Best laid plans.

Chad and I do our best to be super responsible when it comes to finances - cutting anyplace we can, turning off the AC (ahem, not my choice) when it is cool at night, and sticking pretty religiously to the Dave Ramsey envelope system (don't get me started). This means that we don't just decide to go on vacation and go do it, though we are willing to still be a little spontaneous when we can! We've been saving for over a year (since our trip to Seattle/Portland last spring!) to take a week off and go do something fun and we finally settled on Savannah. Neither of us had been in years and it would be a fun mix of historic sites, lighthouse climbing, walking, and beach sitting. Plus, neither of us can just drop out of work for a week without quite a but of warning.

We rented a little cottage in downtown which I found on VRBO.com for an awesome price. We were pretty excited and geared up for our trip but I got an email from the rental company a couple of weeks ago letting us know our reservation had been cancelled (insert a giant WOMP WOMP here). Apparently the city of Savannah has been fighting local rentals/people without hotel licenses (like VRBO or Air BnB) because they aren't getting their cut/paid taxes for these rentals and recently the City Council won a round and changed the laws. So, unless we wanted to rent the cottage for 30 days (nope), our vacation plans would have to change.

And they have!
We aren't going anywhere! Yay (?) (!)

I'm obviously pretty bummed about our original plans changing - and both my mom and my in-laws have tried really hard to find us another place to stay - but I think we will just try a little stay-cation. We will probably go check out a few nearby state parks, do some hiking and maybe camping for a day or two, and work on some projects around the house. Our 6th anniversary falls during this time so we'll celebrate and enjoy a week off work and just hanging out together. I think it will be fun to just be tourists in our own town. We'll make the best of things, not spend all our hard-saved money, and start thinking about next year's vacation!

Hot-lanta.

I managed to pull together 2 of my 3 childhood best friends for a lovely overnight in Atlanta this past weekend. Of course, I didn't get a picture with all. Of us - reunion fail - but I got 2 of us! This first picture is of us on the roof top patio at Chad's uncle's townhouse which he generously let us crash for a couple of days. It was a lovely couple of days full of chatting, loving on baby C,  reading, mosquito bites, and generally just being in each other's presence. Sweet, sweet time.

 

We also visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens today which was quite lovely. They had an exhibit across the whole gardens of huge plant covered "topiaries" - though I would call them giant sculptures. It was pretty cool to see and I am sure they require a lot of upkeep.  

 

 Me with some berries!

  Jess with some orangutans! Yay!

I took a boat load of pictures but I am saving them. Someone special - ahem, one of my 3 readers - might see them in her Christmas calendar so I don't want to share everything!

Weekend livin'.

Sorry it has been all quiet here on the eastern front...life has just been mighty busy.

This week at work has - somehow - been especially busy as we are gearing up for summer and trying to finish as many things up prior to most people taking time off this summer. I went in late this morning after "sleeping in" with my guy (a.k.a. listening to the dog bark and my guy snore through it all) and I meant to leave mid-afternoon but just...didn't. I actually got tons done, as is the norm on Friday afternoons when most people have saved their flex time and aren't in the office. Working two positions and trying not to let either slip is tiresome but enjoyable - surprisingly.

I made a quick trip to Knoxville yesterday to interview and hire the final member of our Teen team and I couldn't be more thrilled with out how worked out. We have a great team of positive, energetic, passionate, team-players who believe in the mission and goals of keeping older girls in the program as long as possible. We are already big dreaming with some cool plans for international travel, local events, and fun weekends. Think....culinary arts weekends at camp and campus tours and NYC. It is going to rock. I had about an hour long chat with a staff member at another council in FL and they have some cool ideas that I hope we can incorporate too. I love it when we can share things that work and not reinvent the wheel, so to speak. I have not - thankfully - had any jobs that I truly disliked. Even working retail was entertaining and flexible during a time in my life when that was important. But this - this I love.

My guy is off this weekend - except for a half day of work at the pool finishing instructing a lifeguarding class. I am thrilled that we are going to get to hang out together some and I have been living for this weekend for a while. Family plans for some pool time and a cookout so I am pretty excited.

I'll leave you with this pic of my guy and his friend A at the race from last weekend. A good trail half-marathon and these two still look great at the end - how do they do it??

Photo credit: Mark McKnight (event photographer)

Epic.

Chad and I don't get to travel that often - mostly because we have to save both our dollars and our vacation days for so long to be able to go anywhere - so I am crazy excited for our upcoming trip to Oregon and Washington state. We are about a week out and have finally settled into some plans that involve things like Mt. Rainer, snow tubing, the motherland REI store, one of the largest locally owned bookstores in the US, whale watching, Pike's Place, and some visiting with family and friends. It is going to be an epic vacation - and the only one we get this year - so we shall make the most of it.

We will spend 2 and a half days with Megan in Portland and the surrounding area. Chad has some historical locations on his list of things to see and we have a few local breweries on our list to tour and sample (of course!). We hope to get to Rainer or up the Columbia River gorge to see some fun stuff too. We will head to Seattle via Amtrak (which I am equally excited about...!!) and stay with my best friend's little brother on a ferry-access-only island. We will be footloose tourists for a few days in Seattle where a whale watching tour is basically the only thing we have firmly decided on so far. I love to travel with my guy and promised he would hold my hand if we go up in the Space Needle so I think my dislike-of-heights-in-my-"old-age" can handle it just to say I've done it.

Marking two more states off my see all 50 bucket list!

Leaving soon...

We are going on vacation this week. Not gonna tell you which days or where - no creeping allowed - though I am sure you will see plenty of updates on instagram where I am @stelmosweetness and on Twitter where I am @Love10984. Follow our vacay and 4th anniversary there.

Counting down.

I have two more days of work and then we will be on our vacation. I could not be more excited and I am trying to figure out how to disconnect my work email from my cell phone. If you literally do not hear from us for 4 days, don't worry. We'll call if we need you. Pretty darn excited.

Today at work was a little frustrating. I have a new responsibility at work that feels really monumental - though in reality, it probably is not. I am responsible for the twice monthly newsletters that go out to all of the volunteers in my area (and writing 100% of the content for them with the other 2 ladies that have my same position in our other offices). Previously, I was just writing a little simple reminder email for my areas and sending out a lot of emails in between with things that I forgot or info that other people needed me to annouce to my area. Now, we are compiling all the info for the entire GS council and putting it in a professional looking format using a web-based program called Mail Chimp. While I really like the layout and it does look a lot better than what I was putting together, I am nervous that people don't realize how important the information is and therefore, are not reading it. (In fact, I pulled the analytics for the last edition and it was depressing how many of them are sitting unopened in people's email inboxes.)

So, today I spent the entire day correcting errors (in 4 different versions of my newsletter because it is customized by area) and fighting with the email server. I love to learn new things and being able to use this program in the future will be a real benefit. Today, however, it did NOT feel like that. I had tons of questions that no one could answer, fonts weren't working, tables weren't looking right - it just didn't look good overall - and that is NOT what I am going for. Usually I can figure most technological things out but today, not so much. I finally had to put it away and go to a meeting tonight (that was wonderfully successful and just what I needed!).

I guess I should edit the bit about 2 work days left because I have to work Friday normal hours, Saturday and Sunday for events, and then normal hours again on Monday. But then - FREEDOM!