Since it's the last day of the year I thought it'd be a good time to reflect on the past year and post the photos from the gratitude challenge I did back in November. I've done this 30-day gratitude photo challenge past years from positivelypresent.com and I always love having this small challenge to remind me daily everything I have to be thankful for. Here is the recap from when I did it last year: 2014 Gratitude photo challenge. I made a nice long weekend trip home to NR so I could celebrate the twin's 4th birthday and meet William. It was nice having the whole weekend to spend time with the family since I hadn't been home since July. Isn't Will such a cutie! L&L really enjoyed the birthday festivities especially the gifts and cake! It was a superman and batman themed party and this year was in their brand new house that was just finished up recently. The Clouse house is so nice and there was so much space for the whole family and party! Overall a pretty great weekend and glad that my guy could tag along for the fun country air filled trip!
It's been awhile since I had a girls weekend with my sisters & mom, the last one was 2 years ago and I wrote about it here. We had one planned earlier this year but weather/being sick got in the way and then life just got busy. Luckily we were able to plan a short weekend in August where we could all get together out in Maryland & Virginia (hopefully next time Sonya can make it!) We packed quite a bit of stuff into the weekend without it being too rushed, it was a good amount of trying new restaurants and exploring new areas. We started Friday with pedicures and dinner at Cava in Baltimore. I've been to Cava a few times and it's one of my favorite restaurants around here, both the upscale restaurant and the fast casual version. They serve mediterranean small plates which meant we could order a bunch of different items and try a little bit of everything. That's pretty much the perfect type of meal for my family since we love to share food and try it all. They also had fantastic cocktails. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out at Brittany and Dustin's apartment relaxing. The next morning we eased into the day with a nice walk around Columbia before getting around and heading to Navy Yard in DC. We found good lunch and dessert options here plus pretty views just walking around. The next stop for our day was in VA. We made a quick pit stop at my apartment then off to Arrowine where we did some wine and beer tasting before driving to Mosaic at Merrifield. We spend the rest of the afternoon indulging in treats and shopping here. We shared affogatos from Dolcezza, shopped at Papersource, Anthropologie, and Target. We ended the evening with dinner at Matchbox, I had only had brunch there so having dinner was a treat and we tried out the pizza which was spot on! We wound down back at my apartment the rest of the evening. Mom and Danielle headed back to Ohio on Sunday but we couldn't send them off without having brunch first. And no trip to this area is complete without Founding Farmers. This time we checked out the breakfast buffet at the Tyson's Corner location and WOW! It was soooo dang good. There were so many options and treats and food and just anything you could want. The amount of food was almost overwhelming but that just means I need to go back some other time to try the food that just would not fit in my stomach! Overall it was a fun weekend with the girls and already looking forward to another one!
I recently traveled to Philadelphia for a design conference called PePcon, since I had never been to Philly before I did a little bit of sightseeing, even though the conference took up the majority of my time. It was also super cold/rainy for June which equaled me not wanted to walk around the city too much, but I did clock a few miles of walking around the city. A few months ago my younger brother Eric moved to Philly so I was also able to meet up with him and surprisingly meet up with my older brother Chris since he was in the area for work. I fit a lot in over the week there and it was a nice change of pace, plus getting to see family away from home is awesome. I will most likely do another separate post on my sketchnotes from the conference so this will be more of a touristy collection of photos! Just wanted to stop by and say Happy Father's Day to my amazing dad and my grandpa. My dad really is the best and I know I can call him with any question I have whether it's something technology related or if my car is acting funny or just to talk and catch up. I wasn't able to spend today celebrating with him but will be making up for all the missed celebrations when I see the family in July! I also want to extend the father's day celebration to all the other guys in my family who I've watched grow into amazing father's to their own kids, it's definitely a special bond to watch grow.
May was a super fun month with a lot of celebrations all around including Kyle, my mom, and my dad's birthday along with mother's day! I wasn't able to celebrate in person with the parents but I was still able to wish them well and I will just have to celebrate extra hard the next time I see them. Kyle and I had a fun weekend in Pittsburgh celebrating (which of course included the now yearly tradition of banana pudding!) We also checked out Wigle's whiskey garden & barrelhouse for some drinks and music. I found a super could chalkboard map made for tracking what states Kyle has completed a race in. It also has hooks for medals and clips for his bibs. I think it turned out super cool and it's fun seeing Kyle excited to fill in the states! I found it on Etsy from the York Sign Shop if anyone is interested, they have a lot of cool products and the quality is awesome.
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