Our weekend was a rather full one over here. My parents arrived in town on Thursday to spend a few days with us and everyone was more than a little excited for Mae and Pop’s visit! We spent a lot of time fishing, hanging out in our yard, grilling out and just soaking up all the family time we could.
Saturday
Our Saturday morning began nice and slow. We sipped our tea and coffee in the driveway while Chase and Ryder hunted for worms and Rhett inch-wormed all over the place. Sadie and my dad thoroughly entertained the boys by “hunting” the squirrels that kept coming over to eat the seeds that fell out of our bird feeder. The squirrels let them get shockingly close and it was really good to see Sadie’s young-dog instincts in full force as she sprinted after them.
We actually ended up taking Sadie into the vet last week for some bloodwork because, as I alluded to last week, we’re getting increasingly concerned about our girl. Though most of the things we brought to the vet’s attention seemed in line with a typical 13-year-old dog’s natural aging process, we are the most concerned about her weight loss, especially since she’s always been a very slim dog to begin with despite being a free-feeder with 24/7 access to food. She thankfully got a really good report from the vet in terms of her overall energy levels, responsiveness, etc. but they are doing bloodwork to check into some things that could be the root cause of her weight loss. We should have the results back this week. In the interim, we’re doing our best to get more calories in Sadie as we give her lots of love as usual and pray everything is okay.
I’ll be sure to share more Sadie updates as we learn more and always appreciate the love and concern you guys show for our girl, too. I feel like she’s grown up on this blog and went from a crazy brown-faced ball of energy to our sugar-faced little senior princess.
(This throwback 2016 pic of Sadie will always be one of my all-time favorites!)
Okay, back to our Saturday…
Once Rhett was awake from a shorter-than-usual morning nap, we piled into my car and headed off to a local pond that is a hot spot for catfish. Even though catfish seriously creep me out, they thrill the boys so this pond is a winner for our family’s fishing fun because we always catch a bunch. We used hotdogs for bait and reeled in at least six catfish and one sunny.
Granddad joined us, too!
I won some Cool Mom points from the big kids when I netted some tiny fish for in their creature cage so they could watch them swim around for a few minutes before we returned them to the water.
(My headband / Updated version of my romper / TKEES sandals / Amazon aviators / My favorite pink tumbler / XL Camo Tote)
Our Rhett man turned 9 months old on Saturday and seemed to love observing all of the fishing craziness as he ate a billion snacks. Since I’ve been around the block with a small baby who didn’t care much about food for years, seeing Rhett happily munch on a wide variety of foods is a big-time relief to me. I’m sure I’ll go into more detail about some of my feelings related to this in my next Rhett update but for right now I’m just grateful he is all about eating! Some of his favorite snacks lately include baked oatmeal, peanut butter on whole wheat bread, banana oatmeal blender muffins, strawberries, blueberries, bananas and baby food pouches. (Bless those pouch toppers for making independent baby food pouch eating virtually mess-free!)
In addition to eating snacks, Rhett was all about the extra attention from Mae and Pop!
You might notice my dad is using a cane in the above picture. He had knee replacement surgery six weeks ago and the recovery has been much tougher than he imagined. I actually received a few comments from you guys via Instagram DM over the weekend about his surgery and the recovery some of your loved ones went through and he really appreciated the encouragement. I’m proud of his dedication to his physical therapy and hope his pain begins to subside at a faster rate and that he can get back to living the active lifestyle he loves so much soon.
Once we arrived home, we got Rhett and Ryder down for naps — Ryder desperately needed one after a five-day nap strike — and both boys slept hard for a couple of hours. While they snoozed away, something rather exciting happened for their big brother!
Chase learned how to ride a bike without training wheels! You guys, truly learned in less than a minute. We were shocked! I think the key to his success was the fact that HE had a really strong desire to do it and that over the course of the past two months or so he became obsessed with his Balance Bike. He would truly FLY down hills on that thing which seemed to really help him master his balance.
With my mom and dad in town to watch the little guys, we were able to set off on a longer bike ride with Chase and he was so, so excited!
We wrapped up our Saturday with a backyard cookout with my parents and father-in-law and celebrated my dad’s birthday a little early.
Chase and I made a red velvet cake to celebrate and Rhett REALLY wanted a bite. I have a feeling he’s going to be all-in on his smash cake on his first birthday!
Once we had all the kids settled in bed, we wrapped up the night with a few rounds of Mexican Train dominos before bed.
Aaand I thought I’d have more time to recap the rest of our weekend this morning before the kids were awake but Rhett is already making noises on his monitor so I have to make this a short one. Hopefully I can find a moment to share the rest of our weekend recap tomorrow but, if not, maybe I’ll have a day-in-the-life post or something for ya later this week.
Thank you for making my blog a part of your day today!
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-1e3-7hOJ_U8Bg.gif\")
Congrats to Chase on two wheels! My daughter did this Saturday as well, just shy of her 4th birthday! She just hopped on and took off, thanks to the balance bike. We are so proud of her!
That’s awesome!!! So exciting when they are ready and just get it!
Balance bikes are the way to go! We never did training wheels and our daughter took off like Chase did when she got her bike for her 4th birthday. I ran up and down the street with her once and she told me to stop running with her! Our son is turning 3 in August and we are planning to give him a pedal bike as he’s so proficient on his balance bike already!