This past weekend I was in Philadelphia with my family to celebrate my younger brother's wedding.



I got into town Friday afternoon just in time for the rehearsal at the church, and I have to admit the whole weekend was such a whirlwind of fun that I woke up Sunday morning wondering how it was all over already.



The rehearsal itself was a little bit on the earlier side, so afterward my brother and his now-wife hosted a happy hour back at the hotel bar for guest coming in from out of town. It was great to get a chance to catch up with a lot of my family members who were in town for the weekend that I hadn't seen in a while.

It was also really nice to catch up with a lot of my brother's friends from college that I probably haven't seen since they all graduated back in 2010.

Happy hour was followed by a delicious Italian dinner, and then my brother, some of his groomsmen and I grabbed one more drink at a bar down the street before we all turned in for the night.

I was up bright and early to meet up with my brother's wife and the rest of the bridesmaids to have our hair and makeup done. It was such a fun morning hanging out with Justine and the other bridesmaids before we headed back to the hotel to get dressed and hop in the limo...





There aren't really words for this limo...it was massive...

The wedding ceremony itself was really nice. I cried a bunch because I am a sap...and because my baby brother was getting married...and because Justine looked so beautiful...and yea...really because I am a sap.

Afterward the bridal party piled back in the limo for pictures around Philly. Tom and Justine's photographer put a single shot from the session on Facebook already. Based on this one alone, I cannot wait to see all the others.



Then it was back to the hotel for cocktail hour and the reception.



My bridal party partner and I entered to an Eagles chant (which I thought was most excellent, and I think many of the guests felt the same way).



And then I spent the rest of the night dancing nonstop. My feet still hurt today from all the dancing.



It's crazy to think the wedding weekend is over. I feel like I've heard Tom and Justine and my parents talk about it and plan things for it for so long, and now it's done. I don't think things could have gone much better though. Everyone I talked to had such a good time, and I know I'm really excited to finally have a sister (which has pretty much been a life-long dream of mine that my mom squashed every year since I was about four years old ha). If I write any more about that I will probably start crying again out of sappiness, so I'm just going to leave it at this: I'm excited to have a sister. Justine is wonderful, and my brother's a really lucky guy, and their wedding weekend couldn't have been more perfect.

The end.

(P.S. I am off to Iceland in a few hours with my friend Meghan. I will have some excellent travel updates for you when I get back and hope to post some fun Snapchat stories while I'm there!)

Well I survived.



After a broken training cycle because of my foot injury, I wasn't sure what to expect of this race. I missed about three weeks of training, and my longest run pre-race was only nine miles.

So the night before the race, I went to bed a big bundle of nerves. I just didn't have a great feeling about the race, plus it was only going to be in the low 20s at the start of the race -- easily one of the coldest days we've had all winter in DC.

Because the DC Metro is a hot mess, the race organizers pushed back the start of the half marathon until 8:30 a.m. This was awesome on so many fronts. It meant I got to sleep in until 6:30 (though, I definitely woke up at 6 because of nerves), and the sun was up and shining well before I had to leave my apartment.

When I got to the race start, I hit the porta-potties and then made my way over to my corral hoping to spot Emily and Megan. I found them minutes before the race started -- just in time to snap a quick picture!



Then we all hopped in our respective corrals. Megan told me she hadn't been able to train as much as she hoped to for the race either and her goal was to keep up with me. If you used to read Megan's blog back in the day, you know this is LOL-laughable because Megan is so much faster than I am.

But we started together and actually ended up running the whole time together, and it was so nice to have a race buddy. Normally I really hate running with other people because it adds so much extra pressure, but I think because our joint goal was mutual survival it worked out so well.

The first five or six miles went pretty well. We were running at a relaxed pace and chatting about random things -- work, Megan's wedding planning, etc. Around mile 4 the road really started slanting to one side badly and I could feel my entire left leg freak out, but eventually that settled.

When we got to the massive hill to climb from Rock Creek Parkway into Woodley Park, Megan and I took our first walk break of the course. That hill is a brutal biatch, and we both decided it was smarter to try to conserve energy than plow forward up it.

The second half of the course is much more enjoyable than the first half. We ran through tons of different neighborhoods as we wound our way through Adams Morgan over to Howard and eventually down to Capitol Hill. There were way more spectators out in these parts of the race -- handing out food and champagne, beer and whiskey.



We passed Megan's fiancee around mile 10.5, and he biked to meet us a few other places in the last couple miles. It was nice to see his friendly face because Megan and I were both struggling at that point.

Mile 11 seemed to drag on for forever. Everything in the lower part of my body hurt. My hips, my quads, my calves. Putting one foot in front of the other was miserable. Megan and I kept counting down how much running we had left as we tried to motivate ourselves along.

The course finished on a slight uphill, which felt especially cruel on Saturday.

My friend's parents caught this great shot of Megan and I running up the hill at the very end of the race. They said I was smiling the whole time, which to me seems crazy because everything hurt so much, I don't know how I managed a smile.



Perhaps I was just so excited to be almost done.

I also heard some of my other friends cheering for me right before the finish. It was so nice to see their smiling faces and then be done.

Megan and I crossed the finish line in slightly over 2:10. My official time was 2:10:26, which works out to just faster than a 10 min per mile average. Not too shabby all things considered.

Despite my lack of training, my horrible nerves going into the race, and the freezing temperatures, I think this was one of more pleasant races I've run lately. All credit to Megan for that. Having a buddy to run this race with made all the difference in the world.



A big, big thank you to everyone who came out to watch and cheer on Saturday morning. It was freezing cold, and I would have wanted to be in my bed if I wasn't running. So thank you -- you all are the best.

Last year, I made it a priority to travel to a bunch of new places I'd never been. I had so much fun that I decided I wanted to continue making travel and exploring new places a priority this year too.



When my best friend found out she was going to be on a six-week work assignment in Nashville, I knew that had to be one of the places I visited this year. I found the one and only free weekend I had the entire month of March, snagged a cheap flight, and Hadass and I jetted off to the land of country music on Saturday morning.



The first thing we did when we got there was indulge in a delicious Southern brunch -- featuring lots of delicious biscuits and some red velvet waffles.



We spent the rest of the day exploring all different parts of Nashville.

We walked along Music Row, where the famous music houses are.



We explored 12 South and hit up the Frothy Monkey for coffee, visited some of the cute shops and strolled through a pretty park.



We took a tour of the Ryman Auditorium, made famous largely because it was the original home of the Grand Ole Opry.



And of course, Saturday night we went to the new home of the Grand Ole Opry to watch a show, followed by some honky tonkin' on Broadway -- where I was reminded that I am not a very good country line dancer, but that it's pretty fun anyway.







Saturday was a super full day, so Sunday was much more mellow.

We actually headed outside of Nashville to visit the charming town of Franklin. We strolled along its main street, which was full of cute little mom and pop shops. It was pretty much picture perfect small town America.

Then we headed back to Nashville and visited the replica of the Parthenon, which was built as part of a centennial celebration. It was super random, but also kind of cool.



Our last big stop of the day before taking Hadass to the airport was a late lunch at the Loveless Cafe, where I demolished some fried chicken and biscuits.

Emily and I also swung by the Bluebird Cafe Sunday evening. The line outside waiting to get in was insane! Clearly the TV show Nashville made that bar super popular.



Seriously I ate so much food on this trip, I was pretty sure I'd only be wearing stretchy pants for weeks. My flight back home was on Monday, and Emily and I stopped a super cute coffee shop for breakfast before heading to the airport.

I never realized Nashville was quite as sprawling as it was. A lot of the things we saw were not walkable to each other, and so we had to drive almost everywhere. I also learned from Emily that Nashville is facing a serious influx in people moving to the region, and the lack of public transportation is a concern for people as more and more traffic comes to the area. It was a different experience for me to see a bigger city this way. I think I'm so used to cities in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic, where all the major stuff is only a short walk away or there is a ton of public transportation to make it easy to get around.

So it was kind of fascinating to see this bigger, popular city that is kind of sprawling.

Even though it was a short trip, it was such a great time, and it was a great excuse to explore a new place with friends!

Man it's been ages since I've done a good book review post, and I'm so excited that I actually have time to read again and can write posts like this again. They're truthfully some of my favorite to write.



I'm going to try to get back on track and do these monthly, but for now, here's a quick look at what I read during the first two months of the year.

Books I read in January

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

This was an awesome book that I couldn't put down. I read most of it in one night and was captivated by the inner workings of the Plumb family. Have a suspicion this will be one of my favorite books of 2017.

The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter

I always love discovering a new author that writes crime/suspense thrillers. I stumbled upon this book because it was recommended in one of my Skimm emails a while back. I loved the twisting plot, and I'm looking forward to reading other books in this series.

Falling by Jane Green

I love Jane Green's story-telling ability, and I loved the characters in this book. But I hated, I mean hated the ending.

[Spoiler alert] One of the main characters dies after falling off a roof -- which was just an ending that hit a little creepily too close to home.

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

This book started rocketing up the best-seller list a couple years ago and a bunch of my single-lady friends read it and said they learned a lot about communication styles. I happened to see the book at the library recently so I picked it up. It was a super quick read, but also super thought-provoking. While it's obviously written for married people, I actually think a ton of the "languages" Chapman talks about can be used in relationships between friends, family members and even coworkers. The book made me think a lot (but not in a bad way), and I really enjoyed that.

High Dive by Jonathan Lee

Too much description, not enough driving action. This book had the promise of being really engaging and grippy, but it just fell totally flat with too much down time and unimportant action between the book's main events.

Books I read in February

Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead

This book started out OK, but it never really picked up the way I hoped it would. I think there were too many stories going on and a couple characters I really just couldn't get in to.

Two By Two by Nicholas Sparks

This wasn't one of my favorite Sparks books. First off it was nearly 500 pages, which is long for any book, but especially a Sparks book. The first 200 plus pages were really depressing because they focused on a crumbling marriage. When we finally hit the point in the book where the wife asked for a divorce, I felt like things started to moderately improve. Overall, I think I enjoyed the booked, but those first 200 pages were a struggle because they were so depressing.

First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies by Kate Andersen Brower

The parts of this book I really enjoyed were the parts where we got to learn how each first lady from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama put their own spin on the office of first lady. I liked the parts that covered their political trips, their own causes and the way they tried to maintain (or not) their own identities in the White House, where they were often overshadowed by their husbands. There were parts of this book though that I thought read a bit like a catty gossip column -- and I just didn't love those parts. Overall though, a good and interesting read about these women and their roles in the White House.

Wow looking back on this list, I read some seriously subpar books in January and February. I'm going to have to make it a goal to stop reading books that suck (I'm looking at you High Dive) rather than try to fight my way through them. Got to embrace what my friend once said, "Life's too short to finish bad books."