My Best Friend's Wedding

My best friend was dating a guy from her work and our town and he decided almost a year ago to enlist in the Air Force. Tiffany was so strong and brave while he was away in basic training and tech school and drove up to see him every weekend she could. They got engaged around her birthday and were married a month later in Texas (where he was at the time) with just her family. Finally when he was done with tech school this month he came home before their big move to Louisiana and they had a reception so all of their friends and family could see them and celebrate their love with them.

Her reception was at a country club and it was beautiful! Her decorations were navy and yellow and she had a beautiful cake decorated with flowers and a candy table filled with all blue and yellow candy for her guests to bring home as favors. She also had the BEST guest sign in idea. Her grandmother made a quilt and all the guests signed the patches on the back with messages of congratulations and love! I forgot to get a picture of it but it was such a cute and unique idea. This is going to be a picture heavy post but enjoy!

Brianna and I, best friends of the bride!

My lovely mister, looking so handsome

One of my best friends Sarah

Tiffany's beautiful cake and cupcakes

First dance

First dance

The beautiful bride with her best friends(:

Since freshman year we've been best friends, I'm going to miss her so much

Giving my "maid of honor (but not really)" speech, so nervous

Relieved to be done speaking publicly

Father/daughter dance

A dance with my best friend

We have to have the one crazy picture

My parents

My wonderful boy

Haha, dancing with the groom

Niki and I

All the girls 

Dancing

Desperate for some love and attention from the Mister

Uh oh, secret drinks

My momma

Dancing with Tiffany's gramma!

Taking a break

Tiffany's mom and my dad

My dad!

Sneaking home some flowers

High Stress

Ever since I can remember I've been really overly concerned with my grades. Well, maybe not as much as everyone else but in college the concern has escalated tremendously. Since I was younger, grades were one of the only thing my dad would openly praise me for. I always felt SO GOOD about myself when he finally acknowledge that he was proud of me for being smart. In high school, I was perfectly content to get mostly A's with the occasional B. I was taking hard classes, I was working, I was trying to have fun. For some reason in college I had it in my head that I needed to get straight A's (and also, it was really easy). I've managed to achieve that goal thus far.

This summer I decided it take 3 classes online. I have to take two stupid gen-ed "exit" requirements for my university so I picked two that seemed the easiest for me to do.Well one of them turned out to be really difficult and the teacher is a horribly hard grader. She knocked off 20 points on my paper because I didn't include two periods in my reference section. Anyway I was consistently getting 80's on all my assignments and I had an 80 average in the class. I knew I wasn't going to improve and if I did get lower than an 80 on any assignment I'd have a C. I tried emailing my teacher for help and she ignored my emails. So I withdrew.

I know, I know. I shouldn't have panicked so much over a B, possibly a C. People get those grades all the time. But in my mind, I'd rather have the W on my transcripts and not have it lower my GPA than get a C and have my GPA suffer. I know I'll probably have to explain why there's a W when I apply to grad school but I'm hoping since it's such an insignificant class they won't even care. It has nothing to do with my majors.

And I don't even know why I let it bother me so much. WHO CARES. A W is not bad, plenty of people have to withdraw from classes. I'm graduating (hopefully magna cum laude) a year early with two, TWO, bachelor's degrees, a ton of research experience, and I manage to maintain a job among all of that. But I am never proud of what I have achieved because I'm always worrying about what could go wrong. I need to adjust my outlook on life. In 5 years school won't even matter to me whatsoever and I won't even remember what grades I got.

So in order to look at the positives in my future: I will be moving into my OWN place. I was worried for awhile my parents would make me live in the condo their renting but I'm slowly convincing them to just let me live alone. Then I'll have my freedom, my Mister will be back and forth living with me and we'll finally have privacy and our own kitchen(!), and I will hopefully be getting my first puppy. I just changed my schedule around for fall and have to do it again in a little bit which means I'll be able to work two days instead of one (my job only lets me work two days) and I could possibly not have to get a second job.

Overall there are way more things for me to look forward to then letting a stupid class overwhelm me and cause me to cry uncontrollably for hours. GET IT TOGETHER ALEX!

Recent Reads v3

Time for another recent reads! I've been reading like crazy this summer and I have basically checked out the whole entire library. I have about 15 library books sitting on my shelf waiting to be ready by the beginning of July. I get a bit overambitious and check everything out at once because I don't want to wait.

So here are the books I've read in the past few weeks and my thoughts about them. And I'm warning you now there were a lot!

Blood Red Road (Moira Young): I enjoyed this book. At first I was weary to read it because people said the language was hard to get in to. There isn't any punctuation or quotations when people are speaking but I got used to it very quickly. The story was fast paced and never dull so that was a plus. It was a decent book. I'll definitely read the sequel. The end however, didn't leave me DYING to read the next one, there was no cliff hanger.

City of Bones (Cassandra Clare): Great book! I didn't really want to read this because there are some crazy fans of this book and crazy fans make me nervous. But it was a good book and a good story and I want to read the next book to find out what else happens. It was very twilighty magic love triangle typical young adult fiction but it was good. I'd recommend it.

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini): Amazing, completely and utterly amazing. I loved the characters, I bonded with the characters, I hated the characters. It was great. A great story and plot and I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. I would go out and buy this and read it again for sure.

The Violets of March & The Bungalow (Sarah Jio): These books are great, easy, fun reads. They both have good plots and they are the types of books I would bring on a beach vacation and just relax and enjoy the story. I didn't have to think a lot but I still connected with the story and the characters.

Delirium (Lauren Oliver): This was another good book. I've been really into dystopian literature lately and this was definitely it. The ending definitely made me want to read the next one to find out what happened and what is going to happen. I like it even if it did start out a LITTLE slow and dragged on. Hopefully the second one will be more fast paced.

Schindler's List (Thomas Keneally): I'm not going to lie. I expected to love this because I love everything with information about the Holocaust. But I was bored and I had to force myself to get through the pages. I just felt it was dense and I really don't know what I was hoping it would be. I'm going to watch the movie and maybe that will allow me to love it more.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer): LOVED IT. I heard wonderful things about this book and it didn't fail me. The story is written in letters but it made it even better. It was cute and funny and the story was great. I definitely want to buy this book as well and reread it as many times as possible. It's another fast and easy read.

We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lionel Shriver): I was warned ahead of time that this book starts out really slow and it's hard to get into. Which was true. It took me until about halfway before I really wanted to keep reading. But it was so worth it. The ending was just .. wow. I couldn't even believe it. Wonderful story. I can't wait to watch the movie and I hope it does it justice.

Lone Wolf (Jodi Picoult): I love everything Jodi Picoult and I just realized I've been saying her last name wrong. It's PICOOOOO, and I've pronounced it PI-COLT. Sigh. It depressed me that I was wrong but I will just keep saying it the wrong way. Anyway, the story was good and I learned things I never knew before which I always do with her books. It wasn't as good as her last two but I never have a bad thing to say about her. Every one of her books keeps me interested and wanting to keep turning the pages until I finish.

Vacation pt 2!

Sorry it's been awhile, I know I promised the second half of my vacation pictures the day AFTER I posted the first half but ... I kept putting it off. I'm taking three classes online and I've been ignoring them and thus had to cram a bunch of work into a couple of days last week so I didn't fall behind. Also I've just been in a negative mood lately. I thought summer would be more time to relax and be around my friends but everyone is busy. One of my good friends went back up to her school for the summer, one is in the process of planning a reception in the next two weeks and then moving the week after that, and the other two work every day during the week. So I kind of just sit around and then drive down to my school two days in a row to work (do not even get me started on how big a waste of time that is). Anyway, I'm going to try to be more positive on a day to day basis. I always seem to have trouble with that. Now that I've rambled and bored all of you, I'm sure, here are the rest of my vacation pictures!

pier lovin'

the mister being a huge creep

i mean, my level of attractiveness just escalates in pictures

always making fun of me, sigh

the beautiful and newly mr and mrs!

one of my best friends since we were 14

And unfortunately that was the end of our trip. We spent two beautiful days on the beach in Destin, Florida and I wish more than anything we could be back. It was magical and relaxing and just what I needed (and need more of!).