Watering Cans & Watermelons

So a little over a month ago, we did a little “Rally for Tally” and got take-out for all three Saturday meals, to spread the local love in the community, and get to try yummy new places ourselves. And we decided to do it again today!

Mama was craving a bagel sandwich for breakfast though, and we couldn’t exactly find any local bagel places (we tried Bagel Bagel on Pensacola first, but they didn’t open until 9am, which was just wayyy too late for us when the toddler wakes us up at 7am), so we picked up Bruegger’s and took it back home. And it was delicious!

We lazed around for a little bit, Emmie found my cozy socks and tried them on, and then we got dressed and went out to run some errands around town, at Harbor Freight and Tallahassee Nurseries.

Even thought I’m not very good at keeping plants and things alive (although I’m trying really hard lately!), I LOVE going to this beautiful nursery, that feels so magical with all the lovely plants under these gigantic, gorgeous live oak trees!

Emmie got to pet Willow the cat, and she was so super sweet about it.

Jeff got who-knows-what-all at Harbor Freight (wrenches, a tarp, ear muffs, etc…?), and at the nursery we got a second bird feeder, a cute watering can, some tiny toddler gardening gloves (which she’s been really wanting lately and we were very excited to find so we didn’t have to order on Amazon and wait two days) and an orange picker for our tree (not pictured, but it was even cheaper than Home Depot or Amazon). It was a very successful trip!

For our local lunch choice, we picked Gumby’s Pizza. We live over here on the west side of town, near campus, so we see this place all the time, but have never tried it. We ordered their special which was a medium pizza and medium “pokey sticks” aka cheese sticks, for $15.99.

When we picked it up, he said there was too much stuff in the oven and the pizza had gotten smushed, so he made us a second one and gave us the smushed one, since he would have had to throw it away anyways. So that was nice! The pokey sticks were very good, but the pizza was only okay though (and very greasy), so we probably won’t order from there again. Oh well, it was worth trying at least!

After lunch, we had a stand-off with Emmie on the toilet, but nothing ever came out, and we eventually relented and put a diaper on her, and got her down for her nap time. While Emerson slept, Nita came to pick me up, and we drove over to my Aunt Suzanne’s family’s farm & produce stand, to pick out some fresh fruits & veggies! Between the two of us, we got tomatoes, corn on the cob, red potatoes, peaches, green beans, vidalia onions, one watermelon (to split) and boiled peanuts!

Uncle Keith was even there, and picked us out the perfect watermelon!

We split it in half once we got home – Nita took her half, and I got busy dicing up our half, with a very anxious little onlooker watching closely.

After dicing all of it, we put a small bowl in the freezer for a few minutes to get it nice and chilled, and then we shared the bowl and it was soooo good!

And since we have so much of the watermelon, I want to do something fun with it… like a recipe I’ve seen before for watermelon salad with basil and feta or something like that. Sounds so fresh & refreshing! And plus, we bought a tiny thing of fresh sweet basil today, and planted in our little herb garden, so that would be perfect!

And then Emerson found this mushroom in the backyard, which was very interesting. Lucky for both of us, she still had on her tiny gardening gloves, so she just waltzed right over and picked it out of the ground!

Her and I ran around the front yard and did all sorts of random stuff, all while Jeff worked on some wiring and electrical hoopla and replacing a light in the shed on the side of our house.

For dinner, we decided to go outside of our comfort zone and try something  new and different – we went to a Vietnamese restaurant! We’d actually been watching some of our favorite travel YouTuber’s recent Vietnam travel videos, and the food looked sooo good. So we wanted to try it out for ourselves.

We got the crispy wontons to share (bottom left of photo), Jeff ordered the “hangover” pho (top of photo) that had a few different meats in it, and I got the grilled pork rice vermicelli (bottom right of photo), which was like half salad, and half rice noodles, with meat and pickled veggies. (Emmie ate one wonton and some plain white rice.) The wontons were really good, but the other stuff was only okay. My first bite was weird, but it grew on me, a little bit, but Jeff didn’t really like his at all. I thought his was decent though, so we brought it home, and I might have the leftovers for lunch next week.

After a bit of meltdown on the toilet again tonight, and about 10 minutes of sitting and reading, and crying towards the end, she finally peed on the toilet again tonight! So that makes three times this past week (all of which she was mad/scared for), so that really feels like something! She had the other half of her roll of SweeTarts as her treat for going potty, while we read a night-night book.

Look at this sweet cuddle bug while I was saying her night-night prayers.

So even though both lunch and dinner were a little disappointing, we had such a great day, doing so much stuff! And just like usual, after a long, busy Saturday, Jeff and I are both exhausted and ready to collapse into bed, very soon!