Officially Summer!

So many wonderful things have happened since I last posted! One of my best friends Amy Stellmaker turned into Amy Farley! She is married!! Their wedding was so beautiful! I got the honor of being one of her bridesmaids. They are currently on their honeymoon in North Carolina. Another piece of exciting news is Bailey is ENGAGED to Michael!! They plan on getting married next summer! So exciting!

I finally moved into my new house in Cedar Falls. I live with the best roommates EVER! I get the privilege to live with Becca, Kate and Jill! Jill is gone for the summer, but will move in in August. Currently, Kate, Becca and I are working on decorating our new little home. I will put pictures up when everything is done!

Currently, I have three jobs. Which is very stressful. I am planning on quitting one of them so I do not go crazy this summer. I start the pool job tomorrow which is very exciting! I am learning that I do not need to make a lot of Walmart trips to buy useless things that I do not need. I am definitely learning the value of a dollar. It is a struggle, but it keeps me focused and aware of my spending.

All in all my life is wonderful right now! I love my amazing boyfriend, living with these amazing beautiful girls is so fun, and I am blessed to be able to have at least two jobs to support myself.

Homestretch to Summer

These past couple weeks have seemed to go by really fast! Spring break was so relaxing. I got to spend time with one of my best friends, Kate, and the love of my life, Jacob. Kate and I were really crafty. We made mustache coffee mugs, painted wine glasses, and made flower headbands! It was a blast! Jacob and I continued to learn how to make "grown-up" meals and we were able to just spend quality time with each other. The end of the week was spent with my family which was really fun! We went to the King's Speech and Applebees. The King's Speech was such a great movie and I recommend it to anyone!

Lately, life has been crazy to say the least. God has broken me down. I have learned that without Him I am nothing. I have been carrying around my pride thinking basically the world revolved around me. I have realized that I have not been as loving as I could to people. I regret this. I have had thick skin for the past couple semesters without ever letting my guard down. I am finally ready to let it down and let people in. This will take time, but I want to get to know people and not just on a surface level. I don't want to just vent to them and have them help me, but rather I want to listen to them and help and encourage them.

This weekend I am going home and I could not have chosen a better weekend to get out of Cedar Falls. I just need some time away. I get to see Jacob and hopefully (fingers crossed) see my brother's track meet on Friday. I still need to get work off.

Highlights from the past couple weeks:

• Quality time with Jacob
• Quality time with Kate
• Quality time with family
• Being an assistant clinician is going great!
• Caught up on sleep
• Finally on the homestretch to summer
• Proactive on finding a second job
• Dance party
• Apartment is clean
• Good grades
• City and Colour is currently on One Tree Hill (Two of my all time favorites) :)

Recent Highlights

Future roomies! Becca, Kate and Jill! So excited!!

Jacob and I made Build-A-Bears for Valentines Day

Jacob graduated from ISU! Congrats hunny!

I love when Jacob comes up for the weekend!

Football games with Becca and Kate were fun!

Pretending to be Paris Hilton

I'm so glad Emily Brodie goes to UNI!

These are some recent photos from the fall to the present. Hope you enjoyed them! :) I will blog about everything hopefully sooner than later! I have been really (and I mean REALLY) bad at blogging and I apologize for that! I will try and start to keep up with this. Hope this finds you all doing very well!!

I'm Baaack!

Kate and I in Chicago!!

Jacob and I at Jordan and Lizz's Wedding!

Emily and I going to the wedding

Amanda, Kate and I at Bash on the Farm

I'm now back on blogger!!

So I have decided I am the worst blogger ever!

This summer has gone by crazy fast!! My life has changed in so many ways and I have discovered a lot about myself. I have also found things that I need to rid myself in my life. I have been leaving up at school this summer so no more living under Mama’s roof! I miss seeing my family everyday, but I’m loving hanging with my friends up here. I live with four other girls, but only Terrin has been here this summer. However she has been traveling every weekend to various places. So it’s kind of like I have been living on my own. I have learned to be very independent this summer which is good and bad at the same time.

School starts in less than a month…which is way too soon. However, my attitude toward it right now is great! I am really excited to actually work hard this semester. I live close to the library so I will be in there more than I ever have in my college career thus far. My major is demanding, but I can put up a good fight!

My love life….let’s just say I have one kind of, but I’ll talk about that more when I know more! e him next Monday and I'm really excited! I'm excited where life is going to take us together and how God is

Recent Happenings

I don't really have anything to talk about, but I haven't written on here for awhile so I thought I should. The semester is FINALLY winding down! I am very lucky this semester that I don't really have a lot of semester tests. I actually have only two tests and they are just unit/chapter tests. I do have to go to two of my other classes as well, but there aren't tests in them. One is a group application and my other class we are going to Waterloo to read to first graders! I'm really excited about that! I'm ready to be done with classes because since I'm changing majors it's hard to have motivation to go to classes and do the work.

A struggle that I have had lately is being confident in myself and having contentment with where I am. I feel like everyone knows what they want and they seem so happy about things. I am not even close to that. I mean I'm not grumpy about life, but it just seems to be a struggle when I'm getting out of bed because I feel like I have nothing to be excited about anymore. I know that I should get out of bed with a great attitude because God sustained me through the night, but some days it just takes more effort.

More than anything I want to just leave Iowa for awhile. I have no idea where I would go or what I would do, but I just want to leave for awhile. I feel like I say this a lot, but honestly I just feel so stuck here all the time. I want a change of scenery and a change of faces. I want to go somewhere where no one knows me and so they don't know my past. Basically, I want a new start with life. A chance to start over.

One last thing. It's kind of girlish, but recently I have been really excited about meeting my future spouse. It's kind of exciting now because I maybe have never met him or maybe I have. Either way God is right now preparing his heart for me and I think that is amazing. I now need to allow God to be in total control of my life and let Him bring me to him in His own time.

On track!

For the past two weeks things have been on the ups for me! At first I was not doing well, but once I started looking forward to my new beginning things have been great! (for the most part) I have been able to hang out with people that I haven't for a long time and have made new friendships! I can see God working in my life because of the people He has placed with me right now. They are amazing people who love me for who I am and they love Jesus. I don't know what was making me not be open to people before, but I had just been so closed to them. I am very excited what God has in store for me. I've learned that when I trust God with my life he will open new doors for me. He knows what is best for me and always has, but I had thought that I had it all figured out. He has been providing me with amazing things that I could never dream of. Yay God!

Changing of Majors

I still need to figure out what I want to do with my life. I think I am basically done with the idea of being a teacher. I did think about PE teaching and health education for awhile, but that as well is a faded thought. Right now I'm considering being an SLP (Speech language Pathologist). This would mean that I need to get my masters which means I just added 2-3 more years of school. Adding years will be ok if in the long run I'm going to love what I do. I want to be an SLP because I love working individually with people. For a long time I thought I could decide what I want to do by myself, but when I've been trusting God with what I'm suppose to do everything is seeming to fall into place. I wouldn't really be behind now if I start my SLP schoolling now since you start taking classes the spring of your sophomore year which is where I almost am. Also all the meetings for the major are coming up soon which means I haven't missed them. I do believe God is leading me towards this. It is going to be very competitive, but I can take a challenge.