Weekend Getaway - The Woodlands and Astros

This past weekend, we took a little getaway to Houston, Texas for some time with family and to catch an Astros game! In my search for water-related fun in the area, I stumbled across The Woodlands Resort and I'm so grateful I did! 

I'm getting a little ahead of myself, though. Let's start at the beginning of the trip, shall we?

It all began with a stop at Buc-ee's, as always!

Brayden looks forward to our Buc-ee's stops almost as much as the trip itself! When I ask if he loves Disney World or Buc-ee's more, his answer is always "both of them"!! 

Within a few hours, we arrived at The Woodlands Resort. Check-in isn't technically until 4 p.m., but guests are invited to begin swimming at noon on check-in day. To my surprise, our rooms were ready and they were placed right next to each other as I'd requested! Perfect!

Our previous water park attempts this summer were mostly rained out (we were 2 for 3 on rainouts), and I knew I wanted to find a place to stay that had more than just a swimming pool. 

This place was perfect and totally fit the bill! It wasn't a full blown "water park", but we still had a lot of options and had we had a blast, too!

They even had a few fire pits around for evening smores! So fun! 

Our rooms were nice and spacious and the balcony view of the woods was incredibly relaxing.

After dropping off our bags and checking out our rooms, we headed for the pool!

Brayden seriously wasted zero time and jumped right in!

I am so glad he has overcome his fear of enclosed "twisty slides". He loves them now!

There was even a lazy river at this resort, which we took full advantage of.

Midway through our float, we spotted another "twisty slide", so we paused to let Bray have a little fun.

That evening, we enjoyed a few smores by the fire pit. They were delicious!

I'm a huge fan of burnt marshmallows. Anyone else? :)

Notice my marshmallow stick - it was stuck! Hah!

The following morning, I enjoyed the sunrise from our balcony, then we checked out of our resort and drove to Ihop on the way to Minute Maid Park. 

Brayden thought it was hilarious that he had five pancakes for five years old! He ate them all, too! 

Strawberry banana pancakes is where it's at.

Meanwhile over at Minute Maid Park, we arrived just as the doors were opening! Perfect timing.

We also spotted our friend Mickey along the way!

Apart from last year, I have a photo like this with Brayden from every single Astros game we've been to since he was born. Such a sweet memory!

We also met up with my brother and sister in law.

Before long, it was nap time. I'm shocked at this kid's ability to sleep anywhere, and he got a good hour long nap in!

Ice cream in a helmet is always a must at the ball park. :)

They won!!

We had a blast and I so enjoyed this precious time with my sweet family!

On our way home, we stopped at - you guessed it - Buc-ee's again!! :)

Where will our next adventure take us? Hopefully to Great Wolf Lodge! We planned a trip there last fall, but due to Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Delta, we had to cancel our plans. Second time is a charm, right? :) (Let's cross our fingers for no more hurricanes!)

Have a great week!

5 Year Update & One Magical Summer

Ever since Brayden turned 5 back in April, I've been in a bit of a denial about Kindergarten. How did it sneak up on us so fast? Knowing I truly wanted to make the most of the time we had this summer, I decided to turn the summer before he started Kindergarten into his most magical summer yet! 

Throughout the summer weekends, we swam, ate snow cones, went on road trips, visited the park, loved on family, swam some more, and by the time it was all said and done, I knew that our mission had been accomplished. 

This will likely be my last official "Brayden update" as he is now 5 years old and although he is still growing and changing, it's not as rapid as it was in previous updates. But, here we go...

Clothing: 5T tops - Shorts are mostly 4T or 5T. 

Pants have to be at least 5T because he's such a tall kid! 

He's in a size 11 shoe.

Weight: 42 pounds (estimated)
Height: 44 inches (estimated)

Watching Brayden grow into his own little personality has been so much fun. He's still silly and loves to make people laugh. He's definitely not the shy kid I was!

He still takes naps everyday and I'm fine with that because they do in kindergarten at his school, too! As far as eating goes - well, his variety hasn't changed much although some choices leave me scratching my head. Apart from his usual chicken nuggets, fries, sweet potato fries, spaghetti, pizza, tacos, yogurt, etc, he now will eat lettuce. Yes, like salad lettuce from a bag. He also loves a green smoothie concoction my mom makes. Kids are so funny!

Earlier in the spring, we took him to our local beach. It was such a nice afternoon and the weather was perfect! We had a great time until Jason hurt his foot (he's fine) but Brayden will tell you all about our day at the beach and how his dad injured his foot if you ask! 

He also played tee-ball this year which was SO interesting and a lot of fun to watch! For a first year kid, he learned a lot and I'm excited to see how next year looks for him! 

In June, we took a road trip to Missouri to visit family at the Lake of the Ozarks. We spent 80% of our time out on the water and Brayden LOVED it!

The whole week was very relaxing and something we all needed. It truly was a great getaway!

While in Missouri, we took him to his very first water park. He loved riding all the rides and sliding down all the slides, but he discovered the green slide pictured here and must have gotten on it about 100 times! He still talks about that water park today!

As the summer drew to a close, we packed our bags and headed to Disney World! I wanted to end Brayden's magical summer with a truly magical experience - at the most magical place on earth!

While there, we visited Blizzard Beach water park which was a first for all of us! It was fun but we were rained out of a good bit of our day (more on that later).

We also rode the Skyliner which y'all know is his absolute favorite!

We also said hello to several characters throughout the week, rode plenty of rides, ate a ton of yummy food, and just enjoyed being together!

I hated to see the summer end, but we returned home from vacation literally the day before Brayden started school. Nothing like making each and every single day count, right? :) 

...and now we have a big kindergartner! 

On his first morning as I was trying to get him dressed, he told me that putting on his uniform was so scary. I reminded him that he already has braveness inside of him because his name Brayden literally means brave! I am proud of how much of a rockstar he has been since that moment! 

At drop off, a sweet first grader was helping kids find their classroom. He asked where Brayden needed to be, we told him, so he took Brayden's hand and walked him to his classroom. Brayden never looked back. It was absolutely precious! 

He rocked his first day and has done amazing since! I am excited to see what this year has to hold! 

Here's to an incredible year 5! Brayden says it's been a pretty awesome one thus far! 

For those of you who have followed these updates for a while now, thank you!! I'll still be back with snippets of fun things in our lives and our crazy adventures so stay tuned! Thanks again for following along! It's been so much fun to share this journey with you!

5th Birthday Party - Maui Themed (From Moana)

This past April, Brayden celebrated his golden birthday (he turned 5 on the 5th). After a lot of back and forth on discussing a theme, what we wanted to do, etc, he finally decided on a Maui (from Moana) theme with a water slide at our house. He recently discovered the song "You're Welcome" and well...it's all history from there!

Let me first start off saying that I was thrilled with the theme he chose because I love Hawaii! In order to make this less focused on "Moana" and more on Maui/Hawaii, the decor drifted more towards palm leaves, the ocean, and a little Maui character I found on Etsy. I was seriously thrilled with the way it all came together. 

As far as colors go, you can see the ones we worked with above (yellow, teal blue, orange, green, and gold for the golden birthday year). Also to note, my options were sort of limited this year because our Hobby Lobby still remains closed from the damage it took during Hurricane Laura. I did make one trip out of town to visit Hobby Lobby, but it's about an hour away so visiting frequently was out of the option. I think the whole party came together pretty well considering the resources I had available to use!

For the entry way, I made a little welcome sing from a white surfboard looking object I found at Dollar Tree. It was supposed to be used for laundry room decor and served as a decorative ironing board sign but I repurposed it as a surf board! Hah!

Thankfully, our Target and Party City were open this year, so that helped a ton! The table cloth you see here as well as the leaf banner across the front were all on clearance at Target so I snagged up what they had!

This cake was an idea from Pinterest and my usual cake lady ran with it. The figurines on top of the cake were from JC Penney (that's all I could find and I think I literally got the last one) and I let Brayden pick out his candle. Most recently, his favorite color is blue! :) 

The cookies were delicious as always and made by a friend of mine. I think she did a decent job! 

The entry way table had a couple of photos, some balloons, and the treat bags for his friends. The treat bags included a mini sand/bucket set to play with at the beach, a few pieces of candy, a lei, and a small beach ball. I found all of those items at Party City, too.

We had shirts made that I thought were pretty funny! Jason's says "just your ordinary Demi-Dad" and mine says "Today got me feeling like Hei-Hei". They turned out so cute!

For food, we decided to go with pizza and finger foods this year. Due to COVID, we wanted to encourage everyone to stay outside as much as possible and be able to grab and go quickly.

Y'all know I love a good "themed" food, so I made place cards with names!

Life preservers = gummy life savers

Coconuts = whoppers

Bamboo = pirouette cookies

I purchased a pineapple but wasn't sure how to cut it, so I left it as a decor item! :)

I thought the idea behind "fish and chips" was cute. The taffy in front was another Pinterest idea - it's key lime flavored with white/green swirl (aka, the Heart of TeFiti)!

The trays I used under a lot of these dishes came from Party City. They are actually supposed to be "chargers", but this worked perfectly!

There was also plenty of salty sea water....I mean hand sanitizer around the house!

As far as beverages go, we had water in bottles, sweet tea, and juice pouches.

Brayden picked out his favorite juice pouch and I love how it worked with the theme! Didn't even do that on purpose!

We also had a coffee bar set up for the adult party guests.

One of my favorite mini-details was the coffee cups. They came from Party City as well! 

For creamer options, we had plain creamer, almond milk, and funfetti coffee mate. The coffee mate was a big hit! I really like the funfetti flavor, too.

Moving outside, we had our Alexa devices connected so party music could be heard throughout the house/outdoors.

The water slide was HUGE (I misjudged the size). It was a giant volcano though, and totally fit with the overall theme!

Finding a piñata to fit this theme that wasn't an astronomical price was rather difficult. Finally though, I found a cute palm tree (on postmark of all places) and added a 5/Maui decal to the front once it came in.

The pinata was "legit" and came from Mexico so it was incredibly hard to break. I finally had to rip it in half! 

The kids had so much fun on the slide!!

We also invited Brayden's little class at his school and out of 12 total kids, five of them were there! (We missed one before she left.) He was SO excited to have his friends join us for the party!

Brayden had SO MUCH FUN at his party and is still talking about it! 

He was so worn out, he fell asleep outside! Shortly before this, he butted heads on the slide with one of his little friends and it wasn't fully convinced that his jaw was ok. After a nap and a little Tylenol though, he woke up feeling fine! I felt so bad for him, but it didn't totally ruin the day! He still had a blast playing with all of his friends!

By the end of the evening, all of the party decor had been taken down and we joked that Brayden looked like a balloon CM at Walt Disney World! :) 

Speaking of balloons, these were all ordered off of Amazon. The palm trees and pineapples also came in a package with pink flamingos. Those poor pineapples would not stand up straight! I had to tape them to the palm trees because otherwise, they literally stayed upside-down. So if you happen to come across a similar package, just know you'll have to finagle the pineapples to make them cooperate!

Anyway, that's a wrap on Brayden's 5th and golden birthday Maui themed party. To me, it was the most fun one yet because he truly got to play, see his friends/family, and enjoy his time at his party. Seeing the light in Brayden's eyes when he talks about how much fun he had makes it all worth it!!

Thanks for continuing to join us on all of our Disney/family/party adventures! I have a few days remaining in our February recap plus a 5 year old update coming for you soon! Have a magical weekend!!