This week has technically been Jon’s “vacation”.

And today is the first day that we’ve really spent the day having fun and relaxing. 😉 Poor guy. Our yard looks fantastic now though!

Nathan has done a lot of this while we’ve been out there working. Cutie head.

Love my little “gobble”-eyed boy. 😉

So, we spend most of the time he’s in the pool yanking up his swimsuit. Not because they are big and fall off but because he apparently remembers the Olympics and think they are supposed to sit somewhere on your body that makes most normal people blush.

We’ve been calling him “Michael” around here lately. 😉

Our poor grass has been trampled lately with all the work we’ve been doing but there are some weeds that are flourishing and have these little purple flowers on them, so they’re actually kind of pretty. There’s probably a great lesson in there about how not everything nice-looking is actually good but this isn’t that kind of blog post.

Anyway, Nathan has been picking them for me lately and so I have a little mini vase on my kitchen table with them in it and I just love it. 🙂

Sleepy worker guy.

And here it is!! Our finished garden! Jon placed all of those stones by hand and did an AMAZING job. I’m so blessed to have such a hard working husband!!

Then, because we can’t stand to rest, we picked up some pallets from a friend of ours and started deconstructing them to make some of the projects I’d pinned on Pinterest. You can’t beat free projects!!

Love these hard worker boys.

And I love how this one turned out!!

Since we’ve been doing lots of swimming, I’ve been talking to Nathan about how we still have to pee in the potty and we can’t just go in the pool. He looked at me and said, “But Mom, pee is water.”

I’m not smart enough to raise this boy.

What have you been up to??

Before I start today, I just want to be sure and remind everyone to keep praying for the people in Oklahoma. I’ve never been in a tornado – or even lived in areas that have them – but I have lots of family who does and I know it’s terrifying. Please be especially in prayer for those who lost loved ones. I can’t stop thinking about these people who lost children. I can’t even imagine.

We have had a quiet few days. We spent yesterday running some errands and then playing around the house. Nathan helped me paint my toenails yesterday by lining up all of my available colors to pick from around my foot.

 In other news, it might be time for me to go through my collection and clean it out, seeing as how this wasn’t even everything I own. 😉

This morning, I was getting my makeup on so I could run a few orders to the post office and do a few errands and the house got very quiet. I always get worried when I don’t hear anything. So, I looked all around and finally found him in his bed. “I’m really super tired, Mom,” he kept saying over and over. I told him he could lay there for another few minutes while I finished my makeup. And here’s what I found when I came back in five minutes later.

Poor baby. He’s going on two hours now. I can’t even remember the last time he took a nap so this is very weird!

Looking forward to a long weekend to work on our yard and hopefully getting some swimming in! Is everyone done with school or close to it? What do you have planned for this summer?

This weekend is such a blur. We were crazy busy all day on Saturday and then Saturday night, Jon and I went to a friend’s wedding. Uncle Bryant and Auntie Cayce watched Nathan while my parents, Caleb and his girlfriend Nicole joined us at the wedding.

I love weddings! Carly’s was absolutely beautiful and it was SO fun. They used mason jars in all the decor and that right there made it a total winner in my opinion. And they had a photo booth. LOVE photo booths at weddings!

We picked up a Frappucino for Nathan yesterday morning (decaf of course!) and he was so excited to get something from Starbucks. He kept saying, “Caramel FRAPP-UN-CHINO” the whole rest of the drive. Ha! He’s his mama’s baby.

And then my parents taught him this and I don’t believe they’ve ever taught him anything I’ve ever loved more:

Yes. Yes, he did say that. I about died.

So, today I want to spend the whole day talking about some of my FAVORITE summer things! Mostly because it’s been in the low 80s this week and I am itching to start our fun summer activities!

Last week, we went to community group and one of the girls in it had made this iced tea. I came home and made it immediately! It’s about 8-10 bags (depending on how strong you like your tea – I like mine at super strength) of black tea and 1 bag of chai tea in approximately 3-4 cups of water. Brew it all together, add a pinch of baking soda and as much sugar as you want (again. I like mine at super strength. 😉 ), pour it into a pitcher and fill it up the rest of the way with water. Then pour over ice!

I seriously have had about 34 glasses of this over the last three days. It’s so sweet and yummy and has a tiny hint of cinnamon which makes it even MORE delicious! I will soon be looking on Pinterest for some homemade teeth whitening formulas. 😉

This kid had the absolute time of his life yesterday running through the sprinklers in the backyard. SO glad it’s finally warm enough to do these things!!

About once a year, my hair cooperates with my attempts at styling it perfectly and it’s the best hair day ever. Which automatically guarantees that I will have nothing on my schedule except going to Walmart and I won’t see anybody I know. So. Yesterday was that day for my hair. And guess where we went? 😉

And to add insult to injury, I was outside watching Nathan play in the sprinklers and someone thought it would just be hilarious to attack his mother with the water and start a little water fight (which, to be honest, WAS very fun.). So by the time Jon got home, my hair was back to normal. Oh well. Next year. 😉

None of the hair details were really a Friday Favorite. I just felt the need to share with you.

I got this book for Nathan this week (except we got the alphabet one – I can’t find the picture for that one online) and it is WONDERFUL. I have to limit how much he does in it every day because he has so much fun doing it. So far, he’s just worked on some of the building blocks to writing letters. It’s so good for him! He can count to 30 and knows the ABC song, but he has a hard time associating the name of the letter with the letter itself and same for numbers, so I think this will help. He’s so eager to learn these things right now that I want to capitalize on it. Plus, it gives us something disciplined and structured to do every day and that has seemed to help with his overall behavior.

And finally, last night we were wet from the sprinklers and pretty tired from our full day of fun, so we scrapped the chicken dinner I was planning to make and went to Freddy’s for hamburgers and custard instead. This definitely gets to go on the favorite list! We don’t go out to dinner just the three of us very often so it was a very fun little family date! And Nathan ate his whole dinner so he got to have an Oreo ice cream sandwich that was almost the size of his head. 😉

What are YOUR summer favorites??

Yesterday, we had our friends Eryn, Evie and Gracie over to play. So I captured the one moment where Nathan was actually being kind to his friend.

His mask in this picture cracks me up. What a silly.

I’m not totally sure what to do with him. He is SO PASSIONATE about everything and so so so strong willed. When I was pregnant with him, I prayed for him to be a strong leader, to not be easily swayed and to not just go with the flow.

Well. I take all of it back. 😉

I love my boy to death but this year has tested and tried me in ways I can’t even describe. Last night, I came home from our Bible study, sat down at the kitchen table and just cried because I was so overwhelmed with my stubborn, strong willed child.

So, as cute as some of my pictures are, just know that it’s not all rosy over here all the time. 😉

Jon is on his last week of work before the summer break and so they’ve started their themed days. Today was “Sports Day” so he wore his old jersey to work. Nathan woke up, saw Jon in his jersey and declared that he needed to wear his today too.

Cute boys. 🙂

And a rare picture of me and my baby. I get so busy taking the pictures that I sometimes forget to get in them.

Today, we have had a good day. I registered us for BSF this coming fall and I’m SO excited about the kids program for Nathan. I think it’s going to be amazing. Afterward, we met up with our dear neighbors at Chick-fil-A so the boys could play. We were originally going to go to the park but some much needed rain made our park a mud pit. But this was way fun. And it included sweet tea. 😉

And now we’re playing outside and waiting for Daddy to get home. Don’t mind the mess in the back of this picture. We’re gluttons for punishment when it comes to yard work. The minute we complete one project, we come up with another one to do. Thankfully, we’ve been able to do most of them using materials we already had.

Love this little cutie. Even when he makes me crazy. 😉

Ack! So sorry for the blog absence, friends. We have been head over heels in crazy this week and thankfully it appears that things are going to be slowing down for a little while here.

This week was very fun and very sad all at the same time. On Thursday, we said goodbye to our dear friends Clint and Leigh Ann and Hayley. So we spent a lot of week spending as much time with them as we could.

Sweet Hayley came to play with me and Nathan on Wednesday. Love these two!

 Dear friends. 🙂

On Friday, Jon’s school had a Doughnuts for Dad day so Nathan and I joined Jon for a super healthy breakfast at his school. Then we were racing over to join Uncle Bryant and Gammy at the trampoline place when a radio station (who I thought was calling an hour later) called for my interview. Nathan was yelling “MOM! MOM!” in the backseat, so I pulled off the road, rolled down the windows and did the whole interview outside the car while Nathan screamed inside it.

It will go down as a stellar moment in my mothering, I think. The ironic part is the host, Nicole O’Dell, was asking me about motherhood on the air.

Just lovely.

We went over to the neighbor’s house that afternoon and it started sprinkling. I walked over to tell the boys to come inside and found this:

Then finally we had a wonderful double date on Friday with our dear friends Shannon and Eric. Also monumental – Nathan had his first babysitter that day! He has only been watched by family and friends up until now so it was very nerve-wracking for me but he LOVED it.

Sunday, Jon was so sweet to let me sleep in. He and Nathan went and got flowers and made this amazing gourmet breakfast for me for Mother’s Day:

My sweet boys!!

And I love this one of me and my baby yesterday. He’s so big. I can’t even believe it.

Me and my amazing mom. I’m so blessed to have her! I can’t imagine where I would be without her.

Shannon and Eric came to my parents’ house for dinner last night and we celebrated Uncle Caleb and Auntie Cayce’s graduation from college. So proud of the two of them!

And that was our week! Ha! I promise I will not be so absent this week! What have you guys been up to in the meantime?? And when does everyone get out of school??

Oh my goodness, friends, we have had the CRAZIEST week ever. Starting Monday, I was not home with Nathan the entire day the whole week. And when I have been home, I’ve been crazy doing everything for Paige’s release.

But we have had a wonderful time and I have had SO MUCH FUN hearing from you guys who have already finished Paige Torn!! 🙂

 Wednesday, we celebrated Paige’s release by running errands for the book signing and having lunch at a new hamburger place here in town with Gammy. Book release days are always so weird. You plan for it for MONTHS but at the same time, nothing really changes in my schedule that day. So I just spend most of the day thinking “wait, what was happening today? Am I forgetting to be somewhere?” ha!

On Thursday, I did a little writing workshop at a local private school here in Albuquerque. I had so much fun and hopefully the kids learned a few things too. 😉 We have been having the most beautiful weather so I didn’t even check the temperature when I left at 7:15 in the morning wearing my definitely spring outfit and when I got to the school I found out it was THIRTY-SEVEN degrees outside. I was so thankful I had a sweater in the car because it was FREEZING outside but I did not look very put together. Ha!

My brother Bryant surprised us several weeks ago with tickets to go see Chris Tomlin in concert and we have been so so excited for it! Friday night was the concert and guys, if you ever have the opportunity to see him live, BUY THE TICKETS. It was hands down the BEST concert I have ever been to – what an incredible night of worship!! I loved it, loved it.

Saturday, I had a book signing for Paige Torn at the cutest little tea room here! It was so much fun – so wonderful to see so many dear friends and meet some new ones! And a HUGE thank you to my mom who spent countless hours helping me get things together and set up for it! What a wonderful time! Lots of thanks to everyone who came!

Then we had a semi-sad occasion – we surprised Leigh Ann with a baby shower Saturday afternoon since they are moving and we won’t get to be there during the proper time for a baby shower. It was very fun but very horrible at the same time. We will miss their sweet family! (Big thanks to Melanie for creating this beautiful collage picture!)

 Saturday night, I was so tired. So we packed up and headed over to Chick-fil-a for dinner. I love, love, love these two. They got to have a daddy/son day on Saturday. I believe Krispy Kreme was involved, so I don’t think Nathan missed me too much. 😉

Last night, we had dinner at my parents’ house with these dear friends – Shannon and Eric! I am so thankful for them. We love them so much. We spent the entire evening laughing.

Sweet baby boy. It’s hard work having your mama’s book come out! 😉

And now it is Monday. We had Lunch Bunch at our house today and I got to snuggle with these two for a minute. Soaking up every last second with my precious Hayley Grace!!

I’m exhausted just reading this! What have you guys been up to this week??

Paige Torn is officially HERE!!

So cannot wait for you guys to get to meet her!

Don’t forget that you can read the first chapter of Paige Torn here! And if you guys don’t mind, after you’ve read Paige, will you leave a review on Amazon for me?? I SO appreciate it – thank you so much!!

So excited! 🙂

Here’s the winner of Paige Torn, the advanced copy of Paige Rewritten (book two – coming this October!!) and the fantastical prize package from my wonderful publicist….

…drumroll please…

It’s Jessica!

Email me your address and who you would like the book signed to and we will get that off to you ASAP!! 🙂 Yay! Thanks so much to everyone for entering!! I was so hungry reading all of your comments! 😉

Don’t forget to scroll down and check out the AWESOME book trailer NavPress made for Paige! And, you can also read a sneak peek of the first chapter of Paige Torn!!

Congrats, Jessica!!