Isaac Turns 1!!

The biggest blessing of moving to Goldsboro is meeting and becoming friends with the Hutchison's. They have been a true bright spot of living in my not-so-favorite place. I met Kim when she was 6 months pregnant and we became friends pretty much instantly. I was able to visit her in the hospital the day she had Isaac and have spent a lot of time watching him grow. So even though we were completely exhausted from the 3 weekends of travel before, we couldn't miss his first birthday party in Virginia Beach, VA.

Here's me and the birthday boy!

 The Hutchison Family!

My Best Friend's Wedding

Having your best friend get married is so much fun! I'm grateful for everything I was able to be there for, but still sad of all the things I missed. I flew in on Wednesday so I could have a night with my BF and still prepare for the big weekend.

Wednesday night we just relaxed and helped make the final changes on the wedding slide show.

Thursday we got to go the Panera (one of my midwest favorite places to eat), then Christine (another bridesmaid) and I set out to get all ready for the Bachelorette party!!! It was a really fun night!!

Me and the Bride!

 All of the girls!

Rach sharing the wealth at the bars

That night was followed by a day of recovery, seeing my husband and parents, the rehearsal, and the rehearsal dinner. Then we got a good nights rest before the big day!!

The beautiful bride with her beautiful dress, her beautiful sash, her beautiful hair, her beautiful veil...it was a beautiful day!

The Co-MOH's sharing some champagne on the party bus!

I can't even put into words how beautiful the entire day/weekend was from the ceremony to the weather to the reception. I was so honored to be there for my best friend and stand by her the day she became Mrs. Bessert!!! Congrats Rachel and Steve!!!

The First of a Few Posts

This last month has been a whirl wind. We go in spurts of having nothing going on on the weekends to have multiple non stop weekends in a row. The last post I left off with how I surprised my best friend for her bridal shower and got to see my Grandma's. That again was a great weekend. I wish I had gotten a picture with Rach, but we were too busy celebrating her wedding festivities...she is officially Mrs. Bessert now, but that requires it's own blog post!

The weekend after that we had our long anticipated half marathon. With me traveling home the weekend before that and drinking lots of wine  we did not prepare as well as we should have, but some things in life are more important than running a fast race.

We started out our weekend by driving to Wilmington and going out for our "last meal" before the race. We chose to not drink alcohol for the week before the race (most serious runners give that up for much longer), but we were out at a new restaurant that had a really delicious drink menu and one of their sangria's even claimed to be good for you because it used acai berry....enough said, we each allowed ourselves 1 drink. There was a band playing in the parking lot, so we stayed and listened to that, it was super fun and not something you see everyday.

Then we went to bed early for our 5am wake up call and headed down to the start line. We really didn't need to get there as early as we did, so we had some time to take pictures:

On the ferry ride over to the Battleship for the start

 With downtown Wilmington in the background

And this run was completely brutal, we didn't prepare well enough, we weren't in shape enough for it to feel good, but we finished in our goal time (under 3 hours)!!

We were extremely proud of ourselves for finishing, but I can speak for both of us when I say, that was our first and last half marathon. We will probably do some 5k's and 10k's in the future, but that's the extent of it.

All in all, it was a bucket list item and we crossed it off the list!!!

Grandma's

I am very lucky to be daughter of two parents who are the youngest of 6 and I am 25 and still have both of my grandma's living. I was also very fortunate to have both of my grandpa's in my life just up until the past few years. This weekend along with surprising my best friend for her bridal shower, I got to see both of my grandma's. One of the hardest parts of living far away is not knowing if they'll still be here by the time we get back to MN.

Grandma Hladky

Grandma Manning

And these are the only pictures I have from the weekend. I need to be better about taking pictures, especially on amazing fun weekends like the last one I just had!

This weekend Drew and I are running our 1/2 marathon...wish us luck. We will need it!!!

Where did August go?!

Whoops!! I completely missed the entire month! I have been very busy at work with our auditing season which means a lot of travel during the day and getting home later at night, along with that, Drew and I are trying REALLY hard to stay on track with our half marathon training, so that means at least 4 to 5 days a week of running/working out for an hour, AND on top of that, I'm studying for the CPA exam....again, so my free time is minimal. But anyways, we had a great month of August starting with celebrating our first anniversary on the 6th! We went to a wine tasting, a craft brewery, and our favorite locally grown restaurant that has AMAZING food!

We've also spent a lot of time watching this cutey grow, he is walking now!!! And here he is getting caught going into my purse, like his guilty face?! LOVE HIM!

And two of my good friends from college, Amanda and Jessica, came and visited Drew and I for a long weekend!!It was SO great to see them and show them around where we live. We spent a day at the beach, a day around town, and introduced them to a lot of our friends down here along with enjoying some adult beverages and catching up!! Here is the ONE picture that we managed to take that weekend, we were too busy having fun that we almost didn't take a single picture until their last night here!

Thanks so much for coming girls!!!!

Can't promise that I'll be a better blogger in September, but I'm hoping that come October (when my test is finally over) that I have a little bit more free time!

Pear Salad

Sounds good, right? Well it just adds to reason #890308435 that I have gained weight while living in the south.

I have been lamenting to my coworkers about how I don't like how much weight I've gained and how much my blood pressure increased since living here and how hard it is to avoid bad food in the south. Today we went to a small diner and a coworker suggested that I substitute a pear salad for french fries. Pears, good, salad, great, pear salad, nasty crap! (Thanks, Jim Gaffigan, for that line)

What went wrong, you ask? 

Oh, they forgot to mention the cheddar cheese and dollops of mayo on the pear!!!!! GROSS!!! This is what is considered healthy in the south...lettuce, pears, cheese, and at least a 1/4 cup mayo. There is a cherry on top, so it's ok, right? Good Lord.

I scrapped the mayo and cheese off and just ate the pear...well and the cherry :-)

Day at the Beach

Drew's favorite place to be is at the ocean, who would think after being from a land locked state, I guess we can thank grandpa George and grandma Mar for the for moving to Hawaii! Unfortunately we have hardly been at the beach this summer with all of the trips we took early in the season and Drew's crazy unpredictable work schedule, but we finally made it there last weekend.

It was a gorgeous day and the ocean felt like bath water. It was wonderful! Unfortunately, we enjoyed it too much and got so sun burnt (even though we did apply sunscreen) that we were MISERABLE for the following 3 days. Whoops! Better luck next time!

Here's our one picture from the day eating at a restaurant on the pier: