Totes Awes Fam

First of all, I'd like to let you know that I came up with a slogan today for GMFC (Great McDermott Fitness Competition): Goin HAM, Gettin Swoll.

Secondly, I'd like to refer you to my sister's blog so you can see all the incredible fun we've been having: FUN! Also, we got to Skype Martin today for his GOLDEN BIRTHDAY (27 on the 27th) and it was so so great to see him and Marielle (and Izzy). 

Finally, I've spent a couple days at Camp T and am home for a little turnover period and I go back tomorrow. I've gotten to hang out with lots of wonderful camp people and they are the best. Because of all the wonderful people that I love, family and friends, life is so full of joy. I'm feeling very thankful.

Summer happy's

 I got to spend some great time with Matthew, Alex, and Cathy this week and it was great! Cathy's visiting, as is her new iPhone, so I tried to super-annoy her Instagram followers by posting lots of random pictures. Instagram all day, err day.

We found these gems in Matthew & Alex's garage (no one knows where they came from). The lenses were literally a centimeter thick and looking through them for 2 seconds gave us headaches. Totes worth it for these beautiful pictures.

 

 I should be a dog photographer..

 Cathy is artsy

I'm headed to Camp Timberline bright and early tomorrow, so today was my last day of Monday/Wednesday 9:30-1:30 babysitting. This family is incredible...so very sweet and loving and just huge examples to me of Christ. They have been such a blessing to me this semester and it's been really great to be a little part of their lives for the last few months. We were really sad to say bye to each other, even though I'll see them in two and a half weeks.

 

 Seriously, can you think of a better job?

Prayers would be very appreciated while I'm at camp (and always, really)!

Family conversations..

Dad: Mark Zuckerberg got married.
Mom: Who?
Dad: Facebook guy.
Me: How? Gold digger.
Mom: Yeah, is she has weird as he is?
Dad: What?
Mom: Is she has weird as he is?
Dad: She's Asian.

Yes, today!

Some days I feel just like this...and oh, how I love my sassy pants.

Today was mostly a success, I would say. To start, I went to yoga and then had lunch (at Cheba Hut!) with the other girl on my Wyldlife team, Max. Then I got some Starbucks and went to a movie by myself! I was hoping to check that one off my list but it wasn't the most successful of attempts because it was a super crappy movie. Ha. So I'll definitely try again for a more fulfilling experience. I saw "Friends with Kids." With the cast and the previews, it looked like it maybe had potential. And there were some redeeming parts (like the song at the beginning - "Hotel Song" by Regina Spektor). But mostly it was this depressing picture of marriage and all the guys were douche bags and all of the characters really just needed some Jesus in their lives. Luckily, I saw it at the cheap theater and only spent $2 for the ticket. I was half really glad I went alone because I would have felt bad for whoever watched it with me. The other half of me wanted to have someone along so I could vent afterwards about how weird it ended up being. Oh well.

I also got my room a little cleaner today, wrote 8 thank-you's, and watched an episode of Friends (my fav). Then I went with Olivia and Abby (and actually lots of other friends) to this great concert at Everyday Joe's coffeehouse. We went to see my friend's brother, who is the lead singer of You, Me, and Apollo. The last time I went, Brent was just playing by himself, but now he has this full band and they are so good! I'd totes recommend checking them out. They're really really great. And apparently about to make it big-time - so cool!

"My First Love"

This blog post is really great. There are 4 parts to "My First Love" and they are all important. Written from a girl's perspective for other girls. Maybe you don't have time to read it right now, but I really think you should sometime. It is so hard and so scary for me, but exactly what I need to hear.
http://kellyneedham.com/2010/05/01/74/

Stuff

My room is a straight-up disaster area. Between the not-put-away clean laundry in my laundry basket(s) and the has-no-place-to-go dirty laundry and the halfway/not-really unpacked Texas trip suitcase...well, you get the point. Basically I just have way too much crap. And summer is so glorious that I haven't found a free moment to take care of it. But I will someday. For now I'll just suppress that nagging feeling of knowing my room is a mess...I've survived this way for the better part of 20 years, so what's another couple days?

The better-than-cleaning things that I've been doing today? Babysitting (aka making money to hold precious babies and play Barbies), Red Robin with Jaime, shopping/sister bonding, eating leftover taco pie, blog-reading, hanging out with really great friends while making cake balls (Katie struggled again...). And tomorrow I'm hanging out in my uncle's classroom and observing a day in the life of a first-grade teacher. YESSSS!

Today was just the best day!

I woke up this morning [uh...it was actually noon. shh] to a wonderful text from Cathy. "It's national chocolate chip cookie day. Just sayin." Best.thing.ever. My first thought was that I should get cookies from Great Harvest because they are delicious. But then I realized I shouldn't let this opportunity to try out a new recipe get away from me. So I went to my "Food & Drank" board on Pinterest (obviously) and found this recipe that I had pinned. And the blogger wasn't lying...they are the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made, personally.

Cathy also made chocolate chip cookies today, of course. Except she improvised, which is way cooler than what I did...check out her orig recipe on her blog!

Mom and I went over to keep my grandmother Abby company and we made the cookies there. We looked at old photo albums while they baked and came across some real gems, including this one:

Look how good-looking my sibs were! Cathy agreed she should get bangs again and Martin said he's down to start wearing pastel sweater-vests over polo's again. Get pumped for the next McDermott family photo.

I picked Olivia up from school today and "Yeah!" by Usher came on the radio. We blasted that baby and made sure to throw in some quality rapping and great car-dance moves. Slash I did that by myself...Olivia was less than thrilled by my embarrassing performance.

My parents were out tonight so Olivia and I made dinner for ourselves. And it turned out really great, if I do say so myself. We made taco pie and strawberry jalapeño salsa. SO GREAT. Seriously, I would recommend trying these recipes.

 Crying as I chop onions...it's the worst. (But notice the sweet apron...homemade Christmas gifts from Mom are the best!)

 The potato shell/crust

 

 The finished product - delicious.

 

I also made these sour patch grapes...basically it's just washed grapes mixed with lime jello powder and frozen...so great. They really taste like candy. My mom said I should probably stop eating them so I don't get sick...I said, "YOLO." Just kidding, I didn't say that. 

Also, here are some random pictures from Mother's Day. We all got to pick out one fruit at the grocery store and we combined them for a freakin good fruit salad.

 Mom loved her photo book and the blog post that Cathy dedicated to her!

I forgot that I also made Cinnamon Honey Butter on Sunday! It is as good as it sounds. (I found all of these recipes on Pinterest...tell me it's not the greatest thing ever!)

 Pretty Mother's Day sunflowers

See Ya

The finale episode of New Girl made me cry. It was just so great. And I'm super sad I have to wait like 4 months for the next season. Ah. I love Nick and I want to be Jess/Zooey Deschanel. So good.

Adventure doesn't have a curfew

My summer started off with a bang. First of all, being done with classes makes me giddy. My dad and I chatted about Elvis and the mad phenomenon of the Beatles on the ride to the airport. On the flight, the stewardess gave me two bags of hun-cal Cheese Nips AND a refill on my ginger-ale. That's service. I cried reading the rest of Bloom and would look out the window at the clouds whenever I thought I was about to lose it completely. I finished the book, so this will be my last time writing about it for awhile - promise. A few of my favorites from the last 80 pages:
1. p. 198:

Fear and Sadness had to go, and it would be my job to kick them out...I just said, "Get out," loudly and forcefully, like a true badass, if I do say so myself. "I am not afraid. So get the hell out of my head. Now."

2. Kelle made a Dumb and Dumber reference...I just know she and I would get along so well.
3. Hilarious descriptions about the hot physical therapist that works with Nella.
4. She writes about getting overly excited about future plans and how it's fun to talk about those dreams. And it made me think. You know the stupid cheesy quotes (that I probably posted on MySpace more than a couple times) that say things like, "Shoot for the stars" or "Dare to dream?" I think I was a very ambitious child, but recently I really have not liked those quotes because, for some reason I had in my mind that those dreams were supposed to be things like being president or being a famous author or actress or something. And I didn't feel like I had ambitious desires like that anymore. But Kelle's section on page 208 made me think about how, for me, those dreams are really things like being an awesome aunt someday, being a mom, living close to my siblings, and having fun with slash loving my family and friends well. And I realized that those are perfect dreams.

This post was really supposed to be about my trip to Texas, so pardon that long digression. Katie picked me up from the airport and we went to explore Austin for a couple hours! We went to El Chilito in search of the sweet mustache see-saw Cathy told me about. The see-saw wasn't there, which was a huge disappointment, but we got some good (and super messy) burritos. We also went to Amy's Ice Cream and I am a little obsessed with that place now because it was delicious.

We celebrated my birthday with Taryn when we got to Waco. They had gone through a fiasco to make a heap of cake balls but they were so yummy and obviously worth the trouble. And look at the card they got me for my birthday:

 

He is a babe. And seriously? They know me so well. And on the inside Justin wrote, "Don't waste a wish on being any cuter, because you simply could not be any cuter. Happy Birthday!" What a guy.

We packed up lots of furniture into the van, but we also had a few days to just have so much fun being together. We ate fro-yo, went to a hibachi grill called Shogun, played lots of games (Sour Apples to Apples, Yatzee, and our favorite- the game of Things), and got manicures. They showed me the coolest places in Waco, including a precious store called Harts & Crafts and a really great coffee shop, Common Grounds. I got to meet a couple of their best friends there and got to hang out more with Taryn's boyfriend, Luke. I also probably experienced my most embarrassing moment when I got locked in the bathroom at Luke's house and he had to break down the door (I know, it was awful. And yes, I've had far too many traumatic locked-in-the-bathroom experiences).

Check out my new sunglasses! When I got home Olivia said, "Those look like they're old-fashioned," and Matthew said, "What are you...from the...1970's?" Yes, yes I am. I LOVE THEM!

On Friday we went to Six Flags in Arlington. The weather had been cooler than usual all week (which was great), but the thunderstorms held off until right after we left the park. Perfection. We were famished after riding crazy rollercoasters all day, so we stuffed our faces at Red Robin afterwards and it was the very best!

It was such a blessing to be able to spend the week with Taryn because we hadn't seen her in so long, so it was also super sad to say goodbye and begin our 14-hour drive. But Katie and I did have lots of fun listening to great music and going through super random tiny towns. I loved the southern scenery of hay bales and water towers (really, I think they're just so cool). We made sure to stop at the state borders to get great pictures and we also made lists about our dreams...21 things I want to do before I'm 21 (it's not finished yet so I probably need your help), things Katie wants to do this summer, and things we want in our future husbands (we're girls, okay?). It really was fun! And we made great time, even with the sections of pouring rain and road work.

 21 before I'm 21:
1. Go to a movie by myself
2. Be in a flash mob
3. Go to the sand dunes
4. Learn to decorate cakes
5. Get a photography book
6. Buy a nice camera
7. Learn to sew
8. Practice cooking
9. Expand/update blog setup
10. Do a sprint triathlon
11. Learn all of the words to "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" (Matthew, I think you should learn them all, too)
That's all I have so far so be thinking and let me know!