Yes, I do.

Too bad if it happens it will not be beautiful soft flakes with which to make snowpeople. It will be ice and sleet with which to cause panic across the state.

Must.not.get.excited. WILL have school tomorrow. Right?

Awesomeness.

Ummm, yes. This looks fun:
Hilarious pop culture fun gets a Cranium spin! From Madonna and mullets to moonwalks and Monday Night Football, this party game isn't about what you know, but how you show it.Here's how it works: Each turn, the opposing team draws a clue card and assigns points to each of the five activity choices, according to how hard they think each one will be. If they pull the "Red Bull" card, they may think drawing it is easy, so they'd give it one point. But acting? Hard. Five points! Now it's up to you to decide: Will you go for the easy points and draw, or go for the big points (and glory) by acting it out? Each turn you get to choose to act, draw, hum, sculpt, or use letter cubes to get your team to guess the clue. With songs, celebrities, fads, fashions, TV shows, movies, and more, Pop 5 cards include all kinds of fun pop culture clues that span the decades -- and every turn, you get to choose how to get your team to guess!
How have I not heard of this before?

Help!

I can't stop messing with the template. Don't like it yet... Any suggestions for colors? Help!

Update: Ummm, yes, I think I might like it now. I will probably keep messing with it. But for now, it stays! And I've added some new links, so I can stop having to stalk a couple of you from Kat's blog. Ha ha ha.

Fra ra ra ra ra.... ra ra... ra ra!

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, I have given myself permission to deck the halls. My parents gave me their old Christmas tree, which is beautiful and exciting because I've never had my own "grown up" tree. It was lots of fun. It also took a reallllllllllly long time, but it was well worth it!
As we decorated, we listened to Christy's awesome Christmas mix that she made me a couple of years ago (read: Mariah Carey!!). And we watched "A Christmas Story." One of the million times I'll watch it this season.
Pssst: can you see Yoda on the tree? :)

Favorite part of the tree: Darth Vader in all his majesty reigning high upon the top of the tree. It's so incredibly glorious.

So proud of the tree! I love it dearly!

I'm.so.full.now

Thanksgiving was awesome. We went to Melissa's house (we= me, Greg's kiddies, mom, dad, Greg's parentals, and my aunt and uncle in from Minnesota. Jeremy came to play after his family festivities). Here's a turkey fryin' up. Mmmmm!
The lovely host and hostess. Thanks, guys!
Mmmmmmmmm...! Casseroles! Me=happy.
My ma's sister (can you tell??) and her hubby
Awwwww...!

Get Your Motor Runnin....

After all of the casseroles, it seemed there was nothing better to do than play with toys on wheels. Here's my dad lookin' pretty sweeeeeeet on Melissa's motorcylce. We all kind of took turns on it. I, however, did NOT drive. That thing is huge.
Yeah, I'm pretty rock-n-roll.
We also had a variety of non-motorized vehicles, i.e. a "green machine" and "scooch." I had never heard of them, but they're pretty niiiiice.
Here's Carleigh before hopping on the four wheeler. :)

GREAT Thanksgiving. I think I'm still full.

The holidays are upon us

It's that time of year again, people. I only have a day and a half of work this week, and then I'm out for T-giving vaca. Holla. Things I'm looking forward to:
1. Wednesday (no work=sleeping in)
2. Green bean casserole and spinach rice- my contributions to the feast
3. Going to my sista's house for the festivities. She's almost like an adult now with the hosting of the meal! But we're not fooled quite yet...
4. Taboo with the fam. My sister and I are UNSTOPPABLE.
5. Day-after-turkey shopping. It makes me a happy girl. I am very competitive and I WILL get that parking spot. Outta my way!!
6. All the people coming in to town... it always seems like more people are here this week than during Christmas! Hope to see some of you...!
7. Getting to decorate for Christmas finally. I will NOT do it before t-giving. But now it's ok. Awesome.

Have a good turkey day, people. Eat some turkey fo' me! I'll tip a casserole for you. :)

Hooray for Friday!

Sorry I've been neglectful with the blogiture this week. I've been awfully busy planning this field trip for my g/t classes to the Parkin Archeological State Park. Here they are, taking a tour of the site. It was really awesome, actually. I learned a lot (see? Teachers learn too!). It's the only place that can claim for CERTAIN that Hernando DeSoto was there. The whole place is a Native American village/burial ground. Turns out this tribe buried their dead 6-8 inches under their houses so the spirits could watch over the living. So wherever there were houses, there were bodies. Pretty cool.
The whole place was also surrounded by a mud moat (not water, pretty smart!) so enemies would get stuck when trying to attack.

Here's one of the mounds... There are people in there! Wow. Also (another interesting fact), in the flood of 1912 in the area, this was the highest point out of the water. So people stood on top and waited to be rescued. Many ended up dying there and were ALSO buried (along with the Native American chief) in the mound. Cool, huh? See, now YOU'VE learned today. :)

Backpacking for the very first time

11-14

Click on this link to go to my photo album for our backpacking trip this weekend. It was absolutely amazing. I must admit, I was a little nervous about the whole thing. Carrying everything in? Hiking? Peeing in the woods for days?? But it was one of my best weekends I've ever had. The views were gorgeous, the air was clean, the water filtered from a stream was delicious. It was my first real backpacking experience, and I gotta say I'm pretty proud of myself. Perhaps I'd even say I'm a little hard core. Perhaps I will... The hike in was completely downhill, which means the way OUT was completely UPhill. Not my favorite way to roll, but I had never felt more alive! Look at the pics in the album and see for yourself... Awesome.
PS, you can make comments on the pics in this new picassa web album if you so choose. :)

Mekaleka hi meka hiney ho

... bonus points to the first person who knows what that's from (the post title). Reasons to be happy girl today:
1. Tonight marks the FIRST time I will get to watch "Grey's" when it actually airs on tv. I don't have to tape it because of volleyball tonight. First time all season. Holla.
2. My sweetie returns from the City of Sin (viva Las Vegas ) tonight. He was at an "EPA conference" (so they say) all week.
3. I get to go backpacking this weekend, and the weather's going to be pretty good for it, I think (I hope).
4. Hoorah for democrats! ... and for having a lady Speaker of the House. Very, very exciting.
5. My creative writing class is starting their unit on children's stories today. They're going to write their own and give them to the kindergartners here at school. What was YOUR favorite book when you were little?
6. Celeb gossip has been oh-so good this week. Channel 7 actually showed Faith Hill's CMA reaction on their "YouTube Wednesday" section. That's funny. And Brit and Kevin? I'm in pop culture heaven.
7. It's pretty out there- go outside and do something!

It's gonna be a good day, people. Have fun!

Don't forget...!

Go vote today!!! Click here to learn more about your friendly (for the most part, right?) Arkansas candidates.

Ooh, and Dan Rather is going to join Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for "Indecision '06" tonight. From this website (check out the full article): "Equally absurd are the corny "Ratherisms" he dragged out during many election-night marathons.
Among our faves: "If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a handgun." And: "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach."

This is MY town

I don't have too many pictures from this weekend (my bad! Geez!), but here's the weekend update... Friday a bunch of us went to dinner at the Oyster Bar (yummy) then sat out on Jeremy's deck by the soft glow of the firepit while it was very very chilly out. If you don't have a firepit, I highly recommend it- always a huge hit for boys and girls. Warms the girlies up and the boys get to poke at it and see who can make it bigger. Entertainment for all!
Saturday, I took Jeremy up to ol' Mayflower for some horseback riding at Chief Whitehorse Trail Rides. Ummm, awesome. It went around the "big bend in the river," (they say). I don't know about all that, but there WAS water, and it was beautiful. What a good fall it's been!
After that we went to Conway, got massages (ahhh yes), had a picnic at Toad Suck (remember when we used to hang out at the dam there, Conway-ers?), then visited UCA in a fit of nostalgia. We had to check out the fountain and all the new buildings. It's hard to recognize. My, how things change in such a few short years... Made me kind of happy to walk around and look at things. We even (gasp!) got mistaken for actual college students and someone asked us if the caf was closed. They must have thought we were non-traditionals. With roller-backpacks.

Hey! The timer on my camera works! Who knew? Gotta love that C-town. Good ol' days, folks. The good ol' days. :)

Happy Birthday to my baby!

A very very very very happy birthday to my boy today! He's the best boyfriend in the whole wide world, so send some love to him.

Thanks for being the sweetest, Jeremy. I'm so glad you're in my life. I love you muchly! Hope you have a great day! Don't work too hard.

Also, today is El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead)! Hooray!

Farewell, best holiday ever

Thus marks the end of my Halloween posts (sigh....). Last night I went over to Jeremy's hizouse, decorated the front porch a bit, and stocked up on candy to pass out to millions of lovely children. Seriously- millions. I have never seen that many trick-or-treaters. Among the best of them... Kristen and Andrew stopped by! Andrew wanted to take the hand as his candy selection, but Kristen talked him out of it.
We had a blast. I dressed up as Lady Vader again and answered the door with light saber a-blazin'. The parents at least got a big kick out of it, even if the kids were slightly freaked.

Final jack-o-lantern of the season... Kat and Karl came over Monday and we watched "Hell-raiser" and carved. Ours is Jason. Can you tell?
I thought the house looked pretty awesome. Spooky spider webs and such. Of course, our neighbors had strobe lights, a fog machine, and a scary noise soundtrack. Ours was still better!
After completely running out of candy and having to go get more, we went to go see "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Beginning." I am truly traumatized.
So long, Halloween!!