July 4th Weekend Recap & Our First Visit to the Children's Hospital

This 4th of July weekend was marked by so many firsts:
first trip to the Children's hospital
first movie
first ride in the back of a truck
first fireworks

We had a FULL weekend! I'm still recovering.

Friday morning, we were setting out to run some errands before lunch and nap when I heard Ryan say from the backseat, "Mommy, I stick baby pinecone up my nose!" in thhise most proud, excited little voice.

I responded, "Up  your nose?! That would be silly. .....WAIT, you DID stick it up your nose?"

At which point I quickly pulled over and sure enough saw what we had found in our backyard and called a "baby pinecone" barely sticking out of his right nostril.

So I kept my best act-calm-and-don't-freak-out voice and grabbed a pair of tweezers from my bag to get it out. The problem was that I couldn't get the tweezers around it, so I held down Ryan's left nostril and told him to blow just like he was blowing his nose.

Well, he did give a small blow but then followed it with an even bigger suck, and there shot the baby pinecone even higher up his nose.

At that point I said in my most forced, chipper voice, "Okay buddy, we're going to go visit a special doctor who will get this baby pinecone right out of your nose! Remember when Daniel Tiger visited the doctor?!" Meanwhile, in my head I'm saying, "Ahhhhh.... don't freak out, don't freak out."

Thankfully, we live less than 15 minutes from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and thankfully Ryan was SO calm and brave and was doing a great job of not touching his nose the whole way there.

They were GREAT. They gave him stickers, blew bubbles on the way back to the room, and were able to get it out without surgery- Praise the LORD! Ryan was SO brave and only started to cry when they were pulling it out, saying, "Dat hurts, dat hurts." Poor buddy!

We took this little bottle home with us and Ryan showed our family and friends and told them what he learned, "Not put baby pinecone in nose anymore." :)

Meanwhile, in the hospital room, this girl snuggled her Sophie and flashed all the smiles- ignorance is bliss. ;)

Later that day, we met Mimi and Matt at the pool and Mimi treated Ryan to a special patriotic popsicle. Whenever Ryan gets excited about a something he says, "Oooooh!" with a big smile and scrunches up his shoulders- sweet guy!

What he did when I told him we were going swimming with Mimi and Daddy

Saturday morning, Matt took Ryan to see him first movie- Finding Dory! Ryan wanted to stay through the credits. :)

Later that day we went swimming at my sister's house, and all of the boys rode in the back of my brother-in-law's truck down to the pool.

Jumping off the diving board!

Girly cracking us up with her stink eye at Ryan in this picture!

Maddox teaching Ryan how to use the firework (a little popper one you just throw on the ground)

On Sunday we swam with friends and had a cookout

And this little lady chilled on her towel.

Monday morning we walked up to the Peachtree Road Race to watch my sister and stepdad and all of the other runners.

Our family the last four years in the same spot!

We took it easy the rest of the day and ended with a walk at our favorite park. Ryan of course stopped to look at the ants.

Later that night, right as Matt and I were about to go to bed early, the fireworks started and we got about 3 hours of quality time with this pup.

Oh Tal.

If you missed yesterday's post, there is a GIVEAWAY involved! You can check it out here.

Happy Wednesday, Friends!

Willow Lane Prints GIVEAWAY!

We had such a great weekend celebrating America's Birthday- as we explained it to Ryan. If every weekend could last for three days and involve fun times with family and friends, I wouldn't mind it one bit. 

I'll have pictures to share from our weekend tomorrow, but TODAY, I am so excited to share with you a giveaway from Willow Lane Prints!

Willow Lane Prints is where I purchased both Ryan's and Natalie's birth stats signs for their rooms.

Kristy, the shop owner, is very quick to respond and will customize any of the prints in her shop to match the style and design you are looking for.

For each of their signs, I used the color chart she provides on her Etsy page to customize the prints to match their rooms.

I was so pleased with how each of them turned out and with my overall experience with working with Kristy, so I was so excited when she offered to give away an 11x14 print to one of y'all! 

She has over 400 designs to choose from- wedding, anniversary, gift ideas, nursery art- you can check them ALL out here!

To enter the giveaway, simply complete the Rafflecopter below.

Winner will be announced Friday!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July Goals

July for us means family time, pool time, our first family-of-four vacation, and a sweet little boy who will turn TWO at the end of the month- insert all the emotions here.

I have 27 days left to love on this one year old and get excited about celebrating his two-year-old self at the end of the month.

Before sharing my July goals, here's a quick recap of how my June goals turned out:

1.

Book our vacation

 We can't wait to ride bikes through this park!
Find all the details of where we're headed here.

2.

Read Me Before You

Ahh, man. I finished this book yesterday and honestly think I would say it was just okay. I was so prepared to loooove it- I'm a sucker for a great love story after all. But I guess that was the problem... I didn't feel like it was a great love story. It held my attention well enough, and I was looking forward to seeing how it ended (even though I felt like I knew how it was going to end the whole time I was reading it), and I will probably still see the movie to compare the two, but overall it was just okay for me.

3.

Create 2 new recipes

I ended up coming up with 3 new recipes this month that were all really different and tasty in their own ways. You can check them out below:

1- recipe here, 2- recipe here, 3-recipe here

4.

Order Natalie's Stats sign

I love what Willow Lane Prints did this time!
Stay tuned for a post and giveaway from WLP next week!

Now for a look at my goals for this month:

1.

Stick to a workout routine
I discovered this month that if I don't make this a goal, I don't do it. So here it is: I want to make sure I set aside time to break a sweat 3 x's a week. And sprinkle in some non-break-a-sweat, quicker workouts in between.

2.
Drink more water
I've had trouble with my milk supply this go around and know that drinking lots of water is one of the easiest ways to get my supply back to where it needs to be. So I'm making it a goal to drink at least 64oz. of water a day. And hopefully I can get that up to 96oz by the end of the month. I have a 32oz. water bottle, so filling that 2-3 times a day will get me there.

3.
Start Natalie's One Year Book
When Ryan turned one, I made a Shutterfly book of his first year.

It was a lot to do all at once, so I want to work on Natalie's a little bit at a time. I figure this month I can knock out her first 5 months (5 months already?!) and have a good start on her book.

4.
Plan something fun Ryan's birthday
We have a little party planned for him but we want to do something special with him on his actual birthday too. We're not sure what yet but bikes, water, animals, cooking, climbing, jumping and building are a few of his favorite things- so we'll probably do something involving one of those things!

5.
Create 2-3 new recipes
I'm liking having this as a monthly goal. I love to cook and come up with new recipes for our family, so I want to set aside time to make this happen each month.

That's it for my goals for July!

Hope you all have a great weekend!