someday

I am well into my second week of summer and I am elated to say that my break has been full of nothing but sunshine and happiness. I am loving every moment of being home with my family, back in the south where I belong, and thanks to Skype, Facebook, and the lovely invention of the iPhone, I am still able to keep in touch with all my friends from school. I am so spoiled and getting the best of both worlds right now :)

As if I wasn't blessed enough, next week at this time I will be enjoying the sunshine from a Hawaiian beach as I celebrate the 25th anniversary of the most amazing parents a girl could ask for. For the last year my parents have been planning a vow renewal (more like a second wedding) that the whole family gets to participate in and it is finally here! The love that I have watched my parents share throughout my life and especially over the last couple months is my glimpse of hope this week. 

With my younger sisters still in school and my older sisters not yet home for summer, I have gotten to spend a lot of time with my mom these last two weeks. As we spend our days shopping and getting ready for the wedding with last minute preparations, my mom has been sharing stories about her and my dad that I hadn't heard before. I have learned so much more about my parent's relationship in the past two weeks and it is like watching them fall in love all over again. The way my mom talks about my dad, and vice versa the way my dad tells stories about my mom brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I can only hope that one day I will meet a man who loves me as much as my dad loves my mom. 

25 years is a hell of a long time and the fact that my parents have been through so much together over these years and somehow ended up together and happy at the end is amazing to me and brings me so much hope. In society today it makes me so sad to see all the divorces and to hear people talk about how true love and the sanctity of marriage doesn't really exist as much anymore. My parents are the prime example to contradict all the people that believe that is true. 25 years of marriage, 25 years of love, 6 daughters, and 2 beautiful grandchildren later, my mom will be walking down the aisle again and I am ecstatic that I will get to be there to witness it.

My parents have been and will always be my rock. They are the strongest, kindest, most accepting people I know and without their guidance I truly do not know where I would be today.  Through every mistake I have made, every hardship I have faced, and every moment I have celebrated they have been there holding my hand, wiping my tears, cheering me on. Blessed is the only word that can fully describe how lucky I am to have grown up with them together and happily married. I have THE greatest example about how a relationship should be and how a man should treat a woman (and vice versa). I have seen their fights, I have heard my mom talk about how my dad is "such an ass," and I have watched my dad shake his head and roll his eyes at my mom. More than that though I see them still hold hands in the car just because they can, I babysit the girls on weekends because they want to go out to dinner just the two of them, and I watched as my mom tried to convince my dad to let her show him her wedding dress because he was "her best friend" and she was too excited to wait. They have already taught me so much about love and life and they continue to amaze me with the strength and depth of their relationship. They give me so much hope about the future and that someday I will find a man to be my best friend and husband for 25 years and counting.

Congratulations mom and dad, I love you more than you will ever know! Cheers to a life full of love and happiness and to celebrating that on the beaches of Maui. Aloha!

its see you later

Goodbyes are never fun and these last two days have been full of some pretty emotional partings. Yesterday I had to say goodbye to one of my oldest friends, Maggie. I have been friends with Maggie my entire life (through our moms), but it wasn't until this year that I was blessed enough to live in the same state as her. I went back to my room and continued to try and pack with tears in my eyes. All of the sudden it hit me, nine months ago I sat in this same room crying as I was unpacking and begging my mom to let me transfer to a college in Texas. I cannot believe how much I have changed this year. I went from someone who was terrified at the prospect of being so far from home and living in a city where I could count everyone I knew on one hand to someone who cannot even fathom the thought of being away from Marquette for three months.

Don't get me wrong, I am SO excited to go home. I have big plans of doing absolutely nothing. Laying by the pool, sleeping in, and day trips to the lake are how I intend to spend my summer with maybe a little bit of work on the side. I miss my family so incredibly much and am thrilled at the idea of being with my sisters again, I just wish Dallas was just a little bit closer to Marquette. No one ever tells you how hard it is going to be to come to college, meet some of the greatest people of your life, and then have to say goodbye to them every summer. All I can think about right now is how lucky I am to have such amazing people in my life that make goodbyes so difficult. I literally have the best people in my life and I cannot wait for sophomore year. For now I will have to rely on Skype, texting, phone calls, and hopefully a weekend trip back up to the midwest in my future. So here's to summer and the end of a year full of amazing memories and incredible friends.

It's not goodbye, its simply see you later. 

mommy's advice

For as long as I can remember, whenever I am going through a difficult time my mom has always told me the same advice. She would hold me, wipe my tears, look at me and tell me that I just had to get through the day. She also would remind me of Dory's theme song in Finding Nemo, "just keeping swimming." I have followed my mother's advice all year long. With every new hardship or tragedy, I just had to keep reminding myself to keep swimming and that I made it through yesterday so I was probably going to make it through today which means I would also get through tomorrow. 


I remember specifically the first week of school, just days after my parents moved me into my dorm room and left me in Wisconsin, that I called my mom so homesick and told her that I wanted to come home already. She reminded me, as always, to keep swimming and that soon enough it would be Fall Break. Somehow all the days that I willed myself to get through have turned into an entire year of college, and I am proud to say I made it. I have officially completed my last class of freshman year and next week at this time I will be home in Dallas, thank God.


Freshman year has been an incredibly unique whirlwind of events. One full of too many ups and downs to count, endless tears and laughter, and an extremely difficult, but needed, learning experience. It is so hard to describe how I feel about this year because on one hand it feels like just yesterday I was meeting my roommate for the first time and moving in, but on the other hand it seems like first semester memories were a lifetime ago. Whichever way you look at it though, Freshman year is over. I am 1/4 finished with my college years and it has been one hell of a year. 


I am so blessed to have truly found the perfect place for me. Marquette University is a great school for so many reasons, but for me it is home. Choosing Marquette was one of  the best decision I could have made, and I thank God everyday that I was brought here. Between my incredible friends that I have met, the endless support that I have received from faculty and professors, and the community that I have become a part of, I truly could not imagine myself at any other college. This year I was presented with so many difficult situations and I could not have made it through them without the amazing support that I have found here at Marquette. I am sad to be saying goodbye for the summer, but I have so much hope for next year. I am so excited to start again at Marquette as a sophomore and I know it will be a great year. For now, I will dreaming of summer and the end of this long week of finals! For all of you still studying, you're almost done. Happy Finals and Happy Summer!

Just some of the amazing people who support me on a daily basis!