Life, Lately // June Weekends

Well, we’ve reached the end of June – the year is officially half over!

This month has been pretty low-key for us, and also, a little bit of an adjustment. Since getting back from Michigan at the end of May, I’ve spent pretty much the entire month here in Portland, which is somewhat of a rarity for me. Cameron and I usually keep pretty busy, and it seems that weekends at home with no plans have been the exception, not the rule, over the past few years. But this June marked one month of home ownership for us, and the first real month we were home with no travel/out of town company, and it’s been somewhat of a bigger change than I anticipated. Back when we were renting, we would just pick up and go out of town for the weekend or spend a day out hiking and wouldn’t think anything of it because didn’t have any maintenance to do around the house. Now that we have a house of our own, there are a million things that we want to do, and at this point, it all seems a little overwhelming/ADD-like and it’s hard to focus on getting any one project accomplished. And when we stay home for the whole weekend to do house stuff and  Sunday night rolls around and it seems like we haven’t made much progress, it’s a little frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I really do love our house; it’s feeling more like home everyday and I’m so thankful that this is where we live…it’s just taking a little getting used to not being able to be on the go all the time!

Another thing that started to really hit me this month was this feeling of having very limited time, in a lot of ways. I am a planner by nature and I love having things on the calendar. But when I look at my calendar these days, it almost feels like time is running out. The summer months here in the Pacific Northwest are awesome, but it seems like they go by so quickly and so it’s almost like there is this pressure to make the most of summer and fit all the outdoors-y things that we want to do into a very limited number of weekends. There are also quite a few places I’d love to travel to this summer, but I know realistically there is no way we’ll have enough time to do it all. Plus, there are all the projects I mentioned that we want to do both inside and outside the house, and they always seem to take up much more time than anticipated. Oh yeah, and then there’s also that whole matter of having a baby at the end of this year. Kind of a big deal. And granted, we are so so excited about it…but it is just a lot to think about! (Not to mention the cost of all the stuff we want to buy for the house, plus everything we’ll need to get for the baby…when I start to think about that, it really makes my head spin…) I think I just get mildly stressed out by the fact that this is the last summer where it will be just Cam and I and so I feel this pressure that it needs to be special and that we need to be doing stuff all the time, because I know there are a lot of things that will be harder to do once the baby comes. Granted I’m sure that next summer will be awesome and amazing in ways we can’t even anticipate right now, but I also know that it will probably involve staying home quite a bit as it won’t be quite as easy to just jump in the car and go places spur of the moment. So that’s why when we’ve had so many weekends where we’ve just “stayed home” this month, in a way I almost feel like we’re wasting them?

But in reality, I know that this summer is really much-needed time for me to work on adjusting my attitude before becoming a mom. To let go of my fear of missing out on things and my need to have plans all the time. To just enjoy things like sleeping in, sitting and reading a good book, or just doing nothing at all. Because I know that all these simple things will also be much harder to do once the baby comes, and I don’t want to look back on this summer and regret not just soaking these things in more. I don’t want to spend this summer stressing myself out if we don’t accomplish everything I’d like, instead, I want to focus on just enjoying little things as they happen. At this point, Cam and I obviously don’t know what parenthood will be like…but one thing I do know is that I’m going to need learn to be more flexible and let go of not having everything go according to my plans. And I’m also going to have to learn to be OK with days where nothing gets accomplished, which is sometimes a struggle for me. Because I already know that even though this summer feels like it’s flying by, once the baby comes time will likely feel like it’s passing even quicker. When I’m a mom, I really want to focus on being present in each moment, whether it’s good or bad, exciting or mundane, and  so I feel like this summer is my time to practice that. Easier said than done, but I’m working on it! 🙂

(And technically, people keep telling me that summer in Oregon doesn’t really start here until after the 4th of July…so in reality, I still have plenty of time left!)

I wasn’t anticipating the intro of this post to be so long, but when I started writing that’s what came out, so we’re just going to go with it! This weekend was fairly uneventful, but perfectly lovely – did some furniture shopping, tried some new brunch spots, finished a good book (review coming tomorrow!), and spent some time outside. You can see snippets of this weekend (and weekends past) on Instagram, as I have barely used my real camera at all this month! With the exception of a few recipes, I only pulled it out a couple of times in June so I thought today would be a good time to share those photos!

On Father’s Day, we went to the Oregon Coast with Cam’s family for the day. Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy and not the best beach weather, in my opinion. Then again, I’m not a native Oregonian because other people don’t seem to mind, and it typically doesn’t stop people from going to the beach.

Clearly this guy was not phased by the weather…ha!

(But to me, any time being at the beach requires wearing a ski coat, you can count me out!)

 But we got to celebrate Father’s Day with Cam’s dad and two of his brothers, so that was nice. 

 And Lola harassed her dad for chips and gave him kisses with her ridiculous tongue 🙂

 And clearly my nieces weren’t bothered by the weather either!

 

Eating some delicious sand…ha 🙂

 World’s best grand dog, confused like usual.

Chips make everything better 🙂

 Until next time Oregon Coast…I’ll be back when the sun is out 🙂

Last weekend, we went hiking in the Gorge with some friends and finally did a hike that I had been wanting to do for sometime now, Dog Mountain!

We heard Dog Mountain was a challenging hike, but had heard raves about great views and pretty wildflowers, so we wanted to check it out before it got too late in the summer. It’s actually on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, but it’s only an hour from Portland. It’s not too long of a day hike at just over 7.5 miles round trip, but it’s definitely a tough one!

 I think we actually missed the peak wildflower time for this hike (that’s more the end of May/early June) but there were still a wide variety of flowers blooming along the trail that were so beautiful!

 Lola was ready to head down at this point I think, but we were still going up!

 Cam and Pete

 Kristi and I

 The hike was great, except there were quite a few bugs when we got to the top. They were annoying to us, but there were really bothering Lola…so we tried to help her out…ha 🙂

 “Oh lawdy, I made it to the top of Dog Mountain!” 

Haha…this picture just cracks me up.

The views at the top were stunning and the flowers only made it prettier!

 You can just barely see the tip of Mount Hood peaking over…

 It was a gorgeous day!