The Balancing Act: Alone Time and Family Time

How is the weekend over already? I feel like it flew by in a flash and all I want is for it to start over!
I feel like the days are going by quicker and quicker and I'm desperate to slow them down. I see my children growing up, some are dating, some are getting taller, some are talking about careers and I sometimes feel like I'm still that 20 something young lady still trying to figure it out myself. It almost feels like a snow-globe. I'm standing still and life is a blizzard whirling around me.

This weekend was your typical, regular weekend, but it also felt like a long weekend. We squeezed in a lot for a short time! For once, time and life seemed to slow down.

Fridays always begin with a coffee date for Mark and me. We go to Bolder Coffee in Rogers after one of us drops off the kids, we get our favorite coffee drinks and we split a muffin. Mark catches me up on all things brewery and I give him a ton of unsolicited advice and options. It's the job of a wife that never ends, or gets old....for me at least.

It's the little moments we steal as husband and wife
that make a big difference in our marriage.

**Side note: For a long time Mark and I used to make all sorts of time for date nights (benefits of a built in babysitter, AKA older brother) and for awhile we really haven't taken many date nights. We go out to eat as a family but really haven't been making time for us. And I really wanted a proper date night. "Let's dress up and go out and do something different!" That's what I wanted and what we needed. Sometimes in a marriage life can quickly go from exciting to auto-pilot. Moving through the motions is fine at times but then when you see your partner is off auto-pilot and living life without you, you  start feeling a tad resentful. His life is full and exciting and yours is boring...very, very boring. Then loneliness sets in. And then fights begin. And that's where we were. However, we nipped it in the bud real quick and agreed that we need to reconnect. So this weekend was about us, family and loving each other and making time for each other as often as we could. Marriage is WORK. And marriage doesn't work without COMMUNICATION and UNDERSTANDING. You have to HEAR your partner and LISTEN to them if you want your marriage to work. You have to make TIME for each other, without the children. You have to remember why you fell in love in the first place and keep that love alive somehow.**

That night Mark and I hired the world's best babysitter, our niece Lyndsey. I picked her up from school, while Mark picked up pizzas for the kiddos. We headed out before 6pm and made our first stop at a super fun place called Cannibal & Craft. AKA, Tiki Bar!!!! Mark loves tiki bars and I love watching him geek out at them! However, if that tiki bar does not play tiki music, it will drive him insane. He wants the whole full on tiki bar, experience. And I completely agree with him! Who wants to listen to Rap music at a tiki bar?? Music can reuin the experience, no matter how great the atmosphere is. Think about it, if you go to Hawaii and you're at luau, do you want to listen to Rap music or do you want to listen to luau tiki music? Other than the very disappointing playlist, the place was really amazing. Drinks were spot on and the decor was perfection. We will go back but probably when it's later in the evening. We went a little too early like some parents on a rare date night.

A tiki bar in Fayetteville, AR of all places!

Decor was absolutely fun and perfect.

We were a little too ambitious and took on a fish bowl.
We didn't even finish half of it. Our age was showing big time!

I don't have a picture of where we went to eat at, but we went to the Old Post Office for dinner. It was okay-I guess I was expecting something more since there was a line. It's basically like Grubs-but a little better. Would I go back? Maybe, but it wouldn't be first on my list. The highlight for us was running into my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins!

Then we went to a pinball bar called Pinpoint. It was so much fun playing pinball on the old machines. Pinball machines always bring back memories of staying at a hotel on vacation and going to the back game room to play on the pinball machines. The smell of chlorine of the pool and the vending machines of candy, chips and soda waiting to be bought. It's childhood for me, it's a warm memory for me that I love so much. So if you get a chance to go, you gotta go. It's nothing fancy. I was expecting it to be swanky for sure. But it was like a basement with a bar and pinball machines. Don't bring the kids-this an adults only pinball bar.

Pinball machines everywhere and it wasn't busy on Friday night.

Star Wars was really fun to play.

After that we went for drinks at The Vault and again, no pictures. Not because it wasn't great, because it was! It was dark and I didn't get any good pictures for my blog. It's a bar literally in a old bank vault. It's small, cozy but very open. I ordered a gin and tonic that didn't necessarily taste like a gin and tonic but it was still good. I'm very old...school and I like my drinks as is, not swanky. Theirs was swanky.

After that we went home and called it a night by 10pm. We did a lot in a few short hours and had a good time. My God we are old.

The next day we went to the lake to celebrate our girl, Kinsey! Our niece was turning 19 and we weren't going to miss celebrating with her. Kinsey is a hardworking girl who we are just so proud of! She's going into the medical field as a surgical tech. She is always working and putting her way through school. So we all gathered at the lake while my parents are camping to celebrate Kinsey.

The perfect gift for the birthday girl and future surgical tech.

Kinsey and her boyfriend, Trent.

Everyone was there, other than our Ryan. He wasn't feeling so well plus he's also working 3rd shift now and so it's taking a little time for his body to adjust to his now hours. And Marc wasn't there-he usually doesn't come out to family events.

Glasgow Gathering

Girl talk around the table with the birthday girl.

My favorite couple, Matt and Alison.

Everyone had a good time at the campgrounds with Kinsey. Chris took Will out on the canoe to fish and then the guys cooked, kids played baseball, the guys played corn hole. It was a great night! Not too hot, not too buggy out. It was perfection. Today is Kinsey's actual birthday and I hope she had a wonderful party at the lake. We love you Kinsey and we love this family of ours!

Will and Chris-thank you for taking Will out!

Will wants one now!

My corn hole champ-even if he loses:)

Chris winning at corn hole!

Now that's a fire! Dad and Mark cooked for everyone.

He'll always love playing baseball with his Daddy.

Marriage is work, family is work. But like they say "work hard, play hard." That just doesn't apply to actual jobs. It applies to all aspects of life and we worked hard at it this past weekend and played a lot too.

Our Sunday ended with Mark taking a trip to Missouri to pick up some chairs for the brewery with our head brewer, Will-not our son Will. He's too little to brew. Ha! I cleaned up Mark's office while they were away, and then ended our weekend with a migraine. Ugh. But it was a good weekend of balancing it all. Balancing Mark and me, balancing time with family. It's all worth it. Well, my head is hurting again and I need to do laundry. So I'm going to end it here...

A truck full of chairs at a bargain for our brewery.

I hope everyone has a beautiful week! Take care of yourself, your relationships and be apart of moments as much as you can be. Balance.

  

Father’s Day "Camping" Trip

For Father's Day Mark wanted to get away, unplug as much as possible, have some much needed family time and just relax. He found a few cabins on line but most were already booked. And months in advance too! He found an older cabin for rent that was just big enough for us, out in the middle of nowhere and for a decent price too.

A gravel road lead us to the cabin. To be fair, it was pretty much all dirt and gravel roads leading up to the cabin. That was fine by us! Kicking up a little dirt and gravel never bothers us!

Our quaint cabin for the weekend was about 30-40 minutes from our home in Rogers to Garfield, AR. The cabin was pretty secluded in the woods, with one neighbor a little way from us. We had electricity, a/c, water, toilets, showers, direct TV....so we were hardly roughing it.

But we were still tucked in the woods with all the critter and bugs too. Even though we had all of the comforts of home, we did spend most of our time outside. I don't mind this way of "camping" one bit!

Inside the house there was a kitchen with table, family room, 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, a washer and dryer and a wrap around fenced in deck.

Another side of the room, a sleepy Will is all cozy by the fireplace. The fireplace wasn't on! It was too hot outside. 

Above the living room, was the view from the loft (one of the bedrooms). The kids loved the loft because they could look down and spy on us. As most kids would love to do. I'm surprised they weren't throwing this from up there. I know my sisters and I would have been playing some sort of dropping game. 

To get to the loft, the kids had to climb this ladder from the kitchen and squeeze in. It made me a little nervous because the ladder wasn't attached. Plus, you had to be pencil slim to get up though that hole. Needless to say, Mark and I didn't go up. Well, our heads fit through the hole! Ha! Mary Kate lovingly referred to it as the Laura Ingalls bedroom. How cute and smart is she to notice that? Remember how Laura and Mary had to climb a ladder on the show to get to bed? 

The cabin was not just fully furnished with all of the typical spoiled luxuries, but it also had cookware, plates, glasses and silverware, towels, a coffee maker, toilet paper, laundry soap, and even firewood to burn. And best part was, we were able to bring the dogs with us! Duchess hated it there. Duchess has major anxiety and doesn't deal well with change, so she wasn't happy during our stay. Even on anxiety medication, she was still a hot mess. But Stella loved it of course. 

Stella mostly loved going on the boat dock with the family to fish. She probably wanted to snatch the fish to eat herself, that's why she liked it! Ha! Mary Kate would take the dogs everywhere with us if she could. She loves having her pups with her all the time.

The deck was peaceful to spend time on. I read, sipped Natural State Beer from our up and coming brewery & taproom, watched our children explore and thanked God for this time with my family.

We always take our favorite beer with us! I can't wait till we are able to share this with everybody this November when we open in Rogers!

(Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for update)

From the deck, it led us down the boat dock. We don't own a boat and really didn't feel like renting one, so we just fished off of it. But don't let this picture fool you. It wasn't a far or steep walk down to the boat dock. It was super close!

Here's the view from the bottom of where the boat dock is located. See, it's not far at all.

The boat dock was large with a table and chairs. The kids spent a lot of time here! Probably the most time. They really enjoyed fishing and just being on the water.

However, walking the plank to get up to the boat dock was a bit of a balancing act. They could have done better than this. But we rolled with and made it work for us. Nobody fell in and the board didn't break.

The kids did fish, as I mentioned already. But they just did this...Mark put the worm on the hooks, took the fish off the hook and all that jazz. The kids just wanted to reel them in...and I get that, cause that's my preference with fishing too! A Daddy's job is never done!

Here's Mary Kate needing Dad's help reeling in a BIG one! We couldn't wait to see what she caught!

And here she is with the catch of the day!! A branch! It sure did put up a fight too! She was laughing so much at this. We all were laughing!

Then Will caught this guy shortly after. It's no branch and he was glad it wasn't. We asked if he wanted to cook any of the fish and he wasn't interested in doing that. He just liked catching and releasing.

Then Mary Kate was redeemed and caught an actual fish! Look at that face!!! Oh be still my heart, her little face expression is the best!

Pure happiness. She was game for all the fishing but much like her little brother, she didn't want to eat them. Catch and release all day. That's fine, cleaning fish is chore.

Our evenings were spent around the fire pit making s'mores, talking life, telling stories and making up stories. I referred to Will as our little man of the woods because he was all over the place. I'm surprised he wasn't covered head to toe in ticks with all of the exploring he did. 

On our last night, Matt, came up to see us and celebrate Father's Day with his Dad. He even spent the night too! Mark is such an amazing Dad with a big heart. Matt is a lot like Mark and it makes me proud that he makes time for his Dad. Between very long hours at his job and a girlfriend, Matt does what he can to be there for his family. Him being there for these moments is the best gift he could ever give to any of us. Especially to his Dad.

This Dad's kids are growing up so fast and these small moments are so important. One day our kids will marry and have families of their own. The few moments we get as just US, are few and far between now. As for Ryan, we don't see or hear much from him. He doesn't call or come over to see his only living bio-parent, me or any of his siblings and it's very sad. We get a text for our birthdays and holidays.  And that's all we get. But in the end, he's the one missing out. Matt makes up for a lot of what Ryan fails to do. And again, it means a lot to all of us that Matt gives us his time. I only wish Ryan would do the same.  Especially for his Dad at least. Maybe one day. Maybe. 

I love being married to Mark. He's my world. He's handsome, smart, funny, talented, sweet, kind, giving and more than I deserve. It was important that this Father's Day was special to him. We all did our best to spoil him, love him and let him know how blessed we are to have him. I'm so amazed that God choose me to do life with this man. So blessed to have been able to have babies with him and build a life with him. He's the Dad I always hoped my kids would have.

Mark has done an amazing job being a Dad. Children never realize just how much their Dad's do and sacrifice for their families. I know I didn't as a kid either. But as we grow up and have families of our own, then we are able to see what our Dad's have done for us and just how much they love us. 

I hope everyone had a great Father's Day and let their Dad's know they are loved. I hope nobody takes this time with their Dad's for granted. Time is not promised. Love your husband's, love your Dad's and teach your children to do the same. Dad's matter more than they are given credit for. 

Golden Graham S'Mores

Happy Labor Day Y'All!! Today I wanted to share with you a recipe given to me by one of very best friends, Angela Howell. Angela gave me this recipe in 2008 and its a recipe that her Mom used to make for her when she was a little girl. She gave this to me the year I married Mark and became a Step-Mom to Ryan and Matthew. This recipe is so decadent with chocolate and just the right amount of sweetness! Perfect for a BBQ, a camping trip or a slumber party! Easy to make and easy on the wallet too.

Golden Graham S'Mores

Ingredients

3/4 cup light corn syrup

3 TBSP butter

2 Cups chocolate chips

1 TSP vanilla

3 Cups mini marshmallows

1-12 oz pkg Golden Grahams cereal

1 cup white chocolate chips (melted)

Grease 9x13 pan

Heat corn syrup, butter and chocolate chips to boiling, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Put cereal in a large mixing bowl.

Pour chocolate mix in and toss cereal and chocolate until well blended.

Make sure cereal is coated.

Fold in mini marshmallows, 1 cup at a time.

Press s'mores into greased pan using buttered spatula or spoon.

Drizzle 1 cup of melted white chocolate chips on top.

Let it sit for an hour

Then cut into squares and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. 

Then cut again and remove from pan and put on a serving plate. 

ENJOY!