three little rituals in June

Coming off of a whirlwind week and heading into a busy weekend!! Just a quckie today. Here are some additional favorite rituals if you're interested.

Weekly Trader Joes Salad Kits & Youtube. Though with summer scheduling my life is slowing down a bit, this ritual saved my mental health. Chris works a regular overnight shift at the fire department each week. I used to feel lonely on those weeknights, often burnt out from working all weekend and just struggling to do my own routines and make a nice dinner without someone else prompting it. Once I let go of being "productive" or cooking something nice on those nights, everything got better. Now, I grab a salad kit from Trader Joe's on the way home from work, and eat the whole thing on the couch with a glass of wine while watching Youtube. It's the best night of the week. 

Google Calendar & A Notebook. While my Google calendar is how I live and breathe, I've also been using a notebook bullet journal style for a lot of planning. I wrote out a monthly spread, the have a page for each week. On each weekly spread I block of a section to put the days of the week and any large, unusual events on those days to visualize it, then I write lists of what I need to get done for the week. I have four categories: Career, Self, Relationships, and Habits. For me, this is the perfect combo of my love for paper planning plus the necessity of being too busy to not have a digital calendar!

Being religious about nightly chores. I am not the best at doing chores in a timely manner. But, as everything has been so busy this spring I've gotten really good at making sure the kitchen is at least closed for the night. If I have more time and energy, I like to sweep, wipe the counters, do all of the dishes, and tidy things up. If I'm moving fast or am low energy, though, I just make sure the dishwasher is running and prep the coffee for the morning. Waking up to just that makes such a huge difference in the start of the day! I've even been starting to finish those chores up before we go out if I think it's going to be a late night. 

Summer Fridays are basically holidays SO A VERY HAPPY FRIDAY TO YOU!! <3

three little rituals in April

 One the greatest joys of adulthood has to be finding your own rhythms and rituals. Look at me! A person out in the world deciding my own preferences. The absolute pleasure of identity-making (or at least identity exploring?). Here are some of my favorite rituals over the past month:

A favorite walking route. Most mornings, Chris and I take Bear for his morning walk together. While we have favorite routes we take often, Chris especially tends to mix things up each time. On days when Chris is out of the house for work, though, I have one favorite route that I always take Bear on for a solo morning walk. We go past my favorite garden house where we stop to drink from the dog bowl and see what's starting to grow, then past what I've decided is our future house to admire the porch. We go down a short stretch of a paved walking trail, then loop back past my friends house. Finally, we go past some flowering apple trees and a house with chickens. The perfect morning loop. 

The quietest Friday nights. Currently, weekends have been jam-packed with my regular coaching work, plus shows and rehearsal schedules for both the company I skate on and the company I direct. This has led to Fridays being one of our chill-est nights. While I often go to happy hour on Wednesdays only to stumble back at 10pm, on Fridays, I get home from work and find Chris already starting dinner (often from the vegetarian cookbook we're working through). We chat together while one of us takes lead finishing dinner, have a drink, then curl up with our comfort food in the living room. We usually only watch one episode of something (recently: Beef, now: Ted Lasso and whenever the Bruins are playing). Then I shower, we clean up, we talk, read a little, and go to bed early. 

A reading break from the world. Spring is a busy season for work, and I've been working hard to ensure that I keep myself grounded and happy even while running around. I'm proud to say it's been a little better this year. One of my new year's resolutions was to stop working when I get home at the end of the day, and I've stuck to that. I've now also started to add in some reading upon walking in the door some days. Ideally, it's a beautifully sunny day. The sun is still out. I grab a beer, then curl up on the couch for 20 or 30-minutes with a book. Sometimes, Chris joins with his own book or a video game. Ultimate reset. 

Happy Friday! xo

big thoughts about community and living a real life (& photos from Burlington, VT)

 

Jesus. This spring. 

Work has been great but literally so busy. I am only beginning to pull myself out of a very intense feeling of overwhelm...the kind of overwhelm where you have 300 unread emails and have to write down "text so and so back" to force yourself to do so. I have a ridiculous stack of random sticky notes and long lists that I've been carrying around with me from room to room, just attempting to make some sense of everything. It's not really worked! But we're getting there. And then....all the mess of the world this week. I don't have words for tragedy like this, but I also know not acknowledging it is worse. I don't know what to do about it, but I do know that we as a community must be less stagnant and passive about every important issue we face. Plenty of people who know more than me have pulled together great resource lists; Cup of Jo is a good one. 

In our own families and households and friend groups and neighborhoods, we must all be more engaged and more human. More supportive. More caring. More discerning. More ready to take on the work of large changes, and more consistent with our practice of small changes. In this moment, I want to work on: being a better family member, specifically an "aunt" to Chris' very little cousin and a supporter of my own younger cousins; a more generous community member with my time and attention; being a more empathetic observer of my neighbor's lives; and more willing to sit with the news, research, and develop opinions about changes. 

Even before this week, I've been thinking a lot about how I want to be careful not to disconnect from the world. Even the grief, even the pain: I want to bear witness to all, to feel the range of the human experience. One of the parts of our upcoming move we are most excited about is being back in town. Our current apartment is a perfectly nice, white-walled unit in a duplex. There is a neatly paved driveway filled with cars. There are fine, quiet neighbors. Someone cuts the grass every Friday. The whole town uses the exact same trash and recycling bins. We live in a cul-de-sac, with many nice, quiet houses. We don't know the neighbors...sometimes we pass someone when we walk the dog, but no one knows (or cares) who we are. When we first moved here, we were excited for more space. Isn't that what we're always searching for? The picket fence? The privacy? But as our move approaches, I am most excited for getting back to the messiness of buildings crammed together. I want to wake up to slammed doors late at night and loud, happy drunk voices in the street. I want to walk by people smoking on their front steps and past piles of free junk on the side of the road. I want to notice people working odd hours, and staying up too late on Tuesdays. I want to to see people existing outside of the apathetic suburbia molds. I want to feel the energy of the first really warm weekend and the quiet of misty Monday mornings. I want the hustle of digging everyone out after a snow storm and the ability to say "let's grab a drink" without grabbing the car keys. 

The truth is as much as I'd love a yard for kids and the ability to plant gardens wherever I pleased, the joy and community I really want to belong to doesn't seem to be here. I want to be throwing elbows with the people fighting for parking spaces and not taking tomorrow for granted. My people are the baristas and bartenders and artists that still hold onto their 9-5's, not the guy who's sat at the same desk for 30 years and thinks we could buy a house if only we stopped spending all our money on coffee.

My childhood was isolated. At times I loved it, and at times it felt wrong. There's a lot of gray area to be found between the good and the bad of a homeschooled, conservative Christian upbringing, and I was certainly firmly rooted in the gray. The one thing I always felt, though, was utterly disconnected to the world around me. My lack of trend following and pop culture knowledge was praised by adults, and scorned by peers. I took a lot of pride in not liking what everybody else seemed to. But I also felt a lot of shame for having no grasp on what "real life" felt like. Real life is what everyone else was living; I was caught aloof and uninvolved, like I was watching a goofy sitcom where the outcome didn't matter to me. Whatever my childhood was, it wasn't living. 

As an adult, I often still feel behind. The difference now, though, is that I can choose to be more connected instead of continuing to hide away. I can choose to not just talk about compassion, joy, being thoughtful, being neighborly, but to really act in that way. To shape my own life into the way I want the world to feel. There is much to be done on a macro level enable us to live as more whole communities. But the pieces we can really control are the small things, that take place inside our own kitchens and churches and bars and front steps. I want to take this move as a chance to be putting that work first.

All of these pictures are from our quick trip up to Burlington, VT in mid-May. Chris drove up from NJ, and I came up from NH. We got an Air Bnb downtown for two nights. It was a ridiculously hot weekend--in the 90's!--but we had so much fun walking around, going to our favorite used bookstore, and trying new sandwich and coffee places. We got to see my best friend and her boyfriend for a quick visit, and tried a very cool new-to-us restaurant called Poco which was so small, intimate, beautiful, and delicious. Our main reason for coming up was actually to get to see Sal Vulcano's show! I had bought Chris tickets back at Christmas and it ended up getting postponed, but we finally got to see him! So fun. This was our first time being in Burlington when it wasn't freezing cold, and we loved it. 

Is Adult Life Just Complete And Utter Chaos?

 

My heart is pounding, I unwisely poured myself a second cup of coffee, my shoulders haven't relaxed since Monday, and I am racing with nervous energy that simultaneously shouts "do all the things NOW!!" and "just stare at the wall and dissociate for a bit."

We're in a bit of a family crisis at the moment. Our dog, Bear, got out of the house Monday afternoon and bit our next door neighbor. He is okay, thankfully--bruised and broke skin, but everything was surface level and there shouldn't be any long term issues. Chris brought him to the emergency room immediately afterwards to get checked out. We emailed our landlords and told them about the situation the second we got the neighbor home. That night they let us know that Bear is no longer welcome here, and we had three days to get him off the property. 

We are not getting evicted...Bear just isn't allowed to live her any more. Which makes complete sense. I cannot describe how utterly shitty it feels to be the neighbor with the problem dog. We both feel so ashamed. And so upset. And very overwhelmed by how to move forward. Our neighbor has been literally too kind to us, considering. We're grateful for him. And we're grateful for landlords who are also not kicking us out. That gives us some flexibility. 

Monday night was horrible and I rage cried for hours. I called my friend, and my mom. Tuesday morning I grieved a little but overall felt way more clear-headed. I was unfocused all day and then stayed up until 1:30am writing an 8-page research paper that I had, of course, procrastinated on (here's a lesson I probably won't learn: don't procrastinate because emergencies happen and surprise!! you still can't drop any balls!!). Wednesday we made a thousand plans for a thousand different scenarios, and let ourselves just chill and spend time together. Today (Thursday) we went on one last of our perfect, family coffee walks and then Chris left for New Jersey with Bear. He'll stay there with his parents for at least two weeks, while we make more of a game plan and explore some options. Today I will finish this blog post, work out, eat real meals, and go to work. 

A bookshelf Chris just finished. 

The plan right now is not to rehome Bear. He's still young (he's just two), and in my heart of hearts I do feel like there is room to make progress and work towards making him less reactive. Rehoming him in this moment seems irresponsible--like we are just walking away from our problems and putting him in a stressful situation that likely will result in him getting more aggressive. So we need to try. Of course, this mostly hinges on us being able to find another living situation. We have to be upfront with new possible landlords, and it's scary to feel like no one will want us with Bear's history. I don't know what we will do if we can't find a place to live, but we 're going to give us some time to search before we worry about that. If we are able to move, we will be able to break our lease once a new tenant is found for our current apartment. It will just be continuing to pay rent until the next renter can start (which is pretty generous given that our lease continues until August). 

I am scared about the increased training we will need to undertake with Bear, to ensure that we can be good owners to him for the future. I'm scared we won't be able to handle it, or that it won't work and we'll still have to consider getting rid of him. I honestly do not think my heart could take getting rid of him. I've been very slow to get used to owning a dog, but now that we are two years in I really would be heart broken without him and I don't want to do that. Still, I worry about what this means our future lives will look like: what will happen when we have kids? Will we ever be able to have friends over, throw parties? 

I am very sad to be leaving this apartment. I really love it here. I love the space, I love the location. I love that it's clean. I love that we have laundry in the basement. I love that it feels like a real home. I love that it's the place I started to feel really grounded in my grown up rhythms: clean sheets every Sunday, the weekly meal plan stuck to the fridge, extra bedding stored for guests in the closets, long walks with Chris and Bear every morning and afternoon. We were really coming into our own here. I was loving this season of life. 

I was looking forward to a lot in this home: I just bought pansies and tomato plants to cover the porches in summer-fueled life. Chris' parents were supposed to visit in two weeks, and I was scheming last-minute decorating projects before they saw the place for the first time. I wanted to host a Mother's Day Lunch, and a Memorial Day cookout. Chris just finished a bookshelf he designed himself, to fit exactly under the big living room window. I have a pile of frames waiting to be hung above our bed. 

Chaotic Easter snaps. 

This past weekend was Easter, and it was such a good one. I was utterly blissed out. In the morning we walked Bear and then made a special Easter brunch for the two of us: mimosas, french press cafe au laits, cinnamon rolls, and fruit salad. I made appetizers and homemade rolls to bring to my parents for a big family lunch. We talked about how this was really the first holiday since we've moved in together where everything felt so right: we didn't overcommit, but also set aside time for fun holiday things; there was no tension with my parents; we weren't stressed about Bear. It felt like we were finally figuring out what our adult lives could look like.

And instead, and instead, and instead. What a shitty turn of events. 

We can only focus on what we can control, and right now that is: being proactive about looking for places. Being honest with friends and family and asking for help. Being on top of our finances so we're prepared for whatever needs to happen. Taking care of ourselves. Honestly though, part of me wants to just burn it all down: go full send and just move to New Orleans, or just bop from Air BnB to Air Bnb and see the country. Sneak away to a new city and live in a tight, sunny little loft. I think you only get one shot to really burn down your life and start over; maybe this could be it?

This feels like the start of a formative moment; a challenge that will shape us. I'm proud to say we feel really together and are each proud of how the other is handling things. Maybe in a few years we'll look back and this will just be a crazy, chaotic adventure. It sucks right now though. 

Is this just what adulthood is? Continuous, utter chaos?

baking & making in january

 Even with being back to full-time coaching, starting the semester, and generally readjusting to life at home, January still managed to hold lots of creative kitchen time. I love cooking and baking. I love the actual act of making food, I love the meaning we derive from food, but I also love the care aspect of food. Nothing makes me feel more capable than when there's a fridge full of good leftovers for lunch, or dinner in the slow cooker ready to go after a late night of coaching. I love the coziness of it all; it's a hug to my little family and a hug to myself. Anyway, here's what I've been making:

The weekend we got home from FL, I made this pie from last year's Joy the Baker holiday magazine to bring to my parent's for family Christmas. Her recipe calls for pears; I used apples instead. Someone remind me next year to buy all the cranberries and keep them in the freezer, it's really not fair that they're only out for the holidays. She uses tapioca granules in this recipe and it lends such a cool flavor and texture. 

The same night we got home (after that horrible drive) I made this creamy chicken stew from Budget Bytes. We are a Budget Bytes home....I make at least one of her recipes every week. This was perfect, comforting, and exactly the welcome home we needed. Will definitely make again soon. 

On a random Tuesday afternoon before heading to the rink, I made two quiches. Quiches are probably my favorite thing to make ahead for dinner. I baked both in the afternoon, the pie shaped one was for dinner that night and then the square one went in the freezer. This quiche managed to be the most like my mom's: lots of bacon, frozen spinach, and cheddar. 

Cut to what I'm most proud of....this Irish Soda Bread!! I used this recipe from Joy the Baker, but omitted her feta and olives and opted for traditional raisins instead. It baked off so well and I was soooo impressed! It's such a quick and easy bread, and to be honest in my mind it feels versatile enough to make on the regular? Maybe a little heavy, but I'm debating starting to make more of our own bread and I think something like this would be on regular rotation. I'm in love, clearly. 

Another thing we've made almost every three days so far has been applesauce!!! This is probably my favorite winter make. We make it in the Instant Pot and roughly use this recipe, but the amounts change every time and I'm convinced you can't ruin it. It has no added sugar, just apples and cinnamon. We eat the applesauce hot on it's own, with oatmeal, and on yogurt and cottage cheese. We've even been using it to substitute eggs in baking. I've got Chris hooked on it. 

Full disclosure: I didn't make this cornbread (Chris did) and I obvi didn't grow the grapefruit. But! I have rediscovered eating grapefruit for breakfast, with just a sprinkle of brown sugar. And grilled cornbread muffins with jam win every. single. time.

And okay, one make of the non-kitchen variety. I'm still working (slowly, and definitely not diligently) on the cross-stitch kit I got from Elise Joy. I LOVE it, the kit is so well put together and fun. It's a Christmas scene of trees and other decor on shelves, and I bought her next one in the series "Flowers on Shelves" as well. Once I finish this tree, I think I'm going to put this away until next holiday season, and start working on the flowers one. Overall I am loving cross-stitch! This may be a craft happy I actually keep up with. 

Other things keeping me creating this month have been work and the wedding! I am running an artistry movement class at a local figure skating club and loving it. It's 30-minutes a week of whatever I want to do; we've been doing lots of edge class style stuff, learning combos, and learning different forms of energy. I'm also choreographing a short program for Colonial FSC's Theater on Ice team which has been a literal dream come true. I'm loving it and can't wait to show you! The wedding is also taking a lot of creative energy, but I've been enjoying it overall. I'll save details for another post. :)

A large part of my goals for 2022 were centered around tending to myself as a whole person, including my creative self. And to properly "tend" that creative self, it's not just about doing the thing, it's about practicing the thing. I am trying to channel more experimental playtime into my every day: taking time on the ice to experiment, letting myself make bad first drafts, just starting, trying new hobbies, doing things I'm bad at. This is where we learn!!

Happy Friday! xoxo

Leaving Middle Street

This coming Saturday, Chris and I will be moving out of our Middle Street apartment. Our landlord decided to sell the house, so for the past few weeks we (well, mostly Chris) have been hustling to find a new place. We're going to be moving about 20 minutes south, two towns over from where we are now in Portsmouth. We're moving into the middle unit of a tri-plex in a small town; we'll be across from a large park with walking trails and have a yard!

We are excited to move. A spare bedroom! Two parking spots! A yard! A full size kitchen! Laundry hookups! But, this also feels a little sad. This chapter is closing. I have loved every minute in this cramped little apartment. 

Chris moved into this apartment in June of 2018, just a week before we met. It was his first apartment without roommates. I came over for the first time sometime in early July. He had two beach chairs set up in the living room, and I helped him put an AC in the window before we left for our third date. 

This apartment is an attic one-bedroom, on top of an older house about a 10-minute walk from downtown. All the walls have slanted ceilings. In the bathroom, the shower is built into the slanted ceiling, and the shower rod sits so low that you can see Chris' shoulders above the curtain. You enter the apartment through a galley kitchen, and directly across from the front door is the bathroom. From there you cross into a little hallway, with the steps down into the main unit cutting up through the floor. On one side of this hallway is our bedroom, and on the other side is the living room. There is a very long, angled closet in the hallway, which we sarcastically called the shed. We keep the pet food and camping supplies and paint cans and tools in there. We've called it the shed so often, though, that now we call it that unironically to everyone, which is confusing. 

The rooms are choppy and none of the doorways flow into each other, which makes it horrible to cool down in the summer. Attics are always so, so hot. To get up to our apartment, there's a huge outdoor staircase that ends in a little landing right outside our door. We spent a silly amount of time on that little, maybe 3x3, landing. We squeezed a tiny grill out there. Last summer during quarantine, I had flowers and veggies going up and down the stairs. The landing is Bear's favorite spot to perch, and every day when I leave he gives me kisses through the slats. 

This apartment was so fun in the first year or so of our relationship. We went on motorcycle rides, went on early morning runs, and went downtown for drinks. I had never consistently stayed over at a boyfriend's before, and I really reveled in showing up for the weekend and getting to live an almost alternate life.

 Sometime in that first year, we had some of Chris' friends come over and I made homemade buffalo chicken dip. We dropped it directly on the newly-installed carpet, of course. We cleaned it up, and I scrubbed and scrubbed the spot with baking soda to get the stain out. Finally, Chris asked how I was planning to get the baking soda out of the carpet. "I'll just vacuum it!" I said, and that's how I learned that Chris didn't own a vacuum, even though he'd been living there for months. 

Of course, this apartment was Chris'. But I took it as mine well before moving in. I had a part-time coffee shop job at the time, and in between those shifts and coaching I'd often hang out at his apartment even when he was at work. He got me a very ugly dresser from the side of the road, that had two drawers missing. Over time we acquired everything necessary to make cookies whenever I got the urge. We at a lot of frozen pizzas, often with the office in the background and a new bottle of wine from the store directly across the street. Other nights, we'd go out for a quick drink before dinner, then spring for an appetizer, and then go to a second place, and just eat appetizers the entire night. 

I moved in in January of 2020. I cannot thank my lucky stars enough that we moved in together before covid. Moving in was a Big Deal. But, I don't know if I've ever felt something that felt so right, straight from the start. It was such an obvious decision. This apartment--and more importantly, Chris--were already home to me. I just needed to move all my stuff in. 

Even so, that first year of living together was hard. It took us a long time to get in the rhythm of things. It took a long time for the apartment to feel like mine. But this year, we've really hit our stride. The apartment stays relatively clean. There is always food in the fridge. We make a good, decently healthy dinner most nights a week. We spend a lot of time chatting at the kitchen table, and a lot of time working quietly in separate rooms. Our favorite weekend activity this summer has been curling up on the couch with Bear, while I read a book and Chris plays videogames. 

I love waving to the neighbor I park my car in front of at 5am every morning, while I head off to coach and he walks the dog. I love seeing Bear wait for me at the top of the steps. I love the light that streams in through the kitchen window at golden hour. I love how cozy the slanted ceilings make each room here. 

This apartment was many firsts, for both of us: first dog, first place together, first time living with a significant other, first time buying furniture, first time trying 1000 new recipes. This was our quarantine home, my oasis on long workdays, where we fought and laughed and made plans and made up. This is where we lived when we got engaged. This has been the place we celebrated, and relaxed, been productive, and retreated when we were sad and tired. 

I have a thousand more photos that are making me teary-eyed, but I'll close it here. Here is to new chapters! New things! Growing together! This new chapter feels very grown up. But I am sad to leave this tight, old apartment. This little place has given us so much space, and so much freedom. Middle Street, you've been the place both our adult lives really started. We'll miss you!

These Are The Days

As I'm typing this, I am sitting in West Palm, Florida, in between ice shows. I'm here skating with Rosstyn Ice Shows & Rink Designs at the South Florida Fair; we're almost to the end of our run and only have four show days left. 

I'm overwhelmed with the feeling of fresh starts, and a new era.  It's been over a year since I was away at a skating contract. Once I get home, I'll have left my other job and be setting out as a full time skating coach and full time student. The previous year, with all it's challenges, changes, and unknowns is starting to slip away. There are vaccines! There's live entertainment! We are coming back, and this pocket of in-between time will be gone. 

I don't believe in sugarcoating everything, or always seeking "lessons" and "bright spots" in bad situations. Not everything has to be great! Some things can just be hard. But this season has held lots of growth for me. Mainly, my newfound appreciation for the present moment. 

I am a rusher. I am always working towards, living for, planning for, the next thing. For me, COVID took that away. With everything up in the air, I had to learn to focus on what I needed in the moment, and making the best out of the situation we were in. And being forced to do that really helped me to appreciate this part of my life. Sure, there were a lot of things I wanted this year that didn't happen...but there were also so many things that did! And I am so incredibly lucky to have had the experience through covid that I had, and not something worse. There is so much to appreciate here. 

March and April 2021 held so much goodness for us. Personally, I felt a rhythm set in. Vaccines helped us return to some of our favorite things for the first time. We got to experience all that ooey gooey joy of being newly engaged. We made good food. We kept the apartment clean. Bear became more manageable. Work found some consistency. We saw friends! Before I rush out of this spring, and into the newness of summer, I wanted to highlight some moments and rhythms from the spring that I want to remember. 

SUNDAY RUNDAY: We ran together almost every Sunday. Our "Sunday Runday" became a wonderful part of the weekend to look forward to. I typically coach all day on Sunday, so getting up early and both getting a work out and quality time together was so wonderful. 

DOG WALKS: Sort of connected to running, I made a concerted effort this spring to walk Bear, by myself, more often. Chris does 95% of walks for Bear. Often, I get frustrated with him...and I had fallen into the bad habit of getting irritated with him at night when I had stuff to do, but he needed attention. I started planning taking him for a walk as just part of my routine some days, and it helped so much. Walking's good for me, too!

BRYANT PARK: I ended up skating with American Ice Theatre for a one-day show in Bryant Park, NYC in early March! It was so fun! Rehearsals involved being on the ice, an hour away from home, by 6am for a few weeks...but it was worth it! The show was so fun and we turned into a sweet little weekend in NJ to see Chris' parents. 

AIT NH: In March we also launched American Ice Theatre, NH! We hosted our first workshop, and made plans to start our junior performance company later this month! So exciting!! 

TACOS: I forget why we started, but we fell into the habit of Taco Wednesdays and loved it. We went with Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays because Chris usually works Tuesdays...and a fun, easy dinner we can both work on turned out to be a great way to reconnect after not seeing much of each other for the first half of the week!

EDGE CLASS: Doug Webster from Ice Dance International has been hasting a pro-level edge class in NH this spring, and attending every week was such a highlight of the year for me. It was so fun to improve and work with so many skaters that I really admire, and that have turned into wonderful friends. Hoping this can continue once I'm home! 

WEEKENDS: While I didn't take really any weekends off, I did have Saturday afternoons mostly off. We did a lot of lunch beers, afternoons spent downtown, and power cleans of the apartment together. We hiked with friends, and went to friends houses. I tried hard to never have school, or work, that had to happen past 12 on Saturdays. It wasn't always successful, but more often than not it led to me feeling so much less stressed going into a full workday Sunday. 

FEELIN LOVED: Obviously, everyone is happy and excited when they get engaged. But Chris and I weren't prepared for how much deeper, and more connected, this time has made us feel. We feel more like a couple, and a family unit, and we're excited for everything that's coming. This spring, we worked hard to preserve time together as a couple and also make sure each of us was doing the things that were important to them. It's a balance, and we're excited to keep striving for that once I'm home. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “these are the days”. These are the days we’ve been waiting for! I have been waiting my whole life to coach so much, be engaged, have my own place, skate well enough for a pro level edge class, have a close friend group. And somehow, I’m here! So I don’t want to rush through. I want to enjoy all of it. Every sunset streaming through our kitchen windows, every time we throw sticks for Bear, every time Chris and I catch up over homemade margs, and every time I laugh with a student. These are the days we’ve been waiting for. Why waste this moment by not appreciating it?