Life lately [brain + photo dump]

Hello loves!

I keep telling myself I'll keep up with blogging better once my comprehensive exam is done, once classes are done, once I graduate... but the fact is, life is BUSY. I finished my comprehensive exam over FOUR weeks ago, and classes ended Monday...

So, I hope you'll just be happy to see me when I'm here and not miss me too much when I'm gone. Like your favorite flaky friend who is oh-so-hard to make plans with but whom you love dearly. :)

Here's a glimpse at my life lately. (that is, the part of my life that wasn't work + papers + presentations + job applications...)

I attempted for a while to walk or run a mile a day in May. That fell apart pretty quickly (#postmarathonslump), but I did manage to convince Pat to take a walk with me on campus one evening!

He took this sneaky picture of me while I was taking the first picture. (#bloggerproblems)

I celebrated my last Capstone class on a patio with my lovely friend Ashley.

 I ran a 5k that was 19 seconds away from my best time ever. (I'll take it!)

My wonderful friend Sam visited, and we went disc golfing! (aka the boys golfed and I walked around and talked at them :)

 This is what a disc-golf walk ends up looking like:

And finally, I had my last college class this Monday. These lovely ladies and I started together and now we're finishing together. (also, you can see in this picture that I chopped my hair off :)

Upcoming in my life: Me and Pat are both graduating this weekend!! Which means -- The Meeting Of The Families. My little sister, Anna, has met Pat's dad and aunt, but they're the only ones who have met. So my parents will be meeting his dad and aunt and everyone will be meeting Pat's sister. It should be exciting!

We also each have three ceremonies!! Luckily, two of them overlap for both of us. Pat and I will each miss one of the others' ceremonies (does that make sense? his business ceremony is at the same time as my hooding ceremony. booo).

And we're also having a graduation party Saturday! SO MANY THINGS.

And then next week, we're taking offffff on a trip to Oregon and Washington. I'm SO excited. We're going to hike Mt. St. Helens, meet Shauna and Tim and see my friend Jacque and do lots of cool things.

I am not sure when I'll be posting again. :( If you want to keep up with me, I'll be on Twitter and Instagram -- find me there!!!

Lots of love,

Trip to Denver!

Ummm....

hey.

I'm really behind on blogging, huh?

But I want to tell you about my trip to see Pat! Let's pretend it wasn't already three weeks ago...

Before Pat moved to Denver for his 12-week internship, I bugged him about me being able to visit. They'd told him he could be working up to 80 hours a week, though, so he knew he'd be really busy. He'd say, You can come visit, but I might not have time to see you.

Well then.

But then one of my coworkers found a good deal on flights between Kansas City and Denver. And I couldn't find the good deal myself but it put the idea in Pat's head and then we bought my tickets and then I was off to see Pat!

It was a quick trip -- I got in Friday night and was supposed to leave Monday morning. But it was soo great to visit him and see where he's living and his life for the past many weeks.

Enough talk. Here's some pictures! We went hiking both days I was there, so all my pics are from that. :)

It was a wonderful trip, and I'm so glad I got to go!

Have any of you been to Denver before? Any tips for the next time I'm out there? We didn't venture into the city much (or at all) -- maybe next trip!

Scenes from this fall

Hey friends!

I got to see my lovely friend Layne this weekend (woo!).

She made an unfortunately accurate comment when she called me "Miss Never-going-to-post-on-her-blog-except-about-books."

Oops.

So I thought I'd share some of the things that have happened in my life since I was a real blogger who posted things other than pre-scheduled book reviews. :)

This year, campus was just BEAUTIFUL for fall. I mean, it always is, but look at these pictures! I was lucky that the week that the trees really decided to turn colors, I had to walk this path 4-6 times a day and got to bask in the glow of the gorgeous colors and crunchy leaves. Heaven.

I played on our student group's rec volleyball team again. Don't let my classmate's #1 fool you -- I don't think we even won one set of one game. It was fun though!! (I'm to the right of the girl in the tie dye :)

For Thanksgiving, Pat and I went home to my parents' house and I got to spend time with that little fluff face up there. Pat also had his traditional bonding with all of the pets, but he of course likes the kitty the best. They're basically besties.

We also had a fire over Thanksgiving! That fire was on the struggle bus the whole time though. For the first forty minutes or so I was just waiting for it to fizzle out and die. But Pat is king of the lab when it comes to building fires, and he eventually got a pretty good fire going despite lack of supplies and some pretty damp wood.

My sisters and I also spent some time over Thanksgiving visiting my grandma. She used to live with us but moved into assisted living after a rough fall in October. She was So. Happy. to see us. It breaks your heart and makes you feel awesome at the same time. It was really good to spend some time visiting her.

Justin, the really cool guy behind Texas in a Box and Oklahoma in a box, sent me this box of goodies to review! Full review coming soon, but since I've been super slow, I figured I'd go ahead and plug it/preview it now -- plus get a discount on your box by using this link! (I believe it's for a whopping $10 off!)

Pat and I went to two KU Volleyball matches in early December. The team made it to the Sweet 16 in the tournament -- the farthest KU Volleyball has gone in program history! Rock Chalk!

Finally, I have been LOVING all the Christmas lights around my little city -- That first one is Mass Street, our downtown area, and the second one is my string of lights in my room :) Twinkling Christmas lights just make my heart so freaking happy. I love Christmas!!

So there's an update on what I've been up to lately. Plus a few papers here and there (finished a 15-page one last night!!), but no one wants to see those pictures!

I've missed you all :)

How is your week going? Can you believe we're a week out from Christmas Eve??? Crazy.

Dance Marathon 2013

Getting ready 

The Marathon

By the numbers:

21/30 hours spent at the Kansas Union

100 pizzas eaten (!!)

12 hours of required standing

12+ hours of actual standing, dancing, zumbaing, yogaing, eating, carnivaling and more dancing

$61,500.65 raised 

for KU Pediatrics and Children's Miracle Network.

Thank you, again, to all who donated. You helped make this event, you helped so many families. You put some good in this world.

PS - More pictures on Dance Marathon's Facebook page.

We love fall :)

and pumpkins and pumpkin patches.

and the Avengers and Harry Potter.

*Happy Halloween, friends!*