Castle in the Clouds

Has it really been almost three years since I've posted anything here?  Not to be dramatic, but A LOT HAS CHANGED.  Mostly, me.  When I last wrote something for the blog, this was me.  I'm the one in the middle. Fast forward three years. This is me now.  25 pounds lighter. More confident. Happier! I have been on more than just a weight journey. I have evolved. I have become someone who enjoys wearing cute, dare I say, even sexy clothes. My wardrobe has exploded. My shoes are out of control. My jewelry boxes overflow. This isn't a brag because almost everything comes from discount stores like Temu and Shein. It's a testament to how fundamentally different I am from the mom/wife who used to wear the same thing day after day and, more often than not, appeared frumpy. I hid in baggy sweatshirts and overly large sweaters. I did not feel cute or sexy back then for a variety of reasons that are more fit for a private journal than this blog.  Those days are done....

  Our first travel trailer. I don't remember camping much with my family as a kid. This is likely because we always had the same vacation destination: a family plot in Baldwin, MI. There was no cabin there. Instead, there were two structures: a small, silver camper and an old single-wide trailer. The silver camper is gone but the single-wide still sits there and is used by extended family members to this day.  It wasn't until I was a teenager that my step-mom and dad bought a pop-up trailer and we started camping elsewhere in the state. My memory isn't the greatest, but I'm almost certain they got the pop-up after I started dating Ken. Eventually, my parents upgraded to a fifth wheel that my dad still pulls around to various nearby camping spots. Ken, by contrast, didn't have a set vacation destination growing up. His family camped. They started out with a truck-bed camper, I believe, and eventually upgraded to a fifth wheel.  Ken and I vacationed both in Baldwin an...

  Me and Ken with the Stanley Cup I recently went away for a scrapbooking weekend with my friends and family. I wasn't in the mood to lug my scrapbooking supplies around, so I only brought a few smaller projects. I had coloring books and colored pencils for those moments when I really didn't want to do anything. I also had my laptop, tablet, photo scanner, and several boxes of old photos.  My first priority was to finish up my nephew's senior pictures. I had some editing left to do from our summer session. I am happy to report I am all caught up now!  I finished up his baseball pics and sent them off to his mom.  Once I had completed that task, I colored for a bit. Eventually, after my sister finished borrowing my computer to do some video editing for her job, I hooked up my photo scanner and started feeding in pictures. I have a feeling I have some of these floating around on an external drive or CD somewhere, but, just in case I can't find them in the future, I sca...