Happy Needless Turkey Murder Day!

 Happy late Thanksgiving everyone! I hope yall had as much of a fabulous, relaxing break as I did. I headed down to Texas bright and early around 8 on Tuesday (yes, I'm guilty of skipping practicum this day...I'm such a good student) I grabbed a free muffin from Panera for joining in their new panera card (if you haven't gotten one, you definitely should. Join for free and instantly get a free pastry. Holla!), a cup of joe from Starbucks, and started out my drive with Taylor Swift's new cd...

Me belting it out to some T-Swift. You could say I was high on life this morning. Wouldn't you if you had 6 days off of school, got a free delicious muffin, and a new cd that could fit the soundtrack to your life?

In order to keep myself entertained on my drive down I kept tally marks of 3 things...1) How many road kills I saw. 2) How many semi trucks I passed. 3) and how many McDonald's I saw. Annnnnd which one do you think won?! Keep reading 'til the end to find out : )

I got to stop in Edmond to visit a good 'ol kampie, Logan! We had an epic skit together on our OD day at K-1 back in '09. It consisted of finding nemo, the wizard of oz, and making fun of wall-e. I'm so glad Logan shares the same kind of hatred for the movie Wall-e as I do.

This is how I feel about Dallas rush hour traffic...or at least when I'm not in a state of panic and scared for my life.

Wednesday was a pretty chill day. I started off spending some time at a Panera by my grandparents house to try to knock out a paper and some grad school crap. Mission unsuccessful. I mostly facebooked, youtubed, and people watched. Then I spent the rest of the day hanging out with Amanda, my cousin. Get this...we got to go to a FREE KEITH URBAN concert!! I love me some Keith. According to Amanda they really only were advertising it through a radio station so there were a decent amount of people there, but it wasn't totally jam-packed. Okay, technically it wasn't a full concert, but hey, I was within a arms length of this man! (video to come soon to facebook) I think he was filming something for a music video for his song Put You In A Song, considering there were cameras all around and he performed this song about 5 times in a row. Good thing I love this song! Then he performed some oldies but goodies like Somebody Like You, Days Go By, and Making Memories of Us. The whole time I was also searching around for Nicole Kidman thinking she'd be there with him, alas, no sign of her about.

Me and Manda face at the concert. I don't want to brag, but I wore this orange v-neck, and the next day when Keith performed at the halftime show for the Cowboys, he was indeed wearing an orange v-neck. He definitely saw me and knew how much I love him and wanted to reciprocate : )

Afterwards, we met up with the rest of the fam for a late dinner... 

Cat, I'm a kitty cat. And I meow meow meow and I dance dance dance...

Then it was Turkey Day! I love this day because it pretty much consists of lots and lots of family games. We played What's Yours Like (hilarious game), Scattegories, Picture Telephone, and Balderdash. Balderdash is one of my favs, except for the category of initials. I suck at initals. One of the initals was GLFC...I gave up on this round and put down a throw away answer. "Grandfathers with Lice Finding Cleanliness" Get this, I got 4 votes with this baby! haha seriously family?!

Picture Telephone was pretty entertaining too. One I started out with was "Betty White is my hero." haha somehow Betty turned into raggedy ann, and raggedy ann turned into bob marley. This one ended with I like singing with Bob marley by the campfire.

After our butt-load of games it was finally feasting time! Oh my goodness, I had a huge food baby afterwards but it was totally worth it. We played the cheesy game where we go around the table and say what we're thankful for. If you know me, you know I'm indecisive. I had to make a list. Mine consisted of 1) family (the obvious cheesy answer) 2) country music 3) and peanut butter. To sum up...It was a great Thanksgiving this year!

Me & Amanda dueling for the wishbone.

Later during the weekend we did some baking (go figure) although I don't know how we could possibly eat these after all the food and desserts we had on Thursday. We ran out of the hershey kisses, so we had to get creative and use mini chocolate chips. These cookies certainly have some character and flare.

My break definitely went by wayyy to quickly, but it was time to head back home and to school. I made another stop in okc to visit a fellow intern from the summer for a bit. I love making stops on long drives to visit friends, it helps break up the drive and make it go by faster. Especially since the drive home always seems to go so much slower than the drive getting where ever you're going in the first place. I was quite bored with my drive near the last 3 hours...so bad that I was speeding juuuuuuust a littttttttle. Maybe 10 over the speed limit, perhaps 13 at times...Good thing there were no po pos in sight!

I came home, was up until 2 working on finishing my paper and grad school-ness, woke up at 6, and headed to class. I may have fallen asleep in my 2nd class of the day when we watched a movie. All I can say is tonight I'm thinking of loading up on some nyquil and passing out for the night!

Annnnnd as for the winner of the counted tally marks. Drum roll for the winner on my drive down to TX was........ 

The winner was semi trucks! Personally, I was rooting for road kill. But what can ya do?

In other news...CHRISTMAS IS COMING! : ) Get excited. Have a wonderful week everybody and good luck for those of you like me who will be attempting for counter balance my thanksgiving food baby!

Movie Quote of the blog..."We have to go shopping...your shirt is bedazzled." "Bedazzled with rhinestones!"

Aye, You're Harry Potter! (in a British accent)

 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part uno finallllllllly came out! It seems like we've been waiting for forever. My sister got the tickets and I went to the midnight showing in KC with the lovely Renee and Katie, which I was majorly looking forward to since I hadn't been to a midnight showing since The Goblet of Fire. Midnight showings are the only way to go. You're surrounded by fans who dress up, quiz strangers on HP knowledge, and cheer, laugh, cry, and applaude all in unison.

Ohh the beauty of sweats, no makeup, and looking ready for bed. I considered dressing up in costume, buttttttttt I figured after a long day at practicum and driving to KC, I preferred comfort over a costume. Although we did see tons of people dressed up. Even older people in their 40s and 50s. (Awesome? I think so. I hope thats me when I'm older.)

Cute sleepy girls. Don't worry, they got their burst of energy once it started! Good thing was that there were only a few majorly overly-obnoxious fans in our theatre. I still love that if you are that type of fan though, its totally acceptable to make a complete fool of yourself amongst other HP fans. But once you get into the real world, you may be a tiny bit judged. 

Now only to wait 8 more months until part 2...On the plus side though, that gives me time to finish the book! I've read all of them except the last one. I'm about 1/3 of the way through, and even though I know what happens and how it ends, I'm looking forward to finally join others in saying I've read the whole series!

ALSO, if you are a HP fan, or even if you're not...you need to watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmwM_AKeMCk Hands down. If you aren't sucked in and singing along in the first few minutes, well...lets not go there. Because you'll love it! Disclaimer: I was a fan of Darren Criss on here before he became a Glee sensation.

After the show got over around 3 I slept over at my sister's apartment so I didn't have to drive all the way back to Lawrence when I needed some serious zzzzzzzzs. It had been a rough week of school with yet another paper due, and a huge group project proposal presentation. Sometimes I'm so over group projects, but in the wonderful world of social work thats all we do. Lovely. So, Friday was my day off and I needed some relaxation. I slept in til 10 (which hasn't been done in a loooong time), got some Starbucks (sadly not a pumpkin spice latte. That morning I needed straight up black coffee), and then definitely spent a good 3 hours at Borders with my computer listening to music and browsing through magazines. Mostly holiday baking/crafty magazines, but also threw in some fit mags and a girly mag to complete my day : )



This was in front of my parking spot at Borders that I had to get a picture of to ask you guys what, or who, in the world is this supposed to be of?! Albert Einstein? Santa Claus? A ghost?? What do you think?! I'm so confused.

Yesterday was quite the day out of the ordinary. Some friends invited me along to join them in KC to make a cheesy music video to the completely ridiculous song Christmas in Kansas City. This song plays on the radio around this time, and it is the. worst. song. ever. But its also great because of the fact that its so bad. How could I oblige to this offer? I accepted. Bought a tacky xmas sweater from goodwill. Made my appearance as a keyboard player that can play while doing a handstand. and am told this video will soon be on youtube. Goo, watch out world wide web!

One more day that I need to make it through until I leave for Texas for Thanksgiving! YAY. I'm so ready for a break away from school, not to mention heading south where the warm weather is is a major plus in my book : ) I have a lot to do before then, but then I head out Tuesday, with a pit stop in OKC to visit some good friends! On my to-do list today...

1) Finish a butt load of laundry

2) pack for Texas

3) Go for a run since the weather turned out so beautiful today

4) Finish ku grad school apps to give to my teacher tomorrow for a letter of rec

5) write a 2 page response paper over suicide...I'm sure i'll feel so overjoyed and happy when writing it. Who wouldn't?

6) make some mixed cds for my drive down to TX

7) Bake something pumpkiny to use up some opened pumpkin thats about to expire

8) watch Elf : ) This should probably be my top priority...

I hope you all have a wonderful, relaxing, blessed Thanksgiving with all your families!! Remember to be thankful for everything God has blessed you with, and tell those you love how thankful you are for them : ) I'm looking forward to lots of family time, endless delicious food, and lots of rounds of games including catch phrase, picture telephone, and Oh Hell. (Jenny, i refuse to play settlers of catan) Then bring on CHRISTMAS! This year I shall spend it in the most random of all places, Montana, with my little seester Fishy.

Movie Quote of the day..."Mom, look. In China everything is old. There's old houses, old parks, old people. Look, this guy is at least four hundred years old!"

Confessions...

Confession number 1:...I have already started listening to CHRISTMAS music. Truer confession...I started listening to Christmas music mid-October. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE Christmas? Since I've been about 7 or so I have gotten used to hearing Christmas music in October. I took piano lessons since I was a youngen and when October hit we had to pick our Christmas piece for our winter recital. So it has become built in me that it is totally normal to listen to Christmas music in October. Branson, MO would agree. And in the spirit of upcoming Christmas, enjoy this little clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU And you should definitely also go buy Dave Barne's christmas cd on itunes.

Oh hey Christmas season, thanks for finally arriving!

Confession number 2:...I used to hate/refuse to eat, touch, or smell peanut butter in any shape or form. Now, I cannot get enough! I'm sure my sisters reading this are making squinty faces and still completely grossed out by this new fact. But hey, I've always been the odd ball of the family (only brunette for example) so they should have seen something like this coming. No one in my family eats peanut butter, except for my mom, so we were never fed it growing up, so I just believed that I should dislike it. When all the other kids in elementary would have PJ&Js, I enjoyed in my JJ&MJ (just jelly and more jelly!) However, I am proud to say I can indulge in delicious pb&js, and my new favorite...peanut butter and banana. Mmm!

Confession number 3:...I also used to hate country music. Thank goodness I finally came around and discovered country music is the best music out there : ) (currently watching the CMA awards!)

Confession number 4:...Apparently I like posing with mannequins...

Confession number 5:...I'm terrified of clowns. Not quite sure why, I've never had a tramatic experience with any. Yet, the phobia still exists.

Confession number 6:...I'm 23, and sometimes still struggle with body image. It can be such a struggle being a woman or young woman these days when we are constantly surrounded by magazines, commercials, and movies telling us that in order to be beautiful you need to be tall, blonde, a certain weight, own fancy clothing labels, own products upon products of makeup, etc, the list seems never-ending. I really didn't even feel completely comfortable or confident in my own skin until this past year. Today in my Wednesday volunteer work I do with Strong Girls through KU, we talked to our girls about body image and what we view as beautiful. This is so important to bring up to young girls (our group of girls are ages 8-13ish) because it seems they are getting hit harder younger and younger with these never-ending distorted images of what beauty is. This can lead to eating disorders, low self-esteem, and a poor body image. It can't be said enough, but the world lies to you on a daily basis.

We watched this Dove commercial...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U The girls thought A) She was beautiful before anything was done. B) She looked pretty with the makeup on, but then thought it was crazy that even with the makeup, she still wasn't good enough. So the computer had to go in and make her neck longer, eyes bigger, take away blemishes, and create this non-existant "perfect" woman. I encourage all of you ladies reading this to be confident just the way you are : ) Don't try so hard to become a cookie-cutter of what the world tells you you should be. Stand out, and know you. are. beautiful. just the way you are! A verse I love to go back to when I catch myself trying to fix my outside appearance more than what is inside and my heart is 1 Samuel 16:7. It says "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." How much time do I spend getting ready in the morning and looking at myself in the mirror? And how much daily time do I give to God and spend time in his word? Some days it isn't even a competition. (Hint, my self-image usually wins) Even though I don't take much time to get ready anyways, but if I still switched around my time spent getting ready with my time spent in God's word I'm pretty sure my day would be so much better.

I want to encourage any ladies reading this to be confident in yourselves and stop comparing yourself to women on magazines and on tv. Of course, I struggle with this too now & again. But I challenge you to make a statement by maybe not wearing any makeup one day and still feel beautiful, or dressing down, wearing sweat pants and still feeling as confident as you would in your skinny jeans. Sure, some days it sucks to be a woman but on the other hand: Women don't have to worry about going bald or growing hair on their back. (ew.) We can handle stress better than men, and women live longer than men. Enough of my ramblings, hey its the social worker in me. Ladies (and gents), you are BEAUTIFUL! Keep on keepin' on!

Movie Quote Challenge..."Just remember, inside every girl, there's a boy. That came out wrong, but you know what I mean!"