NEW YEAR

On December 31st everyone was tweeting about how great their 2013 was and how they made so many great memories and I tried to reflect on how it was for myself and I realized that I couldn't think of anything that really made me feel that 2013 was a great year. The end of 2013 took a turn for the worst and I have a hard time thinking of what positive things happened. I know there must have been a ton of great memories, but I couldn't get myself to think of them all. So I decided this year I need to do things differently. I'll try to post here more, take more pictures, and make use of the cute memory jar I made in order to better document the entire year. I wish I would have done that this past year because the bad things are currently overshadowing the good. But this year I'll be able to reflect all the way back to January 1st to the great memories I've made with my friends that will be able to put a smile on my face no matter what is going on at that time. This will all help in my overall goal of becoming happier and more care free. I've noticed that I always tend to admire those types of people who really enjoy life and have a positive outlook on everything and I want to try to implement that in my life as much as possible from now on. I'm trying to forget about the things that bring me down and leave them in the past. I want to live in the present and enjoy every minute of it. This is my senior year and I need to make the best of it because it'll be gone before I know it. And then by the end of the year I'll be in college and I'll need to keep a positive outlook in the midst of all that craziness.

I highly suggest doing these things especially the memory jar because it's already been a lot of fun to document the end of my Christmas break and I can't wait to read them all next year.
Oh! Also I totally forgot to mention that I'm trying to take at least one picture every day so here are the pictures from that so far...
1/1/14

Driving to Einstein's with Maci

Eating Einstein's with Maci, Ali, and Stacey. After this we cleaned up Jordan's from the party and zip lined and explored in the creek

 1/2/14

The Gaylord was the team hotel for OSU

Painting with Maci, Shannon, and Stacey

1/3/14

Cotton Bowl with Shannon that did not end well for OSU... those darn refs

1/4/14

It was in the 60s this day so I made use of my new hammock

Helped Maci babysit and played basketball with her and Matt

1/5/14

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!