Friday 5-Guilty Pleasures

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Friday Fives

Today’s Friday 5 over at Beth’s blog is Guilty Pleasures. Here are a few of mine!

1. Pop music

I love pop music! All I listened to from 7th through probably 10th grade was teenybopper pop music, what I refer to now as “The Good Stuff”. Y’all remember, right? Back when…

Justin had the fro…

Britney was that innocent…

Jessica & Nick weren’t Newlyweds and were the perfect couple…
And Lance dated girls.

*NSYNC was our obsession, but we also listened to stuff like Britney, Jessica, Mandy Moore, S Club 7, 98 Degrees, B*Witched (seriously), and Christina Aguilera. Those songs bring back so many memories of making up dances on Jessica’s trampoline and riding around in Jessica’s jeep with the top off holding the stereo (because she didn’t have a car CD player) singing *NSYNC at the top of our lungs. Yep, we thought we were cool. I have all of this stuff on my iPod, and I actually have a playlist of my favorites of these songs.

2. Soap Operas

I love ‘em! I’ve been watching The Young and The Restless since I was born, thanks to my Momma! It doesn’t get much better than watching Victor Newman destroy one of his enemies! My other favorite was cancelled ten years ago (*sniff sniff*), Sunset Beach. I absolutely loved it! I still miss it! I also watch The Bold and The Beautiful on my lunch breaks, and Days of our Lives when I can. Good stuff!

3. Mint chocolate chip ice cream

I looove mint chocolate chip ice cream! I actually ate it last week while watching the snow! :)

4. Magazines
I read a lot of magazines! People is my favorite, but I also read Glamour and Elle, and sometimes Allure, Vogue, In Style, and Country Weekly.

5. Starbucks Peppermint Hot Chocolate

I am not a coffee drinker, but I was introduced to Starbucks Peppermint Hot Chocolate by a roommate in college, and it’s amazing! I drink lots of it in the fall/winter, and occasionally in the spring! If you haven’t tried it, you must!

10 Tracks I’m Loving Now

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Here are a few of the songs playing on my iPod right now!

“Little White Church”-Little Big Town
These guys are so awesome! They have been one of my favorites for a long time, and I’m so excited that they have new music out! The song is so fun, and I can’t wait for the album to drop this summer!
“Speechless”-Lady Gaga
I really hate to admit it, but I really like this girl’s music! I heard this song for the first time when she performed it at the Grammy’s with Elton John (love him!). I downloaded the song a couple of weeks ago, and I love love love it! The live Grammy version is awesome too! That one will have you randomly yelling “Take my picture, Hollywood. I wanna be a star!” :)
Album: The Fame Monster
“American Honey”-Lady Antebellum
I just love these guys! This song is cute and fun and summery, and I love it!
Album: Need You Now
“Outside My Window”-Sarah Buxton
I just made this song my ringtone on my phone this week. It’s so fun and happy! Sarah is a great writer, and I’m so excited her album is finally out!
Album: Sarah Buxton
“Little House”-Amanda Seyfried
I loved Amanda in Mamma Mia, and I think she has a fantastic voice! She sang this in the movie Dear John, and even though I wasn’t crazy about the movie, I really liked the song!
Album: Dear John Soundtrack
“Giddy On Up”-Laura Bell Bundy
Love this song! One of my favorites to sing in the car! Laura originated the role of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde on Broadway, and I love the soundtrack from the show. She’s gone country now, and I can’t wait for her album to drop in a few weeks!
“Today Was a Fairytale”-Taylor Swift
It’s Taylor. It’s a fairytale song. What more can I say? Love it!
Album: Valentine’s Day Soundtrack
“I Need You”-Steel Magnolia
On my last Top 10 Tracks blog, I talked about their single “Keep On Lovin’ You” and about how much I wanted new music from them. Just a couple weeks ago, they released a few songs online. This song is their live cover of Tim & Faith’s “I Need You” that I’m assuming they performed on Can You Duet. The more I hear from them, the more I wish I’d seen them on the show. This song is so good. They changed up the arrangement just enough that it didn’t sound like a copycat performance. I just love them!
“The World Is Ours Tonight”-Gloriana
This song was featured on the sountrack for the Olympics. I’m loving it!
“This Is My Son”-Cherryholmes
My mom , my Mom-mom, and I saw these guys perform at the Grand Ole Opry when we were in Nashville over the summer. I’d never heard of them, but I loved this song. It’s from the point of view of a mother whose son has gone off to war. She is singing about sending her son off to fight for people who don’t know him, and about how she understands God’s sacrifice by sending His only son to die for us. Definitely have a box of kleenexes handy when listening to this for the first time.
As always, I hope you check out the songs that you haven’t heard, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments!

Top 2 Tuesday

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Today’s Top 2 Tuesday is Top 2 things you can’t live without!

1. My iPod. I am completely addicted. I love music, and I have music playing pretty much every moment I’m awake. I listen to it when I read, when I’m in my car, and when I’m at work. Even when I’m taking a shower, I have my iPod playing. A few months ago, the hard drive went out, and I was without it for a few weeks. It almost killed me!

2. Sunglasses. If I am outside or in my car and the sun is even a little bit bright, I must have my sunglasses. Sometimes I can’t even open my eyes without them! I love big sunglasses, and I have several different pairs and different colors!

A small example of how often I have to have them:


Playing outside with the cousins


Signing the wall at Graceland


Chillin’ outside the Wild Horse Saloon in Nashville


I even decorated them for a costume party!


What’s that sitting on top of my head? That’s right. Sunglasses.

Fill In The Blank Friday

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Wow! Two theme posts in one day? Crazy, huh?! I was checking out Beth’s blog that I found after she found me at Kelly’s Korner and I saw her Fill In The Blank Friday from Lauren’s blog! I thought it looked like fun, so here’s my Fill In The Blank Friday!

1. Today I am wearing a cute black top, my gray ruffled cardigan thingy, my new awesome jeans, and my black boots!

2. My favorite childhood food was macaroni and cheese and my favorite food now is chocolate and Mexican food (not together!).

3. A day that I am too busy to talk to my Momma at least a couple of times is a day that I am too busy.

4. The last movie I saw was “Dear John” for Jessica’ s birthday and the next movie I want to see is “The Last Song” hopefully with Tracy in the next few weeks. Can you tell I love Nicholas Sparks?!

5. My favorite smell is my parents’ house when my Momma is making candles because her candles are amazing, and the mixture of scents in the house is sooo good!

6. A weird little quirk I have is I always have to put salt on my food before pepper. I’ve very OCD about that. If I don’t, I think it doesn’t taste right. I know it’s all in my head, but it’s something I have to do!

7. When I take personality quizzes, they always say I’m friendly but shy, which is pretty true!

Childhaven 2006

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This is my first post for Kelly’s Show Us Your Life Friday. This week’s theme is Mission Trips. I decided to post pictures from my sophomore year Spring Break trip to Childhaven, a children’s home in Cullman, Alabama. Childhaven had children of all ages, as well as a program for teenage mothers. The year I went was my bible study group’s second year to go. My group went to help do yardwork, paint the cottages, and do other repairs on the grounds. During the trip, I worked probably harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, but had the most amazing experience.

The “Big House”- the Childhaven offices were in this building, as well as the room we had dinner in ever night.

Part of our group, the ones who actually got out of bed to go to the devo by the pond on our last morning at Childhaven.

Our first night, there was a tornado. We all piled in the basement of the big house until the storm passed. To pass the time, our group did what we did anytime we had free time-started singing! The kids looked at us a little funny at first, but eventually joined in.

Every night, we had dinner with the kids. It was so important to us to try to form relationships with the kids and show them that we were not only there to help out, but we truly cared about them and wanted to show God’s love to them. The first picture is of part of our group with a few of the kids. The second picture is me with one of the precious teen mom’s and her adorable baby boy. She and I had dinner together every night, and even though I haven’t seen her since that week, I still think about her and wonder how she’s doing.

Teddie and Lacey would probably kill me for posting this picture, but one of our last nights there, the daughter of one of the house parent’s begged us to come over and dance with her. In this picture, we are doing YMCA, and we also did Macarena and Cha-Cha Slide.

In the afternoons, we tried to stay out of sight so the kids could get their homework done without being distracted by us. We would hang out at the house…

make a Dairy Queen run…

or go exploring in town. One afternoon, we went to this spillway that the group found the year before. We climbed to the top and had so much fun!

We danced in the water like little kids, but had so much fun! It was beautiful!
The first picture is Kayla & Dan,
and the second one is me!
One afternoon we went exploring a cave. It was a bar during prohibition. There were all kinds of escape routes, and we had so much fun exploring!

When we made it to the back of the cave, we turned out all of our flashlights and started singing. It sounded so amazing! We sang for about an hour. Spending time as a group praising God in total darkness was so incredible, and something I will never forget!

Me & Regina, Me & Teddie
I could go on and on about the amazing time we had at Childhaven. Hearing the kids’ stories truly impacted my life, and I hope that we were able to touch their lives as well. Along with the work we did, we formed new friendships and strengthened old ones. Childhaven and the memories I have from my time there will always have a special place in my heart.

I’m a little scared

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I never intended to blog about American Idol, but I feel like I need to talk about what is happening. I’m a little scared about this season. I have watched the show since the beginning, and never have I gone into a Top 12 show having only two contestants that I could possibly see winning this show.

Casey James-really nice voice, and super cute!

Didi Benami-she’s been one of my favorites from
the beginning
Other than these two, I don’t see anyone that has the potential to really be successful from this show. There are no Carrie Underwoods or Chris Daughtreys. Instead, America decides to send home these awesome people…

Katelyn Epperly, Ashley Rodriguez, & Tyler Grady

…and leave us with this

Aaron Kelly, aka David Archuleta 2
Voted in by the texting teenyboppers who loved David,
except Aaron is nowhere near as good of a singer with nowhere near the stage presence

Katie Stevens
This girl can’t get through a show without crying, and it’s starting to get really old.
She is consistently picking songs that don’t work for her, and she’s singing them terribly.

Paige Miles
I have no idea why this girl is still here. She seems very sweet,
but I have no idea why America kept her on the show
after she completely destroyed a Kelly Clarkson song and a Michael Jackson song.
Seriously, listening to her sing Michael Jackson’s “Smile” made me want to cut off my ears.

I’m a little scared!

I worry that with a season of not-so-great contestants and news that Simon Cowell is leaving the show after this season, this could be the end of American Idol. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks! If any of you are watching Idol this year, what are your thoughts on the contestants this year?

Dancing Queen?

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Earlier this week, I decided that I’m going to start exercising. I say this every few months, and usually nothing comes of it. This week, I have actually worked out (so far) two days! In a row! Shocking, I know. For Christmas, I got this awesome DVD!

I loved Julianne on Dancing With The Stars, so I was sure I’d love her DVD. The first time I watched it, just to see what it was like, I thought it looked fun and pretty easy. Easy? What. Was. I. Thinking. I texted my mom to tell her that if she hadn’t heard from me in 30 minutes to call and check on me. A few minutes into the warm-up, I was sweating. She started doing things I couldn’t do (due to the whole fused spine thing) so I decided to move on to the first dance, the cha-cha. Now, I took a week-long dance class in college, and the cha-cha was mine and my partner’s favorite dance. It was fun and fairly easy. Julianne’s cha-cha? Not so much. About 20 minutes into it, I was on the ground. Couldn’t move from complete and total exhaustion. And I’d only learned about three 8-counts of the dance. Seriously? I’m 24. I shouldn’t be in such terrible shape. This is pathetic.

The next night, I actually learned the rest of the dance and made it through without collapsing from exhaustion again. Unfortunately, now I have this weird pain in my back, probably due to all of the “hip-action” (Julianne’s words, not mine) and the fact that fused spine = limited “hip-action”. The pain isn’t hindering my movement, it is just a dull ache. I’m probably taking tonight off due to other plans, but I’ll hopefully be back on schedule tomorrow. With much less “hip-action”.

You know you’re a big girl when…

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You get stuff like this for your birthday
and you get REALLY excited!
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I have been waiting to blog until my new laptop got here and unfortunately, the hard drive on it failed last night. :( I am hoping my old one will work long enough to post pictures from my birthday week tonight after church and Q group. We shall see!