Lists on Lists Baylor Edition

Guys. I'm a college graduate. How weird is that? I honestly don't feel different. Like I realize I'm not going back to Waco in August, but I'm not like WAHHH. Not that I expected I would be. I don't really cry often. Can we just pause a moment and acknowledge that the only time I cried or sort of almost cried or just actually got teary eyed at a graduation, it wasn't even one of my own? It was also my freshman year of high school. I didn't cry at all at my own high school graduation or at college graduation. My emotions are strange. Definitely missing Waco already though. It's barely been a week. As in it hasn't even been a week. Yet, I find myself thinking about Waco things all the time. I find myself seeing people in public that look like people I only saw in Texas.

So this was an idea I was going to do BEFORE graduation. But alas, time took over and ran out, so I never did it. It was supposed to be a daily thing for the 10 days counting down. I don't know what every number will be as I type this. This is a forewarning that it could get cheesy.

10 People Who Made My Baylor Journey
1. Heidi Stump- the first person to put Baylor on my radar when I was a freshman in high school
2. David Crowder- he had to be on here somewhere right? the first reason why I wanted to go to Baylor
3. Kelly Pickett- the first friend I made at Baylor. The only friend I've had for all 4 years.
4. Christine Lau- WW leader turned life groupie. Praises that I had you and Bethany as leaders.
5. Allyson Jacks- the friend who even when we haven't seen each other in forever, it's okay. Always up for adventures.
6. David & Eva Bull- my first life group leaders, who let me stay at their apartment before I could move in to mine on campus, who told me about social work, who loved me and who I always think of when I think of good cooking or constellations.
7. Sara Bates- the first person I met at my new section worship night, who didn't even know my name, but prayed for me, sweetest servant-hearted friend who lived right down the hall in NoRo our freshman year and we never realized it.
8. Erin Gentry-the 2nd person I met at that worship night who also prayed for me, a fighter, a fun, Jesus lover, someone who I look up to even though we're the same age
9. Anne Claire Cowan- the person who I couldn't have made it through senior year without, the only person I'm pretty sure I've had every social work class with except stats.
10. God- told you I'd get cheesy, but I probably wouldn't have come to Baylor if it wasn't for Him and for my parents' support and love that I know stems from their love of God.


9 Things because of Baylor and/or Texas living
1. I own cowboy boots.
2. I listen to country music when I miss Texas even though I hardly ever listened to it in my 4 years at Baylor.
3. Y'all. It rolls off the tongue so nicely.
4. HEB: Here everything is better.
5. I think I kind of like Dr Pepper even though I don't like pop (yep, haven't lost that one!)
6. I get extra excited meeting people not from Texas and when I see Indiana things.
7. I actually mostly understand what's happening during a football game and enjoy it.
8. I have sung and danced on a stage and liked it.
9. Home is more than just Noblesville, IN.

8 Things I'll miss about living in Waco
1. Sunsets and low humidity
2. Being able to walk to my friends' houses and campus (aka a nice hangout)
3. Cameron Park
4. Common Grounds concerts
5. HEB
6. Baylor School of Social Work
7. Friends from all over the country/world all in one place
8. Knowing that my Fall Saturdays would be Baylor football.

7 Songs that somehow relate to my 4 years at Baylor
1. This Ain't Rock & Roll- Steve Moakler
2. Jireh- Antioch Community Church
3. My Portion is You- Antioch Live
4. Keep Your Eyes Open- NEEDTOBREATHE
5. Little Lies- Dave Barnes
6. I am a Seed- David Crowder* Band
7. That Good Old Baylor Line- DUH

6 Things I learned
1. I learned that I'm not that picky about food.
2. That God doesn't make empty promises.
3. That a little motivation goes a long way.
4. That sometimes good things do happen after midnight.
5. That learning isn't the same as speed reading to finish an assignment because you know you have a quiz the next day.
6. That I'm not that same as other people and that's okay.

5 Favorite Baylor Traditions
1. Singing That Good Old Baylor Line at the end of football games, basketball games, other important things
2. Homecoming bonfire because who doesn't want to almost burn down campus?
3. Diadeloso because someone understood that students need a day off sometimes especially in the spring
4. The bells in Pat Neff playing every day at 5 pm because it's nice to stop and listen to or ride my bike by
5. Christmas on 5th because I love Christmas and the off chance that it gets cold in Texas

4 Concerts I Experienced because of Baylor
1. Chris August and Sidewalk Prophets- bringing the chance for awkward photos and surprise birthday gifts
2. Dave Barnes- 4 times in 4 years!!
3. NEEDTOBREATHE- the best Diadeloso musical guest
4. Mat Kearney and Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors- storming Waco Hall was worth it

3 Indiana friends I saw at Baylor (convenient that it was actually exactly 3!)
1. Brielle Peters- who would've thought you'd have a friend from Waco at Samford?
2. Heather Hochstedler- the best reunion, seeing you twice in my Texas home was surreal
3. Jordan Bear- that time you went to SMU and took a fan bus to pretend to be a Baylor fan for a game

2 Favorite Classes I took at Baylor
1. Sociology with Kevin Doughtery
2.  Social Work Practice I with Dennis Myers

1 Final Word
SIC EM BEARS.

(Sorry, that had to end like that. It was only fitting.)

Yep, I did it!

De Nile

It's been a whirlwind of a senior year. It still hasn't really hit me yet that when I leave Waco in 12 days that I won't be coming back anytime soon. I think I recognize it to some extent, but it hasn't REALLY hit me, you know? It's hard for me to imagine not being here at Baylor, in Texas, doing school. I'm probably going to go through one of those weird phases of nostalgia and regret and whatever else where all I can think about is the past and it feels weird and I don't know what to do with myself.

But I'll save all the reflections and such for a later post, perhaps it will be the final post of this blog. Sorry it's been severely neglected this year. Senior year was much crazier than anticipated. I also feel like I've gotten into this bad habit of not reflecting on things and not letting myself process which is kind of terrible.

So before I get all sappy dappy and reflection oriented about Baylor and college etc., I do want to indulge you lovely readers with a little bit of an update. Picture style! I think the last pictures I shared were from October. Yikes. I'll be selective.

Christmas on 5th!

Spent Thanksgiving with puppies, ha!

Final football game was FRIGID.

I made a worry doll at my internship. Looks just like me, right?

Finally got to experience Passion in Houston in February

Found the Waco Waterfall!

Celebrated Diadeloso in April!

Easter in Arizona with my sweet friend, Erica

Spring break trip to Edinburg, TX with Antioch

 So that's most of my year in a snapshot or two. It was a blast. Here's to 12 more days in Waco and to knocking out my bucket list!

short and somewhat sweet.

So senior year has been nothing like I expected in pretty much every way. I'm still deciding whether that's good or bad. In some ways it is disappointing, frustrating, and hard, but in other ways it's helpful, exciting, and crazy good.

I don't really want to go into detail on much of it for a myriad of reasons, but I do want to reach out for prayer. A lot of this year has been busy [see: it's November and the last time I posted was the beginning of September]. I've never been as busy as I have been this year. On top of the full schedule, there are things internally and externally beating on me. How's that for vague? I just want some sense of peace and encouragement in the midst of these hard times. Pray for my attitude to remain positive towards all parts of my life and for me to not pull away from things because it's easier, but to press into the hard places.

As for all the exciting and good things, there are equally as many of those things are there have been rough things.

For starters, I mentioned in my last post how I was doing Pigskin. I'm not a singer, dancer, or performer by any means and I did all that and loved nearly every minute of it. Performing was actually really exhilarating and fulfilling when I finally performed all my parts without messing up!

Pigskin photo booth with some awesome friends!

I've gone to a bunch of football games and sweat till I thought I'd turn into a puddle and shivered two weeks later. Thanks Texas. I never thought I'd enjoy football games. Granted, half the time I'm still confused as to what's happening, but I do know Baylor is super legit and we can score!

Homecoming football!

Fall break was really fun, too. I went to Independence, TX and Brenham, TX. Independence is the home of the original Baylor campus and sort of a right of passage place that freshmen who go to Line Camp in the summer do. But I didn't go to Line Camp, and it's my senior year. So we went. It was really neat to see all the history and the iconic pillars.

Independence, TX

Brenham, TX is home of the first Bluebell Ice Cream Factory. It's obvious why I wanted to visit there. I was amazed at the insane number of cows it takes to make enough milk for the ice cream each day...something like 160,000 if I remember correctly. What?! So much ice cream! We got a free taste at the end. Who wants to guess what kind I had?

Chocolate peanut butter, anyone?

Kelly and I with loads of ice cream flavors

So that's the fun in a nutshell. There are more fun things I've done, but those are the biggest things. I'll likely post in May about my senior year bucket list. Aka when it's all said and done. All of these fun things I've mentioned here are things that were on my bucket list. It's keeping me sane. Checking things off a list is so nice. When everything else seems out of control and overwhelming, I remember my bucket list. And things I'm thankful for! 

Today I'm thankful for:

1. Cool morning walks to campus when riding my bike would be quicker, but I need to slow down.

2. Friends who help me accomplish things on my bucket list and things that aren't!

3. Surprise mail from my mom.
4. Fridays.

busy busy beth

Alright, I tried to think of a clever title, but that's nothing too exciting...par usual. Y'all, it's a Christmas miracle that I am actually posting again in August. Oh my gosh, just realized it's not actually August anymore. Failboat.

So guess it's back to the monthly blog updates! Although September may be able to swing more than one since I'm posting early in this month. I'm at work again posting. It's Friday. I just want to be done. Done with everything, but sadly it's only September. It's actually been moving pretty quickly which scares me a little but is also kind of nice. I'm insanely busy, something I'm not used to, but it's been okay. I have to get used to not having time to extensively relax since I don't get home until after 5 every day except Fridays. And weekends, but that's implied, right? So at least I still have my weekends. Granted, my weekends aren't exactly not busy. Football games are on Saturdays and Sundays are church days and grocery shopping every other week. I also start Pigskin (winners of SING from February perform their song/dance acts over Homecoming) practices this Monday and practices are also on Sundays, so I'll have to be diligent about getting things done on Saturdays...or become that person who does homework on Friday nights. Ugh.

Enough of the blah, "I'm so busy" rant. I'm sure there are people that are busier than me (see: roommate). I'm trying to be more intentional with my time and with people and with myself. I think I may restart my thankfulness journal. I started one last year, but I don't think I got past October. I need to be less structured with it and just write in it when I can about whatever I want. On that note:

Today I'm thankful for borrowed bicycles that get me exercise and to campus and friends' houses.
For lunchboxes so I don't end up with bruised apples (afterthought of thankfulness because I didn't use my lunchbox today and my apple is all sorts of bruised).
For friends who give me rides when I need to get places too far to bike or walk.
For professors who don't give quizzes on days you don't do the reading (whoops already slacking).
For the color blue.
For Floyd Casey allowing any kind of water bottle into the stadium for the football game tomorrow.
For worship songs that I wake up singing.
For time, to make decisions, to sleep, to spend in solitude.
For the SUB and its comfy couches and cozy rooms and old yearbooks.
For Fridays full of adventure.
For posts that end up nothing like expected, but no less refreshing.

once a month

This is a post that's taken entirely too long to share. I started it last week. So there's that.

It's funny to think I thought I'd write more than once a month on this blog. Although, it's early in August and school has yet to start, after which time I'm sure I will have much to share in terms of my internship and Welcome Week and fun things like that.

I'm at work or I'd be able to include nice photos along with this post, so I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures. This post is rather long overdue seeing as the biggest adventure to be blogged about was like 3 weeks ago...It's really difficult for me to keep track of the days when it's summertime. July also went by in a flash, so I'm still in denial that it's pretty much mid-August. So whenever it was, I took the biggest adventure I've taken in a long time!

I took a spontaneous road trip to the panhandle of Texas with my roommate and best Baylor friend, Kelly. She's a real peach and lets me be weird and indulges my crazy ideas. Although, this idea was hers. It was a Thursday. It was a great day because I got a bunch of free things: a Baylor Theatre fleece zip-up, McAllister's sweet tea, a slice of pizza from Nizza Pizza. The best part was that I had Friday off from work because our office was moving buildings, so I would have just been in the way. So I got off work at 3, and Kelly picked me up so she could get some things from my office for her future teaching career and then we got free tea and pizza. We came home and decided to try to check something off our collaborative senior year bucket list. We thought about going to Independence to picnic and explore the original Baylor campus and go to the Blue Bell factory since it's not too far from Independence, but to go on a tour on Friday we would've had to schedule it by 3 the day before [aka Thursday, aka the time that I got off work and we were getting tea]. So that idea couldn't happen that weekend. Thus, the idea to go to Amarillo and see Cadillac Ranch and other random roadside attractions came into fruition. We managed to throw together food and essentials fairly quickly and create some semblance of directions all getting us on the road by 5:45 that evening. Like whoa. We got kolaches for the next morning at Czech Stop and drove through lots of nothingness. We didn't really have a plan for the night; I might have thought we could just drive through the night and nap, or snooze at a rest stop. We did try the latter, but freaked ourselves out and decided it wasn't a good idea to do that. The search for the least sketchy, but cheap motel began and eventually we settled into an American Inn in small town Texas, about 2 hours away from Amarillo.
The morning greeted us much quicker than desired, and it became a full day of driving. Literally spent all of Friday in a car, minus an hour or two. Bleck. It was really a great day though! We originally planned getting into Amarillo and hitting up Cadillac Ranch and then going to New Mexico since we would be about an hour and a half from the border. But, we made the split decision to go to Oklahoma instead to be in two places at once (on Kelly's bucket list) at the border and that took longer than we thought. Ha. Then we took a recommendation from Kelly's brother to go to this state park called Palo Duro. Aka the second largest canyon in the U.S. or so it claims. It really was a magnificent place, so much red dirt and beautiful rock formations. I like nature. I was really glad we took that detour even if we didn't plan it so we got there when it was hot and we couldn't hike because Kelly is in a boot because of some weird injury. Ha.
Finally, we got to Cadillac Ranch. It was great because since it's one of those famous roadside attractions and on the path of Route 66, there were a lot of people clearly making the stop on their own huge Route 66 road trips [see people wearing shirts emblazoned with roads and maps and "Route 66"]. There was also this cute musical group playing the song "Route 66" in front of the cars. Gosh, I wish I could put pictures! Perhaps I'll create a separate post for some pictures since I know everyone who reads this doesn't have Facebook.
Anyways, after we visited Cadillac Ranch, we stumbled upon this hilarious roadside restaurant that seemingly encapsulated everything that is so Texan. 72 oz steaks because everything's bigger in Texas. Don't Mess With Texas trash cans. A swimming pool shaped like Texas. A motel that looked like an old Western town. A giant dinosaur wearing a cowboy hat. Texas brewed beers. It was fantastic. We spent a lot longer there than anticipated, so a visit to the parody Cadillac Ranch (VW Beetles!) was decided against and instead we hit up downtown Amarillo. We found some beautiful churches and lots of horse statues. Much like the race cars that were in Indianapolis a while back or the panda bears in DC. There was one painted like an American flag that we took pictures with. Haha. We ventured around some more and found a sign that marked the area of Amarillo that was on Route 66, which was in this cute area of town that if it weren't so far from Waco, we probably would have stayed to explore later. But alas, we needed to get home, so we embarked on our return journey. We got home sometime after midnight, so for real: in the car a good 2/3 of the day. Whoo!
So that's my adventure to middle of nowhere Texas for you. I will try to remember to post pictures when I'm home from work today!

first world problems

Well, again, it's been nearly a month since I had the goal of blogging a lot more this summer. I don't know why I don't blog more, but in the recent past whenever I wanted to blog...I couldn't. First, I didn't have wifi at my house in Waco for a good week and a half. So that was fun. Thankfully we got it fixed a week ago and were able to avoid being scammed by the router/modem company I called for assistance in resetting our password system, which ideally would've been way easier with the CD that came with the router, but my roommate misplaced. Never fear, we got it figured out with the great help of her father, computer extraordinaire. Then, she found the CD. Isn't that how it always goes? You can't find what you need, then when you buy a new one or figure it out some other lengthy way, you find what you need after it's all said and done. Ha. So I couldn't blog at home.
I couldn't blog at work either. Not sure why...I think my computer here is just jank and old so it can't load pages correctly and such. I wrote a whole blog and it didn't upload and I didn't have the heart to try again, so praying that this will work. I'm using Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer so that's hopefully going to allow me to post successfully.

I haven't been up to much of anything besides work every day. It's rather tedious because there's never much to do and most of the time I'm completely alone. Our building is moving to a different building so we're the only office still here in the old building, and then half the office is out of town. People may think it's great not having anything to do at work, but it isn't all that fun day after day. Granted, I could probably be more productive on the grad school research front, but at this point, I'm not really feeling like doing school so we'll see how that goes. I know I should do grad school, but I'd rather be traveling the world. Obviously, it's unlikely I will be traveling the world, but maybe somehow I can swing it to do social work and travel? Meh. Anyone know anyone who is a social worker and gets to travel? International adoption, please. Would I get to travel for that? I'm just having a lot of second thoughts about my future when suddenly I have to really start looking to the real world. Wahhh. I had it easy getting into Baylor, so that makes it even harder for grad school. Plus just looking at the grad school applications makes me want to cry.

I need adventure. The first summer Dwelling Place I went to, the section leader that spoke talked about how much she craves adventure and I was like shoot, why are we not friends? Haha but the craving and longing for adventure, she said isn't ultimately a bad thing, but what if we turned our longings over to God? What if we prayed "God, take my longing and turn it into longing for You."? Oh gosh. That's like so what I need right now. I have a lot of unfulfilled earthly longings, but there's got to be so much more satisfaction in letting those things go and turning my wants into a want for God.
This blog post is literally all over the place and disconnected. But I needed some writing time and it took up time at work to write this. At least I'm getting paid to sit here and do whatever. I tried to make a friendship bracelet last week off of one I'd started forever ago, but couldn't get the pattern right so that's sad. I honestly contemplated untying the whole thing and starting over. Literally would take up a good hour or so of time at work. Oh gosh, my life. Y'all probably think I'm crazy.

speedy summer

Well, this summer is just cruising by and I'm not doing very well at updating. Sorry! I'm honestly not even sure how time went by so fast. But I'll be nice and give y'all a little update for real instead of some weird rambling.

So I guess since I last blogged with the hope of actually blogging this summer I have...

                                           Visited the Indianapolis Art Museum TWICE.

Gone running: at Butler, by a llama farm, at Potter's Bridge, not nearly as much as I should have.

                       Driven to pick up my parents' CSA vegetable share at the farm many a time.

         Completed The Indianapolis Star crossword puzzle nearly every day; I've become a pro.

                                                  Reunited with camp friends on a rainy day.

                              Cleaned & found gems of my past from when I cadet taught in high school.

                             Traveled to Colorado to visit the relatives and enjoy the mountains.

                                          Made homemade ice cream and picked fresh strawberries.

                                  Taken a blitz of an online summer school class on women's studies.

                      Secured a wicked tan and excellent memories from working a week at SpringHill.

                    Journeyed to the middle of nowhere Indiana on a photoshooting adventure.

           Read more books than I have in ages: memoirs, nonfiction, mysteries, advice, Scottish fiction.

So that's my summer thus far in a quick photo nutshell. I go back to Texas in a week which is exciting, yet a little sad. I feel like time moves faster than I expect it and I'm like shoot I only have one week to do all these things that I could've done all summer. Granted I had a busy month with going to Colorado, taking my summer school class, and working SpringHill, but it was worth it. Summer at home has been pretty quiet, but nice to spend time with my parents and enjoy some random adventures.

Here's to spending the rest of my summer in the Texas heat. Waco, give me some good adventures!