Friday Five: Summer

Sorry about the only two posts this week situation… No excuses and no promises, just some thoughts on summer.

1. I’m incredibly happy that it’s grilling season. Last night we grilled all of our dinner. Pork chops, corn on the cob and peaches. It was wonderful!

Grill all the things!

2. We’ve been in wedding season for awhile and find ourselves wandering through Bed, Bath and Beyond with blue registries and trying to keep the gift receipts separate. It’s not just weddings though, there are bridal showers, bachelor/bachelorette parties, other wedding-related festivities on top of the normal summer festivities. I told someone the other day that I miss summers as a kid when I actually had time to be bored!

3. Our “summer” stuff like vacation and Cedar Point are already over with, which is in some ways sad and in other ways good because we don’t have a single free weekend until fall!

4. The fact that it’s summer means that I have excellent excuses to wear skirts and dresses… which I love. If you’d asked me that a few years ago, I’d roll my eyes and say that I’m a pants person. What changed?

5. Sun. Sunshine. Sunglasses. Sunny days. The bright, warm days and a little vitamin D for this D-deficient girl are just wonderful. (I do seriously have a vitamin D deficiency and the test results to prove it.)

My niece might like summer more than I do!

Tell me about your summer!

• What’s your favorite thing to grill? 
• Any big summer trips planned?
• What’s the best thing about warmer days?

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Friday Five (the first!)

The power of weather

Ask and you shall receive

I love getting mail (even if the mail doesn’t love me). I also know that I’m not alone in liking free stuff.

The Stuff

On two separate occasions, I signed up on Facebook pages to receive something free.

Mio released two new flavors: lemonade and blueberry lemonade. Already being a Mio user, I got excited when they let Facebook fans request to try a “sample” of one of the flavors. I  requested a blueberry lemonade. Six to ten days later, I had a full-size blueberry lemonade in the mailbox.

Target (or maybe it was Target Style) allowed their Facebook fans to request a free beauty bag with product samples. I jumped on the opportunity to try some different skincare problems and get some bonus coupons. When my Target beauty bag arrived, it was better than I had expected! The bag alone was worth the time spent submitted my request.

Things I Enjoyed In March

There are a few things that I’ve really come to love this month, so I thought I’d share them with you.

Freeze Dried Fruit

I decided to try Brothers All Natural freeze dried fruit when we saw it at Costco. The Fuji Apple bag has about one and a half apples and 9g of carbs. It’s nut, soy, gluten and dairy free; vegan, kosher and non-GMO because it’s just plain fruit!

Cherry ChapStick

A K-Couple Valentine’s Day

Today is our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple.

In the past we’d celebrated this day is both big and small ways. I had planned on blogging about Valentine’s Day tomorrow, after our evening plans. But I already have enough to say that I’ll share some of our Valentine’s Day with you.

The hardest part of every day is getting out of bed. Today was no different. I envied my husband for getting to spend 15 more minutes in bed than I did. We left for work at the same time and wished each other a happy Valentine’s Day before parting ways.

Shortly after starting my work day, a tall gentleman, hiding behind a bouquet of roses appeared in my office doorway. Brad had taken some time off work this morning to self-deliver a dozen red roses to me at work.

That meant I got to show off introduce my wonderful husband to some of my coworkers. And my office smells like roses, that’s never a bad thing.

Later in the morning he emailed me a math equation: sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7) *(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

I, of course, put it in Google and got this:

Wedding Band Rebellion

I must be a rebel. I wear my rings in the wrong order!

There are a lot of not traditional trends in weddings and marriages theses days so I’m sure I’m not alone.

I’ve been asked by a couple of brides-to-be why I wear my rings this way and I typically answer that there are two thought processes.

Baby Showers and Crude Books

A couple of my cousins are expecting babies within the next few months and I received invitations to their baby showers. In lieu of cards, they requested children’s books (which is an awesome idea because kids books aren’t only really cool, they can add up if you want to have a good library).

When I was out Christmas shopping with a friend I took a break from Christmas to check out the children’s book section of the store in hopes of finding a great book for the first shower. And there it was:

I excitedly purchased the book and then I checked the registry and they had registered for some Dr. Seuss-themed baby goodies which went along well with the book. I just had to tell my aunt about it… and the following text conversation occurred (thanks to my phone’s crude sense of humor):

Tradition and Memories

I ran across this list of Christmas Eve traditions.

I was shocked to see that one of my family’s was top of the list with a few elements of the other traditions. When I was growing up, there would be a present for each of us that was marked with a star on the gift tag. That was the Christmas Eve present. After arriving home from Christmas Eve church service, we would light the last candle on our Advent wreath and open the starred present. Inside each present was a pair of Christmas pajamas. We would all change into our new PJs and spend some time together as a family before heading off to bed.

On Christmas morning, we woke up in our brand new pajamas and gathered in the living room. Someone (usually dad) would read the Christmas story from the Bible then one of us kids (usually my brother) would pass out the presents. After presents were opened, breakfast would be eaten and we would spend the day playing with our gifts.

I remember one year I received the game Don’t Break the Ice and I played it all day with anyone who would sit on the floor and play it with me.

Our First Christmas

This Christmas will be so different than any other Christmas I’ve had for many reasons, the main one being that it’s my first Christmas as Mrs. K!

I’ve always loved putting up the Christmas tree and remember as I was growing up the certain ornaments that were really special. My family did the traditional “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments and we each had a special ornament, my mom and dad had a special ornament also for their first Christmas together.

Last year's Christmas tree in my college apartment

As a new wife, I wanted us to have a special ornament for our first Christmas together. Did you know that there are a lot of cheesy first Christmas ornaments?

Our attachment to places

Continuing my unintentional, yet enjoyable, series of “things we love” I’ve noticed that many people have a favorite place and they tend to gravitate towards it whenever they can.

The rest of this post will sound like I’m talking about vacation spots, but it applies to other places.

 

I went for the first time at age 18

Because most in my generation went to Disney World and/or grew up watching Disney classics, there’s an overwhelming number of millennials who are attached to “the happiest place on earth.” And why not? It’s a cool, but expensive, place to go. It’s also tiring at times because you want to see/do everything that you can in one day and in most cases, there are a bunch of children enjoying or not enjoying their time in the Magic Kingdom, which greatly impacts my levels of enjoyment.

 

 

 

 

But then there are the places that are just plain beautiful, relaxing, enjoyable whatever you want to say, that you can’t wait to visit because you can just enjoy them without running around or being subjected to a whole bunch of crazy.

You Never Forget Your First…

Car.

A friend and I were talking and she said eventually she’s going to need to replace her car, which made her a bit sad since she’s still driving her first car.

I don’t know a single adult with a driver’s license who can’t tell you the year, make, model, color and quirks of his/her first car. And they’ll recount driving adventures from when they were young.