Christmas!!

Christmas 2011 is officially over :( but it was super fun! Courtney and her husband got in Friday night then Joey got in this morning at 9:30. For awhile, we didn't think he was going to be able to come at all, so I was so happy he's here even if it's only for about 2 days. I absolutely love Christmas time. LOVE IT. I especially love being around allllll of my family (I have alot of it in case you weren't aware.)

Saturday afternoon we decorated gingerbread men with Mommapops (my dad's mom) with some of my cousins. This is a tradition that has been in place since forever pretty much haha. I remember doing it every Christmas of my life so far and it just wouldn't feel like Christmas without decorating those gingerbread men! Plus, they are sooooo yummy. Although my decorating skills haven't improved since I was about 4 years old, it's still a fun tradition. Then, we went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. I also really love the Christmas Eve service because there are so many people there with their families. I love seeing all families of church members in town for Christmas and seeing everyone so happy. Scott also preached a pretty dang good sermon! After that, we went to my Dad's aunt's house to spend Christmas Eve with his family. I think there ended up being about 35 people there. We ate some yummy food, ready the Christmas story from the Bible, sang some Christmas songs, and opened some presents. It was a fun time had by all. I'm pretty sure we barely made it home in time to get to bed before Santa came.

We had to change our Christmas morning schedule a little bit because Joey wasn't getting in till that morning but we were all more than happy to do so because we just wanted him here! While Justin and Courtney had Christmas with his family and my dad went to get Joey from the airport, my mom and I got the house tidied up a bit and cooked our share of Christmas lunch. As soon as Joey was home, we started opening presents. Unlike most years, I really had no clue what I was getting this year for Christmas. I was very pleased to find a Keurig coffee maker under the tree!! I will definitely put that thing to good use. I also got the complete series of Boy Meets World and Dawsons Creek, some other movies, some books(including Josh Hamilton's autobiography), a pair of cute Toms, and 160 gb ipod. I was always a Zune owner, so this is my first time having an iPod. Right now, it's converting all of my music into the right format, but that's okay because I now have an iPod! After our family Christmas, we went to Wawa and Papas (moms parents) to do Christmas with them. First we opened MORE presents then we ate lots of yummy food. My mom's aunt and uncle were also with us, which hasn't happened in a while, and it was really nice to be able to spend Christmas with them as well. The rest of the day was spent playing with our new stuff and sleeping. Christmas can wear someone out! 

Tomorrow, we will do Christmas with Mommapops and Pops and have lunch with them. It's so great having so much family in this small town and it's pretty awesome that we get to spread the holiday into 3 days! And for dinner we are going to have beans and rice at my Great Grandmothers house. I absolutely love this house and I rarely have the opportunity to go there. It's in old Rockport and there's just so much family history in it. Wawa grew up in that house and my mom spent a lot of her childhood playing with cousins at that house. There's just so many good memories soaked into that house!

I'm planning on enjoying every last minute of Rockport until I have to go back to Waco in a few weeks. I hope yall had an awesome Christmas as well and just remember that Jesus is the reason for the season!
I know that line is a tad cliche, but it really is true!








By the way- I don't know if yall have noticed, but I added things to the left side of the my blog! If you look over there, you'll notice a funny cat picture of the day and an interesting thought to ponder. Enjoy!

Home

Have I said lately that I absolutely LOVE being home?! I love being around people that I've known my whole life and I love driving around town and seeing the beautiful water all around me. I've been home for about a week and I can't believe it's already been that long!

I went to Houston this weekend with some friends and it was so much fun! We got there Friday night and then Saturday we went down to the Galleria to look around. Even though it's only 3 hours away, I've never actually been in Houston except for driving through. So it was fun to go down and see the Galleria and downtown Houston. I felt like a puppy that was just let out of it's kennel for the first time ever. There were so many people and so many places to see. It was so cool. Saturday night we were going to go ice skating down at Discovery Greens but we got there and everyone and their mom was skating on the not so big rink. So we decided to go look at Christmas lights around the super pretty houses in Houston. Today, we went to the Texans game. I had never been to a pro football game so it was really fun! Even though we were 3 rows from the top and the Texans lost, it was still a fun time had by all! 

That's all I have to say for now I guess. I suppose when I'm home, my life isn't all that interesting so sorry for the boring post! Here's a funny picture to make up for it!

Lessons Learned

I have officially completed my first semester at Baylor University and I couldn't have asked for a better way to start out my college experience! Was it hard? You betcha. College is tough, but all good things take work. I ended up having 6 finals, with 3 in one day while I was also sick. But I survived!! I managed to pull off 4 A+'s, 1 B+, and 1 B. Not as great as I wanted to do, but I'm not complaining!! I figured this post could be about the lessons I learned as a Freshman in college. I have this underlying fear that this post is going to be obnoxiously long, so I'll try my best to keep it long, but not obnoxiously long.

Lesson #1

Don't ever take Statistics in college. Ever. It is one of those classes that makes you hate your life when you leave. I somehow managed to get a B in that class and I have no idea how. Actually, I made a B by prayer and prayer alone. I went into my stats final on Monday knowing pretty much nothing. Literally. And I ended up getting a 70 on the final, which isn't good, but when you know nothing, it's pretty decent. I managed to get an 80 for the semester and I call that a success. Now, let's review. When your adviser tells you that Stats would be an interesting class to take, what do you tell them? NOOOOOOOOO

Lesson #2

I absolutely LOVE Baylor and everything Baylor has built it's foundation on. For instance, when I went to go take one of my six exams, after the professor passed out the test and everything, he made everyone stop what they were doing. He said that before we started, he wanted to pray with us so we all bowed our heads as he prayed for us to do well on the test and have a safe break. How awesome is that?! I just love that my college is like that. And of course, our sports are doing pretty awesome this season too. I mean, our quarterback did just win the Heisman award. No big deal or anything.

Lesson #3

Everything people tell you about college is true. For example:

• You're gonna be broke
• Sure enough. College kids never have money. But it's part of the atmosphere so you learn to accept it.
• It's hard
• Studying in college is not like studying in high school. Studying in high school is pretty much having your notes in front of you while you watch tv. Studying in college is spending hours in the library with no distractions while you immerse yourself in the subject.
• You're going to lose touch with friends
• I only talk to about 5 people I went to high school with on a regular basis. On the other hand, I didn't see one of my best friends for about 3 months and we're closer then ever right now. But, I also had a friend in high school that I was really close with that I haven't talked to since college started. I'm not blaming anyone, cause I definitely could've picked up the phone too, but it just happens. You get busy with school and you lose touch with people. 
• You're going to miss your family
• This one was tough for me because I'm super close to my family and not seeing them regularly was really tough. It takes some getting used to.

Lesson #4

Appreciate the things you've always had because you now might be without them. I really like living in Waco, but I really missing walking to the store and knowing seeing a friendly face. I miss knowing everyone. I also really miss my church. I've found a church in Waco, but it's just not the same. One of the things I look forward to the most when I go home is going to church on Sunday morning. Nothing replaces it.

Lesson #5

You'll definitely form some amazing friendships in college, but, at least in your first semester, the friends from back home that you stay in touch with are going to be such a blessing. You know if the friendship has lasted through the semester, then they're probably there to stay. And you can count on them to be there for you when it feels like nothing is going your way.

Lesson #6

Your relationship with God will most likely change a lot. Not necessarily in a bad way, but not necessarily in a  good way. It just depends on you and what you want in life. I know for me, it took breaking down some walls and realizing that I can't handle life on my own. So for me, it was in a good way. But it took some time and soul searching for it to get to the good part.  

Okay I'm not going to go back and proof read this post because I'm trying to stay away from everything academic on my break. Okay not really, I'm just super tired and I'm too lazy to go back and read it. So I'm apologizing in advance for my errors. In other news, I'm going to a Houston Texans game this weekend with some friends and I'm super excited!! I've been boycotting pro sports lately and only watching college so I'm breaking my boycott for this game. 

Side note- if you haven't watched this movie (Elf) yet this Christmas season, please do so soon! It's such a great Christmas movie and I guarantee that you will be laughing throughout the whole thing. 

OH. MY. GOSH

ROBERT GRIFFIN III JUST WON THE HEISMAN!!!!!!




SIC EM BEARS!!

Dreams

I actually finished all my work so I'm just gonna do the dream post now cause I probably won't be posting anything else anytime soon. I mean, it's not like I have finals to study for or anything ;) Okay so this post is obviously about dreams. Me and Briana were talking about dreams last night and how weird they are. Like in our heads, a dream could last all night, but in reality, it might be in a span of 2 minutes. Dreams are just weird. Sometimes, dreams can be flat out scary. I've had 2 really scary dreams in my life that I still remember vividly. 

Dream 1

I was about 12 when this dream happened and I was still sharing a room with my sister at the time. I went to sleep and I thought I woke up, but in reality I was still dreaming. Everything was exactly like it was when I went to sleep. I could see Courtney asleep, the door was open, and everything was exactly how I left it. I saw this man walk to the end of the hallway where our room was on one side and my parents room was on the other. He looked into my parents room and saw that they were asleep, then peered into our room and looked directly at me. He walked into my room and started slowly walking directly towards me, never breaking eye contact. In my dream, I couldn't scream or even open my mouth to let out a noise. This man was walking towards me in my own room and I could do nothing about it. In reality, I was screaming bloody murder. Right as this man was about a foot from my bed and within arm reach, my parents finally woke me up. Apparently, I had been screaming and they couldn't wake me up. It was seriously one of the scariest moments in my life. I think the thing that scared me the most was that I could do absolutely nothing to defend myself or let someone else in the house know he was there. I was completely frozen. Talking about it literally makes me tear up because it still freaks me out. I can still see him to this day walking towards me and me not being able to do anything about it. For days, I was scared to death to go back to sleep because everytime I closed my eyes I would see him walking towards me. Obviously, I'm fine now and nothing else like that has ever happened thank goodness. But his face is forever burned into my brain and I know that if I ever see this guy on the street or something(which I'm convinced I someday will), that I will immediately know it's him. 

Dream 2

This dream was when I was little, probably about 6-7. In my dream, I would wake up and walk out of my room. I would go to our back sliding glass door and it would be open. *keep in mind, we have a big back yard that backs up to a pasture* I look back into the yard and there would be this really scary wolf thing running full speed towards me. It was just a normal wolf. It was a wolf that was out to kill me, I could tell. The wolf would run full speed towards me and as soon as it was about 5 feet from the open back door, I would slam the door shut and leave only a few inches of glass between the me and the killer wolf. This dream would show up everytime I went to sleep for about a week or two. 

Don't worry, I also have funny dreams but obviously, they don't stick with me like the scary ones do. I guess dreams just kinda weird me out. I don't really understand how they work, but I don't think I really wanna know. 

Me? Procrastinate?

Sure am!! In high school I was one of the biggest procrastinators ever. I've gotten a little better because I've figured out that it's no fun to wait till the last minute to do everything. That's what this post is; me procrastinating. I really don't want to do anymore work!!

I don't really have any interesting things to say this week so I'm pretty much just posting this to let yall know that I'm still alive. I had my last day of classes today and then my first final is Friday. Then I'm coming home next Tuesday with one semester of college finished and I'll officially be a sophomore in college! I think next week once I'm home and I can relax, I'm gonna do a post on dreams and tell yall about my most memorable 3 dreams I've ever had. Briana and I were just talking about them last night, and they're pretty interesting. 

In other news, Baylor beat UT on Saturday and it was super exciting!! Even though we stood out in the rain the whole game, it was still a really good game. And it was just announced that RG3(Baylor quarterback) is officially a Heisman finalist. The winner is announced Saturday and I would be so stinkin excited if he won. Apparently, a certain guy has guessed the winner correctly for the last 9 years and he thinks RG3 will win. He definitely deserves it. 

It's also really miserable here. It's like -10 degrees. Okay not really. It's actually like 39 but it feels like 30 and it's rainy. And we're supposed to get into the mid twenties tonight and theres a good chance we'll have ice. This beach girl cannot handle that. Alright I gotta get back to homework and studying. Prayers would be appreciated as I go into finals week!