THE MONTH FOR BEING THANKFUL

Throughout this November I have been keeping track of little things that make me happy. The end of October brought a lot of sadness so I'm using this post to help me look on the bright side of everything. So here are some things that I have been thankful for this month...

• finishing homework before dance
• getting front row parking
• new CDs
• my Wednesday night jazz class
• Jesus Calling
• finding new blogs to read
• Thursday night bible study 
• friends who care
• late night bonfires
• Pizookies
• watching movies that came out in middle school
• Bahama Bucks runs
• that one hot day that felt like summer
• reconnecting with old friends
• being comfortable without any makeup on
• finding new music
• finding old pictures of my PawPaw
• OSU beating Baylor
• spending time with my crazy cousins on both sides of the family
• getting good grades
• the great conversations i have with my best friends

November called for a lot of ups and downs emotionally, but thankfully I have had these little things to keep me looking up. I have found that it's essential to keep a happy mindset in order to be happy. Focusing on the things that are wrong only make you feel worse and I tend to do this more often than I should. Maybe I'll start doing posts like this every month or so because I think it has helped me a little in getting to a happier place in my life.

GOOD COMPANY = GOOD COMFORT

Lately I feel like I've been avoiding being around people because I"m trying to avoid putting on a brave face for everyone. It's a lot harder than you would think to act like you're okay on the outside when on the inside you're falling apart. Luckily I finally had a girls night with my best friend last night which made me feel a lot better. I don't have to be fake around her and pretend I'm okay. She understands when I'm hurting and gives the best advice to lift me up. It was so comforting to hang out with her like old times, get some Taste of Asia, and sing our hearts out in the car. Without her I don't know how I would ever get through this. Hopefully I'll be hanging out with her and my other close friends more often and then maybe I'll have more interesting things to start posting about haha.

"As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another."
- Proverbs 27:17

HEARTBREAK

Unfortunately, this week I've been having to get over a heartbreak and it has definitely not been easy. My life had revolved around this boy for a whole year and getting over him has and will be the hardest thing I have ever done, but here are some things that have really been helping me...

• Read encouraging bible verses (Isaiah 41:10 is a good one)
• Talk about it with your closest friends, they have the best advice and always know how to lift you up
• Don't be afraid to go to your parents, they give the best comfort and are so caring
• Keep your mind busy so you don't let the break up consume your thoughts
• Pray

I'm also trying to improve on other areas of my life. As this is my last year of high school I'm trying to make the best of it by focusing more on my friendships, my grades, my family, and my relationship with God. Although I will give myself some grieving time, I want to try to become a stronger and better person out of this experience.

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY

I absolutely love rain, but on this particular weekend I couldn't be more upset that it poured on us. Saturday night was the night of the Jason Aldean concert. I had been dying to go since I heard about it in the summer. I had forgotten about it and had gotten tickets to Paramore on the same night and was super pumped for that, but then my other friends that were going with me canceled to go to Jason Aldean. I couldn't find anyone to go to Paramore, so those tickets got sold. Then my mom texted me saying that her friend had two tickets to Jason Aldean if Drew and I wanted to go. Finally my dreams were coming true and my plans for the weekend made a change for the better. Unfortunately we had only been there for 15 minutes maybe and as Jake Owen was in the middle of performing as the opening act it started pouring and didn't stop. After Jake Owen finished there was a long period of time where no one was on stage and they were just playing random music to pass the time. After a while they finally told us the concert was delayed. At this point Drew was miserable and others were starting to leave so we decided to leave too. Thankfully, Jason never ended up coming on stage after we left. I would have been so upset if he ended up performing. Although it was a weekend full of plans falling apart, we made a memory that will last a lifetime and will make me laugh in years to come.

look who's wearing jeans

HOMECOMING

This past weekend was my last homecoming ever. It was filled with multiple bittersweet moments, but it was by far the best one of all of my high school homecomings.

Game day began with the traditional Lariette high kick routine to Wild Wild West at the pep rally. I wasn't all that excited about performing because kick has never been my strongest style of dance, but as soon as I started kicking it hit me that this would be the last time to ever perform that dance. I forgot how fun it was to show our school how talented we are and I forgot the excitement that comes with hearing the audiences reactions to us falling into the splits. Although I was holding back some tears, I was proud of our last performance and our director actually said it was perfect. What? That is unheard of, but I will definitely take it.

After that we continued the school day which included everyone walking around in our giant mums. Other towns may think it's ridiculous, but I honestly love the tradition and this year I finally got to participate. Drew got me a beautiful mum and I loved getting to wear it around school.

To wrap up game day, the Lariettes participate in another tradition. Every homecoming game the Lariettes do a performance with their "Larrys" which can be a dad or brother or really just any guy. We have a few practices leading up to homecoming and the Larrys learn a halftime performance. Those practices never fail to be quite hilarious and performing with the Larrys is always a blast. The stadium loved it and I'm sad that was my last time.

Saturday was the day of the dance. Earlier in the week I was worried Drew wasn't going to be able to come at all because he had an opportunity to play baseball in New Braunfels, but he ended up turning it down!!! It was so much fun to get all dressed up in my pink dress and seeing Drew in his pink tie (he was very excited to wear). We had a great group filled with a bunch of my friends and I had a lot of fun hanging out with them. The actual dance wasn't all that great, but I was with great people and that's all that matters.

I'm so sad I have no more homecomings left, but I am so happy that the last one was the best. 

we were really excited that the homeoming queen was in our group

PUMPKINS, RAIN, AND GREAT FRIENDS

Today has overall been a really awesome day. It started out with Lariette junior clinic and I just LOVE little kids so it was fun getting to play with all the little kindergarteners. They were either really crazy or really quiet. One second they'd be wrestling each other and not listen to us, and the next second they would just stare at us and not do or say anything when we asked them to. They were just a crazy bunch and I had a lot of laughs this morning.

After clinic was over, a small group of senior Lariettes went to lunch at Schlotzky's, which was fun because I love those girls. Then, we went to the high school where we learned our senior pep rally dance which is going to be AMAZING. It's to a mix of Beyonce songs and I'm kinda obsessed. 

One thing I forgot to mention was that the moment we stepped outside after junior clinic Fall hit us like a ton of bricks. It probably reached 90 degrees yesterday, and when we were leaving from junior clinic it was 57 degrees.. crazy right? It felt so good though so Shannon and I decided we had to spend this day outside and decided to go to the pumpkin patch in Flower Mound. We called up Megan and Maci (who wasn't able to join us til after), dressed up in cute sweaters and boots, and stopped by Starbucks where I tried my first Pumpkin Spice Latte (so yummy).

It was sooooo cold by the time we got to the pumpkin patch, but it was such a great feeling because the weather has been so hot for so long. We walked around and took tons of pictures for about 30 minutes before the place had to shut down for the rain. Right when we got in the car it started pouring which only made this day 10x better because rainy days are my favorite days.

We stopped by Tom Thumb to buy some Angel Food cake mix, threw on some yoga pants and sweatshirts and started baking at my house. Our attempt at baking the cake was a fail to say the least. It wouldn't stop growing and was starting to burn so we just decided to forget about it. Luckily, I found some pumpkin bread mix in my pantry so we made that instead.

In the midst of all this my poor friend Maci was having phone troubles. She had downloaded the beta version of ios 7 over the summer and hadn't downloaded the official one yet so Apple basically shut down her phone. We had our friend Dustin come over and try to figure out a way to fix it, but there's no hope. She might just have to spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone. Yikes!

Today was filled with lots of laughs and a lot of great memories. Here are some pictures from the super cute pumpkin patch:

megan and i freezing our butts off

megan and shannon

i'm obsessed with mermaids.. i just had to

yay for 50 cent pumpkins!

THE BEST SEASON IS HERE

I thought it only suitable to add a new post to my blog as I got a new Macbook today!!! I'm obsessed with it and I'm coming up with every excuse to use it.

Not only am I excited about finally getting rid of my barely functional Dell laptop, I'm sososo excited for this fall. This morning as I walked out to my car to head out to church the weather felt AMAZING. There's nothing I love more than 70 degree weather. It's perfect. Then I had a nice lunch outside with the family. After, we spent hours trying to find the best laptop and finally purchased this one. As I was figuring out how to use a mac I receive a text from my best friend, Blake, saying "Come outside and use your phone as a flashlight and follow the rose petals". My heart practically skipped a beat because I had a pretty good idea what this meant. So I walked out the front door and followed the rose petals that led to the back of my house where my boyfriend, Drew, was standing in the driveway with a sign that said "it would light up my world if you went to homecoming with me!" and about 200 candles that spelled out "homecoming?" and a heart with a framed picture of us and a rose. I just screamed oh my gosh!! and ran and gave him a hug. I have never been asked to homecoming before so this was all extremely exciting. I probably overreacted a little. I was jumping up and down and screaming and hugging Drew like a hundred times. It was so perfect and cute and I can't wait to spend homecoming with such a great guy. And I'm also so thankful for Blake helping put it all together. I couldn't ask for better people in my life.

Today was just such a great day and only makes me 130987514783x more excited for the rest of the year.

Here's a few pics from tonight:

isn't he a cutie? ;)

Thanks to blake for these awesome pics:)))

MISSING CAMP PIKE...

Like every other day after I got home from camp, I am missing it so terribly much. Although, I've been able to see/hear from all the counselors pretty often which makes missing camp a little more bearable.

The two weeks I got to spend in Colorado were probably some of the best weeks of my life. I got to spend it with great people in God's beautiful creations. It sucks being back in humid Texas where it's 100 degrees all the time as opposed to 70-80 degrees in Colorado. And I never thought I'd say this while I was at camp, but I actually do miss hiking. As tough as it is to climb up those mountains, the views were gorgeous and I wish I could go back right now and enjoy those just a tad longer and take a few extra pictures.

I also miss spending time with the awesome mennonites at camp. The camp we stay at is Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp and it is run by a great group of mennonites who are also Christians just with a few differences. We got a few chances to just sit around and talk and get to know them and we also did some devos with them and got to discuss a ton of different things about our faith. It was probably one of the coolest experiences especially when we got them to sing all our favorite songs and we sang (more like attempted to sing) their favorite hymns. They are definitely some of the coolest people I have ever met and I couldn't ask for anyone better to run our camp facilities.

OH my gosh and the food... I miss the food. It was sooooooooo good. I don't even know how to put the greatness of the food into words, just believe me, it's delicious.

I just really really miss being in the mountains. Waking up every morning and hiking up to inspiration point with that awesome view. Gosh it's wonderful.

Colorado is just all around perfect in the summer and I wish camp lasted all summer long.

Here are a few pictures, a lot of them are on my phone still so maybe I'll do another post with more later

Top of Raspberry

All the newbie counselors

Top of Crags

This just cracks me up 

Nativity rock

The ridge of Pikes Peak

BIG CEDAR LODGE

This weekend I went to one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. For my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary the whole family went to Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri. And when I say the whole family I mean the entire family, including grandma's sister-in-law's side of the family, the Regesters. That means there was 36 of us total. But it was so much fun with all the crazy cousins and it was really cool to get to hang out with the Regesters because we never get to see them. We spent 95% of our time doing anything and everything outside. We got there Friday afternoon and sat out by the pool all day and then everybody ate together at the Worman House restaurant. After we ate, Hannah and I went outside with all the little cousins and played hide and seek, which was really funny to hear some of the really little ones try and count. Then that night, unfortunately, somehow I got sick in the middle of night and I have no idea what caused it, but luckily I was fine the next day. We started off the morning with a walk around all the cabins and then came back to get ready for family pictures. Then we changed and Hannah, Lauren, Chelsea and I went with all the boys to the lazy river and then went to the Marina. We got to use the paddle boats which was a lot of fun despite the disgusting dead catfish floating on the water. The boys also found a turtle in the water but it swam away before we could catch it. After that we went over to the "swimming hole" and swam in the pool and the hot tub. That night all 36 of us crammed into one cabin and ate hot dogs and pulled pork sandwiches which was really tasty. Then us kids decided to leave and play some sand volleyball which was pretty hilarious because we all messed up a lot. The next day we had to leave because I still have a few more days of school with finals and everything. Driving away was so sad, but we're considering coming back this summer if it works into our schedules!
Here are a ton of pictures from the trip...

the "swimming hole"

view from our balcony

the cabin

dinner at the worman house

me and hannah (who by the way turns 13 today!)

outside of the worman house

the swinging bridge (which didn't actually swing)