Gracefully Living

A weekend in Charleston!

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Hi friends!! I finally found the time to sit down and go through all my pictures from my recent weekend trip to Charleston! Charleston is one of my favorite places to visit. I love the shops, restaurants, and overwhelming history. Although it was crazy hot, my family and I had a great time celebrating my dad’s 50th birthday!! I thought I’d share a little about our trip in case your planning a trip to Charleston or you just love it as much as I do!

We got there late Friday night so our trip started Saturday. We stayed at The Inns, and y’all wow it was such an exciting place to stay. They have 3 inns in Charleston that are renovated old, historical homes! I found them on Airbnb and thought it would be a fun place to stay to feel a little more like a Charleston local. Anyway, we stayed at 154 Spring street and we loved every minute of it. So much space which is a priority in this family of five. It was also so clean and decorated so beautifully! It was a short four block walk to king street and 5-minute walk to Hominy grill, one of my favorite breakfast spots! I’d highly recommend staying here if you want to stay in a little piece of Charleston history with a great amount of space. We stayed on the second floor. We never saw the guests staying on the first or third so it was almost like a private home. Each floor has its own locked door, so it truly is your own space. I’ll include pictures of our floor below! It was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath!
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The thing about Trust

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Hi Friends! This past week I worked at VBS at my church. I had a great time learning all the fun songs and hanging out with some pretty cool third graders. One kid in particular was able to remind me a little bit about what trusting Jesus looks like because I seemed to have forgotten for a second. So one of our activities was to cut a single piece of paper so that we could both fit through it. At first, I was thinking oh goodness this is going to be a mess. I couldn’t see how this was going to work. But the little boy was excited and wanted to start cutting. He was ready to give it his best shot. I told him to wait and let’s think about it for a second because I wanted to get it right. He was still eager to cut so I eventually decided to just let him go for it. He started cutting and I watched as he cut in a way that opened the paper so that we could both fit through it. I never thought of cutting it like that. We moved on to the next activity and that was that. Though today during church I kept thinking about this moment. And eventually I realized that God might have been trying to teach me something through that tiny little moment.

I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to mess up. Unfortunate since that does not keep it from happening. Messing up is a part of life. I just don’t like it. I don’t ever want others to be upset with me, which again is unfortunate because we simply cannot control others. I like to take things slow. I’m indecisive and I like to wait to know everything’s going to work out before moving forward. I’m not a quick decision maker, I like to know that ultimately, I know what I’m doing before I begin anything. In some ways, this is a good quality. It typically keeps me from making bad decisions, although it definitely still does happen. So while I trust the Lord, when I’m presented with a situation that seems a little risky I’m quick to step back and question God as to what the heck is happening. I’m so focused on getting things right and figuring out how this fits into the plan that sometimes I forget to just trust God and live. It’s really so simple looking at it like that, just trusting and living.
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Animal Kingdom Lodge Recap!

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Hey friends!! I hope y’all are having the happiest start to summer! For the first weekend of my summer break, my family and I took a little staycation at Disney’s Animal kingdom lodge! My family and I are big Disney fans so we take the opportunity to get out there whenever we can!! We have annual passes and sometimes I swear we live there. Anyways, we decided to book a special room to celebrate the end of the school year. My dad surprised my sisters and I with a Savannah view room, meaning from the balcony of our hotel room we could see zebras, giraffes, gazelles, pelicans, crazy kinds of birds, and many other African animals. This was such a treat and a once in a lifetime thing for us and we were blown away by the craziness of the situation. I mean where else in Florida or anywhere in the US really can you look out your hotel window and see giraffes! We obviously fell in love with the room and the hotel its self. I’d have to say Animal kingdom lodge, the grand Floridian, and the beach club all tie for 1st place of my absolute favorite Disney resorts.

I would highly recommend staying at any of these hotels but especially Animal Kingdom Lodge for a staycation, vacation, or even just a day trip. Even if you don’t opt for the savannah view room, you can find the animals all over the resort with plenty of viewing opportunities and sweet cast members who would love to tell you everything they know about the animals!! AKL also has so many dining options. I’ve only tried Boma, which is their buffet style restaurant featuring American and African courses. I went for breakfast and mostly enjoyed the Mickey waffles but either way enjoyed it thoroughly and would go back! They also have a restaurant called Sanaa in which you dine with a view of the African animals! It’s on my must try list for sure! For this trip though we spent most of our meals at the Mara which is their quick service location where we happily snacked on flatbread pizzas, cupcakes, and pretzels and hummus. What a combo I know. I’ll include a picture of the rose gold cupcake my sister Karleigh and I tried below!
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Why do we let social media control us?

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Social media is a blessing and a curse. With its good comes it bad. While it provides us with things like keeping up with friends, finding places to travel, getting inspiration, etc. I find that most of these things are just excuses for us to justify it. I mean not all social media is negative. Sometimes it really can be used for good, like discovering hidden talents and sharing the good and important things in our lives. But other times it is a place where we can feel very negative about ourselves, very easily. It is most always a highlight reel. We share the moments of bliss. Not the ones where we are hurting. Which isn’t a bad thing because privacy is good, but from the outside when we see these perfect pictures we instantly wonder what we’re doing wrong. Why does my stomach not look like that, I want her hair, her outfits are so much cuter than mine, and list goes on. It’s an instant comparison and so often unconscious effort. It’s a picture after picture highlight reel comparison that drains the confidence from us- sometimes without us even noticing.

Friends, why do we let these pictures matter so much to us? The other day I was thinking about Instagram pictures and I suddenly wondered why it mattered so much to me. Why did I care so much about what picture I was going to post? Why did I want more likes and more comments? It’s a never ending unsatisfying battle with honestly no point. Why do we let social media control us? We want the perfect picture, with the best lighting, angels, and so on. We can sometimes get so caught up in what our pictures are going to look like that we forget to live in the moment. Recently I was on social media and an event I was not a part of kept popping up all over, and it was drastically impacting my mood. Instead of enjoying where I was, I was upset about where I wasn’t. SO finally, I just deleted it. For one weekend, I was social media free and being honest it was so good. I’ve always seen people say they did this, but could never bring myself to do it. I think it’s nice to remind ourselves to stop living through others and to live where we are. It made me remember that pictures are not always and mostly never the full story and that comparison is most definitely the thief of joy.

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How do you want to finish?

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Life is full of choices. We make choices every day, sometimes so often, we don’t even realize we’re making a choice. In the mornings, we make the choice to get out of bed early or sleep in, we chose what we want to eat, and who we want to spend the day with. But sometimes the choices we make run deeper than the day to day routine. Sometimes these deeper choices determine who we are going to be. I think we tend to picture life as a race. And in this race, it is easy to want to be ahead. People will do whatever it takes to beat the person behind them. And I think sometimes in the process of focusing so much on winning we forget to remember how we want to finish and who we want to finish with. When that race is over, does getting first place necessarily mean you really won? When you’re standing at the finish line, who’s standing with you, and how are they looking at you?

People like to win. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just important to remember how you win. When that finish line is crossed or the last point is scored, will you feel like you really deserve it or like you cheated your way to the top? When I finish my life race, I want people to remember me as someone who was kind. I want to have a family who loves me and a well lived happy life. I want to focus less on the wordly ideas of first place. Like having tons of money, the perfect body, or an A in every class. There is nothing wrong with these things, I just simply want them to matter less than the important things. Like faith, hope, and love.

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