November, December, January Chats (whoops)

Woaaaahhhhh there, what happened November, December, January, and now about half of February?! The time flew by in a swirl of chaos that made my head spin just a leeeele bit. WHEW. Y’all – these holiday months be cray, right? I know January and February aren’t holiday months, but they were also PACKED full of things for our us. Specifically the past four weeks – we have had crazy crazy craziness. I’ll update ya. But for now let’s travel back to November. I’m just going to break it down by month this time…

NOVEMBER!

November was characterized by Colt’s first birthday (how is he one, though?!) and Thanksgiving.

His birthday was zoo themed, and it was pretty freakin’ adorbs, if I do say so myself. We had lots of cute food: alligator eggs (grapes), zebra cakes, gorilla poop (blueberries), tiger tails (cheetos), buffalo chicken dip (didn’t think of a cute name for that one), and a “watering hole” for drinks. We had super cute theme-y decorations, a smash cake, the whole nine.

All complete with a precious little birthday boy, pictured below with his brother and grandparents, who dressed up as animals for the occasion (deer?) – they committed. #respect

Then there was Thanksgiving. Not too much unique stuff to report there – it was a lovely week with TONS of family and awesome food! Lots of toddlers and babies hanging around. Just the kind of week that leaves you exhausted but so full!

DECEMBER!

The process of taking a cute family picture with two toddlers 👆🏼. December was mainly just Christmas! Man – I love Christmas so much more now that we have kids. Especially this year, Ford was old enough for it to realllyyyy start to get fun – it’ll get ever better in the coming years as he gets even older and Colt starts to understand too!

It’s just so special. Seth and I both LOVED Christmas growing up and how special our parents’ made it for us, and we’ve been so excited to have kids of our own to start those traditions with.

It was the best!

What’s up 2020!?

If I could find an image to describe our New Year’s Eve celebrations, this would be it, fam. I was actually a little bummed out at the beginning of the night because a lot of our friends (without kids) were all hanging out, and we couldn’t join because how does ANYONE GET A BABYSITTER ON NEW YEARS? For reals, evvvvveryone has plans.

But – it actually ended up being a really fun and special night. We got cheap fast food, ate in bed, and drank champagne while we watched old reruns of all the New Year’s episodes of different sitcoms like Friends and The Office.

It was sweet and quiet and one of those situations where a tradition is born without you even knowing you are building one. We’ve decided it will be our New Year’s Eve tradition until our kids are old enough to go do their own thing and we can also join friends in the real world. But until then, it was super fun 🙂.

And as for the new year in general – 2019 was a tough one for us. It kicked our butts a little bit. We are ready to head into 2020 and CRUSH ITS FACE OFF (in a super fun, positive, awesome, let’s-make-it-the-best-year-ever kind of way 😉).

The Past Four Weeks

Y’ALL. The past 4 weeks. Since I have been adios on the blog. Wowzer (wowzer? Who am I).

• Lots of travel – we went to Raleigh two out of four weekends – once to visit friends and the other for a family reunion. I don’t know if you’ve traveled with a one and two year old recently, but dear GOD it feels like you are packing half your home and belongings when you go. Not to mention a 3 hour car ride with them in the back seat is as relaxing as an afternoon at the spa…………But the travel was good! Again, like I said with the holidays, exhausting but full.
• THE BUBONIC PLAGUE HITS OUR HOME. The sickest any of our kids have ever been was poor little Colt this month. It lasted about 2 weeks total, maybe a little less – it was really bad for probably a full week. He had a bad cold that developed into something called bronchiolitis. He would have coughing attacks so bad that he would throw up over and over and over again – I’m not talkin’ he coughs super bad and it triggers a puke. I mean he couldn’t stop coughing so he couldn’t stop puking, for like 10-15 minute periods at a time. It. Was. THE WORST. So, sooo hard to watch. We had to use a nebulizer and give him breathing treatments. Heartbreaking. Ford caught it in a mild degree too, so let’s just say we had looootttsss of movie days.
• Helped plan a close friend’s baby shower the same weekend as the family reunion – aka I woke up at 5 and drove home to make a bunch of food for the shower. No complaints there though – it was a great day and I LOVED helping. Again – exhausting but full. Should I just make that the new title for this post? I’ve said it like 412 times at this point.
• THE PIPE BURSSSSSSTTTTTTTTT. You guys. I could write an entire post about this – I don’t know how to appropriately fit it into one single bullet…but I shall try. LONG STORY short…a pipe burst in our house – water damage, repairs needed, mold growing, the whole burrito. BUT – it gets complicated. A. our insurance company is the absolute worst – it has been a terrible experience with them. We haven’t had our claim accepted yet so we haven’t started doing repairs yet soooo – still have mold growing in our walls! Yay! B. It turns out the year our house was built, a ton of the houses in the area got a bad batch of pipes. Meaning we WILL have more pipes burst in the future. Our neighbor has had twelve. TWELVE. So basically we need to get our entire house repiped…we are getting different estimates now, but I’ll just say, it’s way super duper extremely expensive.

SO – it has been a whirlwind four weeks, and I’ve just had to take a step back from the blog to deal with all this craziness, and I am sorry for that. I really appreciate consistency, and I don’t like when I can’t be consistent in my own life! Hopefully things calm down a bit here – I’ll keep ya updated 😉

If you made it to the bottom of this dissertation, I applaud you. Here – look at some yummy food to reward yourselves 👇🏼

What to Make in Febuary

What’s in season?

Avocado:

• Avocado Chimichurri
• Caprese Stuffed Avocado Cups with Balsamic Reduction

Broccoli:

• Instant Pot Beef and Broccoli
• Broccoli Cheddar Brown Rice Skillet

Cauliflower:

• Chopped Cauliflower Salad
• Thick and Creamy Cauliflower Mash

Lemons/Limes:

• Salmon with Lemon Caper Sauce
• Grilled Veggie Tacos with Cilantro Lime Yogurt