freeze frame time

As promised, here are some pictures to represent my life as of late:


Girls night out with Cate and Ash. It was a good time.

Memorial Day Weekend at the lake with my family. Sister pic on the boat.

I tried my hand at tubing for the first time in over 10 years. I'm proud to say I lived through the experience.

Here's a sweet picture of my nephews while we were waiting at the airport for my cousin to return from Scotland.

Too sweet not to share.

Nathan had a birthday. It was adorable.

Favorite cousins! We were at her sister/my other cousin's graduation party.

I got a new nephew! He's very handsome.

Also, I've been spending a lot of time with this guy. He's pretty handsome too.

oh baby baby

Dear World,

Meet Colten James French

I apologize for the mess you made when your heart melted all over the floor.

Love,

Me

I live because I love to

Oh hey. Is this thing on? It appears that I've been a bit distracted over the past two months with work, school, and boyfriend. No, that last one wasn't a typo.

Anyhow, these various activities have proven to be quite time consuming, though I've certainly had quite a few things to blog about... I guess. My problem is that I'm not sure if the fun things going on in my life are necessarily blog worthy. I'm a 25-year-old grad student with a job and a boy. And a couple of cats. There are a million other people out there like me. I'm not embarking on any specific life adventure like cooking my way through Julia Child's cookbook. I don't have kids to post adorable pictures of or a fantastic camera to use to take cool pictures of random things. I don't have the trials and tribulations of a new marriage yet... I'm just a girl figuring things out. So, here's just a quick update on the biggest thing's in my life, for those of you who may be interested:

1. Grad School: I finished the Spring semester with my 4.0 in tact. I'm currently taking Theories of Group Therapy as a summer class. It's pretty low key, and one night every other week I actually am part of a group going through the process. It's very interesting. In August I'll start practicum, which is basically just logging a certain amount of hours with undergrad volunteers developing rapport and case studies. Then, in the Spring of 11, I'll begin my internship. I'm hoping to end up somewhere like TLC for families and kids. I've recently come to the conclusion that I'd like family therapy to be my primary focus. So many of our individual problems could be prevented if we all learned to communicate more effectively in love as a family.

2. The job: I still am doing really well at work, enjoying pretty much every day. My boss has numerously alluded to the loss he'll have when I finish grad school and pursue a career in the mental health field. I hate to disappoint him, but there is very little chance I'd stay once I'm done with grad school.

3. The family: We've welcomed a new little one, Colten James. He is PRECIOUS. It's going to be so nice having a baby around at all of our family gatherings. Thanks, Mike and Lisa, for the baby fix. Plus, FC Rachael is back from Scotland so that's good news.

4. The boy: Todd is a teacher and a coach and a pretty awesome overall person. We've almost been dating for 6 months (July 2nd is the day) and it's going well. I'll stop at that, lest I go into "that girl" mode gushing and mooning over him and us. Suffice it to say that I'm a fan.

There's the update. I'm heading to Monroe City in a couple of weeks to spend the 4th of July weekend with Todd and his family. He and I are going to run in a 5k that weekend and I am VERY out of practice. I've been working on hydrating and fueling properly all day today so that I can get a good hill workout in. I've got 2 weeks to be able to just complete it. Maybe I'll train hard enough to beat him. It's not looking too promising at this point. My next post will have more pictures.

I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

Panera is awesome. From the garden vegetable soup, to the hazelnut coffee, to the free wifi.

There, saying that makes me feel better about sitting here for 2+ hours working on a paper and routinely checking my facebook.

Yesterday when I landed back in Kansas City after a wonderful trip to Denver, I was 90% sure that I'd lost my one and only set of car keys. Panic ensued immediately. I did a poor job of looking in my suitcase for them partly because I was not really at all surprised at the idea of losing my car keys. It's something I would do. The 2nd reason I immediately went into breakdown mode probably had a lot to do with 3 hours of sleep and being awake since 4am. That's neither here nor there. Anyhow, after realizing that if my car keys were REALLY gone, the result would be several hundred dollars and a priceless several hours would be involved in the solution, I decided to painstakingly look through my suitcase once more. I started pulling stuff out one at a time. Lo and behold, beneath things I hadn't even UNPACKED in CO, there were my car keys. It's a very mundane story, but the moral of the story is NEVER PROCRASTINATE IN REPLACING YOUR SPARE KEY WHEN YOU LOSE IT. I've got an appointment with my dealer (car, not drug... though maybe I could use one of those) on Saturday to get myself taken care of.

If they weren't so expensive I'd order like 50 of them and pass them out to every friend, family member, and coworker I had. "Hi, I know we're not close, but would you mind holding on to one of my spare car keys? It's necessary." Then I'd just send out a mass text every time I did something stupid like lock my keys in my car or drop them in a quicksand trap. "Hey everyone, can whoever's closest to Indian Creek Trail come let me into my car? I've done it again."

All you need is love.

Happy Valentine's Day!

As promised last time (and I know everyone has been waiting with baited breath) here is the playlist that I made to celebrate this wonderful day of love.

Love in the Oh-Ten
Haven't Met You Yet - Michael Buble
You and Me - Dave Matthews Band
I and Love and You - The Avett Brothers
First Day of My Life - Bright Eyes
Falling Slowly - The Swell Season (Glen Hansard and Marketa Iglova)
Electric Twist - A Fine Frenzy
The Way I Am - Ingrid Michaelson
All is Love - Karen O and the Kids (from Where the Wild Things Are)
The Book of Love - Peter Gabriel
All You Need is Love - The Beatles
I Want to Know Your Plans - Say Anything
Valentine - The Get Up Kids
You Really Got a Hold on Me - She&Him
Friday I'm in Love - The Cure
No One's Gonna Love You - Band of Horses
I Will Follow You Into The Dark (Cover) - Amy Millan
Ice Cream - Sarah McLachlan
12:59 Lullaby - Bedouin Soundclash
Quit Your Life - MXPX
Sexy Bitch - David Guetta and Akon (This one is just for fun. Stop it. I can feel you judging me.)

And here... watch this because it's sweet and Postsecret is awesome.

Everybody's working for the weekend.

Any misgivings I had about my job initially have all melted away for several reasons that don't need going into. I have fun pretty much every day at work which is a good thing, obviously. My daily tasks aren't necessarily thrilling, but my interactions with my boss and a few of my colleagues are what make the workday great.

Last Wednesday, for example, my boss and I colored this picture together - well, not at the same time but as a collaborative effort.


The landscape work was my boss, and I added the details like the sun, birds, pond, flowers, and lily pads. I know that the perspective is off on the flowers. Let it go. Your art rules aren't the boss of me.

The story behind the picture is longish and pretty funny, but I feel as though it would lose something in translation from spoken word to blog. However, I did want to quickly share this picture with the world so that you can all know how hard I'm working.

2010 is shaping up pretty nicely so far. I haven't had a bad day yet in February actually (knock on wood).

My next blog is going to have something to do with the AWESOME playlist I just made for Valentine's Day. Just a little something to look forward to.

And I don't feel any different...

2009
The Good...
- Continued 4.0 in grad school
- 2 big family gatherings
1. Grammy's 75th birthday:


and 2. Katy's 50th Birthday!

- Cousin/Nephew Omaha Trip


- Totally Rad 1984 themed 25th birthday party


- BEARCATS ARE NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!

The Bad...
- laid off (bright side - I wasn't unemployed for long.)
- the "situation" (don't you love it when people are really vague about things on a blog?)

The Ugly...
- maybe next year.