House Hardegree: Let's Try and Catch Up, Shall We?

Pretty much every time I post anymore it's a frenzied highlight reel of everything that's happened in our family for the past month because I keep taking long breaks between posts. My bad. I'm going to try and, as briefly as possible, catch y'all up on as many things as I can without completely exhausting you. :-D Here we go!

My gardens are doing really well! Here are some pictures over the last month of some of my pretty flowers as previously promised:

Julia Child Floribunda Rose

Livin' Easy (lamest name ever...) Floribunda Rose

Thanks to the crazy week of rains and mild temperatures, all of my rose bushes have new growth on them right now, so hopefully I'll finally be able to post a picture of my Lady Bird Johnson rose soon. It's seriously gorgeous.

I've also added some babies to my veggie patch in the backyard, and have therefore expanded it to three, count 'em, three veggie patches! I've got the original big box with my pepper plants that are starting to bud (yay!), my basil plants that I've already harvested several times much to my taste buds' delight, and some marigolds for pest control. I recently added three broccoli sprouts and a row of carrot seeds to my big box! Behind the big box is a skinny box with two roma tomato plants (babies y'all), and two rows of green bean seeds. I'm planning on adding another row of carrots here in a couple of weeks to draw out my carrot harvest. (We eat bookoos of carrots...usually roasted with chicken or cooked in a stew.) Finally, I added a little patch on the side of the house up against our chain link fence that has three mounds of cucumber seeds (they like to climb on the fence) for future pickling, and, you guessed it, another row of carrot seeds. It basically just looks like dirt right now, so I'll post pictures of that once there's something to look at. But so exciting!! Yay for backyard homesteading! And many thanks to my wonderful hubs for building my smaller box! Such a handyman!

Those big plants are, starting from the far right, peppers, two basil stalks, and then two more peppers. The milk jugs are protecting the broccoli and tomato sprouts from wind and predators.

Pepper blossom buds!

Moving on...

Our front room, which was originally a sitting room/music room/library until we converted it to a tinker lab/music room/library for the boys, has been taking shape for months and months, and is, of course, still not finished. BUT, I had Justin build the boys this rolling peg board to take the room one step closer to being finished. As you can see below there are many uses for a rolling peg board, but I designed it to be a mobile discovery station with baskets of tools, carpet squares for sensory activities, and art supplies. The boys love it and use it all the time! And, bonus, there's plenty of space still waiting to be filled on both sides as the boys grow and become interested in different things.

Peg board holes are the perfect size for dinosaur tails.

(There's stuff on the other side too...flashlight, giant magnet, plastic scissors, etc.)

I think that picture of Levi is a good segue into announcing that he is officially potty trained!!! WOOHOO! As of today, it's been probably two weeks since we've had an accident, and his accident phase was awful...poop...all over his room...But anyway, I think we've crossed to the other side and are now officially in big boy territory. Yay!

So Justin and my anniversary (probably wrong grammar...sorry sticklers!) is July 19th...8 years y'all!...and we have always given each other gifts that go along with the tradition for that year. You know, paper for your first, cotton for your second, etc. Well, the longer you're married, the more, to put it nicely, fancy the gifts get (useless would be my not-so-nice way to say it), so we broke from our tradition this year and got wedding ring tattoos instead. Haha! Justin got a solid band and I got a diamond. I'll post of picture of his once I have one, but he's at work right now so...

And in case you're wondering, cause I feel like some of you might be, this is number 4 for me. TATTOOS!

Also, despite how much we liked Hope Fellowship (see previous posts), we decided to go elsewhere after they took a weird stance on gay marriage. It was sort of an agree to disagree situation, which we're not really ok with. I don't want to have to explain to my kid that yes, there is a lesbian couple in our church community, and no, we don't believe that is biblically right, but no, we can't say anything. It was sad, but it just wasn't for us after all I guess. So...we've been going to Antioch Community Church for several weeks now and actually really love it! We've visited there several times in the past but have never stayed because they're a little weird (crazy is the word some people use) and they have an interesting reputation for being too outspoken. Ha! Should that be a negative thing in the Christian faith? I don't think so. Anyway, they're crazy about Jesus and we love it! We're going to be attending the membership course in September and have signed up to join a life group so hopefully we'll be starting that process soon. Yay!!

I feel like I'm downplaying this transition because I'm trying to be brief, but let me be clear, we are super stoked about this. I really feel like God has been leading us to this church for a while, but we resisted because it made us feel uncomfortable for different reasons (full band worship with lots of buy-in from the membership so picture people with their hands up, others jumping or dancing, everyone feelin' it; also lots of talk about healing, prophesy, etc.). Maybe I'll post more later on, but just know this is awesome!!

Anywho...I'm about to launch into picture city, but before I do, you may notice that some of the pictures below show us using a card table instead of a dining table in our kitchen. That's because we've sanded down, painted, and oiled our old table (it's currently curing in our garage) and will be selling it on my Etsy story (hey-o!), and Justin will be building us a new one with a mid-century modern/industrial feel. It's gonna be awesome! So be on the lookout for a pretty white table in my shop and a sick new table in our kitchen in a future post.

So...we've done some random fun things over the last month. Here's a quick highlight reel. Don't worry...it's 90% pictures!

Splash pad play in the backyard. I combined the splash pad that Aunt Emily and Uncle Peter got Lincoln for his birthday, with our kiddie pool, and later our slide, for the full water park experience.

We made a ramp out of toilet paper rolls and launched cars, trucks, and balls across the front room. Levi later made it into a bridge between the couch and the coffee table.

Levi got to have a car wash complete with bubbly soap (dish soap and water), powder soap (baking soda), and colorful rinse (dyed vinegar). It made for some fun, bubbly play! And yes, despite his stoic expression, he is having fun. RBF is real y'all...and its genetic.

Lincoln's still learning to walk at this point, so we practice creeping around the coffee table at least once a day. I'll set a toy that he likes on the table and encourage him to come get it, but he spends most of the time griping at me without crying in an effort to get me to hand it to him. Oh boy...

See what I mean?

Believe it or not, it's possible to say no to that face. Although, it usually involves me trying not to laugh at him...

Final fun thing...we went (all 4 of us!!) to the Waco Mammoth National Monument. It's a sheltered active dig site where they found 19 Columbian Woolly Mammoths here in Waco. It's pretty neat and we had a good time together! Fun fact that we learned...there used to be GIANT sloths. When they were on all 4s they were 5ft tall, and when they stood up on their hind legs to get food, they were 20ft tall!!!! CRAZY!!!!