Weekends with the family, first day of school, and travels!

I landed in Germany yesterday and spent the day exploring with my husband. We had a delicious dinner, and I fell asleep around 6 p.m. I had taken a redeye flight, so I was exhausted, but thankfully, I adjusted to German time pretty quickly. I’m taking an hour to decompress after a busy day of exploring, and I figured I’d hop on the computer to finish this recap blog before my Europe travel posts start popping up all over the blog. They’ll be mixed in with pumpkin and fall recipes when I get home. I’ve been coming up with some fun Fall recipe ideas, and I can’t wait to try them out when I return!

I started last weekend with pumpkin spice donuts and sourdough cinnamon rolls. I’m working on perfecting the cake donut recipe before posting that one soon! 

I headed to Sixty Vines on Saturday night to celebrate my friend’s birthday. The last time I was there, I loved their salad, fried zucchini, and oat milk lattes!

I ordered their berry kombucha for my drink. 
I had their chicken Caesar salad for my meal, a ten out of ten! The dressing was a garlicky Caesar vinaigrette, and I just wanted to take a big bottle home. I will have to try to make my own version of it.

The experience, atmosphere, and food have been wonderful every time I’ve gone! Add it to your Charlotte musts! 

I was the only one to order dessert, but I just had to when I saw their dessert menu. I ordered their lemon olive oil cake with mascarpone buttercream, which was fabulous!! I have a lemon olive oil cake recipe on my blog that you may love!

We headed to Summit Coffee for cappuccinos Sunday morning and straight to the mall for a family shopping day. My son loves the South Park Mall playground and the Lego store!

After an hour on the playground, we stopped at Suffolk Punch to get my son his chicken fingers and french fries! After lunch, we grabbed an oatmeal raisin cookie to bribe him to sit in the stroller and then off to the Lego store! He loves their table with Legos to play with. 

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My husband had Monday off, so we headed to Waxhaw for a morning out. They have a new park there that is amazing for kids! My son loved the bridge that overlooked the train track. After walking around and exploring shops, we headed to Emmits Social Table for lunch. I ordered their grilled chicken and kale salad, and it was delicious! 

I needed to use up all the peaches I picked up at the Peachstand on Monday night, so I made little ice cream pops for my son. I filled the popsicle molds with the peach, banana, and whole milk blend.
I made taco salads on Monday night. Mine had taco-seasoned ground turkey, shredded lettuce, bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocado, cheese, rice, and my homemade ranch. 
 We had some pretty intense storms roll through over the weekend. It completely ripped apart my garden. And since everything was falling, getting eaten up by pests, and slowly dying from the temps, I decided to spend all morning ripping everything out and cleaning up the area. I couldn’t bare to look at it any longer. Lucky for me, I have a toddler who is obsessed with yard work. So he helped me rip all the plants out, pull some of the weeds out of the rocks, and take the leaf blower to the area to clean it all up.
I planned to top off the beds with new organic garden soil and put in some mums, fall plants, squash, pumpkins, broccoli, and lettuce.

My son had some different plans for the cleaned-up garden beds. He has now turned it into his dump truck zone, and he’s been playing with his trucks in the garden bed for hours at a time. Since that keeps him happy, outside, and entertained, I decided to hold off on the gardening and let him use the boxes to play for a while. The weather has been amazing outside; that fresh air is so good for the soul. I like to sit on the patio and watch him play! It’s worth it.

We had our first day of school last Wednesday. It’s been tough, so I’d appreciate any words of wisdom in the comments! 
After I picked him up from school, I took him home and made him his favorite smoothie for lunch. It has banana, strawberries, milk, yogurt, ice, and almond butter! He calls it “nana milk.”

I’m so happy we are finally getting Fall temperatures. We met up with our friends for a morning walk, homemade pumpkin spice lattes, and a playground date.
I managed to get some blog recipes up before leaving! Check out thesedelicious chocolate almond cookies and the fall butternut squash deviled eggs!
On Thursday, we dropped my husband off at the airport. He had a week of work there before I flew out to meet him for our trip. 

My mom came to spend the week, and I made some delicious kale salads for dinner! I’ll have this salad recipe up soon!
 Saturday, my dad came over to watch the Iowa game with us! 

I made a tray of veggies with homemade ranch and chicken wings! I made honey mustard, hot, and barbeque. My wings were nothing compared to the way my husband makes them, but I tried!

Sunday we started the morning with breakfast and a long neighborhood walk.

I have been loving the Giggle Squad toys from Target. They are so fun for my toddler to play with. The sink is his favorite! He likes to play in the garden and then run to the sink to wash his hands. Another win from Giggle Squad is this water painting mat!

Also, I made the mistake of buying the JoyRide Candy. It’s so good!
We headed to my son’s favorite spot, Anne Springs, for an afternoon of exploring, playing in their mud kitchen, and splashing in the creek.

We headed to Ilios for dinner after spending a few hours at Anne Springs!

Morning walk with Leo!

I made a healthy dinner on Monday night. It included broccoli, cabbage, peppers, onions, and chicken flavored with orange sesame sauce.

On Tuesday night, I made tortilla pizzas to go with salad. It was freezing when I woke up on Wednesday, so I had to break out my sweater weather mug 🙂

I finished up all my packing on Wednesday morning! I was proud of myself for fitting everything into one suitcase. It’s tough because we will be in cold and warm weather, so I had to pack strategically.

I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my son before leaving, so we went on a park date with Grandma and Grandpa, who are watching him while we are away.

We grabbed dinner at Bossy Beaulah’s and headed back to the house to play before heading to the airport. It’s so tough leaving, but he’s in good hands and probably running the house like a king.

My flight took off at 6 p.m. I packed some snacks, brought my book, downloaded all of Selling Sunset, and skipped my afternoon coffee so I would be tired of the red eye.

I managed to sleep a little but was so happy when the cabin lights turned on and they came around with coffee. At that point, we only had an hour left before landing! 

Make sure you follow me on Instagram to keep up with some of my Europe trip! 🙂