Best of 2017

I have to say, 2017 has been a blast! Blake and I had so many fun adventures....
We started TBall and Basketball, we rode a horse, we vacationed at the beach, we started Kindergarten, and we enjoyed so many fun activities!!!

We also can't wait to enjoy the adventures that 2018 will bring! We plan to travel, vacation, continue sports, and take on many more exciting things!

Merry Christmas 2017

Merry Christmas!!! One of our favorite times of the year!

Christmas Eve started off with me making dinner for my Dad and Blake. While I made dinner, Dad and Blake called Santa to remind him to eat the cookies. Blake was so surprised when they got Santa's voicemail!!! :)

Christmas was a hit! Blake was on the nice list!! This year he got Minecraft toys, Cars 3 toys, Trash Pack Toys, and..... a NINTENDO SWITCH!!! That is his first gaming system. I have a feeling I will have to set a timer on the parental controls so that he will come out of his room every now and then. Haha.

We love Christmas and all of our family and friends!! This is the perfect way to end a nice year!

Pullen Park Polar Express

We tried a new Christmas Event in Raleigh this year... The Polar Express and Pullen Park! We go to Pullen Park all the time but this is when it is totally decked out for Christmas! And the train is like to Polar Express. The park looked so festive and we loved all of the holiday fun! ... Oh, and we took GDaddy!

The park had it's usually fun like the carousel! We love that! But it also had snow, the polar express train ride, and even ice sledding! The ice sledding almost killed me and shot me into the woods, but it was a blast! I am gonna have to work out more if I want so be a boy mom! Haha!

Disney on Ice

Rudy was able to surprise Blake with another favorite tradition... Disney on Ice with Granny! This started when Blake was about 3. We have gone each year and we love it! This year Blake was really into the $15 popcorn and cotton candy, along with his souvenirs. He is not a cheap date! Haha. The theme this year was Dare to Dream and it was wonderful to see examples of characters who had chased their dreams and done the right thing. Blake of course loved Olaf from the movie Frozen and Goofy! :)

Rudy and Rice Krispy's

Rudy, our elf, always brings such Christmas fun to our house! Blake LOVES waking up and seeing what Rudy has done each day.

One day this past week Rudy brought us stuff to make Holiday Rice Krispy Treats. We loved making them together... and more importantly eating them together! :)

And one of my favorite Christmas things ever... snuggling and sleeping in front of the tree. Nothing beats our Christmas Magic!

Christmas Parade

I got a little behind on our posts! Our Christmas fun has taken off and we are loving every second of it. Last weekend we had the Rolesville Christmas Parade! This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions. The parade always goes by Memommy's house, so we gather at her house for treats and family fun. Then when the parade starts we simply go out to her front yard and sit in our lawn chairs as the parade goes by. One of the main reasons I love this traditions is because I love seeing Memommy watch the little kids. She loves it so much! :)

This year was different for Blake.. he decided to watch the parade with the "big kids". He wanted to hang with Jordan and Maggie (my cousins kids) in Memommy's yard and catch candy with them! I loved watching him hang out with them. He looks up to Jordan so much and loves seeing his at school. Im so grateful that he has good examples around him!

Oh, Christmas Tree

December is here!!!! We have so many fun things planned for this month and we always kick our celebration off with out Christmas tree! It is one of my favorite things in the world to do. There is just something about staying up at night and reading by the Christmas tree. I am also pretty excited bc Blake and I have started quite the ornament collection. We love looking at all of our fun ornaments! Blake has a ton of superhero ones!

Blake was really sad to take our Christmas tree down last year. So my dad said he would take it back to where we got it from and let it grow more until we came back the next Christmas. He didn't want Blake to think we just dumped our tree. So, we went back to the exact same Christmas lot and we let Blake try to find our tree from last year. He went right up to the first one and said "This is it!" Sure enough it was a beautiful looking tree! So, my dad and I agreed and we brought it home! :)

We are so excited to celebrate around this tree this year!
Our Elf on the Shelf, Rudy is also back this year. We will update some of his mischief soon!

Pilgram Play

I am a little late on this post, but the other week we got to celebrate Thanksgiving with Blake's kindergarten class. I took off the day of work to volunteer with Blake's class and also enjoy their feast.

I am grateful for being able to volunteer in Blake's class. I don't get to do it nearly as much as I want to, but I wanted to take full advantage of my day off to spend some quality time with him (and his class). I had already spoken to his teacher about helping make a turkey craft. I walked around and assisted the kids as the colored, cut, and pasted. They were all so cute and had to show me every single thing that they were doing. Then Mrs. Walker surprised me by letting me read a story to the class. This English teacher mommy heart melted in that moment. Yes... it is mushy, but those kids were all so into the book. They all wanted to help me and Blake beamed with the "That's my mom" look. I loved it. It was so amazing to have those moments with Blake in his class before all of the Thanksgiving craziness started.

Soon all of the other families arrived. I helped set up the feast and get food for the kids who parents didn't come. It was a great day! Oh yeah, and the kids did a play about the First Thanksgiving. Blake was a hard working pilgram man. Each time Mrs. Walker said "Pilgram Men" he and the others would say "bang, bang, bang" as they looked like they were hitting something with a hammer. It was adorable.

I am so grateful for Blake and his class...and mostly his teacher Mrs. Walker. He loves school so much and I love Mrs. Walker for loving those kids so much.

50th Day of School

Last week Blake and his class celebrated the 50th day of school with a 1950's Sock Hop Party! :) All of the students were encouraged to dress up from the 50's and Blake was a little 1950's bad boy ;) He wore a white shirt with rolled up jeans and Spider-man Chucks. He looked great.

And how has it already been 50 days of school?! I feel like he just started. Blake has learned so much in those 50 days. He is already reading books and learning site words! He even got his first report card! He scored on grade level in all of the skills/subjects! Mrs. Walker bragged about how great Blake is doing and she didn't have any areas that he needed to work on. She just told us to keep up all of the good work we are already doing!

I know I have said it before, but Blake makes parenting easy. He is such a great kid and I am so proud of him learning and loving Kindergarten so much! It has only been 50 days... I can't wait to see what he has learned at the 100 day mark!

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat time!!! We love Halloween night with our friends! For the past few years we have gone trick or treating with our family friends, The Jarrell's! Hunter and Blake have been best friends for 2-3 years and we love this little tradition that we have created.

This year Blake wanted to be Optimus Prime! He had such a cool costume and he really loves the autobots! His friend Hunter was Captain Underpants - a popular book character that we all love. Cam, Hunter's brother was Branch from the Trolls Movie. And of course little Braxton was a Ninja Turtle :) We had the cutest little boys on the block!

Blake and Hunter really  racked up! They are at the age where they really enjoy getting as much candy as they can! They did a good job.

As a momma... I have to look back and enjoy all of the adorable Halloween's from the past. Time is going by so quickly!

Pumpkin Picking Day

Since having Blake, Halloween is starting to become one of my favorite holidays of the year... especially Pumpkin Picking Day!

Every year we go to Hillridge Farm to pick our pumpkins. Its also here I went when I was little. I love our little traditions. We played all morning and then went on the hay ride to get our pumpkins! I think we picked some good ones!

I'm really excited about the next few days... We have to carve our pumpkins and go trick or treating with Hunter and his family! YAY!!!

Blakes First Field Trip

This week has been a SUPER busy week, but the highlight of it was Blake's First Field Trip. His class took a walking field trip to the Rolesville Fire Department!

It was so much fun to see Blake and his classmates learn and explore the Firehouse. They asked lots of good questions to the firemen. They also loved walking around and looking at all of the fire trucks!

My favorite part was that we walked past Memommy's house and she was able to wave to us on the way there and back. I loved that Memommy was able tos hare that moment with us! :)
I also loved that Blake wanted to hold my hand while we walked. My little boy is still in that independent kindergarten child! Haha.

We also had Blake's first parent teacher conference this week! She said that Blake is behaviorally amazing and academically on grade level! She said that he has the best sense of humor and he has her laughing all the time. We love Mrs. Walker and we are so grateful that Blake is loving his first year of school.

Bonfires and Best Friends

Even though Blake is in Kindergarten now and making LOTS of new friends, he still has Hunter as a best friend. They are at different schools, so we have to arrange playdates for them to see each other. I love it when they get to play together because they jump right into being best friends. They just love spending time together!

We took them to Hillridge Farms Saturday evening so that they could play and then enjoy a bonfire and some S'mores! They loved it! I am not sure that they stopped running the whole time we were there. They also really liked eating the marshmellows for the S'mores! I just enjoyed the fire. It's starting to really feel like Fall!

Go Ape

Yesterday we went APE at eh Go Ape Treetop Adventures. It is found in the Blue Jay Point Natural Park here in Raleigh and it is a series of treetop obstacles, rope courses, and zip lines! We of course did the Junior Courses, but they were still very challenging!

Blake is an outdoor kid and he loves adventures, especially climbing stuff! So, I figured this would be perfect for him. Plus, it is all up in the air so it allows for some new excitement. Blake was very nervous but excited going in. He kept making sure that I would be right beside him the whole time. Yes, I had to do everything he did! Yikes!

They harnessed us in and we got to go to our first course. Blake was cautious but he was eager to complete all of the challenges. Most of them were walking across various "bridge" obstacles with little to hold on to (and about 20 ft in the air). I was so focused on Blake that I somewhat forgot I had a little fear of heights. I kept having to just watch Blake so that I didn't have time to get totally light headed and freaked out by myself. My legs were half way numb the whole time.Blake got his confidence quickly and we went on to complete the 2nd and 3rd courses as well! My hands had blisters on them because I was hanging on for dear life!

At the end of each course we were able to ride the zip line down. Blake was super nervous about this the first time. He (like everyone else) initially had trouble trusting that he would step off this platform and it was going to swing him down. I almost didn't trust it myself! But when he did it, he glided down to the bottom and loved it! He did it perfectly. I was so worried about Blake getting down that I forgot to listen carefully to the directions about "landing". Blake was at the bottom waiting for me. I jumped off the platform. Somehow I got turned around and was going in backwards. Next thing I know, my legs went over my head and my butt  went in the air as I landed. Wood chips went all up my shirt as I basically did a backwards roll landing. Ouch! Blake helped me dust myself off and he told me to hurry up so we could do it again. HAHA!

We had a blast! I love that Blake is getting to the age so that we can do some of this adventurous stuff. It was a perfect Fall activity!