Planning for the future

My head is swimming a little bit right now, although not as badly as I thought it could be. Nate and I have begun the process of attempting to plan for our future in terms of retirement and that type of thing. And also looking into options for us in terms of life insurance if God forbid something happened to one of us.

I should back up here and explain how we even got on this track. My cousin recently became a financial advisor. And one of the things that they are encouraged to do to build a client base is pretty much call all of their friends and family to sit down and talk through their options and run an analysis. So, he called us about a month ago and asked if he could do just that for us and we agreed because really, it is something we need to look at and think about. Nate did get set up through his work last year on some retirement plans, but that's about it so far. And since we weren't crazy about the financial advisor he has through work, we had said, gee we should shop around for this and just hadn't really taken the steps to do so. So really, my cousin has given us a good kick in the butt to bring this to the forefront.

I don't like thinking about getting old or the scenarios of something happening to Nate, but it is a necessary evil in life, we have to be prepared for these things.

Fortunately my cousin and the person who's training him have been pretty great in bringing us through the process. We haven't made any decisions yet, we're considering the options they presented us and will make an informed decision in the near future. I'm thinking we'll end up going with him, but that's not a guarantee either. I have to say I do feel comfortable with him since he's obviously family and the guy who has been coming along with him is very relateable and appears to be close in age to ourselves and I think that makes all the difference.

I tell you, nothing makes you feel more "adult" and "grown up" than having these conversations though! I won't lie, there are times even after being married almost four years already that I feel like a kid playing house. But with this stuff, it's definitely more reality! At any rate, I am glad we're beginning to take these steps.

Spring Fever

The weather over the last couple of days has been outstanding! I feel like it's been a long winter! I think it has something to do with the fact that we were having snow in October! In other ways, we've been so busy that it also feels like winter flew by pretty fast. At any rate, I'm ready for it to be over and I'm ready for spring!

I have so many things I want to do this spring and summer. Many of them relate to house related upgrades/repairs/etc. Some of the things I want to do are fun things though too. All of them pretty much involve Nate too, ha ha!

At any rate, it's nice to see the sun, nice that the snow is melting and the birds are starting to sing again. There's hope that spring is getting close!

This weekend I....

This weekend I....

-Had a great dinner at Red Lobster on Friday night with my husband (yay no meat Fridays in Lent!)
-Watched a cute movie (Whip It)
-Went consignment shopping with my mom and got some incredible deals (Fossil purse for $30, heck yes!)
-Cleaned my house a bit
-At least gathered together all of our tax information so we can get those done
-Had a nice breakfast out with my husband other than the fact that our service was way super slow
-Restocked our house on a large number of items we were lacking - food, cat things, etc.
-Spent kind of alot of money due to the above, but some of it came from Sam's Club so hey, won't have to buy again for awhile
-Watched another movie that I had never seen from beginning to end
-Felt good, relaxed and re-energized to come back for the week.

After last week was less than fabulous, this weekend was just what I needed. Some retail therapy, some quality time with my husband and some time to relax. Today is a new day and I continue my mantra of "it's one day at a time". And as Willy Wonka says "Right, then, on we go."

I think it's going to rain today

When you have an extended family as large as my mom's is, there is bound to be issues and drama. It just is what it is. We often joke that we could write a book or a soap opera.

Today however I'm not laughing. Today I am sad for a member of our extended family who is pretty close in age to myself. I am sad for the struggles that this person is enduring and the tough road they have yet to face. I am sad that they are forever changed from the person they used to be.

We grew up side by side. We played at the park. We played with toy cars. We teased each other and laughed and fought like siblings. And I never dreamed back then in those young innocent days of childhood that this is how things would turn out.

I hold this person and those closest to them in prayer as it's the best thing I can really do. And from here I move on, because life does go on. But today I am allowing myself just a bit of sadness and almost a little bit of mourning over a situation that sadly no one can control. It's up to God and we have to trust Him.

Broken windows and empty hallways,a pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.
Human kindness is overflowing,and I think it's gonna rain today.
Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles,the frozen smiles to chase love away.
Human kindness is overflowing,and I think it's gonna rain today.
-Taken from I Think It's Going to Rain Today by Randy Newman

*I am respecting privacy in this situation as well, hence the vagueness. I probably will not say much more than this in the future. Thanks for understanding, I just needed to write this for myself mostly*

Just a few updates

So after yesterday's somewhat heavy blog post I'm lightning things up today just a bit! (In all seriousness on that though - thanks for the support from those who gave me feedback, I was nervous about posting that but it felt good to do and hearing good feed back helped all the more)

This is just a random "what we've been up to" kind of post. Which honestly, isn't too terribly much! Although I am excited that I will finally have an update or two for the "Fun Couple" blog that I have so terribly abandoned! Other than that, here's the latest.

Once again for Lent this year I have given up swearing. It's not like I have the world's dirtiest mouth, but sometimes it is like I have tourettes or something if I'm frustrated - namely in the car, so I felt this was a good choice again. So far I'm doing ok. I could be doing better, but given the snow and traffic this morning, well, you get the idea.

Yesterday I had my first experience ever in filling out a workman's comp report. I was fine, but I did end up cutting my finger slightly while helping my boss package up a mail machine. Because I had to use a band-aid to stop the bleeding she ordered me to report it. It wasn't out of control or anything like that, but better to be safe than sorry I guess! I was happy to discover I was up to date on my tetanus vaccine so I didn't have to worry about that.

We finally have a new beer at home for the first time in quite awhile. Nate's newest brew is a Bourbon Aged Stout or something to that affect. All I know is he soaked wood chips in bourbon (the recipe seriously calls for this) and added that to the mix while he was brewing and given the heavy nature of this one, it needed to ferment for quite awhile. We finally kegged it about a week ago and this weekend it was finally ready to go. And this one is quite yummy. May be my favorite one we've had in awhile, but I am also the weird girl who likes dark beer!

I tried sushi again over the weekend. I'm still not totally in love, but didn't gag on it at all like a previous time Nate forced, I mean, encouraged me to try it. I won't completely give up on ever liking it, but I'm not sold yet.

My Lush obsession continues. Work is busy for both of us. Kind of the same old same old. We just take life one day at a time and you know what, I like it like that!

A road less traveled

I saw a quote on a friend's Facebook page this weekend that really applies to a situation in my life at the moment. It said "don't make someone a priority in your life when you're only an option in theirs." I think this statement speaks volumes.

It dawned on me this weekend that there is someone in my life who has always only considered me an option. We have had a one-way street type relationship instead of a two-way street. And I feel relationships work best when there is that two-way street, you both have to be able to go both directions. Out of respect for that person I'm not going into major details and trust me, if you're reading this blog right now, you are most likely NOT that person.

At any rate though it does have me thinking, why put so much energy into something when it isn't returned? Life is too short to waste time on such things. I'm not going to dwell on it either. It simply is what it is. I have had other people like this in my life before and I have to say, I am healthier and happier when I stop worrying about them and just move on.

On the flipside, I'm sure that I have in my life been the one-way friend. Haven't we all at least once? It may be unintentional - life gets in the way and maybe something or someone who was once a priority becomes less of one through no fault of their own. Or maybe we just don't realize that things change and suddenly our attention is pulled in a different direction. We're humans, things happen. We're not perfect as I reflected in a post earlier this month.

So, if there is anyone out there that I ever treated as an option instead of a priority, I am going on record as saying I'm truly sorry. I'm certain it wasn't purposeful. And in the spirit of that, I'm forgiving the person in this instance as well, simply because I don't think that it's intentional on their part either. I'm not sure I ever was more than an option to them, but I don't fault them for it. I believe they may just be going through life with their blinders on.

If someday the road between us becomes a two way street, I'll be more than happy to drive down it. But for now I'm choosing to skip the one way street in favor of other roads in my life that go both ways. Because I'm so very blessed to have many roads to choose from on the map that is my life.

The Tiramisu Experiment

Remember the whole "cooking with no fear" concept? Well that definitely applied to our Valentine's Day treat!

We decided to stay in on actual Valentine's Day as it was hard to get a reservation anywhere when we were kind of last minute in deciding that we wanted to go out. So, when we decided we would stay in - I suggested to Nate that we finally try making homemade tiramisu as it had been something we'd been wanting to do for quite awhile now.

See, we love a good tiramisu. And the best tiramisu used to be available at Buca di Beppo, where we celebrated many important events in our life (graduations, engagement, rehearsal dinner, etc.) Then for Nate's golden birthday a couple of years ago, we went and ordered it and found something had changed. This may sound bad, but one of the things we used to love best about it was it's super strong rum flavor - it almost made your tongue burn! But on that birthday we discovered Buca was taking a more "family friendly" approach to their restaurant and replaced real live rum with "rum flavored extract". Let me tell you, not quite the same.

So, we then spent the next two years trying to find another good tiramisu. They have a good one at Donatelli's we discovered - but still not quite what we've been wanting.

Finally we just bit the bullet to making our own at home. It was alot of work! And alot of mess. And the results were - tasty! Not quite the right consistency in texture, a little runny in fact, but we have ideas to improve for next time. It actually set up a little better overnight and was pretty darn good the second day.

Here are some pictures:

In the bowl

Side shot

Slice in a bowl - you can see it's a bit runny

Overall I enjoyed our experiment. I would like to try it again sometime. The recipe we followed most closely matches the one on the side of the package of Lady Fingers that we bought at Byerlys. Otherwise you can Google "Original Buca di Beppo Tiramisu" and you'll find the other recipe that kind of guided us!

The other perk of this project? It encouraged me to bring out my old espresso maker and I'm now attempting lattes at home again - far cheaper than going out for one!