{you can do it!}

last. day. of. speech. camp. TOMORROW.

i will miss my kids, i will not miss the 5:45 alarm clock.

friday, i am sleeping until i can't sleep anymore :)

cd girls, we are almost there!

{365}

short and sweet because i don't like to get too sappy (especially if this is considered pda...), but thank you to the most wonderful man for 1 year of dating :)  it has been a wonderful year full of laughter, talking, learning, growing and figuring out what it means to experience this life together.

thank you for being a Godly example of a man who is always trying to help me grow and change for the better, who serves me and others, and who reminds me constantly of what is important in life.

you're wonderful, and i am very blessed to be your girlfriend :)

{grad school}

let me preface this post with I LOVE SCHOOL.  i really do... i love the people i have class with, i love learning new things, i love my teachers... still, this whole 'grad school' thing is not for the faint of heart.

this may sound a bit over dramatic if you are just exceptionally brilliant, or you've never been to grad school.  i've been over there in that mindset (the never been to grad school one...)

that is, until now.

i always thought, 'hey, undergrad isn't too bad!  grad school is just like undergrad minus the unknown! (ie once you get into grad school, no more applying for things until it's a real big-girl job).

jokes.

i feel like life has been put on hold the past few weeks because of school.

here's my typical day:

5:45 the blasted alarm goes off on my phone.  6:50.  it goes off again.  7:00.  it goes off for a third time and i convince myself this is real and not a dream and i really have to get out of bed.  i put on professional clothes, gather my various books, make some coffee and head off to meijer in hamburg.  there i meet 3 lovely ladies and we car pool (how environmentally friendly of us!) off to the land of the colonels.

it's speech camp time.

yes, we call it camp.  it's our attempt to make those 8 year olds really love their life.  it's actually just group therapy, but i get 3 and 4 year olds, so they really do love us.  still, it's at 8:30 am.  (on a side bar, one of them told his mom speech camp is the greatest part of his life.  how adorable is that?  he makes waking up at 5:45 a little more bearable.)

camp runs til 11:45, so we have approximately an hour of free time (which has become the official hour of eating our feelings) before we have class.  classes run from 1-3:30, and then 3:35-5:55 on mondays and wednesdays, and thankfully, just til 3:30 on tuesdays and thursdays.  this means mondays and wednesdays, we kind of die a little bit inside.  like for real.  it makes for super long days (that's 13 hours of school if you count my commute!)

add to that that last week we had a test monday, a test tuesday, we have another test this monday and wednesday, and we have paperwork for clinic.  HOT DANG ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME GRAD SCHOOL!?

this is the reason i have no time for blogging.  or breathing.  or eating.  or sleeping.  or many other things that i once thought were required to sustain life.

oh well... one more week of speech camp!  then i will once again know what it feels like to be a normally functioning human being (well slightly....)

{ichthus 2011}

i love music.  it is just great, and if you have it live, it's 10 times better!  ichthus 2011 is officially over, and it was another great one :)  for the past 2 years, ian and i have worked the compassion international booth, so we split our time watching some awesome bands and telling people about an awesome organization.

the line-up this year wasn't bad!  we got to see anberlin again, which isn't really an ichthus favorite by the crowds, but hot dang they're good!  if you ever get the chance to see them, you really should.  i even broke my rule of not meeting celebrities and met them (the line was less than a minute to see them... i couldn't not say hi!)

another band if you ever get the chance to see that you should jump on the chance is family force 5.  they may appeal to the middle school/high school crowd, but they are HILARIOUS and so good in concert.  they get the crowd excited, they dance around like crazy people, and they just have a good time!  the encore?  oh... they came out with ballons of themselves and a hamster ball.  completely and totally ridiculous, but also amazing.

it was a great weekend!  i got to see some awesome music, tell people about compassion, i got a southern cooking lesson from ian's mom one day when we took a break, i got sun!, and i had a fabulous weekend with the boy!

and happy father's day to the most wonderful dad a girl could ask for!  my daddy can fix everything, he's always sending me encouraging texts, and he has been an amazing example of who my Heavenly Father is.  i love you, pops!  thanks for being such a great dad all these years!

{i am blessed}

relay for life happened!  and it was a blast...  there were times i felt so confused and unsure.  this was not only my first ever relay, but i was also team captain.  people would come to me with questions i had no answer to, but you know what, it was totally fine!

thank you to all the girls who came out and walked, especially amy and brandy who stayed late and came early!  MB and dr. brown came out and walked (and made me cry...), sam and lauren for visiting, my lovely roommate for coming out even though it was crazy windy, my wonderful parents drove down from columbus (and were my go-to people as they have both done relay before!) and the fabulous boy of mine who came after a long day of work and stayed til clean-up was done.

andrea and amy showing off that laryngeal mechanism!

rocking the tutu

ryan's luminary

oh yes. 80's fashion show

love my parentals :)

:)

this weekend made me realize how blessed i am that i have wonderful people that surround me.  i have such a great family, caring and generous classmates, teachers who care about their students like they were their own kids, and a great group of friends that go out of their way to love others.

i hope ryan is looking down and seeing the ripple effect he left on all of us

{summer school}

the joys of summer are over before they began (insert sad violin music here)

summer school has officially begun!  it's nice to see people from school again... i have amazing classmates. that's the good thing :)  still, mondays and wednesdays are gonna be super long, since i have speech camp (hide your jealousy) at 8:30, and we have class til 5:55.  phew!

my day DID start with leftover donuts and peaches from the farmer's market with ian, which was a nice way to start my first day of class!

it's weird to be in class again already... i'm not quite ready, but i am at the same time.  it's weird.  i like being a student.  i'm a nerd and totes ok with it.

{prepare yourself for impressivement}

get ready.... this weekend, ian and i made homemade donuts!!!!

i failed to read the instructions fully (as i tend to do often...) and only after we finished the dough did we realize it needed to chill overnight, but that just prolonged the excitement!

i found the recipe at a blog called the pioneer woman, and it's a really neat blog if you've never been there. she doesn't use crazy ingredients, and we had most of it already!
milk, sugar, yeast, butter, flour, salt and oil.  lots of work (since i don't have one of the coveted kitchenaid mixers... if you have one with the dough attachment, this whole process would have been so much easier!), but it was so fun!  she has much better pictures of the process, so if you're interested, you can find the recipe here.

we also lack a thermometer that can tell the temperature of the oil, but with some testing, we found it.  observe the pictures of the fruits (or fried goodness if you will...) of our efforts!

roll that dough out, boy!

our ghetto cookie cutters... a canning lid and an icing tip

after they rose

frying!

us with our pile of goodness

these were soooo good... i hope someone else tries them!  they were fun to make and delicious :)

{phew!}

first off, a huge congratulations to my beautiful best friend and roommate of 6 years, katie fort for getting engaged last night!!!!!  brad, you're a lucky man (and don't you forget that!).  eeeeek!  it's crazy that this time 6 years ago, we were all excited and planning out rooms for waller.  we have certainly come a long way (especially b/c if you've ever seen waller, anything after that place is an improvement)!  i can't wait to watch you two begin your lives together :)  love you both!

i think i turned 20 in this picture... eek

sledding in the bowl

graduation! katie is officially an MSW!

today is also strange because i applied for unemployment.  the lovely summer school and then internship in the fall leaves about zero time for work, considering this summer i go from 8am-6pm and then after that it's working full time fo free.  awesome!
i have worked faithfully at 7 am (because waking up super early is the only way i've been able to work the past 3 years), and while i didn't make much, it paid the bills.  without working, it's gonna be rough, BUT i'm trying to remember matthew 6:25-34 today:

Do Not Worry

    ²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[a]?

   ²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

i like this passage because it makes me realize, yes, God loves me so much more than a bird or a flower... he's going to provide.  one way or another, it's going to be fine.  either i get unemployment and all is hunky dory (also, i don't think i've ever typed that before... it looks strange), or i find an incredibly random job that only wants strange hours of work, or something works itself out.  it always does! 

if nothing else, i'm getting a great education in something that i love and can't wait to work (which how lucky is that?  i'm pumped to work... ), i have a great and loving family, my best friend is getting married, i have super fabulous roommates, a wonderful boyfriend, and to top it off, monday i start classes with classmates that i've missed over the break!  life is good.

heck... even broke is good.  not all the time, but honestly, by not having money, i live cheaply, i don't stress over how i'm going to pay off my new car, and i'm content with what i have.  what more can you ask for, right?  bring on that ramen!  cheers for my 20 year old car!  high fives for getting creative with my dates!  this is all building amazing character :)

{much to do!}

phew... whoever said breaks are relaxing has never met me...

so the blog's taken a back seat for the past few weeks.  oops!

life has happened.  surprise surprise!  i've been working, hanging out with my favorite kiddos, trying to get life ready for school, getting things together for relay for life, fixing my car, attempting (with poor results) to clean, and all the while trying to remember that it's the last few days of my break before grad school starts up again!

i'll try to think of some highlights...

for anyone who wears toms, you may have the same problem i do.  i love toms, dearly, but i've found they make my feet smell terrible.  like i won't take my shoes off terrible.  if yours do the same thing, i have a suggestion.... they make socks that are lower than no-show!  they're at journey's at the mall, and so far, they've made a huge difference in the scent of my feet.  strange, yes, but i would have liked to have discovered this long ago, so there ya go fellow toms wearers!

my car is determined to make me the greatest car owner/handiest person ever.  i am currently in the process of getting rid of the duct tape holding the siding together.  it should be a simple fix, brownie is trying her best to frustrate me.  mark my words, car, i'll get the siding to stick to you!  wish me luck :)

in addition to my car breaking, my fm transmitter also broke, and if you've ever driven to eku more than 1x per week, you know you need good music... luckily, the people at griffin are amazing and are sending me a brand new one!  heck yes for being a girl and getting what i want sometimes!

i finished the 6th harry potter... one more to reread! (nerd alert, i know)

1 week to relay for life!!!!  phew!  this time next week i will be setting our campsite up!  if you want to come visit, you totally should.  there's tons of events open to the public, and it's going to be a great time.  for real- it's free, so why not!?  also you should consider donating... here's a link to my page.  for real, if 10 people donated just $5 that's $100 for cancer research.  $100 can help with lodging for families, transportation to and from appointments, support groups, better equipment, funding for research, free screenings, and so much more.  the relay goes all night too, so you late night college students have no excuse not to come :)  (here's my site!)

finally, school starts again monday and guess who's not ready.  oh yeah, that would be me.  i'm sort of in denial that i have school in the summer and have been determined not to think about it!  that all has to change monday, BUT it's not monday, so i'm not thinking about it.

tomorrow marks my final day working at the y!!!! it also marks the day that my kids i got 3 years ago head off to high school.  i for real might cry.  it's been a fun 3 years with those kids, and if it weren't for the amazing kids and parents i have, i probably wouldn't have kept this job for so long.

pictures are more fun than words sometimes... enjoy!

making faces with my munchkin

kentucky horse park!

basil and cilantro beginning to sprout

a little picnic in the arboretum

a baking day at sugar creek!  raspberry pie made by ian and myself, and the lovely erica dupps' very beautiful chocolate cake :)  hello sugar coma

hope you enjoyed my fabulous post about not too much!  let's see if i can be more regular about posting...