Saturdays Are A Special Day

As a stay at home mom, it is easy to take Saturdays for granted.
When you spend every day of the week going to parks and story times and play groups, Saturday can quickly become just another day to play.
But after surviving the Election Season, in which my husband worked almost every single Saturday, and enduring the endless hours of Bar review, which occupied every single Saturday, I am learning just how special Saturdays can be.

There is nothing sweeter than being able to tell my children that their daddy gets to stay home and play with them all day long.
Riker is always quick to ask if we can do something special on Saturdays…usually requesting a trip to “Old McDonalds” or Jamba Juice.

TJ and I try our best to make Saturdays extra special for our kids.
Less screen time, more play time.
This past weekend, the weather was warm and we knew we wanted to be outside.
While my kids love walking down to our neighborhood park, it just didn’t seem special enough…
so we piled into the car and made a trip to the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale.

Trains and carousels and climbing walls and slides galore!
There was never a dull moment and the kids were happy to run from one area of the park to the next.
Smiles were present on every face from beginning to end.

Days later, Riker still talks about the “far away park” (a 30-minute drive does make it pretty far away).
While it isn’t a park that we can play at all the time, it definitely made for a pretty special Saturday.

Keeping Cool

Arizona really only has 2 temperature settings…
Really hot and not so hot.
Sure, we have some chilly days in the winter. But people who live in actual cold places laugh at us.
Now that our “winter” is over, the thermostat is beginning its ascent.
And since my children want to spend every waking moment outside, we have to keep cool!

Riker usually wakes up in the mornings asking me to put his swimsuit on so he can splash in the water.
And Olivia eventually warmed up to it, though she still isn’t a fan of getting her face wet.

The swimming pools are still too cold to jump in, but splashing in the water in our backyard keeps us cool enough (for now!)

The best part of our water play is Olivia’s swimming suits.
Sure, Riker’s suit is super awesome and all, but Olivia’s has a tutu.
A TUTU!

And this one is pink…with a ruffle…and a flower!
I literally had to limit myself with just buying two swimming suits…little girl swim suits are adorable and I just wanted to buy them all!
(of course, a trip to Lake Powell this summer may require a few more suits…)

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day!
We all made sure to wear green to church today to avoid getting pinched!

I hadn’t talked to Riker about St. Patrick’s Day very much, he’s been much more interested in Easter…but he learned at preschool that if you don’t wear green, you get pinched!
Unfortunately, Riker doesn’t own any green Sunday appropriate clothing so I had to whip up a little bow tie for him to wear to church.

Of course, now that I’ve seen Riker in a bow tie I may just have to make him a dozen or so more to wear!

Stuff Riker Says

I used to call this “Conversations with a two year old”
but Riker is three now…and that’s a really long title…so I changed it.
Deal.

As we are driving to a restaurant for dinner:
”Don’t worry Mom, I have the directions on my phone. It’s a pretend phone but it has the directions on it. Go right then left, up down up down, and we’ll be at the restaurant!”

Pretty much every time we tell Riker “no” he starts to argue with us and his arguments always start with:
”Well, here’s the thing…”

Sometime Riker plays too rough with Olivia and as soon as she starts to cry he shouts “Its ok, Mom! I will calm her down!”

“I’m not cute, I’m handsome!”

“I just had a bath…now I smell like a man!”