Remembering a Favorite Pet

Let's chat about remembering a favorite family pet.

I promised a follow up post to tell you the things we did to remember Mr. Mittens when I told you about him passing away.  Any time you lose a beloved family pet, it's so sad.  Everyone grieves differently and we tried to do several things to help honor his memory.  We got several sweet cards from family and friends.  That's always a good idea if someone you love loses a pet.  We have always been lucky enough to find a vet that sends sympathy cards when our pets pass away.

I have a few gifts to tell you about that were great ways to honor the memory of a favorite pet.

Tuxedo cats are so handsome and so I started looking for some tuxedo cat art for the house.  I didn't want to spend a ton which made Amazon the perfect place to start.  I found these canvas art hoops.  I got one for Mr. Mittens and one that looked like Topher the cat we lost prior.  We hung them above our desk in the corner of our family room.  They are quirky and sweet and I smile every time I see these silly reading cats.

The vets office stamped paw prints for us when Mr. Mittens passed away.  Olive loved Mr. Mittens a ton so I frame a paw print and a heart of fur for her.  Hobby Lobby had this cute small bow frame.  She was really sad for a while so I quietly framed this and just put it in her room for her to find.

My sister surprised her with a Mr. Mittens photo pillow and key chain.  She used to sleep with Mr. Mittens every night and now she sleeps with his pillow.  This was a really sweet, comforting way for her to keep his memory alive.

A friend sent Olive and I matching cat bracelets with an M for Mr. Mittens.  It's a sweet bracelet to add to a stack and remember our favorite cat.  Thanks, Whitney!

We talk about Mr. Mittens and his antics often. I intend to make a little photo book of him.

I'm sorry if you're dealing with the loss of a pet.  I hope this post gives you some ideas of ways to honor the memory of your favorite pets.

Celebrating 22 Years

Kevin and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary on Friday!  That's a big milestone!  We met when we were in kindergarten, our families were friends, grew up going to school and church together and we share many of the same memories of growing up together.  So 22 married years, but many years together before that is a little more accurage.

We have done fun things all Summer long an as a result we planned our actual anniversary day to be simple and sweet.

We reminisced about our favorite wedding day moments.  Our rose petal send off was one of my favorite moments.  It felt like we were the main characters in a movie.  So many smiles and the perfect way to wrap up our ceremony.  Kevin said he was so excited to see me walk down the aisle.

Olive babysat the boys so we headed out on a date night.  We went to our favorite date night spot for dinner and then walked around Kevin's campus at UE.  We stopped by to say hello to our wedding chapel.  And the weather was cloudy and cool just like our wedding day.  Also, very unusual for late July in the Midwest.

We hung out at home.  Naturally, the cats were thrilled.

We cashed in lots of Chick-Fil-A rewards points for a cheap lunch.  Have you tried the Dragonfruit Pineapple Lemonade this month?  It's tart and yummy.  Then ran a bunch of errands.

Pepperoncinis + pepperoni pizza from our favorite spot.

We agreed to just exchanging cards this year, but somehow I still ended up with roses.

Our anniversary seemed like the perfect occasion to try out the Trader Joe's Key Lime Pie.  I'm so happy to report that it was delicious.  Restaurant quality.  Tastes just like we were having dessert on the beach in Florida.  10/10 Recommend it.

Simple and sweet was the perfect way to celebrate.

College Friend Trip Favorites

Happy Friday!  And Happy Anniversary Kev!  We have some simple fun plans for today to celebrate 22 years :)  More on that later.

Today I'm going to recap a fun girl's trip that I went on last weekend.  I headed out of town with some of my favorite friends from high school.  We coordinated all of our schedules, made plans for all of our kids to be taken care of and headed to our old stomping grounds of Indiana University.    We all went to high school together and then headed to IU together.  We have been talking about making this trip happen for a long time. 

The Union building behind us.  And a cute 83 year old professor took this picture for us.  He adored IU and was so happy to talk to us about it.

I brought the snacks - a snackle box of gummy candies, popcorn, cheese popcorn and chocolate dipped pretzels.

I also surprised the girls with IU themed goody bags.  The bags reminded me of the striped pants the basketball team wears so I thought they were perfect.  I added in a fun square scarf and a personalized bracelet.  The girls loved their gifts.  Be sure and scroll all the way to the end - you're never going to believe the gift that my friend Kelly surprised me with.

We shopped and all found some cute stuff.

We all have fond memories of the Olive Garden - especially the never ending pasta bowls for college kids.  So we grabbed lunch at Olive Garden.

More shopping.  More relaxing in our room.  Then we headed to a local favorite Mother Bears Pizza.

It was amazing.

We headed down town for dessert at the Chocolate Moose.  They have their own version of blizzards call a BLIZZ.  I ordered an Oreo Blizz with homemade chocolate ice cream.  I'll dream of this for a long time.

We stayed up way too late catching up and walked over to breakfast at Lincoln Square.

Everything was delicious.  Especially that homemade biscuit and strawberry jam.

We headed to campus to restock our IU gear.  Everything was so cute.  The merch was extra cute after the IU football team winning the National Title this year.

The I in IU.

The campus, old buildings, giant trees, etc. are all so pretty.

We were all so thankful to get away and relive our favorite college spots.

My favorite souvenir - a new back to school teacher bag!

WOW WOW WOW!!  Remember how I said we were so bummed to miss out on the striped Trader Joe's totes??  Well my friend Kelly found me one!  I was so surprised and have already carried it several times.  It's such a cute size and pattern.

I hope you have a great weekend!  Linking up with Momfessionals

A Day in Curacao

Our last stop was the island of Curacao.  We didn't realize this was the biggest, busiest island we'd visit.  Major bridges, colorful buildings, McDonalds, great shopping and travel time to get to our resort.  We got in a taxi to head to our resort.  Everyone drives FAST here.  We held on and listened in on the Dutch our drivers were speaking.  They dropped us off at our resort for the day - Sunscape.

It was a gorgeous resort!  We had a day pass and had to check in with our IDs and a credit card. We rented snorkle gear and got to enjoy all of the drinks, food and amenities through the resort.  We encountered people from all over here.  So many different languages were being spoken around us and we saw some people from our cruise ship at the same resort.

There was so much color!  It was fun to keep track of our cruise ship as we moved about the island.

Giant iguanas greeted us.  The boys were thrilled.

We had really beautiful views everywhere we looked.  Can you spot our tiny cruise ship in the distance?

I can't tell you how happy it made us to make a cat friend in Curacao.  We were missing our cats at this point in the trip so Curacao Kitty did our hearts good!

The water was stunning!!

We wished we would have known the shore line was so rocky.  We did not come prepared with water shoes so we walked carefully over the rocks and swam out to enjoy the water.  If you go to Curacao, bring water shoes to protect your feet.

There were hot tubs, volley ball nets, water aerobics classes, multiple restaurants, DJs, Jerk Chicken BBQ at the pool, giant chess game, snorkle gear and a swim up bar.  We popped around to enjoy all of it.  There was something for everyone.

We encountered people from all over, but it wasn't hard to communicate with anyone.

Even if you weren't snorkeling, you could see tons of fish and crabs in this clear water.  The big kids and Kevin swam out in the bay closer to that line of rocks.  They were able to see tons of cool fish and creatures.

We even found some shells.

The resort flowers were amazing.

Curacao looked like a post card at every angle.

We parked our stuff in the shade around these pretty trees.

There was great shopping, big military boats coming and going and lots of traffic on that big blue bridge in the background and so much color.  They had dancers to welcome us at the port.  None of the shop owners were agressive.  Just smiling, friendly faces everywhere we went.

Let me know if you have any questions about Carnival, the ABC islands or cruising with your family!  Kevin is the trip planner.  He found all the locations, arranged all of our travel and found all of our deals.  He'd be happy to answer any questions, too.