SOCIAL MEDIA

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

What's Up Wednesday

 Hello hello and happy What's Up Wednesday! The first WUW of summer for us! I am looking forward to sharing a little bit of what we're eating, wearing, and doing this month. Let's have a look:


What We're Eating This Week: We have completely fallen off the plant-based wagon and Dev and I have both been noticing how crummy we feel. We are doing our best to get back into it this week. We don't follow it 100% accurately, but we definitely notice a difference in how we feel if we stick pretty close. This week we are having:

- Black bean, corn and rice tacos. We love to add the Trader Joe's Mexi corn with contija to our tacos--- delish!
- Stir fry with edamame
- Stuffed Poblano Peppers (pictured below-- we will either use Impossible meat or sub black beans for meat)

What I'm Reminiscing About: Lily Grace had Beginner's Day at her future elementary school and it is bringing back ALL the feels. I've told you that she is going to the school where I used to teach, right? Her kindergarten teacher is going to be my former grade partner and one of my closest teacher friends. The classroom she will be in is right next door to the room where I taught for 8 out of my 11 years there. Every time I walk into that building I am flooded with happy memories. It is a weird feeling to have my worlds colliding, but I couldn't be more at ease or confident in how well her elementary years are going to go. 

What I'm Loving: It's SUMMER!!! The kids are done with school and we are officially on summer break! We have already been to the pool a couple times and I know we have a lot of swim time to come. 

What We've Been Up To: We have been busy bees! I did a Life Lately post a week or two ago chronicling what we've been up to, but basically we've been celebrating multiple birthdays, graduations, Mother's Day, etc. On top of that, Lily Grace and I got to go to "Princess Day" at our baseball stadium last weekend and it was a BLAST! 
Lily Grace and one of her best friends went together. They met several princesses, had their nails painted..
their makeup done...
then they ate lunch and wore their princess dresses on the giant inflatable slide.
I was not at all surprised when our ride home looked like this:
I texted these pictures to my family thread and my dad said "did the girls even watch the game?" Haha, yes they watched about 15 minutes before they wanted to go back to the inflatable slides. 

Unfortunately the baseball games are all during Liam's nap time or past his bedtime, so he has yet to come to a game with us. We are thinking next year will be his year!

What I'm Working On: Teacher friends-- I need your help!! My license is up for renewal but I still need a couple of CEU's in technology, and one in reading. Does anyone know of an online professional development that provides a certificate for CEU's? I cannot tell you the number of places I have seen online, reached out to via email to confirm you get CEU's, and never heard back. Probably close to a dozen. It's kind of infuriating. I did hear back from one but the course is expensive-- and since I am not currently working for the district I would be on my own to pay for it.  When I was still teaching I never had to worry about this, we had enough professional development opportunities that I always had plenty of CEU's. Having been just a sub for the past 2 years has hurt my PD credits!

What I'm Excited About: Our annual beach trip is getting closer and I cannot wait to wear those kiddos out at the beach day after day.


What I'm Watching/Reading: We really don't watch TV anymore so I've got nothing for you in that department, sorry. Devin and I have such different taste in TV shows that we struggle too much to find something we both want to watch together. Anyone else feel like you spend 30 minutes just trying to find a show and then you can't find anything so you just give up? We'd rather read our books, do puzzles, plan future trips or just chat with each other. That being said, if you have a good recommendation I'm all ears!

As for reading, I have read some phenomenal books lately! I plan to do a book post in the next week or two but these two were fantastic:
Dreams of Joy--  This is the sequel to Shanghai Girls which I read earlier this year and loved. Both Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy were FANTASTIC! If you like historical fiction and learning more about a time period/place/culture you may not already know very much about, these two books are wonderful. Shanghai Girls is about two sisters who flee China as the Japanese are attacking at the onset of WW2 in Asia. They move to California, where they raise their daughter/niece Joy. Dreams of Joy is about their daughter/niece Joy as she grows up and learns about Communist China in college. On her college campus Communist China has been glamorized and made to be the perfect solution for China. She decides to move to China and help her comrades live out the Communist dream only to find it is nothing like she was told by her pro-Communism college friends. Joy is living in the Chinese countryside during the Great Famine, and the chapters about this time period were heartbreaking and unimaginable, yet so moving. I highly recommend!
The Four Winds-- Caveat: this was not my favorite Kristin Hannah ENDING, but I loved the first 98% of the book. Apparently I enjoyed reading about women going through very difficult times in history this month. I loved seeing the main character find her inner strength as she went through very difficult circumstances. 
What I'm Listening To: I've been on a big K-Love kick, which is Christian radio if you aren't familiar. In Charlotte the radio station is 91.9, but honestly we mostly just tell our Google Home to "play K-Love" and she does it. You can stream it online too, or check their website to see where they play K-Love in your city. There is also a free app you can download on your phone. It is honestly the best, most uplifting background music. I remember my mom having Christian music on in the background while we were growing up and my teenage self rolling my eyes because it wasn't "cool" music. Fast forward and I'm the mom playing it. So much for caring about "cool" music. 😂 I love that my kids can recognize some of the songs from church and sing along. 

When I'm not listening to K-Love, it's country music. Kelsea Ballerini, Walker Hayes, Kenny Chesney, Dan + Shay, etc.  

What I'm Wearing: Apparently I have a new favorite pair of earrings haha! I didn't realize I wear them this often, but apparently I do. They go with everything!
Striped T Shirt (on clearance with an extra 50% off right now!)/Shorts/Sandals/Earrings
White Shirt (old but similar here)/Sweater/Blue Pants/Leopard Shoes (old, but similar here)
This picture is from last summer, but on days I don't have anywhere special to go, this is pretty much what I'm wearing to run around and play in the backyard with the kids. 
Then, earlier this week I headed in to Lilly Pulitzer to look for a dress to match LG's graduation dress. I am looking forward to wearing our matching dresses to church, out to eat, etc. this summer. Matching your daughter is part of the fun in being a girl mom, right? I picked up this dress:
And then this romper too:
I loved these dresses below too, but figured two dresses was enough. I'll hold out for the end of summer sale and hope these other two are included:

What I'm Doing This Weekend: We are headed to the beach! My in laws live in Wilmington, NC so we like to go to Wrightsville Beach when we visit. I love going for a run at sunrise on the beach and took this picture while on a sunrise run last summer:
How beautiful is that? I am looking forward to another sunrise run, then some beach time afterwards!

What I'm Looking Forward To Next Month: Our annual beach trip!! Every year we go to Hilton Head, SC with my family for two weeks and I can't wait! Here I am with the kids last year:
Dev is usually not able to take both weeks off from work so he joins us on the weekends and then for one full week. The perk of it being only 4 hours away is that he can hop in the car after work on Friday and then have two full days with us before heading back to Charlotte Sunday night.

What Else is New: Oh, I got a job :) I am returning to teaching this fall and could not be more excited about it. Lily Grace is moving on to kindergarten and Liam is going to be at our church preschool (LG's former preschool). I subbed at the preschool several times throughout the school year and in March the school director told me they had a position they wanted me to fill for the upcoming school year. She did not have to twist my arm! Liam will be at the preschool all 5 mornings a week, but my class is only 4 mornings a week, so I will have one morning a week for errands/appointments/catching up on life. I have a background in early childhood education and am looking forward to putting it to use again!

Today I am linking up with Sheaffer and Shay for What's Up Wednesday-- have a great rest of the week!

5 comments :

  1. Congratulations on the new job! That will be fun to use your ECE training :) I love all of your outfits, I needed inspiration for my summer wardrobe!

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  2. Ah! I love this whole post! I wish our stadium did princess day, it looks like a BLAST! Shows, I have a million recommendations lol but two most recently from netflix - Our Father (about the infertility doctor who used his own sperm many times) and The Last Blockbuster (really reminiscent if you were a blockbuster kid growing up)! I'm excited for you to be back in the classroom, I can only imagine you're the best teacher! I also love that Lily Grace will go to the school you taught at and are comfortable with - very comforting in times like these.

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  3. That long sleeve pink dress is so cute on you!! I think you should reconsider it now, vs waiting on a sale! haha!!

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  4. congrats on the new job. When will you be at hilton head

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  5. Congrats on your new job! Very exciting. Two weeks at the beach is a dream!

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