Disney World February 2021

We had so much going on in February this year I could have sworn I already wrote this post, but here it is late April and apparently I never got around to it.

We originally had our yearly February Disney trip planned for the first week of February but we decided to go to Hawaii instead. After being home from Hawaii for a few weeks we were missing Disney a little bit so we decided on a last minute quick trip for Andrew’s March 1 birthday.

For this trip we stayed at Disney’s Yacht Club resort. We have visited this resort many times to eat, but never actually stayed there. The Yachtsman is one of our favorite restaurants as is breakfast at Cape May next door at Beach Club and Trattoria Al Forno across the boardwalk at The Boardwalk Inn. Unfortunately due to COVID the Yachtsman and Cape May are closed right now. This was a huge bummer but with our 40% off passholder room discount right now it was still worth it to check out Yacht Club. One of my personal favorite perks to all the boardwalk resorts (Yacht Club, Beach Club & Boardwalk Inn) is that they are all within walking distance to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. For us with 2 double strollers the buses are such a hassle and we would much prefer to walk! This is one of the main reasons we love to stay at the Contemporary resort so that we can walk to Magic Kingdom. The short walk to Epcot from the Boardwalk resorts also makes it extremely convenient to finish off your park days at one of the great restaurants at Epcot and have a leisurely stroll back to your room. Make sure you have park hopper tickets to do this though!

The highlight for many people staying at Yacht Club and Beach Club is their pool area, Stormalong Bay. Yacht & Beach share this pool but it is truly massive and since people staying at other resorts are not allowed in, it’s not too crowded. You will need a magic band/room key to a Yacht or Beach Club room to get in. There is a huge pirate ship slide, smaller kids slide, a shallow sand bottom pool, zero entry sandy beach area, lazy River, a large regular pool. My only real complaint with the pool area is that there’s no splash pad with slides or water features for the littlest guests, although the shallow sand bottom pool is truly only ankle/knee deep on an adult so it’s considered the kiddie pool. Also, the pool area is really huge. It’s completely fenced in but you can’t just turn your kids loose in there because you will never be able to see them especially if they want to go to the pirate slide they have to go out of the gates for that. I much prefer the smaller fenced off splash pad area at The Riviera Resort for really little kids. You can see my post and pictures of it HERE. We still enjoyed our time at Stormalong Bay though and the pool attendants were amazing! The sweetest women were serving drinks and food and the guys when you enter will find you seats, towels, and life jackets for your entire family. One of the major positives to Disney resorts is that they provide pool towels and life jackets in all sizes from the smallest of infants to the largest adults, no need to cram your suite cases full of your own!

As soon as our plane landed and we dropped our bags off at Yacht Club’s bell serves desk we headed straight to Epcot for a quick gaze around the World and then to dinner at Chef’s de France. Our food was wonderful and the kids tried escargot and loved it! I guess if you went in with an open mind and didn’t understand it was really snails you wouldn’t have any preconceived notions about it since it doesn’t actually taste bad haha!

The Yacht Club has a really great restaurant called Ale & Compass that we had never tried before. It’s a full service restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch & dinner. They have an amazing apple caramel French toast that I had pretty much every morning! You need reservations which you can make on the app but they do have a walk up wait list that you can also join from the app if there are no reservations. We added our names to the wait list one evening after leaving the pool around 4:30pm and they called our table at 5:30. It was perfect for us because we went back to our room to shower quick & put on clothes then our table was ready downstairs.

We only stayed for a few days on this trip so we had a full day for Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom & Hollywood Studios. We made it to Epcot a few nights for dinner and were able to get our favorite rides in during those times.

Briar, Baby #5, was 4 weeks old when we took him to Disney for his first trip. For this trip he was 3.5 months and he was so much more into it. He was so curious, watching everything, and taking in all the sights. He will be 9 months old when we go back and I can’t wait to see his reactions then!

The crowds are definitely back at Disney! Florida has never restricted Disney on capacity but they have self-restricted. Right now they are reported to be allowing 50% capacity which doesn’t sound like much but that’s actually what a normal pre-covid park day is like. Since there are no longer fastpasses the lines for all the rides are pretty long and because they’re spaced out 6ft apart they wrap around all over the park and really crowd the sidewalks. This is a really negative aspect to Disney right now, the congestion from the socially distanced lines. It’s extremely counterproductive too because they have the lines spaced out but they’re so long they’re out into the main walk way areas so the sidewalks are elbow to elbow congested with people passing through and people waiting in line.

I’m extremely hopeful that these minor hiccups are almost behind us and our beloved Disney will return to normal soon! In the meantime we are going to check out Universal Orlando Resort soon! Andrew & I haven’t been since we were kids because our kids haven’t been tall enough to do anything there but our oldest 3 are finally at the lowest height limit so we are going to see what it’s like so stay tuned!

If you need help planning a Disney vacation at any Disney destination (Disney World, Disneyland, Aulani Disney Hawaii, Disney Cruise Line or Adventures by Disney) please send me an email! I would love to help you and my services are free! I can also help you with any other travel desires! My email is kayla@teacuptravelco.com

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Disney’s Aulani Resort- Ko Olina, Oahu, Hawaii

I’ve been wanting to stay at Disney’s Aulani resort in Hawaii for a long time now. We are huge Disney fans and even though we travel to Walt Disney World multiple times a year we’ve never made it out to Aulani. We spent 10 days in Hawaii in February 2021 so I finally got to stay at Aulani! Because of all the covid restrictions we decided not to spend our entire trip there but we did stay for a few days to really get a feel for the place. Unfortunately all the restaurants were closed, no luaus and no character meets. When Aulani is fully open though I highly recommend it! You can also book it through me as your travel agent 😉

We stayed in a beautiful 2 bedroom villa that sleeps 9 people. With 2 separate bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a full size kitchen & dining area and full size washer & dryer this 1,125sf villa is super spacious and perfect for large families & extended families. Aulani also has an even larger 3 bedroom villa, smaller 1 bedroom villas, suites and of course standard size hotel rooms. Something for a family of every size!

Our main reason for spending a few days at Aulani was for the pool and splash pad area! Our rental house for the rest of our stay was on the beach but didn’t have a pool and our kids really enjoy swimming. Aulani did not disappoint! There are multiple pools to choose from! There’s a large family pool, a pool with a big slide, a quiet pool, a lazy river, and a giant splash pad! With 5 kids age 5 and under we spent almost all of our time at the splash pad. The beach are of Aulani is great too. It’s set on one of the coves in Ko Olina which are shallow water coves with big rock wave brakes so it’s a perfect calm area for babies, toddlers and little kids to splash around and swim in.

A really cool feature at Aulani is the reef. It’s a large outdoor tank full of reef dwelling fish that you can snorkel in. Kids need to be old enough to swim on their own with a life jacket on but there isn’t an age limit. Our two 5 year olds and our 3yo had a blast while I watched from the windows with our newborn and 2yo. Honestly though our 2yo would have been just fine to go too!

Once everything is open at Aulani it’s definitely a great vacation spot! We would have loved to have done the Polynesian luau there and the kids would have enjoyed seeing the character. Most importantly though, we just wanted the restaurants to be open! We will have to put it on our list to go back!

Oahu Hawaii February 2021

Once Hawaii reopened for tourism flights there were still incredibly cheap and thanks to our endless amount of Southwest points they were actually completely free for us! So pretty much a no brainer to head to Hawaii! There were lots of hoops to jump through first though and I go into detail about them HERE and because of those hoops we spent the first several day of this trip in Northern California which you can read about HERE

As soon as we landed in Hawaii and got approved for our quarantine exemption we picked up a rental car and headed to Marriot Beach Club Ko Olina. Our Airbnb house wasn’t going to be ready until the next day and we knew the kids would enjoy the pool at the Marriot resort so we took advantage of our Marriot points and stayed one night there for free. I’m glad that it was free because it was horrible! Don’t get me wrong, our 2 bedroom villa was spacious and beautiful but there were some crazy COVID restrictions that we weren’t prepared for! You had to make reservations to be in the pool and you could only be in the pool for 2 hours a day. Yep, 2 hours for the whole day! The pool reservation spots filled up too so if you didn’t make them a day in advance you may be out of luck for pool time! We weren’t able to get pool reservations for the pool with the slide but we were able to get them for another pool. The beach was accessible without reservations and it’s a really nice shallow cove that’s protected by a rock wave brake so great for little kids.

The next morning grabbed breakfast at Eggs n Things which is right next to the Marriot and Disney’s Aulani resort. They had awesome breakfast food and we ended up eating there twice.

Next we headed to Pearl Harbor. We had been told by multiple people that we would not like Pearl Harbor but Andrew is a huge WWII history buff so it was definitely a must do for us. Unfortunately everyone was right and we were really disappointed in Pearl Harbor. I’ll let you make your own decisions about it but it did not live up to the high hopes we had of it being a great memorial for all the people who lost their lives there. Fortunately our kids didn’t understand and they thought it was great. We also picked our own pearls at Pearl Harbor!

After Pearl Harbor we drove across the island to Haleiwa where our Airbnb was. Haleiwa is an awesome little surfing town with tons of restaurants and food trucks. Bad news though, our Airbnb was awful! I mean really awful! It had the beautiful views that were pictured on the listing but it was so dirty! We definitely couldn’t stay there so I immediately got on the phone with Disney’s Aulani resort to get us a couple nights there and Andrew found us another house to rent for the rest of our stay! Side note: I did message the Airbnb host about the dirty house and encouraged him to go look at the property himself since he uses an outside cleaning service. He did end up driving over to the property the next day and refunding our money! You can see the picture below the house had an amazing location in Haleiwa right on the beach!

I’ve been wanting to go to Disney’s Aulani resort for a long time now so this was a good excuse for me to get a few nights there! The splash pad did not disappoint for our kids! They loved every second of the splash pad and the pool areas! I’m actually going to dedicate a post just to Aulani because there’s lots of info packed into it!

Finally we got to our new Airbnb, got settled in and really got to dig into Oahu for our last 5 days! Our new Airbnb house was amazing! Seriously spectacular! It was right on a completely isolated sandy beach, huge and sparkling clean! It was the perfect island home base for us and we spent many afternoons just enjoying the beach and each other. We even got to watch a pod of humpback whales from the back deck 2 different days!

We decided to check out Waimea Falls one day. It had rained a lot the day before so the water was pretty muddy and freezing but it’s an easy hike to the falls and actually an all paved trail, we even saw people with strollers. The other waterfall we wanted to visit was closed due to the heavy rains because it’s more rugged terrain.

We really enjoyed the food in Hawaii and especially all the food trucks! We had some of the most amazing food from the food trucks on the side of the road! We also enjoyed all the chickens everywhere! The kids felt right at home with the chickens wandering around while we ate!

Of course we had to visit the Dole Plantation because it’s something everyone says you have to do on Oahu but it was a major disappointment. May not be to most people but as farmers ourselves we saw a lot of stuff that shocked us.

Our last day on Oahu we hiked up Diamond Head Crater which is an old volcano. This hike is intense. The path is rough, narrow and steep with a set of steep stairs at the very top. It’s not shaded and hot too so be sure to wear sunscreen and bring water. The views at the top are amazing though! Perfect views of Waikiki beach and Honolulu! We made it to the top wearing a baby and a toddler and with 3 other little walking so you can do it too! There’s a great little park at the bottom with bathrooms, tables, shade and a food truck!

Our Hawaii trip had a lot of hiccups but overall we enjoyed it. Oahu is very very commercialized and touristy. Next time we visit Hawaii we will definitely try Maui!

Northern California January 2021

Seeing the massive coastal redwood trees in Northern California has been on Andrew’s bucket list for quite some time now. When we were able to score cheap flights to Hawaii from San Francisco but needed a few extra days to get COVID tested, we decided this was the perfect opportunity to make a pit stop on that trip!

We flew into San Francisco the last week of January and picked up a rental SUV. We brought with us Briar’s infant car seat and the twins booster seats but rented 2 full size car seats for the 2 middle girls. Thanks to COVID renting car seats has been even better than before! The past 3 times we have rented car seats they have been brand new still in the box and plastic packaging! We spent a few hours in San Francisco seeing the sites like the Golden Gate Bridge and we also had to stop by City Health Urgent Care to get our COVID tests done for Hawaii. You can read all about how to get into Hawaii HERE

From San Francisco we headed north to our AirBNB rental in a tiny little town called Trinidad, CA. This town completely stole our hearts! It’s right on the pacific coast with a beautiful harbor and pier full of crab fishing boats and a nice sandy beach! The town itself has several little restaurants and coffee shops. Due to covid regulations everything was open for take out only but we still enjoyed every bit of it! Our rental house was spectacular with panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean and it sure helped that the host was wonderful! Him and Andrew exchanged numbers and struck up quite a friendship. The pictures posed below are from the backyard of our rental house.

The main reason we chose this house, aside from is fantastic views and amazing living space for our large family, is because of its location. Trinidad sits just outside the Redwood Forest National and State Parks so we took a full day to explore the forest and we’re not disappointed! The amazing size of these trees just blew our minds!

Between our house and the park entrance pretty much in the middle of nowhere we found a little wood carving shop on the side of the road. We stopped in and chose a giant slab of redwood for the man to carve our name into. He carved it and shipped it home for us so we didn’t get to see it until weeks later but it turned out perfect! For dinner that night we also discovered that the kids love clams! The devoured and entire bucket full of them!

The next morning we needed to head back to San Francisco for our early flight to Hawaii the following day, but since we had all day we decided to start our journey at the beginning of California’s famous scenic Highway 1 and follow it all the way down the coast. This route is not for the faint of heart! I repeat, if you are scared of heights or cliffs, don’t do it! I barely made it through this part of our journey. All of Highway 1 terrified me! The road just crumbles off giant cliffs into the ocean and I’m not even exaggerating, there are multiple places where the road has actually fallen off into the ocean and they are repairing it. The cliffs are insanely high and the road is nothing but 90 and 180° curves around them. I honestly was scared and it was hard for me to enjoy the beauty of the scenery because of it. Oh to be a blissfully ignorant child in the back seat.

Before we made it to the beginning of Highway 1 though we started through the scenic trail of the giants detour which definitely lived up to its name!

Just before dusk we made it to a beautiful beach right outside San Francisco and stopped for a little fun before heading to our hotel by the airport for the night. We loved our short time in Northern California and highly recommend the beautiful town of Trinidad! I can’t imagine how fun it is there in the warm summer months and without COVID!

How to Get a Hawaii Quarantine Exemption

Hawaii’s fragile economy relies heavily on tourism but as a small group of islands with limited healthcare availability they have really struggled with choosing between health and sustainability and oftentimes those go hand in hand.

Hawaii reopened for tourism in late 2020 after being closed for over half the year, but not without limitations. At the time of this post, February 2021, the state of Hawaii currently requires all visitors to adhere to a strict 10 day quarantine OR apply for a quarantine exemption. I’m going to walk you through how to get the quarantine exemption. We just got back from a wonderful 7 days on the main island of Oahu with exemptions for our entire family of 7.

First things first, plan your trip! You will need to know your hotel/rental, dates, and flight info to apply for your exemption. Best to book things that are refundable or you can at least get a credit for if you need to cancel last minute. I don’t work for or even know anyone who works for Southwest Airlines but if you’ve read any of my travel posts before then you know we fly with Southwest a lot! Southwest has super cheap nonstop flights from California to Hawaii right now, I’m talking like $99 cheap! Or if you’re loaded up on points like us they may even be free! The best thing about Southwest is you can cancel or change your flights up to 5 minutes before departure with no penalties and they’ll either give you a full cash credit or a full point refund. Cant beat that!

You need to go to the Hawaii Safe Travels website and create an account. Each person in your party over the age of 18 will need their own account. For example Andrew and I had our own accounts and I put all of our kids on my account. Once you have created an account you need to fill in your trip information. The website is pretty straightforward on what you need to fill out. You will also need to upload a selfie of each person on the account, you’ll see where to put it!

TESTING! This is the most difficult part of getting an exemption. The state of Hawaii requires each visitor 5 years old and older to provide a negative COVID-19 test done within 72 of the departure time of your final flight to Hawaii. The catch is that Hawaii will only accept tests from certain approved testing facilities. You can find a complete list of Hawaii approved testing facilities HERE A lot of these locations require appointments and fill up quickly. You also need to keep in mind that results can take over 48 hours to come back so don’t wait until the last minute to take your test. I’ll provide a sample timeline below. Once you have received your negative test results you need to upload them in PDF format to your safe travels account. They must be uploaded before you board your flight to Hawaii! You should also have a paper copy or at least a copy on your phone, they actually looked at our paper copy too.

24 hours before departure to Hawaii you will need to log back in to your safe travels account and fill out the health questionnaire then you will get a QR code.

That’s it! Safe travels account with trip info, 72hr negative covid test from an approved facility, 24 hour health questionnaire, you’re off to Hawaii!

Upon landing in Hawaii you will have your temperature taken as soon as you deplane then you will be directed to the screening area. When you arrive at the screening area someone will scan your QR code to bring up your safe travels account. For us she also asked to see the paper copy of our covid tests even though we had uploaded all of them ahead of time. Then she approves our exemption and sent us on our way to baggage claim. Overall the entire process at the airport for our entire family took maybe 5 minutes.

After your exemption is approved it will show up in your safe travels account. You will need this to show your hotel when you check in. It looks like this and as you can see mine also lists all of our kids.

Below I’m going to show you the timeline we did everything in so hopefully it makes more sense!

January 20- Create safe travels account for myself & kids, create safe travels account for Andrew (everyone over 18 needs their own account). Make appointments for covid tests at approved testing facility.

January 27- Fly to San Francisco. 3:30pm take covid test at City Health Urgent care in downtown San Francisco. They are well versed in Hawaii travel so make sure you tell them you need the approved test for Hawaii travel. We had results back in about 36 hours but they estimate it taking 48 hours.

January 29- COVID results back & negative. Upload results for all travelers into the appropriate safe travels account. Andrew had his own account and then I uploaded my test and the kids tests to my account. Kids age 5 and older need tests so the twins needed tested but our younger 3 did not.

January 30 9:30am- fill out health questionnaire in safe travels account

January 31 9:30am- Depart San Francisco on nonstop flight to Honolulu.

As you can see we took our covid tests about 66 hours before our flights so that put us within the approved 72 hour window but still gave us enough time to ensure we had results back.

I know this is a lot of information and it’s complicated so feel free to ask me questions, I’m happy to help!

January 2021 Wrap Up

If you had asked me back in the summer what January 2021 would look like I would have said that life would be back to normal, but here we are still living in this crazy COVID mess. I am thankful our run ins with COVID have been minimal and we have largely continued to live our lives as normal as possible. Not being able to travel outside the US has been a major bummer for us, but we have spent the last year going wherever we were allowed which has mainly consisted of Florida to the beach and Disney World a lot! We were also able to squeeze in an amazing trip to Northern California once they lifted their 10 month long lockdown and then a trip to Hawaii once they opened back up for tourists. I’ll make separate posts for both of those trips, they’ll be worth the read!

By far the biggest thing that happened in January 2021 is Andrew and I got baptized! Years ago after Andrew & I moved back to his hometown we searched for a church home for years but never found anywhere we really felt was right for us. Over 2 years ago we ended up deciding to go back to a church in our college town that we knew we loved even if it meant driving 45 minutes one way every week to get there. We haven’t looked back since. Andrew & I both grew up going to church and were baptized as children but really felt called to rededicate our lives to Jesus and be baptized again as adults. We are so thankful for our church family. The drive is so worth it with how much we are growing spiritually and our children are engrossed in learning the Gospel here.

We spent most of the month of January playing and learning. Our baby #5 is growing and changing so fast! He started really socially smiling and cooing at us this month. Everyone loves on him and caters to him so much! We are all soaking up his newborn days as they’re just about over.

We have a few more plans for next month before we have to really dive in to this year’s farming season so stay tuned!

Disney World Christmas 2020

Having a baby is hard work so we decided to take a load off by going to Disney World with 4 kids and a newborn! In all seriousness though adding a newborn to our trip didn’t change hardly anything except a few more stops at the baby care centers.

We opted to stay at our tried and true Contemporary resort so we could walk to Magic Kingdom and avoid the hassle that is Disney transportation most days.

If you’ve read any of my other blogs about WDW then you know that we LOVE the Contemporary. We are extremely partial to main tower theme park view rooms so we can see Cinderella’s castle. This trip was really fun for that because the castle was lit up for Christmas in fun colors. These rooms will sleep 5 adults so they’re more spacious than regular rooms. Below is a view from our beds.

Because we had a baby this trip we decided to spend several days at Magic Kingdom because it has the most rides with no height restrictions. This is also one of the reasons we stayed at the Contemporary again so we could just walk there. Magic Kingdom is always beautifully decorated for Christmas and we did spend Christmas Day there. It was really crowded and wait times were pretty long, but definitely way less crowded than a typical Christmas Day at Disney pre-covid! We had dinner one night at our favorite Be Our Guest and another night we were super excited that Cinderella’s Royal Table had opened back up! We always get the steak at CRT but this time Andrew and I both opted for the salmon and were so glad we did, it was wonderful!

Of course we had a day for Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. The twins were tall enough to ride Expedition Everest at AK for the first time and they loved it but Andrew rode with them and he was unrealistically terrified they were going to fall out haha!

Disney World is probably one of the easiest vacations to take an infant. Every park has a baby care center that offers private nursing/pumping rooms, private bathrooms, diaper changing tables, sinks, microwaves, high chairs, and sells diapers, wipes, bottles, snacks, anything you might have forgotten for your baby. The baby care centers are very nice and extremely clean. They’re also a great place to sneak away from the heat or cold depending on the weather that day. Infants as young as a newborn can go on any ride that does not have a height requirement which is most rides across all WDW theme parks. You can also baby wear your infant in a carrier on these rides which makes them super easy to get on and off with your infant in a carrier and a toddler or two in tow!

November 2020 Wrap Up

November started out pretty slow. We knew we had a little over 2 weeks before #5 arrived so we were just trying to get everything wrapped up for his arrival.

I had one final ultrasound to check on #5 at the beginning of the month and everything looked great

Andrew was able to get harvest all completed by November 10 which was impeccable timing because much to our surprise #5 made his unexpected arrival the very next day.

Briar Rush Rowlett (aka Baby #5) made his unexpected early arrival on November 11, 2020 at 11:17am. Due to COVID restrictions only Andrew & I were allowed at the hospital. I really didn’t like being away from the kids and that they couldn’t come see us so as soon as the baby’s mandatory 24hours were up we were out of the hospital and back home! The other 4 kids were so excited to see him they bombarded us in the driveway before we ever made it out of the car.

We spent the next few weeks adjusting to our new normal, getting into a routine, and CHICKEN POX.

Yep, you read that right, chicken pox. They actually started before the baby was born but I didn’t realize it. Just 2 days before Briar was born MM was outside and she told me that her bottom hurt. I checked it out and she had what looked like a mosquito bite on her butt cheek that she had clearly been scratching. I warned her to leave it alone and moved on. The one night I was at the hospital Andrew face timed me after the kids bath to show me MM’s back and bottom that now had several small spots over it. We were stumped and had no idea what these bug bites came from. We came home from the hospital and it continued to escalate until they finally looked like full blown chicken pox. She has been vaccinated so it never occurred to me that she would have chicken pox. She ended up with the full classic rash all over her body and it spread mildly through the other 3 big kids but not as bad. The other 2 girls ended up with a fever and a few spots here and there. Andrew & I both had chicken pox as kids so we were spared & Briar being breastfed thankfully had no issues.

Andrew, Rhett & Andrew’s uncle spent a few days of deer season working hard to get us some meat for the winter. This was Rhett’s first time to really deer hunt and he is now hooked! He really loves hunting with the guys and they were able to fill out freezer up.

Sara Long Photography took the most precious newborn pictures of Briar and she even managed to get all our kids and our entire family in some perfect pictures that we will cherish forever!

We wrapped up the month with Thanksgiving. The kids discovered their love of pecan pie this year and Andrew finally got me to like sweet potatoes, overall a win haha! We are excited for December and baby Briar’s first Christmas coming up!

October 2020 Wrap Up

October is one of my favorite months of the year! Quite possibly because it’s usually our busiest month of the year! We have so much stuff that goes on in October it always seems like it just flies by!

First I’ll start with all our usual suspects. We continue on with homeschooling preschool and Pre-K. The twins continue with reading, spelling and writing in cursive. I swear their handwriting is much better than most adults I know! At the end of the month we wrapped up the first level of Logic of English Foundations book A. I have ordered level B but we haven’t started on it yet.

Harvest is still underway but about finished! With all we have going on between music lessons, dance, doctors appointments, etc. Andrew has at least one of the kids or multiple or all of them with him every day. Sometimes for my doctors appointments he has to keep all of them which means splitting them up between combines and tractors with our employees. Thankfully the kids love the guys who work for us and maybe it provides them with some entertainment! Haha!

At the beginning of the month Rhett and Lorelei both learned to ride the bikes without training wheels! I had taken them off for them a few months ago but they weren’t really ready yet and we’re just frustrated when we tried. Uncle Kyle stopped by one day and asked when they were going to ride without them and the very next day Lorelei was training wheel free and Rhett was right behind her the next day! I guess all it took was a little motivation from someone other than their parents.

Typically all the kids sit in the main church service with us instead of going to the nursery or children’s church. I prefer they hear the sermon instead of being in the nursery but at Pre-K age they start the children’s church program which is different. The twins decided they were ready to venture out of their own and have loved it every Sunday since! They’re learning so much about Jesus and precious kid centered worship songs!

On October 12 Andrew and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. I can’t believe we’ve been together for 10 years and married for 7 now! Marriage is hard. We have been through the lows and the highs. It took us about 5 years in to realize that our marriage absolutely had to come second in our lives only behind God. Once we really got into the place where that was happening 100% of the time we have absolutely seen the benefits of it! It is so important to put your spouse above all others. One of my favorite quotes is “The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother” and while I love that so much and think it’s without a doubt true, I also believe that goes both ways for both parents. I pray for my kid’s future spouses every day. Whoever they may be, I pray they love them wholly and that my kids do the same. The best way for them to learn that is to grow up living with it.

Update on baby #5: He’s still cooking. For the 5th baby he is apparently holding out as long as possible. They’re supposed to arrive earlier and earlier with each pregnancy but mine have all gone backwards with the twins coming the earliest at 33wks and the 2 little girls at 39+4 and 39+5. With #5 so far we have had 2 different occasions where I thought I might be in labor but the contractions never got close enough together and then fizzled out. So here I am still pregnant and honestly over it at this point! Maybe me writing this out will make tonight the night!

Rhett and Lorelei turned 5 at the end of the month! It was super cold that day so we had their party inside our shop and I’m so thankful our giant blow up slide fits in there! It was nice and cozy with the heater on and everyone had a blast!

Halloween was a little different this year but we made the best of it and decided to have a last minute Halloween party with all the guys that work for us and their families! Our family dressed up as Star Wars characters; Andrew was Han Solo, I was Princess Leia very pregnant with Kylo Ren, Rhett was Chewbacca, Lorelei was Rey, Maggie Mae was the most adorable little Ewok, Belle was baby Yoda, and our German Shepherd was Darth Vader.

Unfortunately Halloween night brought a huge disruption to our daily life and a lot of our farm equipment was vandalized. Our combine and header were driven into a field and wrecked into a center pivot and a tractor with a grain buggy attached were driven through the woods and down into the river bottoms. Every piece of equipment involved was totaled, this is several hundred thousand dollars in damages and stopped our harvest for a few days. We were not the only farmers affected either, about 5 other farmers in our town also had their equipment stolen and wrecked that night. I wish I could say this is rare but it’s not. We regularly have stuff stolen and/or destroyed. I would like to point out though that Andrew has all the radios in our tractors programmed to K-Love which is a Christian radio station and when they finally found the tractor it was completely destroyed but the radio was still on and playing K-Love so maybe whoever did this heard the message of Jesus.

We are so hopeful that November is going to be our best month yet! We will for sure have a new precious baby this month and we are all so excited for that!

Easy Slow Cooker Butter Chicken

Before we had kids Andrew and I were supposed to spend 2 weeks backpacking through India. I had done so much preparation for this trip including painstakingly filling out probably 100 pages worth of Visa applications for us. Andrew’s idea of preparation was taking me to our local Indian restaurant to get a taste of the cuisine.

Andrew’s introducing me to Indian food opened my palate to a world of food I would come to absolutely love!

Unfortunately our trip got cancelled last minute, something I have yet to let Andrew live down many years later. Although it was a blessing in disguise because we ended up finding out I was pregnant with the twins right before we would have set off on this trip and I was miserable sick at the beginning of that pregnancy so it would have been a horrible trip for me. God cancelled my dream India trip and instead ended our fertility struggles with twins! We plan, God laughs. His plan is always always better!

This recipe is a classic butter chicken full of spice and flavor. Your entire house will smell wonderful while it’s cooking. It’s also SO EASY! I have 4 kids 4yo and under and am 8 months pregnant with #5, I promise if I think the recipe is easy right now, anyone can handle it with little effort!

Ingredients:

-4 large boneless skinless chicken breasts (I buy these frozen and usually put them straight into the slow cooker frozen, you just need to add about an hour extra to the cook time if you start with frozen chicken)

-1 small yellow onion

-1 Tablespoon coconut oil (If you don’t have coconut oil you can use Crisco shortening)

-4 cloves minced garlic

-1.5 Tablespoons curry powder

-1 Tablespoon garam masala

-1.5 teaspoons chili powder

-1 Tablespoon ginger

-3/4 teaspoon salt

-6oz tomato paste (this is about half of a small can, I just guess)

-4 cups raw cauliflower florets

-14oz (1 can) tomato sauce

-2 Tablespoons butter

-1/2 cup coconut milk (full fat)

-1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

Directions:

-Dice the onion and mince the garlic then set aside.

-In a medium skillet heat the oil until hot then add the diced onion and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.

-Add in the garlic, ginger, curry powder, garam masala, chili powder, salt and tomato paste. Mix together and cook for about a minute.

-Place the onion mixture in the bottom of your slow cooker. I like to spread it out over the entire bottom. Place your chicken breasts on top then the cauliflower florets, then cover with the tomato sauce.

-Cut the butter into small cubes and place them over the top.

-Cover and cook on HIGH for about 2 hours or LOW for 4.

-When the chicken is done take the chicken pieces out and move them to a cutting board. Mix the slow cooker contents, recover, and let the cauliflower continue cooking.

– Cut the chicken into bite size pieces. Return the chicken pieces to the slow cooker and pour in the coconut milk.

-Turn the slow cooker off and give everything a good stir. Last stir in the Greek yogurt.

This is best served with Naan bread (also super easy to make) and rice. You can use any kind of rice, but I would recommend an aromatic like Jasmine or Basmati.

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