Big Move

My husband and I have a big exciting announcement! 

We are moving home!!!!

The story of our move starts from the summer that we met, back in 2009. Ross was just about to start law school and would be moving away at the end of the summer that we spent working together at Camp Y-Noah as Summer Day Camp Director and Assistant Director. (That's how we met, in case you didn't already know) ;)

Ross moved to Ada, Ohio to attend Law School at Ohio Northern University. We had a long distance relationship for a year which was extremely difficult after working together at a place where we lived and saw each other and worked closely together everyday! But we made it through! I was going to school at Kent State's Stark Campus and majoring in English. Luckily, there was an Ohio State Lima Branch 15 min away from Ada, Ohio, so I transferred schools to continue working towards my degree out there. And so began my journey of being away from home for the first time. 

For someone who switched High Schools during the first half of their Junior year, from a school district I had gone to since kindergarden, I knew how hard these kinds of transitions could be. No matter how hard you try, it's not easy to keep your friendships as close when distance comes in b/w you, because you just don't physically have the time to get together. Luckily technology has made staying connected easier with a simple text, and at the time phone calls. But let's be real, people rarely call each other anymore. I have to take this time to say as a person who isn't able to see family and friends as often as I would like because of distance, texting is not the same as actually being able to see that person and interact with them face to face. I know that for some people, that fulfills their connections, but it's just so...lacking for me. 

I would rather sit with a friend or family member, face to face and have a good chat, or do something fun together. But hey, that's just me. But that experience has been a huge dilemma of mine when it comes to the physical distance b/w myself and my close family and friends back home. You would think that fact that living only a couple of hours away wouldn't mean I would hardly get to see my loved ones, but trust me, no one is excited to come out to Ada, Ohio. When I did come home on some weekends, our parents would battle over our time. :* Kisses, we love you. lol But that made it even harder to ever make time for our friends. 

When we lived in Ada, I told Ross that this just wouldn't work if I couldn't have a cat. He was allergic, so we did some research and found that some allergy sufferers can live with Siberian cats who have a low amount of the hormone in cat's saliva that causes allergy sufferers to reach to cats. She is like our child. We spoil her rotten and love her to pieces! 

But things happened along the way, that made us realize their were bigger challenges that came with living even just a couple of hours away from home. On Mother's Day three years ago now, my brother was involved in a fatal car crash that killed the driver of the other vehicle who was at fault, and a friend in the vehicle in the car which he was also a passenger. He and the others survived, but it was a long road to recovery both physically and mentally for our entire family. I can't tell you the emotional downside to feeling so far away and not being able to get home quickly. That makes a two hour drive feel very long. 

It was then that Ross and I always had an end goal of someday moving home in mind. 

During one summer break we moved to Beckley, Wv so Ross could work in Summersville for a summer internship. I took summer classes to work towards my degree. We rented out the basement of a house that had been turned into an apartment. However, the basement didn't have air conditioningand it had what every basement has, finished or not, spiders! I swore we would never again live in West Virginia! Joke's on me! ;)

We lived in Ada, Ohio for two years while we both finished school. 

Ross graduated Law School.

We got engaged! 

I graduated from The Ohio State University of which I am so proud!

Then we moved in with some very dear friends for the summer while Ross took on his first big job as an attorney working for Bob Cupp while he ran for his re-election. 

They let us move in despite the fact that we are Browns fans. ;)

During that time, I did what I knew best and worked as a pre-school teacher at a local church. When the election was over, after long hard hours where our hearts and minds were put through the ringer for this election, our party suffered a defeat, and we had to move on again. 

This time, we went home for the summer and stayed with my mom while we contemplated our next move. I almost forgot the dreaded bar exam, that was a full time job for Ross to study for. He passed on his first attempt! 

Then Ross got his first job out of Law School working as a Disability Attorney in Parkersburg, Wv. So we moved to Belpre, Oh, right on the river. 

We got married on October 5, 2013. Planning away away from home is a huge pain in the ....

We have lived in Belpre for a year and a half now. We have made many friends along the way, and had amazing opportunities. But moving home has as always been an end goal and has always been in the back of our minds.

 We have both lost a grandparent this year, and have had to make multiple trips over the past couple of years for weddings, showers and all kinds of special events. There have been many times when we had to miss events because it becomes too difficult to come home on a regular basis. First of all it's expensive to drive home often and second of all, we have work to keep up with here at home. My grandma has been ill, and I haven't been able to come home to visit her as much as I would like. We have ultimately been reminded of how important it is for us to be back with family. 

We have missed seeing our family and friends and are completely overjoyed that we are now going to be moving back home! We are currently house hunting but are not in a rush and want to take our time to really look. We will be moving home Memorial Day weekend! We will finally have more time to visit with family and friends, and I honestly can't wait to be back home with a support system! We will certainly miss the connections we have made here but will be sure to come back and visit the special friends! :)

I hope everyone has a very Happy Easter! 

February Goals

So it's February 9th, and it's a bit snowy out.

Goodbye Gluten!

Tonight after completing day 4 of the 30 Day "Catching Fire" challenge. I know, those cornballs stole from the Hunger Game Series, but trust me, you will be burning up with this quick (no rest) 12 min workout.

So sure, I am a few days behind. I fell into old habbits where I stop working out for a few days when after a workout leaves me sore and hurting. But in all fairness, my life is not on the line. I just get the benefit of fitting back into most of my pants. ;) It would be nice if the number on the scale would quit climbing as well (Oh the joys of getting older). Sure, I am still younger than many but my metabolism has decided to peace out.

Speaking of pants not fitting, the scale climbing and my body changing....my hubby and I are about to embark on a new "journey". (I am watching the show, The Bachelor, so that word is stuck in my head at the moment). We have decided that my hot air balloon of a stomach does not like when I eat Gluten and we are going to take a Gluten free challenge. Tomorrow we are having our own send off party for Gluten.

This party will involve a glass of Sequin wine, our favorite Little Cesar's deep dish pepperoni pizza (which is heaven, and I just might cry at that the fact that tomorrow night could be the last time I ever eat it!!! Please make a gluten free crust, I beg you!!!) and of course watching our favorite shows on Hulu.

I have already placed my first online order for some Gluten Free oatmeal! Our local Kroger sells this brand, but found a good deal Vitacost.com! They gave me a refer a friend coupon for $10 off an order of $30 or more if anyone is interested.

Are any of you Gluten free? If you are, what stores either online or local do you buy from for your Gluten free products? Since the hubs and I are new to this lifestyle we would love to know some of your favorite places to shop! I have found some yummy looking recipes on Pinterest, so I already have that destination for ideas covered. Any other suggestions would be welcomed!

It's almost Friday! Enjoy your last day of the week!

Wedding Diaries-The Planning & Behind the Scenes Dillemas

So for whatever reason, I realized I hardly blogged during my wedding planning at all. Well, I know some of the reasons. I was extremely busy planning. If planning your wedding was easy, you are one lucky lady. Mine however was far from easy. 

But since my persistent mother suggested that I delete my wedding planning board on Pinterest as to not give away my ideas, and since I deleted my wedding Pinterest boards after the wedding, I thought I would share some of the ideas I loved that I managed to save to my computer. 

So at last, here as some of my favorite finds my Pinterest during my wedding planning days. Oh, how I do not miss them. I can now cross wedding planning off the list of things I might want to be when I grow up. ;)

We did end up doing the signature photo frame, but I nixed the wishing tree because we had enough for people to sign.

I used this photo to have my florist create my bouquet.

What my bouquet turned out like. I was pretty happy with it. 

I had originally wanted to use these adorable bags and throw bird seed, but as I suspected the church preferred not to have bird poop left all over their entrance way.

So we opted for good ole bubbles for our exit from the church. 

I had originally wanted to do an outdoor wedding  and make some kind of amazing outdoor alter like this one.
But then I remembered that we live in Ohio and chances of rain are high. 

 The day of our wedding there was a 0% chance of rain, and Ohio's reputation of crappy rainy weather didn't let me down. It rained. Oh, let me take this time to tell you that if you are an old fashioned bride with old fashioned values and do not want your groom to see you before you walk down the aisle, do not let anyone talk you into taking pictures before the wedding to avoid crappy weather.

Our brilliant idea of taking pictures before the wedding in order to avoid bad weather and have more time was destroyed by bad weather and we didn't get to take my dream pictures at the park like I planned. I am very tempted to get my bridesmaids together and go there on a nice day in the dresses we paid plenty for and take the shots we never got to get. Thank you Ohio. (I'm not bitter or anything). If we had just given ourselves time after the ceremony before the reception, we could have fit in the trip to the park.

Or, if the janitor at the church had unlocked the room at the church where our dresses were locked inside the night before, then the girls could have gotten dressed and made t to the park before the storm hit. My wonderful love of a friend tried to do this for me...

p.s. it didn't work. lol

This is why I stress to anyone who is wedding planning, to keep in mind that anything can go wrong on your wedding day. Have a rain plan, and a back up plan for that, just in case. When we went to look at the church before we decided to have our ceremony there, they had an outdoor gazebo that I was planning to take pictures in if it rained. When we arrived on our wedding day and were looking for places to take pictures around the church while it poured and stormed outside, we discovered the gazebo had been removed. Lovely, isn't it? Rain is not good luck, unless you want green grass. Ok, rant over for now. ;) Back to my past planning - I have to say, it feels sooo good to finally get all of the horrid, behind the scenes details off my chest. 

We did, however, manage to sneak in a few shots right before we entered the reception, as the sun was just starting to set. 

We had talked about having a candy table, but went with a popcorn table instead. If someone took a picture of that please post it on here or send it to me! (Oh the things I wish I would have gotten pictures of. Deep Sigh.)

This is your brain on Pinterest - and the way you hope your uplighting will look.

This is how my uplighting turned out. lol Not quite how I had imagined it. 

 On a much needed positive note, I was very much impressed with how our cake turned out!

The Pinterest Idea...

The real thing. Which I think turned out better. Compliments of  Ann's Cakes. 

 Ok, last one...

This was my favorite idea of the entrance to our reception hall. But those trees are a bit pricey, so I went with a much smaller one, along with some other personalized decor. 

Pinterest Tree

Owl Tree, I mean our tree. Ha. (I know, bad joke)

What do I want you to take away from all of this "real wedding day" tale? That your day is really happening for one reason. You know you have invited the right people to share this special day with you when they tell you that all that really matters are the vows. Only you know if any details go awry. Sure, your guests might judge some of your decor, but hey, we don't all have the same tastes. You can't please over 100 ppl. Don't try. Do what makes YOU happy. I mean, it's your day after all. This day is about a promise you will make to honor and treasure the love of your life, all the days of your life. Does it suck some things went wrong, well sure. BUT, I married my best friend, this amazing, awesome, patient, handsome, smart, genuine, supportive man that I will honor and cherish all the days of my life. The rain can fall, you can lock me away from my dress, but you can't take away the promise we made. Happy planning brides, and happy years ahead till death do you part.  

My Wedding Story Part 1. Lessons Learned & Wedding Advice

So, I realize it has been over two months since my wedding and I have not written anything about it, but there have been so many amazingly helpful and supportive friends and family who made my day a reality that I was afraid to blog and say that there was anything I didn’t like.

So first, let me hand out roses. (You know the rose and thorn game, a rose for the good things and a thorn for the bad?)

 Okay anyways. Right from the day of our engagement, my mother, her sister my future sister and mother and law, best friend and other friends were already giving me wedding advice. They were so caring and helpful along the way. I appreciated this so so much!

 The life lesson I learned from the planning experience however was that if you ask for someone’s opinion, and you don’t take it, prepare for the possibility of them being offended and or hurt.

 My advice to future brides, is to do what you want within your budget. The budget is super important. 

While we are at this point in the conversation, let me say that for every person who says they wish Pinterest existed when they were planning their wedding, let me tell you that Pinterest broke my heart a couple of times along the way. Sure, there are some awesome, cute and clever diy ideas for weddings, or links to awesome wedding décor, BUT in my experience, diy projects do not always turn out as perfectly as they are represented in a picture from Pinterest. 

I have noticed a trend in boards titled “Pinterest recipes that work, or that taste good!” These have been created for a reason.

Also, the financial aspect of Pinterest is that you could easily find and endless supply of diy ideas that are supposed to save you money but they can also easily bust your budget. So you have to be careful. I fell in love with the idea of sequened table cloths for every table only to learn that they cost over $40 bucks per table and they had to be shipped from out of state from most places I found online. (Hence going with only the sweetheart table having a sequence table cloth.)

If you do fall in love with an idea for your big day that you found on Pinterest, be sure to test it out early enough to find an alternative if you can't create it the way you like. 

We loved the idea of submerging sticks in water inside tall glass vases as a part of our center pieces. We were going with a rustic theme. Then we remembered that wood floats. I know, I know. We should have known. See, I told you pictures are deceiving. Then, it was only upon closer inspection of the lovely enlarged photo from Pinterest that I discovered those fake large plastic diamonds were glued to the sticks to weigh them down and hold them under the water. More work, and more money. Here is an example. The picture I found was quite a bit cuter, however, in my after wedding desire to delete my secret wedding board, I deleted all of my ideas hoping to never have to look at them again. 

At first wedding planning was fun. Then it became annoying and stressful. I am pretty sure my hubby and I experienced for better or for worse before we exchanged our vows. I found myself trying to please everyone in my planning, leaving my fiance and I completely stressed and sick of planning. We just wanted it to be over with already so we could return to our normal lives. Have any other brides felt this way? It would be great to know I wasn't the only one. 

We booked the DJ through my Dad. It was someone he had worked with and knew. Our initial meetings went well enough, but when the wedding drew near, I was more concerned about the timeline than he was. My advice with communicating with the DJ? Make an exact timeline of everything you want to do at the reception. Include names for each event with names of any participants. For example, our DJ didn't use our bridal party's last names and it sounded really stupid. Just saying. Eat as quickly as you can so you can walk around and say Hi to everyone so you can get the dance music going. Our DJ played slow songs for far too long and people started leaving while we were making our rounds saying hi to everyone. I felt like I was cracking a whip at my DJ and telling him when to do what all night long. I shouldn't have had to do that. It was exhausting and I felt like I couldn't enjoy myself. I even called him the week of to go over everything and I emailed him an order of when I wanted things to occur. 

There are so many details and crazy stories I could tell you about that happened behind the scenes during our wedding day, but in order to not make one post insanely too long, I will post things a little at a time. But in the mean time, here is our wedding video put together by our wonderful brother in law and photographer, Mike Rich! Click the word "Video" below. Thanks for reading. More on the big day to come soon. 

Video

Wedding Video Ross & Ashlie - 10.05.2013

Baby Talk

So I guess I should start by saying, this is going to be a bit personal and a bit raw. Why that still may surprise some ppl that I write about how I feel is beyond me. I am an English major. I have been taught about great writers who tell stories that are honestly about themselves hidden in the lives of fictitious characters.

But I am not a fictitious character.

Some of the blogs that I really enjoy are ones when the blogger is real, open, down to earth and honest. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it. It's so simple. But we often forget our paths are own on, and we cannot compare our paths to other people's paths.

With that said, I am going to talk about the baby discussion.

Let's face it, you can't get on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blogger, Pinterest, or whatever social media without pictures and stories all about people's children posted everywhere. Talk about oversharing. Total strangers, acquaintances, friends, family and coworkers all know about your child's pink eye, flu, first time going on the potty, new outfit, trip to the zoo, pics with grandma, adorable hair bow, halloween costume, baptism, injuries, heartbreaks, you name it! If it happens, big or little, you post it online for the world (or your followers) to know about.

Before I was married, I was told there is this secret little divider line, an imaginary club b/w the married and unmarried women. They view each other differently. It's honestly based on personal view how one side sees the other, but there is just some unwritten view there. For instance, before I was married, my family never took my relationships seriously until I was engaged. And I have been in just a couple long term relationships, and handful of shorter ones throughout my dating experience. It's almost as if I felt sometimes like married women didn't trust me as long as I was "on the market" still. Once I was engaged, I could see the difference in some women I knew. It was like, "few, I don't have to worry about her now." For some of us, there is no difference b/w how we see other women, married or not. But for others, we might not even realize that we treat and view the two sides completely differently.

Is it a jealousy thing? Perhaps in some cases. This goes for some sides of the spectrum. How many women are themselves, or know someone who is not that confident in themselves? Do you envy someone else for their looks, career, talents, etc?

I have only been married for one month as of tomorrow, and I feel different now that I am married. But a new line is being drawn. Now that I am married, there is a baby line.

Engaged

I have friends on all spectrums. I have friends who have kids but are no longer married, those who are married and have yet to have kids, those who are still single, those who are engaged, those who are married with kids, those who are married and trying, and those who are married and happy with not having kids at all. We all have different paths. Sometimes what works for one person will not work for another, and vice versa.

Now that my husband and I are married, we have been talking about the future and when and if we want to grow our family. Sure, we just got married, but we have been together for over 4 years now, and I am 28 years old.

Wedding Day

I have worked with kids for as long as I can remember. We're talking maybe at 12yrs. old I started babysitting. I was a Nanny and preschool teacher for years. I have always loved kids. But I don't have any of my own yet because I have been "responsible".

One of the toughest things for me right now is to watch parents who don't want their children around as much as possible, cannot afford their children, and yet they have more than they can handle. And here I am, someone who would love them and enjoy their presence in my life, only to have to wait for the "right" time. Has anyone else had that "when the time is right" "when we have enough money" "when things are in order". Blah Blah BLAH! Line?

It's just hard. I am not a patient person. I wish I was, but it apparently just does not come naturally to me. I always said that I didn't want to be 30 or over when I had kids, especially just having my first one. But life happens, and here I am, waiting.

We have things to get in order, so I have to wait. Sure, I am a newly wed, but something about that number 3-0 scares the heck out of me. Because then you have to wait even LONGER to have kids. I don't want to be a parent who doesn't have the energy to be a part of their child's life.

But then again, I have talked to people who have told me that having kids changes everything. To enjoy time alone first. What do you think I have been doing for the past 4 years? Sigh.

That's the thing though, everyone has what they consider the "perfect time" for everything. How long to wait before you get engaged, how long an engagement should be, how long to be married before you have kids, and what order those all happen in. But we all have to do what works best in our own lives.

So who knows, for now, I will wait. I suppose that "when the time is right" (though I have also been told there is never a "right" time), then it will happen if it is supposed to. In the meantime, people might wonder a little less why I love my cat so much. ha. My husband got her to tide me over from wanting children. It's working out real well. ;)