Hazel is 5!!

Woah….I’m actually posting this on Hazel’s birthday!  I’m right on time.  

Hazel is 5!  We can hardly believe how big she has gotten.  Hazel is smart, funny, artistic and loves to play Barbies, dress up, “family” and any other game with her besties next door.  She loves fiercely and fights loudly and while she can challenge us in ways we never expect, she also owns all of us in this house.  Hazel is definitely our household princess and she knows exactly what it takes to get mom or dad to cave.  Gunnar and Zach often find her to be annoying but they also can be caught from time to time being quite sweet with her.  

Hazel graduated from preschool last week and turned 5 this week.  It’s been an exciting seven days!  She’s more than ready for Kindergarten at the school with all the big kids but first….we hope to have many summer adventures.  

Manic Monday!

Hello world!  I named this Manic Monday because when I started this post a few days ago it was Throwback Thursday.  Needless to say….sometimes it gets a little busy around here.   I’ve been lame at posting so I’m going to throw back what’s been going on for the last 6 months.  That’s right.  I haven’t posted since last November!  Yikes!  Have you missed me?  I’m pretty sure there’s only 1 or 2 people that even realized I haven’t posted so I don’t think the blogger world will be exploding over this.

Ok, we’ve been living in a pandemic world so nothing too revolutionary has happened however we’ve still had some bright moments. Here are some photos and quick recap.  A couple of events are worthy of their own post so I’ll add those over the next few days (hopefully).

Christmas 2020!

The holidays came and went and we all had fun.  We spent the holiday in Evanston and Nana and Boppa drove up to join the festivities and cold.  

Santa spoiled the kids with bounce house, skee ball and scooter so they were happy to play all winter break.










Rich was a good sport when Hazel made an ugly Christmas sweater for him.


And I scored this awesome deer head which now adds style to our back deck.



Winter truly hit in February.  It was the most snow we’d seen in years.  I think we had over 18” in 24 hours.












The boys started back to school in a hybrid model at the end of February too!  They only went for a couple hours a day but it was better than nothing.

Hazel took her first dance class.  The class was mostly in person however she did have to do a couple of virtual sessions due to Covid.

This was our first night of spring break.  We made a stop in DC and then headed to the Outer Banks to meet friends ans family.  I’ll do a whole post on this later.


Spring sports came back to life!  Zach and Hazel (first time!) each played soccer, Zach played flag football and Gunnar and Zach both played baseball.  

Baseball Saturdays have been a little hectic with both boys playing and Rich helping coach Gunnar’s team.  There is a lot of me and Hazel running in between games….or sitting somewhere being frozen.  So no good pics of the boys (a couple of videos that I can’t seem to upload) but here is what I looked like….

We celebrated another trip around the sun for me in our traditional fashion of demolishing a cheesecake.


The boys all jumped in when it came to Mother’s Day breakfast.  Gunnar did all the French toast sticks by himself! He is definitely the cook of the kids.


And Gunnar turned 8!  I’ll do a separate post on this as well.


School was rough this year.  They spent 2/3 of the year at home doing virtual remote learning and then got 3 months of hybrid learning.  June 2nd was the last day of school!


These kiddos have been together since preschool.






Ok….more posts to come!  I promise!

Double Digits

Double digits hit today.  Yep....the big 10!  Zach is 10!!  It has been a full decade since this boy made us parents and changed our lives forever.  He was supposed to show up closer to Christmas but decided to arrive on Black Friday instead back in 2010.  This year he shared his birthday with Thanksgiving but he never seems to mind.  Plus he loves turkey and gravy!

In the midst of a pandemic we couldn’t throw him a party or take him to his first concert but Zach took it all in stride.  We had friends stop by for a socially distanced and masked up bonfire and s’mores session a couple of weeks ago and many friends and family sent him birthday wishes via video (thank you to those that joined in).  Today he spent the day in NC with Nana and Boppa opening gifts, playing games, eating good food and receiving many birthday messages.  We think Zach had a great day!  

At 10 he is becoming a young man that we are quite proud of.  Zach has become much more helpful and is fun to just hang out with.  He is a great big brother or at least has the ability to be when he wants.  He loves Legos (a resurgence thanks to spending so much time at home), reading adventure and mystery books, music of all kinds, playing baseball, riding his bike, watching movies, playing video games and connecting with friends any way he can.  He rarely lets me snuggle up with him these days but he has his moments where he gives me a “nod” by picking me as a game partner or taking a ride to run errands with me.  Zach is fluent in Spanish however saves that skill for his teachers and Gloria (he doesn’t want to waste his time on his English speaking parents....ha).  Oh, and he loves a good joke, fun fact or life hack!

Zach has given us so many fun memories!  We can’t wait to see what more he will do.  Happy Birthday Zach!!!

He has grown so much since he was out cute little bundle of joy and our little over served elf.......but we love him more than we ever could have imagined.