Rome Could've Been Built in a Day.

 Its currently 8 PM, 81 degrees and mostly humid. I love it. 

I prefer the humidity at night way more than I do during the day. I don't know why. I feel so well rested in this moment. Not that today was restful, at all. Today, I cleaned the entire house, meal planned, and went grocery shopping. But something about this moment. All by myself, listening to the waterfall, music playing softly. It feels like the first true moment of rest I have had since before the wedding. 

Boy, what a crazy couple of months. We got a date, ran into planning, got married, jetted across the country, rapidly set up our home and rushed into an insane routine. I can't believe I have already been married for over a month. 

My mom always told me that Rome wasn't built in a day. I wonder how long it took to build Rome, and I wonder how much faster I could have done it. My mom would say this to me, because as soon as I got a project in my mind that I wanted to do, I wouldn't stop until I got it done. This month has felt like a day. I blinked, and the wedding was over. I took a breath and we had moved. I took a nap and I woke up here on our patio. Yet, every memory is so vivid and fresh in my mind. How did this happen? It took us 4 days to get across the country, 3 days to get the house unpacked, and then a blur of finding furniture and home décor that feels like it has finally just finished. 

I guess building out home was a project I wanted to do and I was not going to stop until I was finished. Its just weird to make pancakes for breakfast and eat at the bar, instead of on our yeti cooler in the middle of a sea of boxes. We have bar stools! We have been so abundantly blessed by friends and family... We couldn't have built our Rome without everybody that decided to be a part of our lives. 

Sitting here now, finally being able to reflect on everything that has happened, I am overcome with gratitude. Its so fun and exciting for me to pack Billy a lunch every day, to have beautiful dishes to cook and serve food with. Such lovely items all over our home, but to me they are so much more than items. Not a day goes by that I don't use something and say (out loud, I think it annoys Billy) 

"So and So got us this!" 

Our home was filled with love. Each item, each thing, holds so much value to me.

So I guess maybe even though we put together our home in what feels like a day, it was years and years of love that was poured into our home. We started building this place before we even knew each other. Rome could have been built in a day, if it had a team like the one William and I have behind us. I know this blog is shorter, but I want to wrap it up and spend time in the peace and quiet with my new husband!!!! It feels like we haven't gotten to spend much quality time together, just because of all the hustle and bustle. 

Thank you to everyone who helped my parents with the wedding. Thank you to everyone who came to the wedding, who sent us gifts. Thank you to everybody back home. You guys are the reason we are where we are. I can't believe that I am married to my best friend, and waking up everyday in such an abundantly blessed environment. We love you guys, and I am a little homesick for the mountains <3 Stay tuned to my blog for further updates on this new adventure of becoming Wisor!!

                           

                                Billy & I at my first baseball game, 2018

Good Enough?

 I've got two blogs drafted right now, and I don't think either one is good enough. 

Both blogs are about my life, how things are going right now. My adventure, if you will. I totally just feel like they aren't interesting enough, or maybe fancy enough, or anything compared to what maybe they should be. The words fall flat when I type them. The excitement maybe just isn't as exciting when I put it through the lenses of social media. The joke I laughed at just isn't funny when I try to share it with you..

Are you the one putting this pressure on me? The pressure to be interesting, and aesthetic, and post more? No. So then who is? Why do I feel this NEED to present to you a perspective of my life that is so completely captivating and possibly unrealistic? Hasn't my goal with this blog always been to be real about where I am at? 

Well here is where I am at. I'm in Florida, and have possibly never been so underwhelmed by such a drastic choice in my entire life. 

Now before you start getting upset, hear me out. I am merely a victim of what everybody falls victim to, expectation. I thought my life with be a movie once I got married and moved. I thought that the sun would shine, every single day. William and I would share glasses of wine and watch the sun set over the ocean, and I would be instantly tan and toned and I would be the worlds best surfer, but I would also be hosting dinner parties and game nights and my husband and I would be the social hub of NAS Jax. Every day, I would be on the beach, sipping hot coffee while I took my morning stroll. 

The reality is, I wake up at 5AM to make my husband the same sandwich sack lunch, every day. I read my bible, make my coffee, iron my sheets, and clean the house. Then William comes home form work and I make dinner, and I do dishes. We watch a movie and go to sleep. I meal plan, I budget. I check Pinterest. There is quite the difference in pictures, right? 

Where did I even get this? Why do I feel such a need to make it seem like my life is the first picture? My mom used to tell me that she loved my blog because it was so insightful, and she hoped it wouldn't become a shallow blog where I just talked about how great my life was, and I never wanted that to be my blog either. I think I just got caught up, trying to maybe prove to people, and possibly myself, that I had made it. I was at a spot in my life that most people my age haven't reached yet and it was glamorous. 

Honestly though, if I never had to share with you the adventure of my life, it WOULD feel like a movie. Its not quite the movie I was expecting, but its still my favorite movie of all time. Even though my days hardly ever vary, every single one is still an adventure. Marriage is still a wild jungle full of unknowns. I do go to the beach, at least once a week, and I love meal planning. I am actually thinking of writing a blog on why we should ALL meal plan. 

So yeah, maybe our road trip across America is hard to make sound interesting, because really, other than a light in the truck coming on, me losing the oil cap, and both of us struggling to stay awake (and a freak tornado worthy storm), the trip was boring. The views were amazing, Wyoming is a nomads land, and Nashville is probably the coolest place I've visited, but that's really it. Its not the glamor I was expecting, but if you were there, you would have though it was the most fun trip of your life, too. 

Now, I realize that I do not actually have to share anything with you. I never have to tell you about my "adventure", or anything else for that matter, but I love it. I hate having writers block, or comparing my life to some made up standard I manufactured in my own mind, but I love my blog. Just like I love my Instagram. I know I am not "Insta model", and as hard as he tries, my husband is not a professional photographer, and some of the jokes we share would not make sense to literally anybody (they don't even make sense to me sometimes), but its all magical and wonderful for me, and that's what I want to convey to you, not the flawless plastic version. The raw organic version. Like good carrots. 

I also realize that I can not take any of the credit for being where I am. God has heavily and abundantly blessed my husband and I. Our families have supported us like crazy, and throughout the whole season of engagement and the wedding, we were given so many blessings from all of the people around us.  We continue to have such a hand of blessing laid on us. We have so many people around us, lifting us up both in prayer, and their outward support for us. Every moment of this journey, every boring (or exciting) hour, has been a testament to Gods love and grace. My heart just bursts with gratitude when I think of all the support and love that surrounds us.

So I guess what I am saying is that today, I learned yet another lesson. I need to take some of the pressure off my shoulders, let go of some pride, and just enjoy the genuine story that I am living. This one has flaws, it has fights, it lacks the beach and maybe our dinner parties and game nights are just Billy and I right now. Even though on the big stage of the world wide internet, it's a story nobody would read, its the story of my life, and I love it.  This story is good enough. Its' perfect. I struggled with this in high school too, I wanted my Instagram to make it look like I was having more fun than I was. So here is some wisdom form somebody who just came out of it

Don't worry. Odds are, whatever laugh you're sharing is a ton more fun than trying to look perfect or fun. Lifes beauty comes from the flaws, and if you're in high school or junior high, I know that those words sound like a repeat of whatever your parents just said, but it is true! You have more fun when you're not trying to impress, and I recommend living life through that lenses. 

So now you know I have two blogs in the drafts that I hope I finish and post, even though they are a little boring!!! I love you guys, I am seriously enjoying married life, and I miss home DAILY! Thank you for your continued support <3 

Florida on My Mind

 WOW! Have I been living in Florida for a month already? 

That means just over a month of adventures with my HUSBAND!!! We are all settled into our cozy little apartment here in Jacksonville, we even have our first fish (and snail, named Zoomer)! So how has it been, going from mountain girl, to living in the city? Well let me just tell you, it has been a 180. 

Fun fact: Cockroaches are like ants, apparently. People just HAVE them. You can be as clean as you want, never leave food on the table, diligently clean all your homes surfaces, they will just appear sometimes. Cockroaches can also smell their dead, so if you kill one, more will appear to eat their dead friend, so to get rid of them, you just have to usher them out of your home. Oh, and when I suggested to Billy that he flush them, he told me he was worried they would just crawl back out of the toilet. :) I'm living with earth walking demons from hell. 

That being said, our apartment has had very few (maybe two, thank God), and they only appear when Billy is home and can handle them himself, because Lord knows I don't want to touch them. I also haven't seen any spiders or bees!! I probably just jinxed myself, but it has been a nice month with no cat spiders or giant grown spiders.  

On a better note, I have turned so brown. I didn't even realize it until I saw a picture of myself from our road trip across America! The sunrays will pernitrate your clothes, so I hardly have tan lines (not to brag), but there is a difference between the skin I've tried to tan, and the skin I haven't. Billy got a sunburn in his first week back, even through his SPF 50. HOW??? He has lived here longer than me!! Life with my husband has been quite the adventure, but that's for another blog. 

Billy and I have found a church. The culture down here is so different. I'm used to our worship team using string instruments, dim lights, hymnals, really personal. Here, there are light shows, brand new worship songs, a full band every week, if your hands aren't up, you're the weird ones in the audience. There is also no coffee shop. Technically, they have a "café", but its drip coffee with real creamer, if you'd like. I am in anguish! No espresso :(  

We have Duncan Doughnuts coffee, and Starbucks. Neither coffee shop uses real espresso shots. If you go to a "real" coffee shop, you'd better be ready for it to also be a bar with an insane DJ. Also, you have to go all the way to the beach for it (we are 15 minutes from the beach), and it doesn't open until 7AM. It kind of makes me wonder what the point is? I guess nothing down here opens until 10:00 or 11:00AM anyways. 

Tropical Storm Elsa felt like nothing. We had a worse rain storm a couple days ago. Billy got to stay home on the day of the storm, and our phones kept ringing with this awful sound to warn us of possibly tornados and everything, but it hardly rained, and we got a little wind. It has rained so much worse on almost every other day that I have lived here. Seriously, its not "Sunny Florida" its "Rainy Florida" and you cant take the weather forecast seriously because if you wake up and the forecast calls for rain all day, it will probably be really sunny, but if it says sunny, there will be torrential downpour that the weather never predicted. It rains every day, you just have to guess how hard it will rain, and when. Sometimes, you get a crazy thunderstorm with a few drops of rain, and sometimes its just all of a  sudden a flashflood and two minutes later the sun has almost dried the pavement up. 

The stores are incredible though. I have been really good and I have only been window shopping, but its so interesting to see the difference in fashion down here. 15 minutes from our house is the hottest shopping in Jacksonville, St. Johns Town Center. They have everything from Louis Vuitton, to Coach, to  Dicks Sporting Goods and Nordstrom. They even have a really awesome surf shop! The clothes themselves though..  Everything is in nudes and pastels. You wont find a jewel tone tank top here, no matter how hard you look. EVERYTHING is a crop top. You see a cute sweater? Crop top. Cute tee shirt? Crop top. The actual "crop tops" Are like ribbons girls put over their chests! How long before I start wearing crop tops? The thought alone scares me. 

Also (and this makes me so upset) If you are above a size medium, the malls just don't carry your size. They might have a large, but it fits like a medium. If you are a regular sized human like me, you have to go to "plus size" stores, or Target or Ross. Like, the stores just don't even have an option for girls like us. There are a few stores, like Buckle, and even their tee shirts are a normal length. but everybody else gets away with having no options for normal sized, possibly well endowed women. 

Its been an adventure, and I definitely miss home. The sunsets over the beach are beautiful... but they just cant compare to the sun behind the mountains. It is kind of awesome to see kids (including my husband) freak at how "cold" the ocean is. But I am also too hot to wear even a jacket on all the days that the other girls here are in sweaters. Its 82 degrees. Why are you in a sweater. 

Speaking of which, it is a 90 degree, sunny day! The beach is calling, and I now must go! I miss everybody back home and I talk about you all the time. I'm going to try to keep my blog more updated <3