Things I’m Loving Friday #554

School’s out for SUMMER! Woohoooo! Okay well the big kids technically have to get through today at school but then it’s SUMMATIME. We’re planning to kick off summer with pool time, outside time and family time because, after five straight days of on-and-off rain, this weekend looks sunny! We also have plans with friends to attend River Jam, a free concert series at the Whitewater Center, with friends and are looking forward to some unstructured fun.

And if you’re here today to check out this week’s roundup of Things I’m Loving Friday favorites, keep on scrolling! Enjoy your weekend, my friends!

 Things I’m Loving Friday

• End of the School Year Events

(Red Jumpsuit: Anthropologie / Sandals: Target)

(Dress: Beyond Yoga / Bag: Amazon / Sneakers: Adidas / Ryder’s Rash Guard: Amazon)

This week was jam-packed with school events for our big kids. I found myself at the boys’ school every single day for one reason or another and while it was most certainly “May-hem” in its truest form, it was wonderful to be able to celebrate Chase and Ryder’s hard work and share in their end-of-the-school-year joy. We celebrated Chase’s summer birthday with an in-class birthday book reading of “Interrupting Chicken” (his choice). We walked through a classroom art gallery featuring all of his 3rd grade art work and flipped through the book he worked on all year long featuring a different style of poem for each month of the school year. I volunteered to run a station at Ryder’s water day and got just as wet at the kindergarteners. We celebrated the end of the school year with Kona Ice at a local park. And all week long the boys had that palpable excitement I remember so well on the cusp of summer break. We are ready!!

• Weekend with Mae and Pop

Last weekend we had two visitors! My parents drove in town for a few days and we loved our time together. We had a great dinner out on Friday but unfortunately both my mom and dad were not feeling 100% during the remainder of their visit. We mostly laid low, enjoying time in the backyard with grocery store fireworks and s’mores by the fire pit. They rested a good deal but assured us over and over they were glad they made the trip and we certainly were thankful for their company, too. We’ve jokingly said in the past that rarely is any family gathering without incident these days (get enough people together and someone is bound to not be 100%) but we’ll take any time we can get with the people we love most!

• Thank You Cards

The end of the school year means I’ve been flying through thank you cards. I placed an order for a mega-pack of 50 cards on Amazon and have been so impressed with the quality of these cards. They’re printed on a thick cardstock and I love the scalloped detailing along the edges of the cards and envelopes. And bonus points for sticker-strips on the inside of the envelopes so no lick-sealing is required!

• Diamond Painting Kits + Diamond Stickers

I am forever and ever on the lookout for fun little crafty projects our boys can work on and genuinely enjoy and right now we are in a huge diamond painting phase. We’ve done diamond stickers in the past but never ventured into full pictures until Ryder received a kit for diamond painting as a generous goodie bag treat at birthday party. The kit ended up feeling like a gift to our whole family because the big kids and I all had so much fun working on our individual pictures over the course of several days. (My mom also got into it during my parents’ visit, too! They’re a fantastic grandparent/grandkid activity!) To do a diamond painting, you lay the picture on a flat surface and remove the protective film which will reveal stickiness on top of the picture. Then you use a little tool that comes with the kit to select a color “diamond” to place in its corresponding spot (these are labeled  by either letters or numbers). Think if it kind of like a “paint by number” kit but with sticky little gems!

The big kids’ diamond painting kits also resurrected their love for the diamond stickers we had on hand already and even Rhett (4yo) got into it and created a bunch of little Pokemon diamond stickers for on his Pokemon binder!

And just FYI, there are diamond painting pictures and diamond stickers for just about every interest out there from animals and superheros to Disney characters and Star Wars characters. I see a lot of summertime diamond painting in our future!

• That’s Not My Name by Megan Lally

Genre: Mystery/Thriller / My rating: B

That’s Not My Name is a book with a plot that takes off running. Right away suspicions flare as you think you know more than you do as you continue reading. (This was perhaps my favorite thing about this book!) While the story wasn’t anything groundbreaking and it felt a little redundant in parts, it was entertaining enough as a quick-read thriller that was semi-predictable with one big twist thrown in the mix!

The book begins when a teenage girl awakes along a desolate road, dirty and bruised and without any memory of why she’s in the state she’s in or even her own name. A police officer brings her into the station and soon after, a man arrives, frantically searching for this girl, “Mary,” he says, and though nothing about him seems familiar to her, he has family photos and even proper documentation proving he is her father.

And then there is Lola, a missing teenage girl her boyfriend Drew is desperate to find. Only Drew is the primary suspect in Lola’s disappearance. Drew refuses to give up hope as he searches for Lola, despite the lack of leads and the entire town’s suspicions. Will his efforts help find Lola? Or will his sideline investigations get him into even more trouble?

• Friday Flashbacks

Gluten-Free Weekend Menu for Guests (What we served when we hosted friends who are gluten-free in our home!)

How to Make Salmon Bites (So good in poke-style bowls!)

Question of the Day 

What is one thing you’re loving this week?

For those with school-age children, are your kids out of school yet? Any fun summer plans?