A Very Full Family Weekend

Hey friends! How are you? This weekend flew by and was very full thanks to lots of time on the lake with my in-laws!

We had back-to-back sunny days and with temperatures in the mid-to-upper 80s, the water was impossible to resist.

Diane, Les and Dominic arrived in town on Friday in the late afternoon. This was Dominic’s first visit to our house — he is Les’ daughter’s 12-year-old son — and to say our boys were in heaven with a big kid to follow around all weekend is a serious understatement. Dominic has a little sister a few months younger than Ryder and is incredible with younger kids. We are so, so glad he joined Diane and Les for their trip up to Charlotte and I told them it might have to become mandatory that Dom join them on all future visits because he may be Chase’s new favorite person.

Saturday

We kicked off our first full day together on Saturday with a long family walk before Rhett’s morning nap. While Rhett snoozed, everyone else headed off on a fishing adventure while I stayed back with Rhett and did super-cool things like organize the stuff in the trunk of my car and knock out some blog work. Rhett’s morning nap was on the shorter side and he was awake before everyone else returned so once we were all together again, we quickly ate lunch and headed out for an afternoon on the boat.

Ryder immediately found the puffs I packed for his little brother in our snack bag and went to town.

Oooh the passion on his face! Do not get in between that kid and his puffs. Ha!

(My swimsuit is from Amazon I LOVE the fit of this one! In terms of sizing, I ordered both a medium and a large and both actually fit but I kept the medium based on the fit around the bust and waist. My butt was a little happier with a large though. My aviator sunglasses are also from Amazon.) 

Ryan drove our boat to a little beach where we unrolled our big floating mat and everyone spent a few hours swimming and splashing around.

“MORE! HIGHER!” Ryder’s face kills me.

We made it back home around 4 p.m. and I promptly put Rhett down for a nap — a risky move since he ended up sleeping until 6 p.m. which is basically 30 minutes away from his usual bedtime. Thankfully the decision didn’t completely backfire and he ended up going to bed a little after 8 p.m. without any major issues. Thanks, buddy!!!

We spent the rest of our Saturday grilling out, eating pasta salad and cheesecake and racing toy cars down the driveway.

Sunday

Sunday began with a big first for our family! We thought Dominic might enjoy tubing, so I reached out to a friend and we borrowed her tube and headed out on the lake!

Dominic loved flying all over the lake on the tube and always wanted to go faster!

Watching him intimidated Chase and Ryder a bit but when we assured them we would go nice and slow and that Ryan would listen to them if they said they wanted to slow down or go faster, they decided to give it a shot.

Ryder was up first and we went nice and slow. When I asked him if he was having fun, he would give me a very clipped, “YES” answer but he was very focused on the task at hand. By the time Ryder was finished, Chase was more than convinced that he wanted to try, too. Chase is a very cautious child (hence why Ryder went first) but he said he was very proud of himself for tubing and smiled SO BIG the whole time!

It was so fun to go out with him and I loved it when he said he thought the bubbles under the water from the engine looked like a big blue whale underneath us. Our Creature Man through and through!

(My bikini is back in stock and on sale on RueLaLa! Linking the top here and the bottoms here.) 

Eventually we all made it back to the house for a much-needed nap for Rhett. We had a few hours of downtime at home before Rhett was back up and Dom, Chase and Ryder were all about our idea to head over to Urban Air, an indoor trampoline park that semi-recently opened in our area. When one of my friends raved about it a few weeks ago, we looked into it and Chase and Ryder became members last week! (It’s around $11 a month for the big kids and you can come and go anytime. Sign us UP.)

While the trampolines were a lot of fun for the kids, they seemed to really love the indoor playground, foam pit and the climbing obstacles just as much!

Before we left, Ryan placed an order to pick up pizza for our crew at Inizio’s for us to bring home for dinner. After dinner, we got the boys in bed early and then I made some homemade cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream for us to eat while we hung out for a bit longer before calling it a night, too.

Diane, Les and Dom are leaving later today for Kennedy Space Center so now I’m off to soak up the final few hours with everyone before we say goodbye. I hope you all had a great weekend!