Let's try this again..

This whole blogging thing just doesn't work for me, apparently :) But I'm gunna give it another shot! I have time now!

This past semester the Lord called me away from school and the life I was living. He called me into a life to be lived for His purpose. As of right now I'm waiting for what He's calling me to next, but as I wait I have found myself more at peace than I have been in several years. It's amazing how God works :)

So, because I am no longer attending school and do not have a job as of yet, I have time to blog! And so it begins! Hopefully I can keep up with it this time!

Just last month, my brother, dad and I traveled out to Idaho to visit my cousins! We always have a wonderful time when we get together; I wish it would happen more often! It's kind of funny how well we get along, but I credit it all to the bloodline :) My dad had 19 cousins and they would spend every summer together at the lake, several of them attended the same schools and they all lived relatively close to each other. It's just what our family does.. we spend quality time with each other doing things we love. That's one of the things I love so much about my dad's family. You can call up a cousin (mine or my dads) whenever you need, and they're there for you. Love it.
Here are a few pictures from our trip..

Rebekah and I on our ice skating adventure.. ha that's one heck of a story.. :P


Sledding!


Some of our many treats we made... 116 peanut butter balls, 67 oatmeal cranberry cookies dipped in white chocolate, 100 peanut clusters, some crazy number of chocolate chip cookies and reindeer cookies...


T-Bone! My cousins cow!


We had a blast! And I can't wait to see them again! One night my cousin Michael, his wife and their 3 boys came over for dinner. It was great to catch up with them.. the last time I'd seen Mike and Mandi was just a few days before they got engaged and now they have three children! Unfortunately we didn't get to see Meagan and her daughter or Melissa and her husband and 4 kids (and another on the way!). Maybe soon though!!

sooooooo it's been just over 7 months since I've written. This whole blog thing just didn't work out with papers and tests and the busyness of college.
so. because I love photography and have no way other than facebook to show my pictures I've decided to turn this into a place for me to post some of my pictures! :)
I hope you enjoy them!
I may occasionally include a normal blog post, at least for the summer, but for now just pictures!

So maybe...

I should post again! :) It's been awhile.

Where to start? My days have been crazy and as I guessed, the blog has been put on the back burner. Sorry, y'all!

Two weekends ago I went home for the first time in a long time! It was great to get to sleep in my own bed again! I mixed up a bunch 

of cookie dough to freeze and bring back to the sorority house my sisters loved that! We pretty much revolve around cookies. There's a batch baked at least once a day. And there's always raw cookie dough being eaten. Unhealthy, I know. but OH so good! One day, my friend Leslie and I went on a photo shoot at the local park. We had an absolute blast and got some really crazy pictures!

 I got to go to church at my home church. Which was nice, but really weird! I'm so used to the wonderful church I'm going to up here. I thought they were very similar, but in fact their very different!

I came back for 3 days of classes and then headed back home! I basically just chilled at home. Saturday morning I headed up to GT to hang out with Leslie and attend my first ever college football game! It was quite the experience. I'm a UGA fan, so being in enemy territory was very interesting to say the least! Experiencing life on a big campus and actually living the differences of small college life/big college life was really cool but bordering on culture shock! We had fun none the less. Did the whole nine-yards. Ya know, climb down the alcohol covered bleachers in a mass of people to rush the field. Stand in a sea of even more people just because and to watch the crazy frat boys tear down the goal post. It took them a good 20 minutes, btw. Somebody yelled out "THOSE ENGINEERS!!" 

My best friend, Lauren, was in town this week! Her schools fall break was this week so she flew down from up north. I didn't think I was going to get to see her, but she worked it out and drove up to see me yesterday!! I was able to show her around our itty bitty campus and we hung out for a few hours. It was soo nice to see her! It's been hard not having her just a few miles away! :( 

This past week went by really really fast. It was pretty rough though. I've been smacked in the face by the real world a lot recently and it's really starting to wear me down. But I know this is where I'm supposed to be and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So I'm hanging tight and continuing to listen for guidance from my Heavenly Daddy.

Next week is going to be super crazy, too! Initiation starts tomorrow night! Yikes! I'm really excited though! I can't wait to be officially part of the first. finest. forever. I LOVE it!!! On the topic of greek life.. this week was greek week! During greek week we have all kinds of contests to earn points. The sorority with the most points at the end wins! We had a banner competition, sidewalk chalk competition, powderpuff football, trivia night, toga night, and a talent competition! Here are a few pictures: 

for Toga night we all dressed up like we were in a wedding! We won most creative :) We had another sister dress up like an "expecting toga lady". It was hysterical. She won craziest toga.

this was our banner. The lady is supposed to be our director of greek life, Debbie 

Here's our powderpuff team! We tied our first game, so in order to make it fair and to keep the games going we took some of our girls and some of our opponent, Tri Delta's girls to make one team! Thus we were TriPi :P and we dominated!!

Here's some of my sisters with our chalk art! I left JUST before this picture was taken but we had a lot of fun making it! The goal was to draw something that promoted greek unity. We made one crest and combined a piece of each sororities crests to make a big one! Unfortunately we didn't win, nor did we even place. But that is a topic that must not be discussed in the house ;) We're a little bitter about this :P

Sooooo that's all for now! All of my sisters are coming back from Greek Gala now so I'm going to see how it was! I skipped out on it :) I'm not much for parties and my diamond, grand diamond and I had a diamond date instead! :D

I'll update soon! Hopefully! :)

<3 me

Procrastinating...

I've been doing quite a bit of it lately. That and eating.. I can't decide which is worse! 

Actually, I haven't been procrastinating too badly. I've been too busy to truly be procrastinating.. It's more like switching to a different assignment when I get bored or frustrated on one. 

I dropped British Literature yesterday!! SUCH a relief. That class was ridiculous and I didn't even need the credit! I should've been taking EH102, but my adviser put me in British Literature. It's a very, very tough class and I was putting sooo much into it but my grades weren't showing it and my other classes were hurting on its behalf. So I'm hoping that by dropping it I will be able to focus more on the classes that I actually need and will be able to bring those grades up!

Last Friday my Alpha class and 2 seniors and 2 sophomores went to the Ronald McDonald House! (RMH is our philanthropy) We drove down to the RMH at Egelston and served a meal for the families staying there. I've got to say that that is THE nicest RMH I've ever seen! I stayed in one a year ago when Ryan was in the hospital and it was nice but this one was arguably as nice as the Marriott! For those who don't know

, the Ronald McDonald House is a place where families can stay when their children are in the hospital undergoing intense treatments that require them to be away from home for an extended period of time. For instance there was one family there whose daughter has leukemia. They had already been there once before but were back for a second round of treatment. The next treatment on the schedule could potentially take 100 days to complete! So instead of having to pay for a 100day hotel stay they can stay at the RMH for 20 bucks a night. This includes meals! It's such a wonderful organization and you don't know how much it means until you're put in that situation. I stayed at the RMH in Chattanooga for only two nights, but in that two nights I saw people who's lives were falling apart because of their children's illness but they were able to cope because they were given a nice place to stay, warm meals and were surrounded by those going through the same thing they were. It was a therapy of sorts. Those families become your family and you grieve and rejoice together! 

Having been, sort of, in their position once it was easier to see just how grateful they were for a warm meal and a smiling face. To be able to serve those families made my heart sing and I want to go back soo badly!

Part of our philanthropy is to collect pop tops! So! If you guys would like to help us support RMH you're more than welcome to keep your pop tops in a jar or something! Just let me know if you want to help and I'm more than willing to come pick them up when you're ready to turn them in!! 

One week until Fall break!! You have nooo idea how excited I am! I finally get to go home! I've been home once in two months! And even then it was for less than 12 hours! I can't wait to sleep in my own bed and see friends! Not to mention a break from school! :)

Anywayyy just a quick update to let you all know I'm still alive!

Hope to post again soon!!

Me

I did it...

I went Greek!!

I know, I know.. I said I wasn't going to do it! "It's just not me!" But I did. I found a place where I belong and life is already different, but in a very good way. I'm pledged to Alpha Delta Pi (alphadeltapi.org), a sorority founded on Christian womanhood. The moment I stepped foot into the house I felt at home and the sisters are incredible, I feel like I've known them for years. 

There's a whole lot of detail about what went on during recruitment week- too much to share on here. But I didn't go all the way through recruitment. I dropped out a little over half way through because I wasn't ready to make a decision. My decision was well thought out and prayed over. 

                     Elvira, Alex (my PiPal) and me!

A lot of people are totally against Greek life- sororities. I was too, but Greek life on my campus is wayyy different than greek life on other campuses. Our sororities are very, very small- the maximum a house can have is 32 people. That's smaller than a PLEDGE class at Georgia Tech (I know this because a friend went greek there). Greek life is part of the tradition on our campus. It's not something we take lightly.

Needless to say I will be extremely busy from now on! I will try to post when I can but it probably won't happen often! Between homework, class, sorority stuff, "me" time, and I'm on overload! But I wouldn't trade it for anything and I'm actually thinking about adding more! ;)

School is going really well. I reworked my schedule- priorities included and I feel like I'm heading in the right direction! I've cut wayyyy down on my internet time (which is also a reason I won't be posting as much) and added more intense study schedules. We'll see how it goes!

My friend Alli came to tour campus on Friday! It was fun to have somebody from home come to visit and hang out and LOVE it here, too!!!

Hope everyone is doing well!!

me!

SURPRISE!!!!

This past weekend my biggest planning event ever took place! I'm sooo excited to share it with you guys! For the past 3 months I've been planning a surprise for my best friend who is going to school in Virginia. See, her 19th birthday was yesterday and I knew that being in a state 12 hours away would be hard so I wanted to make it special!

Longgggg story short I flew up there Saturday morning! And boy did we have a great time!!

I'm going to do this post in pictures :) because I don't have the energy to write out a whole post ;) We had a lot of late nights while I was up there but it was totally worth every second of missed sleep!

here's me on the plane :) I had to write that note backwards cause my camera takes pictures mirror image 

the surprise!!!
Zach (my partner in crime) me and Lauren!!!! 
we took a splendid trip to the beach and had a fantastic time! I loved meeting all of Lauren's new friends; they're a great group!

Mrs. Denise, Me, Lauren and Alli cooking!

Lauren's mom, sister, our friend Alli and Alli's mom drove up Friday night to surprise Lauren too!!! We had a fun seeing each other again! It's been like a month! haha that sounds like such a small amount of time but it felt like years!

Saturday was my surprise day! I was hiding in Lauren's dorm room when Alli, Mrs. Denise, Mrs. Rhonda, Bethany and Lauren got back from a college tour! After that we headed to the beach and had a fun time getting beat by waves and playing volleyball. As we were leaving we saw about 12 dolphins out where we had been swimming! One of them jumped up and did a twist in the air! Beautiful! That night we came back and had a delicious meal baked by the wonderful Mrs. Denise and then surprised Lauren with decorations and cake in the boys dorm room.

Sunday morning we went to church, out to lunch and shopping and went back to the dorms for a yummy meal of lasagna that Mrs. Rhonda had prepared for us. We ate and talked and then headed to the beach to worship! We stayed out til about 2 oclock, had a dance party in the parking lot and then went back to the dorms for some games! We ended up going to bed around 4:30!!! :O

It was such a fun weekend! I didn't want to come back to school!

I love it here though.

Just a few updates:

Today we had convocation and a really impressive author came to speak to us. Her name is Carmen Agra Deedy and her story telling skills are phenomenal!! Her challenge to us was to not be timid but to embrace every opportunity as it arises. "Timid women seldom make history"

Tomorrow is the start of recruitment. :/ 

I'm pretty sure I kicked butt on my global warming essay exam. We'll see how the professor grades it though.

Life here on campus is going splendidly. I've loved every second of life here!

I think my friend Alli is going to come visit the school this weekend- I'm pretty excited about that! I love to have visitors! :) And mail *hint hint* ;)

Anyway, that's all for now!

 I hope you had a great Labor day weekend!

*here's my verse for the day/year- 2 Timothy 4:3-5 "³For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. ⁵But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry."

Hope you guys had a great Labor Day weekend!

"..I think I can, I think I can.."

Today I feel like the Little Engine Who Could.

I am up to my ears in homework, the to-do list just keeps getting longer, due dates are coming closer and nothing is getting marked off of my list. Each assignment has so much to it that there's no way to finish it in one sitting. For instance, next Tuesday in Biology I have an essay exam. That shouldn't be too difficult, huh? Well, this essay exam has three questions. Those three questions are:  "Is global warming taking place?" "Since global warming only amounts to 1-2degrees C, what evidence is there that this amount could be important in its environmental impact?" and "If global warming is taking place, is human CO2 production responsible?" Pretty hard core questions, right? Well the professor is requiring us to research *ahem, I have more to say on this*, come up with 10 pieces of evidence for each question, formulate responses and regurgitate them (without notes) on our exam Tuesday morning. On top of that being rather difficult, I happen to disagree with the professor on some of his stances so I have to make sure my evidence and presentation are strong. 

.. I think I can, I think I can..

On top of this assignment I have to read 70 pages of Beowulf, two chapters in the Bio book + answering 25 questions and studying for a quiz, two lessons of college algebra, a blog post about my political typology (received from an online quiz), reading a chapter each from both of my freshman seminar books, and a myriad of other little things all before this Friday. 

.. I think I can, I think I can..

3 more days of class until the weekend.. a long weekend.

.. I think I can, I think I can..

I'm focusing on my Creator, the Sustainer of life, and the One who gives me strength. He's made Himself so evident to me thus far in the college experience and I know He'll give me the strength, wisdom, patience and will-power to make it through this and the difficult times that are still to come. 

.. I know I can, I know I can..