Cram Session

No blog post since January? For someone that has a poor memory, this should be an interesting post. Let me dig deep into my brain and see what I can retrieve.

February is such a short month, so of course it flew by. Shaun and I made an unfortunate trip home to say goodbye to my Grandma Luzier. It's always nice to head back home to see family, but it was a sad realization that the past couple of times we've been home have been for funerals. I guess it's just a part of growing up. My grandmother loved her husband deeply and now it's nice to know that maybe they're together again. It's always tough to say goodbye, but funerals also allow us to say hello to so many family members that we don't get to see often at all. It was so nice to be given so many hugs and reminisce. It was especially nice to see my Grandma Plubell. She's still highly active and enjoys fishing and dancing...such an inspiration!

My Grandma Plubell 

February also brought a new hobby...riding lessons! Some of you may or may not know, but I grew up with horses, but at the time when I was really learning to ride, my parents divorced and I moved on to the big city of Clearfield and just sort of parted ways with riding. I've always had this yearning to get back on a horse. Sure, I've been on plenty of group trail rides throughout the years, but what I really wanted was to learn was how to properly ride and jump. When I started nursing school years ago, I told Shaun that when I finished and got a job that I would take lessons. Well, I've been at my job almost two years now and finally signed up! Last year I got a coupon for four 30-minute lessons and I was hoping that if those went well and I liked the facility and the instructor that I would continue riding. It all worked out and it's been amazing and something I look forward to every single week! I forgot how hard it is...there are so many things to remember while you're up there! It's been therapeutic in many ways.

Ok, that's all I really remember about that month so let's move on to March.

The first weekend began with another Run Green 8K put on by one of our favorite bars, Tir Na Nog. Yet again I didn't do any running prior to the race, but yet again survived! I'm so lucky that I am still able to just get out there and run 5 miles. My body hates it, but I'm still very thankful that I'm healthy enough to do it! We've signed up for this particular race since it began a few years ago, but this year the race attempted to break the Guinness World Record for most kilted runners. We came up 200 people short, but it was so much fun to see so many people in kilts...especially my love!

March has also been full of visitors from PA! Over the second weekend, Shaun's sister, Kelly flew in from Waymart to get away from reality for a bit. It was so nice to have her and she picked a gorgeous weekend to be here. The weather was showing every sign of Spring so we spent a lot of time just hanging around outside and of course, eating! Raleigh has a ton of good food and we love when people visit so that we can eat it all! Her visit also fell on the second Monday which lead us to the Busy Bee for the Pinecone Bluegrass Jam. It's simply good beer and good jammin'. It's becoming a regular thing for us if I'm not working and several family members have now had the pleasure of enjoying it too. It was sad to see Kelly head back, but we only had a few days before our next two visitors!

Dad and Gwen just left this afternoon for GA to visit my stepsister, Erin. They arrived last Friday night and we figured they'd be exhausted from driving so we ordered Lilly's pizza and made a fire pit outside. It was a perfect way to catch up. We kept them rather busy the next couple of days because we get so excited to have visitors. We headed downtown for the St. Patrick's Day parade on Saturday and although we really couldn't see much of the parade, the people-watching was spectacular and it was the most beautiful day to just simply be outside. After the parade we drove over to the Farmer's Market and picked out some things for dinner. Of course, by the time we were about to head home, we quickly realized that no one felt like cooking and headed to one of our favorite restaurants, J. Betski's, instead. It was delicious and totally worth taking all of our market finds home to the refrigerator.

The temperature took a chillier drop on Sunday so we slept in and I cooked up some shrimp and grits for everyone. It was a great easy morning. We later headed out to the flea market, but didn't stay long because of the cold. Shaun took us over to tour his workplace and then we were craving a good burger and treated ourselves to Chuck's. I am a lover of fries and these are top notch and pair perfectly with their malt vinegar aioli :) With our bellies full, we headed back home for an easy evening in our pajamas.

It was so nice to have the house full of some family the past couple of weekends. We absolutely love to share our city with people! We're looking forward to our next set of visitors although I'm not sure who that is. The house is now quiet, the dogs are pooped and those Farmer's Market finds are still in the fridge. I should probably ignore my city this week and use them up.

Raleigh at night during Kelly's visit at the Boylan Bridge Brewpub