Without Wax

"Outlined against a blue, gray October sky…Notre Dame will rise again."

Okay, it may not be October yet and the skies haven't been blue-gray, they've been a wonderful shade of baby blue and yes, we're only one game into the season but I've never been so excited about Notre Dame Football!

Here's a video that pretty much sums up how I feel this season is going to go!



GO IRISH!



*If anyone can tell me who said the first part of the quote at the top, and what it was about, you get 10 points!

I apologize Aubrey for only posting two of the promised three posts! I didn't want to overwhelm you ;-)

The past few weeks my mom kept bringing the idea of going camping up but I completely disregarded it [as would you if you knew my mother] because she only went on one camp-out with me when I was in Girl Scouts because she had to sleep in a cabin and she couldn't shower in the morning. Well low and behold, we went tent- camping [as my mom refers to it] this past Thursday-Friday at Turkey Run in Indiana.

The Wednesday before this, was when I went to St. Louis for the WPS game. The game didn't start until 7 and then we had pictures after, had to drive home, and make a Steak N Shake run for the people at my house so I didn't even get home until 1:30 Thursday morning. I slept napped until 4:45 and we were on the road by 6. Once we picked out a campsite, we pitched this monster of a tent.
This picture doesn't do it justice. It's a 10 person [grown men] and it can fit three queen size beds. It's a good thing we got it though because there were 8 of us. After we got settled, we started tried to start a fire for lunch. Turns out Zach isn't that great with fires we want him to start. Eventually the smoke turned into flames and we were able to eat.

After lunch, we went canoeing. Let me just start out by saying thatmy family everyone completely underestimates my abilitles. Things started out a bit rough but once we got the right groups of people it all worked out. It was a gorgeous day for it!

We all came back to the campsite after that excursion. My mom went to shower [yes, probably the only reason she was able to make it these two days], I napped, and the other 6 went to the pool. That night consisted of washers, food, and fun!

The next morning we were awake [too early in my opinion, I'm on vacation, remember?] and had breakfast and headed to the state park to hike. I wish I would've taken my camera because it was gorgeous!! We went back to the campsite, had lunch, played washers [Melissa and I are STILL unbeaten! Any takers??] and packed up to head home.

It was a great two days with perfect weather and I'm so glad I was able to go!

Sorry about the strikethrough...I thought I did it right but aparently I didn't!

As most of you know, I'm a bit of a soccer fanatic, to say the least. As much as I love men's soccer, I was growing up and playing when Mia Hamm and the '91ers were at their peak and have been following the Women's National Team ever since. After the WUSA failed because of lack of money, the National Team has been the only women's soccer that's ever on, until this year. The Women's Professional Soccer league started up this year with 7 teams [8 next year with Philadephia] and it's been awesome to have multiple games on every week! I had been trying to go to games all season but most of them are on Sunday's or during the week so I was unable to go because of babysitting. On July 26th, I was able to attend my first game, and it was definitely worth all the trouble it took to get there! Zach and I drove up that morning and met Caitlin, Hannah, and Maeve at Chuck's Southern Comfort Cafe which I highly recommend if you like barbeque and live in the Chicago area! We had time to kill after lunch so we all headed to Caitlin's to hang out for a little bit. We all parted ways and Zach and I headed to Toyota Park for the game which was Chicago Red Stars vs. Washington Freedom. Toyota Park is such a cool stadium. The fact that it was built for the Chicago Fire and used for other things and not vice versa makes it all the better in my book. We had amazing seats for the game and it was a great game, even though Chicago lost, meaning they were out of the hunt for a playoff spot.

After a brief hiatus, I am back to the blogging world, at least until I run out of things to blog about! For my loyal readers, I know there's been a void in your lives without new posts to read, and for that I apologize ;-) Ya'll are in for a treat though because there will be three, yes THREE, new post tonight! And yes, I said ya'll!

This summer has definitely been a good one! I've been babysitting for two little boys, E [7 years old] and J [5 years old] every day. Some of the days have been long, but it's been so much fun. We've had very few stay at home days, in fact I think we've only had two days where we didn't leave their house at all. Between pools, parks, camps, we haven't had time to just sit around!

What have you been up to this summer?

This week Not Me! Monday is going to be Stellan Style. Stellan is still in the hospital and it doesn't look like things are going like they wanted them to. Please continue to pray for Stellan, this family and the doctors that are working on him!

I did not constantly check my Twitter every 5 minutes to see if MckMama had posted a new update about Stellan and then decide to just turn the phone alerts on so I now get her updates sent directly to my phone.

I have not been praying constantly for the healing of this sweet baby boy.

I have not had to charge my phone numerous times a day sometimes because I have been checking Twitter and MckMama's blog to see if there were any updates.

I have not been trying to think of a creative way to display Stellan's name to send to MckMama but I haven't come up with anything yet! *Caitlin, I realllly think you should take a picture of Stellan's name somewhere in Ireland and send it to her!*

I have not been telling everyone about Stellan and his story and asking them to pray for his healing.

That's it for Not Me! Monday-Stellan Style!! I hope you all continue to pray for him with me!

I promise to post an actual post about what's going on in my life soon but right now, I feel this is much more important.
One of the blogs that I have on my iGoogle to make sure I don't miss a new post is MckMama's blog. When MckMama was pregnant with Stellan, aka MckMuffin [that beautiful baby boy in the picture above] she was told that he had SVT [Supra Ventricular Tachycardia] and that he would not live. Long story short, he was born, perfectly healthy on October 19th of last year. You can read his story by clicking on the MckMiracle button on my sidebar or by going to MckMama's blog. A few days ago, MckMama took Stellan into the the ER because he was having some problems breathing and was really fussy. He ended up being admitted and was later diagnosed with SVT again. I ask that you please pray for Stellan and his family. I do not know them personally, but after following her blog for so long I feel like I do. There is also another website that someone created, Praying for Stellan, where you can go and leave comments or even a post if you feel so inclined.

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I did not consume massive amounts of Diet Coke this week after I told myself I was going to stop drinking soda all together.

I did not go see the Jonas Brothers 3-D Concert Experience with my little brother, little sister and her two friends. I am 20 years old! Even if I did go, I would not have actually enjoyed it by any means!

I am not actually considering going on the MckCruise. It's way expensive and I don't know anyone that would actually go with me, but hey, isn't that what it's for, to meet people who read MckMama's blog?!

I did not find out that I am terrified of the dark this week. I mean, I just moved everything into the basement, painted it, borrowed my uncles bed [thanks Mark!] and set it up down there to find out it scares me half to death.

I'm sure there was a lot more that I did not do this week but I'm going to leave it at that! What did you not do this week?!

Okay, so I never really went anywhere but I haven't posted in quite awhile. Instead of posting about everything that's gone on since then, I'm just going to start with what's going on now. Otherwise it would be about 20 individual posts or one EXTREMELY long post and I'm sure you don't want to read it as much as I don't want to type it all out. I may post some random pictures sometime though, but don't hold your breath!

Not much has been going on here in Peoria these past couple of weeks, but that changed on Wednesday, February 4th when Parker made his way into the world exactly one month before he was due! He is the son of Brittany [Feucht] and James. I grew up with Brittany and we always used to call each other our cousin. But anyways, I'm so excited he's here and that he's healthy!

I'm going to actually update my blog soon [I was going to catch up today but the boys' school got canceled so I babysat them today and I will be doing that tomorrow...so maybe this weekend at the earliest, but possibly not until after the March for Life] but this is something I feel very strongly about and wanted to get it out there now...

...and that is the Freedom Of Choice Act that Obama plans to sign as soon as he gets in office. I feel very strongly against this. If you dont know about the FOCA than I must encourage you to read about what it means. Also there is a petition out that you can sign if you oppose it. Thank you!