Halfway There!!

So tomorrow I finally get to go home for Christmas break! I am so excited and so very ready to be home!! Tomorrow will be my last Fall semester at Erskine!! I will not have to be back at school until the end of January. I am an elementary education major and I will be certified 2-6 grade but hope to teacher 3rd or 4th grade! But with jobs being the way they are I will not be picky about what grade I am offered. Next semester I will be student teaching and I cannot wait! It is hard to believe that I will be graduating in a semester and starting a whole new chapter in my life, but I am ready for the adventure!!

Thanksgiving Traditions!

I love family traditions!! I know I said in my post about that beach that if you could describe my family in one word it would be tradition, well that it still very true. Holidays is when our traditions become more and more big! For Thanksgiving every year, we go out to eat for dinner. When Grandma Florence (my mom's mom) was alive, she used to cook Thanksgiving but when she passed away my grandfather did not want to cook. Therefore they decided to start going out to eat. We started going to Morrison's Cafeteria every year ever since I could remember. Then Morrison's turned into Piccadilly's and we continued to go. Last night we decided to go eat at Lizard's Thicket because we could go later. It was wonderful! I have always wanted to cook on Thanksgiving but decided that it just would not be the same. Tonight my dad and I will put up our Christmas tree. I usually put the tree up, daddy puts on the lights, and I decorate it. Christmas is by far my favorite season and I think Christmas Eve is hands down my favorite day of the year!! I will post our Christmas traditions soon. :)

Davey :)

So a few weeks ago I went to Florida to pick up Davey for my boyfriend, Daniel, for his birthday!! I know it is kinda crazy to just randomly go to Florida one day to pick up a dog but I did not go by myself, Sara and Kaitlin went with me! He is a bulldog/lab mix and is the perfect dog for Daniel. They are so much a like it is crazy! One similarity is they are both grumpy when they first wake up and take FOREVER to actually consciously wake up. But I love them both nonetheless :) Below are some pictures of Davey. I will be adding more when I put them on my computer.

The ride home to see Daniel :)


playing with moo-moo

sleeping while Daniel ran in to the USC Volleyball game. He can fall asleep instantly!

This one is definitely my favorite! I love how his tongue is sticking out :)

He really is a great dog!! He is sweet and the BEST nap time puppy!!

Davey came over to play with my dogs one night and he decided to corner Rocky under my dresser, Rocky was not too thrilled. I hate not being able to see Davey and Daniel everyday because I am away at school. BUT, I only have a few weeks until the semester ends and then I will only have one semester left until I GRADUATE!!! I am very excited about graduating but nervous at the same time.

Sunset

One of my favorite things to do is take pictures of the sunset! Last weekend when I was home for Fall Break I went to Lake Murray to take pictures of it. Here are some of my favorite pictures from that night:


This one below is my favorite one that I took. It makes me think of my grandmother! She is a wonderful lady that I miss everyday.

Counting my many blessings

At the beginning of August, my mother had her annual physical. During her physical she had a chest x-ray where the doctor found a large mass in her lung. After several different tests, her doctor told her she needed surgery and needed to go see the lung specialist. After speaking with the specialist, he told her that he needs to take out the mass and have it tested for cancer. He then proceeded to tell her that he felt certain it was cancer.
Hearing this completely broke my heart and has really affected my last month and a half. Just the thought of losing my mom tore me up. I fought back tears for several days after hearing this until one of my best friends hugged me and assured me everything was going to be alright. At that moment I cried and I did not stop for a few days. I was scared for me and my mom. I could tell that it was really stressing her out which in return stressed me out. I didn't want my mom to be scared!!
Her surgery was Tuesday the 15th. It was a long morning for all of us. I came home from school the night before to surprise her. She kept telling me to stay up at school but I did not listen. I needed to be near her on that day. We arrived at the hospital at 5:30am and she went back for surgery shortly after that. We waited for what seemed like hours until finally the doctor came out. The moment I saw him I just stopped breathing. He and my dad went into the consult room to talk about the results. When my dad came out the first words that came out of his mouth were "It's not cancer!" I felt like I could finally breathe!!! All I wanted to do was see my mom but I couldnt because she was in recovery. Finally around 2pm I was able to see her! She has been in the hospital since Tuesday. Originally she was going to be released Friday or Saturday but then the doctor changed it to Sunday or Monday. I have gone up everyday to see her and each day it looks like she is progressing more and more. Thursday was her worst day there but she survived it. She and her sister are both strong surviving women!!! My aunt has been through more in the past 10 years of her life then anyone should ever have to go through!! I am so proud of my mom for being strong!! Today was family day at Erskine and my parents came to visit me! Mom is doing so much better now and has been back at work for two weeks. Here is a picture I took for her! It is called "I Can Breathe Now"

Flickr

So I have been introduced to Flickr by my wonderful friend Dorothy. She has been doing it for almost a year and loves it. I love the pictures she takes. She really has an eye for a great picture and is a great photographer!!! She amazes me with her pictures!! So hopefully I can post some things on here that I post on there. Attached is the url for Dorothy's page and my page. Go on and look. It is a pretty cool site to look at!!

Dorothy's link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dor619/

My link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40132106@N02/

You Just Don't Mess With Tradtion

If I had to describe my family in one word it would be tradition! Everything we do is based on tradition and I would not change it for the world. Every year for the past 25 or so years my mom's side of the family goes to Surfside Beach for a week. My mom and aunt rent a house and we all go done and have a blast. We go Saturday to Saturday. Every Friday before we leave, we all go to the bookstore to buy magazines and/or books to read during the week and we are not allowed to read them until we leave Saturday. On our way down we always stop at Cooper's Country Store to get a snack...this usually marks our half way point!

And every Saturday for dinner we have baked ham and biscuits. Over the past 6 or so years we started taking Khaki and White pictures all because mom found a picture of all the kids wearing white tops and jean bottoms back from when we were younger. We wear white shirts and khaki bottoms. Below are some of the pictures taken over the past few years.
Pictures from 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 Beach Trip:
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But by far the thing I love the most is our flags that we hang up on the back porch. Each flag represents our schools:
USC: Les
Wofford: Tate
Dutch Fork: Artie
Clemson: Matthew
Erskine: Me


So tomorrow we begin another adventurous week full of tradition and I am SOO excited!!

Just another day at the farm :)

This week at work was nutrition week. On Wednesday we made edible art and today we went to a vegetable farm. It was very hot today but we still all had fun!! :)

The start of something new!

So for a while now I have wanted to start a blog but I had nothing real exciting to share like being engaged or being pregnant, so I just kept putting it off. Well even though I am neither of those two exciting adventures I just decided to bite the bullet and try it out. Hopefully readers you will enjoy! I have been working at a summer camp for the past few years and it has really been a great job to have because I get to work with wonderful people and play with kids all day long. Each week of summer has a different theme. This past week we talked about manners. The children learned about proper etiquette. On Friday we took them all to Olive Garden so that they could practice their good manners! I was pretty nervous at first taking 25 kids to the Olive Garden but it was a success!! They did AMAZING!! They were so polite and used excellent manners!