High Five for Friday

Hi! I'm running a little late today, but I still wanted to share some of the fun stuff from the past week. 

1) Friday evening we packed up chairs and popcorn and headed to another park for an outdoor movie night. I figured with it being June we'd be sitting there dying of heat stroke but it was pretty comfortable (buggy, but comfortable). They were playing the new Spongebob movie, which was pretty terrible. But Grant liked it and had a good time.

The guys waiting for the movie to start

2) Saturday & Sunday, Grant and I explored our first Kiwi Crate box. (Check out all the stuff it had HERE.)

3) I sewed this fun shark blanket!

It currently has no recipient but I had the fabric and it's so cute!

4) I taught Grant some card games! He absolutely loves them.

Go fish!

5) Sunday afternoon/evening, I wanted to run some errands. Since Husband usually does a lot of work on Sundays, I took Grant with me and we had a little dinner date (followed by ice cream). We share a love of Olive Garden! 

6) Grant's preschool has a calendar and each day has something to bring or do on it. This week the two favorites were crazy hair day and costume day.

Costume day - Iron man, of course!

And crazy hair day!

It's been a pretty stressful week for me but we had so much fun last weekend so I'm hoping to make this weekend another good one. And we're looking forward to a nice Father's Day!

Happy Friday everyone!

Have a great weekend!

High Five for Friday

Hello there! Today I'm linking up Jennie to share some of my favorite stuff from the past week.

1) Last Friday, Grant got to spend the day at his Gramma & Grandpa's. Since Husband I would be out late for the concert, Grant just spend the night Thursday and then all day on Friday. He had a lot of fun and we all met at IHOP that evening for dinner and to pick up Grant. That's where he got to show off his new hat from Gramma & Grandpa (and eat up all the compliments he got at the restaurant).

He's requesting cowboy boots now.

We even got Husband to try it on :)

2) I made a blanket! With my sewing machine. Most of you may not know what a huge accomplishment that is for me, made even bigger by the fact that I really didn't throw any hissy fits during the process. Not only have I never made a blanket with my sewing machine, but I've also never used my sewing machine without having an absolute meltdown over how awful I am at sewing (or stabbing myself several times with pins - no tears and no bandaids make this quite a success for me!). I'm looking forward to gifting my craftiness :)

3) We have a lot of birds in our backyard and my favorites are the cardinals. I love to watch them when they get brave enough to hang out on the deck and every once in a while, I manage to get a picture.

4) This week I shared a fun little Teacher Appreciation gift idea (Teacher Appreciation Week is next week - thank a teacher!).

5) Costume day at school! 

6) Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs! The boy is obsessed. The Land Before Time (classic!) doesn't doesn't leave the DVD player anymore and we watch it several times a weekend. And recently discovered the TV series is on Amazon Prime and Grant has become a fan of that too. I think he has a hard time believing that Husband & I watched that movie as kids too. And the dinosaur book he got for Easter is read a lot. One night before bed we read it cover to cover (this is not a small book people!). Me reading the book, Grant telling me if the one on the page was a plant or a meat eater. He LOVES dinosaurs!

The one millionth showing of The Land Before Time

Reading the huge dinosaur book

Happy Friday everyone!

Have a great weekend!

High Five for Friday

Today I'm linking up with Lauren and Jennie to share some of my favorite stuff from the past week. 

1) As Grant's "big" birthday present, we (yes, WE) built him a sandbox! I was really nagging Husband about getting it built and filled because I wanted it done before his actual birthday so the kids at his party could play. We got it set up the weekend before but last Friday finally got some sand for it. It rained so the first time Grant really got to play in it was Saturday at his party with his friends.

Take Sunday morning after his party but it's a nice shot of
our handy work :) While playing Grant told me "I love this sandbox!"

2) Saturday we had Grant's birthday party! I love his birthdays and planning his parties. The older he gets the more excited he gets and he was beside himself with excitement waiting for the day to get here. And he had the best day! (More on the party HERE)

The Avengers cake I made him

Me and my sister-in-law, Hollie, having too much fun with
the masks I made for the kids!

3) Monday was Grant's first day of pre-K! Or, as he calls it, "pre-K school". It was a bit bittersweet (because along with pre-K comes instant talk of kindergarten) but he was so excited!

4) Monday night we stayed out too late and went to a Durham Bulls baseball game. We ended up staying the whole game (we were off the next day for Grant's real birthday) and the Bulls won and won their division championship. It was a really fun night (and I discovered my new favorite ballpark treat: an Italian ice topped with frozen custard - life changing!).

Me & Grant in our awesome Yankees jerseys...and
Husband in that crappy White Sox one (hehehe).

5) We took Tuesday off to spend the day with Grant for his actual birthday. He got to pick what we did, he chose the zoo. It was blissfully uncrowded and we had a great day! (P.S. I still haven't fed a giraffe.)

Happy Friday!

Have a great weekend!

Grant's 4th Birthday Party

On Saturday we had Grant's 4th birthday party! Even though this party was going to be bigger - it was his first party inviting friends from school - I still wanted to have it at the house. Although they're fun, I'm not ready to have his parties somewhere else. We have a lot of family at Grant's parties so it's nice to have everyone at the house so we can all spend time together and they can spend some time with Grant. My anxiety level was at an all time high knowing that other parents would be coming over but I'm still glad it was at the house. We were a bit cramped but I think the party went well and the kids seemed to have a BLAST!

This year was, of course, Avengers themed. There is a surprising lack of Avengers party decorations so I had to make do with what I could find. With the party being more hectic I didn't take as many pictures as I usually do.

There were also some things on the walls you can't see (that are
still currently hanging in my kitchen).

I almost didn't get this because I thought it was cheesy. I'm glad I did
because I needed more Avengers decor AND Grant loved it.

 The cake. It was supposed to be much more impressive and I decided no. I did a lot of DIY for this party (and I enjoyed that, not complaining!) so I figured I could still make a nice cake without spending 20 hours on it - since Grant doesn't eat it anyway. So this is what I ended up with:

Grant declared it "awesome".

A while back I started making some fun Avengers masks from foam using a sewing pattern that someone so kindly posted (you can see some of them HERE). I thought they'd be fun for the kids to wear. Our activity was going to be for the kids to decorate their own capes, I found blank ones on Oriental Trading. Guess what? Sold out. I was super upset about it for a while but I'M SO GLAD THEY DIDN'T HAVE THEM. I ended up finding a way to make capes for all the kids personalized with their first initial and I think they were a hit. I can't imagine all these rambunctious boys sitting still long enough to decorate capes. (I know that almost none of the Avengers wear capes but I couldn't do a superhero party without capes. What boy doesn't love capes?!)

Posing with his cake wearing his cape and one of the Iron Man masks I made.

Being Iron Man (can you tell his favorite Avenger?)

Grant was over the moon about his school friends coming to his party and as soon as the boys started arriving and getting dressed up, it was like a bunch of mini superheroes running around our house. They were having so much fun! I really had no activities planned but that turned out to be fine. They played in Grant's room, the living room - entertaining the adults - and then headed outside to Grant's new sandbox (built by Husband & me for Grant's birthday present).

Dressed up superheroes!

Having so much fun :)

Superheroes like to play in the sand.

At some point it was time for presents and cake. I'm terrible at keeping the flow of a birthday party and was surprised to look at a clock and realize that we were an hour and a half into the party! It goes by so fast.

When there is extra help opening presents, it's very hectic and
hard to keep a list to write thank you notes later! 

Telling his friend thank you

The kids loved those thingies.

That wagon for his tractor is going to come in handy
when we build leaf piles this year :)

Cape in action!

And cake. I lit the candles and Grant almost immediately blew them out until I mentioned the birthday song. He said "Yes. Everyone sing happy birthday to me!"

And that was that. We all had cake and ice cream (except Grant, who only wanted ice cream) and then most people had to get going. Grant had such an awesome time with everyone and I'm SO glad his friends from school were able to come!

Hugs goodbye (so freaking cute!)

The rest of the day/night was Grant opening any toy that hadn't already been opened AND entertaining us all with his new whoopee cushion.

No matter the age, boys think farts are funny.

Sunday was a rest day for us, thank goodness. I got to relax at the picnic table with my coffee while Grant enjoyed his sandbox and then some TV and a snack before a nap.

I love this kid!

What an awesome weekend :)

A BIG thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us! Grant was so excited about this party and almost a week later is still talking about how much he loved it!