Summertime Oils!

Another update for you!

We're still loving and playing with our essential oils. Damion and I have decided on a mix that we both like for his beard. (I know it's mostly up to him, but it's also nice when I think he smells good. ;o) In a couple of weeks, he will officially have his "yeard." This is definitely something I didn't know about until him. LOL! Anyway, here's the mix we use!

I also wanted to try something on my own to use for my skin.
Now that I'm 36, I should probably do a better job at keeping it healthy, huh?
Here's what I use!

We don't have summer travel plans right now, but a couple of my friends and I hosted an online class about how families can benefit from essential oils while they're on vacation. One of the tasks we gave ourselves was the think on what would be our "Top Five" if we HAD to be limited on what we could bring along on vacation with us! That's a lot harder than it sounds! Here were mine! 

We try to have an online class once a month! They're fun! 

I'm enjoying these oils so much! It's been really interesting to learn about them, and find new uses for them in our lives. I was happy to get the chance to meet a lady who's more local to me that hosted a launch party for the new Premium Starter Kit that Young Living updated in June! I brought along my Mother-In-Law and another friend so we could check it out together! The new kit is super great! I really like the changes they made!

Here's what you get!

11 bottles of oil (Lemon, Lavender, Peppermint, Frankincense, Copaiba, DiGize, PanAway, R.C., Purification, and Stress Away); 10 sample sachets to tuck in your bag or give away; 2 samples of NingXia Red; 10 small glass containers to share oils with friends (and usage cards to go with them!), a rollerball fitment and cap; plus your choice of a diffuser! There are four to pick from! 

The one shown is the one we have. All this tucked nicely into a really pretty box and display format.

There were so many oils that Damion and I wanted to try for different things to support our health when we were researching and learning about oils, so getting the premium kit made the most sense for the money. Buying all of this individually would have cost us double.

Three of those oils are new to the kit, and I think they're great upgrades!

New to the kit is Copaiba, DiGize, and R.C. 

We have those separately from the kit we purchased, 

and I think they're great additions to our oil collection!

Off to work on the next class we have coming up next week! Hope you'll join me!

Second Quarter Catch-Up!

And so! 2015 is half over now.. HALF OVER!
I'll catch you all up on our 2nd quarter of the year. :o)

After Damion's job ended, and we moved back to our home from Houston, it was time to celebrate our first anniversary! Married for a whole year! It's probably taken me this long for it not to feel weird about saying things like "husband" or "marriage." I was 34 when we got married, so it's definitely a new thing for me, after so many years of desiring this!

Our anniversary fell on Easter Sunday this year, and since the Conley family is working on having that be an annual time to get together for a crawfish boil, everyone agreed to have it a couple of days early so we would have that Sunday to ourselves. :o) So, on Good Friday, we all piled under Mawmaw Dianna's carport and the boys got busy with the boil. It's a fantastic Louisiana get-together food (you can get it at restaurants when they're in season, too, of course, but it's much more fun and cost effective to do it on your own). Here are some photos from our time together! (I started out the day doubled-over from a terrible migraine and even got out of the car and went straight to a guest bed to sleep some more; thankfully it was wearing off by the time the afternoon rolled around, but I sure did feel pretty miserable at the start of the day! So, forgive any glazed over looks you might see in my face if I make it into any of these photos. ;o))

Big cooler of cooked crawfish, Hubby's imitation, and a bowl of sides!

You can't forget the Tony's!

Damion's brother, Dustin, enjoying his fill!

Mawmaw got a big one!

My fabulous In-Loves. :)

Molinda and Teddy

Hubby and Dustin working hard in the Spring heat.

Funny girl, Elaina, enjoying her trike, weaving in and out of everyone.

This is all the Conley kiddos. :)

The next day, the day before our anniversary, Damion was helping me organize our laundry room. He called me in to ask me a question about something, I stepped down into the room... never seeing the small plastic trashcan that was near the edge of the step. :o( My left foot went down on the can and kept right on going on the tile floor... all while my right foot stayed up on the stair. By the time I hit the floor, my knee had turned in completely and twisted with a snap. Good gracious! I was of course already freaking out (this tends to happen when you take a fall and break your leg in seven places just a couple of years prior), but he was calm and helped me hurry to try and get settled and see what we were facing. It hurt like the DICKENS (why is that a catch phrase, anyone know?), but we got me up on my feet and back to the living room so I could lay on the couch. I have zero threshold for pain, and I tend to get a little bit emotional sometimes (a lot a bit), but I knew for sure something was wrong. And on the day before our anniversary! :o( We decided to wait and see if some rest, ice, and Aleve would do the trick before we made a decision about getting an x-ray. And once I was a little more settled, Damion took off to find me some crutches. I knew for sure I would need help standing/walking because of how bad it was hurting. Unfortunately for us, this meant that any plans we were trying to make for the rest of the weekend were out the window. We settled on some Chinese take out and a movie at home together... grand plans for another time, which is fine. In sickness and in health, right?

I struggled for about two weeks with it, but he was a great help to me. Damion is a servant-hearted man, and even though he just wanted me to be okay and get better, he was patient and worked hard to make sure I was always comfortable and had everything I need. Even the sweet ladies we usually sit near at church noticed his care for me, and commented about it. So precious. We had been through this before, of course, when he came to help care for me in 2012! Thankfully, whatever I had done to twist/pull my knee was healing up and I was able to start walking without the crutches. I carried them with me when I would go somewhere (especially if I was going alone!) because I was afraid something might happen, but eventually, things were good to go.

Later on in the month, Damion's grandmother offered to take me with her to a hair appointment at a Salon & Spa in Lake Charles. Super exciting! My hair was pretty much down to my waist, and with the summer approaching, I knew I wanted something drastic. I had a photo that I had saved from Pinterest, and away we went! The staff at Scarborough's was great! It's a beautiful salon, and all the services were top notch! My hair ended up being a little bit shorter than I anticipated, but it grows super fast, so it wasn't long before it was doing everything I wanted!

via

before!

 

 the after shots :) 

The end of the month meant it was time for another birthday in our family!
This time, my Father-In-Law, Teddy! We got together as a family a little bit after his birthday to eat some delicious Crawfish Etouffee, and a homemade cake I made. Fresh Strawberry with Homemade Whipped Cream! 

And then excitement in my family!
My cousin Roslyn had her sweet baby girl on May 12!
Welcome, Armita Mae!

7lb, 9oz, 20.5 inches

born 5/12 at 10:59 p.m.

She gave her mommy quite a time, but we're so glad she's here and healthy!

Memorial Day weekend came next, and we spent time with Damion's family. We love to play games together. Quelf is a big favorite of ours! Hilarious.. and pretty embarrassing at times! :) Ha! 

And FINALLY! It was time for me to make my way up to visit my newest, cutest, tiniest cousin!

She's my favorite tiny baby cousin. I'm pretty sure I'm her favorite, too!

And finally - June. JUNE! A big month for me... it has a lot of birthdays! If you know me at all, you know that birthdays are a big favorite thing of mine. :) We have 4 in the Conley family!

June 2 is the first one - this cutie dude!

(I forced him to take this photo lol)

His parents and brother brought us out for delicious seafood,

and then sent us home with some Key Lime Pie, one of his favorites.

June 4th is Aunt Michelle's, June 13th is mine, and June 14th is Mawmaw's.

For my birthday, Damion's parents took us out for super great Mexican food (so happy to have finally found a place here that I love! It's a favorite of mine!), and Damion bought me cupcakes from a bakery that we like. So, it was a delicious day for me. ;o)
We haven't gotten together as a family to celebrate the rest, but I'm quite sure there will be cake and MORE deliciousness! Michelle loves chocolate, and Mawmaw wants strawberry!
Sounds like a fun time in the kitchen for me!

And so, on the summer goes!

March. The Madness!

March came in like a wrecking ball. For real, though. :o)

It started with some issues in our extended family that were very trying. We're still working through them, but learning so much! We are learning more about one another, how each of us deal with hardships and trials, and how when the going gets tough, the love we have for one another makes us a pretty tightly knit group. I'm happy we're in this together!

Because we had so much going on back in Louisiana, (we were still in Houston for Damion's work for the first few weeks of March), we traveled home a couple different times. On our first trip, we celebrated the start of crawfish season by taking my guy to get some! They were still a little expensive since it was the first part of the season, but definitely worth seeing his great smile. The restaurant we went to has become a favorite of mine for seafood. They have the MOST AMAZING stuffed shrimp. It's on a list of "Must Do's" whenever we get to have some family and friends come visit us.. which I hope will happen sometime! HINT HINT! :o) I already have it planned out in my head. We'll go to Steamboat Bill's for yummy food before the sun sets, then head over across the highway to the park by the lake and sit by the water to watch the sun go down. Ahhh! Don't you want to come visit us?!

The next couple of weeks had us back and forth to Louisiana, but when we were at the apartment in Texas, we were packing! The job site was finishing up, so we were going to be headed back home. Yay! We enjoyed the Houston apartment, for sure! But there's just something about getting back into your own home. Especially since this job has had us traveling for so many months! Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Baltimore, New York City... and now we're back home. :o)

My friend Kate and I hosted an online class for some friends interested in learning the "101 Basics" of essential oils. That was fun for me! I really liked the format of teaching like that. We spent a lot more time in the class than we meant to, though! The conversations were flowing and questions were being asked, so we just kept rolling along. It was fun to have a couple of give-aways, too!

The weekend we were set to move out was the same weekend my Aunt was scheduled to come down to Louisiana. My cousin lives down here with her husband, so I left super early that Friday morning and headed east! I spent a couple of days with them at my cousin's apartment. I enjoyed our time so much! So nice to sit and chat with people you've known your whole life, you know? And super fun to spend time with my cousin who is pregnant with her first baby! I loved seeing her sweet tummy! They have some pretty fun little dogs, too!

Beautiful Girl!

Cutie Pup!

One thing my Aunt had in tow was the top of our wedding cake! She was the baker for our wedding last April, and she so graciously kept the top part safe and frozen at her house this whole last year! Funny enough, I said something to Damion about having our wedding cake on our first anniversary (before we were even engaged!), and the look on his face was priceless. He had never heard of it! First, I think he honestly thought it would just be a part of cake that we held onto in our kitchen somehow for a whole year, then stomached a bite together. Hilarious. Especially since he's not really a "cake guy." When I explained that you keep it frozen and thaw it in time for your anniversary, he still wasn't very enthused. I, however, AM a "cake girl," so I needed this to be a thing! My Aunt iced up a tub and kept things really nice for us for her drive down from North Carolina. However, the day I was there with them, we didn't do much to keep the cake frozen, so by the time I made it back to our house to be back with Damion, the cake was thawed and ready. I was afraid that if I tried to re-freeze it for our anniversary (now just two weeks away at this point), that it wouldn't be as tasty. Plus, I mean.. the cake was ready, you know? It needed to be eaten. And, I'm a giver, you see. A Cake Girl Giver. :o)

I took some photos and we sliced in. He was a trooper and even obliged my need to have us feed a bite to each other. It was delicious, of course. I was even amazed at how fresh it still tasted. And Mr. Non-Cake Guy decided that he would like a whole piece after all. Training him right, I say! We (read: me for the most part) munched on it periodically the whole next week, but I got to share some with my Mother-in-law and Brother-in-law since they didn't have any at our actual wedding. They both liked it, too! I knew these were my people.

Delicious! 

We ended the month with a little day trip out of the house. Damion has been wanting to take me down to the Gulf ever since we got here last year. We just never made time for it, and now I'm sad about that. I think I would have loved going there all the time last year! But, it's okay... now we can this year! It's literally the straightest road ever right down to the Gulf. So flat and pretty! And you're at the coast in about 30 minutes or so. It's much smaller than any beach town you can imagine. Almost NOT a beach town. We rode along looking for alligators off the sides of the road (and found two!), and then drove along the beach. The actual sand! That was nice. And it was such a pretty day! Windows down, rolling along the beach for a ride... super great day! On our way home, we rode a ferry across the channel, and drove up through Lake Charles, making a big loop to get back home. We stopped at Darrell's so I could have my first taste of a Darrell's Special. Pretty delicious! (Next time, I'll have them hold the jalapeños. ;o)) And yes, I'll take you there when you visit us!

Gator 1 - he got shy just as I was taking the pic

Gator 2 - this one was about 6 feet long