"Legend-wait for it-Dary" Weekend

On Thursday, I left my kids and hubby and drove up to Springfield, MO to pick up my "bestie" Christie Thornock. We were roommates in collage and have kept in touch ever since, and by "kept in touch" I mean, we talk on the phone about twice a day....

 Christie flew in from Fort Worth and I picked her up from the airport at 8:30 pm.

We had been planning this weekend for months and saving our pennies for a fun weekend without our kids or husbands. We were super excited...does that sound bad? Oh well. It was a blast!!!

Once her flight got in we drove over to the dollar theater and saw "Warm Bodies". It was awesome. I'm pretty sure no one laughed as hard as Christie and me.

By the time it was over,  it was near midnight. We drove to our hotel or our "home" as Christie called it all weekend....We settled in and talked and then fell asleep with the blissful thought that we had no children or responsibilities to wake up to.

We slept in until 8 am. Yes, that is sleeping in for us. Then we ate breakfast at the hotel and got ready for the day. We shopped "Children's Orchard" in Springfield and then went to pick up our race day packets for the Color-me-RAD race the next day.

Then we drove down to Branson and ate lunch at Olive Garden. And by eating lunch I mean we talked and ate and we didn't have to share our food with our kids and got to eat all our food while it was still hot. AMAZING!  We took our sweet time and 1 1/2 hour later..we finally left the restaurant to start our shopping spree.

After 3 1/2 hours at Tanger outlet and buying just about everything in sight, we decided to get some ice cream.  

We were pretty successful, I think! My entire backseat was covered in bags.

 

We found a "Cold Stone" and I was super excited. I haven't eaten there in years.

 Oh "Cold Stone"- you never disappoint me!

After our ice cream stop, we went to Target (our largest expenditure for the day) and then over to Kohls. That ended our Branson adventure and we drove back to Springfield for the night.

By the time we got back to Springfield we were getting hungry, but we were tired of spending money and settled on dollar burgers from "Wendy's".

Oh and we made a Wal-Mart run to pick up the essential snacks for a successful girls weekend.

After getting back to the hotel, we unloaded all our shopping bags (all in one trip)

and took inventory of all our treasures. So fun!

 

The next morning was our 5K. It was a color run, which basically means we ran and people threw color/paint on us. It was pretty fun. Although we did get rained on, we ran the whole thing and finished it together!

Some shots from before the race started.

Our shirts say "Legend...wait for it" and on the back they say "dary"

"Legend-wait for it-dary"!!!!

 

Notice how white our t-shirts are...also LOVE our RAD tats.

How awesom are our neon pink shorts and knee high socks.

The whole "Legendary" team. Tamara Mitchell, Christie, Me and Melanie Hodges.

 

And now for some post race pictures

I love that you cant even see the writing on my t-shirt after all the paint.

Front and back shot...

Love Christie's half orange and half green face.

 

The whole team, post race.

The race was a bit rough but we stuck it out together and never stopped running. It was a great feeling to finish and we only felt a little sick afterwards. Dang cold weather and rain!

 

After the race we went back to the hotel and got cleaned up. Seriously had to scour my body to get the paint off. The rain helped the paint to really sink in...

I may or may not have used all the hot water...Sorry Christie!!!

 

Then we went to IHOP and literally ordered enough food to feed a third world country.

After stuffing ourselves we headed over to the mall to make some returns and do a little more shopping.

We were a little more than exhausted and didn't shop long. Then we found salon and went and got pedicures. Don't you love the obnoxious flowers? Yeah, we did too...

We spent the rest of the night in our hotel watching "Love it-or-List it" and eating dinner. We were so tired and sore...but it was a fantastic weekend. Maybe next year we will plan for one more day...but we had such a great time.

The next morning we grabbed breakfast at "Panera" and then I drove Christie to the airport and that was that. It was so fun to see Christie and it's good to know our phone relationship can handle some face time as well.

Now I can start saving my pennies for next year because this is definitely going to be a tradition. Christie, thanks again for flying all the way from Texas- hope it was worth it!

Lions and Tigers and Bears...OH MY!

While I finished the garage sale today, Nanny took my kiddos to her house. They played and played until nap time. While they were at Nanny's, Tanner learned the phrase "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!" We'd been talking about going to the circus and what animals we would see. Then Nanny taught Tanner that phrase and it was all over. He wouldn't stop saying it. Bailey even started saying "OH MY!!!"

Anyways, after the garage sale was over and the kids had napped, we loaded up and headed over to the circus. The kids were so excited and the whole time in the car they kept saying, "Circus. Circus. We are going to the circus"

We got there and the first thing Tanner wanted to do was get his face painted. It took him hardly any time to decide on the "tiger" face again. Today he had told me he wanted to be painted like  a peacock (we saw one in our "Polar Bear, Polar Bear" book and Tanner was sorta hooked.) Luckily, by the time we got there he'd decided on the tiger.

I love my Tanner Tiger!!!!

 

Bailey kept saying "Paint face. Tiger. Please" and so I'd take her to the face-painting booth and as soon as the paint got close to her face she would start squirming and saying "No. No paint"

Needless to say, she didn't get her face painted. We tried to three times and then I gave up.

 

The circus show itself was pretty cool this year. Honestly, Chris and I were there for the kids. Neither of us are huge circus fans. However, this year was the most fun yet. As the kids grow they just keep getting more and more fun to take to things like this. They had fire breathers and jugglers, clowns and a few other performers. Then there were the tigers and elephants. So fun.

 

We had to get some cotton candy too. No circus is complete without it.  YUM! 

 

Here are a few pics of my little family and my wild kids during intermission.

 

I loved watching the kids' faces as they watched the show. The elephants and the fire breather were the biggest hits.  Doesn't Bailey look so big sitting there watching the show?

Tanner said the circus was "just a little bit loud"

 

After it was over we went on an elephant ride. This was probably the best part of the night. The kids were cracking me up. The elephant's name was "Tracey". The whole time we were riding the elephant, Tanner kept talking to the her. "Where are you taking us elephant?" "What are you doing elephant" "Thank you for the ride, elephant"

 

 

Then Bailey would say "Thank you Tracey" or "Thank you elephant".  We were high enough that Bailey could see the camels and the zebras nearby. She made sure to point them out to me. The kids loved it which made it totally worth the ridiculous costs!

All-in-all, another successful trip to the circus!

 

Splish Splash

I learned long ago how crazy the weather is in Arkansas during Spring. But in the last week the weather changed so much, it's crazy. On our camp out it was 36 degrees at night, three days later it was 78 degrees and we were playing on the hopscotch sprinkler. We had some friends over and the kids loved it.

Bailey was a bit young last year for the hopscotch sprinkler, but this year she is loving it. Check out the look of pure joy on her face. She just kept squealing "Water! Yay Water"

She had so much fun!

Check out the determination on Tanner's face. He was awesome running through the sprinkler!

Bailey strutting her stuff! Haha!

and then shaking her booty!

Playing with the awesome bubble guns. Again with the tongue. haha I love it!

Oh the beautiful eyes of this boy!

 

Then about a week later, the weather turned even warmer and we decided to bust out our sprinkler.

I love the look on Bailey's face. haha.

Tanner was a superstar with the sprinkler. He loved running and jumping over the sprinkler

Bailey getting squirted and loving it!

Oh the fun these two kids had together!

Then we ended our afternoons with pop-ice. What could be better?

We are looking forward to more warm weather. Tanner keeps asking to go to the lake and go swimming. Or to go out on the boat and tube. It's hard to explain that even though its 85 degrees outside, the water in the lake isn't warm enough yet.  So ready for more water fun!

1st Camping Trip of the Year!

Chris just had his first weekend off in about a year. An actual weekend. In one word, it was heavenly. It's amazing having him home and having two days in a row off from work.

To start off our weekend we decided to go camping Friday night. We rented a "camper's cabin" right off the White River. It was basically 4 walls and a couple of beds but it did have a space heater. That was the reason we decided to spring for a cabin, the low was 35 degrees- TOO COLD for the kiddos.

The cabin was perfect for our stay. We got to our cabin and unpacked and then started dinner.

Bailey had so much fun shoveling rocks into her little pail. She was totally and completely content doing this for about an hour.

Here's Tanner grillin' his and B's dinner. Chris' favorite part about camping is getting to cook in his dutch oven and cast-iron skillet. He planned our entire menu and made us lots of yummy food. Unfortunately, my kids are weirdos, and they preferred hot dogs over steak and potatoes..

I love this picture. He was concentrating so hard. Look at his little tounge sticking out..

Yummy hotdogs-Bailey loves hot dogs now.

eating their snacks

Bailey's pile of half eaten cheetos- what is with this girl?

Roasting marshmallows

Me and my crazy kids

love this crazy boy

And then we busted out the beloved glowsticks- no camping trip is complete without them.

Oh the delicious campfire cones....so good!

Then we put the kids down, but after they played for two hours in their beds, we decided to let them get back up. Here is all of us around the campfire. Yes- Bailey was up two hours past bedtime and not trilled about it. LOVE her cranky expression

I LOVE my little family.

Our view from our cabin the next morning. Right off the river- SO beautiful!

A pic of us in front of our little cabin before we left on Saturday.

 

Then we went and played on the playground to let the kids run off some energy. Tanner loved the climbing wall. he was super good at it too!

Oh so precious! Love these sweet siblings

Oh and Bailey fell in love with this horse swing.

White Buffalo Resort "post card" picture.

Kiddos with Daddy. They loved having him with us soo much!

Then we headed down to the river to go fishing. This was about how Bailey fished....

Obviously she is a natural. Then she decided that splashing in the water was more fun. I don't know how she handled this because the water was so cold!!! But she LOVED it

 

Tanner was much better at fishing. He was adorably attentive and really wanted to catch one!

I love this picture. He was concentrating so hard that he didn't want to give me a smile, but finally got a cute little smile from the stinker.

Here's Tanner baiting his hook. He was so careful. I think him and his daddy will have lots of fishing trips in the future.

After I got Bailey out of the river she spent the rest of her time playing in the rocks.

 

So after we finished fishing we decided to head home. We spent the rest of the day unpacking and napping. Oh and doing laundry. (Why do all the fun activities in life require so much laundry afterwards. UGH)

 

The next day we got to have Daddy at church with us and it was wonderful!!!!

It was an awesome weekend and I'm hoping he gets another one really soon.