A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That Weekend

Hi friends! How are you? How was your weekend? For those impacted by the path of Hurricane Helene, I’m so incredibly sorry for the devastation this terrible storm has caused. Western North Carolina, and some of our very favorite beautiful mountain towns, was hit very hard and the pictures we’re seeing are breaking our hearts. My aunt lives in West Jefferson, North Carolina and sent us photos of homes nearly completely submerged and it looks absolutely horrific. Our family is supporting Samaritan’s Purse, an organization headquarted in Boone, NC dedicated to providing relief to the surrounding communities, as well as sites in Georgia, Florida, and eastern Tennessee, if you’d like to join us. Local friends, we’re also donating much-needed items and I have a number of local businesses I can share with you who are collecting these items if you’d like the information.

Friday: The Wild Robot

Our boys were all out of school on Friday due to the weather but by the late afternoon, the storms subsided and the sun was out again. Since Chase’s evening soccer game was canceled, we ventured out to our local movie theater to see The Wild Robot, a movie that’s been on our radar since we read and loved the book over the summer.

The movie had all of us in tears and I thought it was funny, heartfelt, creative and a great movie for both parents and kids to watch together. A rarity these days!

As I’ve mentioned in the past, our boys are not the bravest bunch when it comes to movies but I think reading the book ahead of time helped them anticipate what was going to happen. (The two scary parts for our kids happened when a bear jumped out — but that was super fast! — and a robot battle at the end which thankfully wasn’t too, too long.)

After the movie, Ryan and I took the boys to Urban Air so they could jump around and get some energy out before dinner, shower time and bed.

Saturday

Saturday was a slow paced day which was just what we were looking for this weekend. It began with breakfast and fishing followed by decorating for fall!

I’ve admittedly been a little surprised how into decorating our home for the seasons the boys have been throughout the years, but after begging to decorate for Halloween and fall for the past couple of weeks, I gave in on Saturday and we busted out lots of pretend pumpkins, fall decor and our collection of Halloween books.

Eventually we made it out of the house again in the late afternoon and drove out to some local soccer fields to kick the ball around a bit and enjoy the sun.

Our friend Ben met us out at the fields with his dog Remi which had the boys in heaven as they chased after Remi and tried to catch him as he flew all over the field chasing a ball. He was such a joy to watch and made us remember how much we loved watching Sadie run like the wind and play endless rounds of fetch. There’s something so pure about watching dogs who love to sprint their hearts out have the best time in the world doing something so simple. (Dogs can teach all of us something, I’m telling you.)

After soccer time, we made our way to a small fall festival where the boys had fun bouncing in bounce houses, participating in a scavenger hunt and picking out small pumpkin prizes once their scavenger hunt cards were complete.

By the time we made it home, we were ready for dinner and family movie night. We watched the finale episode from one of the seasons of Is It Cake? on Netflix and that show has been such a fun find for our family. We all get so into it and love trying to guess which creations are cake and which are not. Highly recommend for family fun!

Sunday

Sunday morning we began our day with the early morning church service before popping into Daylight Donuts for a sweet treat. We then took the boys to Target to fill our carts with supplies to bring to a local business that was collecting items to bring to areas of Western North Carolina that were deeply impacted by flooding caused Hurricane Helene.

As a mom, I sometimes struggle with finding ways to involve the boys in our efforts to help during times like this and I’m hoping that including them in the process of picking out items to donate and droping them off might have made helping out feel more tangible than Mom and Dad just talking about donating money and helping the devestation facing the mountain towns near us as well as Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. That’s my hope at least. Who knows if it landed?! We’ll be donating more items this week and will also be packing meals with the big kids to bring to communities in need in Western North Carolina at a local church in the coming weeks but if any of you out there have suggestions for ways you incorporate your kids into giving back, I welcome your ideas.

Since we were out and about most of the morning, by the time we made it home, the boys were very ready for some free playtime and had fun playing around the house while Ryan and I organized some things on our to-do lists.

We then all made it out of the house again in the late afternoon for a family walk around some local trails with Pepper before our usual evening routine.

Plans for this week are all over the place and include some events at the boys’ schools, a few random meetings for me, usual work stuff and two days off school for everyone at the end of the week. I’ll pop in here when I can and hope to see you guys back here on Wednesday. Thanks for making my blog a part of your Monday!