D.C.

So, I'm kind of playing catch up here with this post and maybe a few others but I wanted to document mine & Karl's impromptu trip to D.C. last month!  My parents+Maddie & Emma knew they wanted to take a long weekend trip after mine & Callie's weddings as a little celebration of getting back to normalcy and just a time to relax, especially for my two younger sisters and all they put up with living in wedding la la land for over a year.  Well, within like 48 hours they decided they were going D.C. and the next thing I knew, they were there!  I then took it upon myself to google map the distance from D.C. to Sumter when I noticed that they were a mere 4 1/2 hours away... my mind began to tick.  Well, I took the next logical step and invited Karl & I to crash their weekend as a new family of 4 and the Cuppett's seemed OK with it!  Woo hoo!
(details on getting there that you can choose to skip if you would like)
So Karl & I decided that financially we should just plan to stay 1 night but wanted to be there first thing in the morning on Saturday so our options were to either a) leave crazy early Saturday morning or b) leave Friday night and sleep in a hotel about halfway there.  Well, option "b" doesn't make much sense because that defeats our "save money and just pay for a hotel for 1 night" thing and option "a" isn't pleasing to Karl because he just got home from work and he is super tired... what to do, what to do?  Then Karl comes up with this idea..."we'll drive about halfway and then stop at a rest stop."  What did I just hear?  All I heard was, "we'll drive about halfway and then sleep in your car and risk our lives because someone will most likely kill us when we are pulled over on the side of the road because we are young and in love and that's what happens and also you won't get to brush your teeth or wash your face and your standard of living will immediately drop 100 points."  Wow, does my husband know me at all??  Is he seriously suggesting that I, Hannah K.C. Burton sleep in the car?  So how did I respond?  I agreed with one stipulation: Karl had to bring his hand gun.  Crazy town USA.  So we are approaching the halfway point and it's getting really late.  My parents are starting to call to make sure we are safe and to try and plan our day for Saturday.  I panic: I know that I cannot possibly let the words, "Dad, I'm sleeping in my car,"  come out of my mouth but I also know that I can't lie if he asks where we are staying the night!  I need a new plan.  I start begging, BEGGING Karl to let us stop at a hotel.  I even concede and say I'll stay at a motel. Ewwww (more on this later).  It takes a lot of begging and we even get into deeper issues like how I am innately a Hyatt girl and he is a KOA guy (I learned what KOA is on this roadtrip) and he says that I need to lower my standard of living but I say I can't because I have glitter in my blood... OK anyways, we stopped at a motel... the sickest motel ever.  Better.off.in.my.car.  I blame my mother for my high hotel standards.  As a child, we were never barefoot in hotels and she uses her own sheets and pillows... now I do too.
OK back to the actual vacation...Karl and I got to our hotel bright and early and ended up on the same floor as my family (yay!)!  We paraded around D.C. in a double-decker bus all day Saturday & Sunday enjoying hot dogs from street vendors and absolutely gorgeous historical sites!  We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, The Capitol, The White House (unimpressive, sorry), went to the national museum of Air & Space, Museum of Natural History, we walked and walked and walked, had starbucks for breakfast each day (definite luxury for this country bumpkin), and had a blast.  The weather was gorgeous, the days were long, and did I mention how much we walked?  It was great... I would say that all that was missing were Jeremy & Callie (which they were) but technically Karl & I weren't supposed to be there so it wasn't really a family vacay... well, it was fun regardless.  Karl & I wouldn't have gone & crashed their vacation if it weren't for the fact that I had just vowed to myself to be more spontaneous.. yep.  One of the main perks to living out here and on the east coast is the accessibility to the northeast and all the fabulous states & cities that I've not visited before.  I love to travel and am dying to see more of the northeast so I just couldn't turn this opportunity down!  OK, enjoy some pics now!

Love the travel bug (which I got in our nasty motel room... not really but maybe)
Hannah K.C. Burton

whoa.

So, I was just clicking around here on the old blogger (blogger is the name of the site I blog from and have my blogging account thru) and found a "stats" tab.  I clicked on it for the first time and found some vurrry interrrusttting information.  Y'all, over 5,000 people have viewed my blog in the year that it has existed... people in the Ukraine, Australia, Spain, Germany, the UK, Netherlands, Ecuador, Canada, & France, oh and Alaksa... is this super creepy to anyone else??  Guys, if you blog with blogger, you have to go check this out.  Here's the sitch: I love knowing that people read my blog but (call me crazy) I would prefer for those people to be friends, family, old high school pals, acquaintances, or even friends of friends of friends...I don't have high standards here people.  I'll just say that I don't know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who lives in the Ukraine.  Also, I can tell that my blog has been accessed thru a bing.com search... a) I think it's crazy that I can tell this has happened b) IDK how I feel about bing.com in general (I'm a google lover) c) weird that someone is binging "dynasty living."  Do not worry, I cannot tell who has visited or anything like that so all you non-followers and commenters are still safely hidden from me :)  Well, for now I'll deal with the international and search-engine creepiness as there's nothing I hate more than being privacy blocked by blogs I'm snooping on AND I love sharing what's going on in mine & Karl's life but when I have children, I'm clearly going to have to make this bad boy like invite only or little Burton's are going to get 'napped at their schools and cheerleading camp.  Just saying.  Lastly, I have nothing against Ukranians and I believe in the freedom to be creepy, until I take it away.

Love,
Hannah K.C. Burton

foodie.

Well, I have a horrible long term memory.  It takes one of my sisters or parents telling a very specific decade-old story for me to remember anything prior to the age of 17, with the exception of one thing: food. I have a lot of memories centering around food.  I can remember sitting around the dinner table with my family, I can picture Emma (my youngest sister) as a baby in her high chair as we ate dinner, I can feel the glob of Country Crock butter in my mouth as I snuck into the fridge (circa 1993) for a spoonful of delight away from my mom's watchful eye, I can remember one of my first pit stops as a newly licensed driver being to Long Johns for one thing: crunchies.  Well, all this to say one thing: i.love.food.  And moreso than the average person.  Here's the thing, I get hooked on one thing and stay there for a while and I obsess over it and drag roommates and sisters into it.  Let me take you on a walk down memory lane for a few examples.

Age 5: butter.
Age 7-8: Grandy's fried chicken.
Age 9-10: baby food, peach baby food more specifically
Age 12: Girl Scout Samoas.
Age 14-15: an entire onion (after school snack, every single day.)
Age 16-17: Long John Silver's crunchies (like, order nothing else at the drive-thru)
Age 20: Mushrooms (sauteed, like an entire package)
Age 21: Bush's baked beans (as often as I could.  microwaved. in front of my 'mates.)
Age 22: asparagus, roasted in the oven, a little on the burned side

the one food that has stuck thru it all: bacon.

Most people have like the one thing that they have always liked and people that they spend a lot of time with can even pinpoint that persons "one food."  For example, my dad is a spice drop guy, Charis Anderson is a pecan pie girl, I have a few Pi Phis in mind that are sushi people, my cousin Lincoln is a mac 'n cheese person...  I'm not that person because it changes so much!  Well, needless to say, the asparagus is in the oven as I type.  It is so good but I cannot stop eating it... like, my pee has started to smell like asparagus.  Yeah, TMI I know but I just have to relay the obsessions that I develop over "my one food."  I eat an entire bushel of it every.single.day.  Well, I guess thats all for now.  I can't believe I haven't posted about this huge personality quirk/flaw/trait of mine yet!!  It defines me.

Asparagus lover,
Hannah K.C. Burton

Seasons

It NEVER ceases to amaze me what The Lord reveals to me during different seasons of my life.  Like, one verse or parable will really speak specifically to me while I'm on a mountain top time in my life and then The Lord will use the same verse or song to show me or remind me of something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT when I'm walking through a valley or in a different season of life.  I love Kari Jobe, like I have 1 CD that has been in my car for literally years- that praise & worship CD has seen more praise, tears, bad singing, early mornings, late nights... you name it, it's my go-to CD.  Well, all this jibberish to say that I'm loving/clinging to "No Sweeter Name," by Kari Jobe (obvi) right now.  All of her lyrics are such sweet, simple reminders of God's grace, His promises, redeeming love, and hope.  So, through the mountain tops and valley lows I'll cling to the sweet name of Jesus.

Hannah K.C. Burton

Post Wedding

So I keep thinking, "ok I'm done blogging about my wedding."  OK, lie.  I will blog about my wedding until the day I die.  That being said, I just got all my pictures!!!!  I'm so excited, like I seriously have been looking forward to this for so long!  Karl's at work so that gave me something to do for the past... 3ish hours.  I may or may not have listened to my wedding ceremony playlist while looking at them which may or may not have led to tears, several tears, bad idea- yes.  I just LOVE that I still feel the same feelings I felt that day- so, so, so in love with Karl, overwhelmed with feelings of love & support from friends and family, the tightest and most unconditional Pi Phi bonds, and in complete awe as I watched my parents fund this shindig (in cash, gaffaw.) solely to make my dream day come true because they love me and Karl so much.  Like literally, could this day get better?  Actually yes, if our car hadn't been trashed with greasy unmentionables and someone had just stuck to some traditional "Just Married" and cans tied to the back and if our DJ hadn't turned the reception into a bad rave... icing on the cake.  But seriously, I (for my own memory) want to remember in a long long time how I feel right now and how I felt that day- overjoyed, peaceful, in love, loved.  When people ask me how married life is, I'm always quick to tell them that I still don't "feel married," as in I don't think it has set in yet.  Well, going thru these pictures helped A LOT.  I am absolutely honored by the guests that came that night, by our close friends and family that devoted their weekend to celebrating us, I'm flooded with the nervousness I felt walking out to Karl and then how much fun he & I had the rest of the day- I am obsessed with these pictures, what sweet treasures they are and what precious memories they help to jog!  I'll post more pictures this week after I get our photo CD in the mail, the ones I have access to now have Nine's watermark on them & would just be copied off their website.  The whole several hundred picture gallery can be viewed here, click on "client proofs," then type our password into our gallery- ParkSpringsHK

Bride forever,
Hannah K.C. Burton