Grateful Llama / Grateful Giveaways

Happy Monday, y'all! I had a really amazing weekend. It's hard to believe it went by so fast!
//Small Recap 
Saturday I went to the park with one of my best friends. I've known her since middle school. The kids had a blast! The best part was, the park we met at had a pond with a trail around it; So once the kids got too worn out from climbing, we walked around the trail and threw leaves into the water.

Sunday my dad and step mom came over. My dad has been to our new house plenty of times since we moved in July, but my step mom had never been here.

In the spirit of Grateful Heart Mondays with Emily from Ember Grey, I'm grateful for weekends like these. We didn't do a lot, but it still so fun.

I'm also grateful for blog giveaways! There's a great one for y'all going on now!

I have teamed up with 5 other amazing bloggers to bring you this giveaway.

One lucky winner will be getting $50 to Enjoy Essential. 

This website has the cutest quote tees for adults & the littles, & more. 

That Southern Mama / Love the Here & Now / Casual Claire

The So-Called Homemaker  / The Rambling Llama  / Lot 48

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy Birthday to Ashley today! Good luck to y'all for the giveaway! What are y'all grateful for today?

Weddings, Grandmas, and Costumes - Oh My!

Y'all, how is it October 14th already? Seriously... where has the time gone? This past weekend just flew by like the rest of them have, but that probably had a lot to do with the fact that we stayed busy. In a good way.

// Friday. Typical workday. The only difference was I got to leave 20 minutes early. The company I work for is trying to cut back on too much overtime. By 4:10 I had finished what I needed to do for the day, so I went to my boss and asked if I could leave. He gave me a sideways eye and asked a million questions as to why I wanted to leave early. When he finally understood that I was done for the day and I already had an hour of overtime for the week, he let me leave. YES!

// Saturday. What a FULL day that was.
9 AM got the oil changed in Josh's car
10 AM had a late breakfast as a family
11 AM left for my mom's house. We had a wedding to go to (it started at 2) so since my mom was watching the kids for us we decided to just get ready at her house. This was also the first time Josh and I had seen my mom's new house. Y'all, it's GORGEOUS! I'm SOO Happy for my mom and step dad!
So we got ready, and had exactly one picture taken of us all dolled up. If you follow on insta, you've already seen it. Hey, at least we clean up nicely! ha. Also, do you see it?? I'm wearing my fancy-schmancy EShakti Dress! I LOVE IT!

The wedding (for me) was a lot of fun. One of my long time school friends tied the knot. It was a gorgeous Catholic wedding, so as you can imagine there were a TON of people there. Josh knew exactly one person (me). He was a giant party pooper. It started on the drive to the church: "my allergies are acting up", "my shoes are too tight", "I really hate dressing up". [insert massive eye roll here!]

During the ceremony, it was more questions about who everyone was and how he couldn't believe how many people I knew there (yes, including parents of the bridal party).

*confession: I had a lot of friends in high school, and since I was never at my house I got to know my friends' parents pretty well* haha.

At the reception, we ended up leaving after I said hello to the bride and the bridal party. Seriously y'all, I wasn't kidding even a little bit when I said Josh was being a party pooper. Oh well. Next Sept he'll get it when he's the best man for his brother's wedding. [insert evil laugh here!]

So we left early, but got to spend time with my mom and sister, who surprised our mom by randomly showing up at her house! YAY for spontaneous family time! My sister also got some really adorable shots of the kids. Photo Cred!

 

 

// Sunday. We spent way too much money at Wal-Mart to refill the pantry and fridge. Seriously, y'all... I'm not sure how my four year old eats so much! While we were there, Zander managed to pick out his Halloween costume. Originally he wanted to be a red ninja. Then it changed to Batman. When the neighbor kids introduced him to scary masks he was sold and he finally decided to be something scary.
Allow me to introduce you to our "scary jester" or whatever the offical name was on the costume. Basically he loves it and that's all that matters. (I'm not even sure why the sword was needed, but whatever works, right?)

After Wal-Mart my mother in law came over. We cleaned out Josh's car. [My husband has a nasty habit of keeping empty water and gatorade bottles in the car, so once a week we have to force him to clean his car]. We took a walk around the neighborhood with her, and just enjoyed being at home.
Zander became overly attached to a stray cat that has decided the neighbors accross the street own it now. That's what they get for feeding it. It's SUPER cute and incredibly sweet, but I refuse to feed it. The neighbors keep giving it food, so it won't starve, therefore I don't feel guilty. I just can't have a second animal right now. haha. #sorrynotsorry

So that was my exciting weekend! In text it doesn't look that exciting, but we enjoyed it. We also got some new movies for SUPER cheap at Movie Stop. If y'all don't have one near you, I'm sad for you. This is the only place we ever buy new DVDs and Blu Rays. We were able to score the "Robots" movie for less than 4 bucks this weekend. AKA, Zander's new favorite movie. haha.

Have you entered the huge giveaway happenening on the blog? If not... Do it now!

The Weekend That Didn't Happen

Well, ladies (and gents if you're reading along) I promised a weekend recap, and so a weekend recap you will get. Just please don't have high hopes for the quality of this post. I'm warning you know, quality level is lacking today.

What could've happened

GIFSoup

Some of you may remember from Friday where I said Josh and I were going to escape from the kids and enjoy the weekend just us for our anniversary... yeah, that didn't happen.

// Friday
Josh spilled the beans and told me we were going to go to Helen, GA and stay in a cabin. Insert extreme excitment from me because I love Helen, I love the mountains, and I love cabins! The plan was to get off work, pack, drop the kids off and head up to the mountains. Great plan, right? Right... if only it worked out that way.
What had happened was... got off work, picked up the kids, Ainsley has a fever and is throwing up. Come to find out from the sitter, "oooh, yeah she's been kind of crummy today but I didn't want to bug you at work because I had it under contrrol. She probably got it from (the sitter's daughter) because she's had a fever since Wednesday" UM WHAT?? THANKS for telling me. (I'm a little annoyed with the sitter.)
Plans cancelled. I don't care how much my mother in law loves my kids, I'm not giving her the pain, torture and suffering that comes with a kid that's throwing up.

// Saturday
Since plans were cancelled, I called work to see if they still needed me to help with data entry on cycle counts (aka mini inventory). They had asked early last week, but I declined thinking we were going out of town. I'm not one to turn down overtime and since they still needed me, I went into work for a few hours Saturday. For those that follow me on twitter know what an exciting morning I had.

After 4 hours of work, I headed home to find miss Ainsley in much better spirits. Hubby and I decided to leave her with my mom so we could go to a couple's baby shower. I would've taken the kids, but I didn't want to risk other kids at the shower to get infected with the gunk that Ainsley had. [the good news, knock on wood, is that it's Tuesday and no one else has felt ill]. If you're friends with me on facebook, I posted an epic video of the guys at the shower chugging beer through baby bottles. There were cheaters involved.
In case you're not friends with me on facebook, here you go!

// Sunday
Laundry day! (I warned you, didn't I?) We did playoutside with the kids most of the day. Josh quickly reminded me just how terrible I am at basketball when we played a little with the neighbors. Other than that, mowed the grass and ate takeout pizza.

So there y'all have it. My (not so) overly exciting weekend. We did enjoy it though. We spent time with each other, and as a family and it was just enough. Sorry if it was utterly boring to y'all... I did make a promise.