Nephews Bday and Orange & White Game!

To start off lets just take a minute to look at how incredibly cute my nephew is! He is such a precious child! I was honored to finally be able to attend his birthday party (no thanks to college before) and I loved seeing the joy through his eyes. Kaden had been looking forward to his party for weeks leading up to it and would get so excited with it even being mentioned! He is no longer a baby and is now 3 years old, it is so hard to believe. It seems like just yesterday I was holding him as a precious newborn. 

Kadens birthday party was an awesome safari theme thanks to his creative parents, (ok, creative mamma ;)). I loved seeing his happiness and excitement seeing all of his friends and the joy written across his face as he opened each present!

So I honestly don't know how to transition into the next part of this post because this one is all over the place so i'll just continue on like this is one long flowing post like the others 😂 :).

My 2 year phone contract is up late June so I decided to make the best of my last few months with my current phone and ordered two new phone cases. The one above is my favorite and is rose gold! It is too sparkly even for me but I love it!

.......awkwardly transitioning to my next thought lol....

So every summer since my dad lived in Atlanta, Morgan, my dad, Nana, and I would visit Six Flags Whitewater in Atlanta but now since my dad lives in Texas it is difficult to plan a trip to a city so far away especially when we all have so much going on. But I am going to try really hard to push everyone to go this summer, one for bonding reasons, and two because White Water just added two new epic looking rides!! I found these images of the new rides online the Six Flag website and about shrieked with excitement! Who wouldn't want to try them out! If we go this summer, it will be our seventh or eighth time going! Morgan and I love water parks more than you could know and aren't afraid of any ride. 

I mean look at this! It looks so awesome!!!

Moving on to my next out-of-order topic....

It's April, that time of year again! The month Cody proposed to me! Can you believe it has been two years since Cody has proposed?? I love reminiscing back to that very special day. Cody planned the proposal out for weeks, down to every detail and I was so happy (if you wish to hear the whole story or if you have forgotten, one of the main tabs of the blog has the engagement story/video on it!).

Man was I beyond excited. It was one of the best days of my life because it meant I was going to be with my Cody for the rest of my life!! 😍😍

To celebrate the engagement anniversary, Cody took me back to our engagement spot at the exact restaurant in Knoxville and we had an amazing romantic dinner.

This is our tree!!💗

And I'm sorry to post kissing pictures, that is not my thing but the reason is, I can NEVER take a kissing picture at all and if I do we are not even in the picture. So yes this picture was actually taken by Cody and I had to brag on him because I was EXTREMELY impressed. (Especially since I am the selfie queen and can not grasp why I cannot master this skill lol) 

So after dinner we headed to Nana's house for the Dyar family weekend! We were planning on attending the orange and white game on Saturday! So for the rest of Friday night until 3am we played board games, watched movies, told stories and ate lots of Nana's fudge! I love love loved being able to spend time with my dad. I miss him so much and cherish every moment we get when he is visiting Tennessee. It was sad to see him go at the end of the weekend. 

I had to capture the whole gang before everyone dispersed at the end of the weekend.

On Saturday morning we all woke up and ate at IHop for a delicious breakfast and then headed to the orange and white game. We were all for the orange team. Unfortunately the game was canceled at half time due to the inclement weather. When we got home we got to spend quality time together and eat our Nana's mexican meal. 

Tonya and I worked our dinner off by a hula hooping session while everyone else re-watched the orange and white game on tv. 

The next morning Cody and I went to the church we were married in and headed home not too long after that. But not for course without having breakfast together! I wasn't too sad to go back home because I had an exciting week of work ahead. It's amazing when you truly do love your job, you actually look forward to Monday's! I love Shaw! So as you see below, our little group program I have been apart of for the past 10 weeks at Shaw was coming to an end so we celebrated our graduation by going to Andretii's in Atlanta for go kart racing! It was an absolute blast! I will truly miss everyone in our group. It was such a sweet surprise to have this time to celebrate and bond together before we all went our separate ways to our different plants. 

So last night Cody and I went on a date night to five guys and had a sonic milkshake for dessert! We then went and ran at our old high school (where we "met") and reminisced together. We are quite the nostalgic couple/people if you haven't noticed already :).

This was my date night shirt from last night and I just had to brag on my Gigi. She got me this shirt from Easter and I absolutely LOVE it! It is so stylish; thank you Gigi!

So the month of May for me looks pretty calm but I have BIG life changing plans for May 23rd that I am absolutely TERRIFIED and thrilled about (no it is not a baby ;)). I don't think I'm ready to share yet what it is but I'm sure I'll spill the beans before the big day! Just until then can you keep me in your prayers, I am very nervous about this big event/thing and would greatly appreciate it! Talk to you soon!

With so much love,

Kayla Raborn!

4-29-17

P.S. I just wanted to say thank you guys for reading my blog. I love blogging so incredibly much and it means the world to me that you come on here to read about my life and thoughts! I hope you always enjoy! If you ever have any thoughts or comments please always feel free to leave them below! (if you know how because I don't and am trying to figure it out for you guys)

Pneumonia and Easter

Yes you read that right.....PNEUMONIA. Around April 6th I started to feel like I was coming down with a cold so I took extra vitamin C, and made sure to wash my hands a lot, and got lots of rest. Well as the week progressed I started feeling worse and worse and worse to the point that I was already on antibiotics and cough medicine and was still sick to the point I couldn't get out of bed. Having gone to the doctor beforehand and being prescribed with that first antibiotics (and being almost done with it) and still getting worse, Cody immediately took me to urgent care where they quickly determined from a chest x-ray that I indeed had pneumonia. Let me tell you, the level at which your chest aches from having pneumonia is like no other. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to cough, it hurt to lay down, it hurt to stand. It just hurt. So at the urgent care they gave me two more antibiotics, a strong antibiotic shot, a steroid breathing treatment, and an inhaler. Even with all of that it took me three more days to even be able to get out of bed. Pneumonia sucks. And my energy levels were terrible and I am still currently fighting to fully get my energy back. I am not a sick person, I probably get sick once a year and it is usually a minor cold. So how I got this pneumonia totally baffles me.  In a way it kind of reminds me of that time I got swine flu in high school. Now THAT was bad (105 degree fever, hallucinations, yeah it was bad).

So when Easter started to roll around we had some major Easter plans. We were going to travel to Knoxville to visit both sets of grandparents and go to our new church for the first time for their Easter Service! We were so excited! But when my pneumonia hit I felt so sick we had to miss all of that so instead my mom and sister came down to Chattanooga to cheer me up the Saturday before Easter Sunday. I was barely trucking along so I just laid on my bean bag on the floor talking to everyone.

We did manage to still take Easter pictures!

Of course Morgan and I were coloring Frozen pictures :):)

Even though I felt like crap my sweet mama had me an early Easter basket. It really did lift my spirits! I had candy, a new study bible, Wife after God book, and some serving utensils from our wedding registry silverware set! And I may have had a cheery look on my face but don't let that fool you, just look at how pale my face was! 😨

Look at this gorgeous tree outside my moms house!!

While I had to stay in bed most of the time I got a little stir crazy and straightened up the kitchen to make me feel a little better about being cooped up. At least I could look at an orderly kitchen!

So during the bad week of pneumonia I strictly ate soup, ice cream, pop-sickles, and drank hot chocolate or hot tea. I never had an appetite but my throat hurt so bad I would just die from needing relief so that would be the only time I would eat, just to get relief for my on-fire throat. 

Oh and of course I had to make my famous smoothie. I tried to get some protein and good nutrition in to speed my recovery. 

And to relax my chest and lungs I took lots of baths with my lovely bath bombs from Easter from my mama! Sometimes I even put two in like this day 😂

Another thing that made me feel better too was my Shaw jacket I got from work when I came back. It was a nice gift and I feel so proud to wear it!

As I started to feel better, life of course became more normal and Cody and I had to celebrate with a date night! We hadn't been out in what seemed like a few months!

Oh and to follow up with my new short hair, phantom hair is a real thing! I have it all the time still. I still feel the long hair that isn't there anymore. I also have to adjust the level at which my arm is when I am combing my hair because it was always level with the center of my rib cage when I used to comb my hair but now as you can see, I no longer have hair there so I have to move my arm up half a foot to start reaching any hair to brush. It is so odd. Just little things like that. Also I am trying to learn how to negotiate with my new hair length. When I had hair down to my waist I had it down-pat, I knew when to move it to avoid getting it shut in car doors, how to move it, how to comb it, how to sweet-talk it into participating, and just how it was. Now I am learning that not all of those things necessarily work still and I have to learn how my new hair acts. For example, I can no longer go to bed with my hair wet. Since it is so short it gets pushed in every which way and when I wake up it is stuck like that. With my longer hair I was able to have the hair itself weigh itself down to lie flat after a bad hair day from waking up. 

This is what it looks like from the back at it's natural curly state. I literally wake up with my hair looking like this (picture above). 

One major perk about my new hair length is it doesn't get in the way anymore and I can put it in these cute styles and it will stay and work! It is so exciting! Just look at that cute bun! It used to never be able to do that!! I'm so proud, LOL.

To unwind, Cody took me to the park where we laid out a blanket and read our devotionals and felt the cool breeze blow over us. The grass and the dandelions were especially beautiful that day. It was such a peaceful spring afternoon. We ended the park adventure by throwing the football to each other, Cody's favorite!

I hope you have a great rest of your week!

With so much love,

Kayla 

4-29-17

Locks of Love and Life Update!

Hi everyone! SURPRISE!!! I did a little something....

I DONATED 11 INCHES OF MY HAIR TO LOCKS OF LOVE!

Ever since I was a little kid I had wanted to donate my hair to locks of love but selfishly was always too scared and/or didn't want my hair to be a boy cut after the fact. That is why I waited and finally grew my hair out for over a year and a half to be able to donate my 10+ inches. My hair is now only 20 inches long. It was EXTREMELY difficult maintaining hair as long as mine for such a long time. I ran in to more inconveniences than you could ever imagine. For starters it would take me over 15 minutes to fight with it after the shower to comb through all of the tangles (which I am NOT ok with). By doing this I would lose a lot of hair from trying to de-tangle it and with each passing day my hair would get a little thinner. I would have to keep it in a braid or pony tail every day to be able to ONLY fight with it for over 15 minutes after a shower. When I would lean on my elbow on a surface I would raise my head up and yank my hair because it was under my elbow and I didn't know. When I laid down for bed my hair would wrap around my torso and pull the fool out of my hair in my sleep. Cody would also lay on it from his side of the bed and I wouldn't be able to move my head even a centimeter to reach him to push him off. 

Now since I have donated 11 inches off of my hair and it is now "short", it is SO much thicker and looks SO much healthier. And the best part of all of this was for the cause! I am able to contribute to a hair piece for a child with a lifelong incurable illness called alopecia areata. I would do this all over again in a flash just to know a little girl will be getting some gorgeous locks for life. I am so excited for this reason and wish I could grow more hair quickly to be able to donate again soon and over and over.

The decision to donate has been on my heart for a really long time and i'm so blessed God has given me the opportunity to do so. I hadn't really thought about it too too much for the past 10 years but for whatever reason for the last 2 years I had been reluctant to cut it. After canceling appointment after appointment for trims, I couldn't figure out why. I truly believe God had laid it on my heart to do this and it just took me this long to see his desire for me. Once it popped in my head about 3 weeks ago I knew what I had to do. And it was the easiest decision of my life. 

Now I'm sorry to make this sound like a big deal but let me tell you, this is a HUGE deal to me. I literally have not had hair this short since I was 6 or 7 years old. And that was just because that's just the longest it had gotten in my life and happens to be as short then as it is now. My hair has ALWAYS been long. I have never trimmed it more than 2 inches IN MY LIFE. I normally don't even like to go over a 1 inch trim. It will take me time to adjust to it but I instantly LOVED from the second of the first snip of the scissors. That pleasantly surprised me! I always imagined I would miss it to the point of possibly crying but its neat to see God work in your heart and life. Now I run my fingers through my hair and my hand keeps on going through air. Now I cant reach my hair it if I put my hand behind my back. Now it takes 45 SECONDS to comb my hair and free it of tangles after a shower. And Cody loves my hair. I also look older! I love it so much! It doesn't get caught in doors, couches (yes weird but true for really long hair), or car doors. I can now put my hair in a clip because I don't have to layer it 3-4 times due to the length and thickness because of that. 

The days leading up to the hair appointment I did my Locks of Love research to learn the rules and regulations and brought my bag to collect my hair and my tape measure. I will be sending off the hair with a picture of myself very soon!

Here is my long hair before the fact straightened to get an accurate length of my hair.

My beautiful sister straightened it for me!

Here is a before picture of it curly. This was the morning of my hair appointment. 

And the back! It was down to the top of my pants!

After snipping the three pony tails I went to un-highlight my hair basically. I'm ready to go more natural. My natural hair now isn't as blonde as it was as a child.

Crazy to feel the new length.

After!

I had it straightened with a little bit of curl to go for an even newer look for the day.

I love how it blows in the wind! And surprisingly, my head feels a lot lighter! I think it took a few pounds off of my head lol. 

And the back! Now when it is curly after my next shower, it will be even shorter from the curls. Now there isn't as much weight, my hair should appear curlier! #bonus!

So on to the other aspects of my life! I am enjoying my new job so incredibly much! Everyone is so nice and I am so happy every day! 

Also my sweet mother-in-law surprised me with a monogrammed tote with my new initials! It is so perfect for travel, work, church, and date nights!

Life was pretty hectic the last week but Cody made it all better the second he came home with these BEAUTIFUL sparkly spring flowers. He is such a sweetheart always thinking of me!

Last weekend we celebrated my moms birthday! We all had a blast going out to eat, on a walk, seeing Beauty and the Beast, and playing board games. It is a blessing every second I can get to spend time with my mama and Morgan!

We all went to Cody and I's church on Sunday and had a blast. I love worshiping all together!

Next weekend we will be going to my nephews 3rd birthday and the following weekend we will be volunteering for the egg hunt for the little children at our church. The following weekend after Easter my dad and whole rest of the Dyar side are going to be at the orange and white game and spend a fun weekend together at Nana's house! 

With so much love,

Kayla Raborn

4-2-17

My Famous Smoothie Recipe!!

Delicious Smoothie Recipe!!!

*color may not always be appealing but doesn't reflect true delicious-ness

Would you like to know one of my favorite smoothie recipes of all time!?! Now I am by no means an expert smoothie maker but I have always wanted to be able to make amazing smoothies that I would actually eat! From my 15 year old self and up, I learned how to eat healthy and that your food choices can positively or negatively impact your body. I became health conscious and really learned how good quality foods can help your body function, and how each food impacts your body! 

So I always envied those perfect smoothies and delicious looking recipes but didn't know how to make them, and I didn't want to make unhealthy ones (because most are) and/or I always made them wrong! 

I haven't tried to make many smoothies because of how disastrous they have always turned out and let me tell you, for me, 'just add ice' for thickness NEVER worked. Either my blender was bad or too good and the smoothies turned out thinner than water.

If you are looking for an extremely healthy minimal calories smoothie that tastes out of this world, there are a few things you will need before you even get started on ingredients!

So first of all lets talk blenders.....

You need a good blender period. It is the difference between a good smoothie and a bad one. If you have a poor blender, you will never have a good smoothie. Splurge and spend that extra money upfront to buy a good blender so you don't waste money buying and re-buying ingredients because you think you made the smoothie incorrectly. Trust me. Now I personally have the magic bullet which is incredible. Absolutely incredible. I don't know about many other brands but do your research. I hear Nutribullet is great too!

Second of all, know your ingredients. When you look up smoothie recipes online, there will always be added sugars and unhealthy items in their ingredient list that is 'mandatory' for taste. Well that is not the case at all because what is a smoothie? FRUIT. What does fruit naturally have? SUGAR. And lots of it! Why do you think people who suffer from diabetes can't have a lot of fruit? So that means if you even have a little bit of fruit, that's all the sugar you will need. Period. If recipes tell you to add honey, actual sugar or other sweeteners, or chocolate, something is wrong. Stick to the basic foods found in nature as best as possible. 

Ok enough talk, this wasn't even supposed to be a chatty post but that's me. Here is my personal recipe that is the only smoothie I will eat truly.

Post Workout Dream:

Huge handful of baby spinach ~1 cup

1 small 5oz container of PLAIN Greek yogurt                                              (can be flavored but that means extra sugar 😬)

1 full cup of frozen fruit                                                                      (may be a little taller than the rim of the measuring cup)

1 frozen SLICED banana                                                                   (The banana is extremely important for thickness )

1/4 cup Trop50 OJ                                                          (Tropicana 50 calorie orange juice because it has only half the sugar)

makes 1 serving (about 12-14oz) 

Approximately 300 calories or less (great for post workout especially if you want to add a scoop of your favorite vanilla protein powder for extra protein. But remember that will add an extra 100-150 calories to your smoothie which is ok, just warning you)

So here is the break down:

1. So to make your smoothie, start with your base; this is something substantial, or the most flavorful part of the smoothie which is the fruit. I usually use frozen cherries, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries. And for the frozen banana, try slicing it before freezing to make slicing easier for you. You could even add protein powder also on this step. Don't quote me on this, I have not tried adding protein powder yet and I assume you would need more OJ for it to blend at all.
2. Next, add your binding agent which kind of holds the smoothie ingredients together, if you want to think of it that way, which is the yogurt and the Orange juice. 
3. Then add the fun stuff or extras. I consider the spinach the fun stuff because you can add as much spinach as you please to help get in your veggies for the day, and you honestly can't taste it AT ALL. I have put up to 2 cups of spinach in and it's true, you can't taste it at all in the smoothie because of the sweet fruit! Something else you could try is peanut butter. That might be weird to some because it is a smoothie not a milkshake but I am saying this for all the peanut butter lovers out there including myself! The only problem is the extra calories. But if you want to avoid that I suggest PB2! You can find this in the peanut butter isle at Walmart. PB2 is powdered peanut butter, perfect for smoothies and is only less than a fraction of the calories of a serving of real peanut butter. And it tastes great! PB2 is only 45 calories per serving compared to 190 of the normal peanut butter. 
4. Now I am still new to the smoothie world, so I will start finding new yummy healthy recipes by trial and error in the future but for now I am quite please with my smoothie. Anyway you can always modify my current recipe or any others you find to spice things up! Think of how many different fruit options there are for example and go from there! Have fun with it!

Literally post workout enjoying the delicious-ness

Enjoy! 

Kayla R.

3-26-17

P.S. I am trying to add a little variety to my blog especially since the wedding is over, I don't have any kids, and many of you may not know me and my family. So I am trying to add what I would like to see if I was someone from the outside looking in! I hope to start adding a variety and you can find a topic you like and I can write more about it! I love writing so much so I would love to share!

Topics in the future:

Faith

Workouts

50 things about me

My story

My dreams

Shopping wishlists

Engineering talks

New Job and Working Life!!!

Hey guys! Sorry for keeping you in the dark a little bit about my job hunting search but guess what?!?! I GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so incredibly thrilled to share that I have a job after 4 months of searching! I work at Shaw Industries as an Operations Management Trainee Engineer as part of the innovation group! I am so incredibly proud of myself, my new company, and more specifically my plant! I love the people, and what i'm doing, and everything about it! I work wonderful hours, everyone is so nice, and it is so incredible to finally see my hard work in school finally pay off! 

I didn't want to mention anything until it was official and now it is!! I had fun finding work clothes and learning about the safely gear I will have to wear every day, and was nervous out of my mind for my first day on February 20th but really had nothing to worry about! The Operations Management Trainee program works by us trainees finding our niche in the company after many area rotations and after 3-9 months, applying to hire on with that specific position we find that we like! I think that is genius!

*Now just a little disclaimer for the near future, I like to keep my work life and home life completely separate and I will hardly ever mention or discuss anything about my job from here on out, so that is why I wanted to dedicate a whole blog post about my new job now so you are informed also! :)

My first day! I was so proud of my badge!

Every day to work for my safety, I have to wear ear protection, my hair up (and hair nets sometimes), safety glasses, a visibility vest above, steel toed boots, no jewelry whatsoever (no not even my wedding rings 😭😭😭 but that's ok, I'll get over it) and long pants. 

I also got a Shaw hot chocolate mug which I am going to use every day since it has gotten so cold in the recent weeks! I was given the mug with candy and a Shaw fortune cookie dipped in white chocolate and blue sprinkles as shown below! I am proud of my mug!

I also got a beautiful pink Shaw hat (sorry for the mirror image backward letters) that I will wear so so much since I am a big hat person!

The other day Shaw celebrated their 50th anniversary of their company and I feel so lucky to be hired in on their 50th! The company celebrated it's employees in the Dalton convention center with games, key note speakers, virtual reality tours, door prizes, and gift shops! It was good experience for me to be in Dalton because I will be traveling a little bit all over Georgia in these next few months of being an OMT. 

The weekend leading up to my first day of work, me, Cody, mom, Morgan, Edgar, and Nana all went to the UT family weekend basketball game which we won!!! And got to see an amazing half time show of the North Dakota acrobats team!

After the game to celebrate my new job, I got to pick our dinner restaurant and I chose a very fitting place, Calhoun's on the river, where Cody and I had our rehearsal dinner! It was very special and sentimental to us and just perfect! (if you know me, I love sentimental!) We also got seated at a table with an awesome view of the river!

Working Life: 

So adjusting to working life has surprisingly been fairly easy! I was very surprised how well I adjusted to waking up 5 hours earlier than I was used! I had to learn how to balancing relax time with the hours given after work before bed time. I also had to learn how to balancing errands and chores on the weekend along with working in vital Cody time such as hiking, working out, doing fun stuff together! Between feeding the cows (for Cody's dad while he is recovering from knee surgery), to our volunteer hours, doctors/dentist visits, church events, bible studies, working long hours, Cody's football, and visiting family, Cody and I are NEVER home. We are there to sleep and eat and that's pretty much it and we are loving it! But with that being said, we are learning to prioritize and spend as much time together as we can!

So to implement our priorities ("us" time) we schedule to always workout together especially on Saturday night because that is our favorite thing in the world! We have so much fun together doing box jumps or free weights and we also love doing our marriage Sunday school class bible studies together during our workout breaks at the gym! No one is there and it very peaceful and special! It is a time to strengthen us physically and spiritually while we continue to grow closer together. I love spending time with my Cody!! The picture above is me climbing their monkey bar structure. I love climbing things and can't help it being an ex-gymnast! Fun fact: I was a gymnast for 8 years!

On Friday nights Cody and I get dressed up and go on a date night! This ensures that we spend quality time away from the house together at least once a week! This past Friday we went to dinner and saw the new movie Logan!

On Sunday's we like to hike or go on a walk! It is one of our favorite things to do together!! We love to talk and catch up on each other's lives even more during this peaceful time! ( I would have a picture of Cody but like i've mentioned before, he doesn't care for pictures lol)

Learning what my new normal is and balancing work life and family life has been extremely fun and I am just so blessed beyond belief to have been given this wonderful opportunity to grow and learn, and can now help provide for our little family! I can't wait to find my purpose in work and do great things! I am so excited!!

Love,

Kayla Raborn!

3-6-17