A Birthday + The First Snow

Monday is here and the weekend passed by way too fast. Why does it always seem to do that!?

I hope you guys had a good weekend! Our weekend was rather random, but sometimes random is good, right? With my father-in-law in town, we spent a decent amount of time out and about and took Greg to Choplin’s for a birthday dinner on Friday night.

Of course a homemade birthday cake and a birthday balloon were a part of the celebration as well!

Saturday

Saturday began on an active note with a boot camp class for me and a gym workout for the boys after breakfast. The guys then headed out for some father/son fun while Chase and I ran errands. We stopped at the grocery store, Pier 1 and Nothing Bundt Cakes and naturally our final stop was the highlight!

We brought home mini bundt cakes to enjoy after dinner later that night. (Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure we had cake every single night during Greg’s visit. Apparently birthdays = Four nights of cake in the Fagan household!)

Once everyone was back home, we headed out to a local park to walk for an hour.

The park was quite crowded with people thanks to the beautifully sunny weather. It was the perfect day to be outside and clearly we weren’t the only ones who had the bright idea to stretch our legs in the late afternoon.

By the time we made it home, our stomachs were growling and we drove to Blu Star Grill for a casual, low key dinner. (I’m pretty sure I had the cutest booth buddy even though he was way more interested in his toy turtle than his mama.)

(FYI for the locals, we absolutely loved our food – I ordered the blackened salmon – and the people who worked there were incredibly friendly and thoughtful. They went out of their way to make us comfortable with Chase and were so kind.)

Sunday

Sunday morning it SNOWED! Our first snow of the season! Unfortunately it wasn’t cold enough outside for the snow to stick around, but watching the beautiful flakes slowly fall was a wonderful way to kick off a cozy Sunday morning.

I made pancakes and scrambled eggs with cheese for everyone to eat before the guys headed out to see the new Star Wars movie.

Am I the only one on the planet who has never seen even one of the Star Wars movies? They’ve never appealed to me in the least, but my sister used to say the same thing until her husband coerced her into watching all of them last month. Now she’s a fan and I’m wondering if I should give them a try. (Don’t hold your breath on this one…)

While Ryan and Greg were at the movie, I stayed busy with Chase and Sadie and dusted off my running shoes to take the gang out on a 4.5 mile walk/run. We definitely did way more walking than running but it felt good to be outside.

(Shout out to Sadie lookin’ mighty spiffy in her Christmas sweater!)

I think the last time I talked about postnatal running on the blog, I said I felt like my insides were going to fall out and I must say I am happy to be seeing an improvement with how my body is feeling during a run these days. We run in short bursts in boot camp which feels totally fine but I am admittedly still not feeling back to my normal self when it comes to postnatal running.

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel discouraged when running seems to come back with a vengeance for other new moms, but it is slowly becoming more comfortable for me. I’m practicing patience when it comes to running these days and definitely listening to my body. It’s telling me not to push it or run long distances right now, so that’s what I’m doing. (Side note: It’s so weird to me that burpees feel 100 percent fine but running feels awkward… So strange.)

Once we made it back home, I nursed Chase, took a quick shower and then started to sort through a ton of old photos. I’m planning to send a bunch into Legacybox to have some pictures from college digitized.

(Hi Laurel! Oh and the above pic was from a Viking-themed social. Laurel didn’t walk around wearing cheetah-print stoles for the fun of it, I promise.)

Facebook and digital cameras seemed to explode during the last two years I was in college (raise your hand if you’re also super grateful Facebook wasn’t really a thing when you were in high school/college…), so I’m hoping to get a handful of pictures that were captured on disposable cameras put onto a few CDs.

I stumbled upon some gems like these glorious “professional” photos from a random Carnival spring break cruise:

I’m pretty sure those photos are the closest I’ve ever come to Glamour Shots. The poses crack me up!

The rest of our Sunday was spent watching the Panthers game and hanging out around the house before I headed to the airport to pick up my mom. She was in Gettysburg this weekend with my aunt and the two of them spent some time going through some of Mimi’s old belongings that were stored at one of her friends’ houses before heading onto Maryland for a mini reunion with their cousins. My mom decided to stop by our house in Charlotte for the week to spend some time with her grandson before heading back to Florida on Friday and to say I’m thrilled to have her here again would be a serious understatement. Woop!

After I picked up my mom, we grabbed Thai food for the gang back home and dug into some delicious noodles, chicken and soup before bed.

I hope you guys had a great weekend!