Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to Jessi coming to visit this weekend!

Sunshine to War Horse tomorrow night!

Sunshine to some good workouts this week.

Creep to TOTAL exhaustion. I cannot wait to sleep past 5:05 am tomorrow.

Creep to all the ants in my herb garden :-(

Sunshine to the person who is taking over my old job starting on Monday! That only took 6 months!

Sunshine to my hubby! We celebrated 9 months last weekend at a wedding and had a blast!

Goals - June 2013

Ah – it’s already June 11 and I’m just getting around to blogging my goals. It’s been one of those months where I feel like I have no downtime. Last night, Michael and I went for a run, made dinner, did dishes, and a load of laundry and by the time that was all said and done, it was 9pm!

My May goals went pretty well. I’m going to go a bit conservative for June, considering everything we have going on. If it’s not related to our travel plans or the tri, it probably is not happening.

Professional Goals - May 2013

Get the fiscal year end mailer out the door. Yes. I was happy without it turned out.

Take the “thank you” photo. Yes, but the quality isn’t great. Hoping our graphic designer can make it look good!

Finalize reunion volunteers and party locations. Almost finished. Just a few left and after next week, it won’t matter to me anymore because I am not in charge of it!

Recruit golf and tennis hosts for August event. Done.

Only work late one night per week.  I have been staying late two to three nights a week, but only until 6 a few times so that’s good.

Hire someone for my job! FINALLY – YES!

Personal Goals - May 2013

Stick to triathlon training schedule. We have stuck to the schedule but had to do some switching of days. But we did not missed a workout.

Yoga once a week. Ha – I went once. I just don’t have time. Post-tri, yoga will be back in my routine. I promise!

Eat healthier lunches. I did pretty good but now that the students are gone, I really can because I’m bringing my own lunch every day, so I’m not tempted with all the yummy things our chef (yes, he’s a chef, not a cook) makes.

Try a new recipe. I’m sure I did but I cannot even remember – the month seems like such a long time ago!

Menu plan better each week. We did much better with this in May. This not only helped us eat better but kept our finances in check.

Move into our new room at the cabin. Done.

Plant garden/flowers. Done.

Go to a Twins game.  Success!

Go to my school’s spring musical (Hair Spray). Yes – it was pretty cute.

Have a date night with Michael. We had informal date nights/days but not a formal one. That’s ok though – informal is good for me :-)

Host Mother’s Day brunch. Yes, and it was delicious. We made a sausage frittata, veggie frittata, cinnamon rolls, and a yogurt bar. 

Have a girls night. Yes. We had a nice “walking” girls night around one of the lakes – hope we do more of those!

Go on walks in the evenings. We were not so good about that.

Read three books. I read a lot this month - 5 books. After the TV finales for all my shows, I became engulfed in several books.

Blog three times a week. I need to be better about this. But since I feel like all we did was workout, there was not much to blog about...

Professional Goals - June 2013

Meet our financial and participation goals. We’re close on all of them except one so we should be ok.

Finalize thank you card. 

Meet with data researcher about what end-of-year reports I need.

Start website overhaul.

Hand off my old job to the new “me.” Did I mention her name is Jen and she’s tall and blonde? :-)

Personal Goals - June 2013

Keep up with training schedule.

Complete 30 day ab challenge.

Do one open water swim practice.

Eat healthier lunches. 

Menu plan each week.

Keep up on our gardening/yard work.

Go to the cabin the last weekend of the month.

Have a fun weekend with Jessi.

Eat all of our favorite Chicago foods – deep dish pizza, Ann Sather’s cinnamon rolls, and a Chicago-style hotdog.

Reschedule our meeting with financial planner.

Have a girls night. 

Go on walks in the evenings. 

Catch up on my magazine reading.

Blog three times a week. 

Welcome to the Jungle!

Michael and his dad bought out house 3.5 years ago, after the previous owner had passed away. She must have REALLY loved perennials because our yard is covered in them. The front yard, the back yard, there were plants everywhere.

Immediately after buying it, Michael, and his dad, uncle, and grandpa took out 50+ arbor vitae trees from the front lawn. They planted grass seed that spring and did not do much else until Michael and I moved in a year and a half later.

When we moved in in July 2011, the front yard looked pretty good, but the backyard was like a rain forest. More than half of the backyard was covered with hosta and day lilies. We took out about 100 (I’m not kidding) and planted more grass, but that was it. We left the hosta outlining the yard, many trees, and three planter boxes untouched. There were about 150 hosta and 30 day lillies in that group (again, I’m not kidding – they must have REALLY loved hosta).

Last year, we did nothing other than flowers, as we were getting everything in order at the cabin for the wedding. Our yard continued to look like a jungle and it bothered me so much that I sort of refused to go out there at the end of the summer.

This year, we finally have time to do stuff in our yard. Mother Nature has not been super great to us but here are some of the projects we have tackled so far:

• Attempting to level the ground. Both our front and back yards are horribly uneven so we put down a ton of dirt to help level it out. The back yard still needs work.
• Planted more grass seed. We have planted it every year since we moved in. I can’t wait for the year we do NOT have to do that.
• Weeding. We have done a TON of weeding. I weeded the patch of grass next to our driveway opposite the front yard that is a combo of both hosta and grass (sparingly). I also weeded all of those planter boxes in our back yard. There are a good 30 hosta plants and two random day lilies (that I need to transplant somewhere else) but there were 6 hours worth of weeds. It was not a fun project. 
• Mulch. We have mulched the outlining area of the back yard.
• Transplant/get rid of plants. We moved several hosta and day lilies to more appropriate spots, as we would find random hosta all over the yard, and 15 clumped in a corner. We also had these horrible fern-like things that we both hated so we pitched those.
• Planted herbs, tomatoes, and flowers. We have one regular tomato plant, a cherry tomato plant, basil, sage, thyme, cilantro, and parsley, along with four types of flowers (three being dahlias, which are my favorite flower).

And still to do once it stops raining around here:

• Spread more dirt in the back yard.
• Weed three more areas of the back yard.
• Spray Round Up – pretty everywhere that is not grass.
• Transplant more plants to different areas.
• More mulching.
• Plant some hydrangea. I really want to do this (they are my second favorite flower), but I’m not sure if it will happen this year.

Here are some pics of the garden/progress we have made. I’ll post more when it looks better. Right now, every time I look at it, I still scream “Welcome to the Jungle” in an Axel Rose voice in my head.

Flowers and tomatoes

Herbs

Dahlia #1

Dahlia #2 

Dahlia #3

Check out the growth on these hosta. Picture one was taken on Mother's Day. Picture two was taken 5 days later.

Still a work in progress...I told you I wasn't kidding about all the hosta!

Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to FINALLY hiring someone for my old job. I’m going to jump on a pedestal right now because I am the one who found her (just call me a recruiter) and had I not done that, who knows when we would have hired someone for the job. Plus I think she’s going to be fantastic. June 17th cannot come soon enough!

Sunshine to a long weekend – I love having Mondays off (more than Fridays)!

Sunshine to going to the cabin for the long weekend, but Creep to the crappy weather forecast.

Creep to a lot of weeding that needs to be done in our back yard. Fun Friday night ahead for me.

Sunshine to homemade pizza tonight.

Sunshine to joining a volunteer committee with a local professional fundraisers association. I have missed volunteering since we moved to MN so it will be nice to get back into it.

Sunshine to spray tans. I wish I could afford to get them once a week.

Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to good workouts this week, including yoga on Monday. That felt amazing!

Creep to constantly eating. That is likely related to the workouts but I need to do better with my snacking.

Sunshine to finding out about a practice session opportunity for our tri. It's a guided tour of the actual bike course, which will be so helpful for Michael and I since we've never done this before.

Sunshine to Michael making dinner for me last night. Even when I got home late from work and could help, he insisted on doing it himself (I couldn't cross "the line" in the kitchen). It was very sweet of him.

Sunshine to having lunch with a friend in my professional field. We used to be counterparts when I had my alumni job but she has a new job now too. It was really great to see her and catch up.

Sunshine to talking wedding stuff with that friend. I had sort of forgotten had much fun I had doing it all. But I do not miss the amount of time it took!

Creep to phone tag with Kristen this week. We will connect soon, I hope!

Sunshine to last night's series finale of The Office. I love that show and thought the finale was perfect.

Sunshine to all the yard and garden work we've done lately. We spent all of last weekend working outside and the yard looks so much better. We also planted our garden: tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, parsley, sage, basil, thyme, cilantro, peppers, and a bunch of flowers, including three dahlias this year. I LOVE dahlias!

Creep to the weather - rainy. We are supposed to go to the Twins game tonight.

Sunshine to going to the cabin tomorrow. We have lots to do - cleaning, yard work, etc. but once we get it done, we won't have to do much more this season. Woohoo!