Two on Friday

Crazy week so I don’t have much today. School is canceled today for Hurricane Ian and I have a couple of Teams meetings and regular work. Good times. Hoping the beach gets through high tide at noon today and after that we should be in the clear. 

Anyone else seen this bread? Grady and I went to Publix on Sunday morning and picked some new stuff out. It is good!

See Jupiter in the middle of this picture? Molly Anne and I drove around the neighborhood looking for the highest spot to see Jupiter on Monday night right at sunset. It was the closest it’s been to Earth in 59 years and won’t be this close again for over 100 years. Miss Space Queen loved getting to see this. A special thank you to Poppa for telling us about it!

Hope you all stay dry and safe! Chat Monday!

Factory Finds

You know sometimes when you find things on the website and you feel like you hit jackpot? That's how I was last weekend when I checked out J. Crew Factory for the first time in a bit. All of these are on sale and come in more color options. Good transitional easy pieces. 

ONE

TWO

THREE - no dry cleaning required! I sized up for a bit more comfortable fit. 

FOUR



FIVE - for Molly Anne - it's sooo cute on her!

Random Wednesday

It's been a busy week at home and at work. Just trying to scoot by. Weeks like this I'm like ahhhhh why do I work so much. When it all comes together and you just feel CRAZY. 

Still trying to get Grady feeling better. Croup is also terrible on days 3 and 4 which we have now passed. Thank goodness. I hope we only go up from here. It consumes my brain and makes me insane when my kids are sick.  

Trying to decide what to do if anything about the beach house with Hurricane Ian coming. We really don't have a ton of value in the garage but probably need to go raise those items up a bit higher and move the cushions and outdoor furniture inside. Doesn't appear that it's going to come as far north as OIB but water is wild and causes major damage when you're ON the water!

I have an insane day tomorrow but it'll pass through. Meetings at work, meetings out of work for room mom stuff, a tennis match (super important, ha...actually it is for my mental stability on a week like this) and a doc appointment for Grady. 

One of my friends is having her annual Fall party that was such a blast last year. We are hoping the rain  doesn't come to Charlotte during that party, although it isn't looking good!

Hope everyone is having a good week!

Swim and Panthers Game

Friday was gorgeous out so we went to the club for dinner and let the children run wild! Then gave them ice cream as evidenced by the below picture!

Saturday morning the kiddos and I left the house at 6:30am to go uptown for Molly Anne’s first big time swim meet! It was huge and also 5 hours. Grady was a trooper. Keep in mind he begged to go. He doesn’t like missing a thing! Zero clue where he gets that from!

She did so well! She’s cut time off of the three strokes she competed in from her summer league times! 


And that includes her delayed jump off the block for freestyle, not jumping off the block for butterfly then not knowing what stroke she was supposed to be doing and not touching the timer pad at the end of backstroke! It was a big learning experience but I was so proud of her for going out there and doing her best! Quite different from summer league!


Saturday night Grady had a scary croup incident but decadron at the ER cured that. We used to have a prescription but were trying not to use it. But this time he was barely talking to me and honestly it scared me. This is coming from this mama who has had Molly Anne who had croup 7 times and this was #14 for him. You’d think I was immune but this time wasn’t fun. He bounced back quickly thankfully. 


Sunday morning we took it easy. They played for hours on end just like they did Saturday afternoon. 




I made this half baked harvest bread and also spaghetti sauce to have for when we got home Sunday night. The bread was so easy and I just happened to have all of the ingredients. Honestly I was laying in bed on Sunday morning and saw the reel and I was like dang I have to make that!


My friend Kelly invited 15 friends to all go to the panthers game Sunday afternoon. It was a GOOD time! Girlfriend time is very good for the soul! 

Kevin took the kids to Molly Anne’s field hockey while I was at the game then we all got home about the same time and had spaghetti! 

Teacher workday for us today. Molly Anne is going to get some commercial real estate experience at my office!

Five on Friday

ONE. 
Carline life on a Friday with the King that demanded to go for a ride with Kevin and I to pick Molly Anne up!

TWO:

Molly Anne wanted me to take these pictures of her. Pretty girl!

THREE:

Kevin took this of the kids as they waved to me when I left to go play a tennis match one night. Precious little children of mine. 

FOUR:

Speaking of tennis, how cute is my new white skirt? I wear white more often than any other color and when I saw this, I had to have it. It’s super comfortable too. Also comes in black. 

FIVE:

I ordered my kid's Halloween costumes this week so I feel like I'm winning at life. Molly Anne wants to be Evie from Descendants 3 and Grady wants to be an astronaut. Whatever works yall (within reason, we had to reign in Molly Anne's first costume of choice and say no way jose!)!

Happy Fall Y'all

Happy first day of Fall! Thought it'd be fun to post some Fall favorites from Etsy, Target and Amazon!

1. This garland is always a fav to put on my mantle every year. It's soooo pretty in person. Thanks to my friend Sarah for sharing this secret years ago!

2. Apple cider hand soap is essential to your Target cart! Williams Sonoma always has amazing scents too but a higher price point. 

3. Target strikes again - I love this white pumpkin and this orange pumpkin together!



4. Make sure you have a pretty navy cup for your red wine to sip by the fire!



5. My parents sent my kids some similar pumpkin bath mats and they LOVE them. Had no idea they were living such a sheltered life without a fun bath mat!

The Brush

Y'all are going to think this is the stupidest post of all times but let me tell you about my little experience over at Southpark Mall in Charlotte the other day. I headed to do two things - return this brush at Sephora and have my new P448 stretched in the toe box at Nordstrom. 

I had the worst experience at Sephora. The guy was a you know what and basically since I hadn't bought the brush within 60 days, there was nothing they could do. And let me tell you, he definitely wasn't going to try to help me out. He was very unkind. Fortunately I've never had this experience at this Sephora and it hopefully is just isolated to this one person that was maybe having a bad day. But it made me crazy. And also, don't buy brushes at Sephora evidently. You can get some at Target by the brand Elf that don't even do this and are 1/4 of the price.

Then I scooted to Nordstrom and you know how that went. Amazingly... because that's just how Nordstrom rolls. The guy didn't even question when I had gotten the shoes or confirming that I had bought them there (which I had and I got them a few weeks ago). He just said, "absolutely I'll be right back." And then they were done and perfect. 

Just night and day customer service. And there we have it. That's my story for the day. 

Weekend - Cheer, Party and Mill Pond

It was a BUSY weekend in our world. Did you all have a nice couple of days hanging?

Friday night was the high school football game where Molly Anne got to cheer! They had a clinic for them the Tuesday prior and then they all got to cheer for the first quarter. It is always the cutest thing ever. Ava always takes such good care of Molly Anne!

Her biggest fans!










Kevin snapped this picture. Oh how I love this little boy of mine. Something special about those little boys I'm telling yall!



On Saturday I took Molly Anne to Emme's 7th birthday party which is always a great time at my friend Margot's home! She always goes allllll out and it's all perfect!





Later in the day, Kevin and I headed to pick up Brad and Shauna. We cruised down to Camden, South Carolina for drinks and a special dinner to celebrate Brad's birthday! First we had drinks in downtown Camden at Sam Kendalls which was a great spot. Then we drove out a bit more to this place called Mill Pond Steakhouse. It's one of those amazing hole in the wall places with an unreal view of the pond and the BEST food and drinks. 




I wore this dress for the 800th time. It's good for every occasion. Fits true to size, I'm in a large.






Always good times with them! It was a hoot driving my drinky friends back to Charlotte which was 1.5 hours. Haha! My club soda with a lime brought me back to the pregnant days...it's all I drank back then. 

On Sunday we kind of had a lazy morning but then went out for a bike/scooter/run around the hood. They love being out and about. 

When Grady took his nap, Molly Anne and I went to town on organizing the playroom and her bedroom. The American Girl stuff was taking over her world. And the craft area was WILD. I don't know how she lives like that. Anyway, it's alllll right now! For some reason, putting all of her markers in one bin made a huge difference. 


Then I took her to field hockey for her second practice! She loves it. I'm so glad. We have really great talks on our way to and from as well. Good one on one time!

We wrapped up the weekend with Kevin grilling some burgers and playing out back. Now, back to the grind. Gotta work hard to play hard!