I’m still here friends!
I’ve just been busy getting married…
Going on my honeymoon…
Starting a new job…
And living life!
Be back soon with regularly scheduled programming and more pictures. 🙂
I’m still alive! No worries, I don’t post on Mondays remember? I’m trying to get better at blogging on the weekends, but my weekends are extremely full of wedding planning and working on my tan. 😀 Anyway, this past weekend was no exception and I had a fantastic time at one of my good friend from high school’s wedding. It was the last one I’ll be attending before my own, so the experience was a little surreal for me! The wedding was in Ohio, so you know what that means… Florist, videographer and pastor appointments flooded my calendar and RSVP cards were begging to be opened.
We spent a few hours on Friday night going through our RSVP’s and laughing at all of the funny responses we got. Our RSVP cards were Mad Libs style and I’ll be writing a post about them soon. 🙂
I woke up bright and early Saturday morning to get a 5 mile run in before errands took over my day. I always feel better when I get a good workout in before a busy day, it just makes me a little bit more calm. And I definitely needed the calmness on Saturday. We met with our wedding videographer and then drove straight to the church for our final meeting with our Pastor. It was so weird to actually start talking about vows and our ceremony timing. It’s actually happening!
After our meeting, we went to my parent’s for lunch where my mom filled me in on her appointment with the florist. I wasn’t able to go to the florist meeting because I overbooked myself on Saturday (womp womp), but I sent my very capable mom with all of my notes and pictures. After lunch it was time to get ready for the wedding!
One of my good friends from high school married her high school sweet heart of 8 years! It was so special to watch two people you have seen together for so long, finally tie the knot. They have been through so much together and truly belong together. My heart pretty much melted on the floor when they pronounced them husband and wife.
The wedding was a beautiful mix of teal, purple and black and the bridesmaids carried broach bouquets. This was the first time I had seen this done and I thought it was so unique and beautiful. It’s strange when you are planning a wedding, you start to look at other weddings a little differently. You appreciate the time it took the bride to make a seating chart and you notice creative details a lot more than before. 🙂
The bride was absolutely stunning and seemed so relaxed the whole day. I hope I’ll be that relaxed!
This wedding was a lot of fun because so many of my high school friends were there! These two ladies, Lauren and Amy, have been my best friends since 6th grade and will also be standing up with me in my wedding.
My crazy brother is good friends with the groom, so he made an appearance as well!
I can’t believe that we are next!! How did this happen so fast??
Any high school sweet hearts out there? Go you!
Do you like your weekends to be go-go-go with fun activities or do you like a laid-back, relaxing weekend?
Usually, I like my Saturdays and Sundays to be full of fun activities, but we have had so many of those in a row, that I’m ready for a weekend with nothing to do…Maybe that will happen in November? Haha
I am a lover of small meals and snacks in between them. Last night turned into a night that I snacked my way right through dinner. Not mad about it. 🙂 Wednesdays are my long run days and I always go home first to get a little pre-run fuel in me. My favorite pre-workout fuel is usually a banana with nut butter or piece of toast with nut butter. Last night started out innocently enough when I got home from work and found my hand stuck in the jar of mixed nuts. Then, because I was procrastinating on my long run, I ate a banana and a granola bar. As I was lacing up my running shoes, Jord came in to change before heading to the gym. He opened up a bag of my favorite, gluten-free chips….
And I think you know what happened next. I finally got out the door for my run at 6:40 and completed 7 miles. My legs felt fresh because I’ve been focusing on a lot of cross-training and stretching. When I got home, I wasn’t too hungry but knew that my body needed fuel after the long run. I showered quickly and fried a couple of eggs with toast, mozzarella cheese and tomatoes. I slept like a BABY last night and woke up feeling a little sore this morning but not bad at all. 🙂 I ate another egg with toast, cashew butter and raspberries and raced to work. Can you tell that eggs are one of my go-to meals? They are easy and extremely nutritious.
Obviously, my iPhone takes beautiful pictures… P.s. I like to smash the berries on the toast because it reminds me of jam. Yum. Halfway through the morning I ate a peach.
And now we are all caught up!
My baby sister is leaving for college today! I can’t even believe that this little girl is old enough to live over 400 miles away from us. She is the baby of the family and the last one to fly the coop, leaving my parents as empty nesters for the first time in 26 years.
Alex and my older brother, Ben (pictured above) were always joined at the hip growing up. She is an aspiring singer/song-writer I can’t wait to get her first autograph. 🙂
My parents are driving down with her today and staying for the whole weekend before driving back home on Sunday…Yea, they are having a little trouble with this one. Apparently, so is my little brother, Pippin.
They found him in my sister’s car this morning as they were packing up. Sorry, Mr. Pippin no dogs in the dorm. I Facetimed with the whole family last night and it was so exciting to get to see and hear the excitement going on as they were packing up 18 years of memories.
She is updating her Instagram account of the whole process and it reminds me of when I moved away for college. I had so much adrenaline, anticipation and anxiety running through me, that I didn’t even have time to feel sad about leaving home…Until about 3 days into my classes. I was a little bit homesick my first couple of weeks, but after that, you had to beg me to go home. I think my sister will be the same way. I am so excited for her and this new journey she is about to begin.
I really grew up in college and think a lot of my friends did too. You find who you are and start to learn how to be independent. I can’t wait to see what the next four years will bring for my sweet sister.
Oh, and did I mention that I won’t see her, my MOH, until the week of my wedding??!!! Ah! That makes me sad and anxious and stressed out. Thank God for FaceTime and email.
If you went to college, what was your favorite part about it?
The best part about college was that I was always surrounded by my best friends. How lucky was I that I got to live with them??
Do you ever snack your way through dinner like I did last night?
Hi there! How was everyone’s weekend? It was gorgeous weather here in Indiana and I definitely took full advantage of it. Jordan was in a good friend’s wedding this weekend and the rehearsal dinner was Friday night.
The dinner took place on the back patio of a local restaurant and it was very quaint and a lot of fun. We sipped on lemonade drinks and Summer Shandy while waiting on our dinners. The menu we chose from had three options and the dinner was themed as a barbecue. Jordan raved about the “Farmhouse Burger” and I had some barbecue chicken with fresh spinach and tomato salad. We sat at a table with a few of the groomsmen and had fun chatting about the big day.
Saturday began bright and early for me. It was one of the first Saturdays in awhile that I got to spend the morning at home! I took full advantage of my free time by completing a ton of wedding-related to do’s…Nah, just kidding, I actually watched 4 Netflix episodes. Oops! After peeling myself away from the tv, I opened the blinds and realized it was a beautiful day. I laced up my running shoes and headed out. 
It’s amazing how long it sometimes takes me to get a workout in, but how great I feel afterwards. Thank you, endorphins. After my run, I figured that was enough productivity for the day, so I sat by the pool with a new book.
This book was recommended by my friend Whitney and I can’t put it down. You know you have a good book when it takes the place of Netflix. 😉 I put the book down long enough to get ready for the wedding and drive over to the church. This is one of the first weddings I have been to that is actually in the same town I live in! Very convenient! It only took me 15 minutes to get to the church.
This is also one of the first weddings I have been to where Jordan is in it and I am flying solo. I was a little nervous about going by myself but I found a few friends from college and we were able to sit together at the ceremony and reception.
Yes, we are barefoot-because you just can’t dance with heels.
Jord was OBVIOUSLY having fun…especially because I was driving. 🙂
Sunday was another brilliantly sunny day and I did nothing but lay out by the pool and read. Wedding? What wedding?
We headed over to Jordan’s mom’s house on Sunday night for a big dinner of salmon, steak, corn on the cob and grilled veggies. I should have snapped a picture of my plate because it looked like summer but I am still not used to taking pictures of my food in public. I just KNOW that Jord’s brothers would never let me live it down if they caught me snapping a pic of my zucchini.
And I can’t do a “recently” post without filling you in on my most recent stuff–Monday was my favorite day. I know, how can a Monday be so great? Well, because I got to spend my night with this guy.
Are you still reading after that cheesy line? Sorry bout it!
Jord arrived at my apartment last night around 6:30 and we loaded up the bikes and took off for the nearby trails. We haven’t ridden for awhile and it felt so great to get back out there! After riding, I convinced Jordan to go to the gym to do this quick, lower abs circuit with me. Our gym has a smoothie bar that is impossible to resist because I’m usually starving when I leave the gym and I love anything that even remotely resembles ice cream. 🙂
Peanut butter/chocolate/banana smoothie it is! See how it is almost gone in the above picture? Yeah…we were just pulling out of the parking lot. Yikes! I’m so glad we ended up doing something fun last night, it really made my Monday a little bit easier and it is fun to look forward to something during the work day.
Tonight I am teaching a Zumba class at the same gym, so let’s see if I can resist the smoothie bar this time…
Have you ever been to a wedding by yourself and made the best of it?
Do you do anything special on Mondays to make them a little less depressing?
We made it over the hump and the weekend is peaking out over the horizon. Thursday is always one of my favorite days of the week because it holds such great anticipation for the weekend. But, let’s back it up to Wednesday for a “What I ate Wednesday” post. (Thanks for inspiring me Miranda!) Yesterday was a little unique so I added in “What I did Wednesday” to spice it up a bit.
The morning started off with a fried egg and this little concoction I’ve started making.
It doesn’t look like all that and a bag of chips but it’s actually pretty tasty. It’s simply a piece of toasted rye bread with creamy cashew butter and ripe blueberries on top. I use this organic cashew butter because it has 0 added sugar and the ingredient list is short and sweet. It also tastes amazing so that is rare to find in things without sugar. Thumbs up! The blueberries on top sweeten it up a bit and the egg on the side gets some protein in my belly.
I also had some green tea for energy once I got to work. I worked through the morning and my stomach started growling around 11 a.m., so I ate a big banana and thought about my lunch. By lunch time whatever I brought from home just doesn’t sound satisfying anymore. This is the time when I have to just think about fueling my body and just buckle down and eat what I brought. It ended up being delicious.
In the salad went tomatoes, red onion, green peppers, romaine lettuce, broccoli slaw, one egg white and black beans. I used rice wine vinegar and olive oil for the dressing. All those veggies made it extra filling. On my lunch break, I went to try on my wedding dress!
No way am I showing you guys a picture! Some things just need to be kept a secret, but I did see a possible Mother of the Bride dress. It comes in navy, which is what my mom wants to wear and it would look beautiful on her. What do you think?
I worked through the rest of the afternoon, stopping for a snack of apples–which make pretty boring pictures by the way–and around 3:00 my sister surprised me by announcing that she was coming to Fort Wayne! I was so excited and immediately scrapped any dinner plans and tried to think of fun things for us to do. My 18-year-old sister, Alex, is heading off to college in Tennessee next week! I can’t believe she is old enough to leave for college already.
I took her to one of my favorite Fort Wayne spots, SkyZone, and we jumped and laughed until we almost peed our pants. 😉
We worked up an appetite while jumping so I treated her to FlatTop Grill–another one of my favorite spots in Fort Wayne. At FlatTop, you create your own stir fry by picking out rice, veggies and meat, then pick your sauce before handing it over to the hibachi chefs to fry up on the grill.
There are wooden sticks and pencils at each table that have your table number on them. Each customer writes his/her name on the stick and the server calls your name when they bring out your food. Alex dared me to write Primrose Everdeen on my stick. Not one to back down from a dare, I wrote it. When the food came and they called out “Primrose Everdeen” Alex said, “I volunteer as tribute!” They called her name–“Katniss Everdeen,” and the waitress smirked a bit, getting the joke.
If you’ve never seen or read Hunger Games–1. Sorry for wasting your time with that story and 2. Do you live under a rock?! 😉
After stuffing ourselves with stir fry we went back to my apartment and gabbed about wedding planning while watching Netflix episodes. It was a great way to end the evening with my sister and MOH. When I hugged her goodbye this morning, I became a little emotional. I won’t see her until the week of my wedding…in October! I’m going to annoy her by FaceTiming at least once a week.
What was the best thing you ate yesterday?
Do you have any siblings that moved far away, what is the best way to keep in contact with them?
Striding Out 