June Recap

I’ve been loving these “new” personal life updates! Many of you had requested more personal life updates in my most recent reader survey (you can see the summary of the survey results here). So, I’ve been trying to make that happen because of requests, but I’m also enjoying these updates just for the fact that they’re helping me journal a bit about life! 

June has been a busy, fun month! But just like I said about the month of May, it’s been a wonderful month and all of these fun experiences have helped me to reclaim joy lately.

RELATED: June // What I’m Looking Forward To

Now that I look back on my post at the start of June, I’m seeing there aren’t that many things I listed that I was looking forward to! (That kind of surprises me!) But June ended up being filled with so many great things.

June Recap:

The school year ended. June 2nd was the official last day of school, although we teachers had several more days the next week for teacher inservice and work days. Can you believe Bjorn and I have been teaching for 4 years already? We can hardly believe it some days – we’ve now been teaching for the same length of time we were in college! 🙂 I loved my group of kids this year (I was the 2nd grade Title I teacher) and I do miss them, but it’s wonderful to finally be on break, of course! The teacher I share a classroom with and I did a couple extra summer work days after the teacher workshop days to spend time organizing the classroom before summer truly hit.

It has been so nice having slower mornings with Bjorn most days this past month. By “slower mornings,” I don’t actually mean sleeping in super late, but we do enjoy sleeping in past 5:40, haha! It’s wonderful to just sit downstairs in the living room and read or blog while Bjorn makes coffee and I watch the golden sunlight soak into the room.

We had our gender reveal party! What a special day that was! We had 17 family members over and the whole house was swathed in pink and blue decorations for the occasion. There were a lot of blue and pink treats, too! I’ll share more about the party later on the blog, but we really enjoyed the whole day. Bjorn and I popped a giant black balloon with confetti inside and the confetti was….PINK!!

RELATED: Baby Olson is a….

My parents helped us with some home projects! What a blessing to have family who will spend a day or two working like crazy on the house! Bjorn and I are so grateful. My parents stayed with us for a couple days when they came down for the gender reveal party. They put up a railing for our stairs (we have one bathroom downstairs, and we sleep upstairs, so this really helps me feel safer as a pregnant mama walking up and down our steep steps during the night!). They also installed a new bathroom sink (I am in LOVE with the new one!) and accomplished all sorts of other wonderful cleaning projects! Bjorn and I are are so very thankful for the help as we anticipate baby’s arrival in the fall!

We started some fun nursery planning. I’ve painted baby’s dresser, created a little “mood board” for her nursery inspiration, and we ordered (and then assembled) her new glider! It’ll be nice to chip away on readying her nursery over the summer. Our house has 3 bedrooms and for the longest time, we’ve used the rooms upstairs as our master bedroom, our office/library, and the guest bedroom (you can see glimpses of it in this post). Now, with baby girl coming, we are moving the guest bed into the office/library and turning that room into a library guest bedroom 🙂 and the small original guest bedroom will be her nursery! Whew! Lots of furniture reshuffling.

RELATED: Week 23-24 Bumpdate

^^ How cute is this little fairy garden in a tea cup?! ^^

We’ve enjoyed some summer events in our town. Bjorn’s the mayor, so there’s always a lot going on in that respect – meetings, events to plan and supervise, and people knocking on our door with their concerns or questions. 🙂 The Friends of the Library held a fairy garden making class, and I made a couple little fairy gardens in a tea cup! It was such a cute idea! On the last day of school (June 2nd), Bjorn and I had another Teen Movie Night in the library’s community room, complete with pizza, pop, popcorn, and about 15 teenagers from the community. (That was actually a low number for us – we’ve had 25 before!) There’s also an adult summer reading program going on at the library and Bjorn and I are working at filling out our Book Bingo! Bjorn is way more strategic about it than I am, and he’s powering through more books than me right now. (I think I may be a bit distracted by my nursery daydreaming, haha.)

Wedding prep has really ramped up! We had a bachelorette party for my sister-in-law a couple weeks ago, which was such a blast. Among other things, we girls did an escape room together and it was amazing! If you haven’t done an escape room before, you’ll have to find one near you, grab some friends/coworkers, and give it a shot! Talk about an adrenaline rush. My sister-in-law gets married this weekend, so we’ve been praying for good weather and finalizing details. It will be a beautiful, special day. (And thank goodness, my bridesmaid dress fits this baby bump! A huge thank-you to my amazing seamstress, Rita!) This weekend will be full of family and joy. We are all very excited for Amy and Tyler!

RELATED: Amy & Tyler’s Engagement Session

^^ Here’s an example of one of the customized letters! ^^

We celebrated Bjorn’s first Father’s Day. 🙂 He was so so sweet in celebrating Mother’s Day back in May, so I wanted to do something special for him. BB (that’s what we often call our baby girl) and I got him a Papa Bear shirt, but my favorite gift was this Tiny Letter idea from Leafcutter Designs. Leafcutter Designs creates the CUTEST tiny little packages and even customized letters, so I had BB “write” her daddy the world’s tiniest letter. (I thought it was fitting because she is still so tiny!) It turned out so darling and Bjorn really liked receiving a tiny, love-filled note from his little baby girl!

Our scorpion had babies. Yeah, you read that right. You probably saw in our May Recap that Bjorn was given a scorpion from his 7th graders. 🙂 We named it Constantine (because it’s an emperor scorpion, of course) and then one day, Bjorn called downstairs to me that the scorpion is going to need a new name…because it’s a girl scorpion! I will not be including photos here because the babies aren’t super cute (haha!) but I have to say, Bjorn’s excited because once they’re old enough, we can sell them back to the pet store! I told him the scorpion is the gift that keeps on giving. 😉

 We went to a play that one of Bjorn’s students was in. The play was called “Doc Doc Goose” and poked fun at all the mishaps and injuries that would obviously occur in all of Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes (for real – have you ever looked them up? The scenarios are downright crazy/scary!). We enjoyed a date night in small-town Iowa that night, complete with discovering a cute Dairy Queen and then attending this community play in a playhouse set down in the middle of fields of farmland! It was a gorgeous night.

I got to spend time catching up with friends! This past school year was totally insane, and I usually don’t make it up to the Twin Cities often (and when we do, those weekends get booked with army and errands!). But in June, I was able to make a few coffee dates work. It is such a blessing to spend time reconnecting with people! I met up with a college roommate, a friend I met via this blog (who now lives near Bjorn and me!), a woman I used to babysit for, and another friend came down here to southern MN for an afternoon. I am so grateful for all of these women!

Rodan + Fields is having a great sale right now! It is amazing to work for a company whose products I believe in…and a sale makes it that much easier to jump in and try them out! 🙂 Right now, if you buy a skincare regimen + Lash Boost (the product my preferred customers are SO loving!), you can get 20% off the total price! And then any of my new preferred customers will get an additional 10% off, plus a free gift from me! (I just get so excited about these sales, I had to share with you all!) If you’re interested or just plain curious, shoot me an email at justbeeblog@gmail.com.

What have you been up to this June? Have you had a good month – whether busy, or relaxing? 🙂