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- It’s officially our sweet girl’s birthday weekend and we’ve been celebrating!
Thursday was Braelynn’s actual birthday, so we took the day off of school and went to meet a bunch of family members at White Tree Cafe and Coffeehouse in downtown Irwin for a little brunch-surprise.
Thursday night, we went out to dinner – Braelynn’s choice! And she decided that she wanted Red Lobster for the SHRIMP (this kid loves seafood so much!) We got her an “adult” portion and she stuffed herself full of as much shrimp as she could possibly handle.
Last night, we continued on the festivities with a birthday party here at home! We were missing about half the people who normally come to our parties, so it felt a little “quiet”, but that’s okay. (My brother was out of town, my sister Emma is recovering from the nastiest combination of flu/pneumonia/COVID that landed her in the hospital last weekend, and my other sister.. well I’ll explain where Ellen was in just a minute!) We had a DONUT birthday party – complete with a cake that looked like a donut, lots of balloons, and a literal mountain of gifts. My girl is just so loved!
Of course, her most special birthday gift was getting a brand new cousin ON her birthday! Braelynn now has a birthday-twin! She’s already so excited and planning how they are going to celebrate their birthdays together (next year will be a BIG year: Braelynn will be turning 10 and baby will be turning 1!) Braelynn hasn’t been able to meet her new cousin yet, but hopefully this coming week she’ll get to meet her birthday-twin – she’s so excited! (So, that’s where Ellen and Jonathan were!) I was able to meet sweet new baby yesterday – I went with my Mom and Alethea and Layla to the hospital to take photos as they met their new baby sister (it was wonderful!) - All that light, fluffy snow we got last weekend has already melted. Much to Braelynn and Leander’s disappointment, it wasn’t “snowman snow” when it fell, but that didn’t stop them from monitoring the snow every single day and when they noticed it was warming up earlier this week – they went out and made the most of the wet snow to build a snowman! They are snowman-masters, that’s for sure!
- My brand new Adventuring Abbeys Instagram account officially hit 100 followers last night! I haven’t even said anything about it to my own personal followers – so those 100 followers are all completely organic. I was really hoping to hit that milestone within the first 7 days, but it took 10 days. All in all, that’s still amazing and I’m so proud of how far it’s come! Now I just need to figure out how to keep all that growth up and keep going!
- Remember 2 weeks ago when I said I was breaking up with Peloton? Ugh, it’s been a rough journey over the last 2 weeks trying to figure all of that out.
In a nutshell, I need to write a whole blogpost about it (since one of my most popular blog posts EVER is me talking about how I use the Peloton app with my knock-off bike). But, I tried a bunch of other fitness apps (thankfully, they all had free trials) and spoiler alert: I hated all of them. Peloton has just set the bar so high for me! Their app is so easy to use and understand, their instructors so amazing, their options so vast – no other app I tried could even come close to comparing. So, I decided to tweak my expectations and keep the Peloton app – but at the “lower level” (so, I’m still paying the same amount that I was before). I’ve had to change up my routines and I now have to supplement my workouts with some YouTube stuff, but so far, it seems to be working well.
It’s so weird, but I missed the Peloton app so much while I wasn’t using it! I mean, I’ve been using it and training under the Peloton instructors for three years at this point, so saying goodbye was like leaving a group of amazing friends (which is so strange to say). So, my plan is to continue to see how this all works out (and I want to write a long-form blog post spring-boarding off of my original super popular post, further explaining what I’m doing and to share my “new” system).
