Summer Weeks 1 & 2

The first two weeks of our summer were mostly spent in or around the pool. We signed Mckinley up for a two week intensive swim class and boy am I glad we did. She is so much more comfortable in the water and I am much happier knowing that if heaven forbid something ever happens she has the basic skills to save herself.

 We tried to get out of the house as much as we could in between random downpours every single day. The most exciting day had to be during week two when we met a our friend Heather and her littles at the Botanic Gardens. We had a blast feeding ducks and playing in the dirt and we were just about to make our way to eat some lunch when someone missed a step off of a bridge and slammed her head on the concrete. Let's just say I have never kicked off  flip flops and run as fast as I did when I saw my baby fall head first off of a bridge. We had to keep a close eye on her for 24 hours, but thankfully everything turned out ok.

The rest of our time we spent outside playing with bubbles, having floor picnics, painting, dressing up like pirates and princesses, and whatever else we could find to entertain ourselves. Not pictured is the amount of time we spent watching movies. I am and never will be the perfect craft everyday mom kind of mom and some days I get tired of reading the same books over and over again and dancing to the same song while putting together the same Llama Llama puzzle so we watched movies. Our latest favorites are Free Birds, Mulan and Mulan II, and Any movie with puppies in it (Air Bud or anything with Dalmations). I have also been binge watching tv shows on Netflix. I just finished Breaking Bad and have now moved onto Scandal. Don't you worry I will quickly start Orange Is The New Black once I finish up with Olivia Pope.

Now enjoy yourself and take in our summer via a collage of pictures of my child getting really dirty and eating a bunch of food.

Next week I want to try to get outside some more even though the temps have steadily been rising (Welcome to the South and it's amazing humidity). There is an awesome park I have wanted to visit for a few weeks so my plan is to scrounge up some crusty bread (that's not easy in this house) and take the girl to go feed some scary geese that will attack you if you get too close. 

I am all about making memories here people!

Swimming Swimming In The Swimming Hole

I am not sure why this day is always so difficult for me every year. I know it is coming and I should be better prepared for it, but it still always sends a little panic through my heart when I wake up in the morning and still think I should be getting ready to go to work. Nothing is layed out! No lunches are packed! Nothing is ready to go! And then it hits me that I am not going to work today and I won't be going back to work for 10 weeks! 

Then the panic really sets in because I know I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. for some reason! Ahhhhh!! I have to be at Boot camp at 5:30!! Thank the lord I set out my work out clothes and baked some egg, sausage, and spinach "muffins" last night. So there I go running out the door to do some sweating and then it's back home again.  Now it's time to wake the morning monster and get her fed and rolling before we head out the door for our first day of swim class. I will definitely be writing a full post on our swim class experience because it should be interesting. We have taken a class before, but it was just an introduction to the water and I stayed in the water with her. This class however is a little different because parents are not allowed in the class except for the first day and on Fridays to see what they have learned. This kid of mine is definitely a little fish and loves the water, but we shall see how it all goes when we get to the drop off point. I think it will be a good thing because for such a free spirited kid someone has a little bit of an attachment issue when it comes to her Mama. 

As you see even though I am not teaching there is still something to do every single day. We have our swim lessons every day Monday-Friday for the next two weeks, lots of play dates scheduled, and swim dates at Ya Ya and Papa's house so I still need to make sure I am prepared  for everything we have planned for the next day.

I do know however that when it is time for to relax we will definitely be doing it up right. I have been working on getting our backyard ready for some serious summer fun! We have our playhouse and slide, a water table, lots of dirt to roll in, our wireless speaker to jam to all of our favorite Disney tunes, and now we have an appropriate pool to stay cool in.

We started our love affair with the water in this perfect little baby pool and it has done the job for the past 3 years. 

But we have moved on to bigger and better things! Thanks to Backyard Ocean we now get to enjoy the hot and humid southern summer in this glorious piece of aquatic equipment! 

I was so excited when I was contacted by Backyard Ocean to help promote their Summer Sweepstakes because we love any company that sells products promoting family togetherness. Now that I am home with the wild child everyday we will definitely be spending the majority of our time outside and it gets hot down here so we will need a way to stay cool.

Our Deluxe Square Party Pool  arrived on our doorstep after just a few days of being contacted by Backyard Ocean. We didn't get to set up our pool right away because of too much fun at a super muddy Italian Fest, but after a fun day at church we decided to go ahead and get things set up for our first week of summer break.  First things first was to get our pool out of the box and of course I injured myself or I guess you could say I re-injured myself by dropping the box on my foot on the exact spot my sandals rubbed a huge gash the night before. Thankfully my wonderful husband helped me pull it out and he carried it out to the carport for me since our inflator can only be used when hooked up to a car. I wanted to give a good set up time frame for our pool so I set the stop watch on my phone after figuring out which inflator hose and pieces I needed to get started. Thankfully I didn't start the timer until I got all of this figured out because no one would want to know how long this actually took me. 25 minutes later I started my timer and got inflating. finally started inflating.

The Deluxe Square Party Pool has 4 sections to inflate including 3 rings making up the outside of the pool and an inflatable bench around one side of the bottom of the pool. It took me a little over 17 minutes to fill up the whole entire pool! If you have small children and you tell them you are going to blow up a pool for them to swim in it better not take a long time and if my child could patiently make it through this you know it was super easy.

Funny thing is this small bench took the longest to inflate. The 3 large rings around the side actually had your everyday run of the mill blowup ports, but they also have 3 extra ports with a acre off top and a small black plug for letting out the air that made it much easier and faster to inflate. I used one of my smaller inflator needles to fill up the bench which took a little longer. 

After I got everything blown up Brent helped me carry it back into the backyard and we grabbed a hose and started filling up. Someone loves helping me use the hose to water our vegetables and flowers so you can imagine the pure joy when I let her help fill up her new pool.

It took about 30-35 minutes to fill up the pool a little under the top of the inflatable bench which was just enough water for us today. I didn't want to fill it up too full to see how comfortable the wild child was before going all the way. She of course loved it and I will be filling it up the rest of the way tomorrow so she can show us what she learned in swim class.

Hopefully this is the face she has tomorrow swimming in the big pool! Wish us luck!

Let The Giveaways Begin!

I am so excited to be teaming up with Backyard Ocean the next 2 weeks to promote their giveaway to win their Keep It Cool 2014 giveaways.

All you have to do is jump on over to their Facebook Page and give them a Like and every time they hit a Like milestone someone will win a gift certificate for one of these awesome prizes:

 “200 Likes Milestone” – When the Backyard Ocean Facebook Page receives an additional 200 likes from the start of the sweepstakes period, one lucky winner will receive a $50 Backyard Ocean gift certificate. 

“500 Likes Milestone” – When our Page gets an additional 500 likes after the 200th fan mark, we will give away a $100 Backyard Ocean gift certificate. 

“800 Likes Milestone” – When we hit 800 likes after the 500th fan mark, we will give away a $150 Backyard Ocean gift certificate. 

“1,100 Likes Milestone” – When we hit an additional 1,100 likes after the 800th fan mark, we will give away a $200 Backyard Ocean gift certificate. 

“1,400 Likes Milestone” – When we hit 1,400 likes after the 1,100th fan mark, we will give away a $150 Backyard Ocean gift certificate.

 For entry details and other contest information head on over to the Backyard Ocean Blog .

Giveaway Facebook Terms and Conditions 

Summer Summer Summertime!

I hope you are all now singing the title in your best Will Smith voice. And now you are probably starting to hum the fresh price of bel air theme song and you might even be doing the Carlton dance. Now that you have all of that awesomeness stuck in your head lets talk summertime!!!!!!

School is out and it is time to relax with my girl and enjoy our time off. And by relax I mean play outside all day, search for bugs, and get dirty. 

We have so many fun things planned this summer from swimming lessons to zoo dates, but I am already dreaming about the days we strap on our swim suits slather on some sunscreen and I lay in the hammock with my feet in the pool while the wild child splashes around and gets dirty enough to need a bath every single night. I may or may not count a few hours in the pool as a bath some days and some of you may be cringing right now and a few of you are nodding your head and thinkin to yourself "thank god I am not the only one who does that!" 

Last year we spent most of our time in one of those tiny plastic baby pools and while that was great my girl has quickly outgrown her little wading pool. Thankfully we are teaming up with Backyard Ocean this year and they are giving away tons of school stuff this summer!

Between May 26 to June 4, 2014 Backyard Ocean will be hosting some awesome giveaways and yes I said giveaways! 

So stay tuned and go check out Backyard Ocean on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram and be on the look out for a ton of pictures of my feet and my kid in a party pool. I will be posting again soon with more information about how to enter and be on the look out for wild child and my review. I am pretty sure we are going to love chilling in a pool together all day long! 

Summer Fun

I hope someday to get back to regular blogging, but we have just been having too much fun this summer!

I can honestly say 2 or I guess almost 2 is a blast! Definitely my favorite age so far!

I have a ton of pictures to load from my phone of all of our pool, 4th, and other adventures, but for now here is a little taste. 

This girl has turned into a fish! Sadly I have no swimming pics because I am always in with her. 

We have been trying to stay pretty healthy and we couldn't let and entire half of a watermelon go to waste so we made fresh watermelon pops. They are delicious!

Yaya took us to the Garden Playground and Papa didn't want to miss out on all of the fun. I can't begin to tell you how much this picture melts my heart!

Getting rid of a little energy with some crib trampolining.

We have also been doing a lot of potty training these past few weeks. We got brave and have been going pants off dance off style and my girl has become quite the nudist. The Little Lady has been doing awesome and goes without even being prompted. Sadly when she has pants on that is a whole other story. I think the security of having something on makes her forget to run to the potty, but she is getting really good at controlling it. I think we are at ahead of the game since the monkey isn't even 2 yet so I am not to worried.

I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer as much as we are. 

I just realized Baby Girl is wearing the same brown Elephant or Epelant as she calls them tank in almost every picture and yes these were all taken on different days. This has become one of our favorite summer tops and we are so thankful to the French clan to passing us down some awesome stuff. This is also our go to potty top. Some part of her body has to be covered if her bum is gonna be out all day long!