It's Friday, Friday!

Wooooo, it's been a while since I've blogged. Life of a college student is busy, what can I say?

The past few weeks have been a lot of fun, but at the same time quite stressful between my midterm papers and readings and doing things for CKI.

On Oct 1, a group of us went down to Texas Tech for our CKI Fall Rally. My group went to an animal shelter for volunteer for a few hours. There was a sweet puppy begging me to bring her home:

And the next day we all got together to make some more baked goods for a Kiwanis Banquet where we were serving food that Monday:

We also made some Linus Blankets for Evelyn Rivers, a charity that gives Christmas boxes full of goodies, coats, hats, and blankets to those who need them.

Last week was Homecoming Week! I wouldn't necessarily classify myself as being "spirited", but I did find the maroon tutus on all the buffaloes outside Old Main pretty cute:

On Saturday morning a group of CKIers helped marshal the parade. I've never done it before but those of us that had said it was way more organized this year than last year. It was way colder than we expected, though.

Will actually ran in the Homecoming 5k and got 3rd in his age division!

After we were done with the parade, I realized this would be our last Homecoming unless we made a special trip up here, which I can't see us doing for a LONG time. You see, our town has "Fair on the Square" every 4th of July and every Homecoming. Fair on the Square is where a ton of vendors set up booths around our old town square and sell everything from fair corndogs to knock-off purses to hand-made crafts. It's really cool, but since we grew up around it we haven't really gone in several years. When I realized this would be our last in a while, I asked Will to go with me. We took Dawson and walked around for a while before leaving. It was fun and made me reminisce about childhood- we actually used to live across the street from the square, so we could just walk up and enjoy the parade and Fair on the Square.

Dawson wanted a hotdog:

What a cute kid!

That night we had a tailgate planned with one of the fratternities, but they ended up not bringing a grill. No worries, we loaded everyone/thing up into the beds of two trucks and took them all home and just grilled there. Boomer and Sheba had a fun time with everyone.

On Sunday Will and I took Dawson and my other brother Daniel to church and on a few errands afterwards, including the pumpkin patch!

And, just 'cause they're cute:

Boomer has gotten so spoiled since we started letting him sleep with us. We were worried he would hike his leg on everything, but so far we've only had one accident.

When I get off work today, we're going to the gym and then I think I'm hanging out with my bestie Brandy. Tomorrow Will decided to kill my dreams of sleeping in past 8 am and signed up for another 5k, then I'm going to work with a pet savers group to work with animals for a few hours, THEN I get to go usher for a symphony for a fundraiser for CKI. Church and homework will await me Sunday.

What are your plans for the weekend?

Another Year

So once again, it's been several weeks since I've logged in. Oh well, such is life for a college student.

A week ago was my birthday. The day started off with Will giving me a new chain for the necklace he got me last Christmas, whose original chain I broke. It's nothing special, but it's worth more than the pendant itself lol.

We met Will's parents for lunch at a pizza place in town called 575 Pizzeria. They're an awesome break from Pizza Hut.

I ran around town doing some errands with my MIL while Will and his dad went home. Will started working on my cake around 9 am and didn't finish until 6 pm. I wasn't allowed in the kitchen all day because I might guess what it was, so he had to fetch my drinks all day :)

About 7 that evening, Will had been planning to taking me out for a date, but instead he took me to my surprise party at a friend's apartment. They worked really hard to surprise me, and it worked.

The theme was Cat in the Hat, and my cake was supposed to be a huge top hat. Well, Will thought he could handle the cake transportation by himself and it ended up breaking in the back seat of our car. He and my friends were able to put it back together, and it still tasted yummy!

Please note the "red fish."

There were also green eggs:

And lots of other yummy treats that my BFF Brandy put together for me, like caramel corn, mini caramel apple pies, and more!

Happy Birthday!

My brothers:

Con Will:

 Present time! I also got a tiara- always a princess!

                                                                      Friends.

 Wednesday night when I got home from our CKI meeting, I realized we needed to get started on a fundraiser for our campus Work-a-Thon that's on October 1st. Our idea for a fundraiser was to make baked goods and sell them to our Kiwanis. Since it was such late notice, I did all the baking myself.

                                                            Bread dough rising

                                                          2 dozen banana bread muffins

                                                          3 loaves of pumpkin bread

                                                                 1 dozen yeast rolls

                                                                      1 apple cake

 All ready to go! Surprisingly, I finished soon after midnight. It was a lot of work, but everything timed really well and I didn't have much down time waiting for stuff finish in the oven to cook the next thing.

The next morning Will and I took all the goodies to the breakfast meeting and we made $116! Here's the fabulous group that got up for the 6:30 a.m. meeting:

And a picture of Freska, because she's so stupidly cute. We found her sitting like this on the ledge of the fireplace.

Today a small group of us went out to Palo Duro Canyon to hike to the lighthouse.

Our scenery looked much like this:

There were a few rest stops

Boomer got really tired.

 But we did make it. Unfortunately we didn't bring enough water (it got really hot!), so the three mile hike back was kind of miserable. Not that you could tell:

 We ended up having to pretty much slide down the steep part on our butts- too much loose dirt!

But we made it back and quickly high-tailed it to the store for some water and gatorade.

All in all, it's been a pretty good couple of weeks. Classes are going well but first rounds of tests are next week. Luckily (or unluckily), I only have one test. Most of my classes are having me write papers instead. The only one I'll a little nervous about is my MCOM one, because it's an article for our school newspaper. I have about zero experience with news writing and it's completely different from the writing I do in all my English classes, so it's more difficult for me. But at the same time, it's good to stretch my comfort level.

There are a few other projects/things I've got on the back-burner, but I'm not quite ready to blog about them quite yet.

Happy Saturday!

CKI

This week was our first Circle K International meeting of the year. Circle K in the collegiate version of Kiwanis, and I've been in the "family" since Key Club in high school. I'll do a post later about what exactly it is, but essentially it's a service and leadership organization.

Here are some pictures from the meeting:

John, our Kiwanis Advisor

Lauren, our International Rep for Sub-Region D (or something like that). She took minutes for us.

 Since I'm the president, I volunteered to be in charge of snacks for the first week. I made fruit salsa with cinnamon tortilla chips and homemade(ish) pizza rolls. They both turned out really well.

 Not a super good picture, but there were peaches, kiwis, bananas, and fuji apple with some orange marmalade. Yum.

 After the meeting we were all supposed to go rock climbing, but everyone else either went home or couldn't climb for some reason. So Will and I were the only ones who did it.

 I did a little rock climbing when I was in elementary school, but haven't since then. They put me on the "easy" side of the wall, but there was a point that it was physically impossible for me to go further because I couldn't reach the next handle. Bummer.

 This is about the same point Will go stuck, too. Here he was trying to jump up and grab the next handle, but it just wasn't meant for those of us who are vertically challenged.

 We might could have made the jump, but I hung out too long trying to figure out what I was going to do so my arms were pretty much dead by the time I decided to jump/throw my body up there. I couldn't make it, so I ended up just swinging by my harness. Will tried to jump too but he had just finished working out, so he didn't have a whole lot left to give, either. Maybe we'll try it another time.

Our spectators.

Have you ever rock climbed? Has  your height ever made something especially difficult for you?