One of my FAVORITE bloggers, Momfessionals, hosts a weekly “Friday Favorites” link up and it’s my GOAL this year to try and participate as regularly as possible. So here we go!

Today is our little guy’s SIXTH BIRTHDAY (OMG) so I can’t kick off the first Friday Favorites for 2020 without wishing our little dude the happiest 6th birthday ever. I cannot believe he’s 6 … it literally feels like just yesterday that he was born.

And now he’s so big and totally not a toddler/baby anymore *insert sad face. LOOK AT HIM!

It’s a family tradition that the birthday kid gets a bouquet of birthday balloons on the morning of his/her birthday along with their pile of birthday presents. I always make sure to set it out the night before in case we have an early birthday riser.

Seeing how happy D was once he opened his door and came out was a total favorite of mine this week! This shot is a completely candid picture, I just happened to press the shutter at the exact right moment.

In other favorites – the other day, I heard baby A cry/whining at her brother. I asked what the problem was and D responded by letting me know that he had been holding her hand but let go and apparently she didn’t like that LOL. She wanted him to keep holding her hand! So sweet.

Also, last week D got to move up to the “big boy” class at his TaeKwonDo studio. It just means he’s not in the junior TKD class anymore and is now actually learning TKD forms and testing for colored belts, etc. He’s SO excited and it’s been a favorite of mine this week to see his serious little face trying to memorize his forms. I’ve also been LOVING seeing his creativity bud this week. He’s super into Star Wars & Ninja Turtles and he doesn’t have any “dress-ups” to go with those characters (yet – he may be getting a thing or two for this to celebrate his birthday today *wink) so he’s been making do with these makeshift costumes.

Baby A has been totally into this pretend makeup set that we bought her for Christmas and it’s always a favorite of mine to see my kids actually enjoying the things we buy for them.

Oh my goodness, I ran out of Chemex filters earlier this week so had to resort to the French press method for my morning coffee and … ugh, I don’t know how or when I became such a coffee snob but it was NOT doing it for me. I was SO happy when my Amazon order of more filters arrived so I could have my FAVORITE pour over coffee again lol!!

I love that this week we finally were able to get back into the swing of our normal routine. Both of the big kids have been taking piano lessons for a few months now and E is OBSESSED. I never have to remind her to practice – she BEGS me to practice piano. Love it!

Oooh yum, I’ve been eating this yummy Ina Garten chili recipe all week and it’s a total favorite, too. It’s super healthy as it’s mainly vegetables (her recipe calls for some chicken but I kind of pick the chicken out of whatever I’m heating up for myself because I’m trying to eat less meat). I just add some guac and jalapenos and it’s perfect for all the chilly weather we’ve been having. I thought I could never enjoy a hearty meal like this without the CHEESE but surprisingly, it’s still really good and I find I don’t even miss it.

I got myself a new Apple watch band this week and that’s been a totally new favorite of mine! I’m loving the way the black looks against my white watch.

Listen – I’ve totally surprised myself and have been able to to complete the 75 Hard challenge successfully EVERY day this week so far. Remember how I was most concerned about getting in that second workout every day, especially seeing as one of the workouts had to be outside? I’ve just been getting creative and one of the days I took my yoga mat out into the backyard and did a simple stretching workout.

Yesterday, it was POURING rain and I was busy ALL. DAY. LONG. I thought I really might have to say I couldn’t do my second, outdoor workout but then I thought – NO, let’s FIND A WAY. I took a stationary bike we’ve had sitting in the house and put it on the front porch and CYCLED on my front porch at 9PM last night while it was raining outside. I am LOVING how accomplished I feel every time I successfully complete a day of this challenge, tho! It’s been a total favorite and a TOTAL surprise that I love it this much.

I’ll end this Friday Favorites with my favorite little story from this week. I picked D up from school earlier this week and found him like this – with his jacket all wonky. Apparently he had been fooling around with the jacket and tried to make a cape (he zipped it all the way up and then ripped the zipper open from the bottom up). The problem is the zipper was caught & stuck at the top so he couldn’t get it off. I tried wriggling the jacket over his head and his head is so big, it WOULD NOT COME OFF. It reminded me of trying to give birth to him hahaha. I really, really tried; I even tried to just yank the zipper apart but that didn’t work. On, like, the third attempt of just trying to pull the jacket over his head by force, he started crying because it hurt 🙁 I didn’t want him to cry so I just sighed a sigh of defeat and cut a little piece of the jacket off so the zipper would release at the top. BUT! I was happy to realize that the jacket wasn’t ruined because he could still zip the jacket up and wear it, he just couldn’t zip it all the way to the top because the zipper would fly off then, if that makes sense. Lol, silly boy.

That’s it! Have a great weekend, guys!