Canada Trip!

The past 10 days were a little nuts.

I flew to Ohio, drove to Canada, spent a week up there with 20 of my crazy family members, drove back to Ohio, then drove back down to Atlanta.

I spent 18 of the last 72 hours in a car w/ my husb and kitty.

I have done 10 loads of laundry in the past 8ish days.

After 5 hours of sleep, I am now back to work.

I have a 20 page paper due by midnight Friday that I have written exactly 0 pages of thus far.

Needless to say, blogging is not at the top of my priority list in the foreseeable future! But until I bid my summer class good riddance and get back to some semblance of normalcy in my life this weekend, I'll leave you with a few pics from our annual family vaca to Pigeon Lake :)

We packed most of our family into this lodge + 2 of the neighboring cabins. We had the whole camp to ourselves!

Husb unhooked about 500 fish... {thanks!}

We spent hours and hours boating and floating on the lake!

Bella had a relaxing week too :)

Captain Hubbs cruised us all over the place!

My cousin Chris caught a HUGE walleye!

We pushed off the dock before realizing no one had the boat key...

Little Mitchy got to "go faster!" all by himself (ok, w/ a little help)!

We celebrated Carter's 23rd bday!

There was some jet ski cruising throughout the week, too!

More details and pics to come, but for now the kiddos need naps and with any luck I'll knock out a few pages of this miserable paper before swimming lessons!

Post-vacation catch-up is exhausting. By the end of this week, I'll be ready for another vaca!

Checked Out

Sorry for the lack of posts lately! In my defense, I'm 4 hours north of the U.S. border on a lake in the middle of nowhere in Canada :)

My entire extended family (dad's side) come up here every summer for a week and we literally unplug. No cell phones. No TV. No internet. No flat irons. No air conditioning! Thanks to my dad's little get-internet-anywhere-in-the-world contraption, I've been able to jump online every day or so to keep up with work emails and a few school assignments, but that's about it!

I'll be back to real life - and back to blogging about it - next week! In the meantime, I'll keep snapping pics to share while we fish, boat, eat, jet ski, eat, ski, tube, and eat some more! Being checked out for the week from my daily technology regime has been refreshing -- but I'll be ready to head back to civilization tomorrow!

Summer Life Lessons

Don't worry, I'm not getting all philosophical on ya. Just documenting a few of the realizations I've come to this summer so that I don't forget having these epiphanies!

• Patience really is a virtue. Especially on the days I'm watching the 3 wee ones and I'm sick or tired. I have been really conscious of being patient with those sweet babies this summer and it takes a lot of effort and reminding!
• The more your employees feel valued and appreciated, the more likely they'll be to work hard for you and will want to see your business succeed! This has been such a great learning experience for me, since eventually my husb will have his own Chiropractic office - I'm so thankful to have experienced this life lesson first-hand!
• Joy is truly contagious. Sharing in other peoples' joy and celebrating with them is good for the soul! If you think about the last time you were really excited about something, it was probably the people who shared in your happiness that made it extra special!
• I love my family. Like, I really really really love my family. My husb and my Bella just complete my days. And my life! This isn't a "summer life lesson" but just something I am extra aware of lately. But beyond my wittle family, I just really appreciate and love the rest of my fam. Our parents, and siblings, and aunts/uncles/cousins, and all of my grandparents. I realize the older I get how rare it is to be surrounded by so much family on a daily basis - even when we don't live close enough to visit. As our annual family vaca approaches, I'm just reminded of how blessed I am to be so close to my family, and the more people I encounter who think that its really special is just reinforces this!

These aren't earth-shattering realizations, I know. But I think its important to sometimes reflect on knowledge you've gleaned from time to time... and it doesn't hurt to write it all down (even if it is just on your blog!) so that you can be reminded again and again as you read through old posts!

I'm headed *H.O.M.E.* tomorrow night and cannot wait to squeeze my husband and kittyyy! I am soo looking forward to spending a few days in our home town before heading north (way north) for our annual vacation w/ my whole side of the fam! Funny how a yearly trip that you used to dread and take for granted in your whiny adolescent years suddenly becomes the week of the year you look forward to most just a short decade later, isn't it?? :)

Have you learned some valuable life lessons lately? Big or small, take a moment to reflect today - cheesy, but worth your time, I promise!

Work + School + Visitors = No Blogging

Has it really been 10 days since I last blogged? Seems like its been like 12 hours, that's how fast my week flew by! The busyness of work and school and trying to have a summer finally caught up with me and I was knocked out by a nasty cold. Somehow colds are like a million times more miserable when its nice outside, right? I was a sneezing, watery-eyed, snotty mess.

Perfect timing for my only illness of the year... 2 days before my sister and her bf came to visit for the weekend! Not. I managed to suck it up (this is not my forte... I typically milk my sicknesses as long and as much as I can...) and we had such.a.FUN.weekend!!! Erika and Carter drove all the way from Cincinnati so they ended up staying Thursday-Monday to make the drive worthwhile ~ and we were sure to pack as much excitement into that long weekend as we possibly could! Here is a recap of their visit:


My sister is obsessed with aquariums. So we have to go to the Georgia Aquarium every. single. time. she comes to visit!

She loves to pet the sting rays...

Erika and Carter before the storm rolled in!

Sisters outside the aquarium :)

After the aquarium we hit up Vortex for arguably the highest calorie burger in Atlanta, and waited for the storm to (fingers crossed) blow over so we could get over to the Braves game! Thankfully, the weather cooperated and we were able to see our game (aka: we were able to get our Dippin' Dots and funnel cake and a couple of beers...) and the Friday night fireworks! They lost - boo. But the fireworks - and food - were great! Yay!

At Turner Field

Saturday we ventured over to Sweetwater Brewery for a tour and tasting... 6 samples for $8?! Yes please! So fun. If you live in ATL and haven't gone, I highly recommend it the next time you want to do something different on a summer afternoon.

The men in our life ;)

Sistas

w/ the husb

I was doing so good with picture-taking, I should have known I was due to mess it up! Insert screw up: I brought my camera-less case with us to dinner Saturday night, and the rest is history. Not one more pic was taken the entire weekend! My sis managed to snap a few, so I'll have to steal from her later! The rest of the visit was pretty uneventful ~ lots of laughing, lounging by the pool, a little vino drinking and reminiscing, and more eating. Sooo much eating! So much that I actually hit the treadmill for a 4 mile run the day after they left. For those of you who know me, this is a serious sign of a fat girl weekend!

Monday I was back to work. Back to class. Back to trying to get my house in order. Catching up on laundry. You know the post-visitor drill... then add to that trying to pack husb and Bella for their week in Ohio and I was just one busy chick! I can breathe a little easier the next 5 or so days before a little trek of my own back to Ohio :)

Hope you all have had a fun-packed week, too!

Whole gang at Sweetwater!

Summer Reading List

Books are the treasured wealth of the world
and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

As a life-long avid reader, I was scared to death that law school would ruin my love of books! In an effort to ensure that I still read for leisure - and enjoyed it - I compiled a Summer Reading List for myself.

After scouring the NY Times and Publishers Weekly best-sellers list, polling my Facebook friends, and (of course) consulting Oprah's Book Club book list, I came up with a list of books to work my way through over my summer break. I was so excited to discover that the Buckhead Library was just minutes from our house, so I rushed out the door with only my car keys and cell phone in tow to get a library card. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that in order to get a card, I needed a piece of mail addressed to me with my current address on it. I had no wallet, no purse, nothing. But, true to form, I dug through my messy car and found a DSW Rewards coupon in my center console! See? Sometimes shopping addictions can be good for more than shoes.

So, I got my library card. Step one, check! Step two... find books. This is where I got really overwhelmed. The library down here is nothing like the Hudson Library I have grown so accustomed to! It isn't pretty, it doesn't smell good, there are old computers and dusty wire shelves... and, most importantly, no coffee shop!! Tragic. But fret not - after some diligent Googling, I learned that you can place books on hold on the library's website and they email you to come pick it up when it comes in! So convenient. Here is the list of  books my nose was buried in all summer:

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
• Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth
• Private by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
• Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
• Something Blue by Emily Giffin
• Baby Proof by Emily Giffin
• Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• The Shack by William P. Young
• Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver

I enjoyed literally every page of every book! It was so nice to spend time reading for pleasure instead of reading for school. There are a few books still lingering on my list of holds at the library, but for now my focus is on casebooks, rule books and code books... until winter break, when I can become a pleasure-reading bookworm once again :)

Summer Update!

Is it REALLY already June 25th...?! This summer has gone by much too fast! Here is the update on our lives:

Andrew finished his first quarter of Chiropractic school last week! He did fabulous :) His grades were great and he survived the 27 hour course load just fine. His "summer" is a 3 week break from class, so he spent the first week in Atlanta keeping me company and is now up in Ohio visiting with family and friends for a week! I'll join him up there next Wednesday, and then we'll spend the following week in Canada on our annual family vacation. We can't wait! Oh, and Bella girl gets to come this year, too ;)

I'm busy working... but I'm having a ton of fun doing it! I'm babysitting three precious little kiddos 3 days a week, and working at their parents' bankruptcy law firm the other 2 days! It has been SUCH a good experience so far! I've learned a lot at the office, and at home with the kids haha. It has been excellent birth control - despite their cuteness. I'm excited for a break though and can't wait to see my fam and friends up in Ohio!

In other exciting news, I received a WONDERFUL email the other week! I was awarded a $32,000 scholarship for law school!!! We were thrilled with the news and now there is hope that we may actually be able to reproduce before the age of 35... just kidding. Sort of. But really, we're so excited! My hard work is - literally - paying off.

Looking forward to what is left of our summer and will keep y'all posted! Uh oh... I've been in the south almost a whole year now, y'all is starting to sound like English. I better get back to school......