Morgan's Bridal Showers!

🎕Morgan's Bridal Shower!!🎕

It's wedding week for Morgan! In honor of 5 days left on the countdown, here are some highlights of Morgan's showers!!

April Shower

Morgan celebrated her first bridal shower a few weekends ago! Ebenezer United Methodist church in Knoxville threw it for her (the same church I grew up visiting with Nana, and that threw my shower for me, and that my mom works at, and that Morgan will be getting married at too)! It was such a beautiful shower with our church family. 

Its hard to believe in the exact same spot I had my shower 3 years ago. Time sure flies.

Nana, Gigi, Mom, and I loved helping Morgan collect her gifts and playing the bridal games!

From left to right, pastor Ann, my mama, and Nancy Twigg.

The sweet sweet church ladies!

Ann has such a special place in our heart! She means the world to us!

The sweet treats Denise put together for Morgan.

Morgan received the sweetest most thoughtful gifts! It was so much fun being her matron of honor writing down everything Morgan got!

On a semi-unrelated note, Morgan was recognized at church for her college graduation (this past December) and her awesome job at Eastman! We are so proud of her and loved hearing Ann's sweet words about her!

Go Morgan!!

And here we have Morgan's updated pre-wedding hair! We tried hair styles and highlights this weekend! 27 days (as of 5/5/19) until the big day!!!!

The same weekend we celebrated the Derby and the most peculiar win. It will sure go down in history.

I was Derby ready with my hat though! It has always been my dream to go to the Derby in person. Cody and I plan on going in 2021! Mark my words!!! 

We then walked Sasha and the weekend was over before we knew it. This time of year is so fun and this season of life is SO EXCITING. Only good things from here!

God is so so so so so good!

May Shower

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Her next shower was thrown by Gigi's best friends in Chattanooga having all of our friends and family at. It was such a neat set up! They are always such amazing people doing this for us, they threw my shower for me 3 years ago!

This shower was so incredibly exciting also!!! I had been anticipating it for weeks and was thrilled to host and make the games. Two weekends before, I spent 6 hours making and printing out the two PERFECT bridal shower games! The night before the shower, I got everything all ready and wrapped my own present for Morgan!

The next day it was time for the shower at noon! Mom and Morgan picked me up (because they stayed overnight in a hotel near by) and we headed of course, in the pouring rain, to Morgan's shower destination. 

Morgan looked so incredibly stunning! She is a gorgeous bride!

We walked into gorgeous decorations and the delicious food already prepared!

The Dyar girls

Dyar girls again haha!

Beautiful setup of the room!

After eating and socializing, it was time to play the games. We played how well do you know the bride for us to all answer the 20 questions on our sheets and the winner gets a starbucks gift card or a Chick-fil-a gift card! 

The next game was how well did Edgar and Morgan know each other. Behind the scenes, I asked them each 15 questions about each other writing down their answers and then at the shower sharing with them what each other answered and how close their answers were to what was correct. It was a hilarious game and they did pretty great!!!

Then it was time to open presents!! I was the 'book keeper' again writing down everything each person gave Morgan. She got a lot of amazing gifts!!

Then Morgan opened the present I gave her! I gave Morgan a Wedding Day survival kit filled with everything she might need for the day of the wedding from extra make up, chap stick, baby powder, gum, snacks, dress tape, etc. 

After presents we said goodbye to everyone and helped the hosts clean up. They went all out and were so sweet to throw Morgan and I showers!!!

Of course after the shower, I treated myself with my FAVORITE flavor of boba tea from the best boba tea place in town, Tai Chi, strawberry yogurt boba.

We then continued with our Mother's Day celebration with mama since she had to be in Knoxville for teaching church. 

We ran some wedding errands, I gave mom her Mother's day card and 3 mega packs of her favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream flavored gum, and we ate at Chop House to celebrate her! I am so grateful for my mama and how much she loves Morgan and I!!!*more details about the day on instagram*

The next day we celebrated with Cody's mom and ate with the Raborn family at an Italian place in Hixson. 

What an amazing weekend!

With so much love,

Kayla Raborn

5/27/19

Career/Personal Development: Crucial Conversations

*Ideas from Crucial Conversations Participant Toolkit VitalSmarts*

Welcome to Career Development,
Crucial Conversations!

Somewhere in our 20's we begin our career for the rest of our life navigating through many new things and areas of our life! This will be a many part series focusing on many different aspect to help grow your career, personal development, confidence, and success! Please enjoy my thoughts and different tips and aspects from career development classes I have attended and books I have read!

Crucial conversations are something we have on a weekly basis whether at home or at work! It is an important skill to be able to communicate effectively to have a successful crucial conversation and where the other party feels like they are heard too.

These are the basic steps to have an effective, necessary, crucial conversation.

1. Start with clear intentions
2. Safe environment
3. Face the problem 
4. Motives
5. Listen
6. Perspective
7. Action plan
8. Practice 

Lets elaborate:


1. Start with clear intentions
Be clear, concise, and up-front stating the problem and/or intention of the meeting. Be consensus not to veer off topic when uncomfortable dialog arises. Never avoid problems; face the elephant in the room. If the conversation becomes emotional, ask to continue the next day and come back with an action plan and a clearer head on both sides. If you ever need help starting a crucial conversation, begin with the 5 essential building block questions: 1.Where are we?   2.What's working?    3.What's not working?    4.What's next?   5. What do you need from me?

2. Safe environment
Make sure both parties feel comfortable in the environment. Both parties have a seat facing each other keeping the door cracked. Have a comfortable posture that is inviting rather than confrontational. If this is an extreme case, even invite your HR manager to join the meeting. Ensure the other person's trust by stating whatever is spoken will be spoken in confidence and will not be shared; focus on building trusting relationships on both sides. Vulnerability is vital in crucial conversations, often, growth can't occur unless some level of vulnerability is shared. Also never have a crucial conversation 1-on-1 meeting longer than an hour. If this is the case, this needs to be broken up into segments.

3. Face the problem
Face the problem head on, don't beat around the bush. You will earn the respect of your coworkers when this is practiced. This shows you realize there is a problem at hand and you care about what the other person has to say and want to fix it. By facing the problem head on, this shows confidence and emphasizes the importance of the matter. Some debate is good but never allow arguing to arise. *If this is a crucial conversation about a promotion or such, disregard this step*.

4. Motives 
Check your motives. This should go without being said, simply be a good person with pure intentions. Don't be a jerk, this will get you nowhere, and if you do, people will learn to resent you in your position of power and intentionally or unintentionally work against the cause. Be a team player; this is your group and if one person hurts, you all hurt.

5. Listen
Learning to listen. As a boss this is EXTREMELY crucial in building your employees trust and ensuring them that what they have to say matters. Comment and address their statements or worries after they are done talking or when there is an appropriate pause in the dialog waiting for you to respond. This skill may be the most powerful tool in gaining trust and solving problems.

If your employee struggles to speak up or feel heard, ask them directly what they need. Empower them to speak up by suggesting you will intentionally ask their opinion in a meeting, or giving social recognition when due. Be their advocate. If you are on the employee side of not feeling heard, ask your boss these questions of how he can help give you a voice in meetings and such.

6. Perspective
Put yourself in the other person's shoes. You can always learn a great amount from another person's perspective and imagining how they might feel in that situation. This will give the insight you need to find a solution that not only benefits you but the other person. And if it's not a quick fix, state that! Be honest and continually work towards a solution together. It may even be an ongoing effort, and that's ok!

7. Action plan
Make an action plan. Nothing can be learned or fixed unless there is a plan to move forward. Bridge that gap of understanding and pave the way together creating steps to fix the problem at hand. Make a clear, concise, and achievable goal together and actually follow through.  Have weekly 1:1's to touch base on the goals and milestones you both set and reach!

8. Practice
Practice makes progress, practice as many conversations or crucial conversations with people you trust such as in your family or your spouse. This will not only help strengthen your relationship but will teach you how to handle tough situations in a smooth successful manner. Conversations with family can be the toughest sometimes, especially when emotions are high and situations are important, so this will be great practice!


I know this is all easier said than done but if you practice on how to effectively have a crucial conversation, it will become second nature and you will have a happy, successful, confident, and fulfilled team!


Love always and best wishes,
Kayla Raborn

5/5/19

Lean and Green Meals!

Cody and I have been trying to incorporate veggies into our meals along with lower calorie options. So I have been on a journey to create lean and green meals for week day dinners!


Cucumber Sandwiches

For the first meal you slice full cucumbers down the middle long way (or hot dog style) and scrape out the insides with a spoon or melon scooper to make hollow halves. 

Fill the insides with what you would a normal sandwich such as guacamole, ranch, deli meat, cheese, olives, spinach, tomatoes, etc. Place the other half of the cucumber on top for the other half of the "bread". 

This is a super low calorie "sandwich" option that is extremely tasty and easy to make! 

*Pro trip: hollow out the cucumbers really well so you can chew each bite well. If the walls are a little on the thicker side, it's difficult to eat.*

Mini Dessert:

For a mini dessert, take a mini oreo and fill it with a little bit of cookie dough, some red velvet dessert hummus (found at Publix), and some peanut butter! Delicious! 

Cucumber "Sushi"

Next on our list is cucumber sushi! (there is no fish in cucumber sushi). To make this fish-free sushi meal, take cucumbers and slice them in very thin strips on a mandolin (not the musical instrument). Then lay any type of meat such as pulled pork on the strips along with any filling of your choice such as ranch, olives, pickles, shredded cheese, etc. Roll each of the strips up and stick a toothpick through them to keep their roll shape. Voila, we are done!! This is Cody's favorite! 

Mini Dessert:

Take mini Nilla wafers and spray cool whip in between for a nice bite!

Zucchini Noodle Scramble

Our final lean and green meal is zucchini noodles (in the frozen veggie section at Walmart) cooked like pasta and crumbled up meatloaf (made with steel cut oats instead of breadcrumbs, Cody's recipe) and a squirt of Simply Heinz ketchup on top! This could also be made with just ground beef or ground turkey also! This is probably my favorite of the meals!

I hope this has inspired you to also try some lean and green meals! It's easy to escape the healthy eating route without realizing it. Luckily these meals are super easy to make and delicious if I don't say so myself;).

Love,

Kayla Raborn

4/27/19

O&W Game and Easter!

It's that time of year again!!!! FOOTBALLLL TIME IN TENNNNNNESSSSEEEEEE!!!!

The Orange and White game has come and gone. We have so much fun when dad comes to visit! I love that we all have a common interest we can share together. 

We arrived Friday night and all picked dad up from the airport. We went home, told stories, ate candy and went to bed at 1am. 

The next morning we ate a huge feast Nana prepared for us and headed to the Orange and White game! We got a nice close, free spot and saw the warm ups at 4:30pm. The game unfortunately started at 6pm. Luckily we had great weather and had a blast; the game was 4 quarters with tv timeouts so it was lengthy but we still got out in time for Blaze pizza at 9pm. 

Morgan's custom pizza.

Cody's custom pizza.

My veggie custom pizza, of course.

After Blaze, we re-watched the game super analyzing every play and went to bed at 2am after visiting with each other. 

Sunday we woke up early, went to church, and ate a delicious Mexican meal Nana cooked.

Of course following tradition, Morgan and I got our famous picture in front of the gorgeous flower bush in front of Nana's house. For some reason we look more tan this year, that is a mistake because we aren't haha. The only thing different is our hair is longer!

My beautiful sister!

She snapped this pretty picture of me!

After lunch all of us including cousin Nathan ran out and grabbed the new recipe Butterfinger and the original and did a blind taste test below.

The original was on the top and the new recipe is on the bottom. You can already visibly see the original recipe is much more crumbly, different color, poorer quality chocolate, and a little thinner. Taste wise, the new recipe at the bottom sticks to your teeth less, has a richer toffee taste, a wonderful lingering after taste, and a deeper peanut butter flavor. The new recipe won out of 3/5 people. What a fun experiment! Do this with your family while the original recipes are still out! Which is your favorite?

We finished the day playing dominos. I won two out of the three games and I never win!!! We probably had some of the best fun doing this just talking together.

It was difficult to leave Knoxville and dad but it helped knowing he will be back in 6 weeks for Morgan's wedding!

On the way out Cody and I swung by and got some boba rose tea! So amazing! I am obsessed with boba/bubble tea right now!

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The next weekend (the day before Easter), Cody's sister-in-law and oldest brother had their gender reveal party for their second child. I had bet all of of my proverbial money on it being a girl but see below if I am right.



The kick says it all, I was dead wrong and Travis and Amy are all-boy parents to two little boys. Kaden was ecstatic. 


After the whiplash of being so wrong we all cheerfully congratulated Travis and Amy. Little ones are such a blessing!

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Easter
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One of my favorite things to do is decorate my house for Easter and Christmas. I feel like I am decorating in celebration for our Savior.

I of course have to brag on this new Easter decor mom got for me. This is so out of character for her but so fitting for me, a 'pooping' duck! When you press it down, it poops a candy piece and quacks! I was so surprised when I opened this, mom rocks!!!!!! This will be on my counter every Easter for the rest of my life! :):)

I thought this plush fluffy bunny was the epitome of precious, but I love stuffed animals. I wanted to order this from Altar'd State so bad but it was sold out unfortunately. Maybe next year!

This random picture of this little girl kissing her bunnies just made my heart melt. 

Easter morning was so special, me and Cody's bond lately has been really really great so every day right now is magical. Also there is something special celebrating our living Savior with your spouse.

*We have found some things that improve our life lately that I will expand upon that in another post but we have gotten some health related answers and help (we are more than ok, will explain later) so life is good.  

I finally got to wear this cute Easter outfit that you saw from my previous post 2 blog posts back form Altar'd State. It was so comfy and cute:). 

It was such an absolutely beautiful day! Perfect day to celebrate our risen Savior!

Ok guys, so what color color are my eyes here? My eyes change between green, blue, and grey. 

Of course we couldn't have Easter without Easter donuts! Cody's idea and I was all for it! 

After church we picked up Buffalo Wild wings and took them to Cody's parents house to spend the day, eat with them, grade Cody's papers, and fellowship. It was beyond a perfect day!

Happy Easter 2019!!!!!!!

With so much love,

Kayla Raborn

4/21/19