FROM: STELLA
TO: LAURA
- Summertime is in full swing here in the NC mountains and we are getting tons of outdoor time. I am really loving the app PictureThis that identifies plants quickly from a smartphone photo. It’s helped cure our curiosity a few times and also helped us steer clear of poison ivy!
2. My husband’s birthday was last week and I got him a few simple gifts (this book and these slippers) plus an extra long sleep-in morning while I took Colby to the park. He also went out solo to do a yoga class at a local brewery which was actually a big treat. We realized we don’t do enough solo-self care and need to add it back into our day-to-day routine.
3. I realized about halfway into the COVID stay-at-home order that I hadn’t bought any new clothes in a really long time. Especially since I’d been wearing Laura’s hand-me-down maternity clothes for many of the months leading up to lockdown. It was pretty easy to keep up the trend through all of last year and I just finally bought myself a couple of new things now that we are halfway into 2021. I am very obsessed with this cotton t-shirt from Madewell and these Amazon Essentials H band sandals.
4. This week I read Raising Your Money-Savvy Family For Next Generation Financial Independence. I loved that the book started with a few teachable moments that I can get started on in the next few months with Colby. It’s co-written by a father-daughter team and they each share stories about how learning about money came into play at every stage of a kid’s life. I learned a lot of good tricks for how I want to teach my son about money and also a little about how I’d like to talk to my parents about money as well. My favorite part was that they addressed how parents becoming financially independent and retiring early played into their relationship with their daughter and money. It was cool to see both of their perspectives on this. Looking forward to reading Doug’s blog, Military Guide, and checking out a few of their recommendations for further reading listed in the epilogue.
FROM: LAURA
TO: STELLA
1. In trying to celebrate Juneteenth appropriately this year, our family is focusing on a few different areas of education and support. I’m participating in this Hollaback! intervention training today that is focused on stopping police sponsored violence and anti-Black racist harassment. I’ve done one training with them before and it was very useful and highly actionable, definitely recommend keeping an eye on their calendar of upcoming events. Beyond that I really enjoyed this week’s episode of The Stacks that had guest author Clint Smith speaking about his new book, How the Word Is Passed that I’m very excited to start reading this weekend. Another podcast that is doing great work, especially for parents of young children is First Name Basis (this week’s episode on celebrating Juneteenth has lots of great suggestions including this cookbook that we got last year on Juneteenth and is one I love, Jubilee).
2. My mother was visiting us this week to help take care of Ernie while he had a week off from preschool. It was so nice to have a visitor (our first since the pandemic started!) and so, so lovely to see Ernie’s relationship with her blossom more with in-person time. They did many walks to the park throughout the week and my mom surprised Ernie with some new activities and toys each time they did a trip (this bubble pack, this bubble shovel, and this airplane kit were big hits!).
3. I found this article very interesting on renting vs owning a home right now in various cities. I have a few different friends who are all in varying stages of the home-buying journey and it’s been interesting to hear their different takes on why renting doesn’t seem like it makes sense anymore. From a purely numbers perspective it looks like renting is a choice a lot more of us should be making right now!
4. My husband and I binge-watched Ted Lasso a few weeks ago and loved it. I thought this was a hilarious internet recipe rabbit hole to find yourself down trying to figure out the shortbread recipe!
5. I’ve been following more and more “bookstagrammers” lately and almost my whole Instagram feed is filled with books which makes me intensely happy and also makes my to-read list epicly long. Bookographic is an account the data-loving side of my brain is always excited to see a new post from! (Semi-related: this site is a lovely representation of so many different people’s varied reading interests.