I can’t believe another week has passed – this one seemed to go extra fast because it’s a long weekend and my kids don’t have school today. In any case, my first favorite this week has been THIS BOOK RIGHT HERE 👀

This story/series is a trilogy that loosely retells the story of Beauty & The Beast. I do mean loosely when I say loosely. Haha, other than the fact that there’s a curse and a beast, I’d say the rest of the story is not really anything like Beauty & The Beast (at least the Disney version). BUT! This book is SO GOOD! It is a trilogy but I have all three books in my possession and ready to read. I devoured book 1 in a matter of two days and am reading book 2 right now. It’s honestly a struggle to get myself not to just abandon all responsibility; I just want to sit and read all day hahaha. Which is always a sign of a good book. I’d recommend it if you don’t have anything to do this long weekend!

Next favorite … I stumbled across this vegan granola when I was at Trader Joe’s on Monday. I was actually more drawn to the fact that it was grainless because I do *try* (try being the operative word) to be grain-free as much as possible. Once I checked out the packaging though I saw that it was also vegan and was sold. Guys – YOU NEED THIS IN YOUR LIFE. It’s SO GOOD!! D saw me snacking on this and wanted to try too and then his eyes got big and he agreed that it was so good. He even asked me if I could switch out his afternoon snack for this instead of potato chips .. ok, like they’re good but not THAT good in my opinion. But then again I’m a sucker for a good chip. Now I’m digressing – I told him yes, that’s fine. So you know … my 7-year old would rather eat this than delicious chips. Take that glowing endorsement and do with it what you will.

Speaking of my 7-year old … he has been VERY MUCH into soccer these days. I kind of love it. He’s been doing some kind of soccer since he was around 4 years old. We started with a local community rec soccer thing. The program was cute but the thing I noticed when he was doing it was how nimble he was. He was FAST. He was terrible with dribbling the ball and scoring but boy could he RUN after someone else who had the ball. After a few years of watching him do rec soccer, I thought maybe we’d try club soccer. Soccer is a huge sport in our area and we have a lot of friends who do it year-round as a club sport so … I signed him up. Right now he’s just doing the clinics that his soccer club offers because I don’t know that he really has the right basics foundation from his years of recreational soccer alone. He’s been in the clinic since January and his footwork and agility has improved so much, I’m kind of shocked. And he loves going! Hubby will take him on the weekends to practice and then they go out and do a little father/son time together after (get donuts, run errands, etc). I think he enjoys the 1:1 time with daddy as much as he does the soccer itself.

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The first half of this week had some GORGEOUS weather here in the Bay Area so I made sure to soak up as much of it as possible. It was borderline balmy on this day! We always love a good weather day that can be spent outside or in the backyard.

I also took Kylo, our mini bernedoodle, to our local reservoir for the FIRST TIME ever this week and it was SUCH a favorite to (1) see him enjoying the walk and (2) see how well behaved he was! He did AMAZING, guys! We did two laps around the reservoir which is 5+ miles and he was having the time of his liiiiiiife.

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After having empty frames on top of my piano for more than a year, I finally got around to printing some photos to put into the frames. Fingers crossed it doesn’t take another year to actually put the pics into the frames but I’m glad that the hard part of picking/printing the photos is done. Funny story: J walked in and saw all these photos propped up and said – Oh, switching out the pictures for new ones huh? I said – switching out? There’s no switching anything …

GUYS, THESE FRAMES HAVE BEEN EMPTY THE ENTIRE TIME. 💀You can tell who’s been paying attention to the home decor around here (hint: NOT HIM).

We also changed out our water company to a new one this week after using Alhambra for almost a decade. Alhambra’s water service was just getting ridiculous, especially after COVID hit. They’d miss or skip deliveries or just run out of water and not come to our house. Which, if you know how much water I drink, is NOT OK. After they missed the last three (YES, 3) deliveries, and we had been drinking water from bottles we bought at the grocery store for close to a month, J finally said enough is enough and canceled service. We switched to this no-name local delivery but it’s been fine! The water tastes the same and I’m SO HAPPY to not have to go to the grocery store every 3 days just to buy gallons and gallons of water.

Yesterday, I got to run some errands at the mall and not only is being ALONE without kids a favorite but also, getting to pop into a real, physical bookstore is another favorite for me! I just LOOOOVE bookstores, guys! If you’re never sure what to get me for a gift, Amazon gift cards so I can buy books is never a wrong choice 😉

Here’s my last favorite from this week …

I have been LOVING all the alone time that J & I get to spend together when the kids are at their pod/preschool. Granted both of us are pretty busy working and the morning hours when A is gone fly by really fast but we’ve been trying to be more intentional about taking even 10-15 minutes to go for a short walk with Kylo while we’re alone. Or, like today, we just danced around to Tupac’s California Love bumpin at full volume in our living room. Any quality time with my husband is a favorite for me!

Unrelated but I’m also super looking forward to the long weekend we have coming up. My kids will be off for a 4-day weekend and I have fun Galentines plans tonight with some friends. I’ll probably have a post up next week talking about my weekend so make sure to check back or subscribe so you don’t miss any new posts!