Week Four: Let the Fun Begin

This week was a great example of that phrase "work hard, play hard." As I've settled into my new semester schedule I'm beginning to realize just how much work all my classes and new job will actually be, but also spent a lot of time with good friends.

Monday: I got the exciting news that I was accepted into the University of Illinois Chilcago Occupational Therapy program! This was really unexpected as they offered me early admission even though I did not turn in my application by the early admission deadline, which means they REALLY liked my application. I have two weeks to decide whether or not I accept this offer, and have not heard from any other schools yet. I'll make sure to keep everyone updated!

Tuesday: I got a new job as a Teaching Assistant for the freshman general chemistry labs. I teach a Monday lab and Tuesday morning lab. These are my nifty new goggles -- I have a lab coat too! Sometimes I feel slightly underqualified for this position but the graduate student TA's have been really helpful and patient with me so far.

On Wednesday I joined my fellow Alpha Phi Omega members at 1873, an on campus sports bar. They redesigned their menu over the winter holiday and removed most of the items I usually order, but it was still a fun outing.

On Thursday I went shopping with some friends at Old Navy. In preparation for this weekend's rodeo, we all tried on some denim.

Friday: I know, this is an awful picture. For whatever reason my camera did not want to focus and flash correctly. Basically, what you are looking at here is University Drive, which cuts campus in half. A car completely took out a tree, a crosswalk sign, and a fire hydrant and ended up flipped on its side. Me and a friend came across the wreck and stopped to see what happened. There was only one passenger and she was arrested for DWI.

On Saturday my precious roommate invited me to the rodeo! These are a pretty big deal here in Fort Worth so I was really excited to go! We had a blast checking out all the booths and the rodeo events (some of which I had never even heard of). I bought some fudge and a horned frog shaped cookie cutter. Then we joined her family for dinner. It was exhausting but so much fun!

Sunday was Chapter Dinner, which is a monthly event that moms in my Alpha Delta Pi chapter come make dinner for me and my sorority sisters. Tonight was breakfast for dinner, and it was great to spend time with my friends before starting a new week!

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Week 3

Monday: I kicked off the new semester and celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day by participating in a campus-wide service project called the MLK Day of Service. We did some work at the Como Community Center and had dinner with members of the community afterwards. This is my APO group that served with me!

Tuesday: This was my last first day of school at TCU! I decided to follow tradition and take a picture outside of my door.

Wednesday: I'm diving into more craft projects. This is another melted crayon piece. I haven't melted it yet, just unwrapping all the crayons took forever! I think they have improved crayon technology since I was a child...

Thursday: I took some of my frustrations surrounding politics and primaries out on a nice pint of Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dreams ice cream. It's delicious. Next on my list is Jimmy Fallon's flavor.

Friday: After a long break, we had family dinner with my ADPi family. Two sisters are missing but the majority of us were able to make it! This is us at Yo! Frozen Yogurt after dinner.

Saturday: We went out to dinner and watched "The Help" at Emily's apartment, followed by random zumba workout videos. If you've never tried doing zumba, it's really fun! I used to take classes at the rec center in past semesters. Unfortunately, it no longer works with my class schedule, but there are plenty of videos on Youtube to try out.

Sunday: For those of you who don't know, for my brithday (which was over a month ago) my room was attacked with 22 balloons. I hate popping balloons, so I assumed that if I left them long enough they would deflate themselves and I could just toss them in the garbage later. Well, that was not the case. When I got back to school after a month long break, these balloons had not aged a day! So finally I had my roommate pop them for me. Looks like the party's finally over haha.

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Week Two: Back to TCU!

Monday: Emily and I enjoyed our last few days together by playing Little Big Planet 2 on the PS3 (one of Emily's Christmas presents). We spend a lot of time decorating our "pod" and dressing our characters in different outfits. The game even lets you control your character's expressions, arms, and body movements. The "sac people" are really cute!

 

Tuesday: I've been working on my guitar skills as one of my new year's resolutions. This time instead of getting bogged down in learning theory and the names of chords and stuff, I'm just diving right in and starting to learn songs. I'm finding this approach much more rewarding and have already completed the chorus to a song, thanks to YouTube and other online lessons



Wednesday: I worked on making my mom a new piece of crayon art for the clinic. This one is super easy and can be found on Pinterest. You just hot glue crayons to a canvas, point a hair dryer at it, and watch the crayons start to melt. I choes to use only green crayons so I can flip it the other way, add some fake flowers and turn it into a cute little garden for the OT handwriting room at the clinic.

Thursday: This was my last night with my family at home for a while so to celebrate we went out to eat at Brio. We also got a couple slices of cheesecake from the cheesecake factory which we took home with us and promptly devoured while sitting in our living room and watching Big Bang Theory. It was a great night.

Friday: Finally, it was time to head back to school. Between bringing up my christmas presents, my winter clothes (which I haven't even needed yet-- it seems like it's stayed in the 50s and 60s for a while now!) and grocery shopping beforehand, I had a lot of stuff to unpack.

Saturday was a big day for me because it was my LAST parade/event in general as a member of the TCU Marching Band. We kicked off the stockshow parade at about 11am. Both my parents made the trip up to snap some pictures and video of the occasion which was great! Then later that night was band formal. It had a casino theme and I had a really good time with my friends playing blackjack and dancing until they finally kicked us off the dancefloor. I got my make up done for the occasion and was honored with a gift from the band staff as well as a really thoughtful and beautiful photo album from my color guard friends signed by everyone on the team. Needless to say, it was really difficult to pick only one picture from today, but these are two of my best band friends Amanda and Cristi before the festivities began :)

Sunday was a lazy day, or at least it should have been until I was rudely awakened at 11am by a rogue fire alarm that would kick me out of the building for 30 min and then procede to flash strobe lights in the building, my room, and even the bathroom for almost two hours before a technician finally arrived on campus to turn it off. To keep myself from going crazy or possibly having a seizure from the flickering lights I went out to enjoy the sunshine and pick up the materials for my new craft project. More on this next week...

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Week 1:

This week was really productive and crafty start to the year :)


     After ringing in the new year at home with my family, we had a really nice dinner in our dining room with all the fancy china. It was pretty much like having a second Thanksgiving dinner and it was great!

     On the 2nd, I had some of my friends from TCU over to my house. There were five of us total and we had a good old fashioned sleep over. Some traveled over 2 hours just to get to my house! In this picture, Pamela Lauren and I discovered we all own the same Target pajamas. It was especially great to see Pamela as she has been studying in London for a semester now. We all stayed up late, watched movies, heated up the hot tub and ate lots of junk food.

     In the morning me and Lauren (after some crazy adventures in taking people home) met up and painted some pottery at Walls of Clay, a neat little shop in downtown McKinney where you can pick out a piece of pottery, glaze it, and then they fire it for you. We both chose martini glasses and had a similar color scheme. This is mine pre-firing, so the colors aren't as bright/shiny as they would be in the finished product.



     On Wednesday I did some work on a project for my mom's clinic. It's still a work in progress, but I plan on making another melted crayon piece for one of the Occupational Therapy rooms. OTs work on fine motor skill, which often include writing so we decided crayons would be appropriate decorations. Hopefully I will be able to finish it soon!



On Thursday I went into work to help my mom with a few projects. I redid some bulletin boards, made lots of copies and flashcards, and got to hang out with some patients that I used to work with at Our Children's House. This is the birthday board I helped put together. It has all the patients names on it, and a few pictures of them celebrating their birthdays at the clinic with us. The whole office has an Eric Carl theme and is really cute!

     On Friday I did something that hasn't happened in a while... I took the dog on a walk! She was so incredibly excited and is so well behaved when we take her out. The weather was great too. I love how happy Amber is all the time, she's so easy to please and so affectionate. Hopefully the walks won't end when I head back to TCU.

     Saturday I got the call saying our pottery was finished! I think it turned out really well, the photo doesn't really do it justice. 

And finally, today I finished my online defensive driving course. Six hours of instruction... ugh. I shouldn't be complaining though because it was online and actually kind of funny, and now my speeding ticket I got in December will be removed from my record. I'm just glad it's over with!

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A New Year, A New Take on Blogging

Well, as I'm sure you've noticed I kind of stopped posting for a while there... oops. I was doing pretty well keeping up with my pictures, but after missing a day or two here and there I became somewhat disheartened about reaching my goal. So, I took a break, reassessed, and hopefully have come up with a plan for making this a successful year in pictures... take two!

The most notable change that I feel will help me succeed is that even though I will be taking a picture every day, I will only be posting pictures once a week (ideally on Sundays). That way I won't feel like I'm constantly uploading pictures and blogging will feel less like a chore and more like a treat. The other thing that will be helpful is since I started on January 1st, it will be much easier for me to keep track of my progress instead of having to count backwards into a random week of July. So, hopefully between these two modifications I will be much more successful! I may still go back and insert pictures into dates that I have, but for the most part I'm focusing on new material and final semester at TCU.

Check back tomorrow for the first official picture post!

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