Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog

If by some miracle you are still following this blog or reading, I congratulate you and thank you.  This might be popping up in your reader and you might be wondering, who is this blogger?

Ugh.

This is what makes sporadic blogging so hard.  The "coming back".  I really do want to write to more.  I know I say that all the time, but I really mean it.  It's a hobby that I enjoy and I love reading other blogs.  I just get lazy about it.  I know lazy about a habit.  What are you going to do?

So to make the ease back into blogging a bit easier, I'm going to link up with Jamie for a What I'm Loving Wednesday. 

I love that in a few short weeks, we will be heading for the Smokey Mountains/Gatlinburg for a weekend getaway.  I could not be more excited.  I'm so ready for a getaway and this place is perfect.  It's only a few hours away and it's a fairly cheap trip.  Also it has such great memories for me and the husband.  I can't wait!

I love that tomorrow we are going to reach temperatures in the 70's!  This is amazing.  I'm so ready for spring and summer weather.  I can handle fall, but I have absolutely no use for winter.  None.  I do not ski.  I do not ice skate.  I do not sled.  Warm weather will be much appreciated in these parts.

I love that my husband came and met me for lunch today!  I got to show him around my new office and he got to meet all of new co-workers.  It was nice to see him in the middle of the day and share my work life with him.

I love that March is here and the NCAA tournament is underway.  I'm hoping for big Kentucky wins especially against West Virginia and Ohio State.  A win against Ohio State would be perfection.  While I'm hoping for a Kentucky win, I'm hoping for Cincinnati and Louisville losses.  Mostly because I want the people I'm friends with on FB and follow on Twitter to shut it.  Nothing like a little "friendly" competition!

 via here

I love that on Saturday I get to celebrate with my friend and her family the fact that her father is cancer free!  About a year ago a good friend of mine's father was diagnosed with leukemia.  He needed a bone marrow transplant and my friend was lucky enough to be a match and ended up saving his life.  I'm happy that I get to share in the special celebration with them! 

So Where Have I Been?

In my absence, I have been uber busy.  Okay.  Not really.  I pretend like I'm beyond busy, but I'm really not - at least through the week.  In an average week, I'm busy on Monday nights teaching CCD, but any other night I'm pretty much doing laundry, blog stalking, watching TV or hanging out with the husband.  Fun, right?  The weekend though can be somewhat hectic, like last weekend.  Friday night we had a game night with some other couples, Saturday we had homecoming all.day.long and Sunday we had brunch with my family.  It really felt like we did not stop, but we had such a good time.  Especially with Homecoming.

The college that my husband and I went to is a smaller state school that does not have a football team, so Homecoming is held during basketball season.  There are several events throughout the week for the students and then the weekend is dedicated to several alumni events.  We participated in the the Saturday events starting with the alumni chili cook off.  The husband and I participated with our good friends from college.  We knew we had to really step up our game and not just make good chili because a chili cook off is rarely about the chili itself.

 

Our setup

The setup was nice enough.  We had crackers and cheese and individually wrapped pieces of cornbread.  We even had a personalized bobble head.  The other contestants were wary, but then we pulled out the secret weapon ... and then they were shaking in their boots.

Personalized.Aprons.

Yeah, that's right.  Personalized aprons.  They were key for many reasons.  One they were handmade and personalized and just overall awesome.  Second, they had our names and graduation years on them.  We are standing in reverse order, but starting with the guy on the end he graduation in 2004, his wife graduated in 2005, I graduated in 2006 and my husband graduated in 2007.  Third, they had our Greek organizations on them.  This was absolute key because the current students who were in the organizations automatically voted for us.  

The result for all of our hard work?  We won.  Oh yeah.  You are currently reading the blog of an award winning chili chef.  You are honored, I'm sure.  

After the cookoff it was time for the game, which we of course won.  We were lucky enough to enjoy the second half of the game from the University President's suite.  We're kind of a big deal.  People know us.  (Not really, more like we know other people).

The night ended with an alumni reception and my husband and I both won door prizes.  

Overall, I'm saying this year's Homecoming was an absolute success.  Next year we plan on coming back to defend our chili trophy.  I see a dynasty in my future...

Grab Bag

This week has been crazy since I have started my NEW JOB!!!  I just love saying that.  It makes me feel a special and warm and fuzzy.  Lame, I know, but that's just me.  So since not much has gone on this week, I thought I would just share some random odds and ends.

The J-O-B

First of all, I really like it so far.  I won't go as far as to say that I love it because I don't want to be one of those girls who goes too fast and gets all giddy in love before the relationship has fully formed.  However, I will say that so far, so good.  I don't want to divulge too much information about what I do because these here are the interwebs and you really can never be too careful, but I'm happy with it.  It is a good marriage of a lot of my interests and my talents.  There is a lot to learn, but it's manageable.  I don't look it and have this feeling that I'll never learn it.  The people are wonderful so far.  Everyone is so nice and welcoming.  You know how every group seems to have at least one Scrooge?  I haven't found one yet, and I've met everyone - which wasn't hard since it's a very small company.

Make-up/Beauty

Yeah, I'm going to be lame and write about this.  As I mentioned previously, I have a new interest in watching YouTube Beauty Guru's.  I know that people have probably been watching these videos for years, but I just found them, so to me, they are brand spankin' new.  I now have an interest in using makeup in different ways and trying new products.  While all this fun, I feel like my skin in taking a beating.  I have never had good skin.  Actually I feel like as a teenager, I had decent skin, but as I've gotten older it's gotten worse.  I have been trying to find some affordable products that will help, but along the way I have found aspirin masks.  Now again, there are probably some of you reading this that know all about them, but to me they are new so I'm going to share.  

Basically you just take some aspirin, crush them, mix a few drops of water, a dollop of honey and mix together.  It makes a paste that you smear on your face and leave it there for about twenty minutes.  I just tried it tonight so I can't tell you if it's helped my skin or not, but I can tell you that it has left my skin feeling soft and smooth.  I would show you a picture, but I'm not brave enough for that!

Droid

The husband and I are super cool and finally entered the world of Android and Apps.  We got the LG Optimus from Sprint and I think the best part of getting it was, it was free.

via here

So if you have a Droid or know of some good apps that I have to have, let me know!

Weekend

I'm so ready for the weekend.  While I am liking(loving) the new job, I am ready for the weekend.  We have no major plans yet, which are the best kinds of weekends.  The husband does have a basketball game to coach tomorrow night so I am having some girls over for a girls night.  I'm so excited about this, as I rarely do things like this.  We plan on watching a movie, ordering pizza, calling boys, fixing each other's hair and playing light as a feather stiff as a board.  Ok, we're not really doing all those things.  I'll let you figure out which are real and which are fake.

Anyway, I hope everyone else is having a great week and I hope to actually write something of substance soon!

I'll Be There For You

Day 9 - A Picture of Your Friends

I am fortunate to have several groups of friends.  I have my high school friends, college friends and post college friends (who coincidentally co-mingle with my high school friends).  It's not that I intentionally keep the groups separate, it just kind of works out that way.  

This is my Delta Zeta Family (I'm the second one on the left in the black dress).  This is a bit old, I believe it was taken over a year and half ago at Senior night for my grand little (in the red top).  My little is standing next to my grand little (red hair, wearing black and white) and the other two are my great grand littles.  I love my DZ family and we try to get together at least once a month.  I love it because it keeps me connected to the present chapter.  They are a wonderful family and there are several girls in the chapter who are amazed that we still get together.  It's a tradition that I hope to keep.

 

In case you were wondering who my DZ Big Sister was, here she is!  She is truly one of my best friends.  Whenever something major happens in my life she is the first person I call.  She is the reason I joined Delta Zeta and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be the person I am today without her.  She is a wonderful persona and great friend.  I consider myself very lucky to call her a friend.

 

These are the after college friends.  Please ignore the fact that this looks like some sort of class picture.  This was actually taken at the end of a weekend vacation we all took to Gatlinburg, TN. We all look a little worse for the wear because literally right after this was taken we hopped in our cars to head home. That weekend was so much and I would love to do it sometime again.  The group has changed a bit though as nearly everyone in this picture now has a baby and it makes it hard to get together as much as we used to.  They are still a great group of friends and I always enjoy our times together.

 

 

My bridesmaids.  They were a mixture of family and friends and I am blessed that I had such wonderful people surrounding me on my wedding day.  

 

My high school/grade school friends.  We may not see each other on a regular basis, but these are the people who are known me the longest.  They know my past and they know my present.  They are very important people to me.  These are the kinds of people you want around you for the rest of your life.  We can go a while without seeing each other, but once we do it's like no time as passed.

And I could add soooo many more, but I think this covers my "close" friends.  I can't wait to meet yours!

 

I Left my Heart in San Francisco

Day Eight - A Place You've Traveled

I love traveling.  I wish that I had more money in the good old bank account to do more traveling.  I would love to get out of the here United States and see Europe.  I would love to see Rome and the Vatican or see the blue waters of Greece.  Sadly though, there are other things that I need to spend my money on, but maybe one day I will get to see those things. 

In all honesty though, I have been very lucky in my travels.  I have been to NYC, Chicago, various parts of Florida, New Orlans, etc.  One place I NEVER thought I would get to go was California.  I don't know why, it just seemed unattainable.  About two and half years ago a good friend of mine packed up her and a her fiance and moved clear across the county to Sacramento.  It broke my little heart, but she promised that one day she would be back (actually as I write this, she is back is the good old KY) and promised that if we ever wanted to come out, we would have a place to say.  Well last year after coming off three unsuccessful rounds of Clomid (fertility drug) we decided to treat ourselves.  Plane tickets were uber cheap so off we went to California.  It was ah-mazing and just what we needed.  It was a change of perspective that I needed at the time.  While we stayed in Sacramento we got to see various parts of Northern California including UCDavis, Napa Valley and San Francisco.  It was a real life and Pop Culture (don't think for a second I wasn't in Full House heaven!!) dream come true.  Here are some pictures of our amazing trip:

 

 

Home of the original Mission Style Burrito - as seen on Man vs. Food!