Happy Friday, y’all! I hope y’all have had a great week! Time for a few Friday faves!

Favorite Thing I’ve Read:

It’s a Love Story by Lincee Ray

I shared in my weekend recap earlier this week that I finished Where The Crawdads Sing basically in one sitting and liked it. I finished It’s A Love Story the day before, and LOVED it. Where the Crawdads Sing was good once, but It’s A Love Story is one I’ll read again and share with others. This is Lincee’s second book (which I’d recommend the first, Why I Hate Green Beans, with just as much fervor), but I’m addicted to all things Lincee Ray- her blog (www.ihategreenbeans.com), her podcast (I Hate Green Beans) and her books. It is 85% humor with just enough sentiment and heart thrown in to really get you; for example, the next to last chapter on Hurricane Harvey had me literally ugly crying. You won’t regret any time you spend with Lincee- you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll come away happy!

Favorite Thing We’ve Eaten…

Home Grown Zucchini

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My sweet friend Monette is the nurse practitioner in our office and she is the most amazing gardener. Earlier this week, she gave us a bunch of home grown cucumbers and the most enormous zucchini. Liv was not a fan of it raw…

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But, I made fried shrimp on Tuesday night, so I chopped up a little of the zucchini and tossed it in to fry after the shrimp was done. It was so good! But we will be eating on that one zucchini for a loooong time!

Favorite Online Purchase:

Chewy.com dog food delivery

We go through a lot of dog food. A lot. I mean, we’ve got four hungry boys and they like to eat! We typically use about a 33 lb. bag a week for all four, so I’ve started researching online options to help save a little money, and to not have to lug around huge bags of dog food all the time from Tractor Supply. Amazon did give a subscribe & save discount, and they had Prime shipping, but the shortest amount of time between shipments is 1 month. I didn’t want to have to order four bags at once, but we were going through two bags too quickly and still having to pick up two more at the store (you don’t get a discount on orders outside of your scheduled deliveries). I switched to Chewy because you can order in much smaller time frames, plus order extras at any time and still get a bulk discount. I started out ordering 2 bags every three weeks, but we were running low last week without a scheduled delivery that week. So, I was able to bump up our order to ship out that day and update our delivery to every two weeks with no problem. And what I ordered on Tuesday, came the very next day on Wednesday, just in time for me to not have to get another bag from the store. 10/10 recommend Chewy.com!

{And just in case anyone is curious, we use Purina Pro Plan Savor in Salmon and Rice flavor. For a while, we were using a grain free food, but read a few legit studies that came out discussing the rise of dilated cardiomyopathy in several breeds of dogs it hasn’t previously been prevalent in. Labs were at the top of the list, so we switched back to just a high quality well rounded food just to be safe. We had everyone on grain free to help with Ruger’s allergies, but we’re 95% sure he doesn’t really have a food allergy, so we were fine with dropping grain free anyway.}

Favorite Show for Livy to Watch

Beat Bugs

Livy’s a diehard Veggie Tales fan, but when my mom stayed with us for a few weeks, she found the cutest little show on Netflix called Beat Bugs. Each episode is 15 minutes long, features a song from the Beatles as the theme, and follows a band of little bugs living in a yard navigating things coming down from the humans. Something about the music just captivates Liv and she is mesmerized for as long as we have it on. So, if you are looking for something to keep a toddler occupied for a short (or not so short sometimes, if we’re honest!) amount of time, check out Beat Bugs!

Favorite Thing I’ve Seen Out and About…

Livy “reading” while we waited at the vet

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We had to go to the vet yesterday for Ruger’s early vaccines and sitting there with Livy was just a reminder of how big she’s gotten! She pushed herself all the way to the other side of the bench to sit “alone” and read her magazine. She is just seventeen months going on seventeen. She sat in the extra chair in the exam room and “took notes”, too. She’s growing up so fast and I’m soaking up all these little moments! Also, as you can see in the pics of her taking notes, she favors her left hand. She does this with just about everything- utensils, crayons, pens, etc. She uses her right hand, too, but left seems to be her natural instinct. Mamas of lefties- is this how you knew your little was a leftie? Steven and I are both righties so we have no idea but we’re curious to see what happens! 😬

Have a great weekend, y’all!

Linked with Andrea for Friday Favorites!