It made for a fun mid-week shake up and kicked off a few days full of great moments. Here are a few of the ones that stand out!

Celebrating Mom/Nana! She arrived in the evening and the girls and I were ready for her. We decorated, the girls baked a cookie cake, and I cooked up chicken and veggie fajitas. We continued the celebration the next day with a trip to Southpark Mall. It’s been years since we’ve been to a mall and you would have thought the girls had never seen one. They are both really into American Girl after each receiving one at Christmas, and the store experience thrilled them. From there we wandered around into toy stores, the Lego store, Athleta, and more. It was such a joy to watch them fully immerse themselves in the experience.

We ended the day with long walk with Finley, watching Kaitlyn spar at Taekwondo, and topped it off with dinner at Fresh Chef. We started with martinis and fries (they have such good fries) and I had their famous kale salad and shrimp. It was such a fun day.

Moving the temporary fence. Talk about a small thing that makes a huge difference. I had a temporary fence, the kind that comes in small sections and you hammer stakes into the ground to hold, around my small lakeside garden for a couple years. I decided to move it to the area around our back deck stairs to create an outdoor space for Finley.

She’s good about not running away (that’s the velcro vizsla), but isn’t so great yet about wanting to run over and say hello to any neighbor that might be outside. Chasing her around to retrieve her has been less than fun. Now we can let her out back to enjoy the sunshine or do her business and not have to worry about watching her like a hawk. This might sound underwhelming, but for me, it’s life changing.

Puppy’s first Lowe’s outing. Against David’s judgement, I decided we should bring Finley along with us on our Saturday errands. I was prepared for the chaos of it all, knowing she usually gets so excited around other people and pups. She BLEW MY MIND when she was on her best behavior the whole time. She walked well (we’ve been doing a lot of leash training) and she didn’t jump when people came over to pet her. I’m wondering if the extra mental stimulation actually worked in her favor? Whatever the case, she earned herself the ability to tag along more often.

Setting up the plant porch. The aforementioned garden doesn’t get much use anymore because of the lack of sun it receives. Our back porch however? Gets a ton of sun. Last year it made an ideal setting for our summer garden and on Saturday I got ours set up for the season. The girls and I each picked a plant to claim as our own. Hailey has cucumbers, Kaitlyn has Roma tomatoes, and I have jalapenos. We are also growing snap peas (we’ll see how long they last) and cherry tomatoes. This little spot brings me immeasurable joy and I can’t wait to see it take off! We also up-potted our seedlings. So far, so good.

New dresser for the dolls. I mentioned the girls are into American Girl dolls right now. Well, Hailey requested some shelves to organize their outfits and things, and David came though! This weekend he built them each a little shelving unit, then they helped them to sand and stain them. It was so sweet to see how thrilled they were with them and I can’t wait to see the final product.

My oven timer just went off and I’m pulling out a loaf of sourdough… and realizing I’m quite out of practice. Maybe we’ll make it to the library today. I want to see if what sourdough specific books they have to sharpen my skills.

Meals for the week:

• Baked chicken wings with roasted broccoli and asparagus
• Sheet pan rosemary chicken with sweet potatoes and Brussels
• Burger bowls
• Pork carnitas bowls
• Homemade pizza (I used Amber’s Kitchen and Chef Brandon’s method last week with ’00’ flour and it was such a fun switch up- I look forward to playing around with it again.