Pitching Our Tent

We were so very blessed to receive so many awesome gifts and gift cards for our wedding. Seriously. We were so thankful for all the things we were given and were able to buy because of the love of our family and friends. And one of the things we were so excited about was our own tent. We were able to buy a 6-person tent from Target with some of our gift card money (or what we now call, "Imaginary Monies.") We've had it for a couple of weeks, but hadn't used it yet. So we decided Veteran's Day weekend would be the perfect time to break it in!

We made reservations online for Sunday night, at Three Rivers State Park, in Sneads, Florida. We made our packing lists, went grocery shopping, and tried to plan out our time there. We left after church and lunch on Sunday around 3 pm (after a quick stop to grab some firewood from my parents - thanks Papa!) and made the quick, hour-long drive to the southwest corner of Lake Seminole. We had just gotten our new puppy Prim the day before, and so of course we had to bring her with us. She did great in the car though, and seemed quite excited for the adventure!

We got the tent put up pretty quickly, and got the rest of the camp set up too. The weather was great, and the park was very nice. It was definitely going to be chilly though, so Jeff got a fire going right away.

Before leaving, I prepped chicken, potatoes & veggies to make hobo pouches for dinner. So after hanging out and talking and exploring a tiny bit, we started getting dinner ready. The pouches turned out pretty yummy, even though the potatoes got a little bit burned on the bottom. It was all still good anyways. And then of course in true camping tradition, we made s'mores for dessert!

While we were eating, an armadillo ran by our campsite, and Prim went crazy over it. He stayed in the little clump of trees right next to us for a long time (which freaked me out), but Primrose just wanted to go over and investigate the whole time he was rooting around over there. Jeff wanted to let her go after it, but I was against that idea, so I had a tight hold on her leash. I guess he finally went away after about an hour or so, and then she calmed down.

Then we just sat staring at the fire and talking and enjoying the peace and quiet. It was really nice to just sit back and enjoy the silence and the outdoors and the fresh air. We sat in comfortable silence for a while, and then continued on with our normal conversation. I sure loved spending the night with this husband of mine. And since we aren't completely shut off from technology in this generation, we took my laptop into the tent and watched a couple episodes of "FRIENDS" before finally falling asleep.

And then the next morning, I got to wake up to these two cuties... :)

Well this was actually a quick nap-time later, so that's why he's wearing glasses...

We woke up right after 6 am, and after taking Prim for a quick walk, Jeff got the fire blazing again in order to make some breakfast. I was going to let Jeff be in charge of making breakfast, but I'm too much of a control freak (and I also just really like cooking), so I ended up jumping in and helping out quite a bit too. Between the two of us though, we had ourselves a nice breakfast of fried eggs, turkey bacon and potatoes.

Prim also hadn't eaten much in the couple of days we had her, so we made her a couple of eggs for breakfast as well, and she loved them! Also, we decided to take advantage of the camping tradition, and decided to make some s'mores again :) And Jeff decided to take a couple of really flattering pictures of me eating them. None are super cute, but here's the "best" one....

Since we woke up so early, we were actually super tired, so we decided to take a quick nap. Even baby Prim was tired, so she took a nap with us too.

After nap time, we hung out around our campsite a little more, then had to pack up camp to be out by noon. We then drove down to the public part of the park to explore a bit. We walked out on the boat ramp/dock, to check out the gorgeous view of Lake Seminole, and it was so calm and pretty. Then we found ourselves a nice little trail to hike close by. We walked for about 45 minutes to an hour, and Prim absolutely loved it! She seemed to really just enjoy being outside and exploring and smelling everything. She led the way most of the time, and it was a good thing we had a 24-foot retractable leash on her!

Afterwards, we all had some water, and then made our way out of the park. We found a tiny local restaurant and had the pizza and salad buffet for lunch before heading out of town. We had such a great time camping out together as a little family, and we definitely can't wait to be able to do it again! We're hoping to do it at least once more before it gets way too cold, and then we'll be excited again in the spring once the weather starts warming up a little bit. We want to check out all the state parks close to Tallahassee with camp grounds, so we'll have fun going to a lots of new campsites, and putting our new tent to good use!

Much Love,
Halie

Planes, Grains & Automobiles

Monday morning - we meet again.... and this is a seriously exhausted Monday morning at that. This weekend was so crazy busy, I got very little sleep, and I could have definitely used an extra day just to recover from it. So let's just head straight into our normal recap, shall we?

FRIDAY
Jeff's parents took us and the boys to see the new Disney movie, "Planes," and it was really, really cute. Good job Disney for making another heartwarming movie that brings a tear or two to my eyes... But really, it's a great little movie and we all enjoyed it :) After the movie, we got the rest of the boys' stuff packed in the car and ready to go for the next morning.

SATURDAY
Got up bright and early for our drive up to north Georgia to meet their mom. We grabbed breakfast from Chick-fil-A, and then hit the road. A couple potty stops and five hours later, we ate lunch, and said our goodbyes to those super sweet little boys. We are so thankful we got to spend six full weeks with them this summer, and we just had so much fun with them!

We then made our way over to Atlanta, to visit Jeff's best friend/best man. We went to a cookout at one of his friends' house, and had lots of fun. All of his friends were really nice and welcoming, and didn't make it awkward for us even though we knew no one! After a delicious dinner (grilled chicken and sausage made by an awesome guy from Australia) and some homemade ice cream, we all played Cards Against Humanity. It was my first time playing, and I loved it! I want it for myself now of course. There were 12 or 13 of us playing, and I actually won with five black cards! Holla!

SUNDAY
Woke up bright and early again to head home from Atlanta. We splurged again and got Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, and it was oh so yummy. We took a different route home from ATL than we normally do, and we loved it! It was so gorgeous. We saw so many fields of crops and things, and it was actually really interesting. (We ended up Googling how corn and peanuts are harvested, and we learned something new while we drove...)

A couple of potty stops, some gorgeous back roads of Georgia and about four and a half hours later, we made it to my Grandparents house for a big family lunch! We celebrated my Aunt and my Papa who both have August birthdays. I later worked on addressing the envelopes for our wedding invitations, then we had our first pre-marital counseling session. We stopped by Publix to grab a bit of groceries and pick up a Redbox (since we had a code for a free night!), and then spent some time just resting at Jeff's house...while I addressed some more envelopes.

Super busy, and super fun. We had a great weekend, but we are definitely both exhausted. I skipped my run this morning so that I could sleep until 7 am, rather than 6 am, and just that one hour wasn't quite enough. I'll run tomorrow morning though, so I can start week 6 of 5K training! Tonight and tomorrow we will be busy working to get our invitations stuffed and ready to go, so that we can get them sent out by no later than Friday! Ahhh, so exciting! They turned out great, and I can't wait to show them to you in a couple of weeks, once they've been sent and seen :)

Hope you lovely ladies are having a good Monday so far. I'm looking forward to working on wedding stuff tonight, and making what Jeff has named "Adult Bagel Bites" for dinner! I'll try to make them kind of healthy-ish, and count the calories, but they're just gonna be so yummy!

Much Love,
Halie

Planning, Dresses & Purple Pens: Some Favorites

I got up this morning (even when I really super didn't want to), and did my early morning run of 2.5 miles. And it felt rough. But at the end, I felt good because I have now completed week 5 of my 5K training, and we're just under a month away from race day! Holy crap that's crazy! But I'm excited and ready and I can't wait to have a blast actually running a race...weird!

Today, in honor of completing week 5, I'm sharing five of my current favorite things for "5 Fave Friday."

ONE - Cute, snuggly little boys. Every night for the past two weeks, I've been reading a book to them out loud, and every night they come and snuggle up next to me, and sometimes fight about who's turn it is to sit closer to me. And it's just so stinking sweet. It kinda makes my heart almost burst it's just so sweet. I really do love them, and I'm incredibly blessed to be able to inherit these these precious boys as my step-sons!

TWO - Gems with Friends. It's one of those Zynga games for your phone (like Words with Friends and all those others), but this one is definitely my favorite of all of those. And I'm more than a little obsessed. The problem is, almost no one I know actually plays it, so all of the 'friends' I play with, are just anonymous opponents. So some of you lovelies should get it and then we can play together :) My username is Halez88...

THREE - Buying new dresses, in smaller sizes. It seems like almost all of my clothes are now at a point where they're just getting too big to still be worn. And hello - obviously that's exciting! But my favorite is buying new dresses for work at Target, and instead of buying an XXL (I have a couple of those from a few  years ago), I'm now buying just an L. Definitely a favorite.

FOUR - Wedding planning. Duh. I was going to try not to talk about wedding planning on this list since I talk about it in just about every other post it seems like...but I've got serious "Bride Brain" right now. Soooo #SorryImNotSorry, but planning my wedding is definitely a favorite.

FIVE - Writing in cursive. I know that's a really weird one, but I'm just trying to share 'the real me' with you guys, as nerdy as that real me might be sometimes...But seriously. I started doing it a couple of months ago, in order to practice my cursive handwriting, so that it would look pretty when I hand address our wedding invites. Well now, I just do it all the time! And I really have gotten better, so at least I accomplished my goal of improving. I'll be addressing the envelopes next week, so hopefully I make each one look so pretty!

This awesome purple pen is also my favorite....

And that wraps up five of my most random favorite things right now! Hope you guys liked this little glimpse into some of my weirdness ;) Sometimes I try to keep the weird stuff to myself, but sometimes I just gotta let it out and share it. Today was obviously one of the sharing days. Don't hold it against me though, mmkay?

Tomorrow we take the boys back to their mom, and we won't see them again until our wedding. (Whoa that sounded weird and crazy.) It's been a great six weeks with them this summer, and we've had so much fun together! We have to wake up super early in the morning to hit the road, then drive five hours to North Georgia. Then Jeff and I will head over to Atlanta, to spend one night at his best friend/best man Adam's house. Tomorrow is also our two-year anniversary! But we're putting the celebration on hold for a few days, and we'll go out one night next week. Sunday my whole family will get together for lunch to celebrate our two August birthdays, and then I'm hoping to get some wedding planing or wedding crafting done in the afternoon/evening.

Definitely going to be a busy weekend, but I'm still of course looking forward to it! Hope y'all have good Friday's, and fun weekends as well!

Much Love,
Halie

Peaches, Purses & Parties - Weekend Recap

Well first of all, I'm pretty irrated with Google/Blogger/the internets right now...I had this post about 80% done, with pictures placed in and everything formatted the way I wanted it, and then something freaked out, and the whole dadgum thing got deleted. Not cool Blogger, not cool at all.

So since I'm annoyed at this point, we're gonna let the pictures handle everything again this Monday (just like last Monday pretty much), with just occasional narration from yours truly. And for this recap, we're actually taking it all the way back to Thursday, so let's get to it, shall we?

THURSDAY

Dance recital for Lacey's daughter, then dinner all together to celebrate Lacey's birthday.

FRIDAY
Drove to middle Georgia to spend the night with Jeff's brother, before taking the boys back to their mom the next morning. Ate a quick dinner at Burger King, and we all enjoyed ice cream cones for dessert. Stopped at a gas station, and the sky looked gorgeous, so of course I grabbed my camera to snap a couple pictures.

SATURDAY
Drove a couple more hours to meet the boys' mom, ate lunch, and headed our own way. We took our time and slowly made our way back to Tally. First, we stopped at fruit stand and bought a basket of peaches; then we wandered around downtown Macon for a while; ate dinner at Cracker Barrell eventually; and spent a few hours catching up with old family friends of his who just moved back to Tifton; finally made it back to town around midnight.

Bumped his head getting out of the car, and a nice worker-lady who saw it gave us ice :)

SUNDAY

Church. Lunch with family. Laundry. Game time with Jeff and my parents. Bought a pretty new purse at Kohl's, with Kohl's cash and a coupon, which was an awesome combo that allowed me to get an originally $55 purse for just $11.88, with a gift card! So I didn't pay a dime. Perfect. Then a going away dinner for one of my bestest friends, who leaves on Thursday for a mission trip for 11 months, to 11 countries - called The World Race. Gonna miss this girl so much!

These 5 guys are all her brothers! Chris, Michael, Steven, Taylor & Tim. She's the oldest, & the only girl. Whoa.

It was another really great weekend, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. This week I only have a three-day work week, so of course I'm thrilled about that! Thursday is the 4th of July, and then I took Friday off as well, so I get a five-day weekend. Woohoo!! Gonna soak up some sun and do some wedding planning and hang out with friends and family, and it's gonna be so great.

And here's some super exciting news - I just found out that the interview I mentioned a month ago, finally resulted in a new job for me!! It's actually still at the same place I work now, but it's in a new section, and I get to move from OPS (hourly, no benefits) to Career Service (salary, benefits, better pay)!!!! I'm so stinking excited about this folks. Like over the moon on this Monday morning. I start on July 15th, so I've got to train someone else in my current position until then. I don't know what kind of blogging I'll be able to do once I start my new position, but we'll just see how that goes once we get there. I'm just so excited to be starting something new! (And I aint upset about a bigger pay check either...) Here's to a new chapter!

Hope y'all had a great weekend, and that your Monday is off to a good start as well. TTFN! Which stands for, "Ta-ta for now," as Tigger would say. (I really have no idea why that just popped into my head right now - I think it's just because my brain is going at a million miles per second from the excitement of my news, so everything's just swirling around like crazy in there...just go with it ladies.)

Princeton, NYC & Elizabethton - FFTL Link-Up

Yesterday I took the day off work for an extra day of wedding recovery. It was much needed, and definitely a good thing for me, but I really wish I could have taken another day or two still! I'm back at work today, but absolutely wishing I was still at home. At least this coming weekend is a long one! I am excited to be back in the blog-world though, because I really haven't been since this time last week! So let's dive right into our normal Tuesday post, with my weekly link-up, From Firsts to Lasts!

Today's topics are:

First thing I do when I get to work

First vacation without my parents

First thing I do when I get to work

Unload and unpack all that I brought with me that day. Sometimes I bring in my bag of workout clothes, that's also loaded down with snacks and who knows what else. So I gotta put all that away somewhere! Then I head to the water fountain to fill up my cup of water - and then I'll do that at least four more times during the day. (And then I'll have to pee about six more times during the day...) And then I finally get my computer up and running, and get going on all the emails! I answer a public inquiry inbox for my department, so I'm always answering emails from the public. It gets real old, real fast, but at least it's pretty easy most of the time.

First vacation without my parents

Well, I went on a ton of trips to church camp and cheerleading camp and mission trips and stuff all through my middle and high school years. But I'm not sure I would really consider that a vacation. So I'm gonna say that the first vacation without my parents was probably The Great American Road Trip (The GART) that I took with my girlfriends in August 2010. Three of us (me, Jenni & Cally) started in St. Augustine, FL, drove to Charlotte, NC, to pick up another girl (Hollis), and then drove to Elizabethton, TN, to stay four days with one of our married couple friends (Megan & Dan). Then me, Jenni, Cally, Hollis & Megan all drove to Princeton, NJ, to stay with another couple of our married friends, Kaley & Zach. From there, we went into New York City for a day, and had a great time there. 

It was a 10-day long trip (maybe a little longer, I can't remember), and we had such an amazing time!! We laughed so much, and explored everything we could. We played tons of games, and went shopping, and saw a Broadway, and wore funny hats, and hiked part of the Appalachian Trail. And generally, we just had a freaking blast! We haven't been able to do a trip like that again since then, but we're hoping we can one day!

If you'd like to join in on this fun link up, check out the super simple 'rules' below, and get to writing! Can't wait to see all the new link ups this week, meet new friends, and read y'all's posts!

1. Write your own post about this week's topics & link up with us!

2. Put the new button on your post or somewhere on your blog

3. Visit some of the other links, and share the love with them on their posts!

4. Spread the word on Twitter and/or Facebook

<center> <a href="http://penguinspastapolkadots.blogspot.com/search/label/From%20Firsts%20to%20Lasts" target="_blank"><img alt="First Things First" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVrwkIAid5vWXfGGkNjq6FQv4vvqZDxLXcMp670eJ2k7tfrfkBrZYiGCr0icOPCsIYvq5MR3qLifCTXPxMVdiq77A56Zq2_nIiRzk2hyphenhyphen1gEmgp6NcoBlX5TNfobmRzpUAjnkoXPjsNXIU/s1600/Firsts+to+Lasts+-+1.jpg"/></a></center>

And if you'd like to prepare for next week's link-up, the two 'first' topics will be:

First blate you went on (or who you like to meet if you haven't done this yet!)
First blog you visit on your blog roll or RSS feed

I'm silly and forgot how to run my own link-up, and that next week is actually the last  week of the month, which means it's also the first time we'll write about our lasts!  So don't write about those firsts I gave you before, you should actually write about:
Last book you read
Last movie you saw in a theater

Peeps Be Graduated!

This title was for my family, specifically my dad, who has been wanting me to use "peeps" in one of my post titles ;)

Good Morning lovely ladies, and Happy Monday! A couple of weeks ago, I decided to have a positive attitude on Monday morning, no matter what, in order to hopefully create a better day for myself. And it worked! So I'm trying that again today, and forcing myself to have a positive attitude again today as well, so that this Monday won't be so bad! I had an incredibly busy weekend and I'm exhausted today, but it was a great weekend, so that makes it worth it :)

Well first of all, on Thursday I painted my nails garnet and applied gold stripes to be festive for FSU graduation!

This was for #WIDN on Instagram - later I added the gold glitter to the thumb nail.

FRIDAY
Only worked 'til noon, and then went to a grad reception for my sister, hosted by the College of Human Sciences at FSU
Had a little bit of free time so I read for about half an hour, then helped Meg finish getting ready for graduation!
Our whole family went over to my uncle's house for an at-home Chinese buffet for dinner
Got to the Civic Center for graduation really early, so I had plenty of time to people watch all the crazies...
Sat through hours and hours of thousands of students, in order to see my sister and then my cousin walk the stage!
(Yelled at and almost got in a fight with a butt-head girl and her witchy mother who wouldn't sit down in front of me, approximately 3 seconds before they called Meg's name...Why do people have to be so rude?!)
Welcomed two more college graduates into the family :)

SATURDAY
Woke up at an ungodly hour for a Saturday morning, and set out on a mini road trip to Jax with my Mama & my Aunt
Went shopping for a few hours at the St. John's Town Center, and had lunch at Bahama Breeze
Drove over to the Avenue's Mall for a few hours, and finally found Mama's mother-of-the-bride dress for Meg's wedding
Came back to Tally, had Chick-fil-A for dinner and then went over to Jeff's house
Watched a few re-runs of How I Met Your Mother and just relaxed a bit

SUNDAY
Went to church and Sunday school with my family, and then had brunch at Backwoods Bistro
Met Jeff at his house, got clothes changed and the car packed, and we hit the road for St. George Island
Drove around and checked out the outside of a house we're trying to rent as our wedding location, and it looks great!
Spent a couple hours on the beach, but the weather was crazy! We did collect a TON of shells though for wedding stuff :)
It was super, super windy and cloudy, so we packed up pretty early, and had dinner at Beef's on our way home
Rented "Silver Linings Playbook" from RedBox, and it really was a great movie!

My omelet was green pepper, onion, spinach & a tiny bit of feta. Yum! And that's a fried grit cake - but I only ate about half.

Another busy weekend full of all sorts of things that make me happy: family time, fun with my fiance, yummy food and more. I truly am a blessed girl, and I love great weekends like this! (No matter how tired I feel come Monday morning...) This upcoming week is also pretty jam-packed with stuff, so hopefully I can keep myself normal and under control with everything we have going on! And tomorrow is Jeff's birthday, so that will be fun! And Thursday I'm having lunch with my fellow Tally girl, Angie, for our very first blate! So of course we're both looking forward to that :) Lots of fun stuff ahead this week, and I can't wait!

I hope y'all had good weekends too, of course! Or that you at least got to rest and relax a little bit. Also, don't forget tomorrow Hallie and I are kicking off the spiced up version our link-up, From Firsts to Lasts, so make sure you write your own post, and come link up with us! (You can read all about it in my post from last week, HERE. It's gonna be fun!) Remember to try to be positive today, and see if you can improve your Monday just be improving your outlook and attitude! Happy Monday!

Linking up today with Covered in Grace, Glitter & Gloss, Sami's Shenanigans & Synfully Delicious.