Catching Up..

An update since I've abandoned this blog...

In March, we celebrated my then future sister-in-law in Greenville with a shower.  Sisters are fun, and I am psyched to have a new one.

And we moved my mom away from the house that I grew up in.  This was so bittersweet.  Bitter in that it's the only place that I remember ever living, a place where all of my memories from growing up reside, and to quote Miranda Lambert, is the place where "under that live oak, my favorite dog is buried in the yard".  It was sad to pack up and/or throw away so many things that had meant something to me at one point or another, and to know that I couldn't ever "come home" again.  But sweet in that the house that I loved so much had become a burden in the past several years.  My mom lived there alone and the upkeep was a lot to handle.  Things would break and it was expensive and the mortgage was too high.  So while it was a blessing to grow up in such a great neighborhood, it really was time to say goodbye.  And since then, my mom has moved into an apartment nearby.  I think that everyone who's lived in an apartment can attest to the simplicity of that life, and it's been really good.

In April, we celebrated Easter in Hilton Head with Sean's family.  It was kind of a cold weekend, but I can't complain about the beach!

In May, we celebrated Jensen and Laura as they graduated from college.  Jensen received the President's Award, and I can't say how proud of him that I am.  He was the student body president, the editor-in-chief and founder of the Anderson University Centennial Yearbook, a member of SGA as well as a member of the homecoming court (which he does not claim as an "accomplishment", but as his sister, I will) for the duration of his college career, a Presidential Ambassador, an intern for a company in Greenville, a board member for a business society (that I don't remember the name of), and still graduated Cum Laude with a job to start the following Monday.

Laura graduated Summa Cum Laude with a perfect 4.0 GPA and a teaching job to start in the fall.  She also had an impressive list of accomplishments including being a Teaching Fellow and the preschool director for a local church.  I know that she will be a phenomenal kindergarten teacher.  She already has tons of great ideas for her classroom and is so passionate about it.  It makes me wish that I could be in her class.

In June, we celebrated Jensen and Laura again as they got married in Florence.  My youngest brother, my cousin, my husband, and myself were all in the wedding, and it was fun to have a time aside from Christmas to all be together.  Since I've already bragged on Jensen and Laura a lot during this blog, I'll just say that we're really proud of them and love them very much :)

L to R:  Kristen, Wallace, Bo, Jensen, Laura, Me, and Sean

In July, Sean and I went to Orlando to visit his grandparents and go to Disney World.  I had not been to Disney World since I was pretty young and it was awesome.  After a lot of debate, we decided on Hollywood Studios as the park to visit, since that was the one that I thought I'd never been to and I think it was a good choice.  My mom pointed out later, sounding almost hurt that she had gone to the trouble of creating this memory for her children only to have me forget all about it, that I have actually been there.  Tower of Terror was amazing, and as someone with little Disney World experience, I was blown away by how much went into each ride and show.  I'd love to go back in January and run the Disney Half Marathon, but that's still up in the air :)  Sean said that he would settle for just going back in January, sans 13 miler.

I insisted that we wait in line with tons of little kids for the half an hour that it took to get this picture.  Sean said that he "didn't mind SEEING Mickey, but didn't have to have a picture".  I begged to differ, as this is part of the experience.

Disney's own Chinese Theater

We celebrated July 4th with Nick and Lyndsey in Charlotte in typical 4th of July fashion on the lake kayaking and finished the day grilling at our house.  Hanging out with our best friends/siblings makes me feel bad for people without them.

And...that's about it.

This Great New House: Front Door

I've been making a point to go into our house through our front door instead of the garage so I can take a minute to be happy with myself for our DIY front door :)

Pre-makeover

Since making this wreath, a bird has made her nest in the flowers which makes me feel particularly spring-y.

 I saw a welcome sign similar to this on Pinterest, took a trip to Home Depot, and there ya go.  Since I love painting and holidays, I'm psyched about this switchable sign.

 The finished product

This Great New House: Powder Room

This is one of my favorite rooms in our house because this is where I get ready.  We painted it grey and put in a few other little things to improve it including a medicine cabinet, a rug, and some white towels.  I'm so happy with it :)

Original

Winter Sports, Summer Sun

Last week, Sean headed out to Sun Valley, Idaho for a conference with work.  In addition to being home of the Power Engineers headquarters, it's also one of America's premier ski resorts, so I flew out later in the week to meet Sean for the recreational part of the trip.  I can honestly say that, randomly, this was one of the most fun vacations that I've ever been on (and I consider myself a beach person...with an appreciation of the mountains).  In Idaho.

Sun Valley Club, where we had dinner with Sean's company on Thursday night

 Dollar Mountain.  This is the beginner mountain, a build up to Bald Mountain.  This one is 1000 vertical feet and proved difficult enough for both of us.  Neither of us even managed to be able to safely ski all of the green slopes.  There's like, 30 slopes on this mountain and over 2 days we couldn't even attempt all of them.

 Bald Mountain in the background of the top of Dollar.  That one is 3000 vertical feet, but other than eating on it, we stayed on this safer choice :)

 River Run Lodge, at the base of Baldy where we had an amazing breakfast Saturday morning

 We rode a gondola midway up Baldy for lunch at the roundhouse

The Roundhouse.  One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

 The level of talent that skis here is unlike any I've ever seen.  This mountain is covered in almost straight vertical moguls.  But even little kids were zipping down these and into the trees, no problem.  Unbelievable.

 Natural hot springs in the west are pretty cool.  We drove almost 7 miles down a tiny snow covered dirt road to get here, to this isolated little hot spring in the river.  It's a little weird to strip down to a bathing suit in the middle of the snow and maneuver down a hill into hot water, but it's one of the cooler experiences I've ever been privy to.

 Brunch in the lodge dining room.  While we look pretty beat here, this was so relaxing.  We spent a couple of hours eating an unbelievable breakfast and drinking coffee in this cozy dining room while watching it snow outside.

Ski Boots

This weekend we celebrated Sean's 24th birthday with a trip to the mountains.  I booked this trip a little while back, and would have loved to have been someone who could keep it to myself until Friday when we left, but secret-keeping isn't much of my strong point, so I had to give it to him at Christmas.  So so much for that :)

We stayed here, which ended up being a decent place to stay, and the food was awesome, but when we got there I was surprised to find that instead of the bed and breakfast, lodge with a fireplace environment that I'd envisioned, that we were staying in a cabin room at the top of a dirt hill (advertised as "mountain view").  It had a bed with a quilt, a shower that was literally a glorified tile corner, a toilet that you couldn't use if you were much bigger than me, and a space heater.  We had to follow 'Jacob' up a sketchy dirt hill in the middle of nowhere to find it.  If you watched LOST, then you know why we were prompted to go ahead and text Lyndsey to let her know where we were staying in case we didn't ever come back.  That said, it'd be nice in the summer and if you were expecting these accommodations, really.  But I wasn't.  Since I'm married to an eternal optimist though, Sean didn't cry, and instead saw the bright side.  This was all he could come up with:  "Do you have the rest of your Nutter Butter?  You should leave it outside to see if we can lure a bear.  You think bears like Nutter Butters?".  Later, when I apologized for my lack of research concerning a place to stay, Sean looked on the bright side with the following:  "But Maria!  If we hadn't stayed HERE, we'd never be able to see a bear eating a Nutter Butter!!".  We didn't end up seeing a bear eating a Nutter Butter.  Or any bears for that matter.  But we did find a fireplace in the multipurpose room above us which lessened the blow.

Aside from this small detail though, we had a great time.  I highly recommend the place to eat or camp.  The food was SO good and the service was great.  And it was relatively close to a lot of things.  On Friday night, we hung out by the aforementioned fireplace with a glass of wine from the resort's vineyard (a nice touch on their part) playing games.  That sounds lame, but I love hanging out with Sean, and it's pretty freeing to be in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception...even if it did start out a little creepy.  We spent Saturday morning at Grandfather Mountain where I spent plenty of time in my childhood, Saturday afternoon and night trying to sharpen some of our skiing skills, and Sunday hiking and shopping in Blowing Rock.

The view from part of our Grandfather Mountain hike

The top of Grandfather.  At the risk of sounding dramatic, I'm not sure what the wind speeds were at the top of this mountain, but I felt like I needed to sit down to keep from blowing over.  According to the weather report from the mountain, they've charted wind speeds at 115 mph and temperatures as cold as -32 degrees F.  Obviously, it wasn't that cold or that windy, but it felt like it to me.

1 mile high suspension bridge at the top of Grandfather.  As a civil engineer, this suspension bridge was pretty much the highlight of Sean's entire trip.  At his request, I also have pictures of the turnbuckles and springs that operate this bridge in a way that Sean would have to be the one to explain.  But I'm just keeping them for us to enjoy :)  He crossed it, but like I said, I was scared.  Even as a non-civil engineer, this is pretty cool.  But I've been here on a sunny day as well, and it's still scary.

Sugar Mountain- the reason for our entire trip.  Hopefully in that afternoon/evening, we've sharpened our skills enough to ski Idaho in 6 weeks, although that's doubtful.

Casualty of the trip.  In addition to Sean's elbow.  Sean is insisting that this "isn't that bad", but he can't feel it, and as long as there's any visible evidence of this catastrophe, then it's "that bad".  Naturally, this wasn't my fault, but the resort's since it was the result of a huge patch of straight ice :)

Sunday short hike to a waterfall near the lodge on the Toe River.  It'd be a good place to swim sometime around July, I'm sure.

This is such a fun place to go, and there's so much to do, especially in the summer.  And it's always fun to spend some time in a place so different from home.  Happy Birthday Sean!  You're such a blessing to me and I hope this year's the BEST EVER!

It's already been a year since we didn't become better people, but it never hurts to try again.

We haven't really done resolutions in that we aren't going to commit to running a set number of miles per week, and we're not going to eat more vegetables even though we should, and we're not going to lose weight (I saw a poster that said that the 20 lbs you gained over the holidays makes your resolution of losing 10 less impressive, and this applies here).  But we do have goals, and one of the few things that I learned from Motivational Psychology in college was that writing them down is a good step towards attainment.  So we sat down and came up with the following "be a better person by next year" list.

Spiritually:  

Truly pray for the people that we say we will pray for, and write it down so we don't forget.  I hate it when people use the phrase "I'll be praying for you" or "you're in my prayers" because while well-meaning, that's a lie and what they mean is "I'm glad it's you and not me and that makes me feel sorry for you".  I am certainly guilty of confusing the two sentiments, but they're not the same thing.

Create goals within the groups that we lead at church to improve the preschool  and elementary school ministries, and follow through with them.  Sean would like to add here that he's going to "keep doing what he's doing".  I guess Meredith Lamb needs to humble him a little in the near future.

Read the Bible every day.  "Quiet Time" is something that we both struggle with and could do much better holding each other accountable in.  There have been times that we've been much better when we have a more structured plan, so that's something that we need to reinstate.

Consider leading an e-group in the fall.  Either for young married couples or for high school/middle school.


Relationally:


Make being uplifting towards Sean my biggest priority.  One of the most eye-opening things that I have learned about marriage this year is that you should pretty much be in a good mood, or at least act like it, all of the time.  People don't normally give that as advice because it sounds unrealistic, unattainable, and "fake".  But that doesn't mean that you can't have a bad day, just that you can't use that as an excuse to be a jerk.  I'll say that I think that I do a good job with this, but it's still my biggest relational goal of the year.  Sean makes fun of this saying that I'm basically saying "I'll just keep doing what I'm doing because I'm great at it!" but I've reminded him that he's lucky to be married to someone that he can't argue is great at being nice :)  And I can improve in uplifting him.

Sean says that he hasn't bought me flowers in a while.  Does that count as a goal?

Sean also expressed some sentiment that he wants to make sure that my needs and wants are a priority to him, citing that it's easier to tell me no than people at work...or in e-kids...or his parents...or Mogatu (who's a cat).  I'm not totally sure how to take that, but he smiled when he said it...

And then he expressed some concern that this is public on my blog, and thus the end of our relational goals.


Professionally:


Be involved in some professional organization or team through the NICU outside of general staff nursing.  I did a lot of different things within and outside of nursing at Clemson that I enjoyed,  but since starting work, have felt like a pretty mediocre asset at best and could probably do better.

Do and feel comfortable doing NICU admissions.

Sean wants to get better and more relied upon to communicate with clients.


Financially:


Stick to the budget that we have set.  Our budget is set in a way that encourages us to live a lifestyle that would afford me the ability to not work full time when we have children.  It's not particularly difficult, but I am guilty of spending money keeping in mind that I have an entire income instead of in a way that respects a budget really is set to ultimately benefit me.

Give on a level that requires faith.  Recognize the difference between a tithe and an offering and show that recognition in our giving patterns.

Other:


Put curtains in our living room (I realize how shallow this sounds).

Redonate our dining room table and get a new one.

Sean wants to attempt to dispell the notion that he's a crazy cat guy.  It's not helping that his goal earlier in this blog was to prioritize me over the tabby.  Or maybe it will help.

I refuse to reminisce about the past year unless it's in a "best of" format.

I'm not so much a fan of the "how far we've come" reflections, mainly because I keep this blog for that very reason, but in a best of format, I don't mind.

January:  I got my job offer.  It snowed enough for Sean to take an early day off of work and make soup and grilled cheese.  I took a cake decorating class.  I spent most of my time doing crafty stuff.  We celebrated Sean's 23rd Birthday.


February:  We went to a cooking class.  We celebrated Valentine's Day with surf and turf.  We spent a weekend at a hotel in Uptown Charlotte.  My mom finished her "bad chemo".


March:  I started my job at the beginning of this month.  We visited my family in San Francisco.  I learned to sew.


April:  We spent most of this month looking at houses.  We celebrated Easter in Charlotte.


May:  We bought our first house.  We celebrated Jake's graduation in Hilton Head.  We started our new roles at Elevation.  We celebrated the marriage of Dallas and Liz in Beaufort.


June:  We spent most of this month settling into our new house.


July:  We celebrated the fourth of July at the whitewater center and had a full date weekend.


August:  We celebrated our one year anniversary.  We adopted two cats, Aurora and Oliver.  I went to night shift.  We spent the majority of the month in an effort to restore the health of our adopted cats, and sadly lost one.  I started a young women's Bible Study with Holly Furtick about marriage.  I have learned SO much about our relationship from this study.


September:  We celebrated Labor Day in Hilton Head with Sean's parents, Nick, and Lyndsey.


October:  We went to New England to see the leaves in North Conway, NH and ate lobster in Maine.


November:  We celebrated Thanksgiving in Charlotte with Sean's family.


December:  I turned 24.  We celebrated Christmas in Charlotte, in Greenville, and in Alpharetta.

We have been abundantly blessed.