Our Weekend - The One with the Disney Announcement

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Well, the cat’s out of the bag!  After months and months of keeping the big secret, B and I told the kids this weekend that we’re going to Disney World!  Let’s back up…

Friday, I spent the afternoon preparing for the big announcement.  Jacob can read now, so I thought it would be fun to do the following…

In a really small box I wrapped up the words, “We are…”

In a medium size box I wrapped up the words, “going to…”

Then in a large box I wrapped up the words, “Disney World!!” with a few Disney themed gifts for each of them – personalized shirts to wear in the park, some Mickey and Minnie ears, and autograph books for each of them to take with us. 

Once everything was ready to go, it was business as usual for the rest of the day.  I finally finished cleaning out and reorganizing my office closet.  Remember this?

Well, today it looks like this!

I purged so much stuff, y’all!  Every single thing that is now gone from my closet wasn’t moved anywhere else in the house… it was all recycled, trashed, or tossed in the yard sale pile.  That is a HEAP of stuff that’s gone and it feels SO GOOD.  Before, my closet was literally filled from floor to ceiling with old keepsakes – papers, clothes, stuffed animals, books, toys, school stuff, and other special mementos – and now all of my keepsakes fit in three of those green boxes on the left side of the closet and three of the clear boxes on the right side.  Green is for “stuff” and clear is for “papers.”  One of those clear boxes is my box of old school papers from this post.  Remember that?

Anyway, I now have plenty of room for other things like my box of gifts that I keep on hand for emergency situations that arise where we may need a gift, my card box, my photography equipment, my photo props, and a few miscellaneous office items that I had no space for like my paper cutter.  The best part is that there’s SO MUCH EMPTY SPACE!  Woo hoo!  As always, you can follow along with me in real-time on my simplifying journey on Instagram stories.  I’ve been slacking a little lately, but after Easter it’s going to be really ramping up when I start cleaning out rest of the house.  Three rooms down, a billion more to go!

So anyway, back to our weekend!  The weather was warm and cloudy on Friday and the kids requested to go to the downtown playground after school so we did just that!  We played for a good 45 minutes and then headed home to make some homemade Rice Krispy Treats.  B picked up pizza on the way home from work, we toasted with a couple of his 40th birthday beers, and then it was time to tell the kiddos the big news! 

Jacob opened the first gift and said, “We are… we are what?”  And we told him to go ahead and open the second gift.  “Going to… where?  Where are going??”  So we told him to open the third gift.  When he read it he screamed it out, “DISNEY WORLD!!!!”  and both of them went wild!!  They pulled out all of their new goodies and the look on their faces was priceless.  I got the whole thing on video and B took a few pictures.  Most of the pictures are blurry and the lighting is whack, but they are pictures I will cherish forever.  Just look at their little faces!

They pored over their new autograph books for a while after that.  I bought these character encyclopedias from Amazon so each of the characters can sign their pictures in their books, and I hope they will end up being special keepsakes for each of them to remember their first trips to the happiest place on earth. 

Once they were done looking at their books, they put on their new shirts and ran around the yard for a bit while B and I sat on the back porch.  Then we all went inside, ate some of our Rice Krispy Treats, and watched Disney World videos on YouTube for the rest of the evening to show them what they have to look forward to!  It was such a sweet evening.  

When I was cleaning out Jacob’s school folder that evening I came across this travel bucket list that he had just brought home from school:

How appropriate, right?!

Saturday was filled with cleaning, a bit of relaxing, and Jacob’s third soccer game.  They tied 4-4, which ended up being a good thing considering we were down most of the game.  Just in the last couple of minutes of the game, we managed to make a crazy comeback and score two goals to tie it up.  Whew!

Saturday evening we went to church and then headed to Longhorn for dinner with my extended family.  Two of my cousins were in town so we wanted to go out to celebrate my Mama Cass’s birthday a bit early so we had a large party.  The hostess failed to ask us if it was okay for our party to be split up and B, Me, Jacob, and Olivia ended up having to sit at a table by ourselves away from everyone else.  I was pretty peeved because we didn’t get to spend any time with my family and I had been looking forward to it all day.  Since we were on our own, we told the waitress to just treat us as a separate party (since we were anyway) and then we just ate and left.  It was a pretty disappointing experience and I don’t think I’ll be going back to Longhorn any time soon.  I'm gonna be honest, that whole situation pretty much ruined the whole evening for me, so the rest of the evening was spent getting the kids in bed and then I fell asleep on the couch while B watched some TV.

Sunday morning we got up, made some homemade chocolate chip waffles with chia seeds hidden inside (fist bump, fellow mommas) and then I spent the whole morning going through the MASSIVE mound of crap in our bedroom, sorting, pricing, and boxing and bagging things up to take to my MIL’s for our yard sale. 

She has been storing all of her yard sale stuff in their garage and she said we could bring some stuff over, so we got LOADS of stuff out of our house AND I’M SO FLIPPING EXCITED TO HAVE IT GONE.  #ByeFelicia  Whatever doesn’t sell in the yard sale will not be coming back… it will be heading straight to our church donation center.

We literally filled the back of Brian’s SUV to the tippy top and we still have more to take over there.  And that’s only from three rooms in the house – my office, Jacob’s room, and Olivia’s room.  I haven’t even cleaned out the playroom or any of our closets or other rooms yet.  EEKS.  Just look at her garage!

We celebrated my MIL’s birthday at lunch and then the kids played in the back yard.  Olivia dug in the dirt and picked up bugs and Jacob and Brian played soccer.  Olivia was excited because she got to go pick “sea lions” AKA dandelions.  Lol.  Another funny quote from her on Sunday as she was getting ready – “Since it’s gonna be warm, can I wear macaroni sleeves?”  AKA spaghetti straps.  LOLOLOLOL.  Never a dull moment with this girl, I tell ya!

Sunday evening was spent hanging with my fam at my parents’ house.  Momma made chicken tetrazzini (a long-time fave) and we all sat around the table for the rest of the evening with some wine and some good conversation.  Oh how we love Sundays!

This week is going to be bonkers and I’m going to be doing #AllTheThings to prepare for our trip so wish me luck! 

But first, TORNADOS. 

Y’all, I can’t with this weather today.  Y’all know how I feel about scary weather.  And I’m ALONE now since I don’t work.  Please keep us – mostly just me so I don’t have a heart attack, LOL – in your prayers.

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*Linking up with B Loved Boston for Weekending and HoHo Runs for Weekly Wrap.

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