A Few Good Things

Including the perfect dinner combination, a riveting documentary, and our family beach trip

Hi hi!!! Happy Friday, friends. How was your week?

We’re down at our little beach shack, and my whole family gets here Sunday and, reader, I am SO EXCITED! When I say whole family, I mean it. My brother and his wife and their new baby, Garrett, my younger sister and her wife, my older sister, her husband, and five of their six kids, and my mom are all renting various places down here for our first-ever family reunion of sorts, and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this trip.

We have never, in my 35 years on this earth, all been in the same place at the same time for a vacation. I don’t know if that’s common or not, but it’s definitely not something our family ever did growing up. We couldn’t afford vacations, so we simply didn’t take them. We visited family and stayed with them, which is how we got to see everyone, but we never took actual trips together where there were hotels involved and/or resorts or things like that.

We’re making up for lost time now, and it feels like the perfect moment because all the grandkids are here, too. All of the siblings are adults, married, and in really good places in our lives to enjoy a trip like this together. It feels special knowing we’ll all be under the same stretch of Florida sky for a few days, making memories that honestly should have happened years ago.

Can you tell how excited I am for next week?

In other news, I want to thank you for all of your thoughtful comments on last week’s newsletter, where you shared things about yourself that we didn’t know! A lot of times, sharing your life online can feel like a one way street, so I wanted to open up the dialogue and get to know you a lot more, and boy did you deliver. I LOVE this community and everyone who makes it what it is. Last week’s letter was free for all subscribers, so check it out if you haven’t. It’s a fascinating read!

And if you want to learn more about us, here are a few Q&A’s we’ve done recently:

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If you need us, we’ll be at the beach, soaking up a bunch of family time and eating way too much! We’ll still be over on Instagram if you want to follow along!

Hope you have a marvelous weekend, and here are a few good things from the week.

1. The Beach!

We normally come to the beach twice each summer: once in May for PJ’s birthday, and then again sometime in July for a few weeks. This is always the laziest, most relaxing stretch of our entire year. While we never fully unplug (can you imagine?!), we do our best to scale back and take things down a notch when it comes to work, getting as close to a true vacation as we can. That looks like going to the beach every day, not paying quite as much attention to what we eat, skipping the gym (though PJ usually sneaks in a few workouts in our tiny bedroom), and more or less doing whatever feels right. It’s our time to dream about the future. The someday-maybes. The what-ifs. The ideas that seem a little too big and a little too unrealistic back home. Everything feels more possible down here. Maybe it’s the salt air or the slower pace, but every year we find ourselves talking about the lives we want to build, the places we want to see, and the things we still hope to do. And maybe that’s the scariest thought of all: what if more things are possible than we think?

2. The Perfect Combo

Answer me this: is there a better combination than caesar salad, French fries (with ranch to drip them in), and a crisp glass of white wine to wash it all down with? Think it over! The burst of flavors on a hot summer day, the lightness of the salad and the crunchiness of the fries. Ugh, it all just hits the spot. I’ve been craving it for dinner lately and was satisfied the other night, and now I want you to try it (or do you already order this combo when you go out?) and tell me what you think!

3. The Princess

It’s been a few years since I watched it, but I showed our kids The Princess on HBO Max the other day, and forgot how heartbreaking and beautiful and big Princess Diana’s life was. They had no idea who she was, so I immediately gave a quick herstory lesson. If you haven’t seen it, this documentary is an urgent watch, and the extraordinary thing about it is it’s told only through TV clips from the time periods being shown. There are no current interviews or modern talking heads on the screen, so you really get a sense of what life was like back then and throughout almost 20 year life in the spotlight. It’s a fascinating watch, and I found myself sad at her passing all over again, even 30 years later.

4. Martin Ray Vineyards & Winery

You know how much we love a great glass of vino in this house, and for the last week, we’ve been happily sipping on this bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Martin Ray Vineyards & Winery, and reader, it is SO good. It’s rich and earthy, and has those dark berry notes that make you feel like you know what you're talking about when you swirl your glass around and nod thoughtfully. It’s on the pricier side, but it’s absolutely worth every penny. It pairs beautifully with a steak dinner or a backyard burger, and has quickly become one of those bottles we keep reaching for at the end of the day. If you're looking for a crowd-pleasing red that feels a little special without requiring a special occasion, this is it.

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Every Friday on the blog, we share the 14 items we linked from the week that you loved, and you can shop this week’s Friday Fourteen below!

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Tuesday’s Letter

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If you want to start receiving emails for Keep & Delete, our daily journal, you can do so by following the instructions below:

1. Go to your Substack account

2. Click on the publication you want to subscribe to (Okay McKay)

3. Click Manage Subscription

4. Find the Subscriptions section

5. Slide the toggle next to each section you want to receive notifications about (Keep & Delete)

6. Save your changes

If you want to see all the Keep & Delete’s so far, you can tap the link below. We also end each one by asking you to share your own Keep & Delete for the day, if you feel up to it.

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What about you? What have you been up to recently?
PS: last week’s good things

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