Life Lately & What I've Been Reading

Derek got a new riding lawnmower last week, and we were all very excited about it! The first lawn we ever had was teeny--our house on base at Keesler. We purchased an electric lawn mower at the time, and it was absolutely perfect for our small yard! It also worked perfectly at our old San Antonio house during fellowship, and we didn't need a lawn mower at all for our "desert landscape" in Vegas. Fast forward to this house, and it was taking Derek hours upon hours to cut our yard. We are SO excited to have this new lawn mower! Derek really enjoys yard work, but we are so thankful he'll be able to get it done much more efficiently now!

For Christmas, the girls each got a gift card as part of their present from Grammy & Grampy. They were so excited to have a little "girls day" this weekend to La Cantera to do their gift card shopping at Claire's for Hadley and Barnes & Noble for Shelby. We also tried out a new cookie dough shop called "Scooped," which was really fun!

And our first school lunch dates with Brady's big sisters for the New Year!

These next two pictures are perfect representations of Brady at age 2.5. He is never more content than when he's sitting in his room by himself reading his books! He LOVES to do this! And the second picture below is how he always sleeps--both arms tucked into his sleep sack and curled up in the corner of his crib. :)



And lastly, a few books I've been reading lately! I love doing these round-ups b/c it makes me look back over what I've been reading and reflect a bit...like why are the top three books all memoirs if I don't really love memoirs?! I think I like the idea of memoirs, so I keep going back to them but I never actually really enjoy reading them. I have enjoyed a couple of Nancy Thayer's other books, but An Island Christmas was just eh in my opinion. I absolutely loved The Great Alone and We Were the Lucky Ones though--I would highly recommend those two!

We're so excited about the long weekend! We're ready for a little break after the first two weeks getting back into the swing of things after Winter Break. We're also excited b/c the end is finally in sight for our backyard--fingers crossed, everything with our pool & fence installation should be wrapping up next week!