The best dogs to follow on Instagram

Yup, you read that title right.

I will admit: about half of my Instagram feed at any given moment is pictures of dogs. I counted once, and I followed 32 animal accounts -- mostly dogs, a couple cats, a bird and a hedgehog. I've followed a few more dogs since then.

If it didn't make me so happy, I might be concerned I had a problem.

At any rate, here are my top five dog accounts to follow on Instagram:

ONE.

Leroy is maybe my favorite dog on Instagram. He is scruffy and adorable and exactly the kind of dog I would love to have.


TWO.

I LOVE NORM. Norm is the handsome pug pictured here, but his Instagram is named after his human. His human posts the cutest and most creative pictures of Norm. Love, love, love.


THREE.

The Dogist is like Humans of New York, but about dogs. Kind of a street-photographer, the person behind The Dogist takes pictures of all kinds of dogs all over the place.


FOUR.

Tuna is actually fairly famous for his memes. But I love following this little critter, and his human writes fun captions that really show his personality. She calls him a toodlebrain, which I think increased my affection for him 100%


FIVE.

I think Manny was the first dog account I found. His "siblings" also have accounts -- I don't know how their human manages to post so many pictures, but I love this little dog family!



Plus one bonus account:


This one is a favorite but also isn't. Susie's Senior Dogs posts information on older dogs across the country who need to be adopted. (Older dogs are super hard to get people to adopt.) The dogs are all so sweet, so it's heartbreaking. But it's a good one to follow just in case a dog pops up in your area.


So. If you want to be a crazy person like me and follow a bunch of dogs on Instagram, there are my highest recommendations. They all make me smile on a regular basis. Definitely a good life decision.

Birthday weekend!

Hi friends!

I turned 25 last weekend! Wooooo! I'm old! I decided to visit home over my birthday, and had a great weekend!

Saturday morning I ran a 10k. I wasn't going for a PR as I'd just done a long run the day before for marathon training, but I made it in 1:04:02 , which is only about a minute and a half slower than my PR for this distance. So I'll take it!

(In other running news, the fact that I was able to run this so fast-for-me makes me think I'm doing something wrong with my long runs -- walking too much or taking it too easy. Going to work on eating more so maybe I'll have more energy to run them better. Any tips from seasoned pros?)

Later that day I saw Divergent with my bff from high school, Meleah, and her bro and husband and my sister and her bf. Got all that? I was a dummy and didn't take any pics with Anna, my sister, but Meleah's husband took a bunch of pictures of me and Meleah when we weren't ready yet. (14 in all!) I think they show our relationship pretty well!

I told Meleah I have more pictures with her than any of my friends because she always remembers to take a picture! Unfortunately, all the recent ones pretty much look just like this -- haha. Very posed and on purpose. So I kind of love the extra ones Ricardo took!

At home, my mom made me a cake! Anna decorated it. Isn't it lovely? (The candles are in an A shape.)

Other highlights from the weekend include spending time with this little furry face and my other pets and getting to see one of my bffs from college, Layne, and her girlfriend for lunch. :) It made for a couple really happy days!

Thank you for all the birthday wishes on Instagram and Twitter! They made me smile all day long :)

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.