9.21.2014

{Weekend Recap} Family Time & Milestones

After dealing with a long spat of Terrible Two-ness from our Quad Squad, things seem to have settled down a little bit. For now at least. But because now that I've openly said that, things are likely to get crazy again! Hopefully not until I've finished this post. ;)

Our weekend started off with a wonderful occasion - date night! We hadn't gone out together, not even for a meal, in over two months. It was mostly because of my double knee surgery, but now that I'm doing so much better, it was time. Our nanny came over during the quad's dinner, we bid our farewells and took off care free! If you know us at all, you'll know we headed straight to Texas Roadhouse for dinner then hit up the movies for the latest Liam Neeson flick, A Walk Among the Tombstones. We even snuck wine into the theater (shhhh!) and enjoyed every second of our night out! Can't believe our eight year wedding anniversary is next week!


Saturday morning started off with donuts in the front yard since it was in the high 70s still. The weather has mellowed a tiny bit in Dallas and high temps are topping out in the low 90s, versus triple digit heat. We try to capitalize on the friendlier weather in the mornings and evenings as much as possible.


While my parents are out of town, we're cat-sitting Maggi and the kids love feeding her treats and taking turns holding her!


Trystan decided to help me with a little laundry and got herself into one of daddy's white shirts. She wore it for about 30 minutes! As you can see in the pic, I needed all the help I could get sorting clothes since laundry has, ummm, piled up. And those orange tubs are my fall decor I just finished putting out and hope to share on the blog soon!


Later on Saturday morning the husband took both our dogs to the vet, so I kept the girls entertained with Melissa & Doug sticker books....


....and Harrison helped himself to the kid-friendly shelf of reading material on the other side of the living room. He even "read" the words on the pages and sort of made up his own stories and I loved sitting on the couch listening to him. :)


Sunday morning I actually got out of bed right when my alarm went off and we all were ready for church on time with a few extra minutes for pictures! The kids were very excited to go somewhere and are starting to recall what church is every week, as this is only their fourth time to attend. And Harrison absolutely made my day and melted my heart when I was buckling him into his car seat as we were preparing to leave and told him he was so handsome. Without skipping a beat, he replied, "And you're pretty, mommy!" SWEET PURE LOVE! That boy just has something special over me and always will.



Getting to church several times now has made both my husband and I so proud. Just months ago, finding the time to check out local churches, much less ready all four kids, load them, escort them in and introduce them to a strange new environment while simultaneously nearly doubling the children's class in one go, seemed very daunting. God blessed us with a wonderful Methodist church only five minutes from our home and we've been so pleased with every one we've met there as well as all the programs and children's workers. We met in person with the pastor and several key staff members and met each of the children's caretakers before bringing the kids along with us. We stayed with them the entire first Sunday we attended as a family, then stayed only half the time then only 10-15 minutes this morning after arriving at children's church with the crew before we snuck out to go into the service. They've done impressively well, with only one major meltdown by Kailey, and today the nursery workers said they discovered the trick to distracting the kids when we left the room—goldfish! Needless to say, finding a wonderful church home and getting back into church has been a big milestone for us!

As soon as we got home, I started in on lunch. I've always loved a big, hearty lunch after church, ever since I was little. My favorite thing is to go out to eat after church then lounge around all afternoon. But with four toddlers, sometimes it's just as well to eat at home then put them straight down for naps so that "lounging" can happen for a second! So I made steaks with lots of sea salt in butter in the cast iron skillet on the stove top, steamed broccoli with garlic and baked some potato wedges. Delish!



Everyone went into a little food coma and the kids went down for naps without much protest. I've caught up on some magazine reading, Pinterest-ing and completed our meal plan for the week. Over the weekend, we made a trip to Home Depot—all six of us!—for sand to put in the kid's sandbox they received for their birthday from my parents. Since we are entering fall and won't be using our baby pools for swimming now, it was the perfect time to pull the sandbox out of the garage and set it up. I have had a bag of sand toys sitting in waiting for the longest time (all found at the Dollar Store and Target on deep discounts) and dumped them into the sandbox this afternoon. Excited to let the kids out there to discover a new activity tomorrow since it'll be bath day and I figure that coincides perfectly for their first-ever sandbox introduction. :)


For now, it's time to escape to the grocery store while the husband takes over "kid duty" as the crew begins waking up from their naps. I might even squeeze in a pedicure while I'm freeeeeeeeee...
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6 comments:

  1. Oh, Honey! What a great post and we were excited to see pics of all of you! Harrison is telling the tuth!! You ARE so very PRETTY - inside and out!!
    We are tucked into a very nice motel and watching the Bronco game. Happy to hear via Facebook about the Cowboys winning!! Tell the quads MeeMaw and Granddad are missing them!!! Glad they are enjoying Maggie........tell Kailey to keep those wet wipes handy!!!

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  2. Hi I'm kind of new here!! I love reading your blog!! and the kids are so cute!!
    I don't know how you do it with 4 of the same age... greetings!!

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  3. oh my goodness they are all so big! look how long the girl's hair got! so cute :)

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  4. Glad y'all got a date night! We've been known to sneak travel sized liquor into the movie theater, to mix with soda before. :)
    It's impressive that you not only got the crew ready for church, but also had time for pictures. Impressive!
    My crew is on a sandbox time out...the boys dump buckets of sand on the girls. Every time. Ughhh! With water play days numbered we will need something else to do outside.

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  5. Loving the picture of all of them before church! The girls look too cute, and Harrison's hair is absolutely adorable!

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  6. Gold stars to you both.
    So impressed with all that goes on you make the time fix them fresh foods.

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