Excitement

Nothing is more exciting when you have fun weekends planned out in a row. Two weekends ago was the lake with some of the girls, last weekend the family came to visit, and this upcoming weekend we are heading to Raleigh to see Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd with some of our favorite people!

Oh, the joys of being young with no kids!

I know it won't be like this forever, but we are taking advantage of every moment we can get before things get hectic.

So, here is to another exciting weekend!

A little update

Life has been prett-ay crazy here lately. I didn't take any pictures at the lake, guess we were having too much fun catching up to worry about taking pictures :)

This weekend has been exhausting! My parents and my nephew and niece came down to see us here in South Carolina. I absolutely adore my nephew and niece, but man they are tiring. It didn't take Phil and I long to realize that we were NOT ready for kids, at all!

Here are a few pics from my phone from this weekend. Mom got all the good pictures!

Nerds ^^

Breakfast with the girls :)

Tess took this picture of me :)

Childrens Museum

Gums

Having fun!

We also went to a place called Frankie's Fun Park, and we had a BLAST! I left my phone at home so I didn't get any pictures but it was the best part of the weekend!

Can't wait to share some exciting news with you guys here soon!! :)

What I've learned since moving away from home

Being the baby of the family, I guess you could have considered me "spoiled" or "coddled" or whatever it is you want to refer to me as. I'm not even going to try and deny that these speculations aren't true, because they are. At least they were (phil would like to argue that it still is "are" and not "were" HA!)

If you really know me, or if you've known me for any part of my life, you would know that I have been battling a pretty extreme form of anxiety disorder (it was WAY more extreme when I was younger than it is now). I had my first panic attack when I was 10 years old, and ever since then it has just been a part of my life that I've been constantly battling. My parents have been my rock and foundation since all of this started and have tried many different treatments and medicine and doctors.  Medicine worked some, but it didn't seem to be the clear answer.

I took myself off of medicine about 4 or 5 years ago and have been courageously pushing myself through anxiety attacks and have been really working hard on doing this on my own.
You can imagine what my brain was going through the last couple of days before I moved to South Carolina and the first few days I arrived there, which was about 2 years ago. Panic is kind of an understatement. I understand that everyone gets nervous before big events in their lives, and have somewhat of a freak out, but mine was pretty intense. I have been absolutely fortunate to have a husband that is so understanding of the whole situation and has NOT treated me like a broken person because of it. He never gives in to my anxiety and only helps me push through it.

Moving to South Carolina has been one of the greatest accomplishments to moving past my anxiety. Grocery stores use to be the bane of my existence, seriously I couldn't even go all the way in the back of the store without having a panic attack (talk about controlling your life!). But moving away from everything that I've ever known as a comfort helped more than I can imagine. I had to learn to become independent and stop relying on mommy and daddy for everything, because Phil sure as heck wasn't going to be my coddler. I had to learn that it was absolutely UNFAIR for me and my anxiety to control what someone else could and couldn't do with me around.
A good example of this is when Phil and I were planning our honeymoon. He kept going back to my fear of planes and flying and how maybe we should go somewhere closer. I felt so awful that this thought could even cross his mind. How could a disorder of mine control a destination that Phil could possibly want to see? I felt awful and told him that I wasn't going to let my anxiety control our honeymoon or ANY part of our lives and I would get over whatever plane ride we had to take. And I did, and I was fine, and we enjoyed every minute of our honeymoon without an attack.

Becoming independent and becoming more responsible for my actions has absolutely changed my life. I can't tell you the last time I had a full blown panic attack and how every day life is no longer a challenge for me and I LOVE IT. I try to explain to other people who experience the same thing I do/did/have/had (whatever you want to call it) that sometimes medicine isn't always the best solution. Medicine pushed me into the right direction, but it had to come from ME to do things that were out of my comfort zone, such as move away from home, get married, and change my life!

If you are still reading this, Bravo! I'm sure it isn't that interesting to many people, but I know a lot of people who deal with anxiety/OCD on so many different platforms. I figured putting my story out there may help someone, even if it's to see that someone else completely understands what they are going through.

Girls weekend

If you read the post before you will know how much I truly adore and admire my husband, but sometimes you need a girls weekend, am I right?

This weekend a few of my girlfriends and I are heading to the lake to drink some cocktails and hopefully (fingers crossed) we get to lay out without any thunderstorms!!

I am so so so so so excited. Like, REALLY excited. I love my friends and we have the best time together.

I'm sure as we lay out we will all look like this, and more than likely lay out like so because doesn't everyone look this awesome when they lay out??

 And of course we will stay classy by drinking some of these...which will also lead us to keep laying out like above.

And then once we are done with our classy lay out session and the drinks start kicking in, we will have dance parties such as this. And yes, we will look THIS CUTE while dancing. I'm sure of it.

I'm sure i'll have some interesting pictures to post after this weekend!

What's love got to do with it?

***WARNING: This is a sappy love post. If you are a hater of those in love, please refrain from reading****

There are days when I get an overwhelming feeling of pure love for Phil that I just want to shout across the world's (social media) mountain tops (not that I don't love phil everyday) . I realize shortly after that there aren't many people in this world who truly give a rat's ass how I feel about my dear Phil, so I refrain from using all sorts of social media mountains to express myself.


So, my dear blogger friends, today you are my mountain and I am shouting!


I become very nostalgic towards Phil when we are apart, because I don't feel whole. I know that sounds silly, but when he isn't around, I just don't feel like I'm 100%. He's gone for a few days and as I'm thankful for some alone time, I miss him.


For those who don't know Phil, he seriously is one of the most amazing people I know. Even before we started dating and we were just friends, one of my favorite things about him was how thoughtful and kindhearted he was. He seriously thinks about EVERYONE but himself, which can be a blessing and a curse all at the same time.


There are days when I get so frustrated with my measley paycheck. I get really irritable and frustrated not having all the things I want and watching other people gain material items, but Phil always reminds me that no matter how much money or things someone has, they don't have what we have.


And he's so totally right.


So, heres to me learning to be patient with material things and learn that pretty rings, nice bags, and big houses won't buy what Phil and I have. Thank you Phil for always being my rock, my best friend and now my husband.

And look at how silly he is, how can you NOT love him?

This picture was taken a few months after we started dating back in good ol' 2007 :)

And if you think this post is too gushy, well then you my friend, are what we call a hater. And just for you being a hater, I'm going to post more pictures. 

 This is the first time Phil came to visit me in college our first semester freshman year in 2005, and we weren't even dating then!

 Halloween 2007? or 2008? Not sure

  One of our first nights living together in Spartanburg in 2010.

We've totally been through the ups and downs, but I wouldn't want it to be with anyone else. LOVE YA BABEEEEEE (Thats me shouting on top of my social media mountain)