Back to Reality

Spring Break is officially over and has been for a few days now. The last few days of Spring Break were pretty great. On Saturday, I was in a mixed doubles tournament with my dad. I'm not gonna lie, I was kinda nervous about it. I played tennis in high school for 2 years but due to my back problems and problems with the coach, I didn't play my junior and senior year. This semester, I'm in a tennis class so I've been playing more. Tennis is actually like my therapy. I can be having an awful day but when I'm out on the court playing, it disappears for awhile. Anywho, the tournament actually went really well. We won 3 matches and lost 1 so we ended up getting 3rd overall. Not bad seeing as my dad and I had never played together before. 4 Tennis matches in one day is a lot of tennis when you're not used to play tournaments. The tournament was really fun, but it was super frustrating to me. I knew I could have played A LOT better than I did but it just wasn't working. In my last match, I couldn't even get my toss right for my serve. It's literally just tossing a ball into the air and I couldn't get it right. So frustrating! Overall, it was a lot of fun to play with my dad and against all his friends out there; even if I could barely move that night. 

It's been tough getting back in the swing of actually working. Instead of refreshing me and giving me energy, Spring Break just reminded me how awesome Summer is and how not awesome school is. Just a few more weeks and I'll be done! Thank goodness. I went to advising early in the week and decided on which classes I'm taking next semester and I'm actually super excited for them. For the most part. I'm taking Neuroscience, Greek, Theories of Family Development, Individual and Family Financial Management, and Christian Ethics. I'm excited for Christian Ethics but I know it's probably going to be really frustrating as well.  

My sister and brother in law are coming to Waco this weekend and I'm excited to see them. I'll spend Friday and Saturday with them, and then Sunday will consist of church and writing a research paper. Fun stuff. There's some pretty exciting things going on right now, but we'll see where God takes them. Who knows! I'm slowly figuring out that this isn't my life to live; I'm living my life for Christ so He gets the final say. I might not like it, I might not understand it, and I might be afraid of it, but I've gotta listen to it. Even it if it means going against what I thought the "plan" was, I gotta have faith. It's a hard lesson to learn and I'm still learning it. By the way, I'm looking for a job in Rockport over the summer(that doesn't involve working in a restaurant) so if you know of anything, please let me know!

 Is that not the cutest cat ever? 

I just really liked this and figured I would share :)

Yall have a good week!

Sports. And other ramblings

It's March Madness time!!! Who's ready for endless hours of basketball?? This girl is! I've got 2 brackets going and right now it's going pretty decent I would say. It's still early so there's time for one team to lose and kill my whole bracket. I guarantee this will happen. It always does. Baylor won their first game in the tournament though! It wasn't pretty, but they pulled it off. I love my Baylor Bears, but I do not have them winning my whole bracket. Sorry boys. Have I said lately how much I love sports? I can't even explain why; I just love them. For instance, in my car right now I have a baseball bat, tennis racquet, tennis balls, and a football. I just love them all. I love watching them, I love playing them, it doesn't matter. Is it an obsession? Maybe. But it's a healthy obsession so I don't see a problem with it.

Spring Break has been amazing and it's so close to being over :( I've been able to see friends, go to the beach, see family, eat yummy food, sleep, and just relax. I had absolutely no work to do over the break so I haven't even thought of school since I left last Friday. Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about how time consumes everything we do. We live life day by day and hour by hour. We know how much time we're going to spend on each homework assignment and we have lined up what we're going to do after that assignment and for how long. It just consumes our lives as students. There's also no way to really get out of this. We have to get stuff done and this is the way to do it. But we realized that we wake up and by the time we go to sleep, the day has passed us by so quickly and we didn't even do anything really substantial. Then we wake up and get things done the same way the next day. It's a vicious cycle. That's another reason I love being home. My mind doesn't work this way when I'm home. I just live my life. I don't have anything set in stone or any assignments I have to do. It's very relaxing.

I'm in a tennis tournament this Saturday playing mixed doubles with my dad so that should be interesting. I'm pretty sure everyone else in the tournament is way better than I am, but we'll see. It's just so nice to be out on the court playing multiple times a week again. It's so therapeutic. 

By the way, I'm addicted to this game on my phone called Draw Something. If yall have it and need someone new to play with, my username is erin.albin. I have to warn you, I try my absolute best, but a lot of the time, it still looks like a 6 year old drew the picture. I apologize in advance.

Have a great week, yall!

Questionnaire

I was tagged in this blog survey thing by Hollie and decided to do it. Actually, I'm only halfway doing it. You're supposed to post 11 random facts about yourself (but I did that in an early post), then answer the questions, make new ones, and tag bloggers in it. But I'm not doing any of that, mainly because I don't follow many blogs.

Hollie's Questions

1.What's your take on the Twilight phenomenon? Are you a fan? Are you strongly opposed?

I am strongly AGAINST Twilight. I hate this books with a passion. I have to admit, I've seen the movies but just because my friends wanted to see them. I think the books are written in an awful way. "Bella loves Edward. Edward loves Bella. Jacob loves Bella. Edward is a vampire. What will we do?" It's awful. There's also not a very good message in it. This girl can't survive without the stupid boy. Oh no. That is not how I work. And they're horrible actors.

2. What's your favorite form of exercise? Window shopping is a perfectly acceptable answer to this question.

We always do a workout routine in our dorm room. It's anywhere from jumping jacks, to different forms of crunches, to burpees(look those up, man they are killer).  We also always do some just dance to finish our workout.

3. Running along with the shopping theme, if you could max out your credit cards (without penalty or paying them off!) at any one store, where would that be?

Do I have to choose just one? I suppose it would be Old Navy. Then Forever 21. 

4. If you could pick a movie title to describe your life, what would it be and why? (just the title- not the movie subject or premise... like if you pick "Pretty Woman" it just means you're a pretty woman, not a prostitute who falls in love with Richard Gere.)

This one is hard. Mainly because I'm not very creative. I'm gonna have to go with Smile and Keep Moving. Is that lame? oh well.

5. What (in your opinion) are the ideal condiments or toppings on a hamburger?

Cheese, ketchup, mayo, lettuce, tomato, and sometimes pickles. Depends on my mood. Definitely NOT mustard though.

6. If you could learn a new musical instrument, what would it be?

Guitar for sure. I love the sound of a guitar. Maybe I'll just find a guy that can play a guitar haha

7. Are you an Apple or PC person?

PC all the way. It's kind of that rebellious streak I've talked about. Everyone and their mom has an Apple product so I feel the need to not have an Apple product.

8. What is your ultimate guilty pleasure? (i.e., that trashy tv show? romance novels? ice cream??)

Vampire Diaries for sure. My sister got me hooked on it and I realize it sounds really lame. AND IT'S NOT AT ALL LIKE TWILIGHT. I promise. 

9. Do you have any brothers or sisters (or siblings-in-law?)? Are you close in age? Are you close in relationship?

I have 1 older brother, 1 older sister and 1 brother in law. Joey is 6 years older than me, and Courtney and Justin are about 3 years older than me. As siblings we're all pretty close. With Justin, I seriously could not have picked a better guy to marry my sister and become a part of our family. Courtney and I are super close. I really don't know what I would do without her. The year she was lived in Florida right after she got married was no fun(for me at least). I needed my sister! But now she lives in Austin and I seem them a lot. She's my  best friend. Joey lives in Oklahoma so I don't see him as often as I would like. But, I think I'll always have the cliche little sister attitude towards my older brother. No matter how much he picks on me and how old we are, I'll always admire him.

Anywho, I'm finally home for Spring Break!! I don't even care that the weather is not Spring Break-y, I just care that I'm home. On the down side, I have no voice :( My throat was kinda sketchy on Friday, then I had four and a half hours in a car by myself belting out songs. Now I have no voice. It sounds quite pathetic actually. That means no praise team or choir for me at church tomorrow. Hopefully it'll come back soon.

Integrity

Did you know that when the general public is asked to describe Christians in one word, the top two responses are judgmental and hypocritical? This makes me soooooo very sad. I look around at the Christians that are in my life and I see love. Whether the love is shown by prayer, encouragement, accountability, or even just mowing someone's lawn during sickness, there has always been love.  That's why it makes me so sad that the general public isn't seeing this for themselves. Don't get me wrong, there are Christians that are judgmental and are hypocritical, but that doesn't mean everyone is. The other day in the parking garage, I walked by a car that said, "God hates atheists." Seeing this literally pained me. Doesn't this person realize that they're sending the completely wrong message? Even if someone isn't an atheist, they see this sticker and the word hate just pops out. If they don't know Christ, this is going to steer them in the opposite direction. And honestly, if I weren't Christian and I saw that sticker, I would be assume bad things about Christians as well. The Christian faith isn't about hate, it's about love. I thought about just taking the sticker off but I didn't. I also thought about leaving a very respectful note on the car telling them that the sticker was awful, but I decided not to. I hate when I see violent groups on the news and they say that they were doing it for a reason having to do with religion or "because God told them do it because those people weren't Christians." I absolutely hate that people that don't know Christ, only know of Christians because of situations like this. In elementary school, I always hated when the whole class got in trouble because of one person; it was never fair. This is a similar situation. Christians as a whole get an awful name because of the ones in the group that don't live their life through love. Christians should want to show people how awesome it is to have this faith. We need to show them that our joy doesn't come from wordly things, it's comes from Christ that lives within us. We need to be drawing them near to us, not running them off. I don't even know if there is a solution to this problem except to urge people to act lovingly towards everyone they come in contact with. Maybe if we try to act as Christ tells us to, then the world will see us more than they see those violent groups killing people because they aren't Christian. I only hope that one day when people are asked to describe Christians they will use words like loving, forgiving, and altruistic. Hopefully that will happen one day. 

 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.

Psalm 62:5

Authenticity

Yall, I've been on a blog overload lately. I'm hoping to make it more interesting and this idea just popped into my head. I'm gonna give yall 15 facts about me. I think I've done this before, but those were facts that everyone already knew. I talked about being a Christian, loving sports, loving my family, and things like that. Yall already know those things about me. Hopefully I can come up with 15 facts that yall really wouldn't know otherwise.

1. I don't like my bottled water cold, I like it room temperature.

2. My jaw pops every time I open it or chew. It's pretty gross actually, but it's done that as long as I can remember. It also gets stuck every once and a while which is killer. 

3. I laugh A LOT and at the littlest thing. I've also been told I have a goofy laugh, but oh well. 

4. When I was really little, I told my parents I wanted to be a hotdog when I grew up. Don't ask me why.

5. Tennis is my therapy/drug. I could be having an awful day, but let me play a tennis match and I'll be all better. Being on the court has a way of erasing my mind from everything that is going on.

6. I love driving. If gas weren't so stinking expensive, I would just get in the car and drive and see where I ended up.

7. When I'm in the car by myself for long periods of time, I tend to jam to Hanson. Not the cheesy song, "Mmmbop" like everyone associates them with but their album Underneath is pretty great.

8. I'm not your average college kid when it comes to sleep. I'm in bed by midnight every school night. I have to have 7-8 hours of sleep every night and I'm definitely not a morning person.

9. I don't really know what I want to do after college and that kinda freaks me out.

10. I hate my hair. I know that's such a cliche thing to say, but it's true.

11. I love quotes. I'm not very good and putting certain feelings into words so I let the quotes do it for me.

12. I also love people watching. I like to try and figure people out.

13. I hate potato chips. The smell alone literally sickens me.

14. I'm a sucker for lame romantic comedies. But I also love watching scary movies.

15. I cannot draw or do anything artistic to save my life. If you tell me to color/paint/draw a picture, it will literally look like a 4 year old did it.

Sometimes I post these pictures of things I think are funny. I was thinking about it and maybe they're just funny to me, cause I think just about anything is funny. So, if you think they're lame. sorry!

Ouch.

Sometimes I get in a blogging mood. As you can tell, I'm definitely in one of those moods right now. That's probably why this is my third post this week.

This past week was tough; actually this semester has been tough. School is pretty much kicking my butt this semester. The majority of my classes are going fine but political science and chemistry are just killing me. On Tuesday, I was realllllly frustrated. Pretty much to the point of tears. I got the grade back from my chemistry test the week before, and I didn't do as well as I had hoped for. The thing is, in high school, I NEVER worried about passing a class. If anything, I was worried about making an A in the class, I was never concerned with passing. Then I get here and I do everything I possibly can and it still isn't good enough. It was just super super discouraging. Remember how I said in an earlier post that one of my fears was failing and in turn disappointing the ones I love? Yea, that's why this post is hard for me to write. I have a really hard time admitting that I'm actually not doing awesome at school. Granted, I'm not doing bad. I'm just not making a 4.0 at the moment. I have a hard time letting people know that things aren't going perfectly. I also have this problem of comparing myself to others. It seems like I'm struggling in school while my other friends from high school are doing great. I think about all these other people in college and I fear that while people read this, they will be thinking of them too. I fear they'll think of one person they know in college and realize that that person is doing so much better than I am. While I was so discouraged on Tuesday, I was talking to a friend of mine. Actually, he's probably one of the honorable guys I know. Anywho, I was talking to him about how frustrated I was with school and he had some very wise words to say. He said, "Erin, pray and the most important thing is keep pursuing God. In a year you're not gonna care about this at all, all that matters is your relationship with God." He's totally right. Next year, I won't even care about chemistry or political science. That might sound awful, but it's true. This will all pass but my relationship with God will withstand all. Obviously, I made it through this week. And I'm pretty much done before Spring Break. I'll have a nice relaxing week off and then get back into the swing of things.

Another point of this post is to show that I don't have it all together. I was talking to someone from back home the other day and they told me that they were so impressed that I had my life all together and had everything figured out. Ummmmmmm that is definitely not the case. I really hope yall don't think that. I don't have my life all together. I don't really know what I wanna do after college, I have my weakness, my doubts, my insecurites and God knows I have my fears. I don't have everything figured out, but I'm working on it. I know I'll never have everything figured out, but I'm trying my best to trust God with all of that.

On a lighter night, is this not hilarious?

Last Last Questions

Someone entered the game a little late(pretty sure it was my grandma) so I have one last question! Actually it's more like 3 questions. After these are answered I guess I'll have to start being interesting again. 

Question: What is your favorite book, movie, and tv show. And why?

This is super hard because I like A LOT of books, movies, and tv shows. I don't know if I can pick just one. Actually, I know I can't pick just one. 

Books: 1. Crazy Love by Francis Chan is a must read. It's kind of intense, but I think Christians need to read   something like that every one and awhile. Summing up the book is tough, but it's pretty much just talking about God's love. How God, the creator of the universe, can love pathetic ol' me. It's really a crazy thought when you actually think about it. And if we really love Him back, shouldn't it be this crazy love that we can't live without? I highly suggest the book.

2. Beyond Belief by Josh Hamilton. First off, this book talks about baseball and Jesus, what could be better?! Josh Hamilton plays for the Rangers and is a well-known Christian athlete. Early on in his career, he got mixed up with drugs and became a very bad drug addict. This book talks about those days in details and discusses how Christ got him through those days. It's a very easy read and very very good book. I literally could not put it down.

Movie: Remember the Titans. I could seriously watch this movie everyday and not get tired of it. If you've never seen this movie, I'm not quite sure we can still be friends. It's SOOOOO good. It's about a football team that has to overcome racism within the group and within the town. This movie isn't just one that people watch for entertainment. There are lessons and important values worked into this movie. Word cannot even explain how good it is. 

Tv show: Oh goodness. This is tough. I'm not gonna lie, I have a lot of TV shows that I watch weekly. We watch New Girl which is about a very awkward girl that has 3 guy room mates. They try and teach her to be somewhat normal. It's hilarious. Wednesdays are Suburgatory and Modern Family. Suburgatory is about a city girl and her dad who move into a very uptight neighborhood. Modern Family is one of the funniest shows on TV. It's pretty much just a sitcom about a very normal family and their daily lives. Thursday I watch Vampire Diaries(don't judge) and Grey's Anatomy. I know Vampire Diaries sounds really lame but my sister got me hooked and now I can't stop watching it.  We also watch Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother at night. I promise I actually do get homework done despite all this TV. 

SPRING BREAK IS IN ONE WEEK!!!!! Can you tell I'm excited? As of now, it seems like next week will be fairly easy. I just have one test on Thursday and it's in a class I actually love so it shouldn't be a big deal. I'm so ready to lay out in the sun, hang out with friends and family, and just relax. 

I was sent this picture today and it pretty much made my day. It makes me so happy. These boys mean the world to me. They pick on me and they're punks to me a lot of the time, but I pretty much have an extra set of brothers. They're protective of me, they make me laugh, and most importantly, they're there for me when I need them most. 

By the way, at first, they were all doing a thumbs up and that's why I did my bear claw. But apparently Matt and I didn't get the memo to not do college signs. So I edited the picture a bit so it doesn't look like I'm trying to attack Hunter.

I'm got some mad paint skills, obviously ;)