This is Five… Olivia’s Birthday Interview

Before I get into all things Olivia, I want to give a shout-out to the hubs because today is HIS birthday!!!!  Happy birthday, my love!  Next year if you’d like, we can do a birthday interview for you.  ;o)

So, our jolly gal will be FIVE next Monday, so this past weekend I interviewed her for her annual birthday interview.  In the past she has always been pretty goofy for these interviews, but for some reason she took this one very seriously.  She thought very carefully about each answer and barely showed her silly side, which is very unusual for her… just one more sign that she’s growing up.  Cue all the tears.  :o(  She does, however, still start nearly every sentence with a nice long, “Ummmm…” as she’s thinking.  :o) 

Ladies and gentlemen (well Ladies and Brian and my Daddy… the only two gentlemen who probably read my blog – haha), this is FIVE...

1.      What is your favorite toy?  “Ummmm… hmmmm… that’s kind of hard because there’s lots of toys.  That Minnie Mouse thing where you call Minnie Mouse on the phone that Grandpa gave me today for Valentine’s Day.”  (She literally just got this about an hour ago so it’s fresh in her mind.)

2.      What is your favorite stuffed animal?  “Mmmmm, that doll that you smell her face and it smells like vanilla.”  (It was a gift from my mother-in-law and she’s had her since she was born and she really does love it but I wouldn’t say that she has a favorite… she’s more of a flavor of the week kind of person.  Haha.) 

3.      What is your favorite game?  “Um… hmmmm… Candyland.”  Me: “Not the Hatchimals game?!”  Olivia: “Oh yes, the Hatchimals game!!”  (We have literally been playing this game one to multiple times PER DAY since she got it for Christmas.)

4.      What is your favorite sport?  “Ummmm… ballet!” 

5.      What is your favorite book?  “Mmmm that one’s kind of hard.  Um, that big Anna and Elsa one.”  (She’s referring to her Frozen 5-Minute Stories book and she does love it!  We’ve been reading it most nights for the last few weeks now.) 

6.      What is your favorite TV show?  “Um, True!”  (A Netflix original and she does love it.) 

7.      What is your favorite movie?  “Um… hmmmm… I guess Frozen.”  (Even though she hasn’t watched it in probably over a year because she doesn’t like conflict between the sisters and is terrified of Marshmallow.  Haha.  She is obsessed with all things Frozen, though, so I suppose that’s true.)

8.      What is your favorite song?  “Um, my favorite song is Moana soundtrack.”   

9.      What is your favorite band or singer?  “Um, Elsa.”  (She said this last year, too!  Lol.)

10. What is your favorite holiday?  “CHRISTMAS!”  (She didn’t even hesitate with this one!  She is her mother’s daughter.)

11. What is your favorite season?  “Um, what are the seasons?”  Me: “Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.”  Olivia: “Winter, because that’s when Christmas is.” 

12. What is your favorite color?  “Um, red.”  Me: “HUH?!”  Olivia: “Because of PJ Masks.”  Me: “So it’s not pink anymore?”  Olivia: “Yeah, it is pink.  I like all of the colors.”  (I like that answer!  I like all of the colors, too.  Oh, except orange… I’m only an orange fan when it’s on a fall leaf or a pumpkin.)

13. What is your favorite animal?  “Ummmm, not scary stuff.  I guess giraffes.  Oh wait, I mean hippopotamuses because remember when we saw that one at Disney World and it was tee-teeing?!”  *Laughs her head off*  (First of all, she means rhinoceros.  And y’all, if there is ONE THING that our kids remember from Disney World, it is literally this – the dang rhinoceros peeing in its natural habitat on the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride in Animal Kingdom.  They still talk about that a whole year later and any time the subject of Disney World comes up, this comes up in the conversation, too.  That rhino really made an impression on them.  And I think I inadvertently got it on video.  I should really show it to them sometime.  Hahahaha.)

14. What is your favorite shirt?  “Um, shirt?  The one that has those flowers on it.”  (She’s not wrong, y’all.  She’s referring to a shirt that she’s literally been wearing since she was two years old and she still won’t give it up.  It started out so long that it was pretty much a dress, then it slowly became a tunic as she grew, and now we’re dealing with a very short shirt.  We really got our money’s worth from that one!  Haha.)

15. What is your favorite fruit?  “Um, raspberries.”  (Literally the only fruit she will eat right now so I would have been giving her the side-eye if she didn’t say this.)

16. What is your favorite vegetable?  “Probably, um, carrots, because I used to eat them.”  (Lol.  Sounds about right, she hardly eats any veggies.)  Me: “What about okra?”  Olivia: “I like okras and carrots.”  (Girlfriend does love some fried okra… she’s a good little southern girl!)

17. What is your favorite snack?  “S’mores Goldfish.”  (Both of our kids love these!)

18. What is your favorite treat?  “Treat?  Wow, this one is hard.  I guess bubblegum.  Mmmm yummy, bubble gum.”  *starts making up a song about bubblegum and singing it*  (And she’s totally right.  She is completely obsessed with gum right now and will choose it over anything right now.)

19. What is your favorite drink?  “Um, water, HAH!”  *starts making up a song about water to the tune of “Part of Your World” and singing it*  (And she’s totally right.  She literally only drinks water… she’s not interested in milk or juice or soft drinks or anything else.  I can’t even remember the last time she drank anything other than water… it’s probably been over a year.)

20. What is your favorite thing to eat for dinner?  “Um, homemade waffles because sometimes you make breakfast for dinner and you make homemade waffles.”  *starts making up a song about homemade waffles and singing it*  (I can’t believe she didn’t say peanut butter and jelly.  She chooses it over any food every single day of the week and would eat it for every single meal if we would let her.  She pretty much has at least one per day.)

21. What is your favorite restaurant?  “Um, that shop where you get pancakes… Cracker Barrel.”  *starts singing her class behavior song that goes, “Criss cross applesauce, hands in your lap, bubble in your mouth, chomp.”*  (Random.  Lol.)

22. Who is your best friend?  “Becca.”  (This is true.  It’s pretty much the only person she talks about every day when she gets home from school.)

23. What makes you feel happy?  “Um, happy Valentine’s Day.”  (Can you tell that we celebrated hard this week?  Ha!)

24. What makes you feel sad?  “Um, that someone hit me.”

25. What are you afraid of?  “Storm and thunder and lightening.”  (True story, she also said this last year.)

26. What are you thankful for?  “My friend gave me, um, toys.”  Me: “What else?”  Olivia: “Um, that she bes kind to me.”  (I don’t even know how to spell “bes” but oh my goodness, I’m going to be so sad when she starts using the correct past tense verbs!)

27. What are you really good at?  “Mmmm, doing mazes.”  (Both kids have been on a maze kick lately… especially Jacob!)

28. What is your best memory?  “Um, that one day that I throwed up on the couch and the floor a little bit.  I never throwed up in a long time.”  Me: “That’s your best memory?!”  Olivia: “Uh huh.”  Me: “You know what best means, right?”  Olivia: “Mmmm hmmmm, that means you’re the best.”  Me: “Best means good… so you like throwing up?!”  Olivia: “Noooo…”  Me: “Okay, so what’s your favorite GOOD memory?”  Olivia: “About the Daddy Daughter dance.”  (Every single time we talk about memories, both kids always mention that they remember when they had stomach viruses and threw up.  Apparently they hate it so much it leaves a huge impression because it’s always the first thing they remember from the past.  Lol.)

29. What do you want to be when you grow up?  *without hesitation*  “Elsa.”  (She said this last year and it’s so true.  She talks constantly about how she’s going to be Elsa at Disney World one day.)

30. If you could have one wish, what would it be?  “Um, that I was dreaming about the Daddy Daughter Dance.”  Me: “That’s not really a wish.”  Olivia: “Oh, I don’t even really know what wishes are.”  Me: “A wish is where if you could have anything in the world what would it be?”  Olivia: “That I could float in the sky.”  (Lofty goals… literally.  Hahahaha.)

Happy almost birthday to our girl!  Just five more days!!  We’ve been counting it down since, like, November!  Haha.

Birthday Interview - Age 3

Birthday Interview - Age 4

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Our Weekend - The One with the Michael Buble Concert

It was a great three-day weekend, y’all!  Friday we kicked it off with pizza and craft beers at our new favorite place.  After dinner, we went back home, snuggled up on the couch, and had a family movie night to watch The Little Rascals.  It was one of my favorites growing up and my Momma and Daddy gave the DVD to the kids for Valentine’s Day, so they were ready to watch it.  The kids ended up LOVING it.  And I loved watching it again after all these years.  It is just so stinking cute!

Saturday B picked up donuts for breakfast.  It had been quite some time since we’d had them, so we were long overdue.  I worked on a few projects around the house after breakfast.  I finally, finally got my entertainment center shelves styled the way that I want them and I also started moving around some things around on our walls.  B had an afternoon tennis match, so the kids and I stayed home and did a couple of loads of laundry, Olivia and I did her five year old birthday interview (coming later this week to the blog), and then we all played princesses and Legos and a bunch of other stuff in the play room.

Saturday evening we went to 5:30 mass as usual, and then we went to our usual Mexican place with my mom, dad, uncle, brother, and his family.  I got lots of baby snuggles in while I sipped on a margarita, so it wasn’t too shabby of an evening.  ;o)

The kids were off to bed shortly after we got home and then B and I settled in to watch Jurassic World… AKA Lindsay got in a good couch nap.  ;o)

Sunday morning we were pretty lazy until it was time to go to my MIL and step-FIL’s for lunch, and then we spent a little bit of time in the back yard at their house afterward.  It’s been rainy/dreary here for weeks with only a couple of sunny days sprinkled in here and there, so I feel like I’m starting to go into a bit of an end-of-season funk.  I’m ready for spring!

My MIL came to our house around 4 Sunday afternoon and B and I took off for a rare (if ever) Sunday evening date night!  Michael Buble was playing in Atlanta and it has been on my bucket list to see him for about 15 years, so we bought tickets the second they went on sale a few months ago.

Since we were in Atlanta, we stopped at IKEA on the way to grab another pair of my favorite curtains, and while we were there I ended up grabbing a couple of other odds an ends… a faux fern for the living room (that looks AMAZING!), a frame for my office (so I can finally get it completed!!), and two more frames that will possibly go in the living room… we’ll see. 

After IKEA we headed straight to the venue in Duluth.  It was raining (yet again) and the traffic was way worse than usual (probably because of the rain) so we ended up getting in the door with just enough time to run to the bathroom, grab a couple of hot dogs and beers, and slide into our seats about ten minutes before he came out.  Whew.  There was no opener for him, and they had announced that he would be out promptly at 8, so we were sweating it there for a little while.  I would have been so sad if we had missed the beginning!

The concert was AMAZING… even better than I had hoped for.  He had a 35 piece orchestra behind him along with three very talented back-up singers.  He sang all of my favorites of his as well as a lot of my old favorite standards that he does.  Our seats were INCREDIBLE.  We were in Row R (18^th row from the main front stage) and our seats were right by the catwalk portion of the stage that leads to the middle of the venue.  Therefore, he kept walking right by us and we even made it up on the big screen for a second when he walked by us and the camera followed him.  I mean, he was RIGHT THERE.  It was so cool.

Many people got out of their seats to stand right along the catwalk, but I stayed in my seat.  I ended up kind of wishing I had gone to stand over by the stage, though, because he interacted with the audience a ton – high-fiving, shaking hands, taking selfies with people’s phones, and even getting down and dancing with one lady right next to us.  He was HILARIOUS and told some funny little stories in between songs, and it was just an all-around enjoyable evening.  Made me love him even more! 

We drove home after the concert and headed straight to bed since it was super late.  We ended up sleeping in until about 8:45 Monday morning, which was nice, and then we bummed around the house all morning.  The kids were out of school for President’s Day and B took the day off so it was nice not to have any where to be after having such a late night. 

Monday morning I sold the kids’ old stroller (cue aaaallll the tears) on our neighborhood Facebook page, so one of our neighbors came over to pick it up.  It was nice to have that big thing out of the house, but man, does it make me sad to know that our babies are so old that they don’t need it anymore. 

I also worked on rearranging a few more things on the walls in the house to get them DONE (my word for the year) and to finally have them the way that I want them, and then we headed out for lunch at Five Guys!! 

The rainy morning had turned into sunshine (mostly) by lunchtime, so afterward, we went to the playground to let the kids run around.

Olivia’s ballet/tap class was still on Monday, so she and I headed there for her 3:45 class while B and Jacob stayed at home playing video games, and then just as Olivia and I were getting home, B and Jacob headed out for Jacob’s first spring soccer practice at 5:30.

We are officially back in full swing with all of the extracurriculars, so it’s gonna be a flurry of activity for the next three months until the kids are officially out of school for the summer.  EEK!

Happy Tuesday, y’all!

Still Weekending...

The kids are out of school today and B took off from work since he and I had a late night last night (Michael Buble concert!!!!) so I’m taking the day off from blogging to spend the day with the fam.  I’ll be back tomorrow to recap the weekend… AND THE CONCERT!!!! 

Bucket list CHECK!

In the meantime, you can see highlights from the concert in my Instagram Stories!

Happy Monday, y’all!

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Five on Friday - Thickening Spray, Q&U Wedding, and Quarterly Awards

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Hey y’all!  Goodness gracious, it’s been a crazy week and I’m really looking forward to next week when things will finally (hopefully) slow down a bit.  The painters finished up the cabinets this week so I’ve been working diligently to get everything back in them, plus we’re still working to get everything back in the entertainment center since it was painted as well.  We’ve had all kinds of Valentine’s Day festivities as well as Olivia’s Q & U Wedding and Grandparents Day at the kids’ school.  It’s been one of those weeks that I’ve been at the school a lot, but I sure wouldn’t have it any other way!  I’m just so grateful to be able to be more active there and volunteer more. 

Anyway, let’s get to some favorites from the week!

O N E – Kristin Ess Instant Lift Thickening Spray

I have extremely straight, fine hair and it’s pretty impossible to get it to do anything but be stick straight and flat.  That means that I have to wash my hair every single day and I also can’t use conditioner.  A plus to having fine hair (and not a lot of it) is that it only takes me about five minutes to fully blow dry my hair each day so it’s really not that bad. 

With that said, I’ve always wished for thicker hair and I’ve tried many, many products throughout the years to try and find something that will at least give my hair the illusion of being thicker, and I’ve finally found something that does the trick! 

I bought this Kristin Ess Instant Lift Thickening Spray a few months ago at Target and I absolutely love it.  I just spray a few squirts in my hand and run it through my hair (mostly around the roots) right after I shower each morning and it gives my hair so much more volume!!  There is truly a noticeable difference when I use it and it also doesn’t make my hair look greasy or dirty.  (I can’t use dry shampoo because it’s too heavy for my fine hair.)  I don’t use it every day since a lot of days I’m just bumming around the house in leggings and sweatshirts, but on the days where I have somewhere to be as well as on the weekends, I do use it.  If you have fine, flat hair like I do, I highly recommend this!

T W O – Thyroid Nodule Update

Last week, Olivia had her quarterly thyroid nodule check-up.  Each time we go now, the doc just gets a quick measurement of the nodule with the ultrasound machine just to make sure it isn’t growing.  At her last appointment in November, the nodule measured 1.8 x 2.2 inches.  At this appointment the measurements had changed a bit, but the doctor said since it’s very similar to a wiggly water balloon, he thinks it probably stayed the same size overall, but that it had just redistributed into a different shape. 

Because of this, he has decided to start measuring all three dimensions.  Before, he was only measuring the width and depth, but he now wants to start measuring the height as well so we can get a complete look to ensure we’re monitoring it appropriately. 

The nodule measured 2 x 1.5 x 2.5 at this visit and we are continuing to pray that it doesn’t grow anymore.  As long as it doesn’t grow, we won’t have to do surgery.  He told us again at this appointment that they don’t want to operate until she’s at least 11 or 12 years old, so hopefully this thing will stay stable until then.

T H R E E – Second Quarter Awards

The kids had their second quarter awards ceremonies at school a couple of weeks ago and they both racked up again!  

Jacob brought home:

Principal’s List Award (All A’s)

Religion Award

AR Goal Award

All Day Every Day Award

Top 5 AR in his class Award

Olivia brought home:

Religion Award

All Day Every Day Award

Olivia’s class doesn’t give out quite as many awards yet since they’re still so young.

We are just so proud of both of them, though!!  And I forgot to take pics at the actual ceremonies, so this picture will have to do... doesn't have anything to do with the events, but it's so stinking cute I figured I'd share it!

F O U R – Q & U Wedding

On Wednesday this week, Olivia’s Pre-K4 class had a wedding to marry the letters “Q” and “U” since a U will almost always follow a Q.  They go all out for the wedding, setting up an entire ceremony complete with arbors full of flowers and balloons and guest book.  The ceremony was held in the courtyard at the school and there were lots of people in attendance. 

They had the sweetest little ceremony where all of the Qs (the girls) married the Us (the boys) complete with the exchange of rings (blinking light rings) and kisses (Hershey Kisses, hehe).  The Pre-K4 classes have way more girls than boys, so they borrowed a few boys from the freshmen class to make up the difference, and Olivia was paired with one of the freshmen. 

After the ceremony they had a little reception where they had their first dance and then boogied down to Can’t Stop the Feeling.  After dancing there was wedding (cup) cake back in their classrooms.  It was the stinking cutest thing ever and it may have been one of my favorite events at the school ever.

F I V E – Professional Daddy Daughter Dance Pictures

Last weekend, Brian and Olivia attended the Daddy Daughter dance at Olivia’s school.  The professional pictures are now available, so I thought I’d share them here.  I loved being able to see these because it enabled me to see all of the cute decorations since Brian is a boy and doesn’t think to take pictures of stuff like that.  Hahahaha.

S I X – WHITE KITCHEN CABINETS

Well, our cabinets are done and THEY ARE STUNNING!!!!  I could not be more pleased, y’all!  I really couldn’t!  I did a post Wednesday with the befores and afters as well as a little back story, so if you missed the post, head on over here to check it out!

S E V E N – Valentine's Day

We don't do much for Valentine's Day, but I do like to give the kids a couple of little treats.  This year, I made breakfast for dinner complete with pink homemade waffles with red sprinkles.  Each child got a small Valentine's Day themed Lego set, a card, and a Valentine's Day frosted cookie - a heart eyes emoji for Jacob, and a unicorn (of course) for Olivia.  I also put little love notes in their lunchboxes that day.  B got some craft beer flavored candy and a card, and B wasn't supposed to get a gift for me, but he bought the famous Friends frame for me to put on my office door.  I've wanted one for probably 20 years and I finally have one!!  

And finally, some more memes… I swear, the internet has been on fire lately and it’s cracking me up!

Exactly my thoughts right now with all of these refreshes going on in our house.

Because there's no better place to wander than Target!

Ballet recital costumes, soccer equipment, holiday gifts, birthday gifts, treats to bring to school... it's always something.  Yep, they is expensive fo' sho'.

It's been particularly bad this week.  #Olivia

Me this week when I was singing all the words to "Hook" by Blues Traveler in Publix.

Happy Friday, y'all!

*Linking up with A Liz Adventures and Carolina Charm for Five on Friday, A Little Bit of Everything for Friday Favorites, Meet @ the Barre for Friday Favorites, and By BMG for High Five for Friday.