An At Home Mini Ironman + Father’s Day Weekend 2024

An At Home Mini Ironman + Father’s Day Weekend 2024

What a weekend. From start to finish it was filled with the good stuff that fills me up. My family. Sunshine. Time outside. We spent the weekend celebrating Ryan and he deserved every bit of the love coming his way.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, our weekend kicked off with Chase and Ryder’s first swim meet of the summer. They’re loosely on swim team this year and I say “loosely” because we missed a quarter of the short season and half of the meets while we were away in Florida. Thankfully the swim program they’re in is a junior swim team program that is extremely laidback and has a very “come when you can” approach. It suits us well and we were excited to cheer for our big kids on Saturday morning!

Speedy Meets

At the “speedy meets” (they last about an hour), kids on the junior swim team can participate in a race that is one length of the pool in any of the following four strokes: Freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly. It was Ryder’s first meet ever (it’s his first time doing swim team) but in the past we’ve always told Chase he could choose to do whatever strokes he wished in the meets. This has looked like one stroke or three strokes but on Saturday he did all four strokes in a meet for the first time! And Ryder blew us away by opting to do freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly. Whaaat!?

(Dress: Beyond Yoga / Sandals: Farm Rio x adidas / Bracelets: Amazon / Necklaces: Gorjana Amour Necklace + Gorjana Poppy Gem Necklace) 

When we arrived at the swim meet, Ryder was all about winning his first ribbon (they get a ribbon for every race they do) but when his first heat of freestyle was randomly selected to be a “hot heat” where the kids get to race for candy, his focus quickly turned to suckers. Apparently suckers > race ribbons when you’re 5 years old.

And we were extra grateful for an insightful volunteer who spotted our three-year-old’s meltdown in the making and handed Rhett a DumDum just like his big brother’s. Crisis averted.

OMG Donuts

Since the boys’ meet took us out to Concord, we realized we were within 10 minutes of one of our favorite donut shops and had to pop into OMG Donuts for a sweet treat after the meet.

I’m slowly getting the boys to come around to liking my favorite apple fritters. They’ve long since thought apple fritters look awful (no icing = no love) but two of the three boys admitted my fritter was pretty darn good when they took a bite yesterday. They’re the best, I’m telling you.

By the time we made it home, we were ready for a little downtime, lunch and crafting! And this is when the main event of the day began to take shape…

At Home Ironman Race

For Father’s Day this year, Chase had an idea and told me he wanted to do a mini Ironman race with Ryan. I thought it was the sweetest idea and one that was so clearly inspired by all of the races Chase has spectated and the training he’s witnessed Ryan go through for his various triathlons over the past few years. We wanted to make the DIY race feel a little special for Father’s Day so we made homemade race bibs…

Decorated a finish line sign…

Set up a transition area in the garage…

Got inked up…

And dubbed Rhett “Race Director,” a position he thoroughly enjoyed when he was given a whistle and told he was in charge.

Chase, Ryan and Ryder designed the race course together. They began by completing a short open-water swim in the lake between our dock and our neighbor’s dock and then ran to our garage to change for their bike ride.

They then hydrated and took off on a speedy two mile bike ride around our neighborhood before returning and running up and down the street for the run portion of their race.

When I tell you they were all absolutely beaming when they were done, I mean it. It was so clear Chase and Ryder were so proud of themselves and Ryan absolutely loved the idea of a family race with his big kids as a way to celebrate Father’s Day. It was such a simple thing, but this idea that our 8-year-old brainstormed will stay with me always. We loved it so much.

After their race, the boys all wanted to play in the lake so that’s exactly what we did!

Fueled by cold watermelon, we swam and took the kayaks out before playing Memory and Uno, reading books together and calling it an early night.

Once the boys were all settled in bed, Ryan and I started watching the recently released second season of Unchained, a Tour de France documentary on Netflix, and we’re really enjoying it. My dad and Ryan both bike regularly so it’s interesting for me to learn more about the sport of cycling and the team and individual aspects of the biggest bike race in the world. If you happen to enjoy sports documentaries, I’d recommend it!

Sunday

Sunday kicked off with a call to my dad followed by a mini Father’s Day celebration for Ryan as we gave him a few small gifts.

The boys were thrilled to show him their homemade creations and I was especially excited to give him three years worth of family albums. They took me hours and hours to make but all the time was beyond worth it. We loved flipping through the albums together and the boys had a great time seeing themselves as babies as we reminisced about some of our favorite memories. Now to get a jumpstart on our 2024 album!

The rest of our Sunday was a “choose your own adventure” day for Ryan. The boys helped me make a mini map for Ryan to select various meals, activities, etc. from all day long so we did exactly what he chose from our list of adventures.

Up first: A family hike in Davidson!

Up next: A bike ride to the pool for a family pool day!

We ate lunch at the pool and spent several hours swimming and splashing around until we figured we should head home for dinner and movie night.

Father’s Day Night

We ended Father’s Day with movie night (Shrek, Ryan’s choice!) and homemade funfetti ice cream before heading to bed.

This week should be a good one as it’s our boys’ first camp week of the summer. Chase and Ryder are attending a local VBS camp they absolutely love and Rhett will be attending a splash camp with a few of his preschool friends. All of their camps are only 1/2 day camps so I’ll pick everyone up around lunchtime. And, most importantly, we’ll also be celebrating Ryder’s SIXTH birthday tomorrow!!! I need to get this day rocking before we head out the door in less than an hour, so I’m off! Hope you have a fantastic Monday, my friends!

Related: 10 Outside Activities to Do With Kids