As You Wish

I know I've been missing in action for a while, but I thought I would stop by and let you know I'm still alive and kicking. If there is even anyone still out there.

I'll give a bullet list of things that have been going on to catch you up...

• Looking forward to moving to Santa Barbara.
• Getting ready for a trip at the end of the month with my mom and Andrew to Santa Barbara to check things out.
• Thinking about financial aid, but still not applying for my loans. Loans kind of freak me out.
• Fighting off bronchitis. Being sick can suck it.
• Watching Sydney White on repeat because I absolutely love that movie.
• Patiently waiting for my hair to grow out. It's a long grueling process and I hate it.
• Reading "Eat, Pray, Love." So far so good.

Anyway... that's all I have to say for now. I just wanted you all to know that I haven't disappeared, I was just taking a break. See you again soon.

I have been trying to figure out for a while now what I want to be when I grow up. I decided that I wanted to pursue photography seriously, so I figured the best thing in my case would be to go back to school.

A while back Ashley posted on her blog about the school her father attended and when I clicked on the link to see the school I instantly fell in love. I guess you could say it was love at first sight.

Ever since that day I have been going back to the school's site thinking about how awesome it would be to become a photographer professionally. I've "met" so many fabulous photographers here on the internet that are for the most part self taught. It kind of makes me jealous that they have learned so much by just going out and doing it. I am more of a hands on, show me and I will do kind of girl. If that even makes any sense at all.

Well...I applied for the professional photography program at Brooks Institute and I found out I was accepted! You truly have no idea how completely overcome with excitement I am.

I finally feel like I'm going to do something productive with my life, finish school, and move to a place I've never even visited before. Brooks is in Santa Barbara, CA which is approximately 11 hours (with out traffic) from where I am now. In some ways it seems like a long way, but when I think about the fact that people travel from all around the world to attend school here it makes my commute seem a little insignificant.

Aside from being completely ecstatic about my acceptance I'm also a little sad. Moving to California means leaving behind my family and Andrew. Of course I will visit and I'm sure they will too, but it will still be incredibly difficult to be away. The photography program at Brooks will take me 3 years of intense work to complete, but it will be so worth it.

I better go, I have a ton of paperwork to fill out and financial aid to find. Wish me luck!

Good morning all! I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend whether you were celebrating your love for your special someone or just celebrating the love you have for yourself (because you should totally love you... you are amazing and I said so).

Anyhoozle... I think for this post I'm just going to recap a little bit of each day and call it good.

Friday the 13th, cue spooky music. I had a doctor's appointment in Reno with a neurologist, so we packed up for the weekend and made the 2 hour drive. After the appointment we went to the theater and watched Slumdog Millionaire. It was a really good movie and I'm glad we made it in time to see it.

We made it a semi-early night by checking into the hotel, Summit at Grand Sierra. The Summit rooms are fabulous.

Saturday, Valentine's day, we took advantage of not having any plans and we slept in. It was so nice. The beds in the Summit rooms are so comfy, I wanted to steal one and bring it home with us, but I didn't think we could get it out with out anyone noticing.

Andrew made reservations for dinner at Dolce. The atmosphere is modern and the food was great. I even bought a new dress for the occasion, which I just realized we didn't take any pictures at all over the weekend. Sad.

Sunday we didn't have plans other than driving home, so we slept in once again. It really was a fantastic weekend. Thank you Andrew! You're the best.

My only complaint is that when we got home the heater for some reason decided to stop working, so the house was freezing. Somehow after jiggling some wires and replacing the thermostat it started working again. I hope it stays working because I don't particularly like being cold.

So that's it. I hope you are all having a good Monday. I know that's an oxymoron, but a girl can hope, right?

Side note: I went to the neurologist because for several years now I've been having headaches/ migraines and I was hoping he could give me some answers. A little over a month ago when I first went to see him he told me he wanted me to get a CT scan of my head and do some blood work. At my appointment on Friday he told me the scan looked just fine and he prescribed me some medicine to take when I get my migraines. It was bittersweet to hear that everything is fine with my head. On one hand I'm glad I don't have to have some crazy ridiculous surgery to fix my head, but on the other hand I wish there was some explanation for my head pain other than just because.

Oh and while I'm here typing away I might as well add that when I got my CT scan I had no idea what to expect. When I was taken into the room with the machine I was told lie down on the table. The nurse then proceeded to give me an IV. It then became apparent that she was new to giving IV's and she was unsuccessful on her first attempt on my right arm. I don't know if you have ever had an IV, but it's not the most comfortable feeling having someone poking around in your arm with a needle. She moved to my left arm and was able to get the needle in the right spot. They took the first scan and the nurse came back and told me that she was going to inject some die into the IV and do another scan. She also said that sometimes people get a warm feeling all over or they itch. As soon as she injected me with the die I felt like I peed myself. No kidding. I thought to myself oh great how embarrassing most people feel warm or itchy and I pee myself. No worries I didn't actually pee my pants it just felt like it. Weird.

Everyone welcome my new niece Kendal onto the scene. My sister, Amber, and her wife, Erin, adopted Kendal around Christmas time and I am so happy for them. She is just a doll. Amber emailed me these pictures of this precious little bundle of joy. I hope we can make a trip to see them sometime soon, I really want to snuggle her.

Everyone needs to have goals. I've decided I am going to come up with a monthly goal for myself that I will attempt to accomplish within that month.

My goal for February is to drink more water. I need to become a healthier happier version of myself and what better way than to start hydrating myself with water? I'm not saying that I don't ever drink water, but I don't do it near enough. I'm not going to count the ounces I intake in a day and I'm not going to hold myself to 8 glasses a day. I know that drinking more water rather than sugar packed soda or flavored drinks is going to be way better for me.

I'm also not saying that my goal is to give up these other drinks. I have tried too many times in the past to give up drinking soda or other good tasting drinks. I would like to someday stop drinking soda, but for now my goal is only to drink more of the good stuff.

I'm also going to take this opportunity to give a shout out to the 20 Something Blogger's Biggest Loser site. I have joined and was placed on the Red Team. I expect good things to come from joining this group of bloggers in trying to reach our goals and becoming happier and healthier. My goals for joining this group are to lose 10 pounds, get healthier, and drink more water. Hey look at that I'm going to try to accomplish one of those goals this month. I know that my goals are a bit vague, but I don't want to set my sights too high. Once I have a handle on these things I will re-evaluate my goals and set more. I think this is going to work out beautifully and I'm really looking forward to the outcome.

Here's to living a happier, healthier year!

Please bare with me as I try to fix the mess that is my blog! mmkay! Thanks!

Hi everyone! I'm back. It's been about a month since my last post. I have several reasons for my absence, but I'm not going to bore you with them. Instead I'm going to talk about football. Now ladies before you go running for the hills I guess I could elaborate a bit and say it's a bit more about dance than the actual game of football. Are you still with me? Ok good.

Yesterday as I was watching the pregame coverage of Superbowl XVIII with Andrew I noticed for the first time that it was being held in Tampa, Florida at the Buccaneers stadium. I know this doesn't mean much to most, but exactly 8 years ago Superbowl XXXV hosted the Ravens and Giants. The Ravens beat the Giants with a final score of 34 to 7. You know what else happened that day? I was chosen to perform in the pregame and halftime shows of that game.

Thanks to American All-Star I was chosen as a dancer that was invited to perform in London, England and at Superbowl 35 in Tampa. It was an amazing experience.

When I was in high school I was on the Varsity Dance Team for all 4 years (don't judge). Each year we held a summer camp at the beginning of August and we invited American All-Star staff to come out from Louisiana to conduct a week long camp teaching us several routines a day. At the end of the week we would have a "show off" day for friends and parents to perform the routines that we learned throughout the week. After the performances the staff would give out awards and a select few would be chosen to represent American All-Star as a goodwill performer to travel to whichever destination they chose for that particular year. When I was a junior the location was London, England. (I will save London for another post.) Then from the goodwill performance team they would narrow that number down and invite those young ladies to accompany them to the Superbowl to perform. I was lucky enough to be chosen twice (my junior and senior year).

I don't remember the name of the photographer that took our official pictures, but look at how young I look. Wow 17 years old and thinner. To think that I wanted to lose a few pounds at that time makes me laugh now. That's not how I did my hair for the performance. This was an at the last minute kind of thing, so my hair isn't nearly as cute as it could have been. I was 17 at the time too, so who knows what I was thinking.
Pretty snazzy outfit right? We performed in the pregame show to Sting's song "Roxanne" wearing this outfit. I had no idea until I was on the field practicing that this song was about a hooker. Talk about naive. I remember the girl who was placed right in front of me in our formation was quite large and always had the look of death on her face. When we had our dress rehearsal I noticed that she had her skirt on backwards, so the slits that should have been in the front were showing off her rather large behind. I wasn't about to tell her for fear that she might eat my head.

One of our less attractive outfits would have to be the full body white sweat suits that we had to wear while the National Anthem was being sang by the Backstreet Boys and America the Beautiful by Ray Charles.

Ray Charles was quite funny from what I remember. There was some sort of delay and he was standing on his platform waiting patiently. Finally you hear him say into the microphone, "Can we get this damn show on the road?"

After our dress rehearsal with the Backstreet Boys we were told we could change back into our street clothes. At that point in time I wasn't one of those screaming fans that was absolutely in love with the boy bands. I heard some girls screaming over by one of the tunnels, so I figured I would check it out. You know I was curious. It turns out that they were escorting the Backstreet Boys off the field one at a time with about 10 bodyguards per guy, so the screaming girls wouldn't hurt or attack them. I decided instead of screaming my head off I was just going to go into the tunnel and change my clothes. I bent down to drop my bag by the wall, and stood up to pull my pants off. When I turned around about .25 seconds from dropping my sweats I saw this guy right behind me...Needless to say I didn't undress, I just stood there in shock, first at the fact that there were people there, second these people were men, third most of them were gigantic bodyguards, and fourth I didn't want this guy to think I was trying to undress just for him.

All in all it was nice watching the Superbowl yesterday. It brought back some pretty awesome memories. I need to go through pictures from back then because I didn't have a digital camera. I'll have to scan them and hopefully have some more pictures to blog about.

Good job Steelers! I do have to admit though that I was routing for the Cardinals. After hearing their story and the fact that their franchise has never won a superbowl in their history, it made me want the underdog to win. I was happy with the fact that it was such a good game though. I also decided I need to invest some time in learning the rules of football because sometimes I just don't understand and don't want to bother anyone with my questions.

It feels good to have a post finished and ready to publish.

As You Wish - Sorry for ignoring you. I'm back, I love you, and I will be posting more often I'm sure of it. xoxo