Friday Faves

Happy Friday!  Our week was packed with lots of fun things.  We have 9 days of school left and a busy calendar for the rest of the month.  We were surprised to see a new Pope Leo since we have a Leo, hosted parties and enjoyed time at home this week.

Here are my favorite moments of the week:

1. We had big plans for an end of the year picnic with Kevin's department.  Then a huge storm rolled through.  There was lightning, flash flooding, cancelled plans, uncancelled plans, almost getting stuck on a flash flooded road (terrifying!!) and lots of pivoting.  We were bummed that it ended up being a challenging night, but shortly after we came home there was a giant neon rainbow in our backyard.  So even though the night didn't go as planned, we made the most of it.

A double rainbow!

2. Surprise strawberry party!  Olive learned that one of her good friends wasn't going to be able to have a birthday party this year because of some difficult life circumstances.  Her friend group got together and threw her a surprise party.  We are always happy to host.  It was fun to help her pull it all together.

Olive's cutest Canva invitation.  We texted it out to the girls and their moms and then just told the guest of honor that it was a regular sleepover.

Olive told me I've become famous for making candy salads for her friends.  Yay!  We had all kinds of yummy gummies to mix and spoon out into treat bags for all the girls.

Give me any excuse to use my vintage strawberry cookie jar!

The girls arrived early and planned a scavenger hunt for the birthday girl to find her gifts. I forgot how much excitement is involved when you plan a surprise party.

I rushed home from work to make some dessert.  Then we kept it super simple and ordered pizzas for dinner.

The hit of the night was the portable volleyball net.  The girls played for hours thanks to Kevin helping keep the games going.

I woke up early to make sure they had a yummy breakfast before they left.

3. I transplanted these cute flowers from Kevin's grandma's house last year and they have come back in full force this year!  I smile every time I see these sweet purple blooms.

4. I forgot it was stuffed animal day for Leo and was able to run a stuffed animal over to his school just in time for library.  I can't always fix things that I forget for the kids so when I do it feels great.  The kids had foam parties, pizza parties, fundraisers, signs ups and more.  It is so much to manage this time of year.

5. Olive has an amazing art teacher.  She brought home her 3D art projects this week.  They turned out so cute!

6. Fletch found me a giant 4 leaf clover in the backyard.

7. Kindergarten art is the cutest.

8. Leo + Penny is a close second.

9. I finally figured out why I'm finding dirt scattered all around the kitchen.  Bad Mr. Mittens!

10.  I got some of the sweetest teacher appreciation gifts this week!

11. It was a busy baking week making hundreds of cookies.  I love getting to bake for friends, Fletcher's class, events and baby showers.

12. Fletcher's water color art is on display at school right now!

13. Nothing Bundt Cake is always a good idea.  Especially lemon, with a gift card and a sweet note of appreciation.

14. The big kids say that they refresher drinks from Starbucks - strawberry & blackberry - are both delicious!

I hope you have a really wonderful Mother's Day weekend!  We have a packed weekend.  See you back here on Monday.  Linking up with Momfessionals

8 Rainbows in One Day

If you've been around here for a minute, you know that I LOVE RAINBOWS.

Especially the past few years.  They have been a great reminder of God's goodness for our family.  I wrote about that here in 2021.

Genesis 9:13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

On Leo's birthday, April 7th 2024, we had the most amazing display of rainbows!  In about a 2 hour time span we saw at least 8 rainbows.  I've never seen anything like it.  Some storms blew through our area and God put on a show in our backyard!  We always look for rainbows after storms or rain, but we didn't have to look hard to see this rainbow show.  One would fade and a new one would pop up.

Let me share some of my favorite rainbow pictures with you!  Several of them are double rainbows!

Best. Day. Ever.

Rainbow Signs

Remember when I wrote this post We're Moving! and Change is Hard a few weeks ago?

I said that we had all the big feelings about moving and were really going to miss living in Terre Haute BUT that we knew it was the right decision for our family.

I thought I'd elaborate on that today.

It might not be the most interesting stories, but it's an important story for our family.

There is always a lot going on behind the scenes with Kevin's job that isn't exactly the best blog content.  Things that were struggles, hard and not exactly ideal along with changes that we felt coming.  Combine those with exciting career milestones - getting tenure and being given cool opportunities.  We've been working through some of those things for years.  We have been praying for answers and guidance over the years and most of the time doors were closed, opportunities weren't there and God seemed to be telling us to stay put.  It was very obvious that Terre Haute was the place where we were supposed to be for the past 6 years.  Terre Haute has been really good to our family.  Both boys were born here, the kids have loved their schools, fun friends and I had some really cool opportunities.

June 2021 //

This past summer a job came across Kevin's radar at University of Evansville.  It was the director of a brand new clinical psychology PsyD program.  They wanted to bring in someone to build a program from the ground up.  He said it was a really interesting job opportunity that he felt like he had to explore.  He was shocked that something that seemed like his dream job was coming available in the near future.  He prepped his application, got his letters of recommendation and sent everything off.  I panicked a bit because this was all so sudden and a new school year was beginning.

September //

University of Evansville reached out to him and wanted to bring him in for an interview.

We were a little surprised because it had been months without hearing anything.

He was excited to go and see what their vision was for the program.

He headed out for 2 full days of intense interviews.  

I barely talked to him and he was busy from morning to night.  He was busy talking to everyone from community leaders, people on and off campus, guest lecturing, presenting his research, etc and they made sure he met with all the people.  He bumped into my dad at his favorite breakfast spot and had to quickly tell him why he was there.  Then my cousin on campus.  So much for flying under the radar.

Kevin was on information overload after two days and a couple hour trip each way.  He liked what they had to say and was impressed with what they had to offer.  He thought everything went great so we waited to see.  A few days later they offered him the position!

We had a week or so to decide.  We weighed ALL the pros/cons and talked through the idea of chasing big dreams for our family.  We talked about what opportunities we wanted for the kids as they got older and the pros and cons of relocating now.  We prayed a ton, went back and forth with offer details and then felt like we should take the job.

October // 

We visited Evansville, saw tons of houses and I kept saying a million things needed to fall into place for us to make a quick move - ie in January 2022 vs June 2022.  Slowly, but surely, all of our plans felt like they were been green lighted by God.  Every single thing that were conditions of a quick move were being taken care of - new house, quick sale of our current house, great schools for the kids, etc.

Then I realized I started seeing rainbows everywhere.  That was unusual for me and quickly reminded me of Genesis 9:13 (I have set my rainbow in the clouds and and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth) and that God keeps his promises.  God has always taken good care of our family.  Each move has been a blessing to us and a great opportunity for our family.  We've loved all the cities we've lived in and we were excited about the prospect of another new city.  So the abundance of rainbows had me feeling like God was showing me signs that this was a great opportunity for us to trust Him and trust His plan for our family.  

Let me show you some of the rainbows we saw:

We headed to Evansville for the day to look at houses.  We found the one.  We showed the kids and hurried back to Terre Haute.  Shortly after getting on the road to head home we saw the brightest double rainbow I have ever seen.  It lit up the whole sky + fall leaves.  Kevin and I were like WOW that feels like a big sign from God.

I drove the kids to school one morning like I always do and there was a huge rainbow.  I was feeling a little overwhelmed by life and all the potential changes so this rainbow was really encouraging.

Another morning I was out and about with Leo running errands.  This rainbow peeked through the clouds to give me a little encouraging boost.

And lastly, we headed up to Wisconsin for Fall Break.  We were deliberating the job decision the whole trip and we saw rainbows the entire trip.  They kept popping up everywhere.

So for us all these rainbow signs were just confirmation that we needed to give this a shot!  We needed to leave the comfortable life we'd gotten accustomed to and be ready to go where God was calling our family to go.  Like we'd always done with moves in the past.  Change is hard and not always fun, but we are confident that God has great plans for our family in our new city.