Life Lately

I haven't done a "general update" type post in awhile, so I thought that I was due for one!  We've been kind of crazy busy, it's funny, our time has been filled more since our music group dispersed than it was before - maybe even too much so.  Nate even said the other night that we leave on vacation in two weeks and maybe should think about not planning anything in that amount of time.  I think he has a good point.  I'm not going to lie, I'm a little burned out right now.  This upcoming three day weekend is going to be great I think.  We do have one barbecue planned to visit, but other than that the weekend is our oyster and I think we'll all benefit from keeping things low key and calm. Anyway, enough of my whining about being busy, here are some other current happenings round our house:
-Nate successfully transplanted our tomatoes a few weeks ago to pots outside and so far they're doing really well.  Our herbs are taking off too and we've even been able to cook a bit with some of them already.  We put some fresh basil on a pizza this weekend and it was delightful!

-My "project hair grow" has continued to go well.  I had it cleaned up a little bit just over a week ago and it's working so well for me now.  I am constantly getting compliments on it (sorry that sounds vain!) so I guess I'm doing something right!

-Ollie's language is expanding by the day.  I don't even know how many words he actually knows at this point.  He's a little chatterbox.  He's also a parrot - he repeats a lot of what we say now even if he doesn't comprehend it.  A couple of his newest favorite words?  "Dance" and "Run".  We get a lot of exercise at our house!

(These moments are rare these days - sitting on his Elmo chair 

playing with a badge I made for him at work)

-We started watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix a couple of weeks ago and I see what the hype has been all about, I am in love with this show.  Sometimes at the end of a long day you just need something light and fluffy and this show totally fits the bill.  
-I'm contemplating doing another "no-shop" summer.  If you're new to this blog, I did a no-shop summer experiment last summer to see if it would help our finances enough to maybe allow me to go part-time and spend more time with Ollie.  In the end we realized sadly we just couldn't make it work even with the money saved in three months for me to go part time, but it was still a beneficial exercise.  So I'm thinking again about how I'm really going for a "less is more" approach to our house and our "stuff" and I'm thinking, maybe another no-shop summer would be good for me.  I also had tried to embark on a project "use it up" back before Christmas - use up all my bath/body/makeup items before buying new ones and I will admit right now, I fell off the wagon on that.  If I did another no-shop summer it would really help me get back on track with that.  So stay tuned, I think this is something I'm seriously going to be attempting again.
-And as I mentioned above, we're actually just under two weeks to our big summer vacation for the year.  We'll be staying in a cabin in Itasca State Park which is about four hours north of the Twin Cities.  I'm over the moon excited to finally introduce Ollie to a place that means a great deal to us - it's where we spent our honeymoon nine years ago that same week.  And while it was fun to take Ollie to St. Louis last summer and spend time with family, I am also just so excited for our first true vacation as just our little family of three.  But let me tell you, even if it's still about two weeks away, I'm mentally already checked out.  Work is a struggle right now and even blogging is a slight struggle too.  If my posts slow down a bit in the next couple of weeks you'll know why.  I think this mama just needs a break and getting away from it all is just the ticket.   I need to recharge, refresh, reflect and renew.  I think I'll come back with a new energy.  I will have a couple of posts that will run the week we're gone so you'll probably even hardly notice I'm away!

-Beyond our vacation and plans to go to All Pints North in Duluth in July we really have no plans for our summer yet.  And I'm pretty ok with that.  I think it will be nice to take things as they come, maybe even be a tad spontaneous here and there.  I'm pretty sure on the nice days we'll be outside from sun up to sundown.  I hope to fall into bed on the weekends smelling of sunscreen, chlorine, and bonfire smoke.  It's going to be a great summer no matter what happens.
And on that happy note I'll end this post for today!  What's new in your world?  What summer plans do you have?