Without Wax

This is just too funny/cute not to post!

"So what are your plans?"

This seems to be the question I've been getting lately, along with, "Where are you going to school?" Although they see like pretty straight forward questions, the answers are anything but. At this exact moment, I'm not in classes [although I will be in a few weeks at good ole ICC]. But I'm looking into programs at other schools for this fall.

As for my plans, well let's just say plans change, especially when you're me.

I've wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. A few years ago, I was at my aunt and uncle's house and started reading a book my aunt had called "Baby ER." After reading that, all I wanted to do was be a Neonatologist. It was a perfect fit, I knew I wanted to work in an intensive care unit and I absolutely love babies. A lot of people commented saying it would be so hard to see babies that small, that sick, and to see them die. But I had a different mindset. I knew that those would be hard, but saving just one baby would make it all worth it. So Neonatologist it was. I was accepted into Saint Louis University with a major in Biology/Pre-Medicine and I started shadowing a few different types of physicians just to make sure I liked the hopsital environment. Shadowing the physicians confirmed some of what I already knew, I wanted to work with kids and stay away from adults [as patients] at all costs, but I also found a new love in the form of the Pediatric Intesive Care Unit. This made me want to work harder and do my best so that I could finally be doing what I loved.

Well, as it seems to always be with me, things didn't pan out quite how I'd hoped. I loved SLU, don't get me wrong, but ever since the day I unpacked freshman year, things just weren't clicking. I had a great group of friends who I love dearly, was pretty involved in a great organization on campus, and loved the SLU community, but I still looked forward to going home and dreaded going back when the weekend was up. To this day, I don't know why I felt like that. I think it may have been a combination of missing family birthdays/get togethers, being away from friends that had all been through an experience that bonded us in a way that no one else understood, and just plain homesickness. Whatever it was, it disappeared as soon as I packed up my room junior year. Now that I was home, all I wanted was to go back to SLU.

Now that I've been home for a little over a year, I've had a lot of time to think about what I want to do with my life, and I'm pretty sure I want to be Super Woman, because that's the only way I'm going to be able to accomplish all of this. My first love is and always will be medicine and ultimately I think I will end up doing something in healthcare. What that will be, I'm still not sure. I've tossed around the options of being an Athletic Trainer or Physical Therapist quite a bit lately and have been looking into some schools with those programs. Of course, SLU has fantastic PT and AT programs so I may very well end up there again. Medical school has still been on my mind as well, and although it would take more time for me to get there now, I'm more than ready to accept it as a challenge and do whatever it takes to get there.

I'm sitting here, watching the Opening Ceremonies with some friends at SLU, and Biji starts thinking of ways that she can be part of the Olympic Experience. After much consideration and brainstorming, we still haven't figured out how she's going to accomplish this but it did bring up another topic, Bucket Lists. I made one after I saw the movie, The Bucket List, but I have absolutely no idea where it's at now. I started a new one tonight thought and will share after a few of you share a couple things you have on your Bucket List.

UPDATE:

My Bucket List so far...[I'm still thinking of things that I can actually do now]

1. Attend the Winter Olympic Games
2. Attend the Summer Olympic Games
3. Attend a Women’s World Cup
4. Attend a Men’s World Cup
5. Watch the sunrise on every continent
6. Watch the sunset on every continent
7. See the Northern Lights
8. Attend a Cubs game
9. Attend the Super Bowl
10. Put feet in Pacific Ocean
11. Put feet in Atlantic Ocean
12. Go on the LOST tour in Hawaii
    
13. Attend a movie premier
14. Write a book
    

As you can tell, I have a new look for my blog! I debated on revamping this one or just starting over. There's not a whole lot on this one, content wise, but knowing me, I would delete this one and then later I would need something, so a new look it was. Give me a few days to get it how I want it, but I should start posting a little more regularly. I have a few ideas that will keep me posting even when there's not a lot going on in my life!

"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!

I was not up for 38 hours straight between Thursday and Saturday and then proceed to sleep for 13 hours the next day.

It did not take me 40 minutes to get the mall [usually a 5-10 minute drive] because they closed 64-40 on Saturday morning, a few days early because of the storm that hit Sunday night. If I had any sense, I would have checked the news to make sure it was open.

I did not pay for $3 of the March for Life trip in quarters because they didn't have change for a $20.

My team in Pro-Life Jeopardy did not do amazingly awesome and beat the team with the law student and the Jesuit scholastic on it!

I did not get extremely excited when I heard that Sarah Palin might be going to the March for Life this year. Even if she did happen to be there, there's no way I would get to see her. Still, I got really excited!

I'm sure there was more that I did not do this week, but I can't think of any more! What did you not do this week?

This widget will be at the bottom of my blog, so please take advantage of it!!

It's that time of year week again!



I did not download 18 *NSYNC songs Sunday. I mean, no one listens to them anymore so why bother downloading them?

I did not for .354 seconds contemplate going to the bathroom in my sink last night after some girl threw up in the hall. Even if I did, I did not justify it by telling myself that if I walked out into the hall and saw it, then I would throw up too, therefore making an even bigger mess. Luckily maintenance came and cleaned it up before I could even think such thoughts!

My room does not still smell like smoke from the bonfire that I went to on Friday night!

I did not get upset when Barbara Walters did not interview Sarah Palin for the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008 and then just turn the TV off as soon as she named Barak Obama as Number 1.

I did not go to the Galleria 3 times this week for Christmas shopping. That would've been a bad idea as well as very time consuming!

I did not mention my blog to almost everyone I had a conversation with this week.

I did not stay up a lot later than I should have because I was playing a budget game meant for middle schooler's.

That's all for this week!

Last night a group of us from Students for Life went to Forest Park for a hayrack ride and bonfire. It was a ton of fun! We went on a short ride through the park and then we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for s'mores [we put the marshmallow in between two chocolate chip cookies!] Later, Caitlin, Hannah and I went rolling down a hill! Like I said, tons of fun! Here are a few pictures from the night.








*Oh, and Pepe never picked my nose. Nor was he at the bonfire. He picked Caitlin's nose on the March for Life. Just clearing that up!

I figured you would like to read something other than my Not Me! Monday posts! So I'm going to fill you in on what I've been up to!

A few weekends ago, I was in Peoria for Maine's [my little cousin] 3rd birthday party. Here are some pictures from it:
And then I was home November 25-30 for Thanksgiving Break. I hardly had any down time! Tuesday night, I met Elizabeth, Sarah N., Jewel, and Brittany at Olive Garden for dinner. It was nice to be able to hang out with them, I haven't seen them in quite awhile! That night I stayed at Melissa's because I went with her and her mom to the hospital on Wednesday for some tests. On Wednesday afternoon, I went over to my grandma's with Luc, Lexie, Zach, Abby, Austin and Ashley and played games! We played 2 games of Bunco and a game of Golf [the card game] The younger kids helped grandma decorate her tree earlier. That night I took Lexie and Nichole to see Twilight. For Thanksgiving on Thursday, we went to my Uncle Rick and Aunt Wilma's house. My cousin, Sean, who now lives in Detroit, and my Uncle Bob, who lives in Canada were both there and it was nice to see them, along with my other aunts, uncles and cousins! Friday was super busy! We took Abby, Austin and Ashley to the Santa Claus Parade [longest running holiday parade in the United States!] and then we met Kristi and Grandma at Avanti's for lunch. Abby, Austin and Ashley came over afterwards and went with us to get our Christmas tree and helped set it up while Zach and I went to the AT&T store to look at iPhones! That night, I babysat Evan and Jacob and then to of their cousins, Ben and Gabe, yes...4 boys...all around the same age. It was busy but so much fun! Saturday I went to a basketball game in Brimfield and then to American with Melissa. She ended up buying an awesome video camera. That night I babysat Parker and Brock. It was nice seeing them too...I couldn't believe how much bigger they had gotten! I hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving!

I did not contemplate [along with everyone in my car] e-mailing my professors to tell them that there was too much snow and that the conditions were too bad to drive in, so that I could stay in Peoria for another day/night.

I did not get extremely excited when Notre Dame got a first down in the third quarter. It's not like that was their first first down of the game or anything.

I did not use my old ATM card to scrape the ice off of my window on Friday night because I didn't have a scrapper in my car.

I did not bring my dress back to school in case I go to the APO formal but forget my shoes.

I did not go see Twilight for the third time this week.

What did you NOT do this week?

I did not see Twilight twice already. Nope, that would be a waste of money.

I did not buy a box of 24 waffles but only eat two, and then have to throw the rest away because I don't have a freezer.

I did not sleep in until 1 in the afternoon yesterday. That would be completely irresponsible of me considering all the homework I had to do.

I did not offer to help bring the Billiken back to it's rightful home in front of West Pine Gym.

I did not just throw away a pumpkin that had been rotting in my room for weeks. Nope, that would be absolutely disgusting!

I did not say "Bonjour" to someone instead of "Hello" because I had been doing French homework all day!

I have not had "Bella's Lullaby" on repeat all day because I absolutely love it!

I did not play Guitar Hero for over an hour today, that would be a complete waste of time!

For more Not Me! Monday posts, head on over to mckmama's blog!