It has been A WHILE, to put it very lightly, since I’ve blogged. Let alone a personal blog! I think my last personal blog was about being pregnant in 2018. Wow! So long ago.

For those who don’t know, but I’m 99.9% certain everyone knows, Valerie was born in September 2018 and then Irene joined our family in July 2020. The blog silence isn’t so surprising when you learn about that! Haha! Two small children doesn’t lead to much freetime. Add in a crazy pandemic and whew. Life is crazy.

We’re still in our Louisville farmhouse slowly renovating it. In 2019, we made major changes to our main floor. We hired a contractor to put in a brand new kitchen, new flooring throughout the entire first floor, and update the fireplace. It looks completely different now and I love it – minus the mass of children’s toys and baby gates. The before photos are from our walk-through when we bought the house in 2017. We made all the structural wall changes just after moving in. These after photos were taken in 2019 after all the work was complete just before Christmas, hence the Christmas decor. We still have several things to finish like the crown molding, mounting the tv, a new dining room table, island chair update, and all the artwork that needs to be hung! That’s my next project. 🙂

To add to that in 2019, we also decided to completely renovate the master bathroom, except we did that ourselves! And by ourselves, I mean Matt and his dad, haha. We reconfigured the bathroom entrance to be in the closet to help with wall space in the master bedroom. It’s not super obvious in the before photos, but the door was just to the right of the shower across from the vanity. Now the second photo was taken in the door entrance. Having that towel rack right next to the shower is a BIG win. Also, we made the shower wider because we weren’t accomodating a door and those extra inches makes the shower feel extra spacious. Because you now enter the bathroom through the closet we wanted to do something beautiful in there too. In 2020, Matt used quarantine time making custom shelves and drawers in our closet. It’s SO much nicer now! I’m so impressed with his skills.

Aside from babies and house renovations, our day-to-day doesn’t vary much. We play and eat and nap and repeat all day every day.

2021 has been a rough year for me personally as I’ve lost both of my grandmothers. Grief is a new emotion I’m learning and changing through.

I’m obviously still taking photos and loving every moment. I share a lot more over on Instagram – business and personal! Though I hope to continue to share more here too.

Matt is still taking seminary classes and working full time. He’s quite the busy man!

And that’s it for now. That’s our August 2021 life update!