Catching up {& Random Thoughts}

Happy weekend, friends! I hope yours is an enjoyable one. 

Thanks to all of you for your kind words and support since the last blog post. Y'all are the best. I looked through photos to add to this blog post and I haven't even been taking as many photos lately! Weird. By the time weekends come, I've been exhausted recently. My body and mind have just needed to veg it seems. So I've let it! Weekends lately consist of college football on Saturdays and church, maybe grocery shopping and napping on Sundays. 

We just started a 6-week marriage bible study at church this week. So far, I'm loving it! The study is called "With" in case you're curious. It has led to good conversations and thought processes. I'm excited to keep walking through it together. So far we've reminded ourselves to schedule regular date nights, and try to be intentional about our time together. Let's face it: living with someone else and doing life together every day can be hard after a while! We're different people. He doesn't do things the way I do (which obviously my way is the right way;)), think the way I do, or know exactly what I hope he'd read from my body language. Haha, you know what I mean. It takes intentional work to me, and I like doing studies like this to remind us to keep our focus. 

We also recently celebrated our 6 year anniversary! In some ways it feels WAY longer, and in some ways, that number feels pretty big! We've squeezed a lot into these years, that seems certain. Between our moves, job changes (with our moves), etc., it feels like we've just now started to steady out. I also realize I'm getting older, which is crazy. I'm pretty positive I'll be 23 forever. We shall see ;). Oh yes, here are some photos of our anniversary date night since I never shared them here. 

Nick had reservations at a fancy restaurant for us. The food was SO GOOD. It was a quality experience too, where they take time to really go through the menu (especially helping me with the gluten & dairy free thing). 

We splurged on an appetizer, nice wines, expensive meals (haha!), and desserts. Since it was our anniversary, they provided glasses of champagne for us too, to enjoy a toast. 

Our shrimp appetizer was so fresh and tasty! (I forgot to take a pic of our entrees, but we loved and devoured them). 

Desserts and champagne. My dessert was fresh orange sorbet - so tasty! Nick's was a bourbon bread pudding I think. It looked amazing.

After that, we walked around downtown and saw a group gathered, ready to help with a marriage proposal. They were taking pics forever and we could tell the soon-to-be-engaged couple wasn't there yet, so we walked around other areas and came back to see this same group taking pics with the bride and groom to be, showing off her new bling. It was so fun to see! I seriously love love stories. 

Cheers to 6 years, my dear!

In other news, I haven't gotten even a trim since my major haircut in the spring and I'm trying to figure out what cut to do next. It's angled now (like below), and I've thought about cutting off the angle just to be straight across. I'm also trying to figure out if I should get bangs back. I'll probably search Pinterest for hours and make a decision by Christmas. Kidding, I'm hoping to make a decision within a few weeks and get 'er done. 

It also has been one year since I got off my fibromyalgia medications! I have to remind myself what a big accomplishment that is. I still have progress to make, and I have bad pain days that take me down here and there. It's still a chronic not fun thing to deal with, but I have things that can help me too, which I'm thankful for. Not taking medications means I'm dealing with the symptoms! They still ebb and flow depending on things I can't even identify sometimes. Other times, it can be over-exerting myself physically, too much stress, posture issues, food sensitivities, etc.  

I talked with a friend recently about the idea that people like the idea of having a great testimony for the Lord, but they don't want to have to walk through the valley to come out on the other side. Some days I mentally feel fine and feel like I can conquer anything before me. Other days, I mentally can feel that I'm in the valley of this testimony. 

That being said, we all have so many things in our lives we may feel have us in the valley. We all have tough things in our lives we're dealing with. Let's support and encourage each other and know that the family that looks perfect on social media has their own tough things they're dealing with. My life isn't perfect, y'all. I try to encourage others and post things I think may make someone laugh, give them an idea for something to try, or share something happening in our life. Maybe it's just a pretty photo I took. It's never to make you think my life is perfect - cause I'm the first to tell you it can't be! Nothing on this side of heaven is perfect. We're all imperfect. Let's embrace it and enjoy this life. If you're on instagram, you may enjoy the hashtag #myrealreallife a friend of mine started. I'm thankful to be on this imperfect journey with all of you! 

Well that blog post was all over the place! Haha. I have missed this space to write our my words and hope I can hop over here more than I did over the summer. I hope you're well, my dears!

Today's Pinspiration:

Haha, I LOVE this! Virtual high fives to you all. 

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Our Bed & Breakfast Getaway {4 Year Anniversary}

I knew Nick had something up his sleeve for our 4th anniversary, I just had no clues as to what it would be. He planned this a few weeks in advance and even sought out input from someone who was familiar with where he wanted to take me. He made all the plans and even tried to throw me off, by asking questions like "Have you ever been zip lining, and do you have an underlying heart condition?" Ha! I answered him, skeptical at this point about what this plan was. On our way there, he asked "Have you ever been bunji jumping?" Oh boy.. what was I in for?! :)

The day before we left (two weeks ago now), he told me we'd be leaving at 12pm Saturday, and would be back around the same time on Sunday. He said we'd been in the car for a little while, and approved the things I packed (I asked him to, to be sure I dressed for the right occasion). We drove west and south. Any potential ideas were out of my mind at that point, because I'd never been south of Fort Worth on this particular highway and had no idea what would be there.

After driving for about an hour, we arrived at this adorable little town square. 

This courthouse in the middle of the square is so pretty! 

We drove by the town square to check in to our Bed & Breakfast

It's such a quaint little place! The couple who owns this business has 4 cottages on this land (a few blocks from the square) and also two suites on the town square.

Nick checked in while I stayed in the car and he brought this back - I was so excited to see our place! I had never even told him I've always wanted to stay in a Bed & Breakfast. Plus, we were set away from the action, in Granbury, TX. 

Our suite was the three windows over Jezebelle's, you can see our little tan door to get up there just to the left of the shop.

They did such a beautiful job with these suites

The view outside of our window! SO cute. I've always loved small town squares. There's also so many boutiques there! Oh my heart was jumping with joy. And I was so excited Nick thought of this all! 

This is the second bedroom/sitting room. So cute and classy.

After we got settled, I rested for a bit, and we were off to check out the square. So much to see! 

They had a Elvis show playing at this theatre - we thought about getting tickets, but chose to spend money on other things, but this entry way is so neat! 

They also have a beach to a lake a few blocks from the square, this cute victorian was on the way. So picturesque for a nice small town.

We realized we wrote the same things on the outside of our 4 year anniversary cards. Cue "aww..." :) 

We went out to dinner for a date night. Oh how I love date nights!

Dinner was so good - we checked the menu before going so I could eat something good. I got a gluten free margherita pizza without cheese - it was delish! 

Sunday morning, we went back to the cottages for breakfast (which they also made gluten and dairy free for me). The koi in this pond were huge. 

The court house again, closer up this time. Such a pretty building. 

One of the other shops we really liked was Dog Tired - that was the weekend we agreed to keep Ranger, we had fun browsing all of the cute dog stuff there. 

Here's the necklace I got (with matching earrings!) at one of the cute boutiques. 

We had such a great getaway and it was so refreshing to enjoy some quality time together and not have an agenda. Thanks to my hubby for planning this great getaway for us! I appreciate that he could see this would be worth it for us. And it was. Happy four years, and many many more, my love! 

Today's Pinspiration:

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Puppy!

Anniversary #4
Nick and I are heading to enjoy our anniversary weekend shortly (Nick is surprising me with where we're headed, I'm excited!), but I wanted to do a quick photo dump puppy photos! Nick and I are celebrating 4 years of marriage which is pretty crazy! It's been quite the journey in these 4 years - moving everywhere, learning about fibromyalgia, and having many new work situations with each of our moves. I'm so blessed and thankful to have Nick by my side. As I've written many times here, he helps me so much on a daily basis, encourages me, and carries my burdens as his. Marriage is one of my very favorite things:) Love you, sweetest babe!

Joe
I got to talk with my step dad Joe on Monday and it was great to hear his voice sounding better and talk with him a bit longer than the quick conversations we've had while he was in the hospital. He still has a lot of healing and recovering to do, but he's out of the hospital (YAY!) and has family to help him transition. He's been walking with a walker to regain strength, and has been having a harder time managing pain since he gets nauseous with the go-to pain meds. Nights have been tough for that reason. We've been praying his nights and pain will get better, for continued healing, for strength, and for mental endurance on the long road to recovery. He will be laying low for at least a month to recover. Thank you all for your prayers for him and checking in to see how he's doing. It's great to celebrate the improvements he's been making! 

Puppy News!
He was born early Tuesday morning (about 6am). After hours went by with no more pups, mom and pup were taken to the vet to see if there were more pups on the way - nope! Just this little cutie, a litter of one. 

Her breed typically has smaller litters anyway, but very early on - like the week after she was in heat, she had a pretty messy miscarriage, poor thing:(. There may have been more than one in that episode, so I think the rest of the litter just didn't make it. She's had many litters with previous owners, so I think her body wasn't capable of a larger litter at this point. I think this pup is lucky he made it through that and her body kept him and grew him. I also think it's funny to look back at the videos I posted of her tummy movement (mostly through Instagram @eatexploreenjoy) and now know it's just this one pup that was moving around so much!

Here he is:

 Right after he was born! Yes, it was messy - sorry.

He's a fast mover so getting a still shot of him pretty much only happens when he's sleeping! 

One of my very favorite pictures of the mom and pup - taken by Nick!  

My turn to feed 

 Mama Indy is always closeby, inspecting him and cleaning him. She's a great mama.  

The bottle feeding master at work

He's two days old here 

We're weighing him to be sure he's getting enough milk/gaining weight.  He's at 5.5 ounces now - so tiny! Yet a normal size for the breed. 

Tongue out- Mama Indy 

Today's Pinspiration:

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