Back to School Photoshoot

Earlier this week we did a back to school shoot for an upcoming campaign and suddenly it hit me: Pretty soon, all three kids will be at school during the day, leaving us at home to wallow in our sadness. Just kidding. Leaving us at home to get more work done than we have in the past three years is what I meant to type.

It will be bittersweet. Anna won’t spend her entire day with us anymore, but she will be getting the social interaction she so desperately craves and needs. It’ll be the two of us at home again, like it was a few years back and like it was supposed to be last year before we realized Anna wasn’t ready to start school yet and kept her home for one more year.

That’s the thing that I’ve learned about parenthood: things change in the instant. One minute they’re in diapers and you’re teaching them how to talk, the next all three of them are in school and you have the whole day to yourself. And by “day to yourself”, I mean you have the whole day to work with fewer interruptions.

We’re excited to start this next season of life. That’s the other thing about parenthood: There is always something new and different happening, and it is never, ever boring.

In fact, I think it’s about to get even more interesting.

In Less Than 24 Hours, Two of Our Rugs Were Ruined

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES.

It all started the other night after dinner, when we were saying goodbye to Matt and Beau. We were in the front room seeing them off when PJ picked up a candle that was sitting on our mantle. It was a candle we had going all night and I had just blown it out. He didn’t know that.

He picked it up to smell it like he’s done a million times, because he has a thing with smelling candles pretty much everywhere he goes, and thought nothing of it. The only problem is, like I mentioned, it had been burning all night, so there was a lot of fresh, hot, liquid wax sitting in it. He picked it up so swiftly that the wax went everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.

It splashed onto the side of his face and hair, creating a big gooey glob of a mess that trickled down onto his chest and finally onto his stomach. Besides all over PJ, the wax also made its way onto our green velvet chair and our sisal rug. Both the chair and PJ were able to be cleaned quite easily. The rug on the other hand, is most likely a goner. Matt sent us a trick to try and get it out and we’re going to do that and hope for the best, but at the end of the day we may just turn the rug around so that the wax is hidden underneath the couch.

Meanwhile, the next day, as PJ tells me he is so over all the rugs in our house and wants to declutter everything, he notices two huge piles of throw-up in our room on our white jute rug. Ugh. If you know anything about jute rugs, you know that you can’t scrub them or it will make it worse. When something stains them, that’s pretty much it. We always figured our bedroom would be safe because no one else really goes in there except us. We were wrong apparently. I’m not sure why Meryl, our dog, decided to make her way into our room to throw up, but it happened and now we’re in the process of taking that rug up.

What are the chances that both rugs, two of my favorites might I add, would be ruined in less than 24 hours? When it first all went down, I felt angry and like our life was spinning out of control. Why was this happening? Why is our house so disgusting? Does life have to be so hectic all the time with kids and animals and everything else going on? My mind was racing and trying to put it all together.

The next day, however, I gained some clarity. These things, all of these things, are just stuff. Stuff that can be replaced, and if they can’t, then they can’t. And it’s okay. It will all be okay. Life won’t feel hectic and overwhelming forever. It’s just the season of life we’re in right now and we have the power to change it and make it easier. And so we will.

Moral of the story: Don’t pick up a freshly blown-out candle with a bunch of hot wax in it too quickly. It most likely will never end well.

Fresh Apples From Getaway House for Ocoee Farm

Happy Friday night!!

We all felt somewhat decent today, so we took a ride out to Getaway House to bring a bed over there in preparation to rent it out as an Airbnb. The house itself is finished as of this week (!), so now it’s just up to us to stage it and get it ready to rent out, which is honestly the best part. The house looks SO good. I can’t wait to give you a proper tour.

While we were there, PJ had the kids collect all the fallen apples from the apple trees and put them in a bin while I was in the kitchen cleaning up the countertops from all the construction debris. I thought it was a cute little activity but didn’t think much of it.

On the way back from Getaway House, we stopped by Ocoee Farm and PJ said something along the lines of, “Free food for everyone!” Then it clicked: The apples were for the animals at the farm!! The kids took turns grabbing apples and feeding them to the pigs, which is just about the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Lil Cutie is GINORMOUS on her own, but next to Anna she looks even bigger. She loved the apples, and so did the rest of the pigs.

The geese were a little more hesitant to come near me to eat the apples, so I threw them and they swarmed. The sheep weren’t interested in the apples in the least, sadly. They don’t know what they’re missing!!!

It feels so good to be back to normal (for the most part) after feeling like absolute shit the last week. Going out to the farm again and seeing the animals and feeling the fresh, albeit hot as hell air, felt nice. I can’t wait to be out there full time. So much progress is happening on Holiday House, and even though it’s still so far off, every day feels like it’s closer and closer to making it our home.

Matt and Beau are coming over tonight and making us dinner. How sweet is that? So excited to actually have a good meal and maybe even a glass of wine. Have a lovely weekend, friends!!

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From Worst to Even Worst-er

It doesn’t matter that it’s not a real word!! Things just got even more intense here at the McKay house. PJ has what I had for the last week and my heart breaks for him. It’s almost ironic in a way, or a saving grace, however you choose to look at it. The very day that I feel 99% better is the same day he gets sick.

I woke up this morning feeling good. Great, even! After a week of feeling like I was going to die from the worst stomach bug I have ever had, I finally felt like myself again. I didn’t feel as nauseas and I had so much more energy than I had in so long. I took the kids to the friggin park!! Do you know how good it felt to walk on down to the park? The things we take for granted every day y’all. Each day that you can get up and breathe air and feel even a little bit good is a good day and the rest is downhill after that.

PJ, on the other hand, didn’t feel too hot. He woke up with a splitting migraine, so he took some medicine, wrapped a sheet around his eyes to block out all sunlight and took a few naps to try and get it to go away. None of it helped. His head was still throbbing by the middle of the day, only he now had other symptoms, too.

He felt achy, he had chills, and worst of all, he felt like he was going to throw up. Sure enough, by the evening, he was wrapped up in bed, throwing up, and running a fever. If I didn’t know any better I would say it might be a form of covid. My sister and her girlfriend both tested positive the other day and, though they’re handling it for the first time, I know how painful and awful it is, even if you are vaccinated. This thing that we both have/had is very comparable to the feeling of having covid.

So now we have another McKay sick and bedridden for the foreseeable future. I am so thankful I am feeling better to take care of the PJ and the kids. Can you imagine if we were both sick at the same time? What a shit show that would be. It’s time to get serious, though. There’s work to be done and a house to clean and children to parent and a sick husband to take care of.

Let’s do this.

PS: On the plus side, Matt stopped by today with homemade blackberry biscuits (how sweet is that?) and oh my goodness I’m so glad I feel well enough to eat them.

The Worst Stomach Bug of My Life

The last time I felt this sick was when I had covid last year, and even then, I don’t know if it felt like this.

For the last week, I have been in bed every day battling a stomach bug of some kind that, and I’m not exaggerating when I say this, felt like I was dying. I can confidently say that without fear of sounding overdramatic because my sister’s girlfriend had the same bug and said the exact same thing to me about how she felt.

It all started with our daughter, who got sick the night before we left the beach, and then our son threw up three times on the drive home the next day. A few days later, our daughter threw up again, this time in the middle of the night. Which then comes to me. I woke up last week and immediately felt sick to my stomach and ever since then, things went from bad to horribly bad. I was throwing up so violently that I was telling PJ I couldn’t do it anymore because of the pain. It hurt to keep throwing up, even though I knew that was the only way I was going to feel better.

Now that it’s been a week, I am probably 80% better. My stomach still feels nauseous, like if I just threw up again I would feel better, and for some reason I’m extremely fatigued and easily tired. Because of that last symptom, I took an at-home covid test to see if this was a weird form of covid, but it came back negative.

The only people in the house who haven’t gotten this horrible bug yet are PJ and our oldest son. I’m hoping they don’t get it because it’s pretty much awful in every way imaginable. PJ has been so sweet and making chicken noodle soup and taking over a lot of the family duties I usually handle. What would I do without him?

After a week of being in bed watching The Kardashians, I’m looking forward to feeling normal again and getting back to our regular routine. Hoping that starts today!!!

A Happy Accident

The other day, PJ accidentally spilt some diffuser oil over in our bathroom.

But not just any diffuser oil, our favorite ever: White Cypress by Lauren Liess. She sent it to us over two years ago and it’s been in our bathroom ever since. It smells so good! It has notes of cedarwood, moss and cucumber, which might just be the most heavenly combination ever.

So he hit it and knocked it over by accident, not breaking it, but spilling quite a bit. He mopped it up with a spare towel that was in the dirty clothes and that was that.

Well, when it was time to do towels, I just threw them all in the washing machine, not thinking anything of it. But then when I got them out of the dryer, they all smelled like the diffuser and suddenly I’m wondering if I should put a little into every load? I washed them over a week ago and they all still smell so delicious. I never want the scent to go away. Every time I get out of the shower and bury my face into one of the towels, I instantly feel like I’m staying at a boutique hotel or a luxurious spa.

I love happy accidents like this. Thanks, PJ!!