Buddy Bands....They work!

This past Saturday, the lovely Kayla came into town for a visit, and as always we had a great time. Kayla is such a blast and it makes me sad that we don't live in the same city anymore. We all met up at Rocky's and tried to enjoy the band. I emphasize the word try because the band played all but 3 or 4 songs that Logan, Court's fiance, and his band play. Don't get me wrong, they played well, but we're partial to our Logan!

Captain Morgan and his pirate wenches were there passing out free goodies and among the goodies were these sweet wristbands! As soon as we put them on we immediately began re-enacting the following video. If you guys watched as much Saved By The Bell as I did growing up, hopefully you'll remember this video!

Buddy Bands

And here's our own rendition of Buddy Bands.....hey they work! :)

Music is my first love...

I love music. For most of you this isn't a surprise! Just like my girlies, music has always been there for me and it has invaded all facets of my life. Sometimes you hear a song that describes just how you are feeling and today, this is the song. Hope you guys enjoy.

I'm a lucky girl...

I love my friends. All of them whether they are old friends or new friends. These friends have been there for me during the good times and the bad, the break-ups and the make-ups and everything in between. This blog is dedicated to them and they are listed in the order I met them.

Christi and I met each other at Vacation Bible School before we ever started school. In Kindergarten we were placed in the same class and we’ve been friends ever since. (24 years and counting!) One of our greatest accomplishments is that in all those years of friendship, we’ve only had 1 fight. That fight occurred in 7th grade when Christi ditched me to hang out with the much cooler 8th graders. After a few weeks of not talking, her Mom and my Memaw staged an intervention to “get us back together!” We couldn’t be more opposite, but honestly that’s been the secret to our friendship, we balance each other out!



Then there is Jenny. Jenny and I met during the Spring of 2001 when we were both student assistants at Tech. We became fast friends and had a lot in common, namely our love of music. We went to many a concert and some of my greatest college memories involve Jenny. I introduced Jenny to her husband Spencer and now they have a sweet baby girl, Madison. She’s an amazing girl, and I’m so happy to call her my friend.

Next is my Kayla! Kayla and I met in 2006 when she was a student assistant in my office at Tech. Kayla tells it like it is and if you cross her or one of her friends, you better watch out! She’s wise beyond her years and is probably one of the funniest girls I know. She’s witty, outspoken, outgoing and just all around amazing. Kayla lives in Midland now and we don’t see each other as often as we’d like, but when we do…watch out!



Then there is my sweet Court. She and I met when she became a grad assistant in my office at Tech in 2007. When I first met Court, she was this timid little girl that was in a very unhappy relationship. Between Kayla and I, we tried to show Court that there was more out there and the once timid little Court became a beautiful, fun and outgoing girl. Not that she wasn’t beautiful before, she was just in an unhealthy relationship where she wasn’t appreciated and made to feel like she wasn’t. We got her through that and later that year I introduced Court to my friend Logan who became her fiancé 6 months later! They are getting married this June and Kayla and I are both bridesmaids! We can’t wait!


Then of course there is my sweet Coco. Coco has been by my side since the summer of 2004. She’s been my shadow, following me everywhere I go and sometimes she’s even my pillow when I fall asleep on the couch. She knows when I’m sad and she knows when it’s time to play. She’s the best dog and a complete sweetheart. Sometimes she thinks she’s a lapdog, which is okay with me because I love her so, so much!



There are of course many others that have touched my life in one way or another. Some people are lucky to even have one person they can call a true friend, I’m lucky to have 4…..and 5 if you include Miss Coco, which of course I do!

Friday Fun Day!

For those of you who follow my blog, I told you recently about the lovely Sarah who inspired me to make jewelry. Well guess what? She started a blog. You can check her out here, or you can find her on my list of homies! :)

Recently she dedicated a blog to a list of her favorite things and I decided that I too would dedicate a blog to just that...my favorite things. It's so easy to get caught up in our day to day lives, that sometimes we lose sight of the little things. So take some time for yourself and make of list of your faves too!

Favorite Books:

* Marley and Me

* The Wilco Book

* Tao Te Ching

* Save Me From Myself

* Scar Tissue

Favorite Smells:

* Honeysuckle

* Homeade Tortillas

* Clean Laundry

* My Papaw's aftershave

* Babies after a bath

Favorite Songs:

* Poor Places- Wilco

* Staralfur- Sigur Ros

* Un Puno de Tierra- Ramon Ayala

* High and Dry- Radiohead

* Clair De Lune- Debussy

Favorite Days:

* June 23, 2004 (The day I picked up Coco)

* Christmas Eve

* Saturdays

* My birthday

* Halloween

Favorite Places:

* The beach in Cozumel
* My Memaw's House

* Curled up on the couch with Coco

* Austin

* The Fidler's Lake House

And just like that....the holidays are over

One thing that is really great about working for Tech is the time off. My last day of work for 2008 was December 22 and my first day back was today. The majority of that break was spent in Southlake, but I'll get to that a little later.

We left for Lamesa on the 23rd and stayed until early Christmas morning. We had a great time with my family and had lots of fun playing with my Aunt's new Wii. Let's just say that Wii boxing isn't as easy as it looks!

One of my family traditions is each person draws someone's name and they have to make that person a gift. We all got a good laugh when my sister cut out pictures of the Jonas Brothers and replaced the oldest brother's face with my Uncle George's face. Underneath the photos it read, "By popular demand, Kevin Jonas has been replaced by the other brother, George Jonas." HILARIOUS! :)


We left for Southlake at 7:00 Christmas morning, and as soon as we got there we opened presents and went to the movies to see Marley and Me. I read the book last summer and when I heard the movie was being made, Taylor and I read it together since he'd never read it. He loved it as much as I did so we were both excited about the movie. The movie was good, but not as good as the book. I know, I know movies are rarely better than books. On a separate occasion, we went to see Yes Man and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The latter was an AMAZING movie. I highly recommend watching it, but remember to potty before the movie starts, it's a 3 hour movie so you may find yourself squirming in your seat wondering if the movie is almost over. I'm not speaking from experience, I just noticed a bunch of people squirming and used deductive reasoning!

Since we were in Southlake for about a week, we had to find things to do to occupy our time. We took Taylor's family dogs Tanner and Murphy along with my sweet Coco to to a nearby park. Murphy is a golden doodle (half golden retriever half poodle) and is pretty much my second favorite dog....of course Coco being my fave!




The Cotton Bowl signaled the nearing of the end of the vacation. Unfortunately this obviously didn't turn out the way we wanted it to. We got stuck in traffic, stood in a mass crowd of people trying to get into the game (apparently there were only about 5-9 ticket takers to accomodate thousands of people!)had to watch the crappy Ole Miss fans in their blazers (for guys) and high heels and short skirts (for girls) reapeatedly yell derogatory things (one young girl called my sweet 50 year old co-worker trailer trash to her face while another young guy in a blazer pushed an older gentleman in Tech gear into the stands after merely passing by him in a walkway ....don't worry about 7 Tech fans rose to this man's defense and pushed the guy and made him go back to the Ole Miss section). As if this wasn't enough, on the way back to Southlake, we got rear ended. Yeah, it was one of those kind of days...


Overall though, we had a great Holiday and were ready to return to Lubbock. I'll close with a pic of Coco sitting in the back seat of Taylor's PACKED CR-V. She was ready to be home too! Hope you guys had a great holiday!

Ahhh, the Holidays.....

So this year has been quite the change from last year. Last year around the holidays Taylor and I had just started dating, so celebrating the holidays apart from each other wasn't a big deal. Fast forward to this year and dividing up time during the holidays became and issue. In the past I was lucky enough to date someone from Lubbock and since I'm from Lamesa, we were able to see both families all in the same day! I've never been away from my family during the holidays....except for this past Thanksgiving.

Since Taylor is from Southlake, which is obviously more than an hour away from Lamesa, we decided that we would spend Thanksgivng with his family and then alternate every year. My first Thanksgiving away from my family was a little tougher than I thought it would be. I'm used to celebrating with at least 15 people (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents etc)and including me there were 5 of us at Taylor's.

On Thanksgiving morning, Taylor's mom was out running errands, Taylor and his dad were outside hanging Christmas lights and Taylor's brother was still asleep while I sat on their couch alone, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Tradition in my family is to watch the parade with my little cousins Katarina and Mickaela. As I sat there alone, I let my emotions get the best of me and I started to cry! I feel pretty silly about it now, but like I said, this was my first time away from my family.

For Christmas though, we are celebrating with my family Christmas Eve and then driving out early Christmas morning to Southlake. I'm not looking forward to the drive, but we really don't have much of a choice. We will spend New Year's with some friends in Dallas and then my present to Taylor for Christmas is Cotton Bowl tickets. Yay, go Tech!

So in closing, I'll leave you with some pictures of our silly cats who thought our Christmas tree was their own personal jungle gym. At first their climbing warranted adorable pictures to be taken but now my tree looks downright sad as they have damaged several of the limbs. There is much truth in the saying that cats are untrainable, but by golly Taylor and I have been trying to keep the kitties out of my Christmas tree!




And lastly, I can't forget about my sweet Coco....she's the good one! :)

It's October....really?

Wow, things have really been flying for me lately and I'm starting to wonder where all my time has gone! Working on the website is pretty much a full-time time job, on top of my full-time job at Tech. Between catching bands (for the site of course!) interviewing, attending events etc., etc., life has been pretty hectic lately.

One event we recently wrote about on the site was about Nightmare on 19th Street. For those of you not familiar, it's a Halloween "Scream" Park. It has 3 attractions and literally takes about an hour and a half to get through. I don't like haunted houses and I told Taylor that I didn't want to go. He basically made me go since it was something we were writing about on the site. His explanation went like this, "Jenn, it's like a rollercoaster, you can't write about it unless you ride it." Touche Taylor.....

So last Friday, I put my big girl panties on and Taylor, myself, Court, Logan and Ian went to Nightmare. They have people going through the attractions in small groups, so since Taylor was taking pictures for the site, he stayed a little behind us. I didn't like this at all because it meant that I had nobody to hold onto or hide behind. Well I say I didn't have anybody to hold on to, but I pretty much clung to Court and Logan for dear life. I don't like scary!

The three attractions were Clown Town (yeah another thing I don't like), Witch's Walk and Blood Moon Manor. There are people waiting behind every corner ready to jump out and scare the begeesus out of you and during the witch's walk (which is outside btw) There are people jumping out of bushes with running chainsaws. Like I said, I don't like scary.

At the end of the attractions, there is guy who works for Lubbock Online who takes pictures of reactions. Well now for your viewing pleasure here is the picture of me hanging on to Logan and Court! Again....I don't like scary!

P.S. Upon interviewing the Nightmare owners for the story, Taylor found out that they had to bust out a pee mop last week because someone literally peed themselves!