Meadowlark Gardens

As you know if you read my previous post I've been stressed recently. This last weekend (once I saw that the weather was going to be decent) I decided I needed to do something fun outside. 

So I visited Meadowlark Gardens. I love Meadowlark. I've been there multiple times before, but it's been a few years since my last visit. 

There were some blooming flowers and it was beautiful! 

Enjoy the pictures of the gardens and the flowers!

I don't know the names of many flowers, but I do enjoy looking at them. 🌺

Daylillies!

Although the picture doesn't really do it justice, I liked the contrast of the brown grass, the pink blooming tree, the green trees, and the blue sky. So pretty!

I wish I was better at flower names. Oh well. 🤣

There was a wedding ceremony happening on the gazebo when I took this picture. 

I do believe this is a tulip! Is that right?!

I do know these are bluebells!

Part of the Korean bell garden within Meadowlark!

I loved visiting Meadowlark! It helped me feel a bit more calm amidst the stress in my life. 

On my way home from Meadowlark, I saw these flowers and had to stop and take pictures. Aren't they pretty?!

So pretty! It was a little warm on Saturday but I loved my outing to Meadowlark Gardens. I really needed it. 

I hope you all are having a lovely spring time!

Stressed

I must admit March felt like a really long month to me. I'm glad it's April. It feels like a fresh start even if nothing has really changed from March. I'm pretty positive part of the reason March felt so long is because I've been stressed for multiple reasons. 

I'm going to be moving in a month or so. Moving and everything that comes along with it is always stressful. Looking at places and finding the right place, packing up, the actual moving part, cleaning, the extra money it costs to move etc, it's all stressful. (I'll be moving within the county or neighboring county I currently live in). 

Please send prayers/good vibes my way that my move will go okay. 

As a break from the rest of this post Ash is really cute! 😁

Another thing stressing me out is my car. It has been acting up again. If it's not one thing with my car it's another. I have spent more money on fixing up my car than I paid for my car in the first place. And I'm not even exaggerating that. I'm tired of not being able to trust my car to go long distances any more. 

For now I'll keep my car, but I think I might need to be on the lookout for a newer one soon. But that's another thing stressing me out, the thought of looking for and buying a newer car. 

There are more things weighing on my mind right now, but I will refrain from writing them here for now.

I hope you all are having a good spring time and don't have too much stressing you out right now!

Daylight Savings

So this last weekend was daylight savings time where we spring forward an hour. And for some reason it's taking me longer than normal to adjust to the new time. 

I've been going to bed a lot later than usual because I don't feel tired at the normal time. It's really hard for me to wake up in the morning and I need to press snooze multiple times. I know I'll eventually get used to it and it'll be fine, but for now, I'm struggling here. 

Also on Tuesday it was 78 degrees and it felt too warm to me. I went on a walk and got hot and sweaty and I feel like it's too early for that.

Thankfully, it's not going to be that warm for the rest of the week, but it's a slight hint of summer to come. 

Thanks for reading about my complaints right now. 😉

Dallas

My sister, Heather, was out of town for a funeral and she fell and broke her ankle in multiple locations. She had emergency surgery the day after she fell to put the external fixator on it (pictured below). Then she had a second surgery a week later. Now she’s wearing a big boot and has to be non-weight bearing on that leg for six weeks.

Since this happened while she was traveling she was stuck in Dallas (where she flew in and out of for the funeral) until she was okay enough to travel again. At first she stayed in the hospital where she had the surgery and then they transferred her to a skilled nursing facility.

Four of us siblings (Matt, Lara, Kristina and I) were able to fly out at different times to keep her company and be there for any appointments she had. 

This was a sunrise from my hotel one of the mornings I was there. I really liked my hotel. 

 

While in Dallas, I ate out almost every meal. One of the places I went to was Empa Mundo World of Empanadas. It was near the facility Heather was staying at and I bought some for H and I. 

I liked the way the place was decorated. So interesting! They had a bunch of $1 bills covering the walls with names and dates of people who had visited. Some of them also had the country or city the people were from on it.

A close up of some of the $1 bills on the wall. 

The restaurant also had flags from many different countries hanging from the ceiling and bills hanging from the flags that represented a person or group of people that visited from that particular country. 

The empanadas were good. The filling was delicious with good flavor but I felt like the pastry part was a little over done (at least to me). But overall I liked the food!

I was in Dallas for five days and I overlapped with my sister Lara for a few hours. Lara got there on Monday late morning and I left Monday evening. 

I am so grateful I was able to take a few days off of work and fly to Dallas to be with Heather. 

Heather was in Dallas about two weeks and was able to fly back to Utah today. She has to be non-weight bearing on that leg for six weeks and has been in pain since her surgery. It will take some adjustment being back at home but I think she's a little relieved to be back home.

I hope she has a smooth recovery. I know this whole process has been hard on her. 

Olympics

I like watching certain events of the Olympics. In the Winter Olympics, I especially like watching figure skating but will watch almost any sport just to see what it's like!

I don't usually have the streaming service that the Olympics air on but will get it for the month and then cancel before the next month is charged.

I am in awe of how effortless Olympians make their sport look! This was the French team in the Team Event- Rhythm Dance.

This was one of the downhill skiing events and I was surprised at how fast he got going at some points in the event. 

68 mph, flying down a snowy hill on skis with only a helmet for protection. It scared me a bit but it was interesting to watch though. 

Ilia Malinin in the Men's Short Program. He was so good! I will just say that he has a lot of pressure on him as the Quadgod. 

And another event, Nordic Combined LH/10km. Watching this stressed me out a bit because there was so much going uphill and downhill. Watching them race uphill in their skis looked really difficult and tiring.

But it is super interesting watching the Olympics. I think anyone who makes it to the Olympics is amazing! It doesn't matter if they medal or not, if they made it, they're good!

What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching?

January Happenings

Some random happenings from January.

Enjoy the photos! 

Three years in row, we've had a family gathering on New Year's Day with the family members who live in the area. 

This year we met up at a mall food court for lunch. It was fun and the food was delicious!

One day it was pouring outside and I really didn't want to go on a walk. I put on some fast drying clothes, got my umbrella and convinced myself to go. 

I ended up really enjoying the walk. For some reason it made me happy even though I got pretty wet on the walk. :)

I received an adult coloring book from one of my sisters for Christmas. I've been enjoying coloring the pages. It's pretty cathartic. 

I went to brunch with a few friends one day. I got this salted caramel waffle and it was delicious! It had bacon, whipped vanilla mascarpone, brown sugar roasted walnut crumble, caramel drizzle and sea salt. 😋

The group of friends I went with to brunch. My friends are awesome!

Some cuddle time with Ash. 

The last half of January has been quite cold outside. I had to convince myself to go on this cold walk last week. I did go, but I didn't want to. 😂

Normally the winters in Virginia are pretty mild with cold temperatures but not very much snow. Last weekend it snowed and it's also been really cold. The highs have been in the 20s and lows in the single digits every day since the snow got here. The issue with that is now the snow is icy. 

Unfortunately I do not own a shovel and could not shovel my car out of its parking space the first day after the storm (which would have been the best time to do it). And it's been really hard to find a shovel because all of the stores are sold out. Thankfully I received one on my doorstep (after a local store got a restock of shovels) on Thursday. 

The snow pictures above were taken the day after the storm (Monday). And it’s Saturday now and my car is still stuck. I’ll work more on getting my car out today.

Hope you all have had a good January and are staying warm and safe wherever you are located!

Procrastination

Sometimes I put off doing things longer than I should because I overthink. I think it’ll be super complicated or take a long time. At times it does end up being complicated or take a long time but sometimes it doesn’t.

There was something I’d been putting off doing for a couple of months. This week, I finally made the call to get it taken care of (yay) and it ended up not being nearly as bad as I had debated about in my head for so long. 

I say all of this to say, maybe I should try to not overthink so much and procrastinate tasks as much as I do sometimes. But knowing myself that will be a hard thing to try to overcome. 🤣