5 years of blogging

 

Five years ago I started this little blog!  Jason's sister had started a blog to document her pregnancy and to keep out of town family in the know about Chase once he was born.  I thought it was a great idea and since I never seem to think of many things on my own, I stole the idea and well, the rest is history.

 

Click HERE to ready my first post on July 31, 2008.  We had just announced my pregnancy with Bryce and thought it would be a good way for our family near and far to keep up with the progress.  This blog has been my digital scrapbook over the past 5 years.  I was never creative enough for a paper scrapbook (shocking I know since I was an elementary school teacher), but the blog world was just what I needed to document special occasions in our life.  The best part, each year I have my blog printed into a book so I actually do have "paper scrapbooks". 

 

Thanks for reading!  I hope you'll stick around for the next 5 years!  

Sunshine Ink Studio Giveaway

Last week I told you about my friend Beth and her Etsy shop, Sunshine Ink Studio.  Sunshine Ink Studio is an Etsy shop that specializes in custom party printables, invitations, stationery, printable art, and graphic design.  Beth is my go-to for invitations.  This past Halloween she made me this adorable invitation for Bryce to invite his preschool friends to our church's Trunk or Treat.  She also made Emmy's 1st birthday invitations back in February.  Beth is so creative and is very easy to work with.  She has a great eye for design and can bring an image in your head to reality.  And if you're like me and you really don't have an eye for design, she can pick the right colors, fonts, and designs to make the perfect product.   

 The most recent thing Beth has made for me were these scripture prints for our church foyer.  You may remember THIS post I did when I helped a committee of girls at my church redecorate our foyer.  We simply gave her the color scheme, told her some of the verses we were interested in and she chose the perfect way to display them for us.

  Since I love Beth's work so much, and I know you will too, I wanted to host a giveaway so one of my lucky readers could see why I love her shop so much.   

To enter the giveaway, simply leave me a comment on your favorite Sunshine Ink Studio item.  Extra entry for followers of The Whitlock Family blog!  This giveaway runs through Sunday, August 4.  Winner will be notified via blog announcement and email.  Thanks for entering!

The holidays will be here soon believe it or not, and the shop will be stocked full of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas items.  Happy shopping!

i love birthdays

Today is my 31st birthday and I have to say, turning 31 was much easier for me.  For some reason, I had a hard time with 30.  I've gotten over it these past 12 months and today really just felt like any other year! 

 

 

Last night my girlfriends came over and we took a moment for a photo op before we all hopped in Kelly's minivan for our night out.  Just call us the mom squad!  I was just excited to be going out with adults in an outfit that wasn't my daily "mom" clothes and possibly even in style (thanks to my friend Beth for jazzing me up in a bubble necklace and some Jack Rogers (well they were look alikes, but that's good enough for me)!

I chose the Wine Loft because I LOVE their crab cake sliders.  The wine and champagne flight were an added bonus!

 

We had planned to get cupcakes for dessert because the Wine Loft serves cupcakes from a local cupcake bakery, but the day's choices didn't appeal to us so we went to a fun dessert place called Shindigz.  It was SO good and the servings were huge! 

 

The celebration continued today with family.  After church, we went to our usual lunch with Jason's family and then both of our families came to our house for cake and ice cream/banana splits.  Tonight we went to P.F. Chang's with my parents and my Nanny.  I just love P.F. Chang's and we don't go often so it was quite a treat!   

 

I had a wonderful weekend celebrating my special day with the people who mean the most to me!  I couldn't have asked for a better birthday.  Thanks to everyone who made it so special.  I love you all.  Speaking of "love", I told Jason the only thing I wanted for my birthday was for Emmy to say "love you".  She says "bless you" and "thank you", but never "love you".  I've been working on it to no avail.  Tonight as we were getting the kids ready for bed, I asked Emmy to say "love you" and as clear as day, she said "love you". Melt.my.heart.

five on friday

 

I finally decided to hop on the Five on Friday bandwagon.  Today I'm linking up with Natasha from Hello! Happiness.

 

1. Target Cartwheel App - Natasha recently tweeted about this app and I immediately checked it out.  You simply browse Target discounts (between 5-30% off) on items from groceries to furniture and add them to your "cartwheel".  When you check out in the store, you just pull up your cartwheel barcode on your mobile device and they scan it for savings.  I sometimes browse discounts while I'm in the store to see if there is a discount for anything I'm purchasing that day that I can add before checkout.  I have already saved over $9!  Another reason why I love Target.

2. The Children's Place - I don't typically do much shopping for the kids because Jason's sister so generously passes down clothes from her kids.  However, I can't turn down a good sale and there are some basic things I find that I'm always needing to buy for the kids.  The Children's Place is having a huge sale with many things priced at  $2.99 and $4.99.  My mom and I went shopping on Wednesday and came home with all of this great stuff.  I got Bryce 4 pair of jeans for $4.99 each ($3.99 each after a 20% off coupon I had) and two pair of jeans and a sweater dress for Emmy for $2.99 each ($2.39 after my coupon).    

 

 

Everything else (except the boots my mom insisted on buying) were also discounted a bit and I had my coupon.  Emmy is always needing pajamas (and all brands are kind of pricy)  so I snagged her 4 pair at $6.40 each with sales and my coupon.  My mom also got the kids each a shirt and I got Emmy a pair of jeggings and we spent just under $100 on 15 items and saved $130.  That's a steal if I do say so myself. 

 

3. Our garden - Actually I should say, our cucumbers.  We planted cucumbers from seeds this year (not really thinking we'd have much luck) and I'm getting about five a day.  We also have some pumpkins coming up that planted themselves last year after Jason and Bryce smashed them all over our driveway.  Jason was a little lazy with the garden this year so no famous Hanover tomatoes for us this year. 

 

4. Sunshine Ink Studio - My very talented friend, Beth, is the creator behind this fun Etsy shop.  She has tons of fun designs and has created many things for me from invitations to scripture prints.  You should definitely check out her shop and check back here next week for a fun giveaway!

 

 

5. My kiddos - These two keep a smile on my face everyday.  I am so thankful to be able to stay home with them and experience all of their daily changes. 

more beach pictures

I had a few more beach pictures on my phone that I wanted to share.  If you follow me on instagram, you've already seen most of these.  If you aren't following me and want to, you can find me at gwhitlock.  And if you want to see even more of our beach pictures, you can head over to Kelly's blog.

 

 

Our friends Grant and Brittany joined us this year and we finally got to meet their son, Gavin.  Emmy loved him.  Actually I think she was jealous that he had a paci and she was scheming a way to get it. 

 

We love ice cream.  Good to the last drop!

 

These two cuties loved the beach.  I love how tan and blonde they are now!

 

Did I mention we love ice cream?!?

 

Jason decided to park his truck in the sand off the driveway since it was so big and we had so many cars in the driveway.  He got stuck!  Do you see the blue shovel on the ground?  That was his answer to getting the truck out.  Unfortunately the shovel didn't work (believe it or not), but luckily someone staying across from us had a Jeep with a winch.  We enjoyed watching the show from the house!

 

One day after lunch we left the kids napping with the grandparents and headed down to the beach café for some beach refreshments!

 

I was so in love with the pigtails Kelly gave Emmy during the week.

 

Emmy hasn't been taking a morning nap for about a month.  However, vacation wore her out and she ended up napping with MeMa on the beach every morning.  Jason was excited to get to nap with her on the last day!

 

Apparently I can't have too many pictures of this sweet girl.  Bryce really was there and had a great time, but he and Chase spent most of their time in the water so I just had more opportunities to get pictures of Emmy!



sandbridge 2013

 

We had the BEST week at the beach.  We could not have asked for better weather and company!

 

 

The girls in their yellow bikinis.

 

The boys were very brave this year. 

 

They spent lots of time in their life jackets out in the ocean past the waves.

 

 

 

Sunscreen mohawk hair.

 

Emmy is a beach bum like the rest of us!

 

We brought plenty of toys to play with while we were in the house, but none of us have a top bunk at home to play on

 

Matching suits.

 

Kelly did Emmy's hair this week.  Love.the.pigtails.

 

 

Jason had fun too.

 

 

 

 

The tight space of the pack n' play was the preferred place to play.

 

Our family.

 

 

The whole gang (Comps, Whitlocks, and Caddells).

 

Here is a look back to Sandbridge 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.

jimmy buffett

We got home from a wonderfully relaxing week at the beach today.  I had planned to blog some while we were gone, but the amount of pictures I took was overwhelming and I'm having a hard time choosing which ones to use.  So for now, here's a little something to hold you over until I get back into the swing of things around here!

 

 

We headed to Sandbridge last Saturday and met some friends in Virginia Beach for the Jimmy Buffett concert that night.  They had some extra tickets and since we were already there, we decided to join them.  They even brought all the fixings for a fun tailgate before the concert.  We had so much fun.  Thanks, Melissa!