Day 26

Day #26: Something you read online. Leave a link. Discuss if you like.

WHEW. So this afternoon/evening has been a BIG adventure of moving things out of my apartment. Specifically the main large (and heavy/awkward) pieces of furniture I have. Thankfully, our friend Kevin was free to come help out. What a lifesaver & a good friend, seriously people.

All of that accomplished now,  I am worn out and so ready for bed - really seriously debated just skipping blogging tonight but this wouldn't be a challenge if it was easy or something right? Ha. Well anyways - here we go.

I have to keep telling myself this :)

It's interesting in some way that today's prompt was to leave a link of something that I read online - since today the Supreme Court made a ruling on the topic of same-sex marriage in this country. Most of the new stories & links of reading online today all had something to say about the supreme court ruling. Whether you agree or disagree with the ruling made today - today was a historic & eventful day in our Nation's history.

So I shall leave some of the variety of links and news stories I have read today in light of historic events. Plus two stories I read this morning that had nothing to do with Supreme Court anything - but just made for interesting reads :) The challenge says discuss if you like....so if you like - discuss. Goodnight everyone.

• Supreme Court Rulings Hailed as Historic

• 41 Signs Today

• Ultramarathoners: Faster, Higher, Stronger and Sleepier

• WWII Soldier's Letters

Day 18

Day #18: Tell us a story from your childhood

Once upon a time, my family moved out to Pasadena, California when I was in middle school. This was not a permanent move, it was only temporary. My dad's company needed him out in California for work a lot one summer - so basically the whole family came with to save my dad some travel time! :)

The morning we left for California, since we were going to leave our cars parked at home while we were out of town - we took a limo to get everyone to the airport which was awesome. On the plane my brothers Isaac, Luke and I all sat next to each other and I remember we were obsessed with 2 of the music videos they kept playing on the airplane: A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton and Soak Up the Sun by Sheryl Crow. Yup we were prettttyyyy cool obviously.

Our summer once we got to California was literally JAM PACKED with activities from what I remember. We walked everywhere that was possible [including to the grocery store near our apartment building we were living in, I remember thinking how ridiculous this was!].

The apartment building we were living in had a pool, so my main goal was to just spend as much time at the pool as possibly. My mom's main goal was for us to make the most out of our California time aka we spent as much time as possible on the go. I remember not being a huge fan of every place Mom wanted us to visit and I also remember being less of a fan of the fact that she made my brothers & I journal about everywhere we went either - BUT looking back on this time in my childhood/family's life - what a cool experience and props to my mom for doing everything she could to expose her 4 kids to the California opportunities we had available.

In the short few months that we lived in Pasadena we visited every museum possible - everything from The Getty & Ronald Reagan's Presidential Library to the Guinness World Record Holding Bunny Museum (this was really just a small house shoved full of bunny junk we found out!). We made trips to Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and San Diego. We visited the Tournament of Rose Parade House & Gardens. We went to the library frequently. Pasadena has a super beautiful library - worth stopping in if you are ever in the neighborhood! We hiked (at the time one of my least favorite things we did). We made sure to spend a few days a Legoland. For Mother's Day we went out to Knott's Berry Farm (an amusement park). Mom found a church near our apartment that hosted a free concert series every Wednesday afternoon, so of course we walked to that every week. We made trips to a Target near our apartment that was 2 stories tall AND had an elevator inside which I remember thinking was awesome. We went to a small car race that someone randomly gave my Mom free tickets too. As a family we loved eating at a local place called Wahoo's Fish Tacos. SO GOOD. Just Mom & Peter (who was still an infant) and I spent a weekend in Hollywood. We checked out the Wax Museum, the Guinness World Record Museum & Mann's Chinese Theater. We went to church every Sunday at Pasadena Lutheran - a very old & beautiful church! And this list of things is just what I can remember offhand at 10:45pm tonight!

I'm sure Mom has our California journals somewhere. [Mom if you are reading this, we should find those] I know that I was not a fan of the journaling we had to do the whole time we were there, but looking back on our family's little adventure, what a special time. We survived the 6 of us [at the time] living in a 3 bedroom apartment all summer. Thanks to my parents, especially my Mom, we got to experience as much as possible while we were there. I'm sure now that since tonight I have started thinking more about this memory from my childhood I will later on remember more details about our time there. Definitely cool and almost surreal now 11 years later to think that we lived in California together for a time. Enjoy some pictures I found from our adventures! :) The end.

Playing dress-up at The Getty Museum 

On one of our hiking adventures! Mom & my youngest brother at the time.

More dress up fun!

Peter was so little!

Legoland Trip!

More hiking adventures.

Luke & I at Knott's Berry Farm

One of our many family dinners at Wahoo's Fish Tacos.

Note from my life today: Kind of a rough day overall BUT bright spot, I got to have a wedding dress fitting today so that was AWESOME. Anytime I get to wear that dress is a win. That's all I have to say about that, just wanted to share :)

Day 17

Day #17: A favorite photo of yourself & why

Whew, so today has officially marked the beginning of me packing up my apartment. Bleh. But since my packing in going towards a good cause [moving, getting married...] I suppose I will survive. Blogging tonight is my temporary oasis from working & packing, so brace yourself for a novel. Just kidding!

Actually, today's prompt caused me to happily scroll through lots and lots of pictures that I have. Thank goodness the challenge is to pick a favorite picture and not THE #1 favorite picture of yourself, I'm too indecisive for that!

The picture I chose is a favorite simply because to me it just has joy spilling out of the picture. I look at it and love that this quick snap of a camera lens captured one of my favorite things to do, smile & laugh, with Adam, my favorite person in the world. This picture reminds me how Adam has the ability to remind me to smile when I am upset, to diligently work to make me laugh if I am too stressed about something, and to laugh with me - although, let's be real, he also has no problem laughing at me. But I love him so much for all of that. Is it August 2nd yet?! :)

Day 15

Day #15: A Day in the Life [PHOTOS!]

Officially will be half way through this 30 Day Blogging Challenge by the end of this post! I realized sometime last week that it was valuable in the mornings to look at what my blog topic was for the day so that I could be thinking about what to write as the day progressed. That definitely came in handy today since the topic was a Day in the Life with the suggestion of taking a photo an hour. The photos from today were definitely not taken every hour exactly or anything BUT throughout the day I tried to at least snap photos consistently.

Soap box moment: Today's topic challenge/prompt has been a blessing to me. Flashing back to my first post of this challenge I shared that I was feeling like I had lost some of the joy of blogging. In that same post, I also reflected on the idea that since I would be fairly lazy about when I would/would not blog it seemed like a lot more pressure to post and "catch up" on life when I would get around to it. SO, back to today's challenge being a blessing to me because:

1. Thinking about capturing moments from today throughout the day gave me a new perspective on how the day's events were unfolding. Anything that was part of the day was automatically worthwhile & valuable just because it happened today and that was the intended theme of this post
2. Whenever I would remember to take a picture of something going on today, I would get so excited about the part the picture would play in sharing today with you [anyone graciously reading this] AKA I have been excited about writing this post ALL day today - for anyone that knows me personally, when I get really excited about something, it kind of consumes me. :)
3. Today is also a post that makes me feel like I am starting to understand the blessing of this challenge in general, reminding myself that while a blog is great for reflection & life sharing, it can't just become about sharing all the over-the-top life moments that happen...but instead a blog can be a more beautiful & honest space when it is defined by being transparent about all the in between/normal/boring/frustrating/sad/average things that happen all the time in the course of any given day - and those moments should be valued, shared, and reflected on just as consistently

So here we are then, moments from a Day in My Life. Special blessing to share today [and this whole weekend] with my friend Paige who very patiently and willingly participated in my photo marathon all day. And for those of you who have read this far or followed any of this blogging challenge, thanks for coming along on this journey with me.

Beginning of the day, trying out a free yoga class under the Arch downtown St. Louis, we followed the girls on the path in this picture out of the parking garage since they looked like they knew where they were going. [They did]

Our view during class.

Pumped for free yoga + that we both owned the same headband, classic.

My yoga spot.

Post free yoga. Do we look balanced + centered? :)

Our yoga spot. Also, we drove around randomly a lot today.

Post yoga, we walked around downtown [cool architecture details like this photo everywhere] for a while, main goal was Starbucks.

Found Starbucks, weird customer service experience, but we accomplished getting food + coffee.

Starbucks finished, we wandered into Macy's to check out their sale. Found this...

And then we turned the corner and it got better...

Macy's life.

Can't even tell what is real & fake in this picture right?

More Macy's life.

Yup, we were those people.

Productive bonus of Macy's trip, I found the perfect final accessory for my wedding look :)

Left Macy's and went to check out a cool bookstore we parked next too. Bathroom first, this was a bar connected to the bookstore + where the bathroom was located. Very unique looking.

Bookstore! I have been wanting to go here since I moved to St. Louis. Downstairs: New books. Upstairs: Used books.

One of the many reading nooks in the store.

Best. Thing. Ever.

LOVE this place, probably better that I only just now went inside with only a month left to live in St. Louis...otherwise my personal book collection may have gotten out of hand.

BOOKS! Spent $8 on 4 hardcover books. They also each came with a bookmark from the store. Score!

Paige asked about Goodwill's and I have 2 close-ish to my apartment, from that moment our day took a thrifting turn. Goodwill #1.

More of Goodwill #1.

After Goodwill #1, we headed back towards my apartment for lunch, stopped by the Kirkwood YMCA to pick up our rack packets for a 5K we spontaneously signed up to do tomorrow. Paige is PUMPED for her FIRST 5K :)

What up 5K?!

A nice lady offered to take this picture for us. I look like I am giving a weird blessing, don't know what I was thinking ha.

Race bibs for tomorrow!

My car post all of our adventure from the first half of the morning.

After a lunch stop at my apartment, Goodwill #2. A sampling of the goods from one shelf  area alone that we could have come home with.

This was my prize find of the day. $0.50. Awesome.

Goodwill #2 led to a trip to Home Goods. We kind of hit a tired wall here, found this sweet couch, sat on it for around 45 minutes and had a serious/deep life talk. [Used the self timer on my camera to document our little oasis]

This was our view for 45 minutes of our day, seriously :)

Too bad this was $1800.00 - not really in the young adult budget.

Home Goods led to a Target trip [they are next door to each other] to pick up some food things for dinner, it started raining at this point in the day.

Target for dinner supplies, then to Redbox to get a movie for our evening.

Redbox to home for showers [finally] we didn't shower for yoga + hadn't totally expected to end up spending the whole day out and about, needless to say SO refreshing to be clean!!!

Post shower, cleaned out my sink [should have taken a before, sorry!]

Time to make dinner.

Dinner.

More dinner.

Pumped to eat finally.

Ate outside, enjoyed rain/thunder while we ate.

Dinner life.

Last but not least, have been working on this post since we finished dinner and now I am done, so our last thing today is finally watching the movie we picked out from Redbox, then it will be bedtime, the end! 

Thanks for sharing in my day today. :)