family memories

Signs You Might be an Older Millennial

/ azlotnik / Leave a comment

Hello, subscribers. I have been waiting to post something since this summer. If we have been chatting, you know this summer was less than stellar for me. 

I have been thinking about what to post next. This post is one of the many stories I have been writing in my head all summer long:

I am a Millennial. I consider myself an older millennial or xennial: part of the Oregon Trail Generation if you will. I was born in 1985, smack dab in the middle of the 1980s. I grew up with an older brother. He basically controlled the TV in our household. My brother is an older millennial, so I consider myself one too.

Many would say millennials get a bad rap. We, older Millennials, are nearly 40. (I am about to be 36 and am super happy about it- for the record). Why do we get classified with the younger millennials? I say it is because generations stick together. 

When I graduated high school, our generation was called Generation Y. We were the kids of the millennium. We had the best of both worlds. Life before technology. Life before smartphones. I am sure you have seen all seen the memes about this. 

Now, we live in a world where we are glued to our phones. As a parent and as a human, this is a difficult situation for me. I talk to Google like she is my friend. My son also talks to Google, which is quite funny.

Anyways, without further ado: here is my list that I have been compiling all summer: 

Signs you might be an older Millennial:

  • New technology is not your strong suit.
  • You bought your first Chromebook and still have no idea how to start a zoom call on it. (yet, you will figure it out)
  • You are looking at your printer (which is hooked up and plugged in) that has not worked in years.
  • You remember your childhood vividly, basing years on the grade you were in/what a wonderful summer you had.
  • You love the 80s and 90s nostalgia.
  • You have a memory of riding in the back of a pickup truck.
  • You also have a memory of riding in the back of a minivan with no seats. Seatbelts seemed optional, but you knew you were supposed to wear them.
  • Nickelodeon was the best. TGIF was even better.
  • You may have graduated college during a recession.
  • You are becoming a parent or raising a child during a pandemic: pandemic toddlers are so resilient.
  • You are a believer in social justice, at least I am.
  • You know exactly where you were when you heard of the death of Princess Diana. You remember who you were with at the time. 
  • The same goes for 9/11. May those we lost live on in the memories of their loved ones. Never Forget.
  • You do not want to settle for any job. It has to be a career job.
  • You love social media: I remember seeing an actual, The Facebook at the University of Georgia. This yearbook-type publication is where they say Mark Zuckerberg got the idea for the platform while at Harvard. (If you watched the movie The Social Network, he could have stolen the idea. I guess we do not know)
  • You get confused by Instagram, wishing they taught you how to use it for business in school.
  • You did not have a hashtag at your wedding. (It wasn’t a very common thing when I married my husband in 2013.)
  • You may remember seeing rotary phones at Grandma’s house.
  • You avoid group texts. I am doing that right now, so I can have time to write this.
  • You prefer talking on the phone over texting.
  • You got your first phone at age 16 when you were able to drive on your own.
  • Nowadays, you hate listening to your voice mail.
  • You think chain letters/emails are the worst. Did you know they still exist? My friends broke the chain of a sticker club for my son once. We did not get any stickers in the mail. (but my son did get some from a friend in person)
  • You miss getting letters in the mail.
  • You still like to write things down even though it is easier to use your phone or computer.
  • You always have to look up how to spell emoji. Thanks, spellcheck.
  • Speaking of emojis, you overuse them. 🙂 ❤
  • Mom jeans are back in style, but they are not the ones you remember as a child.
  • You love skinny jeans. In middle school, you may have spent your own money on wide-leg jeans from the Limited Too. 
  • You did not fly on an airplane until you were in elementary or middle school.
  • You grew out your bangs as a child. Now you have side bangs as an adult.
  • Your friends all have grey hair. (none yet for me, luckily)
  • You have tickets for Elton John so you can say you saw him before he “retires.”
  • Music shaped your childhood, and now you share that music with your children.
  • This list could go on forever, like the song that never ends…

I am sorry if you are singing that song right now. Ha!

I would love to know more about you all: my subscribers. Are you an older millennial? What else would you add to this list?

Keep reading!

Lake Life

/ azlotnik / Leave a comment

Sometimes your loved one’s traditions become your own. My husband grew up going to his Great Uncle Johnny’s lake house in Tennessee. Uncle Johnny and Aunt Mary (whom I never had the pleasure to meet) would always invite Ryan up to his lake house on the Emory River for a week in the summer over the Fourth of July. The property was near the Kingston Steam Power Plant. He started going once his grandfather, Johnny’s brother, passed away when my husband was ten years old. Uncle Johnny wanted to include Ryan in the family get-togethers and treated him like he was his grandson. Uncle Johnny never did have any kids or grand kids of his own. 

Other family members would join in the week at the lake including his distant cousin Ron (Ronny), Ronny’s parents Roger and Sis, and his brother Mike and sister-in-law Tammy. They would go for rides in Roger’s boat, water-ski, tubing, and also take spins on Ronny’s jet-ski. Often, Ryan and Uncle Johnny would just drive around and do nothing, a term they liked to call “piddling.” Ronny and Ryan would often take a late-night trip to get a slushy at Sonic, get gas for the boats, and get items from the grocery store that they wanted. Aunt Mary passed away when Ryan was in high school and Uncle Johnny later remarried to Lena. 

When my husband and I started dating in college, I was invited to go to the lake too. On the fourth of July in 2006, Ryan and I drove the four hours to Tennessee and four hours back in one day just to be there for the holiday. Ronny was the only guest there that day and we rode on his jetski and saw the boat races at the annual Smokin the Water Festival in Kingston. It was a wonderful day and got a glimpse at what Ryan was so fond of about lake life in Tennesee. 

My first trip to the lake house with Ryan in 2006.

The next year, we spent a whole weekend at the lake with Ronny. We would spend our days out on the water. Uncle Johnny and his wife Lena were so kind to us. We had so much fun tubing on the lake and riding on the jetski all weekend. Ronny was always so fun to be around. He was a kind man who was always up for a good laugh. He and Ryan grew very close over the years. A few months after our weekend visit, Ronny visited Ryan and we all went to see the Charlie Daniels band at the Freedom Concert. Ronny and Ryan talked and kept up with each other over the years, and we always meant to visit more often. Then, something very unexpected happened to the lake.

Top Left: Johnny and Lena at the lake house. Middle: Jet-ski time 2007. Top Right: Ronny and me
Bottom Left: Ronny and Ryan. Bottom Right: Uncle Johnny and Aunt Mary

On December 22, 2008, an ash spill at Tennessee Valley Authority plant in Roane County flooded the water at Uncle Johnny’s lake house. It was the largest coal ash spill in U.S. history. His lake property was ruined with ash sludge. Ryan’s dad owned the lot across the street from Johnny’s but had not put a house on it yet. His lake lot was also deemed unfit for use due to the ash spill. To learn more about the ash spill in Swan Pond click here.

The TVA bought out about 100 landowners near Lakeview Drive on the Emory River including Uncle Johnny and Ryan’s Dad. Uncle Johnny did not relocate to lake property, rather he bought a modular home in Rockwood, Tennessee with Lena. 

Ryan’s dad looked all over for comparable lake property and ended up buying a lake lot on a different part of the river in Spring City, Tennessee. It is a small town that has one stoplight and doesn’t have a standalone McDonalds. (It’s attached to a gas station). The local grocery store is a small Piggly Wiggly and you have to drive 20 miles to reach a Wal-Mart. Spring City has grown on us. We now have a deep appreciation for the small town and what it has to offer. 

In the fall of 2011, we found out that Ronny had passed away at the age of 43. He was taken from us much too soon. Maybe if the ash spill never happened, we would have gotten to get together with Ronny at Uncle Johnny’s one last time. We were busy with our jobs and life got in the way. Ronny will always have a special place in our hearts. 

Ryan and I got married in 2013. A few years later, Uncle Johnny passed away. When our son Nathan was born in 2018, we decided to honor Johnny by naming him after Ryan’s Great Uncle. Nathan’s middle name is John after Uncle Johnny.

While I was pregnant with Nathan, Ryan’s Dad began construction on the lake house in Spring City. It was finally complete around the time Nathan was 10 months old. In April 2019, we stayed over at the lakehouse for the first weekend. The first of many weekend lake trips. 

Nathan learned how to crawl during that first lake vacation. Must have been all the soft carpet in the living room! During another weekend trip, we took Nathan to meet late Uncle Johnny’s wife Lena. She loved meeting him and he loved exploring her home. 

Every few months, we go to the lake house and make family memories. We love going there and now love sharing the love of swimming in the water with Nathan. We started a new tradition of taking porch pictures of the lake house. It was so neat to see how much Nathan grew from each visit to the lake house to the next. The last time we went to the lake house over this past Fourth of July, Nathan wanted nothing to do with the porch pictures. At age two, he is more interested in exploring than being held by mommy and daddy for a photo. He didn’t smile, but we finally got a decent shot or two on the porch. 

Pictured are Porch Photos, Nathan with Gran, Pop and Lena, and Smokin the Water festival over the Fourth of July.

Last year, we went again to Smokin the Water in Kingston. They no longer had boat racing but it was still a fun festival. This year, the festival was canceled due to COVID-19. We still had fun shooting off fireworks in the cul-de-sac and watching the neighbor’s fireworks from the porch. 

We are going up to the lake house again in a week with our friends who have a boat and we will all go riding and tubing on the lake. I love making memories with my family at the lake house and in the water in Tennessee. Nathan loves going to the lake house and asks to go there almost daily. I hope he will always have a love of going to the lake. I’m excited to see what the future may bring for our family and to have him grow up visiting the lake just like his Daddy did when he was a kid.

Our most recent trip to the lake. Enjoying the water/beach and a porch picture.

DIY: Cork Board Map Of United States

/ azlotnik / 2 Comments

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My husband and I like to travel and we thought it would be neat to document our trips with photos on a map of the United States. This project evolved as it went on and we had thought about it for a while. We saw numerous different ways to do this, including purchasing them outright for a considerable price. Since we are relatively crafty, we decided to make it ourselves and thought it would be a good project to do together.

It has been several months since we did this project, but I wanted to blog about how to make it in case anyone was interested in making a corkboard map of their own. In this blog post I will explain the tools you need and give step-by-step instructions of how to make it. We documented our project with pictures and have included those for you as well.

Here are all of the things you will need:

  • 3/8 inch cork sheet (We used a 1/2 inch thick by 24 x 36 inch sheet ordered off Amazon)
  • 1/4 inch thick piece of plywood minimum 24 X 36 inches from your local home improvement store (We used MDF, because it’s what we had at the house)
  • Printed map of the outline of the United States big enough to fit within 24 X 36 inches
  • Small push pins (We purchased these off Amazon)
  • Scissors
  • Pencil
  • Jig Saw (We had access to a band saw, so we used that)
  • Dremel tool with sanding bit
  • 1 quart of Contact Cement/adhesive from your local home improvement store
  • Paint Brush
  • Box Cutter with new blade
  • 2- Picture hanging kits rated for 30 pounds
  • Drill and drill bit for attaching picture hanging kit
  • Screwdriver
  • Hammer
  • Wallet sized photos of your choice from around the country

* If you want to include Hawaii, like we did, you’ll need blue spray paint as well.

Here’s how to make it:

We went online and bought the cork and push pins. The rest of the items, we either had or purchased at Home Depot. Our printed map was printed by a friend, but you can purchase your own on Amazon, or print it at FedEx Office Center. We ended up getting 1/2 inch cork and we determined that was a little too thick. That’s why we recommend getting 3/8 inch thickness if it’s available.

To start off the project, we cut out the outline of the map with scissors. We then traced the map onto the plywood with a pencil.

The next step is to cut out the map on the plywood, following the traced lines with the jig saw or band saw (if available). Make sure not to touch the lines.

When coming to tight curves, use relief cuts as shown.

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Take your Dremel tool and sanding bit, and sand the edges to smooth and fine tune the map edges. Sand down to the pencil marks.

Place the plywood map face down on the cork. Roughly mark with your pencil where the map is on the cork. Give yourself one inch of room around the map just in case.

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Now, apply contact cement/adhesive to the face up side of the plywood map following the instructions on the container.

Apply the cement adhesive to the marked area on the cork.

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Once dry, place two glued surfaces together. Press firmly following the adhesive container’s instructions.

Use a new box cutter blade, and trim excess cork from around the plywood map.

Now, use the Dremel took with sanding bit to flush up the cork to the plywood.

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The map of the contiguous United States is now complete. Now, it’s time to add your desired wall hanging fixtures.20161222_142127We used a wire picture frame hanging kit. We used the appropriate drill bit to make a pilot hole. Make sure to not go completely through your project with the drill bit. We then used screwdriver to install the kit per the instructions on the frame kit.

 

To Make Hawaii:

We used a cut off piece of the plywood and cut it into a rectangle that is 9 inches wide by 7 inches tall. We spray painted the rectangle blue. While waiting for the paint to dry, we then used our paper map to cut out the islands of Hawaii and then transferred those onto some of the leftover cork. We cut the islands out of the cork with a box cutter then sanded the edges of the cork islands with the Dremel tool. Once the blue paint was dry, we then used the contact cement (or you could use super glue) to glue the islands to the blue rectangle. We then attached a mounting loop to the back for hanging on the wall.

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Final Steps:

Figure out where you would like to put the map and Hawaii on the wall and attach necessary hardware to the wall with a hammer. Now you have an idea of what your map will look like on the wall. The only thing left is to add photos! It’s probably best to take the map off the wall while you add your photos, securing them in place with push pins. Place the map back on the wall and admire your work!

* NOTE: We would have included Alaska in our map, but we have never been there!

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