Graduation Weekend Recap

This weekend I headed to Kentucky for my little sister Jessica’s graduation. While I’m sure I could ramble on about the tediousness of the drive up and back, the food, the people, the long and rambling ceremony, I will instead hit you with a few bullet points:

• I miss my church in Kentucky. We’ve spent almost two years searching for a church here in Tallahassee and yet not once has one felt even slightly as much like home as it did when I walked into State Street two years after leaving.
• Bowling Green was no less of a liminal space than Tallahassee is, and yet I still lack the hope that we’ll ever plant roots as deep here as we did in the BG.
• Are any graduations exciting? Okay, to be honest, I kind of liked both of my own; but it’s different when you sit surrounded by your friends and classmates and make fun of the president of the university quoting the lyrics to “Forever Young.” But sitting through someone else’s graduation? Never fun.
• I think God was trying to make me appreciate Florida. When I left Tallahassee Friday morning, the air was hot and humid and the weather promised to be awful and muggy all weekend – not pleasant. But in Kentucky I found cold, windy, rainy, awful weather – even less pleasant. Point taken, God.
• The best friends are really the ones that have been there the longest. Now why won’t they just move to Tallahassee?

All-in-all, it was an excellent trip; I got to see my bestest friends, family I hadn’t seen in a long time, go to my favorite church, spend an afternoon with my Bowling Green family, and proudly watch my sister graduate. Totally worth the drive.

Western Weekend

This past weekend Dave, Potter, and I headed to Bowling Green to spend some quality time with our Kentucky friends. Though we came back exhausted (and way behind in school work/grading in my case), it was well worth it.

When we got the BG on Friday, we just hung out with the Kickerts (who we were staying with) and went out to eat for some yummy Hibachi cuisine. Saturday was our big day, which we mostly spent at Western’s homecoming. I practically spent the whole tailgating time running all over campus, trying to see as many friends as I could. It was great! I saw more fabulous people than I could have possibly hoped for. I did, however, chicken out of the second half of the football game. It was too darn cold! And we lost, which is no fun.

On Sunday we went to Ben and Beth’s church, and then Amy Cate (yay!) drove up from Nashville to hang out with us.  We attempted a trip to Jackson’s Orchard, but some nasty rain thwarted our efforts.  We did get to buy some yummy Apple Pies and cider, though, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.  After Amy left, I got to visit with Jen (yay!) and my sister, followed by some really enjoyable Is Special at Puerto’s (yum!).

And that was the gist of the weekend, interspersed with some doggy playtime, Settlers of Catan, girl talk, and plain ol’ hanging out.  It was a really wonderful (and much needed) weekend.  Here’s some highlights:

Shiloh and Potter played A LOT of tug over the weekend.

We got hang out with Leslie at tailgating!

I got to pick on my little sister:)

The Martins (with baby #2 on the way), the Altmaiers, and the Kickerts.  These are definitely two families I wish I got to see more of!

All in all, it was a REALLY great weekend.  It started off what promises to be a great holiday season.  Next week I get to see my family and then just a month later we get to spend a whole week with our Altmaier family.  I can’t wait for all of it!

Country Roots

Growing up in Somerset there were two decent radio stations: country or oldies. So, naturally, I listened to country a lot growing up. Though there’s still some country I like, I don’t listen to it on the radio very often because they always play the same songs, most of which I don’t enjoy. So I stick to country on cd. But, for some reason beyond my understanding, when the fall weather rolled into town, I started wanting to listen to country music, on the radio no less.

When I turned on our local country station I learned that Garth Brooks, one of my three all time favorite, will forever love country artists (the other two being Reba McEntire and the Dixie Chicks), has an Ultimate Hits collection coming out in November. To promote the cd (which has three new songs on it), he was going to have one concert in Kansas City. It was promoted as being “One Artist. One Place. One Time Only.” or something like that. Well, the concert sold out in something like 5 minutes. So they added another concert, and then another, and another, until they finally capped it at nine concerts (all in Kansas City within a one week time frame), which sold out in a combined hour and a half. Crazy, huh?

Well our local radio station got two tickets and, of course, is doing a give-away with the tickets and an all-expense paid trip to Kansas City. It was an easy give-away, just call in when you hear a Garth song, be the thirteenth caller, and you win the cd and are entered into the drawing for the tickets. So, I program the station’s number into my phone and turn on the radio Monday morning (the contest runs this Monday through Friday; the drawing will be this Friday). When I hear the (new) Garth song I call in, double fisting it with my cell phone and home phone. Sure enough I get through on our home phone, which is notoriously staticy. So I can barely hear the DJ. Eventually I hear him say, “So, Kelly, what’s your last name?” And, a bit confused, I tell him my name’s Catherine. He’s fine with that and takes down all my info, tells me I’ve won the cd (which won’t be out until November) and am entered into the drawing for Friday. I’m ecstatic. Ecstatic! I would LOVE to see Garth in concert.

So I get off the phone and walk into the kitchen, where the radio is still on. All of a sudden I hear the recording of them telling the caller they’re the 13th caller and the screaming ensues…except it’s not me. It’s some girl named Kelly. She’s very happy, but I’m very confused. I call the station to find out what’s what, but they’re not answering the phone (probably because they assume I’m some obnoxious girl still trying to be the 13th caller). So I look up the station’s office number and call it, where I eventually find out that somehow, after being told she was the winner, Kelly hung up or got cut off and I seemed to have been patched through. So they have my information but not hers. But, generous country station that they are, they’re going to go ahead and give us both the cd and enter us both into the drawing (if she calls back to give them her information). So not only do I get a free cd and maybe a free trip to see Garth, but I didn’t have to be broadcast on the radio like a screaming idiot:) It really works out pretty well for me.

I will, of course, let you know if I win, in which case I will end up being the screaming idiot on the radio.

Our Last Wedding

Finally, here are some pictures from the wedding we went to last weekend. I don’t know if disposable camera quality has gone downhill or if I’m just used to better pictures, but the pictures from our throw away Kodak aren’t best quality, so the “good” pictures here were stolen from my friend Beth’s facebook page. So thank Beth and enjoy:

The WKU dorm girls. From left to right: me, Katie, Beth, Leslie, Tara, and Tina. Leslie is the last of our group to get married so now we’re going to going to have to find new reasons to get together!

Me and Katie. She lives in Abilene, Texas now so it was good to have this rare opportunity to see her!

Me and Bethel…I miss this girl like crazy!

Dave and I lookin’ fancy!

Dave and Ben are so serious!

I love this picture! Check out Beth (on the left) and Katie (in the middle). Their expressions are priceless:)

This is only one of many pictures of Dave posing. He’s such a ham!

Big and Little

Off Topic Side Note: After I typed today’s blog title, my mind wandered. In 3rd grade, our class’ Christmas pageant was circus-themed (I don’t know how this worked; you’re about the find out all I can remember). Most of the class was cast as clowns in the pageant and two of the parts were Big and Little who were, you guessed it, a tall clown and a short clown. I REALLY wanted to be Little. Not because I was overly short; I was fairly average in height. But if I remember correctly, Little had a lot of lines. Unfortunately, there was a very short girl in our class who wanted the role because she was, well, short. We had a bitter rivalry. I ended up getting the part (my talent was obvious at that young age…NOT!), and the other girl hated me for quite a while after that. Random memory.

The real reason for the title comes courtesy of today’s pictures. One of the biggest surprises of our trip home last weekend was seeing Sandy, the miniature dachshund we got when I was in 5th grade. She was TINY! And I’m sure she was no smaller than she used to be, but now that I’m used to Potter, she looked so little to me. And pointy. But still lovable.

Today Dave and I went to a wedding reception for some church friends. They actually got married a couple of months ago, but they were married in Washington state (where she’s from) so they had a reception for people from Florida (he’s from Jacksonville). It was nice and fun to see them but awkward because we only knew a handful of people beside the bride and groom. But I was glad we went.

The rest of my weekend will actually be pretty easy with some church stuff, a meeting, and lots of Old English translation. Fun, eh?

My Old Kentucky Home

This weekend’s trip home was very good, but very long. The pictures for today are of Potter’s “get me out of this freaking car” face. He’d lay his head on the center console, nose at one of our arms, and look at us with the puppy-equivalent of “are we there yet?” It was cute and mirrored exactly what both Dave and I were thinking. It seems that almost 24 hours in a car in one weekend is well past the limit for all of us.

And yet it was totally worth it. The drive up was terrible, or at least my part of the driving was. There was torrential rain, at least 4 wrecks, and crazy drivers. It took us twelve and a half hours to get to Lexington, at which point I was going a little more than stir crazy. But Mom and Pete welcomed us with beer and brats, which made it all better. The next morning we got up, enjoyed a pleasant breakfast and conversation, and then headed to Louisville for Leslie’s wedding. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was loads of fun. My friend Katie said in her blog about the weekend that weddings have never been as much fun since her own wedding, and I totally sympathize. My wedding was so perfect for me that I constantly compare other weddings to my own, though I know (or hope anyway) that their weddings are perfect for them. But I kind of miss taking notes through weddings, stealing ideas for my own nuptials. Maybe one day (many years in the future) I’ll get to do it all over again with a vow renewal:)

The best part of the wedding for me was getting to see all of my amazing WKU friends. I miss those girls so much! They’re amazing and wonderful and I love how, after not having seen each other for months, we’re instantly as close as we always were. I could’ve sat and talked with them for hours. But the time we did have will hold me over for a while:)

After the wedding Dave and I drove back to Lexington where we picked up Potter and then headed to Dave’s parents’ in Somerset. Even though we didn’t get there until a little after 10, the whole fam waited up and we got to spend time with them and watch UK stomp UofL, which I was surprisingly happy about. We didn’t last long after the game ended and went straight to bed. We woke up and had a big fabulous breakfast with Dave’s family and spent some time in the wonderful fall weather (high of 72 or so) playing with Potter in the backyard. Then it was back in the car and back to the warmer weather of Tallahassee.

Potter, I should mention, was amazing on the trip. He got a little restless on both parts of the trip, but he would only walk around in the back seat a little more or nose our arms. At mom’s he handled being around 2 miniature dachshunds and 2 cats very well and slept like a log. He certainly enjoyed getting so much love from his extended family!

I’ll post some pictures from the wedding soon, but one of the many mishaps of the weekend was our leaving the digital camera in Lexington when we went to the wedding. So we bought a disposable one, which means we now have to suffer through waiting for development. In the meantime you can just trust me when I say I looked hot:)