top five friday.

#1 - being with family. this has by far been my favorite part about this week. i hate that i've had to work every day, but gosh is it sure fun coming home to a full house. i'm so sad they are all leaving tomorrow! we just don't get to see them enough.

#2 - another trip to disneyland! that place makes me so happy. even though it rained the entire day. i'm slightly glad that it did though, otherwise i would have had no reason to buy this baby:

and yes, us girls got matching ones. because we are that awesome.

my feet were completely pruned from being wet all day long {huge pet peeve}, but i couldn't help loving every second of being there. lines were super short too, so that made it easier to enjoy things.

#3 - the griffith observatory. i honestly had no idea that this thing even existed. arika wanted to take pictures of the hollywood sign and google maps told me this was the best place to do it. so we drove up the mountain, saw a coyote on the way, battled people for parking, and finally reached our destination. it gave us a super pretty view:

and thanks to arika, i learned that this place is actually the scene for one of my favorite movies. look familiar?

#4 - shamrock shakes. i read an article the other day that these things are to die for, so i made sure we tried one on our way home. i was not disappointed.

if you like mint ice cream at all, you will love one of these. definitely worth the couple bucks.

#5 - beach day and a campfire. zachary rented wetsuits and boogie boards for he and his brother, alex, and took a swim in the ocean last night.

they couldn't feel their feet or control their hands by the time they were done, but i think they had a good time. not to mention, they were basically swimming with real live sea otters. who does that?? it was awesome. we then made ourselves a cute little fire and had fun eating hot dogs and s'mores, while telling ghost stories.

happy friday!

-sarah

top five friday.

#1 - beach camping! our cute friends, devin and whitney invited us to go camping last weekend and goodness was it fun. we stayed up way later than we should have and ate way more junk food than was necessary, but that's what makes camping fun right?

i'm so glad these two will be living close to us when we move to cheyenne. i see a lot of dinner dates and shopping trips in our future.

we woke up and this was our view. it. was. awesome.

#2 - the barbie and ken wedding photoshoot. i saw this on pinterest and had to check it out. maybe i'm just weird, but i was dying laughing at some of the pictures. they are so spot on! need more motivation to look at it yourself? here's a sneak peek:

so funny to me.

#3 - celebrating pi{e} day. i know i did a whole post on this already, but it was one of my favorite things from the week. so i'm sharing it again. also, i feel kind of proud that i made a pumpkin pie. i know they're not that hard, but i've never done it before, so it was kind of an exciting moment in the averett household. they actually didn't turn out half bad!

so little and cute. i love it.

#4 - these shoes:

i'm a flats and flip flops kind of girl, through and through. the only time i wear lace up shoes is to go running {which turns out, that's not very often}. but after all the trips we've made and theme parks we've been to, i'm sick of wanting to chop my feet of when we're done because they're too tire from trying to hold my flip flops on or my heels are rubbed raw. it's time to invest in a pair of shoes that will make it possible to enjoy my days. and these are the ones i want. that's all.

#5 - and finally, what i love most about this week is the fact that right at this very moment, our family is on their way to come spend an entire week with us. i'm so excited i can hardly stand it! this is going to be the longest day ever. we're meeting them in LA tonight and i cannot wait!

happy friday folks!

have any fun plans for the weekend?

-sarah

oh how pinteresting: pie day.

happy pie day!!

don't know what that is?

i guess that's a good thing because it proves you're not a nerd.

or that you've never taken a math class {which might not be so good}.

growing up with a mother that was a math teacher and having taken a billion math classes myself, this has always been a somewhat entertaining day for me.

today is march 14 or 3/14.

pi = 3.14159265...blah blah blah. {commonly rounded to 3.14}

therefore 3/14 = pie day.

glad we got that settled.

here are my favorite pie picks on pinterest this week {try saying that ten times fast}:

it was a mistake to look at this before i went on my lunch break.

all i could think about was eating all things sugary.

not good for this girl.

doesn't it look incredible though?

 found here via lisa bozich

is it weird to think that pies are cute?

because these are most definitely cute.

what a genius idea!

can't wait to make these for thanksgiving this year.

found here via shelby lynn

i haven't made many pies, but the few that i've done have always been sealed off with just the pinch and squeeze method.

that takes enough coordination as it is.

i'm amazed at the talent of some people in making their pies look like this!

found here via leigh sondrup

not all pies are desserty ya know.

spaghetti pie was a favorite of zachary's growing up.

it reminds him of his mom.

all the more reason to eat it in our house. 

found here via leigh

pie pops.

what? 

whoever thought of this had a lot of time on their hands.

still awesome, nonetheless.
found here via cassidy perry

i'm craving a key lime pie.

but i'm so thirsty.

whatever shall i do?

problem solved: a key lime pie shake.
sounds tasty.

found here via michelle bazinet horgan

to top it all off, here's a fabulous dish to bake all of these wonderful pies in.

look at the ruffles on that thing.

love.

if i didn't think it was absurd to pay $40 for some bakingware, i'd go buy it today.

oh well.

found here via rachel russell 

any other pie day supporters out there?

-sarah

p.s. want to do your own 'oh how pinteresting wednesday' post?
link up with michelle here:

top five friday.

#1 - i know i already talked about it, but disneyland was definitely my favorite thing that happend this week.

there's nothing better than a visit to the happiest place on earth.

#2 - this song:

i'm addicted to it. it was on the radio to and from work yesterday and it made my day. wanna hear something even better? thanks to my friend nichole and her awesome finds on her blog, i just bought this song and the rest of its album for 25 cents. 25 cents! i spend that much on a gumball at the mall. i'm in lady antebellum heaven right now.

#3 - reaching goals. remember when i said that one of mine and zachary's new year's resolutions was to run a mile for every day of the year? well, i've been failing miserably. i haven't run seven miles in a week once yet. it adds up quick, so i'm behind by like a month. that was until yesterday. i have 7.24 miles completed for this week and it's only friday! i can't tell ya how good it feels to accomplish a goal that you've set for yourself.

#4 - colored jeans. i think this is one of my favorite fashion trends as of late, especially with spring right around the corner. nothing screams happiness like bright colors to me. that's why i picked me up a pair of these last weekend:

i haven't tried them out yet, but boy am i excited to!

#5 - cruise browsing. zachary has been dying to go on a cruise since the day i met him, so we're going to make it happen this year. we originally wanted to go to europe, but that's not going to happen for a few years now i think. then we wanted to go to the caribbean in may after he graduates from training, but i don't think that's going to happen either. so now, we are looking at august/september time. my question is, for those of you that have been on a cruise, do you prefer the bahamas or the cayman islands? i haven't been able to find a cruise that does both, but i've heard great things about each of them. right now we are looking at one that would go to key west, fl, grand cayman islands, and ocho rios, jamaica or one that would go to half moon cay, the bahamas, st. thomas, usvi, san juan, puerto rico, and grand turk. thoughts, opinions, suggestions, advice?

thank you for stopping by!

-sarah

oh how pinteresting: funnies.

there's nothing i love more than funny things on the internet.

here are a few that i've pinned recently:

only true star wars fans would appreciate this.
so funny.
found here via shann

zachary and i laughed for a good couple minutes after reading this.

it totally sounds just like it!

found here via niki hirning

i did a double take the first time i saw this.

i thought there's no way someone would really go to a work party naked.

then i realized exactly what i was looking at.
couldn't stop laughing.

found here via brittany mason

nuff said.

found here via hannah

i am guilty of so many of these.
especially the texting at a red light scenario.
i swear it's never green unless i'm texting!
found here

i don't normally like to draw attention to large people.

i think i would die if i saw my picture being made fun of around the internet.

but this was too good not to share.
looks just like him!

found here

this couldn't have been drawn any better.

what a hilarious misunderstanding.

found here via makamae

hope you take some time to laugh today.
happy wednesday!

-sarah

the big dl.

if you think zachary looks the least bit upset in this picture, it's probably because he is. this was taken right after we walked all the way to disneyland, only to find out that it was closed. yes, closed. i was shocked too. apparently, there was a suspicious package found near the entrance, so they called in the police department and bomb squad and wouldn't let anyone in the park. turns out it was some college student that was geocaching and hid a streamer in a pvc pipe. what a smart kid. only after we decided to drive home and were 20 minutes away did we see on twitter that they were letting people in again. we weren't going to let a beautiful day go to waste, so we turned right around. as inconvenient as it was, the whole fiasco actually worked to our advantage. it caused a lot of people to go home, so things weren't nearly as crowded as we were expecting.

the moment we walked in to the park i felt just like a child again. all i wanted to do was skip around all day long. i won't bore you with all the little details because i'm sure the majority of you have already been to disneyland {if you haven't, you need to reconsider what you are doing with your life} and know the joy that it creates in your soul, but i will leave you with a few pictures from our magical day:

 {thunder mountain railroad}

{i sure got a keeper}

 {some random goat on a barrel. we thought it was funny.}

{big star wars lover right here}

{getting ready to go on the star tours ride}

{i don't think i could finish this sucker, even if i wanted to.}

one of the best parts about the entire day was seeing this guy. {if nobody in this picture looks familiar to you, then you need to get with the times and start watching 'modern family'. funniest. show. ever.} we walked past him and zachary turned to me with his eyes real big and said, "that was dylan from 'modern family'!!" we then proceeded to chase him {he must have been walking really fast because we had a hard time catching up} and snapped this picture. he apologized for being in the way, but little did he know he was the reason we were taking the picture in the first place. we are kicking ourselves now for not just stopping him and getting in the picture too. it was still pretty dang sweet though.

it sure was one incredible day. i'm already gearing up to go again in two weeks! can't wait.

-sarah

top five friday.

#1 - exploring santa maria. every sunday, we like to go for a walk. but since it's been kind of cold this week, we decided to go for a drive instead. we thought we'd check out the little nooks and crannies of our lovely town and take a drive in the hills. we eventually found ourselves on a narrow road that was overgrown with weeds. we reached a gate and didn't see any 'no trespassing' signs, so we continued to proceed. we came upon what i think used to be a part of the base, but isn't in use anymore. all that was left was this:

can't you just picture a couple of zombies clawing their way out of that door? i was kind of expecting that to happen the entire time we were there. i was slightly terrified, but mostly thrilled. glad we made it out alive.

#2 - frozen tv dinners. i've always had it in my mind that only lazy people eat them and that they're a sorry excuse for real cooking. i'm here to say that i was oh so very wrong. i've tried time and time again to shed a couple extra pounds, but it's so stinkin' hard counting calories in homemade meals. after reading about the main keys to losing weight, i realized that frozen dinners are a lot more genius that i give them credit for. they help with portion control, they're super easy to count calories for, most of them have a good balance of protein and veggies, and they're surprisingly delicious. my favorite is the smart ones: chicken enchiladas suiza.

mmm, delicious!

#3 - blanket beds. since we made a goal not to watch tv this past week {mission accomplished}, both zachary and i have taken a serious liking to reading. a couple days ago, it was warming up a bit and we wanted to read outside. so we took every single blanket we had in our house and dumped them on the back patio.

it was a bit colder than i was expecting, so i had to bundle up a little. i ended up falling asleep while waiting for zachary to join me because it was just so dang comfortable. 

#4 - this video:

"shut up. sit down. i love you."

"fix yo' face." "you fix yo' hand and stop poppin' me"

"hair. face. hair. face."

it's just too good not to share. love it all.

#5 - and lastly, after saving every penny this last year {literally}, we can finally cross off something on our bucket list: save enough money in change to buy a ticket to disneyland.

that's $111.75 right there - enough money to buy a ticket and even some to spare. looks like this weekend is going to be spent at the happiest place on earth! maybe we'll catch a glimpse of the modern family cast while we're at it...

have a great weekend ya'll!

-sarah

good-bye abu's.

not very many things can get me out of bed in the morning.
i love sleep.
i don't know how zachary wakes up for work so early day after day.
every morning he comes in to give me the usual good-bye kiss and back tickle, while he's lucky if i even open my eyes as i mumble my 'have a good day' and 'i love you'.
today was different though.
i jumped out of bed in no time because i had to take this picture:

it's flight suit day ya'll!!
and dang is he good lookin' or what?
i'm so proud of this man.
he's got a lot on his plate and is learning so much, but he still makes time to be the wonderful husband that he is.
i couldn't ask for more.

-sarah