hey there, blog.

i've been quite mia the past few weeks for no real reason. fall is finally here and i was so happy to pull out my cardigans last weekend! the past few weeks have been spent with hanging with friends at various bars & restaurants, redecorating & crafting, and even a little mid-week surprise birthday trip for miss kristin last week. here's some things i've been up to!

{handmade cards + new frames for the downstairs bath}

 

{bike ride with my momma & her new bike}

 

 

{drove down to cola to surprise klav at her surprise birthday last thursday!}

 

 

{then met up with the boys when i got back to charlotte cause apparently going to sleep just wasn't an option}

 

 

{weenie roast with rach last saturday}

 

 

{then celebrated katt & brandon some more at another engagement party + the bar after}

 

and last but not least - TV SHOWS ARE BACK! nashville + revenge + homeland + parenthood all started this past week! scandal starts this week & i think that's all (HAHA) the tv i watch. oddly enough, this is the first year i'll be watching 3 of these shows actually live on tv. i watched parenthood & scandal all during the off season & caught up with homeland about 2/3 of the way through last season. let's see if i can keep up!

cancer can't do backflips.

on saturday evening my friend katie was diagnosed with leukemia. she's 24 years old. she's in great shape. she's a happy, hilarious, healthy, 24 year old who had a sinus infection that wouldn't go away and now she has leukemia.

katie will receive chemo, the super aggressive kind, everyday for the next month. she's moved on into her hospital room where she'll stay until they finish the first 3-4 week round of chemo. she'll keep receiving chemo for the next 6 months. she has cancer in a mass in her chest & cancer in her blood but thankfully is hasn't found it's way to her bone marrow. this specific type of cancer (t cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia) is fast spreading, so her treatment plan is extremely aggressive.

katie is in great spirits. in talking with my friends in atlanta that have seen her, they say she's doing great. i chatted with her yesterday & she said she's got great nurses so she's well taken care of. she was also snap chatting this morning with videos of her noisy machines which made me laugh out loud. she says she's excited to not have to shave her legs for awhile :)

so if you pray, please join me in praying for my former teammate and sweet friend as she ventures into this hell of a journey. please pray for her to keep laughing and to keep fighting. please pray for her very best friends (that are also my friends) that are walking with her through this. it won't be easy. please pray for her boyfriend that is juggling a new job along with spending as much time as he can with katie. please pray for her siblings, who already lost their mom due to a brain aneurysm in 2009. and please pray for her dad. no father should ever have to watch their child go through this, especially without her momma there.

you can follow her updates here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/katiebaden

cancer can't do back flips, but katie sure can.

i love you kb!

random blog dump: my week + latest reads!

TGIF people. this is the first weekend in months that i have zero plans. i am so pumped to do a whole lot of nothing besides watch football, run, and hangout with my bully girl.

tuesday night i had dinner with my family at 131 main in dilworth. my parents are creepy groupies at the one in blakeney, so it's rare we get them up to our side of town for dinner. half price bottles of wine & filet mignon - yes please!

wednesday night i headed back up to verizon to see kelly clarkson & maroon 5! i am starting to feel like i should pay rent at verizon. after an HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTE drive, we met up with two of rachel's friends from home and made our way into the sea of screaming women. as if there was any doubt in my mind, adam levine may just be the sexiest man on planet earth. well, other than ryan gosling. it was an awesome night with new friends and some of my favorite songs. live music keeps me trucking.

i finished up a few books the past couple of weeks. first being girls in white dresses by jennifer close.

 

total easy reading/chick book. it's basically a bunch of stories of a group of friends that are in their mid-twenties going through the never ending engagement parties, bridal showers, weddings, and baby showers that consume your twenties. while it is really relate able to me, i had a hard time keeping all the friends straight. there were A LOT of characters and about half way through i gave up trying to remember who they all were and just finished the book. i would recommend it for some easy reading on the beach or something, but it didn't change my life. 

 

next up i totally shifted gears & read within arm's length by dan emmett. dan was a officer in the marine corps before joining the secret service and eventually ended up on the personal protection of president clinton & president (w) bush. i am obsessed with all things government & presidential, so i absolutely loved this book. while dan takes you through the steps of his career, you get a true sense of what life is like for someone whose job it is to keep the most powerful man in the world alive. we are so lucky to have so many men & women serving our country who are willing to sacrifice everything to save not only the president, but the rest of our country too.

 

 

 

and last but not least, i have been obsessed with anna sun by walk the moon for a few weeks now. it's awesome & makes me dance in my car.

 

have a great weekend!

my sister is having a baby girl! {gender reveal party}

saturday night, my sister leigh and her hubby derrick invited the family over for their gender reveal party! they have known since last tuesday and made us wait another 5 days to find out - it was torture! i helped craft the decorations during the day and then we headed over for dinner around 6pm.

after we watched my gamecocks lose, we all sat outside for a lovely dinner before heading inside for dessert. leigh passed out cupcakes for all of us and we counted down to find out what baby b is - a baby girl {video below}! this is the first grandchild for both families - so needless to say she will be one spoiled kid.

congrats leigh & derrick - i can't wait to meet my niece - i promise to learn to change diapers before february gets here. i love y'all!

we got john mayered.

we are all in our mid to late twenties, with careers & some with mortgages & a lot of other adult crap. but for some reason, we decided to drink an entire handle of fireball before the john mayer concert last night. we're never going to grow up.

{the gang}

{classy}

 

{we ran into sarah!!}

 

and now that i've heard slow dancing in a burning room live, i can die happy.

 

another fun night out with the buds!

sunshine, best friends, and a limo ride: labor day 2013 {cherry grove, sc}

after ammie & i so kindly bought everyone biscuits for breakfast on friday, i jumped in the car with her & dalton back to charleston, sc. they have recently moved into the same townhouse complex, and you can throw a rock between their front doors - i died laughing upon discovering how close they are. i love both of their places! we scooped up dalton's roomie, packed ammie's bags, and headed up the coast to cherry grove, sc. cam's grandma owns a house  across the street from the beach & kindly let us borrow the house for the weekend!

 

{felt like a family road trip from hell}

 

we got to the house around 8pm, ordered pizza, and waited for everyone else to arrive. we decided to forgo the beach bars and stay put on the amazing front porch. i finally hit the hay around 1am and was so confused to wake up at 5:45am and find everyone still sitting in the living room. clearly, i can't hang!

 

we woke up and watched gameday for a few hours before heading to the beach. there was barely a cloud in the sky - it was a beautiful last beach day of the year.

around 6pm we headed to overtime to start watching football. chelsea & jason met us there & it was so fun to see them! something about seeing your best friend out of your normal setting when you're not planning on it is really fun. a million hours later once the football game finally ended, and georgia choked, we spent the rest of the night on a rooftop beach bar listening to weird music.

sunday was a totally lazy day besides ams & i sneaking off to enjoy the first real meal of the weekend. and then around 5pm, we jumped into a giant limo and headed to wilmington, nc. cam has a family that he is so close with that he refers to their daughter, jordan, as his sister. well Jordan's best friend was throwing her a low-country boil engagement party in wilmington, and since we were so close, they invited us to come!

the limo ride there was a total blast & we killed 4 bottles of champagne. the engagement party was hosted at a gorgeous house across from the water. the food was amazing - we had oysters & shrimp boil. we met the nicest man in the world who lectured us all about what we deserve in a man, and all 3 of us were crying. i got to meet jordan's extremely kind parents, and a handful of other important people in cam's life. it was the perfect night!

 

 

{cam, ams, rach, me, dalton}

the limo ride home looked a little something like this....

after we got home, we enjoyed another porch night with music & our pals. monday came too quick and after a TERRIBLE lunch at a local restaurant, we all headed our separate ways. i am forever thankful for the university of south carolina & chi omega for bringing these people into my life. i am a lucky girl & i have some pretty great friends.

 

hope your weekend was as amazing as mine!

battle of the carolinas: football is finally here!

ever since steve spurrier moved to columbia 9 years ago, we've kicked off most of our seasons with thursday night games. this is really fun because a. it's the first college football game of the year and b. you get to spend all of labor day relaxing {read as drinking} instead of feeling sick to your stomach all saturday.

this year was a special thursday night game. born in south carolina, raised in north carolina, educated in south carolina, and back to living in north carolina, i'm a carolina girl through & through. and although most my life has been spent in the carolina to the north, my heart lies in the one to the south. and if you live in either carolina, you know there is an epic battle of who is "the real carolina." talk about the most annoying thing ever. unc fans think it's completely asinine that anyone would think of usc as carolina. i have spent the majority of my post grad life trying to get unc fans to understand that it's the exact same thing as them thinking unc is carolina, but they just don't seem to get it. 

my brother in law is one of these "unc is the only carolina" people, as he graduated from chapel hill. so since my sister & i are usc grads, we decided to make this game a family affair. around noon on thursday, we all packed up into brian's car and headed south on i-77 to god's country. 

my friends are amazing and love me so ammie was so kind to let my family use her parking spot. this made things so much easier for us & brian - this was his first usc game since his stroke. we unpacked and set up with ammie's dad & his friends and started the party! two of our cheer friends that my sister coached came and met up with us, and the rest of my gang stopped by for a bit too. around 5pm we headed into the stadium to make sure we got to our seats in time for the pre-game show {ex-cheerleader requirement}. 

{the set-up}

{the spread}

{carolina + carolina + fireball = doing it right}

{my babes}

{us with mia & rachel! leigh and i are very thankful our uniforms weren't made out of spandex when we cheered at usc!}

{melting in the upper deck}

it was unbelievably hot {per the usual in cola} and we were pretty much sitting on the sun, so i spent the first half of the game trying not to die. a few touchdowns and quarters later, they suspended the game due to bad weather approaching. that was a first! so after filing out of the stadium, kristin called and i knew she was close to where i was, so i ran to hug her neck {and meet the boyfriend who is totally adorable} for all of 2 minutes and 4 hugs before the sky fell out. i ran back to the tailgate to find my family gone & thankfully ammie was sitting in her dad's car, so i jumped in. it rained like crazy for about an hour before we hauled our sleepover stuff over to our friend's tailgate where truck bed drinking commenced. 

{williams brice stadium}

{my sweet carolina}

once we finally decided to leave, i forced ammie to ride in the back of the truck with me. you see, i am happiest riding home in the back of a truck after the gamecocks win. ammie screamed the whole time and i laughed hysterically. she kept saying her dad would kill her and i kept reminding her that it's legal to ride in the back in sc :) once we got back to nicole & charlee's new {and awesome!} house, we made the brilliant decision to go swimming in their new pool after 12 hours of drinking. needless to say, we slept well!

{you're a trooper, ams}

cheers to football season & go gamecocks!