It’s been a while since I’ve done a post about what’s been going on lately. So, here goes. This is a long, random one! If you follow my instastories, you will have seen a lot of this before.

We lost our little dog, Dakota on Labor Day. She was 15 years old and we’d had her since our Junior year of college. Before we had kids we were definitely those crazy dog people. She was our first baby.

A neighbor found her in another neighbors yard, she had become quite the little wanderer. We don’t know for sure but we think she had a stroke or a heart attack. She’d had a stroke a couple of years ago. She’d also been diagnosed with kidney disease about 1.5 years ago. We had been thinking for awhile that she was getting close to the end because of her age and the kidney disease. But even the night before she died, we had come home from my parents house and she was as spunky as ever. Running all over the place like a maniac. We are going to miss this sweet girl …

We buried her in the backyard beside our lab, Oscar who died of cancer 2 years ago. The boys both cried when I told them. It was sweet and kinda heartbreaking.

I’ve been trying to get back into a regular exercise routine. But I’m not going to lie, it’s been tough. I can’t take the baby to childcare at the gym yet so going requires a lot of coordination with big Luke. Between breastfeeding (3 hours of my day!), getting kids to and from school, naps and dinnertime, it can be pretty tough to fit in a work out right now. I keep telling myself to be patient, this is a season. Enjoy it. I’ve been able to run or hit the gym about 3 days per week and I’m starting to feel so much stronger and healthier. When the weather is nice, I run to the park because …

…talk about a good way to start the day. This pic was post Irma. You can kinda see the debris on the beach and the path. You can also see all of the dock pilings that are missing docks. So many of the docks on the harbor were destroyed in the surge.

Speaking of Irma, we weathered the storm just fine. It was a stressful few days of hurricane prep but for the most part we were in the clear. The biggest threat was storm surge on the high tide. We had the biggest storm surge since Hugo hit almost 30 years ago. There was a lot of flooding around town but our house was fine. Our fence was smashed in two places from falling limbs so that’s annoying. We also lost power for about 12 hours and I simultaneously almost lost my mind . . . and then felt like such a chump knowing what so many people went through.

The kids were super helpful with the clean up efforts. Fleet probably took 20-30 loads of debris to the street. I couldn’t believe it. We were so excited that we ended up paying them $11 and taking them out to dinner which in retrospect they would have been happy with a couple of bucks each and some ice cream. But seriously, we were speechless. They were amazing.

This little bit is very independent. The most common phrase around here is, “Elle do it.” She loves to change clothes and came out wearing this the other day.

Look at these lovers . . .

Love this quote . . .

Love the way he is smiling at his sister . . .

The baby sleeps in our room right now. He’s the first of our kids to do this and it was mostly borne out of necessity. We simply don’t have anywhere else to put him. But it makes our room feel like a sanctuary and neither of us mind it like we worried we would. He doesn’t sleep in the bed with us but if we aren’t in the room, sometimes I put him on our bed and I LOVE walking in to this . . .

Last Thursday was International Peace Day. The boys school hosts a really neat school wide event. Video posted below. Here are some pics from the day.

I missed the memo on purchasing Peace Day t-shirts (and most other memo’s for that matter) so we ended up making t-shirts the night before. It’s always a good idea to have some plain t-shirts and paint for these moments. This is not the first time we’ve had to do something like this!

Is this guy for real??? . . .

Luke and I got away for a date night last weekend . . . well, sort of away. We couldn’t escape this guy! (By the way- I’ve had a lot of questions about this sushi. It’s just from Harris Teeter. They randomly have the best sushi.)

I know that everyone is all into Spotify these days but I’m old school and generally prefer not to learn new things (haha!) My most recent favorite Pandora station . . .

We found these Adirondack chairs on the side of the road. I have two and have been wanting two more. They are in pretty good shape except for a broken piece on the arm rest that needs to be glued back on. And they look brand new after a pressure wash . . . I plan on staining them dark brown/almost black like my other two.

I have so many books on my “want to read list” right now. Here are a few:

All of Brene Brown’s books

• Check out her podcast with Oprah on her Super Soul series here: https://player.fm/series/oprahs-supersoul-conversations/bren-brown-part-1-daring-greatly

Bitten by a Camel – Kent Dobson

• Check out an awesome podcast with him here.

Option B – Sheryl Sandberg

What we talk about when we talk about God -Rob Bell

The Universe has Your Back – Gabby Bernstein

Two of these are sitting on my kindle waiting to be read. I’d love some more recommendations!

And ya’ll, I just discovered Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee on instagram) and he’s amazing! Very motivational, follow him! He has an awesome youtube channel too.

A couple of shows we’ve been watching on Netflix

And we’ve been watching the latest House of Cards season which is pretty unbelievable and feels like our current situation probably isn’t any better. It’s like watching a train wreck- I can’t stop even though it’s awful. Ugh.

Anyway, I hope to write a post soon about how things are going as a SAHM. The best part so far is that I feel so much less rushed. I was always rushing to get laundry done, dishes washed, to get to work, to get to carpool.  I even felt rushed when it came to loving on my kids like I better soak up this moment because I’ve got to get to work/chores/sleep. I felt almost frantic most of the time. Now I feel more present. We are still insanely busy but sometimes I get to just take a few minutes (or an entire one of Elle’s naptimes) and do this . . .