Friday Favorites {#135}

Hello and Happy Friday! Why do the short weeks always feel so long? We had a great week with a couple of extra days off, sports, and some early birthday celebrations.

As always, I’m linking up with Andrea and Erika for this week’s Friday Favorites.

Here are some favorites from the week:

School photos arrived, and Hadley said that they look like grown ups. She’s not wrong!

Hadley got her braces off a couple of weeks later, but I’m glad to have this moment in time forever!

Also, the day they had school pics, I picked the kids up from school. When Hayden got in the car, I asked him if he got pen on his shirt before or after the photos were taken. He said,”After.”…Hmm…shaking my head.

Another favorite was an unexpected four day weekend. Due to high rates of illness and teacher absences, we didn’t have school on Monday. Obviously, I’m thankful my kids haven’t been sick (nor have I), but I hate that so many have been these past few weeks. Since I knew we also had Tuesday off for Election Day, I let Monday be more of the fun day while Tuesday we had schoolwork and chores to do. So, Sunday night, Hadley spent the night at a friend’s house, and Hayden played about five hours of Xbox on Monday!

Tuesday, they slept in, we had lunch with family for early birthday celebrations, we raked leaves for a couple of hours, and the kids had some homework and studying to do.

*Early* birthday cards for the kids are always a favorite...

…as are silly selfies I find on my phone.

On Sunday, I put one pencil tree up in the living room until we get our real one.

Then, on Monday, I put up the other one in the sun room.

If having a favorite pencil tree up the same time as having a glowing pumpkin out is wrong, I don’t want to be right!

I voted on Tuesday which is always a great feeling.

Over a week ago, Travis and Hayden used the leaf blower to blow all of our leaves into piles under our three trees. With the nice weather on Tuesday, (and Travis working so much), the kids and I bagged 25 bags of leaves. Joke’s on me! We need at least 30 more bags to finish the other two trees.

Lexington typically has dates that if all your leaves are on your curb, they will drive by and suck them up with the vacuum. Well, due to staffing shortages, they aren’t doing that, so that’s why we are back to bagging. The kids were big help, but I needed two Tylenol that evening.

Hadley’s volleyball team had a big win this week against a cross town rival. It was amazing to see how much better they were from game one last week to game two this week!

And…last night, Hadley served 12 straight points including the game point. Serving is something she knew she’d need to work on this season, and we’re so proud of her that her hard work seems to be paying off.

Favorite Mom Meme:

Right?!? I swear, all I find now are empty candy wrappers from Halloween, water bottles, and cups in their rooms!

Favorite New Follow:

I have a fave new follow on Instagram – @karikampakis

Raising teens is hard, y’all. This account is a best selling author and mom to four girls. She has so many great posts talking about being an encourager, helping your daughter find real friends, teaching your child to trust their intuition and more! Whenever these posts are on my feed, I always stop and read them.

Bonus Fave: Flashback Friday

This sweet memory before Sesame Street Live popped up from 2013. This was a part of the kids 4th birthday present, and they were so excited.

Not Just a Mom:

On Monday I’m co-hosting our monthly Not Just a Mom link up with these fun bloggers:

Our topic is: the internet made me buy it.

If you have a blog, we’d love for you to link up with us on Monday!

Weekly Recap:

Here are my posts for this week in case you missed one:

What are your weekend plans? We are busy with lots of fun things! I’m sure I’ll recap those next week.

Thanks so much for reading, and have a great weekend.