Oh, y’all. I’ve started this WUW I think 3 different times (I think it was June, and then July, and now August), and I’ve finally been able to get it finished. So, here’s a little recap of our June July August SUMMER with What’s Up Wednesday with Sheaffer and Shay!

What We’re Eating…

I’ve been making a lot of recipes from The Whole Cook lately and they’ve all been so good! I’ve made and we’ve loved the Sirloin and Roasted Veggies, the Italian Smashed and Roasted Potatoes, Parmesan Bacon Green Beans (probably our favorite), Bruschetta Chicken, Pistachio and Herb Crusted Salmon, and the Ultimate Marinated Grilled Chicken over salads (and then again in like a baked chicken alfredo pasta situation). And my mother-in-law has been loving recipes from Dinner at the Zoo, so when we decided to try spinach lasagna, I saw she had a recipe and it was really good! Steven also made the most delicious fajitas a few weeks ago and I don’t know that I’ll ever have fajitas that good again. Until I can hopefully convince him to make them again 😉 (And don’t judge my photography, I’m definitely not a food photographer!)

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We’ve also been doing some take out picnics at various parks since we aren’t eating in restaurants (but I think we’d prefer the park anyway?). It’s been fun to get out and play!

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What I’m Reminiscing About…

A time when things were normal… but aren’t we all, haha! There are brief times that I kinda forget everything that’s going on and then something snaps me back to this weird reality. What a time to be alive! (which is something I’ve found myself repeating often). My motto of 2020 has become “I just don’t even know”. And it applies to pretty much everything, just with different inflections.

What I’m Loving…

3 Things:

• I was ordering a 4 Things tote from The Shop Forward as a gift and ended up getting myself the Tami Taylor 4 Things tote to be my pump bag for work (I have a few different Vera Bradley cosmetic/ toiletry bags inside it to keep everything organized). I love it! It’s very well made, and supports a great cause so it’s a win-win! #texasforever

• I picked up some new Yetis for us and really love them- the 18 oz Rambler bottle with the chug cap (for water), the 26 oz Rambler bottle with the straw lid (for water) and the 12 oz Rambler bottle with the hotshot lid (for spill-proof coffee). I can fill them up before I leave for work and the coffee stays hot all morning and the ice doesn’t melt in my water so I can keep refilling it through the day and get all the water I need (I far and away prefer a straw to drink cold beverages and will put a silicone one through the lids of my other Yeti tumblers. This just makes it easier!). My “signature color” is the seafoam/ turquoise- I also have the 12 oz handle coffee mug, 20 oz tumbler and 30 oz tumbler in that color and love/use them all! Steven doesn’t use a straw lid with his, just the chug cap, and I got Livy the children’s version (she picked pink!), and it has held up really well to her crazy and is her main water cup (she has one cup for water, and a few non-straw cups for milk). It’s part of my quest to have less things that are better quality to cut down on clutter and waste.

• And lastly, for my birthday gift from Steven, I picked out a seersucker weekender bag, sherpa duck boots, and leopard print sneakers– all monogrammed from Marleylilly. I love anything monogrammed, and Marleylilly has great stuff! I first loved the sneakers, but they were actually the free gift if you spent $100, so I ended up getting the two other things to get the sneakers for free 😉

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What I’ve Been Up To…

We ended June at Lake Richland Chambers, and you can read all about that week HERE. 🙂

We celebrated July 4th at the ranch with watermelon and these little cuties! It was HOT but fun! Amos and Pecos were very invested in this photo shoot, so they ended up in the background of some (most) of the shots, but I loved when they decided to lay down like they were supposed to be there, haha! #twoyoungestbrothers

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Steven had a few call weeks in July, so we didn’t make it out to the ranch for a few weeks, but we got to go at the end of July and it was so nice! Livy got to feed Uncle Avery and Aunt Shelby’s new longhorns, and she and Boudreaux were really hoping Daddy would share his ice cream!

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Livy went to “Grammy and Pop Pop Camp” (aka stayed a week with my parents) in August and I feel like she didn’t even want to come home, she was having so much fun. We are so blessed that both sets of our parents are willing to take her at the drop of a hat, no questions asked if we need a break and that they make an effort to schedule time to take her so they can have fun and one-on-one time (really one on two because she needs all the supervision she can get, haha!). She has so much fun with Grammy and Pop Pop and Gran and Bud! This edition of G and P camp included a lot of swimming, sand box play, push pop ice creams on the porch, and learning to sing “Skinna-Marinky-Dinky-Dink” (which is a song that I learned at Mother’s Day Out when I was her age, so my mom wanted her to learn it, and she’s got a lot of it down. She likes to emphasize certain parts to her own liking, so some verses have more gusto than others, haha!).

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While she was gone, I had a one-on-one week with my little man. He is growing at warp speed, but is the most adorable little man I know! At four months old, he is 17.5 lbs, 2′ 2″ tall (80th percentile for height and weight), and wearing size 6-9 mo clothes– a VERY stark contrast to his pipsqueak of a sister who wore 3-6 mo clothes until 18 mo old. But I’d say he’s in the 100th percentile for cuteness! (Also, his shirt in the middle left says “I’m a Koala-ty guy” and I cannot stop laughing over it. I’m so sad he’s outgrown it already!!)

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What I’ve Been Working On…

Trying to be more organized, so reorganizing, purging, cleaning etc all the things. I’ve made this little area in our laundry room as our “landing pad” for when we leave in the morning and come in every afternoon. I’ve got hooks for both kids’ backpacks that go to Grand Betty and Papa Wayne’s house, my purse, and my pump bag. In the hallway between the laundry room and our room, I have key hooks and a little basket for Steven to put his wallet, hospital badge, key cards, air pods, and anything else he uses regularly to keep it off the kitchen counter. All this has typically been just random clutter around the house so I’m hoping giving it all a home will help things feel more orderly! I’m still trying to decide what (if anything) should go under the basket, etc.

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I’ve also cleaned out the bottom section of our hallway linen closet to make the toy area. I picked up a puzzle rack for all our Melissa and Doug puzzles and clear tubs for magna-tiles, building blocks, and play magnets (like this Minnie magnetic dress up doll, but Livy’s Minnie has all the Disney Princess outfits, not regular clothes. I think it is probably one of her most fun toys, haha!), and I’ve tried to wrangle all the coloring books, kinetic sand, and any other toys she plays with on a regular basis at the table. She is using the Chicco pocket snack booster in one of our extra chairs (which can be folded down, and Henry can use as a high chair at the ranch) and Henry took over her Ikea high chair to sit at our dining table. All of this used to be semi-organized (not really) on a bench behind the dining table, so Livy had easy access to pull ALLLLLLL of it out all the time all over the place. I’m hoping now it will be a little more controlled, so we can pick up one thing before getting out another.

And lastly- I picked up this over the door organizer for our pantry because I was tired of digging through a box for our spices/seasonings, and when I was finished reorganizing the pantry with it, I thought I seriously might cry tears of joy because it (and the subsequent order of our pantry) makes me so, so happy. I’ve had those fabric boxes in there for organization for a while, and they work well for some things (snacks, baking supplies, etc.) but not other things (900 small bottles of seasonings and spices).

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What I’m Excited About…

After years of trying and ending up kinda frustrated, I think I’ve finally kind of gotten the hang of using my Silhouette machine. I was successful at these first three shirts…

So I kept going and made these two for Livy and Adley…

And I’ve got plans to make little “Cousin Crew” shirts for the three of them, too! If black vinyl messages on plain white shirts is your jam– then I’m your girl for now 😉

What I’m Watching/ Reading…

Over the last few months, I read (and would recommend)…

• On the Bright Side by Melanie Shankle
• Stand All the Way Up by Sophie Hudson
• The Lies that Bind by Emily Giffin
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• All Things Reconsidered by Knox McCoy

Currently reading…

• The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi
• Saints by Addison Bevere

We just finished watching the new season of Yellowstone (definitely rated R), and I’ve been very slowly rewatching The Office as I listen to the Office Ladies podcast with Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (and it is very hard to rewatch slowly, but the podcast episodes are long, so I only end up listening to maybe 2-3 a week trying to catch up to them in real time).

What I’m Listening To…

2 podcast episodes that are 100% worth your time–

• That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs- Interview with Tauren Wells
  • This is older (I think from January?), but this interview was a handful of sermons, y’all. He had so many just small but powerful tidbits of wisdom that were so worth this listen, but I’ll leave you with one statement that was super convicting- “If you are willing to trust God with the path of your life, you must also be willing to trust Him with the pace of your life.” He talks about the upcoming election, and several other important points.
• The Big Boo Cast Episode 194- Twitter Wager Interview with Mike Leach
  • Oh friends, y’all know I adore Sophie and Melanie, but those two interviewing Mike Leach thanks to a tweet being shared 1000 times? What a treat! Where else would you learn which SEC coach is most likely to win in a bar fight, and what his favorite new books are? He also ended up talking a lot about his time at Tech, which happened to coincide with some of my time at Tech, so it ended up making me a little nostalgic for being at Tech (and a time when we were actually decent at football 😉 and could actually play football. Sigh.).

What I’m Wearing…

I have been living in this tank top from Target. I have the black, white, brown, aqua, and pink. They are very lightweight, and I love that they dress up easily with jeans, shorts, etc., or dress down with Nike shorts and a ball cap. The first two I bought were the black in size small and the aqua in a medium to see if I liked the bigger size for length, but honestly? The medium wasn’t really longer, just kinda bigger around the arms and baggier. So I ended up with smalls in all the other colors (and the aqua again because my medium ended up with some kind of weird grease looking stain on it anyway). I love these tanks as well because they are super easy to layer under sweaters/ cardigans, etc. in the winter, which is totally my jam.

Also, in my quest to reorganize, purge, and clean, I pulled this many clothes out of my closet to be done with. I am super sentimental with clothes and have the hardest time giving them up (even if I haven’t worn it in forever or really never wore it) because I can always convince myself that I’ll wear it at some point. I tried to be super ruthless and pull out anything I hadn’t wore pre-pregnancy (both times) because most of that was from grad school when I had to wear business casual a lot. I tried to remind myself that life is different now, and my wardrobe needs are different, and I don’t need 27 business casual blouses because I work 3 days a week and I wear scrubs those 3 days. But it was so hard, y’all. I feel like I can look at an outfit and tell you some memory I have in it and that makes it SO HARD to get rid of. And if I’m honest? I’m going to vacuum seal this bag and put it somewhere and see if I end up wanting anything out of it before I for sure get rid of everything (which I probably won’t, but it makes me feel better. I’m a hoarder, y’all.

What I’m Doing This Weekend…

Not 100% sure… Steven is on call at the VA, so we have to stay home, so maybe I’ll get more cleaning/ purging done? Probably not 😉

What I’m Looking Forward To Next Month…

Oh, I wish I had the guts to look forward to something happening in the distant future, but I’m not sure I do, haha! We haven’t really made very many plans just because things seem to be changing all the time. We’ll be going to the ranch a few weekends and seeing family, which is always fun. And since our group is still pretty small (under 10), we’re starting our morning session of Bible study back up, and I’m so, so excited to get back to that (plus, we’ve got several new ladies/moms, so I’m really pumped about our new group!). I couldn’t in a million years predicted all the things we’ve seen in 2020, so who even knows what September holds! (Again- I just don’t even know! Haha!!)

What Else is New…

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Y’all. Potty training this child is going to be the death of me. Seriously. She is flat out the most stubborn human being I’ve ever interacted with, and there’s no relent in sight. She 100% knows what to do, and is capable of doing it, but is currently refusing. As my father-in-law put it, this is just not high on her priority list and won’t happen until she decides it is. Uggggghhhhh. We had mild success by taking Monkey and Unicorn to the potty and declaring that they were big kids that used the potty just like her. But that lasted I think about a day. She’s got new Minnie undies for whenever she decides to get on board with this, which is hopefully soon!

(And just in case you want to offer the helpful hint of setting a timer and taking her in intervals– been there, done that, doesn’t work. We’ve gone anywhere from every 5-10 minutes to 20-30 and she pees as soon as she gets up. She sat on the potty for literally hours before when I had someone offer to help train her, and she refused to go for those hours and then went as soon as she got up. She knows what to do. We’re just currently suffering under her wrath of stubborn. Lord, be near!)

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In happier news, she does seem to really enjoy being a big sister and loves “Herry” (Henry is a little hard for her to say). She has the occasional sneaky streak when it comes to him (we caught her mid run toward him with a play frying pan in her hand once), but overall she’s super sweet and engaging with him, and pretty proud to show him off and interact with him. They are pretty sweet to watch!

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Just a few gems from the last time we were at the ranch!

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I mentioned earlier that they have grown at drastically different rates, so one of my new favorite hobbies is comparing them age to age or size to size. Uncle Avery and Aunt Shelby brought that sleeper back for Livy from Scotland when she was about 3 months old and it’s size 3-6 months. It didn’t fit her until she was 8 months (pictured here). Henry wore it a few weeks ago at 3.5 months (pictured) and it was already a little snug! Their differences just blow me away!

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And one last thing… How Great Thou Art was one of my grandma’s favorite hymns, and it always makes me think of her. A few weeks ago, one of the other doc wives in town was giving away this giant hymn print, and I immediately jumped on it. I’ve been missing my grandma a little extra the last several months, and this felt like a sweet little tribute to her. It’s HUGE, but really pretty, and I’ve got it hung in our bedroom (over our Peloton, which doesn’t exactly fit together, but it was the best place for it). Love you, Mommom, and miss you every day!!

And that’s all for our June/ July/ August recap! See y’all in September!