I'm Still Here!

It's been a while since I've blogged, but there has been a lot of good things keeping me from it. I finished my Junior year (woohoo) and immediately started summer school. I started classes because I'm not going to Mexico anymore. There is a reason, and I'm okay with not going.

The week before classes started my best friend from high school (Ashley Perry) got married. It was a beautiful wedding, and I was honored to be a bridesmaid in her wedding.

Then on May 18 my precious niece was born. Anabelle Elizabeth was born at 11:23pm. She was 9 lbs 6 oz 23 in long. We are so blessed to have her in our lives! It has been a blast to get to know her and see her grow in the past few weeks. The family is doing well, and they are enjoying having her here!

For the rest of the summer I'm spending time with the family, taking more classes and working. I am living at school, but am enjoying the time with my roommates. I hope to blog more to post more updates of the summer or at least pictures of our adventures! :)

Playing Catch Up!

The past few weekends I've gone home for Easter, a baby shower, and prom. It's been kind of crazy, but I've loved every minute of it!

For Easter the whole family came home; we had lunch and just hung out together. It was wonderful to get to spend time with the siblings and mom and dad. We got to relax and catch up with each other, and we got to poke and prod a little at biz's belly which was AMAZING to feel Anabelle inside of her. Not much longer and our get-togethers will be a little more crazy with a new born.

Feeling for Miss Anabelle

The next weekend (this past weekend), I went home and helped Mom, Dad, Tony, and Joy Campbell (no relation) with Elizabeth Campbell's (again no relation, but very good friend of the family) prom dinner. Tony and Joy hosted my junior prom dinner for 5 of my friends and

myself. The situation is that they make dinner and dessert for us and have it at their house,

and then send us on our way to prom. They even give us a little gift that has a champagn

e glass from dinner (it had sparkling grape juice in it) and a

picture of us that they took before dinner. Both couples are amazing and very generous!

I loved my proms dinners, and it was great to get to come back and see Elizabeth go to her prom. She has grown up to be a beautiful young lady, and I am so proud of her.

That was all on Saturday, on Sunday my cousin (well technically she's married to my cousin Chris, but I claim her as my cousin) Molly threw biz a baby shower. We had the women from Dad's side of the family come over and we played games, had food, and watch biz open some precious gifts. It was a wonderful shower, and I really enjoyed the time with the family.

What the men do during a baby shower...

Baby Time

My sister Elizabeth (or biz as some know her as) is due May 18 with her first child!! I am so excited to be an aunt to Anabelle Elizabeth. This past weekend we had a shower for the Macks and baby Anabelle. It was hosted by some of her sorority sisters and small group friends; they are such wonderful women an had a wonderful party.

I thought this was just darling. It was the door decoration for the shower. The colors match Anabelle's room.

Mommy and Mimi! It was great to see them both <3

Anabelle's 'Charlie the Cardinal' toy. Chirp! Chirp!

Her swimsuit and coverup for Mimi and Papa's pool.

Stacy's sweet daughter Addie. She loved to look at this picture of herself, sooo cute!!

She is about 34 weeks and is ALL baby.

We got to feel Anabelle with hiccups, it was AMAZING!

Biz and some of the girls.

Exciting News about UTD

WE'RE BACK!!! Up 'Til Dawn got some very exciting news this week that we are back on campus. The only thing is we have to find a faculty sponsor, but that doesn't seem like it should be too difficult. We are soooo excited and can't wait for next year! Keep your ears open for our organization and how you can help!

Thanks

Disappointing News

A post or so ago I shared about our finale for Up 'Til Dawn.  It was such an awesome experience, and we had an amazing outcome.  Well, after all the effort we put into this year and the past many years, our exec. board was given some sad news.  Up 'Til Dawn will be removed from Ball State's campus.  We are VERY disappointed.  We were notified about a little over a week ago, so now I've had some time to think about it and settle with the terms a little better than the day or week we received the news.

Our team did some digging and found out the reason they are removing us from campus is because the  Student Life office feels that Ball State students are not as interested in Up 'Til Dawn as they are in Dance Marathon.  If we are basing this on numbers it's not exactly true.  We have more participants than DM, the only difference is that the majority of our participants come from ESA (thank you girls) and their participants come from the rest of the greek system because they HAVE to be involved.  [ At this moment I like to think "which makes more sense having more students who WANT to participate, or less who are forced to participate"]  Anyways, we can't change Student Life's mind or force them to allow us to be on campus, we just have to accept it and work around it.

Lucky for us ESA is dedicated is considering hosting Up 'Til Dawn through their sorority.  They are such great girls, and I think this will be a great thing for them and for Up 'Til Dawn. 

Here are the links to the BSU Daily News articles if you want to read more about it:

Article 1

Article 2

Still Young at Heart

For my Social Studies class I have to plan a field trip with my group.  So we decided to plan a field trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.  To plan the trip we of course had to go to the museum and view it like the teacher (and like the students lol).  Here are some pictures from our trip.  This trip makes me look forward to some of the exciting things I will be able to do with my class; even though I know I won't always be able to take them on field trips, but we can have some fun!!

The Mastodon that was found in Greenfield!!

We loved these chairs, even though they were waaay too small!

Acting like super heroes in the comic area.

Megan and me in the submarine (I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant for adults, especially for 2 of us).

ACCEPTED!!

WOOHOO! I received an e-mail last night saying I was accepted to go to Mexico this summer.  I'm so excited! I will be gone from May 25th until June 28th.  I will be in Morelia, Mexico and traveling with KIIS (Kentucky Institutes for International Studies).

The pink is where I will be staying while I'm in Mexico :)

UTD

The whole executive board with Happy Friday Guy and Spectrum.

Wow what a weekend! Friday night I had my big event for our organization on campus, Up 'Til Dawn. We raise money for St. Jude hospital to fight childhood cancer. Last Fall we had a letter writing event to send out letters asking for donations from family and friends. Everyone who came sent out 50 letters. This weekend those who wrote the letters came and celebrated the money we raised, and others came to help support. We stayed up from 10pm -6am playing games, listening to comedians, a band, and we had a special from Spectrum. At the end of the night our total was announced and then we all headed home to get some much needed sleep. It was a great event and thanks to all of those who supported us in all ways.

The exec. board with our guest speaker, Kale, from the hospital.

My Turn

I decided I was going to join the band wagon.  I love keeping up with everyone's blogs and seeing what's going on in their lives, and I have a lot coming up in my life so I thought I'd share.  

Just to fill everyone in on what's going on in my life... I am a junior at Ball State, studying Elementary Education and I am working on a minor in Spanish.  I absolutely love  my education classes and am looking forward to student teaching.  Spanish is fun too, but a little more difficult.  I am still working through it thought, I know it will be totally worth it in the long-run.  I live off campus with 4 amazing girls.  We have a very old house, but it treats us well.  I'm not there much because of my busy schedule with class and work, but when I get the chance it's a great get away.  I work on campus in our special education department.  It's a great job, pretty simple, but has given me a lot of opportunities.

I have a lot of exciting things coming up and I am ready to take action!  I am waiting on my placement right now for student teaching for the Fall. I am hoping to stay in Muncie, and work with older elementary.  I also am waiting to find out about a summer trip to Mexico.  I applied to go to Morelia, Mexico for 1 month with KIIS, through Ball State.  I would have the opportunity to take classes and finish my minor while there!  Also, in the next couple months I will become an aunt and my best friend Ashley is getting married!!!! I can't wait for all of these things to happen, but it is also very overwhelming when I think about it all.  Well, I think that's the gist of my "filling everyone in" portion.  I'm going to do my best to stay on top of this and share what's going on in my life. :)