Matt, Riese, and I are excited because on Sunday we are off to the beach – the Outer Banks – for our annual trip with Matt’s family!
We were supposed to leave Wednesday to stay a few extra days at a hotel on the front end but decided to cancel that for obvious reasons. So instead we’ll be heading right to our rented house and keeping to ourselves for the week! I’m excited for some beach and pool time and a break from our normal routine.
I’m also going to take next week off of work, which will be a really nice treat. A blog post is ready for you for Wednesday, but I won’t be posting other than that until we are back. You can see what we are up to on Instagram if you want a preview. 🙂
Since we were supposed to be leaving Wednesday, Matt had requested Wednesday + Thursday off and decided to go ahead and keep it that way.
I took Wednesday as a full workday for myself while he hung out with Riese – it was so nice to have some extended, dedicated time to catch up – and yesterday I worked in the afternoon but decided to take the morning off so we could take another family bike ride!
See the Washington Monument peeking out in that photo above?
We biked from our place to the Four Mile Run Trail and took that onto the Mt. Vernon Trail. We went north a few miles and stopped at Gravelly Point, which is a cool area where you can watch planes fly overhead! Riese was fascinated.
We went past the main area and set up in an empty area right on the water so we could have our picnic lunch.
Matt made us sandwiches: leftover chicken + cheese + avocado + mayo + arugula. Yummy!
(More ideas in this post: healthy sandwich recipes.)
We also had some unpictured carrots, grapes, pickles, and cheddar bunnies. 🙂
It was hot out but nice in the shade, and the views of the water were so pretty! I hadn’t been down here in awhile and missed it!
Here are some other random highlights (food and otherwise) from the week:
I had 6 inches cut off my hair!
It was time – it was driving me crazy because it was so heavy and hot, and I didn’t want to deal with crazy long hair for the beach with the ocean and pool situation.
This is the shortest I’ve had it in as long as I can remember – maybe since grad school when I went through a shorter hair phase?
They aren’t blow drying hair at the salon right now, so you show up with clean, dry hair and then they flat iron it and cut it when it’s super straight.
It’s fun having really straight hair because I never usually do – we will see how it looks and how short it is once I wash it and it puffs back up! Definitely riding the straight hair out for as long as I can though thanks to my favorite dry shampoo (affiliate link – use code fannetastic for 10% off your entire first order – I also love their baby balm, nature bug spray, and soothing serum – helps my rosacea a ton).
The salon was really empty, they checked temperatures on the way in, and everyone wore a mask 100% of the time inside (I took it off for the picture above since I was outside and not near anyone). They were cleaning everything like crazy too which was reassuring.
Back to the food, we had some yummy grain bowls for lunch one day with all sorts of odds and ends from the fridge + pantry:
We also had quesadillas and salad for another meal:
And one night we actually decided to go out to dinner at a restaurant! We were outside the entire time and they had everything super distanced table-wise.
We started with salads/broccoli and then I had the wings – random dinner but it’s what I was in the mood for! It was so nice to have a night off from dishes…
We had some of the leftovers (plus leftovers from a pasta + meat sauce night we had recently) the next night for dinner – clean out the fridge night!
Last night, we had a salmon flatbread Sun Basket dinner – Riese really liked brushing garlicky oil on the flatbread:
It was yummy!
Matt seasoned the salmon with a little salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and garlic powder and then pan seared it. Really good flavor combo!
Have a great holiday weekend and a nice week next week, friends!
If you want some recipe inspiration for the 4th of July, here are some posts to check out:
