Procrastination: My way of doing things

Yes, Yes i know. another long time has gone by and i apologize. I've actually gotten emails asking about it! Glad to know people are enjoying this....well, when i keep up with it anyways-ha. We've been so busy (shocking) and that is why the delay has been so long. I've always had problems with procrastinating...the doctors haven't found a cure yet so I guess I just have to deal.



OK well so this doesn't turn into another novel I'll just sum up and then hopefully be able to keep up on a day-to-day basis (or at least an exciting event-to-exciting event basis. day by day may be a little boring...class, eat, sleep...class, eat,sleep....). 2 weeks ago saturday Chad and Chelsie had entered to play in this soccer tournament for a charity "The Jesus Project". Their team ended up making it to the championship! The next night we had a WONDERFUL time with Steven and Chelsie because they offered to make us dinner! It was a "thank-you" for hosting and cooking things for them. How sweet :) Well sunday night they came over and started cooking...however, when Steven opened the steaks (NY Strips!) they were purple. Now, all the steaks that I have seen un-cooked, granted, not a lot, but none of them has looked quite like this. Steven and Chelsie took it back to the store and exchanged it (they said it seemed like a normal thing for people to bring meat back because it was bad...note to self, do not buy meat from there) and then everyone came back to the apartment and started the adventure. There was so much stuff and I just stood there and watched as they cooked the steaks on the stove, steamed broccoli, cooked rice, seasoned rice, seasoned steak, baked croissants, cut up fresh pineapple, made fresh salad with ranch croutons and cheese, and it was all incredibly good. We had a lot of fun that night just sitting around talking and actually ended up getting Steven's didgeridoo (don't blame me if I spelled that wrong...) and we all tried to play it, tried being the key term in that sentence. It was great though!


The next weekend was our Fall Break meaning we had Friday the 17th off. Better than nothing but still only one day compared to regular colleges many days off. Anyways Thursday after our bible test (don't even ask how that went) we headed off on our 6 1/2 hour ride down beautiful arkansas roads of fields and tractors and boringness. How wonderful. We made the best of it and became rockstars singing at the top of our lungs. Too bad you can't send in tapes to American Idol via cell phone. We totally would have won. We finally got home pretty late and were getting everything ready for bed and I was downstairs talking to mom and if you know us, you know that we usually stay up who knows how long yacking on and on about anything and everything. However, tonight we had already said how tired we were and how we'd just talk about everything another night....well we kept saying that and saying we were going to bed....and kept saying it until about 3:30 until we decided that was late enough haha. Friday Mom and I headed out and got manicures and pedicures! I still think this is just amazing that mom does this every other week, its great! Anyways the lady that she gets hers done with did my feet and nails for the wedding and i loved her and we both got to hang out with her Friday. I think we laughed the entire time - it was hilarious. We met Chad and Dad for lunch at Panera Bread (YAY!!). Speaking of...random, i know, but I had always thought things were pretty healthy there...on the contrary actually. I was looking up how to make one of their sandwiches and found out that a lot of the sandwiches had 20-38 grams of fat...in one sandwich! The soups (even the healthy sounding ones like broccoli cheese) were just as bad. Shocking! Of course, this doesn't change how much I absolutely love this place, but still, I couldn't believe it! Anyways we ate their and then Chad had to leave to go to his INTERVIEW! He came back an hour and a half or two hours later and told us how well it went! They were asking him to come back for a second run and we are planning on when that will be. I am so excited that we actually might end up in Birmingham. I believe in 11th grade or so I told myself that I wanted to live a number of places other than Alabama...and now I'm so excited its a possibility haha. So that was a good boost for the weekend. Friday night Mom, Dad, Chad, Me and Kyle played the board game Settlers. Quite a long game but I ended up winning and so it was worth it ha. The best thing is no one saw it coming and were concentrating on 2 people who were almost winning and then BAM! i win. wonderful. Anyways don't want to become too self-absorbed....

Saturday Mom and I left around 3 to head over to Bethany's house. Mom and her were putting on a "thank-you" dinner (i see a theme forming...) for a lot of people who helped with the wedding. We went early because Mom was making her famous rolls for everyone. I helped chop veggies (zucchini, squash, green peppers, onions) which we later made into kabobs and grilled. We had tenderloin that was soooo tender and everyone loved it. It was a ton of fun as always - the guys built a fire in the yard and at the end of the night all the guys ended up out there and all the girls were inside talking. Very stereotypical huh. I did go out there a few times - we were roasting marshmallows and so there was no way I was going to miss out on that. It is one of my favorite things in life...anyways...we ended up back at home pretty late that night. Sunday was church. Man i love that place - i always feel right at home at that church. So we went to early service (still getting used to the fact we have 2 services) and then for class Mom and Dad teach a Financial Peace class so we got to sit in on that which turned out great because it was about insurance stuff we needed to know and also about things we went over in class we had to skip to go to the interview. That was really great and I know wherever we end up we will definitely be doing that class....we will have no idea what to do otherwise ha. OK so we went out to eat at Cozumel of course and during the meal Chad and I decided why not stay another day and leave on Monday? So we did. Sunday night we played another game of Settlers and then Monday Chad tried to get in for his second interview but they were too busy so we just got to chill out. We went to Panera again (can you tell this is one of my favorite places?) and then left in the afternoon. We went to Memphis and was able to see Chad's parents and Brett for a little bit. I wish we could have stayed longer but we had to get back to school :( Overall though the trip was good and we are waiting to go back!!!

The next weekend my Dad's side of the family was in town because my cousin was in the homecoming musical Oaklahoma. We got to go out to eat with them on Saturday at a local pizza place so it was good to catch up. We went to the musical that night and it was pretty good! I knew a little about it but i had never seen it before. I knew one of the main girls in it so that was fun too. It was about 3 hours long but it was worth it and we had fun.

Chad and I had a date night and went to the new Mcalisters in town - I got some sweetberry chicken sandwich that I wouldn't necessarily recommend...wasn't horrible I just won't be getting it again haha We had another date night when we went up to Little Rock and went to the mall - Chad got some much needed new jeans and a sweater. We got our 6 month ring inspection and cleaning, and we went to Target (forgot the giftcards again Mom). Its been fun just having random date nights :) We're together a lot anyways but going out "on a date" is just fun! Last night Chad asked me out on a date night walk - we went out around 9 and walked around a trail that goes all around searcy. It was cold and we had jackets and flashlights. We carved our name on a tree like people used to do haha but i loved it. On our way back we stopped at Popeye's and got some biscuits and ate them on the way back home! I am just so blessed by my wonderful husband

OK Monday night we hosted an "after-halloween" get-together thing (so we could go buy stuff on sale...are we college students or what?). I got some paper plates, cups, and napkins and then we were going to have the chocolate fountain with stuff to dip in it. I made some "putrid punch" which was just apple cider with "bobbing apples" which was frozen apple cider with food coloring and placed gummy worms all over it and in it. Didn't quite turn out like it was suppose to....looked a little weird, but it was good so i guess it went over well. I also put gummy worms in our ice cubs and we fixed kool-aid and so it looked cool with the worms you could see in the cups. Well the chocolate fountain, of course, didn't work right so we just had this lumpy chocolate sitting in the bottom of it that everyone dipped into...should have known something would go wrong but it turned out ok. We all played SEVERAL rounds of mario-kart on the Wii game system throughout the night. That game is really fun when you have a lot of people. Its even more fun watching other people play it. Hilarious. My mom still trumps all with how hard I've laughed while watching someone else... So i think we had about 9 people total over here. good crowd. I really love hosting things like this...I just love having people over, serving food, playing games - love it.

OOOOOK so that catches you up! Whew! Now i Promise to keep up with things so be checking back on a regular basis from now on. I still have to put up pictures of the apt, wedding picture information, etc. So sorry to get in this lull of no writing but alas, it is over! I will be writing very soon....

Here, There, and Everywhere

birthday, mom, rolls, cookies, target, futon, sad, roadtrip, grape juice, chapel, timeshare, scared, sideways, adrenaline, magic, tigers, terry, 3 hour tour, pressure, sad again, zebras, pigs, ark, huge, 44 oz steak, 9:00, sunshine, british guy, pasta, clothing, late.....and that sums up everything we have done lately. The End.

Ha ok just kidding. I will give some detail for those of you who are more interested. Well there has been so much going on that I literally have not had time to sit and write it all down. One thing after another has just given me more and more to talk about so this may be quite an extensive entry. The 21st of September was my Golden Birthday! Finally a true adult, able to do all the adulty things except rent a car but hopefully I won't really be needing to do that anytime soon. Actually nothing has really changed besides me being able to say I'm 21 ha. My wonderful Mother came to visit the weekend of my birthday which was wonderful news. She got here on Friday and stayed until Sunday. Friday night we wandered WalMart (with all of the arkansas characters from the hills that come out during the weekend) and Mom taught me the good things to have to keep a pantry stocked instead of my week old bread and peanut butter (no, it wasn't really that bad but it was nice to have help to know what things were needed to actually cook). We were there for quite a while and returned home and got to put everything in its place - is it weird that I love doing that? I really do. I love putting everything away in an organized manner. Guess thats a good thing, i just bet Mom and Dad would have never guessed that seeing my room growing up. It was so late after we had everything put away that we just sat in the living room and talked for a little bit -- there was this show on tv, I don't remember what it was but it was the guy that went to a national park and lived with the animals for several years and then got eaten by one of the bears he called his friend....anyways he recorded everything and it was quite humorous. He was running around with these foxes like they were best friends when really they were wild foxes running away from him, and his crazy mind was telling him they were playing together. SO if you ever see that on tv, just watch it for a few minutes and get a good laugh. [OK just as a disclaimer...this post is going to be quite lengthy so go ahead and get comfortable if you aren't already......] Saturday we woke up and started in with the oh so famous Cavender rolls that I had to learn to make in order to consider myself a cook at all. It takes a total of 3 hours to make the rolls because they are completely from scratch - it was a lot of fun. It is funny though, how much I really don't know - like random things you spray on that helps something not get to sticky or putting this in the mixture to prevent so and so...not sure if that made any sense but maybe someone will understand what I'm saying. Basically all that to say im a newbie and am slowly learning so stay tuned for great stories. OK so rolls got finished and looked phenomenal - they were the perfect brown on top, and just so you can get a visual...

I think the total number was around 37? Anyways those are definitely gone and have been for a while. We destroyed them and had probably half of them eaten by the end of the day - and that is no joke. Afterwards we headed to Little Rock to get some things from Target and do a little shopping :) Ended up not getting anything because it was "one of those days" where nothing worked and if you don't understand then you are lying, or I am very jealous ha. After Little Rock we headed back and Mom and I cooked a meal! We made salisbury steaks, broccoli rice and cheese casserole, and already had the rolls. Steven ended up coming over and we all ate to our hearts content. It was a good meal - thank you mom. We sat around and just talked and talked and it was one of those times where everything that was said was just the funniest thing you've ever heard and our faces were red and our jaws were sore. Great birthday celebration! Steven then busted out his french press and we all partook in this new thing we had never tried. Even mom, who hates coffee, had a cup! Although her cup consisted of about a centimeter of coffee, half a cup of creamer, and hot chocolate mix to top it off. Basically it tasted like chocolate creamer but she fell in love with it and was so excited to see she liked coffee. Hilarious. Then came Sunday, and Mom and I ran (yet again) to Wally World and picked up some frozen stuff we had neglected to get on our adventure on friday. It was so fun having her down and being able to show her our mostly set up apartment (and yes - i have pictures now so they will be up soon, stay tuned). It was sad to see her go but it had to be done, I'm sure sitting around while we went to classes for hours wouldn't be too exciting. And I'm sure she was missing all the animals at home :). Sunday was my actual birthday (woo hoo!) but since we has Branson, MO planned for the next weekend we didn't really do anything big. We actually rented Cool Runnings because Chad had never seen it. Let me just say that movie will always be good, and having been to Jamaica made it even better. Chad got me some BEAUTIFUL little hoop earings that have dangling see-through blue spheres that hang down which he gave me on thursday before my mom got there, and ALSO a Cardinals Ankiel jersey which I have wanted for quite a while and that was given to me on our one month anniversary half for that and half for my birthday :)

Alright break time, get up, go to the bathroom, eat some snacks....there is much more to come.

Tuesday we randomly decided to take a trip over to Memphis! We left after classes and had a wonderful dinner of grilled chicken, hash browns, rolls and sparkling grape juice (love love love that stuff!). We then did presents which was so sweet because I wasn't even expecting anything and then moved on to cake (funfetti with chocolate fudge icing...if you haven't had it, go buy it after you finish reading this. it is amazing) which we all ate and loved, of course. The next morning we left around 7:30 to try and get back in time for chapel but we forgot about a tiny detail called traffic which there was a lot of, and then construction back up as well so it set us back a little and we pulled into harding at about 10:07 (chapel starts at 10) so we didn't want to skip because who wants to waste a skip when you are already up? My skips consist of me turning off the snooze and deciding to sleep in an extra hour. Anyways we ran in and made it to chapel and that was our wednesday.

FRIDAY we left about 6:30 to head to Missouri for our "free vacation" we won about a year ago. It is one of those timeshare things but hey, we have time so why not sit through a presentation for a free weekend, right? We got to Branson and went to check in to "Branson Getaways" where they were going to give us all the information about everything included. We were then informed that instead of the Welks Resort (keep this word in mind...resort....) we were being moved to the Howard Johnson (i don't see resort at the end of that....) because they had complaints about dirty rooms. Hard to believe, but hey, nothing we could do about it. The H.J. was actually pretty nice because it was newly renovated so no complaints. We checked in and waited on Mema and Papa to get to branson (they live about 40 minutes away) so we could meet up with them. We went to Steak and Shake (one of Chad's favorite places) and had lunch and then headed out to Silver Dollar City (a.k.a. "Steal-your-dollar city" by the Burris family).'' The weather was perfect, very sunny and not too hot so walking around outside all day didn't bother anyone. We got there around 1 and stayed until about 5. One of the first things we did was this thing called "Grandpa's Mansion". You walked in and there were ghost things all around and there was a room that was completely upside down and then you made your way downstairs and the floors were completely slanted so when you were walking 'upright' your feet were actually very slanted. It was really funny seeing everyone walking around. I actually got pretty disoriented, but that is just my luck. I get that on a normal basis so who knows what my brain was thinking in that room. We walked around and did a ton of rides and I haven't done that in forever so I loved every second. Here is a little f.y.i. about myself....you know how most people scream or squeal or cry on the big rides that go fast and spin you every which direction? Yeah, well i don't do any of those things. I laugh. That's right- as my heart is in my throat and my head is slamming against my harness I am laughing the entire way. Who knows where I got that trait from.... We also went to this saloon show, watched furniture get made, watched baseball bats get made, got to see how peanut brittle is made, and went on the famous ride "Fire in the Hole" which I have heard about for months leading up to this outing. You'll just have to go visit Steal-your-dollar City to find out what its all about. I should get paid for all this advertising I'm doing, although I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate being called Steal-your-dollar City.

Friday night we went to Andy Williams restaurant he has there. It was very classy and had very good food. I got salmon and Chad got shrimp pesto pasta. We had a great time just talking and eating - got to hear a few stories about Mema and Papa growing up and their first few places they lived and about working on the railroad. I love hearing stories like that. After dinner Chad and I headed to our Magic show that was included in our package. It was Kirby VanBurch and his wife and the show was very enjoyable. When we got there, however, we sat in our seats and this other couple came and said we were in their seats....long story short, they got to sit second row but we got to keep our seats so I guess that is ok haha. No we had pretty good seats about 5 rows back or so. The show had tigers, leopards, chickens, and this little duck who wore a bowtie- adorable. He made them appear, disappear, change bodies, etc. After every trick we would sit there and analyze how it was possible, so that means it was a good show if we are bewildered every time. I did figure out one of the tricks, but I won't spoil it for all you magic fanatics. We were pretty worn out after our long day (and I think I mentioned about 5 times that day how I couldn't believe it was just friday, it seemed like we had been there at least 2 days with how much we had done) so we went back to the hotel and just chilled and went to bed.

Saturday we woke up and got ready for our oh-so-exciting timeshare meeting! Yay! The presentation started at 12:30 and was suppose to last for 2 hours. We sat and talked to this guy named Terry for a while about their services and how they are different from other timeshares and all this stuff and then we watched an informational video, etc etc. We got a tour of the property and honestly, all this stuff is pretty cool. If we were about 20 years older and had a lot of money, it would be a definite consideration. However, these people did not realize we could not write a check anywhere near the $12,000 down payment they were asking for. We just laughed at that. Anyways, 3 HOURS after we arrived we were saying we HAD to leave because our next show was at 4:30 and we had to get there early to get the tickets and seats and it was a little bit of a drive from where we were. We finally escaped and headed to the Sight and Sound theater to meet Mema and Papa to watch the production of "Noah". This was absolutely breathtaking. The stage was HUGE and the details of everything was amazing. For the second half of the performance you were inside the ark and they had tons of animals that they loaded onto the ark - zebras, camels, pigs, goats, cows, horses, etc. and they were all live and then they had other animatronic ones in their stalls. Just everything was done with great detail, it was really great. We hadn't eaten all day (since our lovely 2 hour meeting turned into 3...) so we left afterwards and headed to a restaurant called Montana Mikes because in our package we got dinner there, which was a $30 certificate. It was a steakhouse and we ended up splitting a 44 oz. steak. 44 oz.! It was so big we had leftovers for 3 meals after that. That was a lot of fun. We had planned on going to the Branson Landing afterwards which is an outside strip mall but it ended up closing at 9 and we arrived at 8:45 so that was exciting. We walked around then headed back to the hotel.

Sunday we attended church with Mema and Papa and Sarah and Todd (his aunt and uncle) and Aunt Dee (his great aunt). We went to a place called Zio's for lunch, of course I loved it since it was Italian. I got this spinach and artichoke pasta that was really good. We all hung out for a while at Mema and Papa's house and watched some football and ate some jello cookies that Papa made - soo good!. We hit the road around 3:30 and headed back to the Branson Landing planning to stay just a little while but of course I ended up having luck with clothes (random) and so we stayed quite a while...aka we left when things were closing. It was a lot of fun though :)

Whew....alright I know I left some details out but I just wanted to get a post in so everyone knew I was still here. Don't expect it to be this long before the next one. PLEASE add any details I left out in a comment!! ...or just comment ha

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