a grand adventure is about to begin @themorrelljourney - Tumblr Blog

random thoughts

sometimes i just need to get out thoughts and don’t want to spill it all on another social media platform...

1. i haaaaaaate baby/bridal showers. hate them. they are like my least favorite events to attend. i think we make way too much of a fuss about them. we end up pouring way too much time, money, and resources for a terribly boring event. i’m all about blessing the about-to-married couple or soon-to-be-parents. YES! buy them a gift! but do we have to buy gallons of plastic junk to use for a couple of hours and then toss it in the landfill while we present them with gifts?

2. i’m on fire for our financial journey again. mark and i have some big goals this year and i’m excited to start making some progress on them! last year covid really slowed us down because my business took such a hit but i’m excited to start getting back on track. my first wedding of the year is may 1st. i’ve still had some more cancellations or postponements for this year but i’m so much more at peace about it this year. if we lose some income, we lose some income. it’ll be okay. i’m so grateful for the weddings i’ll still get to do.

3. i say it all. the time. but mark and i are so, so good. we continue to get stronger each year of our marriage. he agrees, we are more solid than ever before right now. i keep thinking, how can it get any better?! and it does. almost 17 years together and i still look forward to seeing him every. single. day. i have never been more in love and never felt more loved.

4. while the division in the country on EVERYTHING stresses me out, i say very, very little about. almost nothing. but what pisses me off more than anything is having assumptions made about a group that i identify with. i have both friends and family members that say things they think encompass all christians. i have friends and family members and role models that say things they think encompass all liberals. or conservatives. i agree, a lot of christians do a pretty piss-poor job at loving other people and being open and accepting. but there are a ton out there that are loving, gracious, encouraging, and open-minded. none of us are perfect, especially christians. i just hate having the worst assumed about me because of what a few loud, obnoxious people do. i realize the same could be said about SO MANY groups of people, that’s just the one that i feel personally. and because of that i try not to make assumptions based on my experience with a few.

5. landscaping is notttttttt my thing. i do not like flowers and receiving them as a gift would be more stressful to me than anything else. but we have finally ripped up some pachysandra in our front yard and started planting some evergreen plants. i’m liking how it’s coming along so far!

6. i read “the no-impact man” and even though i’m already pretty environmentally-friendly, it still has changed the way i view things. we have solar panels. i use reusable snack bags, lunch boxes, and water bottles for the kid’s lunches. mark packs leftovers in glass tupperware every day for lunch. every day that it’s not raining or below 30 degrees i walk my son to school. when we can walk places, we’ll walk instead of drive. i make our own laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies. my son wears 100% hand-me-down clothes and we shop at thrift stores for my daughter. we do A LOT of things to try and limit our carbon footprint. yet there’s so much more we could be doing. i look at a grocery shopping trip (with reusable bags, obviously.) but see so many products wrapped in plastic. even foods i feel good about. frozen fruit for smoothes? plastic packaging! broccoli? plastic packaging! peanut butter? glass container that our town no longer recycles and we just have to throw in the garbage. little by little, we’ll keep taking every step we can to continue to live light on the earth.

7. and my kids. they are amazing. truly, they are wonderful human beings. they have the biggest hearts. they love our family FIERCELY. i love so much about them. i just needed to say it.

On Friday we headed into Ithaca to get our car checked out at the Honda dealership. We originally had an appointment to bring the car in on March 16th, but when everything went down we canceled the appointment and didn't manage to reschedule something until now. Our car has been making a noise for several months and we got it checked out a couple of places locally and they directed us to the dealership as it seemed a problem bigger than what they could handle.

We did school in the car on the drive down and dropped it off at 9am. We then walked the 1 mile it took to get to the closest park. We went hiking for a little while, played near some waterfalls, then found a quiet place to eat our picnic lunch and play some games together. We played freeze tag, spud, and larish in a small field while we waited for the hours for the car to be fixed. It was $953 to fix the car on Friday and while we wait for another part to come in, it’ll be close to another $2000 next week to complete the repairs. We finally left the park at 2pm to get the car back.

I’ve made almost no money since October. I’ve had a few wedding deposits here and there and I’ve been paid for 2 ceremonies (not full weddings) since the pandemic started. We had goals this year to max out our Roth IRA accounts, put several thousand to the kids college funds, and make significant strides to paying off our house. We ALSO are working on buying a second car and building up a Disney fund. Well, many of those goals are squashed. With just one teacher income, we can cover our monthly needs and then have a *little* extra room for fun money but not much more than that. And with almost $3000 in car repairs, that certainly wasn’t in our monthly budget. Thankfully we have a car maintenance fund and an emergency fund that we were able to pull the money from to cover these costs. Our car maintenance fund is now at $0 and this is the first time since we first created it over 2 years that we have to pull from our emergency fund. I just got word this weekend that one of my July weddings is a go and I also have an elopement in July so I’m really looking forward to having a little extra income that we’ll be able to replenish these funds and maybe make the tiniest bit of headway on some of our goals.

The money situation is frustrating, but I still feel okay. I love being on a team with Mark and being able to look at each other and say “it’s going to be okay.” We were able to make it a fun family day for all of us. We were able to get out of the house and do something a little different. We are able to talk to our kids about money and how we handle it with no debt. They understand that we’re making a lot less money right now and they also see us not being very worried about it.

Sometimes I have to work hard at seeing the positives and looking at the bright side. These are one of those times.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on time lately. There are certain things that come up that remind me how long Mark and I have been together. Things that make me realize we are getting older.

First of all, yesterday was Mark’s sister’s 22nd birthday. On June 6, 2004, Mark and I took her to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the movie theaters for her 6th birthday. I remember her getting scared at the werewolf part and hopped into Mark’s lap and hid her face during that scene. Nowadays, on Saturday mornings we let the kids get up to watch a movie or play video games on their own. Yesterday Kenzie picked out HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban all on her own. I made the connection shortly after. I just couldn’t believe that 16 years ago I took my 6 year old future-sister-in-law to a birthday movie and today I have a 6 year old and 7 year old of my own that watch the same movies.

Also, after going back to Mark’s house after the Prisoner of Azkaban all those years ago, I told Mark that I was falling in love with him. He had this orange barricade on the side of his garage that he and his brother used for skateboarding. We were sitting on that barricade and I said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” It all sounds very high school and tv-special now, but it was true. We weren’t even dating yet but I already knew.

We’re coming up on 16 years dating and 10 years married in July. Maybe with the big 10 year milestone coming up it’s got me thinking about all of these things. But the other thing is that I’m so proud that things are still so, so good with us. We are so rock solid. Each year it really does keep getting better. He really is my favorite person in the world.

It’s been over a year and a half since I posted here. A couple of weeks ago when it was Xander’s birthday, I came back here to look at some of my posts that I made from the year he was born just to reminisce and I found myself missing it.

Here’s a photo from several weeks ago. The last two and a half months have been filled with finding new places to hike nearby, reading Harry Potter with the kids, playing more games than you can imagine, and walking, walking, walking.

For the first two full months of social isolation I was pretty much thriving. I felt like I couldn’t really say that “too loud” on my other social media platforms for fear of hurting others feelings or seeming too “braggy.” That in conjunction with realizing I was missing posting on tumblr, I knew I have almost been the most honest here.

In normal life, I feel like I’m constantly being pulled. I feel like I make sacrifices a lot for social situations in order to please other people. I hate having things on the schedule in the evenings and never ever like being busy. Quarantine time has been refreshing for me. It took all the social pressure off of me for a while. I was getting every single ounce of family time that I’ve always wanted.

The last couple of weeks have started to get a little more difficult. But it may also be because the social expectations are starting to creep back in and I don’t feel quite ready to jump back in and have life resume as normal. I DO really miss my business. Weddings have been postponed, rearranged, changed. Our income will look much differently this year. Over the last couple of years I have finally been able to bring in a substantial amount of income to help our family reach our financial goals. Those goals are definitely slowing down this year. But I also really just miss weddings. And having something really passionate about that I can work on. I’m excited for them to start back up again.

I would like to start posting again for me. For a place to look back on and remember our family memories. Who knows if I actually will. I would like to treat it almost as a family memory book. Maybe if I make it a priority. Writing has always helped me. We’ll see!

inspirationalcollages

themorrelljourney

i have big dreams.

Another family 5k and fun run this morning! I love tracking every run we do on tumblr so I always have a place to go back and look to see how we’ve improved.

Today’s 1 mile fun run for the kids was their 2nd for the year. There were a lot more kids at today’s race than their 1st. Of course all kids just start sprinting at the start of a race and then tire out really quickly but I was really proud that Kenzie and Xander generally knew how to keep their pace. Having done a race before and practicing with them from time to time, they know how long a mile is. And I was SUPER proud of their times! Mackenzie finished at 8:34 and Alexander finished at 9:20. I ran with Xander and my sister ran with Mackenzie. Both of those times were their bests.

Then Mark and I ran the 5k. It was a fast, flat course right along the lake and it was beautiful. Mark got 1st place and got his best (adult) time of 19:08. I don’t have an *exact* time for me because 2 or 3 people in front of me took a wrong turn, I soon realized we were taking the wrong path and tried to correct and did my best to get the distance right, but we can’t be sure. Either way I definitely got my best time, as my best time before was 24:38 and I finished today at 23:55. I think had I wrong the correct path I definitely would have been within 10 seconds of that time.

I’m going to gather all of my official race times and keep them here for my future--

September 29, 2018 - 23:55

July 21, 2018 - 24:39

June 16, 2018 - 25:35

April 30, 2017 - 29:00

October 5, 2013 - 29:36

15 days until the half-marathon!

#running #5k

There is so much I’ve wanted to say

but tumblr is apparently really low on the priority list, even though there’s been several times over the last 2 weeks that I’ve wanted to sit down and post about a number of different things. And I can’t do all that right now, gotta get editing on a wedding video. But here are some of the highlights that I’ve WANTED to talk about.

Mackenzie started kindergarten and it is going SO WELL. Seriously, better than I could have imagined. She’s loving it.

My new farthest running distance is 10 miles.

I signed up for a half marathon. Who am I?

I plan on going for 10-11 miles this evening to actually start my training for the half.

I ate kale chips and date power balls for breakfast. Who am I?

I had a roasted vegetable and quinoa bowl for lunch. Who am I?

I have love love LOVED making principal payments on our mortgage but we’re pausing that as we save up for a second and/or replacement car. I DO NOT want a second car but I will also never have a car payment again, so we need to be prepared for the time that we do need the 2nd car or to replace our current one.

My days are now filled with lots of time with Xander. But I still have to spend time editing my wedding videos, which I feel bad much of the time I can’t give him tons of attention, but he’s been doing amazing learning to play independently, something he’s never had to do before.

Still not sure if people are notified if you reply to them within the notes --- I never get notified so I’m guessing not? Which is really annoying.

Anyway, to answer your question, right, we do not have credit cards. We cut them up about a year and a half ago and have used cash or debit for everything since then. In the first year we saved a little over $1000 by using cash instead of card. We used to use credit cards for the rewards and we’d pay them in full at the end of every month but even when considering the amount of rewards we’re missing out on, we’re still spending way less by using cash envelopes and sticking to the amounts we set each month. I used to love love love my credit card and I was so loyal to it and defended it all the time. But I’ve never missed it since stopping them and love not having one.

FILLING UP THOSE BOXES!

We have this house “thermometer” on our wall filled with a ton of tiny boxes to mark the progress of paying off our mortgage. August was the first month that we were really able to start attacking the mortgage. I absolutely love being on baby step 6!

Baby Step 1: $1000 emergency fund

Baby Step 2: Pay of all debt except mortgage

Baby Step 3: 3-6 months of expenses in emergency fund

Baby Step 4: Invest 15% of gross income into retirement

Baby Step 5: Save for kid’s college

Baby Step 6: Pay off mortgage

Baby Step 7: Build wealth and give generously

For the 2018 year, we decided to live off of only Mark’s income and use my income to fully fund our retirement accounts, kid’s college savings, and paying off the mortgage. So we wanted to make sure that our investing accounts were fully funded for the year (I keep the money in a separate account and then invest it regularly each month) before we starting going after the mortgage and we were able to get our funds set for retirement and college by the end of July. Now we turn our focus onto the house. We are going after the PMI right now - that’s our next big milestone. We also want to set some money aside for a 2nd car. I do NOT want to get a second car, but Mark’s VERY reliable carpool partner moved away so we’re kind of unsure how the carpool will go this year. I’m willing to walk to school every single day of this school year if we have to - I REALLY don’t want a second car, BUT I do want to start getting prepared for when we will eventually get one. And we’re NOT going into debt for a car so we need to start saving up for it ahead of time! So those are the two big goals to finish out 2018 - eliminate PMI for the mortgage and save up a couple thousand for the car.

I seriously love this plan. I think about it all the time. I’m so passionate about it and believe in it to my core. And I love getting the kids involved. They are getting it. They are excited about paying off the house. They know they aren’t going to take out loans to go to college. They are our why.

#mackenzie #alexander #dave ramsey

Today was our last day of summer vacation as a family! Mark starts his 6th year of teaching tomorrow with a staff day and the first day of school for EVERYONE is on Wednesday. Mackenzie starts kindergarten and Xander and I will be back in his part-time preschool for another year. I’m actually feeling mostly at peace about Mackenzie starting kindergarten. There are times that I still get emotional and worried but I know that this is the right step. Mark and I prayed about this decision -- I even considered homeschooling, which is something I NEVER EVER EVER thought I would EVER do, but ultimately we decided on public school. And I know it’s the right decision. That doesn’t mean I won’t be crying as I drop her off on Wednesday. It’s hard to believe we’re already here. But it also reminds me how super, super grateful I am that Mark and I made the decision for me to stay at home when they were little. I will NEVER forget a person once said to me, “they are only home for such a SHORT period of time,” referring to the first 5 years before they go to kindergarten. And being home with Mackenzie full-time since her 1st birthday (and Xander since day 1!) still tops the list of best decisions I’ve ever made.

Today we had a 3 hour picnic and played in a creek. It was a super slow, relaxing day. We ended the day with a walk to an ice cream shop we had never tried before. On the way home we saw a beautiful sunset and a rainbow - a reminder of God’s promises. School is going to be okay. We’re ready.

#mackenzie #alexander

Our trip to DC was also a fun little way to round out our summer. It was a quick two day, one night trip. We got to enjoy ourselves a little bit. We got ice cream both on the way in at night and on the way home. We tried a thai-inspired rolled ice cream place which was fun and I got the lavender flavor! We also made a quick stop at the Air and Space Museum and a photo opportunity at the Washington Monument -- I really like the photo Mackenzie took of us with the monument. :) This was so fun and I’m so glad we took a little bonus 2 day trip!

#mackenzie #alexander

8 days ago, I became an aunt! Mark’s brother and his wife welcomed a baby girl, Geraldine Marie, last Sunday in DC. On Monday we took a spontaneous trip to meet her in the hospital. Mackenzie was particularly excited about having a cousin and was so proud to hold her (just look at her face!). We also got to see the new house that my brother-in-law and sister-in-law recently bought as we got to stay there while they were still in the hospital. I forget how TINY newborn babies are! I couldn’t believe it! Sweet little Gigi.

#mackenzie #alexander

A little update on my exercise and food lately...

I’ve still been consistently running 4-5 times a week. Back in May I decided that I would try to reach a new distance every month - 5 miles in May (5th month), 6 miles in June (6th month) and so on. Last Thursday I attempted my 8 mile run for August and completed it. It was so, so hard though. The 6 and 7 mile runs I did with Mark and although they were tough, I never felt completely floored by them. The 8 miles I did by myself and I was really struggling the final 3 miles. It took me half the day to feel somewhat recovered and I really started to question if I’d want to keep going with this in the next upcoming months. But this morning I decided to try and do more 4+ mile runs to get the longer distances more consistent. I still do 3 miles the most but I’m going to try and do more 4-6 miles between now and when school starts (when school starts, I’ll have to get up even earlier to get my run done before Mark goes to school, so I don’t think I’ll be doing as many 4+ mile runs then). This morning I went for 5 and it felt pretty easy. It DEFINITELY felt easy compared to 8!

On August 11th my family and I participated in our 3rd round of the Hudson Heptathlon. We all did track in high school (and my sisters in college!) so we started this fun competition a few years ago. We got together for my mom’s birthday and did another round. Each time we’ve done it I’ve consistently come in last in almost every event. The events are 200m, 100m hurdles, 800m, long jump, vertical jump, javelin, and brick throw (we’ve had to get creative in the different events we’re able to do given our access to equipment). This year was no different except for 1 event. The 800m. I got 3rd! I was never a sprinter so speed is not my strong suit so I haven’t been surprised to be so much slower than everyone else in my family. But I was really happy that I felt as strong as I did in the 800 - it finally felt like proof of all the work I’ve put in in the last few months. We got Mackenzie and Alexander in on the fun too. They participated in all the events we did, or at least a modified version of them. And what was some of the most fun was setting up a relay at the end of the day where the kids both got to be the anchors for the race. It was fun to watch!

And finally food. I don’t eat so I can run. I run so I can eat. I haven’t gotten any closer to my 5 pound weight loss goal in August and today I said I’ve had ENOUGH! Time to get these pounds done with. I’ve got 11 days to do it so let’s just do it. I made a spinach mushroom feta egg scramble this morning with nitrate-free bacon and then roasted broccoli and cauliflower. I have always, always, ALWAYS said that I hate vegetables but I’m learning more and more how to cook them to my liking. And what I’ve learned to love about vegetables is that you can eat a lot of them for little calories. So bring on all the vegetables people!

#food #running

This is what it looks like when your dreams come true.

A Good Day

Today was a good day but I didn’t take a single photo.

The kids have been fighting with each other like crazy lately. It’s just been, ugh. Annoying. But today was good. After church we had a family meeting to talk about what kind of family we want to be and who we want to be as people. It’s the beginning of a much larger conversation, but I think it was a great start and really helped shape our day. The two of the them got along together today better than they have in weeks.

Yesterday’s cheese festival was a little disappointing. They had tons of samples and everything was good, but it was just that...just good. Or fine. Nothing stuck out as amazing. One food truck advertised a hot waffle ice cream sundae so we ordered one of those. It turned out to be a soft flimsy waffle and the ice cream was just okay. I was disappointed because I knew we could make it so much better. So we did. We’re scraping together meals at this point because we ran out of our grocery budget for July so I can’t go shopping again until Wednesday so in looking through what we had, it turned out we could make our own NICE cream waffle sundaes for dinner. So I whipped up some chocolate peanut butter nice cream while Mark worked on waffles. We drizzled more peanut butter on them, tried our hand at our own homemade chocolate “magic shell” topping, and made homemade whipped cream. Our waffles were way better and actually had a little crunch to them and I for one thought the nice cream tasted been that the blueberry cheesecake real ice cream we got yesterday. And the whole family loved the dinner. Honestly, doing fun, silly, out of the box dinners like that is one of my favorite things we do.

After dinner Mark played basketball and the kids and I went to a park we don’t normally go to. They played nicely, laughing together and imagining together for a full hour. It was glorious. Good, good day.

Since we officially became debt free this month, we’ve relaxed a little bit on the budget for the month. We took our trip to Hershey Park, went out to dinner a few times, bought some landscaping things for the house, sent the kids to nature camp for the week, etc. We’ve stuck to such a tight budget for the last couple of years, we (Mark) needed some relaxation on the budget for a few weeks. Today we’re going to a cheese festival where there’s supposed to be tons of delicious food so I’m pretty excited. And our anniversary is on Tuesday and we’ll be going out to dinner again for that. These two things are the last two big things that we’ll be a little more relaxed on the budget and then come August we’ll reel it back it and start focusing on our mortgage. I’m really excited for all of it. Excited for indulging in some great food and experiences the next couple of days but also excited to really start baby step 6.

I just love my family!

icanread

themorrelljourney

2018 has been all about goal-setting and achieving them.

While everyone knows I’m all about eating healthy and exercising lately, something I haven’t specifically posted about is weight loss. I’ve tried and failed several different times to lose the weight that I’ve kept after having kids. And after having kids and changing my eating habits and eating a lot healthier, I thought it’d be easier to lose the weight since I was making better food choices. Well, I was eating healthy, but I was also eating a lot of it. I’ve learned how to cook the last few years so most of my meals started tasting better and I just wanted to eat, eat, eat. So I did. Because it was healthy! So I was allowed to right?

When I graduated high school and when I got married I weighed right around 150. I was happy enough with that weight at those times. During college I gained some weight but apparently it just kind of fell off before the wedding? I don't know -- I never kept track of weight that much back then and never did anything in purpose of losing weight. But after kids and losing that initial pregnancy weight I settled right around 165. Xander is now over 4 so for about 4 years I’ve wanted and tried on and off to get back under 160.

In the summer of 2015 I made some actual changes and counted calories using MyFitnessPal. At that point I made it down to 161 but then gave up. Since 2015 is when I made the actual changes to eating REAL food and making it delicious, but just eating a lot more of it.

Fast forward to December 2017 and I said, “I’m going to start my new year’s resolutions early and I’m going to lose 1 pound a month for the next 13 months.” Well, the next few months I tracked my weight and still just averaged about 165.

Mother’s Day came and I put my foot down. It had been 5 months of me trying to lose weight and hadn’t seen any change. I decided to start counting calories again. At that point I also realized that I felt like I had no self-control when it came to food. Whenever there was a potluck, a holiday party, a graduation party, a reason to celebrate (Mother’s Day!), a wedding, what have you, I would just go all out. But the problem was, there was these big meal opportunities pretty much every week so I never made any traction! My goal after Mother’s Day was to simply get below 160. I wanted to see the 150s again. By June 6, I just dipped under 160.

Then I didn’t really know how far I wanted to take it. I thought, okay, well let’s go for 155. I didn’t really believe that I could get ALL the way back down to 150 because I had tried and failed so many times in the past. By the end of June I was 157. Then I was listening to a segment from The Dave Ramsey Show and he was talking about discipline and self-control. He simply said, “if you want to make a change, do it. If you want to change how you spend your money, change. If you want to change how you eat, change. If you don’t like something that you’re doing, just change it.” And that really inspired me. In that moment, I realized that I had self-control and discipline when it came to money. I could easily live on a budget and restrict my spending. We were able to turn our finances around and do it quickly. So then I said, I just need to apply that to eating and exercise and I CAN DO THIS. I CAN. I went for a walk with Zeke and decided I WILL. I will get back down to 150 and I will do it in 7 weeks. 1 pound a week for 7 weeks and I’ll be at 150. 7 weeks from that time was August 10th.

This morning I stepped on the scale and it was 149.6. I DO NOT remember a time that I’ve seen the 140s. It has to have been at least 13 years. I believed I could, so I did. Going to weddings and parties and potlucks are still hard for me but it’s easier for me to say no to a LOT of food that I would have said yes to in the past. I feel like I’m finally actually changing my relationship with food and I’ve stopped mindlessly eating.

My next goal is 145. I don’t know what my overall BIG, END goal actually is. But I’m going to keep going with this while I still feel good and strong about it. I don’t feel ready to give up like I have in the past. I feel strong and ready to tackle the next 5 pounds. I never took a before picture (because I just kind of assumed I’d fail again when I first started?) but I did find a photo that I can use and I’ll need to take an updated picture for comparison, mostly for myself so I can enjoy my progress!

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