romance

Have you ever heard a song and gone to the place it takes you? When I listen to music, it usually takes me to places that I've been to before.  Even if I've never heard the song before, I find myself associating places or moments with the music that I'm listening to.

At this very moment, I'm being transported to a place in the middle of nowhere at night with the one I love. Stargazing. There's nothing going on. Just peace and quiet. Simply enjoying being with another person. Knowing full well that there's no other place I'd rather be.


All I can think is I can't wait for this moment to really happen.

new

So.. life lately has been pretty great. I finished my online class and definitely got a 100% in the class. HOLLA. That's pretty exciting. The only thing is now that it's over, I feel like I have nothing to do. There's nothing left that I need to get done, so I've been trying to find things to fill my time so I don't feel completely unproductive.

In less than 2 weeks, I will be leaving for Austria! This trip is a choir trip, but I'm trying to not think about actually performing, and I'm just going to enjoy myself. I've never been to Austria before, so needless to say, I'm VERY excited.

Oh, here's something interesting that's happened lately. When I went to Sayre to take my grandma out there, my parents found a rottweiler out in the street. They brought her into our garage thinking surely the owner would come looking for her soon after. No one ever came. My parents decided to let her in our house. Normally, I don't think it would've been a bad idea, but Cleo (one of our little dogs) doesn't like her. Cleo growled at this rottweiler, and the rott grabbed her by the neck and started shaking her back and forth. BAD NEWS. My dad rescued Little Cle right before this rott killed her. So she was out in our backyard for awhile.. Just until we could find somewhere we could take her or someone who would adopt her.

Now, almost a month later, we still have her. My dad is completely obsessed with her. We have named her Heidi, and she's a new member of the household. She's actually very sweet-mannered. I don't know what caused her to go after Cleo that day, but she hasn't tried anything with any of our other dogs, so I guess she'll be okay. We now have 4, yes 4, black and tan dogs at my house.

Not too much longer till summer is over. I'm not very ready for classes to start back up, but I really can't wait for football season!! So, I guess there's always an upside to everything. ;)

life lately

So sorry I haven't written lately! There have been so many things going on in my life lately, and I seem to have been neglecting my poor blog.

Since my last post, I've been pretty busy.  First of all, my friend Brittany moved to her house in Stillwater, and so I went to her house-warming party.  Oh the way there, I ran a stop sign and got hit by another car. I couldn't believe it. My first real car accident, and it was MY fault. That definitely put a little damper in my night.  So.. I was carless... again.

After all that happened, I was kind of in a little funk.  I went places and did things, but it just wasn't the same. My summer just seemed to be having a lot of ups and downs.  About a week after I had my wreck, I got the terrible news that my car totaled. TOTALED.  After the hail and the wreck, my car was just worn out.

Later that week, I got my new car! Now, okay. I was really really really sad about my poor car, but my new one is pretty freaking awesome. It's a brand new, black 2010 honda civic coupe.

Since I've had my new car, I have been driving it everywhere.  I took my grandma home and stayed out with her for a couple of days. While I was there, I spent some time with one of my very best friends, Cindel.  We've been friends practically since I was born.  We had an absolute blast when we were together.  Not only did we catch up, but we reminisced on all the wonderful times we had when we were little.

My summer is finally hitting the high that summer is supposed to hit.  I still have the most wonderful, loving family a girl could have, the best friends I could ever ask for, and a life that I can't complain about. 

just another day

Yesterday was a great day. I spent time with my family, played volleyball with some very good friends, and then sat by my aunt's pool listening to music and stories told by my family. Thank goodness this day happened.

As I have already stated in a previous post, I've learned a lot this summer. The last couple of days have been no exception to that. Here's a big lesson that I've been really thinking about a lot. Well, it might not be a lesson, but it's something that I hope to do to possibly change my life.

I have always been so concerned with having something that I don't currently have, and I would let it get me down all the time. I've come to realize that this thing that I want is 1. not worth having right now, and 2. not important. Last night, it hit me really hard that I have some things in my life that I need to work on. I also have a lot of important things to invest my time in like my family. My wonderful, LOVING, close, thoughtful family.

I've been spending a lot of time with my family lately, and all it makes me think is how lucky I am to have the loving family that I have.  There aren't too many people that have a great support system in their lives, but I am so blessed.

Just thinking..

Ever wonder why you think about the things you think about? Or how about this.. How many things you think about in a short amount of time. I drove to Norman and back today and thought about countless things from spending time with Jamie today to what I want to do with my life. It wasn't until I got back to the city that I thought about how many things I had actually thought about in that 45 minute drive.

Try it sometime! It's ridiculous how many things you can think about in a tiny amount of time.

true joy

I feel like I've learned a lot in the small time since school ended.  I don't know if it's because I want something to write about, or if I actually am starting to really appreciate the things I have around me. I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's the latter.

This summer has already taught me so much, and it's just getting started. I'm excited to see what else is going to come my way for the rest of the time I have until school starts. Hopefully, all of these things will continue after school starts. It definitely wouldn't hurt me at all to learn how to appreciate the things that I take for granted.

As crappy as it's been not having a car, something special happened the day the crazy hailstorm hit oklahoma city. When I walked outside to see what kind of damage the hailstorm from hell brought upon my car, my aunt's next door neighbors were standing out in their driveway, doing just about the same things as I was. I had never formally met them, so I walked over with my aunt and started conversation.

I can remember when I was young, maybe 8 or 9, my brother's car got broken into, and I wanted so badly to go see what his car looked like. So, my brother picked me and walked over to his car so I could see.

While I was talking to my aunt's neighbors, I saw their little adopted son, Anthony, just looking up at us, probably wondering what the heck we were talking about. He's 4, and he was just so cute! So I looked at him and said, "Hey Anthony. Do you wanna go look at my car?" He looked up at me and nodded. So I picked him up and walked over to my car. He held his hand out and tried to touch my windshield. He was so curious, just like a kid I suppose. After a couple of minutes had gone by, I walked back over to his driveway and tried to put him down. He wouldn't put his feet down, so I just thought, "What the heck." I held him for a little while. He was so sweet. He just put his head down on my shoulder and didn't utter a word. I fell in love with him right then.

It came time for me to attempt to drive my car home, so I put him down and told him that I would see him again soon. He started to walk back to his front door.  He was very mopey. He obviously didn't want to go back inside. So I crouched down and said, "Hey Anthony! Come give me a hug!" He turned around and ran to me with his arms wide open.

It wasn't until after he had gone inside that my grandma told me why he had been adopted. His mother did some terrible things to him, things I'm not going to say. My heart broke. He's the sweetest little boy I've ever met, and I don't understand how people can be so hurtful. Knowingly hurtful. My grandma also told me she thinks the reason he took to me so fast was because I'm young like his mom.

I have always envied my friends that are very obviously good with kids. I've never been really close to any younger kids, and I've never had one really take to me like he did. I'm kinda good with early teens I guess, but no one has really touched me the way that Anthony has. I was telling my mom earlier how I can't believe how fast I began caring for this little boy. I asked her if that's what it felt like when she had kids. She told me it's this feeling times a million. If that's the case, I can't wait to have children. This little boy is truly amazing.

I had the great pleasure of seeing him again today! His eyes brightened up when he saw me walking over. What he doesn't understand is how much joy I got from seeing him and playing catch with him.

You never know what wonderful things can happen amidst something bad happening. In the two very short meetings I've had with Anthony, my life has been changed. My days have brightened.

Please don't rush through life. Take advantage of every moment that God gives you on this planet. Like everyone always says, it's the little things in life that make it worth living. What I didn't really understand until now is that the little things that happen to you have the biggest impact on your life. If something so small can be life-changing, why would you ever want to miss it?

The most important thing in my life is my family. It doesn't matter what goes on in this house or anywhere for that matter, nothing will ever make me love them any less than how much I love them right now. If anything, my love for them grows every day.

I've been thinking about some of the things that have happened to me in the past, and I am beginning to realize how lucky I am to be healthy, have a loving family, and be surrounded by people who care about me so much. If I ever needed anything, I would have people all around me who would do just about anything to make sure I was taken care of.

Sometimes, it takes a little reminder to make you realize that you are right where you need to be, and the people in your life are there for a reason. I ask you to just time some time out of your day to think about the people in your life who truly care about you. They're the ones who make everything possible. They're the ones who love you more than anything. And they're the ones who deserve your love and thanks.

thoughts

As I was reading some old texts last night, I realized that my life right now is as perfect as it could possibly be. I spend so much of my time worrying about things I shouldn't worry about and wanting things that I don't need. Everything I need is right here. If I needed more, God would provide it.

My biggest problem? Waiting on love. Maybe my goal this summer should be to live as carefree as possible and to stop trying to make things happen. My moment will come. It's just not right now.

the beginning

As I was creating this blog, I remembered Xanga. That was my first online blogging experience. While reading it, I realized how much of a high schooler I really was. We all know what that means... I wrote a few profound things, but overall a lot of my entries were full of information that people either didn't want to know or didn't need to know. Now that I just finished my third year of college, I decided that this was something I could do to express my opinions on things, maybe vent a little bit, and most importantly show my love for people. What you are about to experience is the life of your typical college student. This may sound slightly boring, but I assure you that your "typical" college student may not be as typical as you think. So here we go.

I'll go ahead and start with some general yet important information about me.

There are three very important things in my life, and they all mean the world to me: my family, my friends, and music. My family and I are very close, and I love them more than words can express. My friends are the people who are constantly on my mind, and they're the other people (other than family) that I would most willingly give my life for. And music is my passion and is something I'll never give up as long as I live. I love singing. I love playing the piano.

Here's my life lately.

I finished my junior year at the University of Oklahoma last week. As it came to a close, I really began thinking about what my life will be like in the coming years. My years in college have flown by faster than I could have ever possibly imagined, but I think I can use them to get a glimpse of what my life could become. These are some of the most important years of my life, so surely they can help me determine how to live the rest of my life.

Since summer has started, a few interesting things have happened.

1. Rachael, one of my very best friends, graduated. This is very exciting/traumatizing because as excited as I am for her to do amazing things with her life, she will be greatly missed by all of the people that she touched.

2. Oklahoma hasn't seen temperatures over 90 degrees. It's tornado season so we've had lots of storms come through, but it's been unusually cool.

3. (Well, really a sub-note of 2) Oklahoma had the worst hailstorm it's ever seen on Sunday. Now we're talking some UNREAL sizes and amounts of hail. I was at my aunt's house when it hit. We got golf ball sized there. As we were watching the news (we=me, my aunt, and my grandma), good ol' Mike Morgan informed us that parts of Oklahoma City had softball sized hail. AND it was hailing so much that, no lie, the ground looked like it was covered in snow. Oh yeah, and to make things worse, the whole storm lasted all of 5 minutes. The amount of damage caused in 5 minutes of storm was unbelievable. Then after it stormed, it was as sunny as could be, like someone played a huge prank on Oklahoma City. "Oh just kidding. The storm that just shattered your windshield didn't really happen."

4. After somewhat bragging about having 20/20 vision my whole life, I discovered on Tuesday that I no longer have 20/20 vision. I mentioned something to my mom last year about how I couldn't really see very well far away, but my lack of seeing far away never really hindered me at all or caused headaches or anything, so I just put it off. I said something to my mom again a couple of weeks ago, and so she scheduled me an eye appointment. So I went in on Tuesday at 11 and left at 1 with contacts and an order for some glasses. Now, as bummed as I was about having to get all these things, I am pretty glad I can see clearer, and my glasses that I ordered are SUPER cute. So, I guess it's not all bad.

All of these things are pretty minor occurrences in the long run, but right now they're pretty life-altering, which then goes to show that the little things in life really do make a difference, even if it's only for a little while.

As a young woman, I know I've still got things to learn, I'm going to make mistakes, and I've still got my life to figure out, but at the end of the day I know 3 things.

I am loved.

I will always be loved.

LOVE conquers ALL.

Thanks for reading. You'll hear from me again soon.