Spring Break 2015 Adventures

It's been way too long since I've made a blog post. Over a month. Goodness Lydia, get it together! Let's get right to the point of this post so I don't dwell on what a horrible blogger I am.
SPRING BREAK! Today is my last day of Spring Break, sadly, but I had a really great week! It started on Friday with seeing two plays at Bob Jones which were, of course, fantastic. To those who didn't hear me say it already, Advanced Drama put on the BEST performance of "Lies About High School 2" that I've ever seen. I guess 3rd time's the charm! While I was seeing the plays, my aunt and her dog Cassie arrived at our house.
On Monday, we went to Chuck-E-Cheese for a little while. I literally played 30-40 games of skee ball. I used all of my tokens on skee ball. There were no other games I wanted to play. Once I ran out of tokens, I cashed in all of my tickets at the little ticket cruncher thing. I ended up with about 160 tickets. When I went up to the prize counter I realized that I was completely uninterested in any of the prizes so I gave Tessa my ticket receipt to add to her tickets. I thought "I guess I'm officially too old for this stuff."
When we got home Tessa and I changed into more summery clothes because it was really nice and warm outside. Tessa just learned how to ride a bike the other day, so I walked around the neighborhood with her while she rode her new bike. Then James came over and we hung out at the park and then watched a few episodes of Parks and Recreation. Irony.
Tuesday was probably my favorite day of the whole week. That was the day we went on our big adventure to Nashville and the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, Opry Mills Mall, and the Grand Ole Opry House!

First we had lunch at the Aquarium restaurant in the mall! I was so excited to go there because I have a strange love for fish and aquariums and sting rays and the ocean. It makes me really excited. So of course I have plenty of pictures and videos.

I literally took all the pictures that day in Snapchat so that's why there's a text bar in some of them. Tessa has never been a fan of aquariums and she especially hates sting rays, so she wasn't very happy when she'd look towards the tank and see a sting ray face against the glass.

The restaurant looked really cool and had a great atmosphere. As for the food, I wasn't very impressed with how they cooked their shrimp. If you know me, you know that I usually LOVE shrimp. Whenever I go to a new restaurant and don't know what to order, my go-to is shrimp. So, of course, being at this new restaurant, I ordered shrimp. But it was weird. I wasn't crazy about it. But I was still very happy to be there because of the sting rays and the other cool fish and the eel and the weird-looking Shovelnose Guitarfish (they look like a mixture between a sting ray and a shark).

After we ate, we did a little bit of shopping and then went to the Dave and Buster's arcade. I was kind of worried that I wouldn't enjoy it because of how little I enjoyed Chuck-E-Cheese the day before, but it was the coolest arcade ever. My favorite part was the GIANT MARIO KART!!! You literally sit in a chair and put your foot on the pedal and steer the wheel and it feels like you're actually driving a cart! The pedal was kind of strange at first because my driving instincts were telling me not to press it down all the way, but that's how you get your cart to go full-speed. I didn't take many pictures in the arcade because I was just having too much fun, but I got a couple:

I took a ton of 10-second videos that I compiled into a YouTube video if you're interested in seeing the rest of that adventure. Anyway, I ended up just getting a couple of things of candy from the prize room, but I really didn't care because it was more about the games than the prizes. 

After the arcade and some more shopping, we spent a little bit of time around the Grand Ole Opry House.

Tessa was getting some dance energy out of her system. She usually doesn't cooperate for my selfies but the one we took outside of the Grand Ole Opry House is probably one of my favorites. I got a guitar pick and a little harmonica from the gift shop.

Then we moved on to the hotel. I absolutely LOVE the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. So, of course, I took tons of pictures and videos (which are compiled here).

I was really excited that we got to go on the boat ride. It was very relaxing to me and our tour guide was a cute old lady with a calming voice which you'll hear if you watch the video. The selfie with the water fountain was taken on the boat. Again, there are more videos than pictures. Blue hydrangeas are my favorite flowers, so I took pictures of every blue hydrangea plant I found. Those are my two favorites. I'm so in love with these flowers that I literally gasped when I saw them. The goldfish pond was just really cute.

After we spent our time in the hotel, we went back to the mall and got dinner in the food court. Then we did even MORE shopping! We found a Disney Store where I got a beautiful Belle mug (because I'm obsessed with mugs and Beauty and the Beast is my fave). Then we went to the Vera Bradley store where they were having a 50% off sale! I got a wallet and a matching phone case as early birthday presents. 

So that's basically the extent of that adventure! The next day was pretty chill. At some point in the week my aunt took Tessa and I to the mall. We went to Belk and got scarves like we always do when my aunt visits, then we went to Icing where Tessa got some nail polish and such. After we shopped we went to Maggie Moos and had ice cream. 

Yesterday we went to Chili's for dinner. I had never been there and I felt kind of lost when I saw that they didn't have shrimp. I ended up ordering chicken enchilada soup and it was delicious. I love almost anything with cheese and it turned out to be a super cheesy soup. I'm definitely a fan of Chili's now. 

Tessa played a couple games on the little touchscreen thing. Also, that's one of my new scarves. Ignore the old lady in the background. 

There you go! That's basically my spring break in a nutshell. The Nashville adventure was honestly the most important part and it would have been cool if we could have stayed at the hotel for a night or something, but it was an awesome day anyway. I hope you all enjoy the videos. I felt like this post just wouldn't be complete without them. 

My next post will be about my most recent creative endeavors, including T-shirt bags and a painted wooden plaque that I made for my bedroom door.

Meat and Beef Sandwiches

Hello again! It's been a little while since anything super exciting happened, but this weekend was an exception. Not only was Saturday Valentine's Day, but it was also the day I got to see Brian Regan live! It was an awesome day that I'm going to write a little recap of after a mini update on school things.
I'm going into the 6th week of my second semester of college. This past week I took my first math test of the semester and received the grade on my first essay of the semester in English. My first history test will be on Tuesday. I wasn't confident with my essay at all because I couldn't focus on it and I was just happy to have it finished and turned in by the due date. I really didn't know what I was supposed to be writing about. I ended up getting an 88, which is much better than I expected.
I studied like crazy for the math test, even getting up at 6:30 to have enough time to finish the study guide and go over the formulas. After I took the test, I checked over it for any mistakes. Luckily I remembered that 4 times 5 is not 25 and that the x's go UNDER the y's in the slope formula... A couple days later I was able to see the grade online and I ended up with a 93.5! I laughed about getting a higher grade on my first math test than my first English grade. I would have done a lot better in high school if I had actually studied for anything.
Today I've been working on a lot of stuff for English class, including the outline for my second paper, which is still confusing me, but not as much as the first one did.

Anyway, Valentine's Day!
I went to Cafe 153 with James for our Valentine's Day date around 1:00. It was really nice and I was (happily) surprised that the only other people there were a couple of business men. After we had our hot chocolate we went to his house and played ping pong until I had to pick up Katie. James gave me a cute mug with Snoopy and chocolates inside it. His mom also gave me a very pretty necklace that I can't wait to wear. I made him a batch of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and gave him a little mason jar with a bunch of ideas for free and cheap dates. We hadn't been to Cafe 153 in a while so it was nice to have out white hot chocolate again and spend some time together.

After hot chocolate and ping pong, I picked up Katie and brought her to my house for dinner and to hang out before the show. Katie and I started watching Brian Regan videos on YouTube together fairly recently. I've been a fan of him probably since 9th or 10th grade. When my mom told me that he was coming to our civic center, there was no way that I was going to miss it or let Katie miss it. We ordered our tickets for Dad, Katie, and I and started counting down the days.
We got there an hour early to beat the crowd and Katie and I made videos and took pictures and quoted Brian Regan skits and she taught me some sign language. I now know how to sign "mean," "poop," "don't know," "don't care," and "shut up." That's really all I need to know.

Anyway, when 8:00 rolled around, the opening act came on stage. Joe Zimmerman was hilarious and I think I remembered more direct quotes from his act than from Brian's. When Brian came out on stage Katie and I looked at each other and said "He's real!" It was so awesome to see him in person and to hear new stuff from him since I'd been listening to the same skits forever. He goofed up at one point and said "Would you like a meat and beef sandwich with gravy?" and then stopped and said "...Meat and beef... I really need to think of a word that's not synonymous with meat." Then for the rest of the show he kept referring back to his meat and beef sandwich.
Usually I'm majorly against anyone recording or taking pictures in a theater setting of any sort, but there were people doing that and ushers posted at every door who weren't doing anything about it, so even I took a few pictures and recorded a video at the end when he was repeating some of his older skits. I sent the video to my sister who was in South Carolina for a dance competition which made her really happy. Katie and I yelled "I bought two boxen of donuts" in the video, but he didn't acknowledge us. At least we tried!

It was an awesome day and night that I had been looking forward to for a couple weeks.

On another note, I'm hoping to start up my Etsy shop sometime soon. I'm not sure how soon exactly, but I'm working on coming up with a name and I have a few scarves ready to sell. I haven't been doing many new projects to post about lately, but maybe once spring break rolls around I'll have some crafts to share. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Atlanta Adventures

Taken as we arrived in Atlanta, GA

Last night my family and I got back from the Hollywood Vibe dance convention in Atlanta. Tessa did an absolutely fabulous job in her competition dance and I can't wait to be able to share the incredible photo that was taken of her. Sadly, I have to wait until after their last competition to post it anywhere, but definitely watch out for that, because it is a truly amazing picture.

Pre-awards glow stick party. 

I watched a lot of dances on Saturday evening and the scholarship auditions on Sunday afternoon. I was really happy with the kinds of dances that were brought to this competition, because the dances I saw at a different competition last year had a tendency to be pretty inappropriate. The dances here were clean and age-appropriate. My mom and I had a couple of favorites from studios other than our own, especially a duet to a song called "Sisters." We were excited to find out that the dancers are actually sisters.
When I wasn't watching dances or the awards, I was mostly crocheting. I actually started my Hufflepuff house scarf! I've been taking some pictures of my progress and I'm really excited about it. The last time I tried to crochet, the edges were uneven and I kept messing up the number of stitches. Somehow this scarf is going really well for me! I've had the right number of stitches the whole time (I count them almost every row...) and the edges are straight! I have no clue how it's going so much better this time, but I'm very happy that it is. I'm having so much fun with it that I might even make more for other Harry Potter enthusiasts I know.

"This is the most fun I've had all weekend!"
Mom put her feet in the hot tub on Sunday while Tessa was in classes.

Returning to my recap of Atlanta. After we got to the hotel on Friday, my mom and sister went to the Hard Rock Cafe that was a short walk from where we were staying with Tessa's friend and her mom. The last and only time I had been to a Hard Rock Cafe was in 7th grade in Washington, D.C. on a school trip. I absolutely hated it. I've had such a negative point of view on Hard Rock Cafes ever since then. Honestly, I think the only reason I didn't like it was because I was probably very stressed out and frustrated from being around so many people for so long.
This weekend I decided I would try it again, and I'm very glad that I did. My dad and I went for lunch on Saturday. Before we went I wondered what bands I would recognize other than The Beatles. My first thought was Imagine Dragons, but I tried to dismiss that because I realized they were probably too new to have any memorabilia in a Hard Rock Cafe. Although there weren't any guitars or jackets or autographs of theirs on the walls, I did find a T-Shirt in the gift shop...

It turns out that Imagine Dragons partnered up with Hard Rock Cafe and the Tyler Robinson Foundation to make this shirt and 15% of the sales go to TRF to help families "battle the unseen costs of childhood cancer." So obviously I had to get it. 

Other awesome things in Hard Rock:

Where they have live music.

Joe Perry's guitar used to record "Dude Looks Like a Lady." It also appears in the music video.

Steven Tyler's "Walk This Way" outfit. Not sure why I didn't realize there would be Aerosmith stuff there.

ADAM LEVINE'S GUITAR!! I gasped, took three pictures, and sent them to Katie. Used to play "She Will Be Loved."

Lynyrd Skynyrd's guitar.

"Fly on proud bird, you're free at last." Johnny Van Zandt's shirt which was worn during performances of "Freebird" in honor of his brother Ronnie.

Elvis Freaking Presley's motorcycle and jacket. This was super awesome.

I am glad to say that I no longer have any dislike for Hard Rock Cafes. 

On Sunday during the scholarship awards, I got tired of standing so I went and sat with my dad in the hallway and waited for it to end. I sat up on a really big ledge and took this picture of the view from that window:

Buildings are just cool to me. So that was the last picture I took in Atlanta before we got on the road to go back home. The ride home was pretty stressful, but we got home safe which is all that matters. Belle was VERY happy to see us. You know that sound dogs make if you step on their foot? That's basically the sound she was making for 10 minutes after we arrived. She was screaming at us and we were only gone for 3 days! 

I don't know all of the awards that our dance studio got, but here are the scores that I remember (not including solos):

3 dances won Platinum.

6 dances won High Gold.

1 dance won Gold.

Tessa's group won a High Gold and 1st place overall teen open production! I also remember that one of our dances won a "Best Concept" award. They all did a wonderful job. 

Their next competition is in South Carolina, but I won't be going to that one because I'm going to see my favorite comedian with Katie! I'm sure they'll do fabulously as usual and hopefully Tessa's group will get their Platinum!! 

Side note: I was going to write a blog post about the photoshoot with Kaylie for Lost Cause Revival, but she made one before I could so here's the link to her blog post!

Friday Update

Not many "blog-worthy" things have happened in the past week or so, so I figured I'd post a mini update.
I just finished my first week of my second semester of college. Despite the horrible drivers in the horrible parking lots caused by horrible, pointless construction, it's going nicely! My pre-calculus class is going well considering we're only graphing right now. My history class seems like it's going to be interesting and I'm not sure what to think of my English class, but I missed the first real classes of those subjects yesterday because of weather. The best part is that I'm already over 2 weeks ahead in my online astronomy class. I'm not particularly enjoying it, but I'm way ahead, so that feels good.
Since I didn't go to class yesterday, I pretty much knitted all day long. I actually made 3 things in one day out of two skeins of yarn. I finger knitted two headbands, one of which is going to be bought by one of my friends, and I arm knitted another scarf. I'm starting to enjoy finger knitting a little bit more than arm knitting, but it kind of makes my fingers hurt so I'm not going to try to finger knit a scarf or anything, that would just be ridiculous.
This weekend I'll be doing some modeling for my favorite entrepreneur, Kaylie, so she can list some more jewelry on her Etsy shop this month. Keep an eye on Lost Cause Revival for those!
Next weekend I'll be going to Atlanta for my sister's dance competition. I really like dance competitions and I can't wait to see what Tessa's group earns at awards. I'm not allowed to talk about the dance online because there are dance thefts out there, but I'll let you guys know how the competition goes awards-wise.

Some projects I'm hoping to start soon:
-Crochet a Hufflepuff house scarf
-Paint a few canvases for the kitchen
-More arm knitting!

There's my little update, I hope to post more as more share-worthy things happen around here, but with classes starting back, I'll probably just be posting mini updates for the most part just to keep this blog active. Thanks for keeping up with my ramblings!