Following up on last week’s premiere, Counting On took us back behind the scenes of Duggar family life – and little Spurge’s first birthday!
Meanwhile, Joy-Anna and Austin worked on a house flipping project together, because apparently that’s what they’re doing for work!
As Counting On Season 3 Episode 2 got underway, the focal point was the first birthday for Jessa and Ben Seewald’s first child, Spurgeon.
If you watch Counting On online, you know that marriages, births and courtships are always front and center. Kids’ birthdays, as well.
With Jinger Duggar now living out of state, the co-party planning role fell to Joy-Anna (Jessa was seven months pregnant at the time).
At least Jana Duggar got a break for once?
Eh, not really. We know she’ll be picking up the slack as always. “Joy’s not much of a shopper,” said Jana as Joy navigated the store.
They made sorbet and a smash cake, and set up a bouncy castle against the clock. Even if Spurge didn’t like it, the party was a success.
Jinger Duggar and her new husband Jeremy Vuolo couldn’t attended the party, living many hours away, so they “attended” via FaceTime.
“It’s going to be a challenge to get back for all of the family events because we’re so many hours away,” said Jinger of this new reality.
“It’s so strange to not have her around,” said Jessa.
Fortunately, Jinger and Jeremy were settling into married life in Texas quite well, even if his waistline is not what he’d like it to be lately.
“Me being out of shape is making this look a lot harder than it is,” said the ex-soccer pro after buying five pounds of cheese at the market.
“You look amazing, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jinger swooned, and then they had all the sex. We’re guessing. Off camera.
At the time this episode was filmed, Joy-Anna Duggar and Austin Forsyth – who we saw wed on TLC last week – had just begun courting.
Confusing as that is, we got to see them flip houses together. As Joy put it, it’s a good way to see how a partner “works under stress.”
Obviously he passed that particular test.
“It’s been way better than I ever thought,” Austin said, and dude wasn’t talking about home renovations … if you know what we mean!!
Okay, he sorta was. He gushed of Joy:
“I’ve learned you just have to quickly show her how to do something once. And soon enough, she’ll become better at it than you!”
Those Duggars are a resourceful lot!
Fortunately for home refurbishing purposes, and side hug purposes, Austin and Joy had a chaperone on hand in Forsyth’s handy father.
He also told the cameras how he once told young Austin that he had to flip and sell five houses on his own before he could get married.
That’s an extremely random-sounding benchmark, but as Jessa Duggar pointed out … they are working on house number five right now.
“I think he’s really eager to finish this last one,” Mr. Forsyth commented, and we have to think he wasn’t referring to any capital gains.
As for Joy’s take on this endeavor?
“We can distract each other from work when we’re trying to get a project done,” she revealed. “You don’t want it to be ALL work though.”
“You want to have fun too and make memories,” the 19-year-old added, and “I could see us doing this together in the future.”
We think that dream may just become reality. Just a hunch. We just hope Austin lets Joy-Anna wear pants in the process.
