Things I'm Looking Forward to in April

John's mission call 🤍

General Conference. One of the best weekends of the year! 

The new season of When Calls the Heart. It looks like Elizabeth and Nathan are finally getting together! 🙌
I wanted it to happen two seasons ago, but better late than never!

I just realized that I have a sister named Elizabeth and a brother named Nathan, so that just made it a little weird. 😆

The solar eclipse on April 8th. Please don't be cloudy or rainy that day! 🙏

Fun get-togethers with friends, and one planned with my Cape Cod Moms co-workers. 

April vacation with Sam. We're going to relax and do some fun things at the Cape for a few days.

The Boston Marathon. It's a little more special than usual for my town this year because it's the 100th anniversary of the Marathon starting there (and the 128th year for the Marathon in general). I don't live far from the route in my new place and am close(ish) to the starting line. I plan to walk over to Main Street to see the runners go by, and I'll try to drag Sam along with me too!

Warmer weather, blooming flowers, and hopefully a regular return to walks in the woods. These are a few of my favorite things! 🎜

(P.S. It bugs me that for the last two graphics above and the first one at the very top, there's a double space between the paragraph and the picture. I did everything I could think of to fix it, but Blogger was having none of it. So there it remains, and I must resign myself to the things that I cannot control. Story of my life! 😆)

February 2024 Randoms

Cute things I saw at Target:

I loved Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, and Winnie the Pooh as a child (I still do as an adult!).

It's fun watching John wrestle live on YouTube. I like to stream it to the TV and watch it there.

This was a really good WSJ article about two BYU long-distance runners who went on missions and got better at running when they returned. They both qualified for the Olympics last month. I cut this article out and sent it to John (because I'm old-school like that).

I'm excited for John to experience some (or all) of these benefits on his mission. His call should be coming in the next week or two!

I read an interview with Andre Agassi and who knew, he and I are a lot alike in some ways!

This is how I do my editing and writing work. I usually do around three hours in the morning (sometimes more, sometimes less), and the rest of my day fits in around that.

✔✔✔

Of course, he has a much bigger budget from which to spend on these splurges, but still, same thing. Well, kind of. 😄

One of my least favorite amendments. Ha ha. 

I read a good book, The Pilgrim Hypothesis, that had a lot of inspiring stories and connections between the founding of the United States and the restoration of the gospel.

Beth had this drink in her car and I snapped a picture to remind myself to get it and try it sometime. I don't drink a lot of soda because it's bad for you, but when I do, why not make it probiotic so that it feels healthier?

Here's my picture and bio for Cape Cod Moms! It's on their website, and these two pictures are from an Instagram post they did.
I love this job and am so thankful I was hired for it!

I'm itching to make a couple of edits to my bio! It's literally the editor in me. 😄

I have fond memories of these markers.

 In my opinion, this is one of America's most beautiful places. 😍

I went for a nature walk on a cool new (to me) trail near my house and saw these funny Suess-like trees that were dead on the bottom and green at the top. 

The culprit? Deer!

Another match on the big screen for my boy J. He lost but he put up a good fight (literally 😉).

I NEED to go here!

This is from Sam's wrestling banquet (in my old high school cafeteria, which is now the middle school cafeteria). It was a rough season for him, so I'm proud of him for finishing and not quitting. He and John are very different in their approaches to competition--hopefully in high school, Sam's approach will align more with John's (which is to be nervous, but also excited, and to get out there and do your best. Sam's approach? Skip the meet. 😑).

Angela Lansbury is one of my favorite actresses of all time, and Murder, She Wrote is one of my favorite shows of all time (yes, I have been a 65-year-old in many ways for most of my life 😆). I enjoyed this webinar about her.

Jessica Fletcher is one of my models of a happy, successful, single lady.

She was great as Mrs. Potts, too!

If you have to die, this is the way to do it. She was a class act from beginning to end.

Retirement research, trying to figure out what I need. It's still at least a couple of decades away, but the time to prepare is now (unless of course, life has changed dramatically before then, and my guess is that it will!).

Maybe this is a little TMI but it's my blog and I'll share if I want to (do you get my reference to the old song? "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..."). Anyway. I already have more than this amount saved for retirement (the literal benefits of having been married to a retirement actuary for 21 years). So I think I'm in pretty good shape for now, provided the stock market doesn't crash or anything crazy like that. And you know my feelings about the likelihood of that happening. (In case you don't: very likely.) In any case, I do my best to be prepared and take care of what I can control, and then I don't worry about the rest (too much). 

 This sunset is "fire," as John would say. 🔥😍

I love this movie. I've been trying to get a copy of it for awhile and I finally got one. This is one of my favorite stories from the scriptures. I think it's very applicable to our day and that it will become even more so in the future. Moses is one of my favorite prophets of all time. And not just because Charlton Heston plays him! Although that definitely helps. 😉

We usually take a walk on this boardwalk out over the water every summer. It's not too far from my Cape house. We have a personalized plank on the boardwalk. It's such a lovely spot!

I had these two Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake dolls!

I'm just going to copy what I said on Facebook about this picture because I think it's funny: 
A few weeks ago I worked on some research for a writing job I’m doing for a Boston-area magazine that’s launching this spring. I forgot about what I’d written in the first line under the town name as my takeaway about that town and have been giggling about it ever since I saw it. I crack myself up!

Poirot is one of my favorite characters. I love how fastidious and intelligent and funny he is. As you can see, I have a thing for detectives!

I had a great collection of Poirots stored in my DVR and I lost them all when I moved. 😢

Another pretty place in New England that I've been to.

I'm happy to report that I got a Shamrock Shake this season!

I'm not happy to report that this is all too accurate and we are currently experiencing "Second Winter." 😭