge stash and he went through all of it.  He made cat forts, ninja traps, barbie things and these hilarious tape socks.  He was very proud of his invention.

Leo plays hard and naps hard.  Look at those cheeks!

Even though lots of life felt chaotic, I made sure to keep many of our routines in place for the kids.  I packed lunches the whole month and kept life as consistent as possible for them.

We finished our 16 slot Santa frame!  I worked really hard last year to print out all the Santa photos I could find starting with Olive's first Christmas in 2013.  I adore this big frame!!  Each photo is 4x4 and I LOVE looking back at all these sweet Santa moments over the years.  I'd highly recommend doing this.  I know it'll always be one of my favorite Christmas decorations to put out each year.

It's not too late to finish up those Christmas crafts.  I bought these wooden frames at JoAnns for $1 each and used gingham ribbon from my stash to add a bow to each wreath.  I couldn't wait for the kids to decorate them.  I had big plans to have them paint, but markers worked great.  They each decorated their wreaths and then signed the back of their frames.  I added in a recent photo from our Fall family pictures.  I can't wait to hang them on the tree next year!

I took all 3 cats + Leo with me to their yearly vet appointments.  Sometimes you've just got to make it happen when you're in a time crunch.  They all needed their yearly shots and check ups.  They all got good reports and were mostly well behaved.

I went to a really fun Favorite Things Party with friends before we moved.  There was a $15 gift budget and everyone brought appetizers or desserts to share.  We had a blast!  I came home with a bath set and brought my favorite eye shadow pallet to give away.  I love these kind of parties!

Leo and I spent a lot of time in the car running errands, having to be out of our house, waiting on pick ups, etc.  He was a total trooper.  Also, he could sit in the van and press buttons all day long. 

Some of the sweetest moments happened as the kids were wrapping up their last weeks at their old school.  Olive cashed in her reward tickets to read to Fletcher's class one last time.  His teacher sent me this picture and I cried.  It wasn't easy to move them mid year, but we're optimistic that they'll be really happy and settled in their new school soon.

Olive's class had a weekly Mystery Reader.  She'd asked my mom to sign up and I promised I would do my best to get her in town before we moved.  We managed to pull of a little bit of a surprise (although Olive said she totally knew it was Mimi) and my mom got to read to her class.  Kevin and I got to read to her class in October and it was such a fun experience for all of us.  I'm so happy this happened!

SO many boxes!!  We're still unpacking and working to get settled, but reflecting back on our December, I can say that without a doubt, Kevin and I worked tirelessly to make it the smoothest transition possible for our whole crew.  I've got a long list of moving tips I'll have to share with you this month.  They're updated since our last move in 2016 now that we had 3 kids and 3 kids to move.

Thanks for reading and focusing on all the highlights of December with me!

2021 Family Pictures

I'm so excited to share our 2021 family pictures with you today!

As with all family photo shoots - things were chaotic and crazy, but we got lots of good pictures!

We scheduled family pictures months ago with my cousin.  She takes our pictures every other year for my whole side of the family and we usually all go together to gift it to my mom for Mother's Day.  Life happens, we've got 19 schedules to try to work with and we had to reschedule them for 2022.  We all made it work and helped each other out with family pictures.

My parents were visiting Terre Haute around my birthday and offered to snap some pictures for us.  I picked out the outfits for everyone and the location.  The weather didn't look like it was going to cooperate, but right at the golden picture taking hour everything came together.  We stopped by our very favorite park (Dobbs Park) and took pictures with all the golden leaves.  Getting Leo to be still for photos was nearly impossible.  We got a work out trying to keep up with him.  Thankfully my parents still got some great family pictures for us and we got to have dinner at the country club afterwards.

These might be my favorite family pictures ever.  Yellow is my favorite color, Fall is my favorite season, Dobbs Park is a favorite park and things couldn't have looked prettier for us!  My parents took the family pictures and I snapped pictures of the kids.

I'll start with my favorite picture & our Christmas card picture!

I LOVE their new head shots!

I wasn't kidding about Leo.  He RAN anytime we set him down.

Fletcher was adamant that this was the best spot.  He ended up being right.

I love when pictures capture their personalities perfectly.

The reward for a great family picture session - climbing trees!

 Did you get family pictures taken this year?