Spring Break

Let's recap the past week, shall we?
I road tripped it to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with eights friends from college.  The trip was roughly 20 hours each way.  The Hunters were excellent hosts - they served some awesome meals, have a beautiful house, and (most importantly) a wicked awesome hot tub.  High points of the trip included:

Day at the beach

Wrights Brother's Memorial - This is their workshop

Elizabethan Gardens

Checking out apartments at Southeastern Baptist Theological  Seminary after Robert's tour

Hiking up some dunes.  I was sick out of my mind at this point.  Clearly.

My parents met working at Ridgecrest nearly 30 years ago.  It was cool to finally get to see it.

-Putt Putt
-Dinner out for Miss Audra's birthday
-Lots of games and fun with friends

Low points of the trip:
-Throwing up at 1am Thursday
-Throwing up at 2am Thursday
-Throwing up out the window while the car was still going down the highway on Thursday
-Throwing up in a parking lot at Southeastern

My mom and grandparents got back from Portugal tonight.  Can't wait to hear all their stories!

Now it's time to face reality and do some studying.

My life lately

March 18:
This week has been insane.  Let's see:
I met with my oncologist on Wednesday.  He's great!  He's leaning toward it just being an iron deficiency.  I'm going to take some supplements for a few weeks to see if it helps.  PS The appointment took four hours.

Robert's mom came to Bolivar yesterday to take us out to dinner.  Bolivar has a new barbecue restaurant that is great!  It's also super cute - used to be an antique store.  She's letting us borrow her car to go to North Carolina.

I got to work in the nursery quite a bit this week so that's cool.  It's just a minimum wage part-time job, but it's better than nothing.  I can't wait for my first grown up job where I make more than 8 bucks an hour.

My mom and grandparents left for Portugal today to visit my brother.  They'll get to see a game or two while they're there.  Jim has an upstairs porch that's about the size of a living room, and it looks over the city, so I'm sure they'll be spending plenty of time soaking up the sun and relaxing out there.

One Year

Robert and I have officially been dating for a year.  I honestly can't believe it!  Robert is my first boyfriend, and he was definitely worth waiting for.  Some of my fondest memories together so far include:
Going to St. Louis to watch the Cards play
Painting pottery together
Flying kites
Having choir together
Being able to talk about absolutely everything
Giggling together all the time

Robert definitely brings out the best in me.  I always thought it was weird when people said stuff like my significant other is my best friend, but now I understand.

Hiking around after our picnic

 

 

I've started working in the church nursery this semester.  Some of my favorite little kid quotes so far are:
After flushing the toilet: "Bye, toilet paper.  It's time to go see your friends."
"Is this the biggest sink?  I need the biggest sink because I'm a very big girl."
"I wear big girl underwear.  Do you?"
"Dad put this dress on me today.  He wears very big boy underwear."
Note: This was said to a co-worker, not me. hehe "I don't like you.  You do things I don't understand."
"I have a real horse at home.  It's blue.  I'll bring it next week."

I have an appointment to meet with Dr. Leo (an oncologist/hematologist) Wednesday afternoon.  I'm nervous/excited.  It's scary to think that he might find something that really is wrong with me, but at the same time I want to get an expert opinion.  Wednesday can't come soon enough!

This is the last week of school before spring break.  Trying to stay motivated.  It's really easy to shut down early especially since this is my last semester of college, and I've already been accepted into grad school.

Happy Friday

It's the weekend!  6 weeks down, 10 weeks to go until graduation!  I don't really have any exciting weekend plans.  I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning, but it's just a six month cleaning.  Fingers crossed for no cavities!  It's storming tonight, so I've got my window cracked open so I can hear the rain and thunder.  Robert has job training at Windermere this summer.  I'm so thankful that he has already secured a steady summer job.  He'll be working at the Edge which is a ropes course and rock wall.  He might even give some cave tours! Hopefully it's not raining on him right now.  I got to babysit my favorite little guys in the whole world this afternoon.  Highlights include: eating fish sardine stick ice cream and drinking mud soda, making welcome signs for grandma, getting my hair done with a tractor as the comb, and hearing Coop shout, "Don't forget to tell Robert we love him!" as I walked out the door.  

Last night was "Battle of the Air Bands."  Basically people lip sync and dance around to songs.  Robert and two of his friends did "My Little Buttercup" from The Three Amigos.  They got honorable mention!

Intimidating!

Robert drew that impressive eagle free-hand!

This week Robert and I discovered our new favorite hang out place to just sit and chat:

Perfect for a cheap date!

  Okay so the power just went out for a few seconds.  I'm glad I'm in for the night.  Have a great weekend!

I've Seen Better Days

Oh man.  It's been a whirlwind of a week.  Recap:

- Went to KC with Robert on Monday.  Crazy trip.  Didn't get back home til 2am.  Plus side: Got to see my dear friend Jen for a bit.

- My car broke down.  Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong happened.  I put it in reverse and it went kaplunk, put it in drive and it revved up a bunch, the check oil light came on, the check battery light came on, and the power steering went out.  Of course when my dad came to look at it it worked fine for him.  Does that sort of thing ever happen to anybody else?  We had a friend look at it.  Apparently the carborator (spelling?) was totally clogged.  Scary!  He fixed it. :)

- I had mono last spring.  With that it's totally normal to have low white blood cell counts, low platelet counts, high monocytes, and high lymphocytes for about six months.  So every few months I've gone in to have my blood re-tested.  It's been nearly a year now.  I got the results to my most recent test two days ago.  Everything is still out of whack.  Very discouraging.  My doctor is finally being proactive and has referred me to an oncologist and hematologist (cancer and blood doctor), but it's really scary.  If something is wrong I want to nip it in the bud.  So I guess the oncologist (Dr. Leo) is going to look over my records and then set up an appointment with me.  It could be something like: "No worries.  You're white blood cell counts are always low.  Happens to the best of us."  Or, as my primary care physician mentioned, it could be something like: "You have leukemia or lymphoma.  Wish we would have done something about it when we realized your counts were off 12 months ago!"

- I skipped all my classes on Tuesday.  I like to think of it as a mental health day.  Think my absences will be excused?

- I work in the church nursery on Wednesday mornings during a Mom's Bible study.  I have older 2's and younger 3's in my room.  Quote of the day: While playing with Play-Dough one of the kids stuck a blob on his finger and shouted, "Finger puppets!!!" Presh.

- I helped buy a new microwave for the dorm.  One of the fun parts of being an RA. ;)  In case you were wondering, it's not a good idea to microwave a cookie with a sheet of computer paper and a metal fork in there in as well.  Shocking.

- I sponsor a girl named Happiness through World Vision.  She lives in Zimbabwe, and I've been sponsoring her for a year and a half.  I wrote her the other day.  I'm so thankful for the opportunity to bless and be blessed by her.

- Sad story: On December 15 I ordered two tickets to a Yellowcard concert in KC on April 5.  Robert's favorite band of all time is Yellowcard.  When we first started dating he mentioned he wished he could have gone to one of their concerts before they broke up.  Well, this month they're releasing a new CD and going on tour.  March 13 is our 1 year anniversary.  So I got us tickets 3 months ago (4 months before the concert) to celebrate.  Guess what.  Robert has a choir concert the same night and will fail choir if he skips us.  What else? There are no refunds.  See ya later, 70 bucks!