greatness.

Okay, so my spring break ended up being full of Abilene fun. As promising as the week was looking to be (sister and I had already made up a rap by Sunday...) we decided to head off to the mountains for a quick 3 day trip. Totally worth it.



This was McKinley practicing riding in the back seat the day before we left for our 6 hour venture...

...to here. aka heaven. or my heaven at least. My Aunt Debbie and Uncle Bruce have this amazing cabin in Ruidoso, NM that we have been so blessed to call home for as long as I can remember (aka middle school). 

And I got to eat my favorite. The Buttery. Yumm.

It was a great trip. The week after SB was my week from down under. I had a big test, 4 papers, a few chapters to read, and a big assignment in my acoustics class. It was a rude awakening, but so is life.

I did get to use one of the cool new white board learning rooms in the upstaris library! My love of whiteboards made my studying much more fun...

{yes. I did take a picture of part of my work of art. It's a weird thing how much I love whiteboards...and if anyone is suffering a cognitive disorder...here are some things you might need to know.}



This past weekend my friends Kellie, Tara, Hayden, and I got a quick getaway to Lake Brownwood for the day! It was perfect, 90 degree weather. We put on the sunscreen and basked in the sun for a good 4 hours. We had a blast. I love these girls!

After being owned by the sun {which drained us of all energy}, we drove back in silence...listening to John Mayer...and loving how wonderful the day was. minus the wasps.

Hopefully everyone has had a great Monday. We made homemade lasagna. All I can say is {yum}.

We are kind of lost wthout the Bachelor, still.

But life goes on.

So,

{enjoy your week}

happy birthday to the other casey!

Well, we've made it to Thursday!

Which is St. Patrick's day, but also even more importantly, MRS. Casey Marchbanks' Birthday! You can see all of her incredible talent {here}. She is an wonderful photographer and has an amazing talent for all things graphic design.

 

Casey and I were quite the pair in high school. We were known as "the k/caseys" or "kc squared". Clever, I know. Our shared name is why all of our friends called us by our last names. I seriously don't think I was called "kasey" until I was in college!

We've been through quite a bit together, to say the least. I'm starting to realize we never really took normal pictures...this one was when we met up {I was in Germany, she was in Oxford} for the weekend and toured Christ Church aka where parts of Harry Potter were filmed. obviousy a must.

 Our latest 'big' destination was her wedding this past summer.

 I'm so thankful to have you in my life caseyloro! I'm so proud of this girl. Love you!

Can't wait to celebrate

here...

next week! Love love Love!

Things to look forward to...

So, this is my first spring break in 4 years to not do something cool.

I had a little pity party on Saturday, which was quickly cured by SzeChaun take out and watching Morning Glory. So cute by the way!

Even though I'm not in Greece, NY, or Malibu, I'm looking forward to a reason to do nothing but catch up on a few favorites that get pushed to the side on a regular basis.

{my life would not be complete with my real simple.}

\

{I usually only get to this mag when I have nothing to do, but I still love it.}

{I get to watch my TODAY show girls for the next 5 mornings!|}

{maybe I'll get a little further on my alexandra book...I promise it's not a 'self-hellp' book. Even though the title may promote such thoughts...it's about decorating, promise!}

I'm also excited to make lots of long distance phone calls to my loves on the west coast.

AND last but not least, I'm trying to take our yellow lab on a walk once a day. Little Molly doesn't quite understand the concept of a leash, but we're working on it.

Hope everyone has a happy Monday! Bachelor tonight, get excited! Go Emily!

love love love.

Bachelor Mondays.

This post is dedicated to things I am missing now, but also to things that I am loving at this very moment.

I've realized this is a good balance to realize, reflect on, and not dwell on.

1

One year ago today I was starting the best spring break ever with 10 of my most amazing friends. While being couped up in Courtney's incredible Grand Lake cabin in CO for 7 days, we stretched every option of everyone following their dreams yet simultaneously living in Grand Lake, CO. That didn't work...but a girl can always dream.

2

My friends and I here in Abilene have started cooking dinner together on Monday nights and watching the Bachelor. TOO much fun! Tonight J'lyn made incredible chicken, squash, and asparagus dinner. I made Pioneer Woman {awesome-est blueberry muffins}. DELISH. I feel healthier eating things made from scratch. I don't think that is always the case...

3

One year ago exactly, the girls spent the whole day telling the boys how important it was to stay quiet for just 2 hours to let us watch the bachelor finale. We seriously lectured them all day: no stomping, no running, no bugging. Ironically, we all make our hot chocolate and are mentally prepared for such a monumental occasion...and forgot the time change. What up, we got owned by mother nature. Suffice it to say, the boys were loving hearing our screams of horror when we realized we missed the WHOLE FIRST HOUR! Great memories. And he chose Vienna. WHAT? Still confused about that one...

{of course the boys heard the rukus and their first instinct was to grab the camera, run downstairs, and capture our freaking out. thanks guys.}

4

This is totally off topic...but this might be the most important thing. Abilene finally has FROZEN YOGURT! Welcome to 2011, Abilene. For the past 4 years, Malibu Yo was our go to. Now the issue is: what to call it? Nikkis? Kind of not a huge fan of the name...other options we have brainstormed are: swirl shop, swirls, yo (CA favorite), and niks. I think that NIKS might be the winner. We are all about abbreviating. The 4 year old I nanny abbreviated a word yesterday and justified it by saying 'it's a fancy way of saying the longer word.' From the mouths of babes.

Well there you have it. Old and new memories of Mondays.

Hope all of you bloggers enjoyed your Bachelor Monday as much as I did.

i miss songfest.

For those of you who have lived in Abilene forever or who have been to ACU, you are probably familiar with the term sing-song. Well, sing-song has taken over my roommates lives for the past month, but it all ends tonight! I can't wait to post pictures of my cute popcorn and piggie roommates, but that will have to wait until after the big performance tonight!

In the mean time...I have been reminiscing on the good times from Pepperdine's version of sing-song, aka SONGFEST! Those were some of the best weeks of my life, by far. It is quite different from sing song for the following reasons: we dance (ah!), sing, and act out a story. It is 12 minutes long, and let me just tell you that teaching fraternity boys how to dance and act and sing is quite the feat. But also, hilarious.

I always said that nothing could take the place of ACU's sing-song, but songfest definitely holds a LARGE part of my heart. My first year of participating included a trip to the ER, but the show must go on right?!

Last year (aka the year we WON!) our theme was history. GPS (gamma phi, PI PHI, and sigma chi) decided to go beyond typical historical events that were expected and went with {the plague}. Yeah, I know. Kind of creepy. But hey, every other act dealt with brothers and one became the king. I'd say our creepy act was an odd type of fresh air for the judges.

Half of us were 'infected' and the other half were not. The boy on the right was actually {the plague}. Yes, he grew the beard out for this role. He took is part very seriously.

And of course, we loved all our supporting pi phis who came to cheer on 'the plague'!

All this sing-song mess makes me miss those 10-midnight practices 6 times a week.

Wouldn't have ended college any other way.

Anyways, good luck to all you sing-songers tonight! Can't wait to have y'all back in my life again.

My Wednesdays.

Every Wednesday I wake up knowing that my afternoon will be the most tiring afternoon of the week, but also the best! It's that kind of exhaustion that makes you sit and think about how blessed you are to be able to do what you are doing. So, what am I actually talking about? Well, every Wednesday afternoon I get go play 'soccer' with about 100+ refugee kids who have moved to Abilene from places such as Africa or Bhutan.

About a year ago, some of my good friends decided to branch out from a regular 'church going' Wednesday night. They took a soccer ball to an apartment complex where they knew refugee kids lived. They made lots of noise which brought about 10 kids outside, and they started playing soccer with them each week. Well, each week it grew and grew, and well, the rest is history! Now Jason and Stephen have actually moved to Africa (you can read their blog here), and they are doing awesome work with a ministry in Kenya!

Now, a year later, about 25 college students go pick up kids from about 5 different apartments and bring kids over to a big field at Madison Middle School. These kids are such a blessing. They push you and love you. If you sit down you are gauranteed to have about 5 little girls start playing with your hair. It is awesome.

Lets be real. I don't have a soccer playing bone in my body. So, we started doing cheerleading with the girls. (a little bit more my tempo) We taught them jumps, stunts, and cheers. One of the volunteers is the Bold Gold sponser at AHS, and she made it possible for our girls to go cheer at the AHS vs. CHS volleyball game. It was so great to hear those little accents shouting! Suffiect it to say, those 30 little girls were louder than both cheerleading squads combined.

So, every Wednesday we go pick up kids, listen to some Justin Bieber with the windows down, play soccer, football, cheerleading, tennis, duck duck goose, and red light green light, and have a discussion on things such as friendship, forgiveness, and being kind. We end the day with a prayer in which the kids repeat the words back to us. It is the greatest thing ever.

It's such a blessing to be a part of this ministry. It has made being back in Abilene such a huge blessing (seeing as I was a little worried about moving back and becoming too 'comfortable'). It challenges me, but these kids are so incredible. It has also created a great community between the college students who help out! In college, I learned that community is the most important thing ever, and this new community is the number one reason I love Wednesdays so much.

love love love.

Winterstorm 2011. Texas style.

Hey guys. So, here's how it went down. Monday night my dad calls to tell me to get gas in my car before 'the storm' hits. Little did I know the rest of Abilene would be at the gas station with the same idea! So, it starts raining and then sleeting. What? Wasn't it just 75 when I went running about 3 hours ago?

This is what the view from my front porch looked like after about 30 minutes of snow! Our night turned into a slumber party quickly when we made the executive decision to have a snow day the next day (even if ACU didn't agree). We moved 3 of our queen sized beds into the living room and created our 'bach pad'. 8 girls + no school + snow = slumber party 2011.

We spent the next 4 days (yes, 4 snow days) waking up late, making a huge breakfast of pancakes, waffles, and cinni-minnis, eating, eating more, then cooking dinner. Luckily we had just been to the store, and so most of our meals were interesting combinations of what one finds in a college student's pantry. aka bagel bites, pasta, macaroni, and french green beans.

We did trek to my parents house a few times. I felt like I was back in Germany having to walk everywhere in the snow! Good thing my parents only live .3 miles away! I can now tell my grandchildren that I walked in snow to shower (due to our frozen pipes) and get butter (a necessity for all snow day foods).

Overall, it was fun to have an early spring break, but we I am ready to get back in the swing of things!

That's all for now. Enjoy this winter weather while you can, it will be 100 degrees before we know it!