Happy Wednesday, y’all! It’s time for a little life update with What’s Up, Wednesday with Shay!

WHAT WE’RE EATING THIS WEEK…

We’ve been eating so good this week! 😉

Steven’s parents and Granny are in town to watch Olivia while our nanny is on vacation, so we’ve been hitting all the good local restaurants and cooking up good food at home. We spent Saturday afternoon at Fire Street Pizza in Nolanville…

We had steaks/ catfish/ shrimp/ burgers at Johnny’s in Salado on Friday night, and my birthday dinner at The Gin on Nolan Creek in Belton on Monday night. We’ve had my birthday dinner there every year we’ve lived here, and it’s my favorite! The restaurant itself used to be the town’s cotton gin and sits on the creek that runs through town so the atmosphere is really neat and the food is amazing! I had the fried catfish (which is probably the best I’ve ever had anywhere), and Steven had the rib eye tacos and said they were delicious. This was our first year to have our sidekick with us and I wouldn’t have it any other way! Last year, I was still in the first trimester on my birthday and morning sickness (which was always evening sickness for me??) made me hurl up my birthday dinner, so it was definitely better this year!

We’ve also had grilled steaks, sausage, and jalapeno poppers and chicken fajitas at home. Tonight we’re having roast with carrots and potatoes. And then I’m back to being the head chef on Thursday, so we’ll see, haha!

 

WHAT I’M REMINISCING ABOUT…

Not really anything in particular, but I have thought a lot the last week or so about what it was like when we lived in places with little to no humidity. Those were the days… 😉

 

WHAT I’M LOVING…

Let me tell you a little story about the BEST PLANNER THERE EVER WAS…

One day a few months ago, I was watching Jamie Golden on Instagram Stories (which I also love and highly recommend you follow her!), and she walked through her new planner from Agendio. The best part? YOU DESIGN IT YOURSELF! (All the nerdy praise hands!).

So, when you go to the website, you choose daily, weekly, or monthly. I picked daily with a monthly calendar at the start of each month (which means mine is basically huge).

On each monthly spread, I have…

• the month
• boxes for “to-dos” for the month (things that can happen any time during the month, like inspections, etc.)
• and boxes at the end of each week that say “Steven:” for me to write what rotation he is on for the week and anything else about his schedule that I need to keep up with.

On each daily page (or weekly or whatever you choose), you pick the layout of the boxes and what they each say.

• I chose to have the date at the top with the current and next month.
• Under this, there is an empty box that I can write big dates/events in. On every Monday, mine says “Steven:” in this box so I can write what rotation he is on for the week. I’m sure as we have more kids and as they get older, I’ll be adding in their names to this box as well!
• Instead of the hourly times, I have a morning, afternoon, and evening section. I like this better because there are things that you need to do sometimes that don’t necessarily fall into a “time”, so this fits better.
• Across the page, there is a place for a daily to-do list. Mine is lined, has check boxes, and takes up half the column, but there are so many other choices!
• At the bottom of the right column is just an empty large box for any other notes. For example, on Sunday, this is where I wrote notes for the sermon at church instead of a separate notebook.

That is the biggest deal about this for me– because I’m able to lay it out how I want, and eliminate things I don’t use or need, I’m condensing myself down to one thing to carry– no more extra notebooks or scrap papers or calendars. It’s all one book! (One giant book, but one nonetheless!).

At the end of each week, I have a meal planning sheet that has a spot for each day, and then a space for a shopping list. I have tried hard the last several weeks to get better about meal planning and being more organized with meals and grocery shopping, and I feel like this is going to help so much! They have a lot of choices for this added page– budget trackers, goal sheets, notes pages, etc.

Because I chose the daily layout, it had to be spiral bound, but some options can be a hard back binding. You can choose your cover from their offerings and most can be customized (like I picked the turquoise color to go with the tan petals), and then they are all monogrammed or personalized for free. You can enter as many personal dates or reoccurring events as you like and it will come pre-printed with these (for example, I did all of our immediate families’ birthdays and anniversaries, plus my BFF and our dogs, and then other important dates to us). You can pay extra to have tabs put on each month and tear off corners if those things are important to you (they weren’t so important to me that I wanted to pay extra). All said and done, with the design and shipping, I paid $66. (What??? Isn’t that such a deal???). And yes, as Jamie Golden said, I also paid for this with my own cash money, so there is no promotion here– I just want to share this because I am a planner nerd, and I absolutely love it! I did a lot of research before I went with this one, and this is the only one that had everything I wanted. And it’s just hard to settle for something that only checks some of your boxes, when there’s something available that is exactly what you want!

 

 

I also started my duties on the executive board for the TMEA (our medical spouse alliance group), and one of our first jobs was welcoming new residents at Graduate Medical Education (GME) Orientation!

 

WHAT I’M DREADING…

Not really anything. I’m not loving this heat right now, but I feel like every day of the summer that ticks by is one day closer to fall/ winter!

Pecos has decided to hang out indefinitely in their pool…

 

WHAT I’M WORKING ON…

I need to be working on pulling all the newborn sized clothes out of Olivia’s dresser so I can get all the 3 month and 3-6 month clothes in. She’s still rocking 3 month sized clothes here at 5 months, but we’re slowly graduating up. I’m putting off pulling out the newborn stuff because I’m emotional, and it makes me sad they don’t fit anymore. And I’m delusional about some of them and am convinced she might still fit in it (face palm). She won’t, and I just need to move on, haha! 😉

I also rearranged the furniture in our dining room and moved the secretary desk I refinished a little over a year ago into the office nook in our room. We still have some exercise equipment that we’re trying to sell in that space, but the main stuff we are using is now out in the garage, so I’m excited to use that space as more of an office/ laundry over flow room once we get rid of a few more things! I moved our old coffee table into the space in our dining room where my desk used to be. We’ve been trying to sell it for a long time since we don’t use it, but once I moved it, I feel like I really like it there as a kid table in the future! All I need is a little chair and it’s ready to go for Olivia to color and play!

 

WHAT I’M EXCITED ABOUT…

I finally finished our flower beds! I started redoing them last spring because grass had grown through all the mulch and they looked bad. I pulled out all the old mulch and worked to pull grass and just as I was making progress rolling into last summer, I found out I was pregnant and spent most of the summer feeling yuck. So, I started a couple weeks ago with the project again. This time, I laid down landscape fabric at the base to help keep grass and other weeds out a little better. I severely underestimated how much mulch I needed, so that required multiple trips (and twice as much as I originally thought), and then I got flowers from Lowe’s last week and got them planted. Our house faces directly east, so we get full east sun from sunrise until about 2-3 PM in the flower bed, so anything we put there needs to be able to handle a lot of sun! I ended up going with lantanas (we had these the summer we moved in and they did really well!), some celosias in between (I think they call these cockscomb??), and a crepe myrtle for the edge of the bed.

This bench used to be in our front hallway, but I felt like it has come to the end of its’ functional time, and is ready to be more of a decorative piece. It fits perfectly in this archway between our front porch and the flower bed, so I put all my flower pots and my “Welcome Y’all” cotton stem mason jar sign from Hobby Lobby on it. So far, I love it out there! These flowers all came from HEB and didn’t have a label so I’m not really sure what they are, but they are pretty and doing well in the partial sun there!

And how cute is Olivia in her little smocked dress in the flowers on Sunday?? She was much more interested in playing with the flowers than smiling for pictures before church.

 

WHAT I’M WATCHING/ READING… 

So, a few weeks ago, I started watching Suits on Amazon Prime. It took me a few episodes to get into it, but now I’m on the 4th season and kinda hooked! I find it totally weird but fascinating to watch Meghan Markle and think about how she’s now married to a prince!

Still working on Girl, Wash Your Face and Eat Cake, Be Brave! I haven’t been reading as much lately but I need to get those finished up! I also have Why I Hate Green Beans by Lincee Ray on deck!

 

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO…

So, I’m not really watching The Bachelorette, but I listen without fail each week to the recaps by Knox and Jamie of the Popcast and Lincee with Some Guy from Austin on the I Hate Green Beans podcast. They are so funny! I read Lincee’s written recaps for I Hate Green Beans and Sheaffer’s recaps on Sheaffer Told Me To as well. Between all the recaps, I haven’t really felt the need to actually watch the show. I get all the funny without having to actually watch the yuck! 😉

 

WHAT I’M WEARING… 

Anything cool! Shorts, flowy dresses, tank tops, etc. I’ve been experimenting with knotting up longer, flowy tops and I think I like it so far! Covers up that mom fluff 😉

 

WHAT I’M DOING THIS WEEKEND…

Steven is working, so I don’t think we have any big plans! We usually find time to take the pups out to the lake, so we’ll probably do that if it’s not too hot!

 

WHAT I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT MONTH…

Steven is taking a week of vacation in August so we will have a little week long break before the chaos of fellowship interview season starts! We don’t have any plans yet as far as what we’re planning to do, but it will be nice to have a break!

 

WHAT ELSE IS NEW…

Let’s see… here’s a montage of Olivia’s Sunday pictures (we take a picture every Sunday before/after church)…

 

And this happened the other day…

Baby girl sat up on her own! Now, it didn’t take long after this to tumble forward, but she made it a few minutes by herself and I was so proud! She slept by herself in her room for the first time last night and I’m equal parts elated and devastated. She’s growing so quickly, which I love, but it’s also a little sad. Time flies, sweet friends- soak it up!

She also has managed to get good at getting her toes in her mouth. 😐

 

We’ve been working on our mother/daughter selfie game…

 

And I love watching these two more than anything. They just melt me!

 

These handsome boys have been killing it at summer retriever training (when it’s not too hot outside)…

And Boudreaux has become the official tummy time monitor. But only for short periods of time because it’s obviously a lot of work.

 

And that’s about all we’ve got going on! Happy end of July! 🙂