Beach Bums

This week I have been at the beach with my parents, Dustin, cousin Jesse, Brittany & Matt...and of course Jett for his first beach trip! It has been so fun seeing his reactions to sand, salt water, and the sea breeze. He loves the sand on his feet...and apparently likes to put a fist full of it in his mouth :/ oops! He loves the way salt water tastes, too. He likes to lick it off his hands after sitting in his baby pool full of ocean water. And surprisingly he doesn't cry and scream like other babies on the beach. He just falls asleep instead. (Awesome!) Here are a few pics of how our week has been going:

I will be...

Officially a senior starting tomorrow at 10:30! And all I have to make on my exam tomorrow to make a B in that class is an 18.33. Hooray :) Sweet summer starts tomorrow.

Project After Project....After Project

I have been working on projects for the past 2 months. No lie. I have already turned in 7 projects and I have one due Friday. One due Monday. One due next Wednesday. Two due next Thursday. And one due the following Monday, which just so happens to be the last day of class. Thank God for that. On top of that, I have to do homework and quizzes every week and take the occasional test. Why is it so stinkin' hard to get a bachelors degree? Did I enroll to get my MBA here or something? Geez Louise.

Home is where the heart is.

This statement has never meant so much to me as it does at this point in my life. I go to school 190 miles from home and the only thing that keeps me sane at school is my boyfriend and my dog. However, there's so much stuff at home that I miss when I'm gone. Number one: my nephew. He's my first nephew and I'm unable to see him everyday, or every week for that matter. I have to watch him grow and smile and cry via skype or video text messaging and it breaks my heart! So when I'm able to come home and love on him without technology helping it is so amazing. He's such a comic. He likes to pee on his mom unexpectidly, make funny faces, and laughs at my animal noises. And when I'm home he makes my visit so much better. Number two: my family. While I'm away at school I talk to my parents everyday & they listen to me cry when I'm stressed and gripe when I'm whiney. But being home makes all of that stress and whininess disappear! I love how my dad is always cracking jokes, my mom is always bossy (but loving, too!), my sister is always waiting with open arms to greet me, my grandparents always want to catch up on what's going on at school, my cousin Jesse always wants to be around me even though he tries to make it seem like he's just hanging around the house for the food, and my other sisters (the boxer girls) always seem so happy to see me and wag their nubbs as fast as they can! Basically, my family is like the mafia. We all have each other's back. We all eat together all the time, watch the news together, ....just sit at the table and stare at each other together. My family is pretty amazing. Number three: My house. I love my house, my town, my road, my family living all around me (most of the time), my land, the trees in bloom in the spring in my yard, and the sound of my dad out in the garage working on a car. I just love my home and Greenville is not my home. My apartment just doesn't smell like my home or feel homey like my home.

And what's great about coming home is that not only do I get to see all of these people that I love, but I also get to bring the good part of Greenville back home with me...Dustin & Bindi Sue.

I hiked it, I liked it.

Yesterday me and Dustin decided to go on a little hiking trip together to Grandfather Mountain. Little did we know that this little trip would be risky to our lives. Grandfather Mountain is a privately owned mountain so you have to pay to go hiking on the mountain. We get up to the top of the mountain and walk across the Mile High Bridge first thing. And at the center of the bridge you are actually suspended a mile above sea level...pretty scary stuff! Especially when it's windy. Then we headed halfway down the mountain to start hiking. We were so excited, so we packed our backpack full of treats for our lunch (beanie weenies, fruit cups, and Gripz cheese its) and headed up the Grandfather Trail. There was a sign we came up to that said, "Caution: Only hike if wearing stout hiking boots" and me and Dustin were like, "yeah ok, whatever!" and proceeded up this trail disregarding this warning. Then, we come up to a rope. I'm kidding you not! We had to pull ourselves up this mountain on a rope! Then, it got worse. We come across some ladders we had to climb up. And the ladders themselves weren't bad but there were a couple we had to climb and we were literally 8 inches away from the side of the mountain and if we were to make one wrong step we would have fallen 500 feet to our death. It was so scary! I cried a little when I got off that mountain out of happiness to be alive! But once we made it to the Macrae Peak, 2nd highest peak on the East Coast, we had a view of the most breathtaking scenery I've ever seen. We felt as if we were on top of the world!

Being an Aunt.

Being an aunt is an amazing thing. Friday night, my first real night home for Spring Break, me and my parents babysat Jett all night long for his first overnight stay anywhere without his parents. He actually did really well and slept amazingly. He slept for four hours straight and then about an hour and a half, then about another hour and a half. However, I was exhausted once morning came. I couldn't put sentences together very well and felt like a zombie all day long. But you see, the great thing about being an aunt is that you can provide love and compassion for your nephew and when you're exhausted and can't do it anymore you can just send him home with mommy & daddy. I love my nephew so much, but I'm so glad that I can still keep my normal sleep patterns for a few more years!

Cleaning Day

I often find it hard to clean my apartment, and not for the same reason as most other individuals find it hard to clean their homes. I'm abnormal when it comes to cleaning. I love to clean! I'm an absolute neat freak and clean my apartment everyday...some may call me anal, as a matter of fact. However, when it comes to vacuuming my apartment I run into some problems:

1) I have a really cheap vacuum cleaner so it occasionally spits dirt back out on the floor instead of sucking it up.

2) I have a really small vacuum cleaner so the filter get full extremely fast.

And 3) My dog attacks the vacuum cleaner before I even plug it in.

Most dogs are afraid of the vacuum cleaner and shiver and shake while their owner is vacuuming the floor. But no, not my Bindi. I try, every single time, to sneak into the laundry room and pick up the vacuum cleaner as quietly as possible so she won't start her attack before it's plugged in. This sneakiness NEVER works. This afternoon, I thought I finally had her tricked. I sat the vacuum cleaner down in the hallway and was going to plug it in in the hall's electrical outlet and then start to vacuum my bedroom. Just then, I look up to find Bindi starring down the vacuum cleaner. They were having a stand-off and the vacuum was losing. So she begins her crazily loud barking, putting her butt up in the air to let the vacuum know that he was in for it. As soon as I plug it in and turn it on she attacks! She bites the wheels, the front, and literally picks it up off the ground.

Bindi just won't put up with loud and obnocious visitors!