July // What I’m Looking Forward To

I’m blown away by the fact that it’s July already!! Can you believe it? Summer’s officially here and we’re loving it. You can catch up on past personal posts below:

April // What I’m Looking Forward To — April Recap
May // What I’m Looking Forward To — May Recap
June // What I’m Looking Forward To — June Recap

Here’s what I’m looking forward to this month.

What I’m Looking Forward to in July:

1 // The 4th of July! (Aka, my half birthday!) I’ve always LOVED the 4th of July. In the town I grew up in, we always had a 2:30 pm parade (complete with area marching bands, countless floats, candy, and a 4-plane flyover) and 10 pm fireworks over a lake. The 4th is filled with good memories for me, and I just love celebrating the freedoms we have in this country, thanks to those who defend us. (It’s also pretty fun to have awesome food, celebrations, and fireworks on my half birthday, haha!) The communities around here in southern Minnesota don’t all have a 4th of July parade, but there are certainly ways to find parades and fireworks on this holiday!

2 // Making more progress on house projects. Baby girl coming in the fall has been the major impetus for all these home improvement projects. It is so wonderful to be chipping away on our to-do list to make sure all is ready before she arrives and we already have a new bathroom sink and stair railing (like I mentioned in this recap post). My parents and brother helped us out even more this weekend, with projects like scraping and repainting any old window sills, sanding down the doors upstairs, and a lot of other organizational tasks! Our office/library room is slowly transitioning over into being our new guest bedroom, while the guest room (from this post) will be transformed into a baby girl’s nursery! I really appreciate my parents’ and brother’s eye for what needs to get done, and we are so grateful for the hard work they’re putting into this house!

3 // Baby-related collaborations coming up! Many of you responded in my most recent reader survey (see the results of it here) that you’d like to see more product reviews as well as more posts on motherhood or pregnancy. Well, you’re going to get both of those soon! 🙂 Besides the bumpdates posts I’ve been sharing lately, I’ve got some fun baby-related product collaborations coming up and I can’t wait to share about these products!

4 // Travels with my husband. As teachers, we love using our summers as a chance to travel and adventure together! Last summer involved our big Europe trip. We left right around this time last year and spent 2 amazing weeks in London, Paris, and road-tripping throughout France and Belgium! (You can read all about our trip with the “Europe” tag on this blog.) This summer won’t involve international travel, but we’re still super excited. Just like last summer’s 2 weeks at Fort Knox in Kentucky, I get to come along for some more army training Bjorn has this summer…this time, at Fort Lee in Virginia!

If you haven’t been a Just Bee reader for very long, then you may not know this, but Fort Lee and just Virginia in general is one of our very favorite places in the world! We got married in March 2014 and then Bjorn had army training at Fort Lee for that entire summer (actually for 4 months) and we got to be there together! As an officer, he typically gets evenings and weekends off, so we would spend that time traveling and soaking in sights. Since we had gotten married as teachers during the school year, we considered our summer in Virginia to be our honeymoon. We have such good memories of our time in Virginia and we are seriously excited to be returning for a month this summer! My time there will be a lot more low-key than Bjorn’s since he’ll actually be completing a course during the day, but we’ll be fitting in a lot of adventuring on the side. 🙂

5 // Just Bee’s blogiversary! I started Just Bee in July 2014, when Bjorn and I were in Virginia for the summer. It’s CRAZY to think that 3 whole years have passed — it’s like life has come full circle and I’ll be back at Fort Lee celebrating Just Bee’s 3 year anniversary right where it all began! 🙂 I’m thrilled to say that I love blogging just as much, if not more, than I did when I first decided to take blogging seriously. There will be some fun blogging-related posts coming up on the blog this month, and I’m looking forward to celebrating this milestone with you all!

There are so many fun things coming up this month! Keep your eyes open, as always, for a recap post at the end of the month!

If you missed any past personal life update posts, you can access them here:

April // What I’m Looking Forward To — April Recap
May // What I’m Looking Forward To — May Recap
June // What I’m Looking Forward To — June Recap

Have a wonderful 4th, and a great month of July, friends!