2015 Goals - July Update

It's been a while since I updated on my new years resolutions and how they're going. I would say "eeehhhh...". -_-

1. Be at work on time every day. If I have something I have to be at, I'm there early. If I don't have anything scheduled early, I can never get myself there before 8:30/9. It's pitiful really. Still a goal I have. I had a plan to get up and be at spin class every morning, which would get me up and more likely to be ready to go to work on time, but I've missed all but one of those 5:45am classes. I seriously suck at this. Still a big work in progress.

2. Cut back on 'after school activities'. School's out for the summer! I do need to remember that it's ok to just be home some nights and not be running from one activity to the next. 

3. Sign up for a half-marathon and get to the gym. So Stacie and I have decided that we're going to run the full marathon in October. Oh good Lord what have we decided to do? Except we haven't been running that much. After Pelotonia maybe?

4. No fast food. I've still been doing pretty good at this. I don't eat out that much. But occasionally do go to McDonald's and get a McFlurry and fries.

5. No social media. I'm back on all of it. 

6. Study my Bible daily. I didn't do this every day, but I am doing better. I'm doing a bible study this summer with Marcey and a few girls from my class that focuses on hearing God's voice. Something that I always struggle with because I don't know if he's trying to tell me do something or just me?

7. Be a better communicator. It's going ok. Sometimes I'm a little too bossy and I also worry that by not being an open communicator that I come across as 'standoffish'. It's constantly a work in progress.

Life Lately - Summer and Fairs Week

Somehow it's already the end of July and school will start back up in just 5 weeks. NOOO!

I've been so busy this summer that I'm going to schedule a few 'do nothing days' over the next couple weeks so I can just be at home and enjoy summer.

Molly and I have made it to a few county fairs so far, with plans to go to a few more. Last week we went to Madison County and Kayla came along too. It was really disappointing because the buildings where the 4-H exhibits are were closed (set up for a dog show that wasn't for another 18 hours) and there was a Farm Bureau meeting in the FFA building. So we just kept walking around buying more food. (I see what they did there, marketing geniuses.) But we did get to watch a few classes of the hog show, eventually see the baby pigs in the FFA building (adorable!) and then spent way more time that we should have slow motion filming people on rides. People watching is awesome at county fairs.

We had a smiler while showing.

Love me some baby pigs. (And bacon!)

Fair rides.

Three girls who love fairs.

Bowie likes to snuggle with her mama at night. And mama doesn't complain.

Saturday morning we ran in the Color Run, then headed downtown to the Jazz and Rib Fest. I'd never been, but it was on my list of 101 Things to do in 1001 Days, so I was excited when Molly recommended going. Well it was 840 degrees outside and the lines were ridiculously long. We got some freebies from LL Bean and a few other tents and got a lemon shake up because we were so hot. But buy the time we ate our free rib slice from a sauce company and drank our shake up we were so hot we weren't hungry anymore. So we left.

A free rib from a sauce company. #freeforme

Molly enjoying her free rib. We also got free shots of margarita.

Jazz and Rib Fest selfie

That afternoon Caroline was in Ohio from Nebraska, so she came over for a little bit to visit. Molly and I had an awesome argument about cleaning the apartment about 15 minutes before she arrived (keeping it real). And then after Caroline headed back to Northern Ohio, Molly and I headed south.

We went to the Clinton County Fair, which was not worth the trip. As soon as we got there, it got really cloudy and started lightening. Then all of the displays were gone. No commercial building, no 4-H displays, all of the animals were gone. My biggest pet peeve is cleaning up things before an event is over. So we paid full price admission to get in and there was nothing to see. Ugh. I got to visit with Sarah and her kiddos for a hot second before it started raining.

Clinton County Fair selfie (with the sweet tea too)

We got to our parents late on Saturday night. Their A/C was broken. Awesome. My bedroom has absolutely no air flow and the windows have been painted shut since 1975. It was a sauna. I tried to sleep on the couch for a while, but eventually moved a fan to my bedroom. But first I found this scene...Molly sleeping on the floor, while Posey got the couch. My parents had gotten new couches two days before, so we had four couches in the living room that night. We moved them out the next day.

Sunday we cleaned out the garage and moved our old couches out there. It was the hottest day of the year and we're all in a dirty garage. I was so sweaty and had not brought clothes home to do this in. We found this sweat bands in dad's construction stuff (looked like this) and we had them on our foreheads, our neck, molly and I had them stuffed down the front of our shirts. At one point Molly even had a popsicle in her shirt. It was so hot. If only we had a pool.

We had came home to go to an event for Zach Farmer. I'll talk more about that later, but we spent the afternoon doing that and then spent a few hours at Mam and Papaws before heading back to Columbus. It was an unplanned busy weekend, but that means we had a lot of time to be spontaneous.

Vacation 2015 - Part 1

We did something a little different from our past vacations and added a few days in Savannah to the front of our normal trip to Myrtle Beach. 

My parents also like to take relaxing vacations. And going to a new destination and trying to find new places to stay and eat is not relaxing. Do this means we have a pretty identical vacation every year. Which is fine, but over the past few years Molly and I have had the itch to go and do and see more things when traveling. The problem is we LOVE the beach, so we don't really want to get rid of the beach trip and we don't want to take away a day of beach time to drive or do something else. 

When I'm at the beach I want to sit on the beach for all of the hours of the day and never leave. I do not like to take an afternoon and go to the mall, or the soccer store, or the teacher store, because I only get 4-6 days a year to be on the beach. I want to be out there in the sand, sun and water for all the time I can. Sometimes I don't even go in for lunch!

So for the past few years, she and I have been doing little trips in the spring. We've been to NYC, St. Pete Beach, Disney World, St. Augustine, Savannah, and Charleston all in one road trip, New Orleans, Charleston, Niagara Falls and Canada and we have so many places on our bucket list for future travels. 

Mom wanted to get in on a road trip with us and since she refuses to fly anywhere, the tropics weren't an option. We decided on a few days in Savannah and Mom booked tours and dinners and a bunch of fun things for us to do. Dad got in on the trip too when we all realized there wasn't any other way for him to get to the beach part of the family vacation without going to Savannah first. He was pessimistic about it, but ended up enjoying the tours and the history of the city and already has made comments about wanting to go to Charleston for a few days next year prior to the beach. Yay!

We left early on a Wednesday morning and traveled straight to Savannah. Molly and I took over the back seat and I can't really remember any problems. Molly likes to take advantage of being the baby of the family and take up all the room. Complete with 29,394 pillows. 

We stayed at the Embassy Suits and it was wonderful. So clean, the staff was wonderful, and they had free drinks and appetizers every day from 5:30-7:30pm! FREE! 

On Thursday, we walked down to River Street, looked at the river, visiting a few different shops and had dinner at the Cotton Exchange Tavern (awesome sweet tea, btw), went to a market, etc. About halfway through the walk, Dad headed back to the hotel and we visited Forsythe Square and a bunch of little shops. Some of my favorite shops were Saints and Shamrocks and the adorable Kitchen on the Square. 

Molly being "waving girl" along the Savannah River. 

On Friday we had tours scheduled in the evening. We had already walked a lot, so we rented bikes from their bike share program and rode around town. We went down to Forsytle Square and rode along the river too. We had to make a pit stop for sweet tea back at the Cotton Exchange Tavern. This was probably one of my favorite things we did.

Friday afternoon we went on our Paula Deen tour. I mean, what's a visit to Savannah without eating at Paula Deen's restaurant? The tour took us around the city and the driver/guide told us all about Paula's life, showed us her original home and restaurants and then the best part was that we got to eat at her restaurant at the end of the tour! The food was great. My favorites were the macaroni and the green beans. And then I had her Gooey Butter Cake for dessert. OMG....(insert angels singing here!). It was delicious.

Mom and Molly - sweet tea in hand, of course.

Daddio and me. (Paula Deen Tour - #girldadprobs)

Family Selfie

So much deliciousness on one plate.

Our waiter captured us about to explode after dinner.

After the tour ended Molly and I went back out on the town, while Mom and Dad cooled off at the hotel. It was 359 degrees outside in Savannah. I have never been so sweaty in my life. We visited the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low (founder of Girl Scouts) and the Forrest Gump bench, which actually isn't there.

A bench in the same park. 

My pretty sis.

Just a random trellis that was pretty. 

That night we went on a ghost tour of Savannah. It wasn't scary at all, it was more historical with a little ghost stories thrown in there. We visited the site where slaves were sold and how no Spanish Moss grows in the square because it doesn't grow were bad things take (took) place. We saw the "caves" where slaves were taken if they were too sick to be sold, and ultimately died. Some of the stories were about socialittes who hanged themselves because they'd blown all their money, but still haunt their old house. There were a lot of cool stories. We never got any orbs or images in any of the photos that we took, but Molly and I both saw something on her screen when the flash went off, but nothing showed up in the actual picture. 

ghosts all around us?

The picture where the 'thing' was, but then wasn't.

Sisters on a ghost hunt.

Saturday was the 4th of July! We went on a river boat cruise for lunch along the Savannah River. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it was fun. The captain told us a lot of history while we were on the cruise, which was cool.

Official Photo

Molly and Mama

Me and Papa

Mama with her girls

After the cruise, we went to Tybee Island beach and just spent a few hours in the sun. The beach was totally different from Myrtle Beach in that it was just a beach - no hotels, no lifeguards, no rules. There were also no waves, so everyone was just hanging out in the water with their drinks and then had tents set up with flags and streamers (so many Georgia Bulldog tents, yuck!).

Georgia Beach selfie.

 We had to leave the beach because it started to rain. So then we stayed in the hotel all evening. I got fidgety because I just wanted to do something. Molly and I eventually decided to walk to this train museum, but then when we got outside and realized it actually wasn't raining, just looked like it, we walked to the river to watch the fireworks. We were so frustrated because we had cute red, white, and blue outfits to wear and we were in Ohio State clothes. The fireworks were nice, we went back to this haunted tunnel where Molly freaked out on me because I wanted to go down the stairs and she was afraid of ghosts killing me, then we went back to the hotel.

Supporting the #1 football team in SEC country is American!

Sunday we drove from Savannah to Myrtle Beach and did a little pit stop in  Charleston. It was an adventure of a drive, and after lunch at Fleet Landing (so good!) and a quick walk around Battery Park, I got to drive the rest of the way to the beach. A real miracle that someone other than dad was behind the wheel. ha.

We also found this fixer upper to buy. For $5.5 million.

The haaaba (harbor) behind us, I do declare.

That's all for the first part of our vacation. The 6 days at the beach were pretty uneventful, but I have a few pictures to share later. 

Color Run 2015

I ran the Color Run on Saturday with Molly and Avery. We created a team way back in the winter and had a few others from Piketon join in on the fun.

I had done the Color Run in 2012 with my brother, cousin and some friends. It was fun, so I was looking forward to doing it again this year. The route was completely different. It didn't take us through Victorian Village, but we did go thru Franklinton. Basically the same place, right? ha. 

Avery was adamant she was walking this 5K, but guess who ended up running the first mile and would have to stop, run backwards or run the opposite flow of traffic to meet back up with Molly and me? Our little Avery who wasn't going to run.  #thatgirl :) We might have all walked the majority of the rest of the run (it was very crowded) and then of course ran to the finish line. 

We had four color stations - orange, yellow, pink, and blue - and then the glitter station (our favorite). 

When you have just a few colors on you, it's pretty. But by the time you've done all the stations, then participate in the little color throw party at the end, you're just a mess of colors and kind of look (and feel!) dirty. But it's still a lot of fun. 

I took my phone, but never took it out of my sports bra (TMI?). Molly took all of the pictures.

Sister Before/Sister After

After Orange/After All the Colors

It was a little hot. I was a little sweaty. 

Obviously the color and my sweat created stains.

Car selfie to show off the glitter.

All of the Piketon peeps team. 

Post race with our littlest sister.

We sweat glitter.

Next time I want to volunteer to be the person who throws the color on the runners. I think that would be the most fun!

Not me. Stole in from the internets.

Traveling Fool

I've been in Ohio about three days total over the past two weeks. I've only slept in my own bed the same amount of time too. But I'm not complaining!

Two weeks ago I went to Myrtle Beach with Jill and Amy. It was a low key girls trip to celebrate our 30th birthdays. It worked out that Jill's grandma owns a condo in North Myrtle Beach and Spirit Airlines has really cheap fares to get from Cleveland to the Myrtle Beach area. All we had to do was split the rental car and pay for our own meals. It was a pretty cheap vacation.

We spent the days on the beach and the evenings walking around at one of the many tourist areas. We had at new (to me) restaurants and had too much ice cream.

My safari themed room - it matched my bathing suit!

Molly and I had planned to go visit Lauren in NYC over the weekend when I returned, but she had to work till noon on Saturday and it just wasn't going to be worth it for us to spend two days driving and only be in the city for 12 hours. So I decided we should reschedule for later in July.

Instead I got caught up on things from being gone all week and then we went to Zoombezi Bay on Sunday afternoon after I got home from church. And while it rained we walked around the zoo a little bit and saw a very large lioness.

My favorite pion.

Just a baby giraffe. 

I was at work for one day last week and then traveled to Texas for a work conference. It was my first trip to Texas and I experienced non Texas weather since it rained the entire time I was there. Tropical Depression Bill was coming thru.

The conference was good. Not exactly what I expected, but a great networking opportunity and even if a session wasn't what I expected it to be, I still always get a lot of brainstorming done during sessions like that because something sparks an idea, so I came home with a few pages of notes that I need to sort thru and put into action over the coming days, weeks, and months.

We got to see a lot of cool things while we were there. We had dinner one night at the George Bush Presidential Library. That was really cool. I could have spent so much more time walking through the museum. I also toured Kyle Field, which was disappointing because of construction and a not so great tour guide. I wish I'd gone on the Bonfire Memorial tour instead. And then for Spirit Night we went to their amazing equestrian facilities. Seriously, amazing!

Me and George

Me and Barbie

Wedding Dress

President Emily

Side note about this picture above me. It was a photo op, they had a bunch of them throughout the museum. We asked one "older-ish" (50's) if she wanted a picture and she responded by saying "No, I don't believe in women being president!" Say what? First of all, it's a photo op. Do you believe in children being vegetables or farm animals, because there are photo ops like that at every county fair across the country! And two, what a horrible thing to say to young girls (even though we're 30!) but just imagine what she's said on that subject to her granddaughters. I hope they know they can be whatever they want to be and not what 1950 American told them they had to be. Rant over.

I was so over hearing how great the SEC is.

Our last night there, after the conference was over, a group of us went to a bar called the Dixie Chicken. One thing they had that Ohio definitely does not have is a rattle snake in the wall!! After playing a game of pool, the A&M Yell Leaders, who we'd met a few nights earlier as they led some 'yells' for us at Spirit Night, showed up to play 42. They were nice boys and taught us to play too and I believe I have a seat for an A&M game next fall if I can make it to College Station!

Playing "42" with the college boys. #stillgotit

Yell Leader approved!

Molly and I went home for Father's Day weekend and Saturday night wound up on the other side of the county during one of our random road trips. We ventured to Seip Mound, an old historic Indian burial site, that we used to have family picnic's at when we were little (creepy?). It seemed so much bigger when we were little!

And then last night we had a really beautiful sunset, so I had to grab a quick pic on our way home!