Phone Photo Dump: Dec. 31 - Jan. 6

Growing up I was always the one with my camera out, snapping away. Didn't matter where we were or what we were doing, I always had my camera. My friends used to call me The Paparazzi and J's uncle used to call me Flash. I got away from taking pictures the past few years, but since I upgraded my Blackberry for an iPhone I've been snapping away again, only now all my pictures are on my phone.

One of my favourite parts of blogging is seeing a little bit of other blogger's lives. I figure by sharing the photos from my week (or at least a handful of them) I can share a little piece of my life more easily. These aren't the only pictures I took this week, but they're definitely some of my favourites.

1 & 2 were taken New Year's Eve. We decided to use my new selfie stick to try and take a "family" picture. Daisy (our beagle) and Sydney (our cat) weren't particularly cooperative. Daisy doesn't usually get that close to Sydney, we think she's actually a little afraid of her.

3 & 4 are what most of the pictures I take every week look like. Daisy likes to sleep, and she's pretty adorable when she's all curled up on the couch with us. Every time I take a picture of her like this J laughs and makes a comment about how I must already have enough pictures of Daisy sleeping. But can there ever really be too many pictures of an adorable beagle flaked out?

5 isn't exactly a picture obviously, it's a text message I took a screen shot of. It's from one of my staff. I know you can't read it but he basically thanked me for being a lovely person to work for. Most of my staff are university students and I always try to be accommodating to their changing availabilities and flexible with time-off and shift-switch requests. Dorky, I know, but it's nice to know they appreciate it. (I took the screen shot to text to my husband because I was that excited. DORK.)

6 - 9 were taken on New Year's Day at my parents' place. We had dinner there with my brother and his fiance. Two of the cats (the boys) stayed pretty close to dad while he was cutting the ham. My brother brought his BB8 over to show off, and Maggie (mom and dad's third cat) wasn't quite sure what to make of it. My brother was also in charge of dessert, he and his fiance worked together and made a delicious carrot cake from scratch. He enjoys the baking and she enjoys the decorating so they're a good match.

11 - 13 were taken on my father-in-law's 60th birthday on Sunday. 11 & 12 were taken at the church (he's our pastor) during the party we threw for him and 13 is of him opening his new iPad from my mother-in-law and all his kids. (J is one of six kids so if they all go in together getting big ticket gifts is do-able.)

14 is probably my favourite picture from the week. Daisy is totally a daddy's girl - she loves getting as close to J as she possibly can!


Happy Friday, enjoy your weekend!

xo,
Sara

Monthly Goals

I love the idea of setting goals each month, but I've never been super great at actually achieving them. I'm going to try and take it a little easy on myself this year, and only set three goals each month. One will be a blog goal and two will be goals that relate to one of my 2016 resolutions. I'm cautiously optimistic that tying my monthly goals to my resolutions will make me more inclined to work on them. And hopefully by the end of this year I won't be writing a post and how (once again) I sucked at keeping my new year's resolutions. 

January Goals

1. Try out at least three new recipes. 

(One using the veggie spiralizer I got for Christmas.)

2. Completely organize and de-clutter at least one 

of the following rooms: office, laundry room, 

rec room, master bedroom, spare bedroom. 

3. Blog at least 10 times. 

Pretty straightforward and hopefully pretty achievable. I'd like to get more than one room cleaned and organized but at the same time I want to be thorough so I think I'll aim for one a month to start, I'd also like to blog at least three times a week, but I also don't want to be posting just to post. Plus, I think I'll be more motivated next month if I achieve all my goals this month. I'll try to gradually make them a little more work, but this is as tough as it's going to get for now.

Wish me luck!

xo,

Sara

Hello 2016! (My Resolutions)

While I was getting ready to write this entry, I decided to look back and see if I had blogged about my new year's resolutions last year. I did. And they were great. No, really. Completely in line with what I had planned for this year, but written much better. Yay last-year me! ;-)

But at the same time, it's not really a "yay" moment. Because if those were my resolutions last year, why are they my resolutions again this year? Apparently it's because I suck at keeping my new year's resolutions.

I thought about calling them something different. About doing a whole post on the difference between resolutions and goals. And then making goals instead of resolutions because maybe resolutions are just too much pressure. But that's a little ridiculous.

So, here are my resolutions for 2015. I mean 2016!

1) Be healthier

• I want to eat better. I need to cook more meals at home, and I need to try to use healthier ingredients.
• I want to drink more water. And not just drink more water, but less diet coke (sob) and less energy drinks. 
• I want to move more. One ringette game a week does not do it. When the time comes I want to be able to chase my kids and play games with them without feeling like I'm going to pass out. 

2) Be organized

• I want to do planning. I want to have meal plans and I want to have a plan for this space. At work I am a super planner, everything figured out down to the last detail, but at home I'm pretty much completely disorganized.
• I want to keep my house clean & organized. If company were to show up unexpectedly I would be mortified. We're not dirty people or anything, but things are cluttered and things rarely go back where they belong when we're done with them. (True confession time, we basically live out of laundry baskets instead of putting our clean clothes in our drawers. So bad.)

3) Be disconnected

• I want to step away from my phone more. I want to step away from the TV more. I want to step away from social media more. (That last one might seem odd considering I'm also wanting to blog more, but I waste so much time being unproductive when I'm online. I could spend half the amount of time and still get posts done and leave comments.) 
• I want to read more, and I want to "wife" more. I want to spend quality time with my husband. I want to play games, I want to chat, I want to go for walks.

I guess my 2016 resolutions aren't exactly the same as my 2015 resolutions, but they're definitely close. Here's hoping I do a better job with them this year!

Do you make resolutions? Do you stick to them or do you find yourself making the same ones every year? (Or is that just me?)

Happy New Year!

xo,

Sara

Trying Again

I have decided to try this whole blog thing again. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure it will stick, but here we are. 

I'm going to attempt to be organized, I've pinned some blog planner printables and I already have some ideas for posts. I like having a space to share things, and I think as we get further into our adoption journey I'm definitely going to want to have a space to share my feelings. I'm hoping that in the coming months you'll see this space filled not only with updates on our adoption journey but with book reviews, recipe reviews, the odd DIY project, and with a spattering of my random thoughts thrown in.

Welcome to Duchess Diaries - here we go! 

xo,

Sara

Camp Weekend

When J was a kid his church did family camp every year. For the past several years they haven't been able to do it, but God worked it all out this year and we were able to go. I don't think it was quite the way J remembered it, but it was nice to get out of the city and spend some time away from the world.

The location of the camp was perfect. It was less than an hour away from home, but it felt like you were so much further away from the city. The cabins and grounds were clean and well-maintained. We certainly didn't spend the weekend at a luxury resort, but we were comfortable and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. 

One of the neat things at the camp was the human fooseball. We had a ton of fun!

All of our usual doggy sitters were at camp with us. So after much debate we decided to take Daisy with us. She had a ball! She made new friends, and she certainly didn't lack for attention.

We spent a couple peaceful hours outside relaxing Saturday afternoon while J's uncle and cousin played and sang. 

Saturday night we had a devotion around the campfire and then roasted hot dogs and made s'mores. 

Sunday morning we were able to have our church service outside. I was worried about Daisy distracting everyone but she curled up on her blanket and slept through the entire thing. (Apparently she was tired from being up late at the fire the night before.)

The end of camp was a little bittersweet as J's youngest brother, Joseph, headed back to school in Florida early this morning. We won't see him now for about 16 months. We've already started filling a piggy bank though for a trip to Florida. He graduates in May 2017 and we're hoping to be there. 

I am covered in fly bites and have a ton of laundry, but I wouldn't have changed a thing about this weekend. I am so grateful to belong to a church that is full of members who enjoy spending time together both in and outside the church building. 

Hope you had a great weekend!

Linking up with: Her Heartland Soul, and Life of Meg.

Our Vacation; Part 3 (Six Flags America)

Back in early June my husband and I traveled to Washington, DC. The main purpose of our trip was my sister-in-law's wedding in West Virginia, but since we had never traveled together (in almost 6 years of marriage) we decided to extend our trip and be tourists for a few days. Well before we left we had decided what we were going to do with our three days as tourists: see the sights of DC, visit the Smithsonian Zoo, and spend a day at Six Flags America.

Six Flags was a super fun experience. I hadn't been to a real amusement park since I was a kid, and J had never been to one. (The closest thing we have in Nova Scotia is Upper Clements Park and it doesn't even compare to Six Flags.) We went in the middle of the week so there weren't any crowds. We didn't have to stand in line for any of the rides. We rode everything at least once and rode our favourite roller coasters a couple times.

So hot & sweaty, but having so much fun!

We got a discount on our park tickets by buying them at the hotel before we left. It wasn't a huge discount, but we saved $20 US. (The exchange right wasn't quite as horrible then, but it was still pretty bad!) We ended up using our "savings" to buy refillable sports bottles. They were a bit pricey but I don't regret the purchase at all. It was so hot and all the concessions were really expensive so I don't think we would have kept ourselves properly hydrated if we hadn't bought them.

I was a little nervous about heading to the park after reading some of the reviews online, but our day at Six Flags was probably my favourite. It even beat the zoo and I loved the zoo! It was a very experience for us, the weather was fantastic, and the lack of line ups was so unexpected that we really felt like we had lucked in. Watching J's face on his first real roller coaster was something I'll never forget either!

An overflowing, grateful heart

On  Thursday we announced to Facebook that we had started our adoption journey. It was something
we debated for a while. We are so so so early in the process that it felt a little like announcing a pregnancy before the end of the first trimester. And we have no idea how long the process could take. There is a very real possibility (and kind of a frightening one) that it could be six years before we have our child. However, we are so excited and I am a colossal over-sharer, so we went for it.

And we were blown away.

I've never posted anything that ended up with over 100 likes. And the comments were so unbelievably sweet and supportive. And they came from people I hadn't talked to in years, and people J has never even met. We also learned that an old friend of J's is in the process of adopting internationally. The experiences that led her and her husband to adopt are very similar to ours so we are looking forward to getting together with them in the near future. My staff, my co-workers, and especially my boss are so 100% behind us and I'm pretty sure I can already feel the prayers from our church family.

It is going to be a long, bumpy road and I know that. There are going to be mountains, there are going to valleys and there are going to be prairies when we feel like nothing is changing at all. I can't say that I'm ready for all that - I am impatient and and I am emotional - but all of the support is going to make it so much easier to bear.