My mom brought this dress home for me a few weeks ago after going on vacation with some of her girlfriends in Florida. To say it is perfect a bit of an understatement. We thought we might have to have it altered, but then I tried it on and it fit just right! Thanks for spotting it, Mrs. Burns!

Dress: Gift 

Ring: Charlotte Russe

Bracelet: Finch

Shoes: J.Crew

Lip Color: Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Certainly Red

Nail Color: William Tell Me About OPI

I'm still loving little dresses and pops of neon, but man oh man am I ready for a pair of leggings and some boots. 

Anyone else?

We took a vacation at home this weekend.

Life gets a little crazy sometimes, and my family is particularly bad about taking the lake for granted when things get busy. So when I got this new job, we decided to cancel our annual beach trip and spend a weekend fully soaking up our home and appreciating just how lucky we are to live on the water year-round. We stayed home, hung out together, ate seafood, took a billion pictures, boated everywhere, got in the pool, and sat outside for hours.

  

On Saturday, Sean and Rob set up an old projector and a sheet outside and we watched the Olympics under the stars. Summer nights, fireflies, and a homemade outdoor theater: this is what dreams are made of. 

Hope you had a beautiful weekend, too. Happy Monday!

Happy First Day of The Olympics! I shared this post on Busy Girl earlier this summer, but now that the Olympics are really about to kick off, I thought it fitting for me to once again share this, one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.

Back in high school, I was quite the swimmer. Two practices and probably five or six meals a day, a few times a week in the weight room, and working my ass off in the pool and the gym all led to one huge meet, which my team and I would prepare for with extra enthusiasm as we threw away our razors for several months, growing out our leg hair in hopes that the extra drag would make us even a millisecond faster on race day.

This story begins after Michael Phelps had just been to his first Olympics, in 2004. He's from Maryland, if you didn't know, and he used to swim for the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, which is the pool where our aforementioned biggest meet of the year used to be held. We were all pumped, because he was on the heat sheet for several races at this year's meet.

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Let me tell you a little bit about warm-up pools--basically, they're a necessary evil at swim meets. They're over-crowded and anxiety-fueled and hard to move in, but hey, ya gotta warm up. I was in the warm-up pool in Baltimore that year, getting ready for my 200 breast stroke, when suddenly, someone ran over me. At this point, everyone has shaved pretty much any existing body hair off, so after my slippery legs came around and kicked this person's bigger, just as slippery leg, I turned around to say, "Sorry, man!" and was surprised to see Michael Phelps looking right at me with a little bit of disgust on his face.

I had just kicked Michael Phelps right in the leg.

"Oh! Sorry about that!" I panted, treading water in our lane, wondering if now was a bad time to ask him to sign my cap or my arm or my face or whatever. But in that moment, he wasn't interested in signing an autograph or talking to me or really doing anything else but swim. And then he solved the dilemma of the warm-up pool:

"If you'd just keep going, we wouldn't have to stop."

Gee, thanks Michael. I had no idea you were so revolutionary in your thinking.

Either way, I still met up with him later and got him to sign a couple shirts.