I am going to pull another disappearing act for the next few weeks. I’ll be around here and there but a lot is happening including:

• Taking on a whole whack of extra freelance work to save money for Harry Potter World! (21 sleeps!!) and our season ski passes!
• Getting our basement room (currently the gym + spare bedroom + junk closet) cleaned out and ready for my brother to move in in just over a week!
• Grandparents visiting this weekend, haven’t seen them since June!
• Crazy-busy at work

Yes, you’ll notice number 2 on the list is a pretty major life change for us! So I’ll give you a bit of background:

My “little” brother moved to Kamloops in September to attend University. He moved into the dorms to get the full university experience and it is just not working out for him with two of his three roommates (we all know how that goes!)

Basically the conversation went something like this between me, Logan, Eric and my mom yesterday. My mom emailed me to say Logan wanted to move out of dorms and he’d like to live with us, I (assuming it would be next semester) say yes of course, last night Logan is over for dinner and informs me he gave his notice for October 31; aka 1.5 weeks!

It’s totally fine, and it’s not that we don’t want him for those extra two months, we just have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do that I thought we’d have 2 months to do and we now have 1.5 weeks to do No big deal, it’ll get done!

I’m sure it will be quite fun! Logan and I haven’t lived together for eight years but he’s been hanging out with us quite a bit since moving and has been over for dinner a few nights a week so it’s kind of win-win for all of us. We get some extra income every month and will have someone home a lot more (he has mostly night classes) with Chloe and he gets more home-cooked meals.

All this to say, I’ll be in and out over the next week or two while we get our life organized! In the meantime, I’m still posting my photo of the day (and other random musings – I use it more than my own personal account now!) on the blogs Facebook page, there’s my new tumblr blog where I’m posting all my eats and of course I’ll always be tweeting away like a madwoman!

See you when I see you!

***

Have you/do you live with a sibling before (other than as kids)? Any advice for us to make this transition as smooth as possible?

Today I am 23. I usually do a “birthday comment request” post on my birthday (21st birthday, 22nd birthday) but this year I’ve decided to share a post that I’ve been writing for a few weeks now. It was inspired by Ashley’s 10 year vision posts which I absolutely love reading.

After reading her most recent vision I sat down and started writing my own. Here is what I came up with!

{Photo via Rebekah}

My Life in 10 Years

I open my eyes and look at the clock. It’s 5:45 AM on my 33^rd birthday. I burrow under the covers a little further and cuddle up to my husbands back before rolling out of bed to get ready for my run. Eric has agreed to get the kids up and ready for the day. I head out for an easy 4-miles on the trails. I’m preparing for my 5^th marathon, which I’ll run next month.

After my run I unroll my yoga mat on our back deck and go through my sun salutations. I became a certified yoga instructor five years ago. I teach it on the side, mostly for fun and to share my love of the practice.

I walk into the kitchen sweaty and refreshed to find Eric making pancakes. I give him a kiss good morning while I pour myself a cup of coffee and he pulls me in for an extra tight squeeze, whispering happy birthday in my ear. We celebrated our 9-year wedding anniversary exactly two months ago.

I sip my cup of coffee as I wander upstairs to the shower. I head for the bathroom to have a long hot shower. After I’ve showered and dressed I go into my office and sit down at my desk, still sipping on the same cup of coffee.

I hear Eric getting the kids – ages 2 and 4 – out of bed and herding them into the kitchen. “Blueberries or chocolate chips in your pancakes?” Eric says. “CHOCOLATE CHIPS!!!” is the response. I smile to myself wondering why he bothers to ask.

Chloe comes wandering into my office and lies down in her dog bed by my desk. “Hey, old girl. How do you feel today?” I scratch behind her ears as she lazily gazes up at me before laying her head down to sleep. Webster is perched on his cat stand by the window; he doesn’t leave there very much anymore.

I settle into my office chair to get some writing done. I still work about 30 hours per week but most of it is spent at my home desk. I spend my days with my children and work in the early mornings and at night after Eric gets home. I’m also in the middle of writing my first book.

I gaze at the screen for a few moments while I sip my coffee and then shut it before I even have a chance to open my inbox. I will spend the day with my family and work can wait until next week. Tonight I am going out for wine and appies with my girlfriends and tomorrow our family is going out to the lake where we bought property a few years ago. Eventually we’ll build a cabin.

This morning we’ll go down to the Farmer’s Market and pick out some fresh produce and baking to take to the lake with us. We eat a mostly vegetarian diet and the kids love trying new and colourful foods.

My family means the world to me. Life is good and I am very happy.

***

Questions of the day:

Do you believe in “envisioning” your goals? If so, what is your 10 year vision or 5 year vision? 

And, if you don’t have a vision to share, when is your birthday?!

Hi friends! Happy Tuesday. I can’t believe I haven’t blogged for four days. I don’t even remember the last time I took that many days off in a row!

I am just popping in really quickly to say ‘hi’. It’s been a busy four days for me! The rest of our trip home was fabulous and I enjoyed some much needed R&R while also squeezing in lots of family time. I slept in until 8 or 9 AM every day I was there. After rolling out of bed I would have some coffee and something to eat and then either go for a run or take my moms lab for a walk on my favourite walking trail right by her house!

It was such a lovely way to start the day. I wish every day could start like that!

What else did we do? Well, I successfully made red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting for our Canada Day BBQ. They were amazing-ly delicious and I will definitely be making them again soon.

And we spent lots of time with our three nieces and nephew that included a birthday pool party for all four of them – with four cakes to boot!

And then on Sunday we spent 11.5 hours driving through windy mountain roads like these:

Pretty, yes. But also REALLY annoying to drive through on the tail end of a long weekend. I lost track of how many RV’s and motorhomes we got stuck behind.

After literally spending all day in the car and getting home late on Sunday night we basically crashed. Then yesterday was an insanely busy day at work and this afternoon I’m jetting off on that business trip I mentioned.

See you from my hotel room! I have some posts rolling around in my head about staying healthy while traveling for work since I’m going to be living out of a hotel for then next four days while also working an event booth for 9+ hours each day! Should be interesting.

Since 95% of my readers had a long weekend this weekend – tell me, how was your long weekend? What did you get up to?