reflections

Life Lately & Bee

| The Bee Life

I’ll admit it, the beginning of the year has been a little tough! I hate to use the cop out of the winter blues, but wow – they are seriously setting in. Anyone else out there feeling a bit of the blues during the start of 2019?

I’ve been reflecting a lot on why the winter blues are hitting me so much – and I’ve started figuring it out.  A few things I don’t mind sharing with my bee-readers is (1) I haven’t been as physically active as my workout routine is virtually nonexistent (no endorphins!) (2) My confidence has been low & I’ve let it creep into different aspects of my world (3) Things are changing – the news of some close friends leaving has hit me a bit harder than I anticipated (4) As a result, my anxiety just flairs up!
Life Lately - the bee life
But the beginning of the year hasn’t been all bad, we’ve been making good progress on our bathroom remodel, I had a girls night sleepover, celebrated a sweet friend’s baby shower, and have had lots of pup snuggles – oh and our house is cleaner than ever with all the weekends I’ve stayed in. My parents came to visit for some early birthday celebrations and we’ve had a few breaks in the weather which has helped getting out and about and the pups on walks. Plus we are planning trips for the near future, and even booked some. Yay!

Since I’ve nailed down a few of the winter blues triggers – I’ve already started to combat them by working to stay inspired through creative outlets, reading new books for motivation, planning and making the gym happen, and also getting in as much time with my people as possible so that I’m not stuck in my own head. xox. 

How do you combat your blues?

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Why We Celebrate the Little Things

| The Bee Life

Monday marked our three year engagement anniversary and in May it will be 8-years together – I love all of our little anniversaries.  And although we are married and have other bigger anniversaries to celebrate, we still like to celebrate and reflect on these little moments that we’ve shared together.
Little Moments - the bee life

Why We Celebrate: From 3-months to 3-years, to the day we got the keys to our (first) house, a monumental trip, or the day we got our Moz – it’s these little things that lay the foundation of our relationship and the reason for it’s existence today, tomorrow and ten years from now. It’s celebrating these little moments that help keep the joy of those moments alive while looking forward to the future.

Sometimes we celebrate with a handmade card, sometimes flowers, or recreating a meal (like Chipotle and Champagne from the night we got engaged) or just sending a little text or picture about a memory from that day.  We save going all out for the bigger anniversaries!  It’s also fun reflecting on all the firsts we’ve had together, while also still realizing how many firsts we still have yet to have.

Cheers to celebrating the little things!

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Fitness Friday 02.19

| The Bee Life

Guys! Confession: I’ve been totally slacking from a fitness perspective – after working through and fighting the urge to rest with prolonged chronic back pain (almost 4-months) – my routine has been completely shot, because I all of a sudden haven’t been resisting the urge to rest as much! #FailedRoutine
Fitness Friday 02.19 - the bee life
I’ve been slowly working through the back, getting back my strength and working to be back to the place I want to be with my routine.  I’ve also been itching to get running again, I’ve actually been dreaming about running – but I’m an outside runner and the winter doesn’t really jive well with that. But, enough with the excuses – time for plans on how to get back into the groove for 2019, for real this time!

First things first, stop making excuses.  I haven’t been getting up out of bed for my early morning workouts, and I easily bow out of the evenings blaming the commute or being tired.  It’s time to start waking up and working out!

Seriously, cut those damn carbs. Again, lazy is easy and carbs are a lazy way to eat.  Better planning for meals and proactively cutting out those carbs will help balance the inconsistent workout routine.

Establish a running routine. As I mentioned in my 2019 fitness goals and above, I want to incorporate running as a more prominent staple into my fitness routine this year. We are already signed up for a race in April, but I want to sign up for half marathon… or two *grins* this way I’ll have a training schedule to help me stick to this goal.

Are you struggling with your fitness goals? How do you overcome them?

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Valentine’s Day – 2019

| The Bee Life

Hey love birds and all you haters! I’m a day early, I know – but I wanted to share a little bit of love going into the ‘holiday’ and also a fun playlist I’ve created for all the feelings of love, from loving yourself to heartbreak to being head over heels in love, this playlist has it all, check the link below to listen (make sure it’s on shuffle)!

Click here to listen to Heart Ache by The Bee Life on Spotify

View More: http://marinaclaireandco.pass.us/emily--alex
Photo by: Marina Claire & Co. 

The beautiful thing about love is that it takes all shapes and forms. It’s not just having the love of a partner, it’s loving yourself, your family, your friends and your life.  Love is also reflecting on the love lost and love learned in your life to where you are today and how that’s shaped you into the person you are today.  I firmly believe I’ve become the person I am today because I’ve loved who I’ve loved – friends/family and significant others – and the loss I’ve experienced from that love (I even have a tattoo sharing that sentiment!).  So this Valentine’s day remember to love yourself and always share the love beyond just this day or just get lost in music.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

xoxo

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Why I Finally Decided To Change My Last Name

| The Bee Life

Confession time:  I wasn’t planning on changing my last name once B and I tied the knot – in fact I was pretty adamant about not changing it.  Everyone always asked me, “Well what does B think about it?” … and at first he didn’t love the idea, but as we talked about it over time he grew to understand my perspective and was accepting of the idea.  And no matter what people’s responses were to me saying I wasn’t going to change my name – because people definitely had opposing opinions – I knew that B and I were on the same page and that was all that mattered. In fact,  we actually joked more about B changing his last name instead of me changing mine.
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Now, it’s only fair of me to not share ALL my reasons of why I didn’t want to change my name – and those closest to me know. And if someone asked and REALLY wanted to know, sure I’d tell them, but I’m not going to just offer it up. *tongue out emoji*

But onto the good stuff about WHY I decided to change my name and HOW I shared the news with B. The reason why might sound really really stupid or even a little silly… but I wanted people to know that B and I were married.  Sure, most people knew, we both wear rings – but there were little moments in everyday life, that made me pause and have to explain, “No my husband’s last name is Wildebeest.”  I also felt that the whole point of being married is being one with each other as a union and in those little moments it didn’t seem that way at all.

So, as these little moments in life continued to happen over the course of our first year of marriage, I began throwing around the idea of changing my name – first to friends and then worked on convincing my stubborn self.  The first anniversary gift is paper, what better gift to give B than surprise him with my new social security card with my new name on it? … as the year went on, I continued to pitch myself on the change while those little moments continued to happen and build the case.  Plus, I knew B would be psyched, deep down happy, and not expecting it at all.
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Needless to say, I was a little nervous when I finally told B for our anniversary, because he’d gotten so OK with me NOT changing my name – that I wasn’t sure if he would really care anymore.  But he was so excited about it and not to mention completely shocked (and in a bit of disbelief)!

Final confession.  It’s still a bit of a struggle for me, I fought against conforming for so long and have a deep love for my maiden name that it hurts my heart a little – dramatic? Maybe, but I know that in time the change won’t even phase me, and that I’ll always be EB deep down.

To help with my name switch I enlisted HitchSwitch they provided detailed check-lists and pre-filled paper work to make the transitions easy while helping me feel not so lost navigating all the different updates! I still have a few updates to make, but all the major ones are checked off the list. ❤

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Beach Portrait Session Photo Credit: Marina Claire & Co.
Wedding & Engagement Photo Credit: Timothy Logan Photography

Fitness Friday 01.19

| The Bee Life

It’s a new year, which mean it’s time to reset on your fitness goals, evaluate wins and losses from the past year and start focusing on the now and make things happen! Because Fitness has and will continue to be a priority for me, I wanted to really focus on specific goals for my health and wellness beyond my other goals for the new year and what better way to kickoff the first Fitness Friday than with clear goals of the year!
fitness friday 01.19 - the bee life
Run More! Running has always been part of my fitness, some years more miles than others – with the goal of still running a handful of races, I want to incorporate running in my routine beyond the training for the races and making it more of constant.

Build My Core Strength. This should have been a priority for the past 13 years – due to  my chronic back pain – which has been flaring up more than lately, I’ve been thinking about ways to moderate this more as I get older.  And one thing that I’ve been told in my years is building my core strength, so by adding in a simple addition of regular planks I hope to build this up!

Less Carbs.  Plain and simple. I’ll begin buckling down on this a bit more, as I’ve been enjoying the finer things in life lately.

Remaining Consistent with Bootcamp. The last two years I’ve gotten into a good groove, seen progress and continued to get stronger.  I like the group fitness class and it’s an easy way to check off 2 or 3 days of workouts in the week!

Although I’m not working towards fitting into a wedding dress – this past year was a good year of maintaining my routine, sticking strong on my diet.  I worked so hard to establish that routine and make the big progress that I did – I don’t want to loose that routine or happiness I gained in myself.  So here’s to another year of becoming and loving your best self!

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2018 Recap

| The Bee Life

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! Happy all of the things! I took a bit of an unintentional hiatus for the end of the year, which seemed to be needed, thus back on track and a bit delayed here is my 2018 Recap, which I’ve been very reflective on this past week leading up to the New Year… and with mixed feelings, might I add… Year End Recap 2018 - the bee lifeCompared to 2016 and 2017… the only word I could think of to describe this past year was normal.  2016 was an epic year, it was the year we got engaged, the year the Cavs won the NBA Finals, the year I transition into a new job, plus we had some awesome trips mixed into all of that.  2017 was of course #ourweddingyear including more vacations and just all around amazing-ness.  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with normal – it was just figuring out what’s next after two amazing years of it all.

So as I tried to not to overlook our “normal” 2018, I started thinking back about everything we did.  From two great trips, including one new city, to countless days/nights with friends, pool days & birthday parties with our nieces, lots of weekends back home, and many dinners and day dates in between – our 2018 was anything but normal mainly because of all the wonderful people we spent our days with – which I think is evident with the pictures above.

I also had some personal accomplishments coming off a year of ups and downs, and finally getting my butt in gear physically and professionally.  It felt great to run two long races without stopping from our 10-Miler in April to our half-marathon in August — it makes me want to continue our running streak and find new races to run, while sticking to our favorite ones.  A few other accomplishments I was proud of was joining the board of a nonprofit and my one-year anniversary at my company!

So here’s to 2018 and loving the new normal in 2019!

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Wednesday Reminders – Grateful

| The Bee Life

On the eve of Thanksgiving, it’s time to take a moment before all the crazy starts tomorrow and really reflect and remember what we’re truly grateful for.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m grateful for the wonderful people in my life.  My family, my friends, our neighbors and my coworkers — we are lucky to have so many thoughtful and caring people in our lives that we can call family.

We have been blessed with such a wonderful life and that in part has been because of the fabulous people in our lives and the opportunities they’ve provided for us to get to where we are today.  I hope you all have a blessed, happy and stress free Thanksgiving and remember to squeeze your friends and family a little tighter this year!

xox.

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Cheers to One Year!

| The Bee Life

Yesterday was B and I’s official one year wedding anniversary.  It’s amazing that it’s been one year, sometimes it feels like our wedding was just yesterday and sometimes it feels like it’s been years! I was looking back at my wedding final update on The Bee Life, and it was fun to read the 6-things I was looking forward to the most.  As a refresher, here they are along with some fun memories for each.

  • Seeing the reception venue all set-up and all the tables put together – it has all been a vision in my head for well over a year… and I can’t wait to see it all put together. This was one of my most favorite parts, luckily we were able to get in on Friday to get stuff set up before the big day – the venue was everything we dreamed it would be and more, completely obsessed.
  • Walking down the aisle to B and seeing him all done up in his suit! This was a surreal moment, I was trying so hard not to cry – which I was successful keeping it together.  This part was such a blur! But seeing videos of this, I was sprinting down the aisle, ha!, probably so I wouldn’t cry.  Recap: Our Ceremony
  • My Father/Daughter dance – it’s going to be a tear jerker but that’s all I’m saying. I loved this moment and it definitely got a lot of guests teared up.  We danced to A Whole New World from Aladdin, which happened to be the same song my dad and I danced too when I was about three – and we had that video playing in the background as we danced to it again!
  • Dancing the night away with B, our family and friends.  So. much. fun.
  • Eating MY wedding cake and drinking champagne! Our cake was so delicious and I didn’t drink nearly enough champagne!!
  • Finally being B’s wife! The best part.

One Year - the bee life
If you missed all our wedding fun, catch-up on some old posts; Girls getting ready and the groom getting ready pre-wedding.  And check out the links above for the Venue and Ceremony!! Our wedding was pretty perfect, and our first year of marriage has been a nice coast through and happy to have all the wedding festivities behind us!

Cheers!

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Here are some helpful wedding planning posts if you’re getting ready for the big day! Creating Your Sweetheart Table, Planning Your Honeymoon, Tips for Creating Your Wedding Registry, 8 Wedding RSVPs You Won’t be Expecting, and Tips for Swoon Worthy Engagement Pictures.