First Weekend of 2020

Hello, hello! I know it’s been more than a week since Christmas but today feels like the first day our family is coming out of the holiday season fog. It’s back to business as usual for all of us and, to be quite honest, I’m ready for it. Routines work well around here for all of our sanity and I’m looking forward to getting back into our usual weekday groove.

We enjoyed our first relatively quiet weekend at home in what feels like at least a month (well, our first quiet weekend that didn’t involve any fevers or runny noses, that is) and we made the most of it. The weather on Saturday called for a decent amount of rain so we decided to put our Discovery Place membership to good use and have some fun indoors at Discovery Place Science in the city instead.

Whenever we go to the uptown location, we always park on the top of the parking deck because the boys love watching the cars zoom underneath the covered bridge walkway as we make our way to Discovery Place Science.

Clearly a lot of people had the same idea we did on Saturday morning because the place was hopping. Fortunately most of the crowds seemed to arrive toward the end of our visit (we arrived about 30 minutes after it opened) so we were able to see all of the animals in the small aquarium and the insects and amphibians without hoards of people around us.

Since Discovery Place Science is only a couple of blocks from 7th Street Public Market, one of our favorite spots in Charlotte, we took the boys on a short, surprisingly sunny walk to the market for crepes after we were done at Discovery Place.

Ryan was in charge of ordering crepes for all of us while I went over to Not Just Coffee and got us drinks. I had to laugh when two of the four crepes he ordered came with ice cream on top. Ice cream for breakfast? Can’t complain!

With full bellies, we piled back into the car and made the drive home for Ryder’s afternoon nap. While Ryder snoozed, we tackled some chores around the house and took turns playing Guess Who? with Chase as it poured outside.

The rest of our Saturday passed by in a blur of early evening church, pizza and part of a movie before we called it an early night.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, we had plans to meet up with our friends at MyGym’s sibling class. Chase was psyched to have some of his best friends in the class and Ryan and I enjoyed catching up with Carrie and Nick in the middle of the kid craziness.

After MyGym, Ryan and Chase campaigned for waffles and since we don’t own a waffle maker, I ended up on my first-ever trip to Waffle House. I’m not sure how I’ve never been to a Waffle House but I suppose there is a first time for everything!

(Yep, still over here living in my GAP softspun joggers – currently on sale for $29 – and Madewell low top sneakers.)

Ryder was clearly psyched about his first trip to Waffle House, too! But, then again, at 18 months, he’s psyched about pretty much everything these days.

We left feeling nice and full and ready to shop for some food for the week ahead.

I snapped the above pic during Ryan and Chase’s “waffle cheers” but clearly my timing was a bit off. Are any of your little ones obsessed with “cheers-ing” everything, too? Chase already has Ryder trained and they cheers various food and drinks all day long.

After a quick trip to the grocery store, we made our way home and figured we should take advantage of the sunny skies and bundled everyone up for a 3-mile walk with Sadie around the neighborhood.

Can you tell Ryder was adamantly against having the stroller blanket over his legs and Chase was all about it? Shout out to my Aunt Laurie for, yet again, claiming a spot as one of the world’s best gift-givers when she made the above fleece shark blanket for Chase a while back. He’s obviously still loving it!

The timing of our walk was about an hour before Ryder’s usual nap time so we shouldn’t have been surprised when he ended up falling asleep about 20 minutes into our walk. Since Ryder is not great about transferring to his crib after he falls asleep in the car or on walks, we knew his afternoon nap was going to be a big fat fail once we got home… but we tried anyway. He spent about 40 minutes playing around in his crib before his playful noises turned to “come get me now” noises so we ended up having a decent amount of time to kill in the afternoon with the boys before bed.

We decided to stay close to home and it was a great decision. I managed to check some things off my to-do list (fun things like invoicing, packaging up holiday returns, laundry, etc.) and then we got everyone in bed by 7:15 which felt like a major victory!

The early bed time left me and Ryan with a decent amount of time to chat and read before falling asleep. After finishing America’s First Daughter (a long, albeit incredibly interesting and, at times, hard-to-read book), I was on the lookout for something fluffier with a little mystery in the mix. I am currently about three-quarters of the way through The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand and it’s exactly what I was looking for — summery, mysterious and interesting with the perfect amount of fluff.

And now I’m off to get this week rolling. I hope you all have a wonderful Monday and thanks so much for making PBF a part of your 2020 so far!