Friday's Letters

Dear Husband,

Well you have made it to your first non-weekend. I'm sure you are dreading these 3 straight weeks of work more than I am. I'm hoping we can make it these crazy weeks without a huge brawl. So far so go, but we haven't even made it through the first weekend so it's probably too soon to say. Thank you for being so devoted to our family that you are "willing" to work for 19 days straight. I love you!

Dear Evelyn,

You've been a good baby this week. Now please just continue to be your cute and good self for the next 14 days. I'll give you lots of ice cream if you do! I'm not above bribery. Love you!

This was just taken from my living room window, so it isn't the best picture.

Dear New "Car",

You are not a car; you are a tank! This picture doesn't do you justice. I need one of me standing right next to you. I feel tiny driving you around. I also feel like I'm going to back into something or sideswipe something. Slowly I'm getting used to you, but I think I will be banished to parking in the back of parking lots for quite awhile. Parking you well is nearly impossible! On the plus side I can carry my family of 3 and 5 of our closest friends with us wherever we want to go or just a huge load of things from Target!

Dear Wilhelm Auto Repair,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for fixing the A/C in my new "car". (Let's not talk about how we bought a car without functional A/C in this heat! At least that means we got an awesome deal!) I was so happy to hear it only needed to be recharged! You guys always do great work and we never feel ripped off. Thanks for doing it quickly too. It's nice to be able to leave the house again.

Thankful Vol. 5

I am thankful...
- for a nice cool house in this 100+ heat.-  for the little bit of rain we got last night. While it wasn't much every little bit counts.- for a relativity good baby. While she's starting to do naughtier things and get into stuff, all-in-all she's been easy. She plays well by herself, eats well, and sleeps well. We've been so blessed to have her in our lives.- for a hubby who is willing to drive and hour each way to and from work.- that my hubby has a steady job now. That reliability brings a lot of peace to our home.

Linking-up with Carina@A Punk, A Pumpkin & A Peanut

Date From The Jar #4

You can read about date #1 {here}, #2 {here} & #3 {here}

This past Saturday Nick and I went on a date night. We figured it would be a good weekend for it. It was our last free weekend together before two weekends of Guard Drill in a row for Nick.

Saturday ended up being a super crazy day. (More on that to come) So it was so nice having something to look forward to. By the end of the day we were dropping off Evelyn at my parents' house and headed down town to our favorite Bar/Pizza Place.

Yia Yia's is a local pizzeria. They also pride themselves on their extensive beer list. (The above picture is of their beer menu.) They have about 10 beers on tap. Only a couple do they have all of the time, while the other's are always changing. They have upwards of 400 different beers on any given night in their beer case. There beer menu is categorized by type of beer and then lists the brewer and country it comes from. You can pretty much find anything you could ever imagine.

 The pizza at Yia Yia's is also delicious! It's a thin crust pizza, without too much sauce. They have many different kinds to pick from or you can build your own. We always go with the Pacific which is marinara sauce, green peppers, pineapple, canadian bacon and cream cheese! It's sooooo tasty. If you've never had cream cheese on a pizza you are missing out! They always serve the pizza with a few hunks of their homemade bread, which is also delicious.

Our best impressions of Evelyn's new whinny face.

The last time we had been to Yia Yia's was before I was even pregnant. So well over a year and a half. It was nice to relax, drink a good beer and eat some good pizza.

We started off the night with some Guinness off tap. It was so good! I had never had a Guinness before, now I'd say it's one of my favorites. Mine was almost gone by the time our pizza was done. We decided we should share another beer, because neither of us really wanted to drink another whole one. After looking over the beer menu for awhile we decided on this:

It's called Gulden Draak Ale and it was from Belgium. The taste was delicious. It was sweet and fruity, perfect for dessert. I couldn't drink much of it though, because it was extremely fizzy. I'm not a big carbonation fan and this beer had as many bubble as champagne. So I'm probably weird, but carbonation hurts my mouth. That's why I'm not much of a soda fan.

It ended up being a wonderful date night and the perfect end to a hectic day. We of course had to drive-thru McDonald's on the way to pick up Evelyn to get some ice cream sundaes. We can pretend it was all because we want share a treat with Evelyn, but we all know the truth is Nick and I love $1 sundaes from McDonald's.

I've been a little MIA from the blog these last couple of weeks. Not sure why, but I've just had a lot going on and blogging hasn't been a top priority.

I hope you all are having a wonderful week so far! Hope you are staying cool, because the heat is killing us here in Nebraska.

Thankful Vol. 4

I'm so thankful for my hubby!
This week hasn't been the best for me. I've lacked energy and just haven't want to do anything all week. I've been a little discouraged which just leads to lack of motivation.
Thankfully my hubby took notice.
Last night I asked him to run to the store for me. So after he got home he got Evelyn ready and took her with him as he ran to the store. It was nice having that time to myself. He also picked us up some dinner. Which was such a blessing, because I was dreading having to cook.
This hot weather makes me despise cooking!
Well this morning when I head to the fridge to get my coffee I see this.

It just made me feel so happy inside. He got me one of my favorite candies, a Toblerone bar, when he ran to the store! It's the little thoughtful things like this that just brighten my day.
I needed this to bring me back to a good and happy place. A place of thankfulness and joy.
What are you thankful for today?

Linking up with Carina!

A Glimpse Into My Mind

There have been a lot of things on my mind lately. A lot them have seemed to focus around a feeling of not measuring up.

Right now I'm feeling that in almost every area of my life I'm not quite hitting the "mark". I'm not being the best Christian, I'm not being the best wife, I'm not being the best mommy, I'm not being the best homemaker, I'm not being the best friend. On and on I could about all these things I'm starting to feel I'm just failing at.

Yet I know that this elusive "mark" is an impossible standard that I'm trying to hold myself to. While I may say, "Oh it's ok if my housework suffers, because I'm chasing Evelyn around all day" I'm really thinking to myself, "Wow, I really need to get it together! Evelyn's an easy baby, why can't I get some sort of rhythm down?" I know I shouldn't be trying to be perfect, but I find it hard to give myself grace and just let perfection go.

I feel like I have this monumental task of trying to better myself. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to do it all on my own. I'm praying for the strength and guidance from the Holy Spirit to help me change my areas of struggle. It just seems like once I feel I'm making headway with one personal struggle of mine, another one shows it's ugly head and reminds me that I have so much farther to go.

Being a perfectionist is one of those struggles. I know it's unobtainable, yet I still break my back sometimes to try and achieve it.


Why do we do this to ourselves? Why are we demand so much from ourselves? God doesn't demand perfection, yet we break ourselves down fighting for it!


Is it because down deep we know that we were meant for something more than this? That we were meant for complete and perfect communion with our Father, but sin entered the picture and changed all of that. So instead of living in paradise we have to live in this world with just the hope of paradise to come.


I don't know where I'm going with this post. Mostly I just needed to get these thoughts out of my head, otherwise they just get muddled up in there and make it hard to concentrate on anything else.


How do you find encouragement when you are feeling like you're not measuring up to your personal expectations of yourself? Are there any specific Bible verses that help to center you back to God and His Grace? Have you read any books that have given you more clarity? Please let me know! Either leave a comment or e-mail me.

I hope you all are having a fantastic start to your week!

Friday's Letters

Yes I'm a little late with my letters today. It's been kind of a crazy day so far.

Linking up with Ashley@Adventures of Newlyweds!

Dear Headaches,
You seem to be more frequent lately. I know that part of it is because I need to go see an eye doctor and get new glasses. Another part of it is that I'm already addicted to a second glass of iced coffee in the afternoon/evening. I didn't have one yesterday and still at 4pm I have the headache I woke up with. Please just let me be. I'm tired of having you so often!

Dear Nick,
So last night you put away all of the dishes and re-loaded the dishwasher. While I'm super appreciative of that, there is just one little thing. All of those dishes you put away were DIRTY! I know I wasn't the kindest on the phone when I informed you of that. For that I'm sorry. I'm still not quite sure how you didn't notice. I love that you were helping out though, regardless of it going terribly wrong!

Dear Weekend,
I need more of you! You should start multiplying. This schedule works for me: 2 days of work followed by 2 days of rest. I think everyone would agree that this would be ideal. If that doesn't work for you how about 3 day weekends every weekend! You can choose.

Dear Heavenly Father,
Did you notice I left you till the end? Have you noticed how I've been avoiding you lately? I honestly don't know what's up with me. Every time I've tried to sit down for my time with You over the last few weeks I just couldn't focus. I feel like I haven't known what to say lately. I want to be back on track with You, because I don't like this feeling of being far from You. I'm going to try to make time for You a bigger priority in my day. You know what is in my heart even when I can't seem to say it. Let's work on this!

----------------------------------------

Well friends now I'm off to go make myself an iced coffee and hopefully that will save me from this darn headache!

I'd love to know if you have anything fun planned for this weekend! Just leave me a comment.

Happy Friday!

Date From The Jar #3

You can read about date 1 & 2 {here} and {here}.

Nick and I wasted no time in having our first date night for July. This past Sunday we picked out one of the cheap date nights that either has very little planning or is an at home date. The stick we choose happened to be an at home date, which is exactly what we needed after a long weekend.

Where we were gonna get our Chinese food from was a given. Rolling Wok is our favorite Chinese restaurant. Every one of their meals comes with 2 crab rangoon and then we always get their egg rolls, because they are delicious.

Can you tell that I have a soft spot in my heart for anything fried?! Now I just need to develop a soft spot in my heart for exercise!

The movie was a little more work. Nick and I don't normally agree on movies. If by some odd chance we do agree they don't seem to have the movie in any Redbox near us. Thankfully it wasn't too hard to pick something out. We quickly decided on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Mostly because we still haven't seen it.

We worked hard to get Evelyn to bed early. She's been going to bed later and later it seems like lately. I think it has to do with the fact that it's still light in her room at her old bedtime and she doesn't seem to like that. It also has to do with the fact that since Nick doesn't get home till 6 most nights, he wants a chance to see her before she goes to bed. Thankfully she didn't put up any sort of a fight going to bed early.

In the afternoon I set up the coffee table in the basement with a tablecloth and some candles. I put minimal effort into it, but it still looked nice and made it feel a little more special. Thankfully that cats had only minimally messed it up before we came down. The little rascals!

While I fed the baby before bed Nick went and picked up our food. I got Sweet & Sour Chicken, my fave, and Nick got Chicken Fried Rice. I threw it on some plates so that it looked a little nicer then the styrofoam containers. We also cooked up the left over pot-stickers from our Trader Joe's Date Night. It was so much food, I couldn't come close to finishing mine, but it was so good!

Even though we had plenty of food we had to have popcorn. What is a movie without popcorn?!

The movie was good. Confusing, but good. It had been so long since we had seen part 1 that we were both a little lost at times. I'm the only one who's read the books and I can't remember any of the last book, so that was no help.

We both thought that the movie was a little long. Also we thought they broke part 1 and part 2 off in a weird spot. I don't know where else they could have done it, but it makes it so that part 2 can not stand alone as a movie at all.

It was a great date night. I can't wait till we can do our second date for this month. We have one picked out, we just haven't set a date yet. We've got to find a sitter for Evelyn.

If you've seen Harry Potter 7 Part 2, what did you think of it?

P.S. Sorry there are no pictures of Nick and I. I had totally intended on taking some, but it didn't happen. I'm going to try to actually get pictures of us next time.

Fun With Daddy

I've been so blessed to have a husband who is a wonderful daddy. He loves getting on the floor playing with toys almost as much as Evelyn does. Evelyn loves when he gets down on the ground to play with her.

                                      

One of their favorite things to do starts with Nick trying to build a tower without Evelyn noticing. The moment she catches wind of what he's doing she crawls over and destroys it. Nick tries to see how big he can get it before she comes along and breaks it.

It's become one of my favorite sounds to be busy doing something and hear them playing in the background. It warms my heart every time.

Linking up with Laura@Bits of Splendor. Go check out her blog, she's awesome!

How you all have a good start to your week! We're headed to Evelyn's 9 month doctor's appointment this morning. Thankfully there will be no shots though!

Friday's Letters

Here's another installment of Friday's Letters!

Linking-up with Ashley as always.

If you haven't ever taken a look at her blog, you need to!

She's a wonderful photographer, has an adorable puppy named Bella and has a really inspiring story on how she's living life with lupus.

Now without further ado, my Friday's Letters.

Dear Illness That Is Plaguing My Family,
Thankfully I have evaded you up until this point. I honestly can not believe that Nick has gotten sick from you, but I am seemly unscathed. How did that happen? I'm not complaining though. I'm sure just as I'm writing this your germs will take hold in my body and start to destroy me. For now though, I feel fine. Now just let me go find some wood to knock on!

Dear Hubby,
I'm glad that you are finally starting to feel better! I don't like when you are sick. I don't know why, but you being sick grosses me out a lot more then Evelyn being sick. I'm just happy to be able to kiss you again, because it was torture these last few days when I've barely let you give me a peck on the cheek. I have really missed your kisses.

Dear Heat,
Please go AWAY! I can't stand you! I don't like being stuck in the house all day, everyday. Poor little Evelyn can't handle this heat wave. Don't get comfortable, because no one wants you here! Kindly be on your way and let us have a few 80 degree days. Usually even that is too hot for me, but seriously that would feel like heaven at this point! The only thing you've been good for is that for some reason the flowers on my front porch are just thriving right now! (Pictures above) They are shade flowers, but for some reason they wouldn't bloom till it started being over 90 everyday. My petunias on the other hand have lost all their flowers and aren't taking too well to you. Go figure that one out! The shade flowers are thriving, while the flowers meant for sun are wilting. Regardless, excessive heat, you have to go!

Dear A/C,
Thank you for being awesome and working like a champ. I know it hasn't been easy for you and that you haven't been able to keep up entirely with the over 100 degree weather, but you're doing great! Keep up the great work!

Well friends, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Try and stay cool!

4th of July Recap

I look haggard, because I was exhausted! Evelyn had woken up 3 times the night before. She hasn't done that since she was 3 months old.

We had a very low key 4th of July. Part of that was because it's nice to have relaxing holidays and part of that is because Nick is still trying to get over the cold Evelyn gave him.

In the morning we met Nick's family for breakfast. It was nice to get to see them and I know they love getting to see Evelyn. We just sat around drinking coffee and chatting. Nick's sister even came. That was nice, because she leaves for a year on the 15th.

For the afternoon we hung around the house. Evelyn napped, we napped and I threw together the salad I was taking with us to my Aunt & Uncle's that night.

Every 4th of July since I was a little kid my family has always gone to my dad's sister's house for a 4th of July party. Now as an adult I'm taking my little family. There is always good food and plenty of fireworks. My aunt's neighborhood is always filled with people blowing things up and since it's a newer development the trees aren't very tall so you can see fireworks in every directions. It makes for a fun night.

Playing with her Grandma!

Luckily Evelyn isn't the least bit afraid of fireworks. We were a little worried that the loud noises would scare her, but she doesn't seem to mind it. By the end of the night she was even figuring out that after she heard the loud pop (from the shell firing out of the cardboard tube) to look up and see the firework explode. Sometimes her intelligence just blows us away.

All in all it was a great 4th of July. Next year hopefully we will all be healthy so that we can spend the afternoon at the pool!

Thankful Vol. 3

I'm thankful for the break in the middle of this week.
I'm thankful for being born in American, a place where I have freedom to worship my Lord without fear.
I'm thankful for those who fought to make me free and those who continue to fight to protect my freedom.
I'm thankful for Nick staying home Monday, even though it was because he was sick.
I'm thankful for this little 4th of July cutie!

Don't worry there are more pictures to come! Hopefully Picmonkey starts working better so that I can edit my 4th of July pictures a little.
Hope you had a wonderful 4th of July!

Linking up with Carina@A Punk, A Pumpkin And A Peanut

Date From The Jar #2

If you'd like to catch up, I posted about initially making our date jar {here} and I posted about our first date {here}.

Our second date just kind of fell into our laps. At the end of May, Nick enter his name in a drawing for baseball tickets at work. We were excited he won. So we decided to use it as one of our date nights since we had Saltdogs Game in the jar. Instead of the Saltdogs (Lincoln's minor league team) though we went up to Papillion and saw the Omaha Stormchasers, which is the KC Royals AAA team.

Nick won 4 tickets so that made this date a "group" date. It wasn't a double date, because the two friends who joined us weren't in a relationship or even knew each other before the night. I invited my friend Deborah who is usually away at school in Chicago, but home for the summer. Then we also invited Nick and I's good friend Tony, who is living in Omaha for the summer before heading to Purdue for graduate school in the fall. It was good company for a fun night.

.It was so hot! There wasn't a breeze at all. Thankfully it was overcast otherwise it would have been even worse. At least our seats were pretty awesome. Ninth row just to the left of home plate. I think these were the best seats I've ever had at a baseball game. That almost makes up for the heat and humidity.

Tony & Nick

The game started off kind of slow, but it picked up and got more fun to watch. After the first inning we were afraid that the Stormchasers weren't going to do very well, but they quickly turned it around. There was a lot of action. Lots of crazy hits, lots of stealing bases and lots of errors leading to awesome runs. I even think Nick was quite entertained, which is saying a lot, because he's not much of a baseball fan.

There was a lot of tasty food and drinks. I forgot to get a picture of our food, but we had burgers and chili cheese fries. Then later we shared a funnel cake. Funnel cakes are just like warm donuts so I of course had to have one! We had beers at the start of the game and then found out they had a Mexican food booth that was selling margaritas. Naturally Nick and I had to share one. It was pretty tasty and much stronger than I thought it was going to be. (That's why we shared.)

Deborah & I

We only stayed till 9:30, because we had to get home and pick up Evelyn from my parents' house. We left at the end of the 6th inning. So we at least got to see the majority of the action.

It was such a fun time that Nick is going to put his name in for tickets in August too. If we get tickets again we think we're just going to bring Evelyn with us next time, as long as it's not too hot. It was nice to be away from her for a night, but I also think she would have fun.

Have any of you been to any baseball games this summer? What's your favorite food to get at a sporting event?

Have a good Monday everyone!