Married Life: A Week in Our Lives

Married Life: Our Schedules

After we got married and returned from Jamaica, I only had six more days of work before summer break. After all of the craziness of wedding planning, it was NICE to have the summer off, not have to work or plan anything! We had 3 day weekends every weekend, as Matt has Mondays off....I mean, it really doesn't get better than that! During the summer, we continued playing volleyball, so on Tuesdays we were at Open Gym and Thursdays we were playing our games.

Fast forward to the school year starting back. Our schedules became more filled with activities and we're constantly on the go. On an average week, I work Monday through Friday, Matt works Tuesday through Friday. He gets home at varying times, depending on the day, and I typically get home between 4:45 and 5:00. On Mondays, he gets so much done around the house, or handles "fun" things, like paying bills, etc. Monday nights, I have bell choir practice. Tuesday nights, we have volleyball games. Wednesday nights, we usually have nothing. Thursday nights, we run Open Gym (every other Thursday). Friday nights we're typically dead tired, and if we go out, it's rare. haha.  Of the past 4 Fridays, we have ventured out 2 of those nights, but I promise you we were dead tired when we got home (at only 8:00 or so...).

We get a lot of comments about why we go to bed so early--we go to bed between 8:00 and 9:00 every night, including most weekend nights, too. Why? Because Matt gets up between 4:00 and 4:30 for work every morning. I know I don't have to get up that early, but once I hear his alarm and everything, it's hard for me to go back into a good sleep for another hour and a half until my alarm goes off.

Finally, it's the weekend. Weekends are sometimes filled with birthday parties, dinners, baby/bridal showers....the list goes on! With the size of our families, and the age most of our friends are at, it's not unusual to get these types of invites!  When they're not filled with all these events, they're spent doing stuff around the house...inside or outside, now. We have several "projects" in the works or being brainstormed, and we can't wait to get them all done! Of course, on Sundays, we go to church, and some times have to stay after, depending on the week. We've become more and more involved at church, taking on more responsibilities.

On top of all of this craziness, add on the training we always try to fit in (running, weight lifting, etc.--more on that in a later post coming up), the nights when we have NOTHING to do are much enjoyed! Sure, I'm known for sitting in the house while we're watching TV and saying "I'm bored," but only because I feel like I need to be doing something, because that's what I'm so used to! We didn't plan to have such busy lives, but that's what fell into our laps, so we've gone with it thus far.

So, maybe you could care less about what we do with our time every day, haha (similar to how you could probably care less about the headaches I talked about in my last post!). But I use my blog to document everything, and I'll continue to do so :)  To end this post, here's a picture of one of "Matt's birds" that he took in our backyard. Even though I hate birds, we do have a lot of pretty colored birds. But you can bet your bottom dollar I won't near them!!

My History of Headaches

As I was randomly going through Pinterest one day, I came across a pin titled "To The Wife with Migraines." Naturally, I had to click on it to see what the article said.  It's a really great article that I'd suggest to read if you also suffer from migraines.

If you don't know, I also have the unfortunate pleasure of having migraines. I had headaches throughout high school and during my time at Longwood, but February 2012, during my last semester at Longwood, that's when they really started getting bad.

After many, many doctors appointments, referrals and MRI scan since August 2013 (or technically, December 2012), my migraines are almost managed. *for the most part.* Do I still get annoying headaches often? Yes. But not only that....the entire side of my head and face hurt, and my eye throbs. The best part is, the next time I have one, it's on the opposite side...and so on with every other headache.

For several months, I kept a detailed headache journal, including when I took medicine--was it one of the prescriptions? was it just Advil? how many did I take? did it work?-- the Pain Level of the headache, what I ate that day, and sometimes I included any exercise for that day.  Over Christmas break, I really slacked off on this, since I was keeping my headache journal on my work computer, where I was spending most of my time.  Now, I'm back to keeping the headache journal, always including every detail about the above topics.

There are many nights when I fall asleep with a bag of ice across my face.  Or, the other lovely nights, where I have to wake Matt because I can't get up and I desperately need medicine and/or ice.  I'm EXTREMELY thankful for him on those nights, and the nights where he makes wonderful dinners (no different than any other night), but I'm so blah and nauseous that I can barely eat or even smell the food. No beuno.

So, after reading this article, I myself decided to make a list of tips for myself, if you will, for dealing with these stupid headaches:

-Enjoy the time when I DON'T have a headache. Like, reeeeeally enjoy the time. Even for something as simple as making the bed when I wake up.  If I wake up with a headache, I don't make the bed, simply because bending over, tucking the sheets in and what not, and then standing back up sends this huge rush to my head, making me feel dizzy, and all these other random symptoms that I don't want to feel bright and early in the morning.

-Don't think that things won't get better, because they will. Even though I still have these obnoxious headaches, at least we're on the way to really getting a hold of them. I have a preventative medication for them that I take daily, as well as another to take as soon as a headache starts. If that doesn't work, I take another after x amount of hours.

-Don't NOT take medicine. I used to not take medicine and let my headache go away on it's own. Now, I'm much better about taking medicine when a headache starts, or as soon as I'm able to!

-Keep telling myself this: Mallory, you have an ice pack on half of your face. Stop trying to watch the end of that show, text someone, or check Facebook. Just lay there and do nothing...for once! haha

And, because a post would be really dull without a picture, here's a picture I sent my sister one day during one of these fabulous headaches. I've spent many a day/night in bed like this -ice pack on my face and all- waiting for a headache to leave me alone! At this point, I don't even care how ridiculous I look in this picture, because hey, I document everything in my life, I might as well share it all: the good, the bad, and the pathetic looking.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I never in a million years thought this would happen, but schools are closed for snow/sleet in March on St. Patrick's Day! Crazy! I have to admit, I'm way over the snow days, though. The first couple weeks of random snow days we had were nice, even though it did end up messing up exam week. Since then, I've kind of just been over it.  Come on, Spring!!

Anyway, I thought I would share with you our St. Patrick's Day decorations we've gotten so far. I'm sure we'll get more after the holiday and when they're more on sale!

We bought the flag, door sign, and straws (I love my holiday-themed paper straws!!) all at Michael's a couple weeks ago for 40% off. They've marked it all down to 50% now, but I'm waiting for more than that ;)

I made this banner maybe four years ago or so? It's kept up well, and I only had to glue one piece back on a shamrock when I took it out this year!

Over Christmas break, Mom, Abby and I went to the Williamsburg mall that was closing at the beginning of January, and the stores that were left had stuff marked down like crazy! Mom and I each got one of these candle holders, and I think we maybe paid a quarter for them! I also got a Valentines Day one, too.

This month's Subway Art:

And, of course, my chalkboard! I have so much fun decorating this!

 

Love List

Time for another round of things I'm loving!

1. Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee--Matt and I came across this in Homegoods Friday night. To say that we were both excited would probably be an understatement! Matt chose for the bag of coffee beans, so that he could use our coffee grinder to have even fresher coffee.

 Mmmm...drinking it takes me back to breakfast in our room with this amazing view in Ocho Rios!

2. Karen Kingsbury is now sharing an e-series to follow up with all of her books about the Baxter family.  I started reading these books in high school, and finished up when I was at Longwood. When I got to the last book of the series, I just didn't want the stories to end! Luckily, my mom shared a link with me to sign up to receive chapters about the Baxter family via email through Karen Kingsbury's newsletter.

*If you haven't read her books yet, I highly recommend you get started now! Start with the Redemption series, then the Firstborn series, then the Sunrise series, followed by the Above the Line series, and finally the Bailey Flanigan series. Yes, it's a total of 22 books once you've finished all of the Baxter Family Series, but they are all WONDERFUL. It's so neat because all 22 books have the same characters, but each is focused on a different family member, and how all of the characters are connected.  Don't waste anymore time, go pick up a copy of Redemption and get started on Book #1 of 22!!

3. The new cast of Dancing with the Stars was revealed on Good Morning America yesterday! I wasn't as into the cast, at first.  Until they got about halfway through who the Stars are, I was rooting for Danica McKeller from The Wonder Years, but THEN, Candace Cameron Bure came out and I was so excited!! Thennnn, they brought out Meryl Davis and Charlie White from the Sochi Olympics--now that is going to be a great competition to watch! But then, I was confused...how could they NOT have Derek Hough on this season?? That didn't make sense, until they revealed who is partner will be.  It is going to be very cool to watch him work with Amy Purdy, a double amputee Paralympian!

4. Matt's Chick-fil-A special----okay, maybe somewhere else out there has already tried this, but in this household, Matt made up this breakfast sandwich, and I'm also a fan! Order a Spicy Chicken Biscuit and add egg!  If you don't like the Spicy Chicken from Chick-fil-A, you might also like this.  Adding the egg onto it cools down the heat, but you still get the great flavor! :)

5. I love these shirts, based off of TV shows or movies, or just really funny quotes! Some are pretty weird, though..haha

March Snow Day

Of ALL the snow days we have been having, none of them fell on a Monday, which is Matt's day off from work.  When the precipitation started earlier than expected (when Abby and I were leaving the Y, yet still stood talking in the parking lot while it was raining...), I figured there would possibly be a delay for Monday's school schedule, but never did I guess we'd have a Snow Day! I honestly didn't think we'd get as much snow as they were calling for. My first two alarms went off Monday morning, then my phone started ringing and when I saw the called was "HCPS" I knew what that must mean! I was thrilled to finally have a Snow Day on Matt's day off from work! :)

We had already planned on dropping his truck off for its inspection first thing Monday morning, so we didn't change those plans at all.  Then we headed to Martins and Sam's, both of which ended up not being as crowded as I thought they would.  When we went to go pick his truck up, part of the road was closed off, so we couldn't even get through to pick it up!  Good thing I have another snow day today so Matt could use my car to get to work!   When we left Monday morning, it was only sleeting a little bit, but when we finally got home, our house looked like this....

We didn't get home until about 10:30, and neither of us had eaten, so Matt whipped up some sausage gravy and biscuits!

And, I burned one of my favorite candles for probably the last time this season.

Then again, who knows. It could snow next week for all we know...

We have so many movies that we bought from Black Friday sales that we still haven't watched! However, we crossed two of those off the list this weekend! Sunday evening, we watched The Hangover Part III, and yesterday we watched This Means War. Both of which were really good! Now...to find time to watch the rest of those movies...

We also left a bowl outside again to collect some snow to make more snow cream!! We didn't make it last night, but you better believe we have snow in the freezer right now so we can enjoy that treat later ;)

Oh! And I finally changed my blog layout! I decided that I really needed a new/different look, so I started working on the header image a couple weeks ago, and I finally made the change yesterday. What do you think? While the pictures in the header are three of my favorite pictures from our wedding, I decided  not to use our wedding colors as the main colors for my blog....for now, at least! haha

Hatteras Weekend Trip

Last Friday afternoon, I received a call from Matt saying we were going to the beach for the weekend. Um, what? Who is? Where? WHEN?! Let's just say the call caught me really off guard and then I was in stress mode, because Mallory does not just pick up and go somewhere for the weekend---at least a couple of days planning would be nice, haha. But, I managed to get home, pack and we were on the road with Matt's brother, Mike, & his girlfriend, Chrystina, all within about 3 hours of finding out we were going. haha.

We spent Friday evening driving to Hatteras, and by the time we got there, I just wanted to go to bed, because it was hours past our bedtime. haha.  On Saturday, despite some mishaps with catching the Ferry to Ocracoke, we had a good time: we walked on some of the beaches, took lots of pictures and Matt & I collected a bunch of shells! However, I was so mad at myself because even though I remembered to bring my camera with us, I DIDN'T remember to make sure the batteries were charged before we headed out on Saturday. You could say I was mad. I was able to get a decent amount of pictures, as I would turn my camera on, take a picture real quick, then turn it right back off. I was really trying to save that battery. haha.

Hope you enjoy these pictures of our weekend!

Wasn't planning on starting my weekend taking this picture, but hey, when at the Border Station.....

Bad joke? Probably.

While in Ocracoke, it was awesome because we literally had the beach to ourselves!

These pictures of Matt running after the birds cracks me up.

I had my bigger lens on for these pictures....do you really think I'd try to get close to birds? No.

On Sunday, as we headed home, Matt and I made a few stops.

First up, I Googled the house that was featured in the movie Nights in Rodanthe (great Nicholas Sparks book, by the way!). By the time I figured out which house was used and found the directions, we were just 7 minutes away!

Abby, look! Dory Lane!

Here's the house!  However, if you've seen the movie, you'll notice this isn't what the house looked like when they were filming.  They added features to it, like decks and shutters, for the movie. Also, where it is now isn't the original location of the house.  It used to be right on the beach, but the beach started eroding away, so they moved the whole house!

I just loved the name of this house in the neighborhood! Very clever!

Moving on....here's the "patchwork bridge" that I did not like driving over.

Heading over to the lighthouse!

Well, that's interesting..

We went to a second lighthouse, but this one ended up still being closed for the winter, so we didn't get to up close to it, but I was able to get a couple pictures of it through the trees..

Hey! Anyone recognize this house?!

My family stayed here with the Warthans when they invited us to the beach with them!

I don't know how I remembered this, but I knew it was off of Dolphin Road, and sure enough we passed it, so I made Matt drive by :)

 When we got home, we finally went through all of our shells.

Last night, we bought a great vase that we have them all in now :)