Happy Friday!

Well, I was a little bummed when I went to the gym the a couple of days ago and realized that our pool is a different length than I thought it was...I thought it was 50m long, but it's not, so when I say that I swam 800 meters, I was totally wrong, which was a major letdown. I was so proud of myself, but whatever. Our pool is actually 25 yards long, so I had swam 600 yards, which converts to 548.64 meters. Oh well.

So I went to the gym yesterday and I swam either 700 or 750 yards...I ended up losing count, but that's at least a whole football field further than what I swam before. I'm still proud of myself, since it's 2 more laps than what I swam the day before, and I'm still adjusting to when to breathe to pace myself and so forth. But it's something that I'm definitely enjoying and I'll miss getting to go while I'm gone this week. I've found myself looking forward to going every day. That's so unusual for me.

Yesterday, I was feeling a little domestic and decided to make Travis a batch of snickerdoodle cookies since I'm leaving him for a week. What's sad (for me) is that I don't really care for snickerdoodles, so I don't have a home-baked goodie to snack on. But it works out well for Travis since he gets them all.

Moving on to something MUCH more exciting...I'm watching Saved By the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas. You should be really, really jealous, since this is the world's best TV movie! Well, Lifetime's Fifteen and Pregnant may have it beat, but whatever. ;)

I wonder how much they had to pay Elizabeth Berkley to break away from her life-changing adventure of filming Showgirls. I mean, look at the success and fame that movie got her---I can't believe she was willing to be in a SBTB movie.

Just kidding. Elizabeth Berkley is probably living under a bridge somewhere hooked on caffeine pills reliving the glory days.

My horrifying news of the day is that my mom called me today and told me that of ALL of the things to find in the trunk of her car, she found...a rat. She has no idea how it got in there or how long it's been in there, but it was definitely traumatizing.

I'm not sure that I'll be able to post anything next week, so I'll be back eventually to...bore you with my mundane details of life.

Gather 'round, young grasshoppers.

It's been a long minute since the last time I made a post. I keep finding myself spending less and less time on the computer, but this could be because more friends are less busy since school has let out for the summer.

But don't be confused, my life hasn't jump-started into being really exciting. What did I do today? I tie-dyed 5 shirts for a camp that I'm going to next week with my church (as a leader.) It's called Super Summer and everyone has a color that they're in based on their age---except for the leaders of course...I've been assigned to Yellow, which is students that are going into the 11th grade. Everyone represents their group by wearing their color, and I just couldn't deal with wearing a plain yellow shirt, and I don't really have yellow in my wardrobe, so I bought white shirts and did some amateur tie-dying just to make it a little bit more exciting than plain yellow. To anyone scratching your head...if you knew the camp, you'd understand.

So I've been continuing in exercising, but I am still working on finding a workout that suits. I easily become bored with a warm-up on the bike, 30 minutes of weights and 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical and treadmill. I've been taking advantage of the pool at the gym recently, and I have really enjoyed it. This is a new addition to my workout regimen, but yesterday I swam 800 meters doing all sorts of different strokes. It's amazing what I remember from swimming lessons when I was 5. We're going again to the gym in just a bit, and I'm really excited.

Today, I booked the hotel for our trip to New Braunfels this summer. I'm beyond ecstatic about the whole thing. It's one of my absolute favorite trips of the year, this only being my third time to go and ride the river. We went several times when I was a kid, but we never tubed down the Comal River. Travis's parents took us 2 years ago and I decided then it would have to become an annual trip. Last summer, Travis, my brother, my best friend and I all went and I'm pretty sure I've never laughed so hard in my life. I'm so excited. C'mon July 22!

That's all for now. Maybe I'll remember to post more later. :)

Hello, again!

A friend of mine told me recently that it was time to update my blog, so here I am.

I've been busy the last couple of weeks and have hardly been on the computer.

While Sarah and Robert have been taking some time finishing schoolwork for their last classes, I kept Ethan. My mom usually keeps him, but right now she's working for the Census, so she's been busy with that. There was one day that we went to Bahama Bucks for sno-cones, and I was able to take a couple of pictures:

The next day Sarah brought him here and we decided to go down to the pool and go swimming. He had never done it in a big pool before and he's a very cautious child, but he did an excellent job. Of course he was timid about it, but I was able to coax him to let me carry him all over the swimming pool and he loved it. That night I went to Wal-Mart and got some pool toys for him which he ended up really liking. He over for the next few days and he's trusting me more and more to do things.

Here he is at our pool's tanning deck, where the water is only 6 inches:

The second one was a different day before we got in the pool, but it was cute anyway. :)

This past weekend was pretty busy. We went to the graduations for Bryan and Alissa on Saturday, (Bryan is Travis' brother, and Alissa is Bryan's girlfriend) and it was a long day. Their university had two ceremonies for the graduates, and of course they weren't in the same ceremony, so we sat through both. On Sunday I went to my sister's graduation which wasn't near as bad, except it was REALLY hot. Though it made for very busy weekend full of time on the road, I'm proud of them all. :)

What else is going on? Oh, right. My birthday is tomorrow and you are allowed to send lots of money and gifts my way. Don't forget, mkay?

New stuff! :D

Yesterday my mom and I went to TJ Maxx, and I saw these really great lamps that I wanted for our bedroom, but since Travis wasn't there, I wasn't just going to fork over $60 for lamps that he possibly doesn't like, you know?

So today I take him by there, and he liked them and agreed that they would be a good addition to our bedroom. Maybe the need to show them off to people that come over will inspire me to get our bedroom in order.

Now presenting, my new lamp(s)! There are two, but I only took one picture, duh.

Also, pardon the other lamp in the background. I've yet to find a new home for it.

The shade is white, though I could definitely handle getting a colored shade later on. They had 3 of these lamps, 1 of which had a grey shade in the same style, which I really would have preferred, but since they only had one like that, I just got the white ones.

Anyway, yay new lamps! :)

I'm a neglecter.

So I have been terrible and neglected my blog for a while. But I've been kind of busy, I guess.

Last week, Travis and I went with his brother (Bryan) and Bryan's girlfriend Alissa to a Chick-Fil-A opening about an hour from here in hopes of being in the first 100 and getting free Chick-Fil-A for a year.

We were not in the first 100, but were there in time to qualify for the raffle...which we didn't win, but whatever. We had a good time and lots of laughs. It may have been a day wasted, but it's not like I missed work for it or anything. It was something to do.

Over the weekend, I went to the beach and it was so pleasant. I really enjoy a sunny day just laying in the sun with a friend, watching the water.

I also watched this movie with some friends this weekend called Arlington Road. It was a fairly low-budget movie made in 1999 with Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. It ultimately was a fictional story about terrorism in America by Americans, and it was actually really good. It was filmed in surrounding areas to where I live, and the homes that they used for the neighborhood was filmed literally around the corner from my friend's house, though she didn't live there at the time. It was strange because we walked by the houses and then watched the movie, so it was like, "Hey! I was just there!"

I watched Precious today. I don't know what I was expecting, but I don't think it's what I was expecting, though I have to give credit to the acting in the movie. I do think I liked it, though it was a little rough to watch.

I guess that today is a movie theme, because I am going to have to spend some time soon watching American Beauty. I was thinking about that movie yesterday and realized I haven't watched it in a while. It's one of my very favorites, and I've probably seen it a gazillion times.

I often wonder if anyone else is like me and can watch movies over and over like I can. But if it's a movie I really like, I enjoy the story. It's like reading an old book over and over. It's just something that you do.

Anyway, I'm boring and that's all I have for now.

I'm sitting here waiting for the dryer to finish its cycle and am flipping through photos on Facebook to pass the time. You know how Facebook works. You end up adding most of the people that you went to school with, regardless of your current relationship with them. If you were friendly to each other in school, then you're Facebook friends.

This, as you know, allows me to be nosy and look at peple's pictures and try to figure out what their life is like to an extent. That's what brings me to this post.

There are a number of people on my friends list that post pictures of their life constantly, which is fine. It doesn't bother me one way or the other because I don't have to look at them. Through these pictures, I can see the inside of their home, how they dress, places they go, who they spend time with, etc, and usually makes me happy for them or sad for them.

Today I was looking through a few albums of a girl that I know, and I always remember her as being a nice, fun, happy person, but from what I can remember, she grew up in a world of financial difficulty, and due to the neighborhood that she lived in, was probably exposed to a lot of things that a kid shouldn't have been exposed to. In the photos I saw of her, it seems like her life is no different now. She seems live in the same type of neighborhood, if not the same one that she grew up in. She seems happy, which is good, but I can't help but wonder if she ever really tried to change her life for the better.

I wonder this about people all the time. I didn't have an easy childhood. We didn't have a nice house. We didn't have a nice (or even decent), car. My mom worked really hard to support her children and we just always had troubles along the way. When I started kindergarten, I knew then that I wanted to be a teacher. I didn't know yet that it was a profession that required college, since most 5 year-old kids don't know what college is, but I remember learning later that I would have to go to college and that college cost money.

I didn't really care though. The older I got, the more I was convinced that I wanted to have a different life than what my mom had. She worked hard and did the best she could. I tell her this still and I'm grateful for that, but that doesn't mean that I want to follow in her exact footsteps. So I made it happen. And my siblings have made it happen. My older sister is graduating in May with her Bachelor's and I couldn't be more proud, especially since she got some kind of award for her hard work. She's paid her way through school while having a child. Just because her life didn't go exactly according to her plan, didn't stop her from continuing in achieving goals she set for herself.

So maybe it's because of the way that my mind works that it makes me sad for the people who never try. It's one thing to try and fail, but keep trying. It's different to try and fail never try again, or to just never try to change their life in the first place.

Oh, abbreviations.

Just now I was reading status updates and whatnot on my Facebook when I keep hearing "UTI" from the television.

I was wondering why on earth they were discussing UTIs on television and saying it over and over.

Then I realized that they were talking about the Universal Technical Institute:


not Urinary Tract Infections.

That's about as bad as my college prefacing the students' email addresses with 'std' for student, but of course everyone was like, "WHY DO THEY HAVE SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE IN MY EMAIL?!"

That's all. It made me chuckle.