Yay, Friends

Last night I got to hang out with the Camp/Author Friend and her significant other!  (Partner?  They aren't married, but have been together forever.  English needs a better word for this type of relationship)  Anyhoo, they were in the area and were able to go to dinner and visit for awhile.  Actually, they took us to dinner, which was extremely sweet of them.  They are both awesome and it was so good to see them as it's been a couple of years since we got to hang out.  It reminded me once again that I am blessed with amazing friends.

The C/AF was wearing adorable turquoise-y ballet flats.  I didn't get a picture, but they were cute.  They also might have been more blue than turquoise, but I'm going with turquoise for the shoes in tonight's post.  

Suede!  

Crochet!

Oooh, shiny.

I like the cutouts on this.

I really like the green accent on this one.

My main issue with most of the ballet flats I've tried on is that they have zero arch support.  I may as well be bare foot for the support they have.  These are Keens, though, so I'm assuming they would have arch support.  Apparently I need me some Keens ballet flats!

And what was I wearing for shoes last night you might ask?  I was wearing boring black sandals.  JG would be so proud! 

The hubby and I were very happy to have some social time last night with good friends.  It's been a bit crazy and hectic around here for awhile, so this was a much-needed break.

BFF

So, we actually left the office early last night!  I think we left around 6:30, which is awesome.  I didn't have to try and sneak  in a nap!  Sadly I woke up this morning feeling worse than ever, so after a rather miserable day of hacking and blowing my nose and generally being gross the hubby took pity on me and we left at 4:00.  Can you even imagine?  I hope the office didn't fall down in our absence.  We came home and I took a lovely nap and read some.  I woke up awhile ago, caught up on a few things I should have finished at the office, and now I'm going to write a quick post and go back to sleep.  Hopefully I'm feeling better by tomorrow.

Today is Best Friends Day!  I have the BEST best friend.  She is awesome.  If I weren't so tired I could go on and on as to why she is the bestest, but I will have to save that for another post.  In the meantime here are 2 pictures in honor of her:

Purple Keens Mary Janes.  Purple is her favorite color and I already know she has Keens Mary Janes, so these are perfect.

And The Beatles, of course.  I love this shoe, and think we both need a pair.

I hope you have a bestest best friend who is as awesome as mine is!

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

Cute Auntie Shoes Day 2

I finally unpacked my suitcase on Sunday, which is the reason I'm finally wearing the shoes that the auntie gave me while I was in Montana.  Here is today's selection:

They're Keens, which I love.  They're Mary Janes, which I also love.  And they're brown, which is good because I need cute brown work shoes for summer.  So yay!  Then I went looking for more Keen Mary Janes, and holy shoegasm, Batman!  I give them without comment since mine would all involve exclamation points and variations on the squeee! sound.

 

Maybe I will only wear Mary Janes from Keens from here on out.  There were so many more that I had to stop myself from inundating you with every darn picture on the internet.  Squee indeed.

In other news today is the 8th anniversary of my ordination, which is really weird because I'm no longer ordained.  Last year on May 17th I was, and this year I'm not.  And I'm not sure if I will be again?  But it still happened, so I can still celebrate the occasion, right?  It's so confusing, and I'm trying not to let the weirdness infuse my whole day.  Thankfully I have plenty to be getting on with at work these days, so it helped to take my mind off of the weirdness for at least part of the day.  I still want to stuff my face with chocolate, though.  Sigh.

Moving on.

Memory Lane: 2013 (celebrating!). 2014 (Oh look, more weirdness about the day). 2015 (never mind, I didn't even post, so we can skip last year's angst).

Family!

Today was awesome.  We had a family dinner to celebrate my (late) and Double A's (early) birthdays.  The rain from yesterday continued today which meant that Flower's and Laughter's soccer games got canceled, which meant that their whole family got to come to dinner when we didn't think they would be able to.  There were 12 of us:  me, Mom, Dad, the Brother, the Seester, the Brother-in-Law, Double A, the Bean, Flower, Laughter, the Auntie, and the Uncle (who I haven't seen in a couple of years, so that was extra-special-awesome!).  We were only missing DJ and the hubby, which is very very sad.  There was German chocolate cake, which is never ever sad.  Sigh...it was lovely, and I wish it could happen more often.  Here are some shoes from the day:

The Auntie's thrift store boots.  They're crazy, and cool, and totally work for her.

Dad and the Uncle were both wearing Keene's today.  One of these days I should round us all up and take a Keene family picture. 

The Seester's adorable brown sandals, with a slight, unintentional photo-bomb from the Brother-in-Law.

So it was a pretty fabulous day.  So fabulous, in fact, that even going to the mostly terrible and very long Batman Vs. Superman couldn't ruin the overall fabulosity.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

Vacation Day 1

Aaaah...Montana...how I've missed you.  Today was a fairly perfect day.  It started a little after midnight when my plane landed in Missoula and the Auntie picked me up at the airport.  I then got to see her new house and we chatted way too long and didn't get to bed until after 2:00.  One downside to the day was waking up at 7:30 because I had to go to the bathroom and then not being able to fall back asleep.  Oh well.  The Auntie and I then spent the (unseasonably warm) day playing.  We went to the University of Montana (my alma mater) bookstore and wandered around campus for awhile.  We had lunch at a new-to-both-of-us place downtown that was super yummy and then did lots of walking and window shopping.  We went to Rockin' Rudy's, which is one of my favorite places ever.  Then we me the seester at the girls' school and watched Flower and Laughter during their soccer practice, after which I spent the rest of the evening at the seester's, which is where I'm staying tonight.  Holy buckets, Flower and Laughter have both gotten so tall!  And they were cracking me up tonight with all of their stories and antics.  Here are some shoes from the day:

This selection of adorable baby shoes was in one of the stores the Auntie and I wandered through.

Flower's sparkly, strappy wedges.

Laughter's fun, polka dot fleep flops.

The Auntie's awesome Keenes.

The Seester's awesome Tevas.

My new shoes!  First pair I've bought in maybe a year?  I needed some black flats for this trip and for work, and really liked these.  It was incredibly stupid of me to walk around all day in shoes I hadn't broken in, though, and I now have the blisters to prove it.  But, I think JG will be so proud of my black shoes!

 

Laughter's feet selfie.

Laughter's and my feet, one each in a pair of the Seester's adorable purple shoes.  Picture taken by Flower.  You can also see the back of one of my new shoes, so you get a better understanding of the whole.

I really could not have asked for a better day.  I love my family.

Memory Lane: 2013 (funny, as my battery is about to die again tonight). 2015.

Forgotten

I was going to post earlier, but first I forgot what I was going to write about, and then I forgot to post. Collective eye roll. Whatever. Also, I'm going to talk about today even though it was actually yesterday. I haven't slept yet; that's my logic. Today I sorted through clothes and shoes to purge and reorganize. I now have 3 large garbage bags to take the Goodwill, one of which is shoes. I didn't count the number of pairs that were in there, and even if I had I wouldn't tell you because frankly it's embarrassing how many shoes I can get rid of and how many I still have left. But I do feel accomplished for getting the task done. I also got allergy shots and had coffee with a friend, so a fairly productive day with some socializing thrown in. Today was better in terms of pets, thank goodness. Although both puppies are currently whining because Tallulah is locked in the bathroom. I will be so happy when Chalupa's hormones settle down and she is out of heat. Oh well. Shoes. Brown. It's kind of a theme. Poop is Brown, puppies are brown, coffee is brown. Heck, even the hubby is brown. Hee hee. But plain brown shoes are a bit boring, so we're adding turquoise to the mix.

I don't wear cowboy boots, but these are cute.

I actually used to have these shoes. I think they were the victims of my last moving purge.

Ooooh! Wedges!

I very much enjoy Keens. Even though they make my feet stink.

Adorable. Yes, please.

Baby shoes in the colors and pattern I would like a nursery if that was ever a necessity.

Also cute. Very girly. Speaking of girly, or at least a girl, today was the Bean's birthday. Apparently in July I blog all birthdays a day late, as I'm not redoing this post. Especially considering I did it on my Kindle. Sigh, one day maybe my memory will return. In the meantime, good night, and here's hoping Tallulah stops whining, Chalupa doesn't destroy anything trying to get to her, and the hubby gets his elbow out of my hip before I have to smack him.

The BFF

Today is the birthday of my BFF.  It's sometimes hard for me to believe that we have been friends for 17 years, but other times it feels like we have been friends for much, much longer than that.  We met in college when she was living in the dorm where a friend of mine was her RA.  We both had not-so-great roommates that semester (my 2nd, her 1st) and ended up living together for the spring semester.  We pretty much clicked right from the beginning, sharing a love of movies, The Beatles, Target, and many other things.  We quickly developed our own inside jokes and language about stuff, and right to this day we can set off on a giggle-fest that lasts for hours and completely baffles the people around us.  Sadly we live way too far apart now and I don't get to see her or her son as often as I would like, and I have yet to meet her new husband.  Thank goodness for cell phones and Skype. 

 

This morning I texted her and asked her to send me a picture of her feet.  She and her husband are enjoying a music festival so have been camping this weekend.  So her footwear is appropriate:

 

 

If our feet were the same size I would totally borrow these.  Like I said, these are completely appropriate for what they are doing this weekend, but these are also the BFF's style.  She is much more practical than I when it comes to shoes.  Oh yeah, another thing we had in common was our love of Birkenstocks (don't judge...we went to a liberal arts college in the 90s).  The BFF wears totally cute shoes, but they are much better for her feet than some of the ones I am drawn to.  Anyway, Happy Birthday, to my BFF, my life is so much better with you in it!

 

Island!

So, my extended family owns an island on Flathead Lake.  My grandmother's sister and her husband bought it decades ago and proceeded to have a family reunion there every 4th of July.  Some of my best summer memories are there.  The hubby, brother seester, brother-in-law, nieces, auntie and I all went up for the day and had a fantabulous time.  The water was amazing.  If you've ever swum in Flathead you know that 95% of the time it is COLD.  We're talking turn your lips purple, chatter your teeth until your jaw aches cold.  The hubby didn't agree, but the rest of us thought it was fabulous and spent most of the day in the water.  I have the sunburn to prove it, even though I thought I was using a ton of sunscreen.  The 3 older nieces are total fish, and Laughter is pretty comfortable in the water, but also content to play on the edge and entertain herself as long as she knows where all of her people are.  It was such a good day.  Here are some of the shoes that got worn for the adventure:

 

 

Flower and Laughter sporting their sandals.  Laughter's are too big for her because she keeps leaving her other shoes places.

 

The auntie's cute, red Keens.

 

Laughter and the seester in their matching shoes!

 

 

I couldn't resist this one.  Men in white socks and sandals crack me up.  At least they aren't wearing black socks with their sandals...

 

I didn't get a picture of  the brother's or the hubby's shoes.  Brother was wearing Birkenstocks, hubby was wearing Alpines.  Neither were wearing socks.





Aaaaah

Today was the last day of VBS.  There were lots of little (and not so little) issues throughout the week, but I hope that most of the kiddos had a good time.  They make me smile when they aren't driving me crazy, and a bunch of them go out of their way to say hi and get a hug, which always brightens my day.  I spent the week putting out fires, naming Kindergarten freckles, listening to tattles, doing puppet shows, buying, sorting, organizing, trying to keep track of supplies, seeing smiling faces, trying to tune out whining, and making the kids think I was crazy because I took pictures of their shoes.  I actually had my camera today and took a few:

 

 

Fun Keens.  And some more in the background that I didn't notice when I took the picture!

Pretty, flowered sandals.  I would totally wear these.

 



 

Same Keens, different kid...

 

More Keens.  Feet belong to the twin of the girl in the first picture.

 

Sisters!  They asked specifically for me to take a picture of their matching shoes.

 



Tie-dye!  She wouldn't let me have them, though. :-(

 

So another camp is over.  I'm now ready to sleep for approximately a week.

Tired...

I am soooo tired.  Everyone is starting to get tired, kids and volunteers alike.  Today I felt like all I did was put out fires and listen to people tattle on each other.  It's one thing when the kids tattle, but then some of the adults started in.  I love many things about camp weeks, but man they just wear me out.  Even though this is the 8th camp I've done at this church I still feel like I'm faking it, and that I really have no idea what I'm doing.  There's a lot of guilt and self-doubt that comes out those feelings.  I had a friend who would always try to get me to list and acknowledge the things I did well, but when I think of this week all I can think is that it's "fine."  Hopefully the kids will at least get a little something out of it.  I know some of them are having a great time.

 

So, shoes.  I'm too tired to be creative.  I don't think I even have anything in reserve to break out.  There were cute shoes at camp today but every time I saw them my camera would be elsewhere.  There are a few sets of twins here this week (and one set of triplets!) and one set had the most adorable Keens, but I didn't get a picture.  Maybe they'll wear them again tomorrow.  In the meantime, I just looked some up:

 

 

I would wear any of them, but I totally want the tie-dye pair!