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Keeping the Peace // The beach

At pretty much any moment I’m burying stress as deep as I can so it doesn’t constantly affect my life. However, when something gets added to the pile, it can become too much and I feel like throwing myself off a cliff…and that’s generally something you want to avoid.

Winter has sucked this year. There is no getting around that. Not only has it been the worst, longest, most cold winter of my life, I’ve also had to deal with a lot of pain from the dental work and we’ve been living at my parents place as well so we haven’t had a ton of space.

Being displaced is always this gross feeling sitting in the bottom of my gut these days. We are leaving tomorrow to shoot a wedding and then pack up everything at our condo in Ohio and move it back to Michigan. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find a house yet so we will be moving everything into my parents house. Now, don’t get me wrong, my parents have a lovely home and the basement is finished and it’s fine here but it’s just not very much space. We are in the bedroom downstairs and I’ve taken over my dad’s office to work out of. My parents are great and we get along with them fine, it’s just not our own home and our own space and at this stage in our life, it’s hard to not have your own place. We just can’t see the point of signing a lease and renting a place when we are searching for a house. We’ll just end up getting screwed into keeping a lease if we find a place soon. So although this trip to pack is going to be filled with many tears on my part I’m sure, I would still choose to live here with my parents for a while over being stuck in Ohio. The only good thing about Ohio was our condo though so it will be hard to officially leave it even though we have not been there for a few months. I’m losing hope on finding a home, but hopefully that hope will be renewed somehow in the coming months. But enough of why things feel sucky…

I don’t know if it’s like this for other people, but it takes a lot of effort for me to relax. I have to be really intentional about it because If I’m not, I’ll work all the time and not even realize where weeks of my life has gone. So that’s something I’m really taking seriously this year. Summer is AMAZING in michigan and I often miss out because I’m working so much since it’s our busy season but I’m determined to streamline my workflow, get up earlier and find a way to get everything done and still put effort into having a real life outside of work. You know, like normal people do.

Luckily, I have Ryan. He is laid back and always at peace it seems like. I like always having someone to go relax with as well. If I was totally alone, I’d probably fail miserably at relaxing. Over the past couple of weeks since the sun came back, we’ve been going down the beach taking walks and napping in the sand and it’s been a lovely break from the reality that is our life right now. Because it’s still cold out, not many other people are there and it’s so quiet and peaceful. It’s the most at peace I’ve felt in months. Although it’s chilly, having the sun hit my face feels so good and to breathe such fresh, crisp air is like breathing for the first time.

I just need to find these little things in life that bring me peace amidst what seems like a non stop wave of stress and uncertainty. As long as I can seek those things out and run to them when I’m about to lose it, I think I will actually enjoy this year. That’s the goal 🙂

So here are some photos of the good parts of the past couple of weeks.

Beach-0001_WEBThese photos were taken about 2 weeks before the ones you’ll see later. It’s crazy how it didn’t take much for all that ice to melt!Beach-0002_WEB

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My hair was feeling annoying and then I found out I have not had it cut since December. NO WONDER. It’s crazy how long it’s gotten from the days when I cut the whole right side off.Beach-0003-2_WEB

Easter!! We got plastic eggs instead of doing real ones because if you empty them, they are really fragile and if you do hard boiled, you eventually have to ruin them so this seemed like a lot better idea.Beach-0020_WEBBeach-0022_WEB

The Heartstone in Muskegon has the MOST DELICIOUS SOUP I have ever eaten in my life. I look forward to going there for weeks waiting for them to have my favorite soup since they do a different soup every day. Needless to say, soup makes me really happy.

On easter, it was 65 degrees out so we went to take a nap on the beach. Unfortunately, it was about 45 degrees out by the water because of the wind. Good thing we brought a blanket. 🙂

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It’s crazy how the sand get’s all messed up in the winter. Once summer is here, all these hills will be all smooth and this beach is actually quite nice.Beach-0029_WEBBeach-0030_WEBBeach-0032_WEBBeach-0024_WEB

Ryan made sure to take a photo of the sand to send to a friend in Ohio to show him what sand actually looks like, haha! Ohio’s BEST beach is basically dirt and rocks.

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We probably won’t spend a ton of time at this beach once the summer is here because it get’s really busy and I hate all the noise but I’ve got other more secret beaches as a backup plan. 🙂

 

 

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