Baby Baby Baby

So my boss has a baby.
I think she's almost five months old?
But she's come to work meetings a few times, and tonight my boss had this little girl with him when he stopped by for a minute to see how things were going and sometimes...

I will catch this little baby just staring at me and smiling.

It kind of makes my day.

It makes me feel like THE coolest person, really.

I just want to grow up to be a baby whisperer. It's official.

Siblings Day!

I changed my Facebook profile picture to match Rebekah's in honor of National Siblings Day.

I know, my head is tilted the wrong direction.

But getting this photo was SO MUCH WORK that there was no way I was about to try again to fix it.

No one was home, my camera was dead...

So I had to wait around for my battery to charge enough to be functional, and then use the 10-second timer. And keep the camera balanced on a desk, angled correctly... there were some bloopers.

Like a Ghost.

Forgot to set the timer.

Forgot to set the timer. Again.

Happy National Siblings Day!

P.S. I'm only aware of the holiday because of my Facebook newsfeed. Honestly.

The Final Haul

As my high school French teacher would say, I am currently feeling "screwed, blued and tattooed" (say it with an Irish accent).

There are two more weeks of class before finals.
And I have these two papers I need to write... One is supposed to be fifteen pages, and I can't say that I've started it, yet. Every time I think, "Man, I need to work on one of those papers," I choose to work on researching the OTHER one. It's going to be an issue.

But HEY, that presentation I mentioned in my last post actually went really well! I ended up just scripting the whole thing and then looking up when I could. It was cool because it was just a conference full of history nerds, and they seemed to enjoy my research! They laughed at all the right places, and even in some unexpected ones. It was cool to have people enjoy my research as much as I have.
And there was a hot tub at the hotel we stayed at, so that was cool.
My roommate went to the conference, too, so we had an absolute ball.
Our ride up was SO NERDY.
There were four of us students along with a history professor, and our conversations were pretty much identifying favorite presidents, and postulating the political affiliations of various Disney characters. Geek squad.
And my paper DID place, which I had legitimately not expected. Here are some photos of the weekend! (which you may or may not have already seen on Facebook)

On the road!!

Lookin like a mess, but holding the coveted certificate!

All of us! You can probably guess which is my roommate. JJ, the guy in the blue shirt, took first place in the U.S. history category. 'Atta boy!

We're intense.

We were pretty stoked for the hotel...

I had the back row allllll to myself! It made it difficult to hear what Dr. Mosser was saying up front. Oh, well.

Giving my presentation! "Yanks and Franks: Franco-American Relations in WWI France." Colin came up with the "Yanks and Franks" part.

Jared, Randi, Me. Geeking out.

They served cookies during the awards ceremony.

Chipotle and frozen yogurt on the way to the conference! So excited!

I told you we were excited for the hot tub. But I had some last-minute reading to do and Randi wanted to review her presentation and we didn't want to waste any time soooo.... multi-tasking. 

I dripped my wet hair on my only copy of my scripted presentation. #Fail

Our super official name tags. My hair kept getting caught in mine...

Four-Eyes

I've been working on a presentation. It needs to be around fifteen minutes, and it's not even for a grade. It's on a paper I wrote a year ago and am presenting at a conference this weekend.

I'm not even going to win any paper prizes-- it's not a senior paper or anything. I'm just a second-year college student doing it for the experience.

And writing this presentation is SO HARD.

I don't want it to be super scripted, but without a script, I don't know what to say.

It's awkward and horrible and I hate it.

I'm so excited for the semester to be over.

PLUS, once I'm home I can get my eyes checked and GET GLASSES. #Stoked.

I'm still buying into the big frames trend.

Like these or these.

Like I said... STOKED.

Wants of the Week

I've gotten it into my head that I don't really have "normal" cardigans. I have long boyfriend ones, but I want "normal" ones in navy and coral. Like this:

It's from Forever 21 and is like $12, but they don't have it in my size (M) anyway.

Also on the list from Forever 21 is this peplum top. I just want to try out the style. It's very nice-casual and classy. Plus... elephants.

But it is about $18, which seems exorbitant. So I have not purchased it.

Finally, the pairs of boots I bought myself a little over a year ago are WEARING DOWN. The heels are becoming non-existant. And it's pretty sad... It makes buying some new pairs seem justifiable. I mostly have my eye on this one from Target:

HELLO, PERFECT. I've been wanting nice boots with a chunky heel like this-- don't believe me? Go find my Christmas list. And it's $30, which is reasonable. But I'm feeling a little guilty from some spending that occured the other night (I got a navy cardigan!), so I'll hold off.... at least on this paycheck. I just have a lot of clothes... and shoes.... but I wasn't kidding about the worn down heels on my current boot collection. There are holes. Actually.

On that note, I don't have any black boots. Which I feel should probably be a staple. There have been multiple occassions where I felt like a black boot would just work better. But I don't know what style of black boot I'd want. Maybe something like this?

The black makes it nice, but the slight scrunch gives it a casual touch, making it multi-purpose.


I really do need to start breaking in some callouses on the heels of my feet so I can start wearing flats without bandaids as the weather warms up.

Which is funny because we got like eight inches of snow last night.
HA.
Someone's optimistic...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

OHMIGOSH
I just hunted down my Christmas list so you wouldn't have to (because I know you would have, otherwise) AND IT IS THE SAME HEELED BOOT. THE EXACT SAME ONE.
That is unplanned. I've wanted the same thing since OCTOBER 29TH! (It was an early Christmas list...)

SIGNIFICANCE. SHOULD PROBABLY BUY IT. HOPE IT NEVER GOES OUT OF STOCK!

Laundry

I should leave my laundry in the dryer next door for prolonged stretches of time more often. They folded everything-- even the underwear! Heck, I don't even fold my own underwear!

My roommates' status: My roommate is folding her unmentionables while singing Backstreet Boys with all her lil' heart and soul. All the while it is pounding snow outside...Yup, this is how we Spring Break

And some fun roomie quotes:

Lauren: Where is my other green sock?
Randi: I almost lost my wedding ring the other day.
Lauren: So? Which is more important? Could we please focus on my green sock? 

Randi: "Hoe."
Lauren: I'm just going to assume you're talking to Ruzzle and not me...

Spontaneity. And Babies.

I'm a good, cool, spontaneous college student. Because I took a spontaneous trip to North Carolina. With my boyfriend.
Wasn't that so collegiate of me??

Colin's aunt and uncle drove up to visit with him on Friday night. It was our last day of classes before spring break, and Colin was leaving for a backpacking trip on Monday morning, so I decided not to work on Saturday. Shifts were optional, anyway, because of the break.

But on Friday he went out to dinner with his aunt and uncle while I went to work for five hours, and I met up with them to chat a bit afterwards.
They mentioned that their son, Graham, had a rugby game on Saturday, and Colin mentioned how he needed to make it down sometime to watch Graham play.
And. then. the. dots. were. connected.
And we decided to follow them back home the next morning, spend Saturday night there, and drive back up after sacrament meeting on Sunday.

SPONTANEITY.

It was really fun. I got to DJ. Kind of. It went kind of like this:
(a Lumineers song comes on Colin's iPod)
Colin: I put ALL of the Lumineers songs on this playlist just for you!
Me: YES! Thank you!!
Colin: That being said,  will you skip this song?

Yep. So I DJ'd... using his iPod... playing the songs he told me to.... HMMMM.

Anyway.
We got to their home in Chapel Hill (or was it Durham?) in time to make some sandwiches and eat a quick lunch so we could head to Graham's game, which started at one.
We got there a little late. I didn't understand what was going on. But it was intense. Colin spent the entire game waging an inner war about whether or not he would be able to muster the courage to hypothetically play rugby. I think he decided that he might maybe be okay playing defense.
And then we toured UNC's campus. And some girl scouts, without much effort, convinced Colin to buy a box of cookies.
And this post is getting really long.

We went back to his cousins' house and went outside and looked at their cool forts in their wilderness backyard and his 18-month-old cousin, Hazel, played on the swings with me and was so freaking cute and dinner was really good and I watched his aunt read his younger cousins stories and it just made me really want to be a mom and teaching my kids things with stories and having a cool house and a backyard with wilderness for playing with imagination instead of electronics and then the next day in church a little girl named Sylvie was next to me with her parents and she brought me books and we looked at them together and named the animals and she made an elephant sound and it was so cute and it just made me really baby hungry and I just really want a little baby girl and also Colin's little cousins were throwing little fits all during sacrament meeting and it was just a little bit funny and that was an intentional run-on sentence to prevent me from taking a really long time to finish this post and also for the literary purposes of expressing my anxious desires.

And then we drove back to Buena Vista.

Then End.