Spa Night and July 4th..

So, let's start with Spa Night.

The night before we went to celebrate 4th of July in Stilly with their dad, I stayed the night with Cameron's sister Candice to do a spa night with her and her daughters, Scout (10), Mattie (9), and Lilly(3). Let's just say, I learned something very important from this experience...and I have a temporary hate for bananas. But we'll get to that later...
So, the night started with the hair mask!
Ingredients:
-2 tablespoons of olive oil
-1 banana
-1 tablespoon of honey
-1 egg
-2 teaspoons of plain organic yogurt (be sure to skip the flavored stuff!)

The directions we were given:
1. Mix all ingredients together
2. Apply on hair and cover with shower cap
3. Leave on for one hour
4. Shampoo and style as usual

Here are a few pictures of us looking pre-tty fancy in our shower caps.

Next were the facial masks!
Ingredients:
-1 tablespoon of oatmeal, finely grounded
-1 tablespoon of plain, organic yogurt
-A few drops of honey

Directions:
1. Mix the oatmeal and the yogurt together in a small bowl
2. Add the honey, mix again
3. Apply mask to face, leave on for 10 minutes, wash off with warm water

Top left: Scout; Top right: Lilly;
Bottom left: Mattie; Bottom right: Lilly and Scout relaxingTop left: Candice; Top right: Me
Bottom left: Lilly and Scout; Bottom right: Lilly

Alright, time for the lessons learned:
When doing the facial mask, be sure to warm it up first. Or else you feel like you are putting on a slimy, grimy, cold slather on your face! Not very relaxing at all. If you'll notice, Lilly doesn't have that much on her face because she could barely stand the feeling! Poor girl was shaking like a leaf lol
Aaand now for the hair mask lesson. *sigh* Okay, remember where it mentioned the bananas? Yeah, be sure to REALLY make sure they are completely liquidfied. As in, be sure to purée. Otherwise, you'll run into the problem we did: Small banana chunks stuck in your hair. One would think they would come out fairly easily, but oh no. Poor Scout has this beautiful naturally curly hair and I spent about an hour on her head alone trying to get it all out. And myself, I probably ripped out about half of my hair trying to get it out! Its funny now- not so hilarious then. But, now we have a good memory to go along with it. :)Left: Scout's hair with the banana; Middle: The tub with only half of the banana pieces from my hair alone; Right: My hair with the banana

4th of July!
For the fourth, I spent the evening with Cameron and his family at his dad's house in Stillwater. It was a bittersweet occasion, because his dad, step-mom, and younger brother and sister are moving to Wisconsin at the end of the month. But it was such a great time, everyone had a ball! There was delish smoked chicken, a major water fight followed by a silly string fight, watermelon, then later time for talking and simply enjoying the evening with family. In total, I believe there were about 19 people there in all...so a full house! But it was completely comfortable...and I love that they already make me feel like part of the family. (If any of you are reading, thank you for that!! <3)Two of Cameron's beautiful nieces, Scout and AdelineLet the water fight begin!!Smiles everywhere!
Catherine and Mattie attacking Cameron!CHARGE!
Grandpa Brent getting in on the water fight action!My favorite picture from the evening...water crashing as it meets in the middle from opposing sides. What makes it even cooler is its girl vs boy, sister(Scout) vs brother(Gunner)!The water fight gang! Love how Samuel (far right) is shooting off his gun...makes me wish now that I would've taken a picture with everyone shooting off their guns at the same time!
Adeline looooved the watermelon...Lilly liked it too! Double fisting it!Grandma Sue showing some of the kids old pictures of their parents
Cameron and his sweet little sister, Catherine
Some good-bye hugs...
(Grandpa Brent and Mattie)

Like previously stated, it was a seriously great night. Hoping the next large get together is sooner rather than later!!

Worst blogger ever? Yeah, that's me..

Well, months ago I promised a 4 part blog post about our trip to NYC. Obviously, that didn't happen. I blame school. But to give the highlights: Had a bird poop on my face (LOL), had the best italian food and dessert (Serendipity's "Frrrozen Hot Chocolate"), I feel in love with NYC and I can't wait to go back!

What has been happening in the last few months? Not too much comes to mind but I know there has been a lot! Here is what comes to mind, though: my Grandma's huge and successful birthday in March. So many of her friends and our family came out- amazing. One of my cousin's graduated high school, another is becoming a dad, and my best friend found her wedding dress! (which was so fun to go shopping for, she is gonna look stunning on her big day!) And this last month was filled with birthday parties! Two of Cameron's nieces had birthdays (one of which was a family softball game- so fun to play again...but man I was SORE!) and my adorable nephew turned 2!

What is to come? Well, my birthday is in 11 days...pretty stoked about that. :) About to start another summer class, Cameron's sister's baby shower (which thanks to Coty and their mom, it's gonna be amazing!), I'll have three weeks off in August then it'll be time to start another fall semester! Speaking of fall, I'm more than ready for it to come. Bring on the cooler weather, football, holidays, and pretty leaves/trees.

I've decided that this will be my last effort at maintaining a blog...if I can't do it, it's just not meant to be! This weekend I'm doing a spa night with Cameron's sister and the nieces I mentioned before and spending the 4th with his family...going to try to do blog post about that or at least my birthday...we'll see!

New York City...Part 1/4!

So last weekend Cameron and I along with our friends Joey and Kristin got to visit the Big Apple. Now, let me start off by saying just one weekend in that huge city is not nearly enough! But it was still SO fun. So this is part one of the New York posts (if I crammed it all into one it would be entirely too long!)

Thursday night: Our flight got into NYC around 5:00pm. The trip immediately started off interesting! Upon walking out of the airport to find a taxi to take us to the hotel, a man approached Joey telling him that he could give us a ride. So we start to follow him, and doing so we bypass all the taxis....and start walking to the parking lot. Kristin and I immediately start dragging our feet and I'm sending Cameron the "what the heck?!" look. The guy saw our hesitation and showed us all of his taxi...credentials? Not sure what the right word for it is but he showed us his license and a small "NYC Taxi" sticker-license thing taped up on his window. Still hesitant, we climbed in the car and Kristin pulled up Maps on her iPhone to make sure he wasn't taking us anywhere else. Lol! But, it all ended up being fine, he was a really nice guy and we actually called him to take us back to the airport on our last day. ;)

The view flying in! :)
The lovely welcome sign we received...

Kristin had done some research of places to try while we were there, and found a really neat place called Jeykll & Hyde. We went to eat there after getting checked in to our hotel and it was a lot of fun! They have a "butler" that is in full character that would come approach us and say funny things, and he would also go to the back and control all of the things that would take place on the walls of the restaurant. There was a huge rhinoceros next to us, a werewolf, a gargoyle, a mad scientist...all of which he could control and use to talk to us. We were the only people in the restaurant, so we got a lot of attention! ;)After we left there we went to Magnolia Bakery to get some cupcakes! And they were gooood. (They had GREAT hot chocolate, too!!!)
Friday: We started the day off with some Starbucks across the street from the hotel and then headed to Times Square! I loved Times Square. So bright and colorful and lots of shops! :) And on the walk there we got to pass a lot of the theaters where they have many of the Broadway shows!! (I have a great love for Broadway shows/musicals. Sadly, we didn't get to see one this trip. But next one for sure!)Kristin, Joey, Cameron, and I (barely got myself in there!)(MY FAVORITE. Cameron took me to see it when it came through Oklahoma a while back, and it was absolutely amazing.)We stopped in at M&M World!
We had O'Lunney's for lunch...mmmm.

After O'Lunney's, we got on the subway and headed to Ground Zero. I don't know quite what I was expecting, but my heart was definitely not prepared for all the things I saw. Being there made what happen even more real to me than it was before, and it was hard to see and even attempt to put myself in the many shoes of the people involved. The people on the planes, the NYPD, firefighters, the families of those who passed, the volunteers, citizens of NYC...My heart hurt the entire time. A very somber experience.

The new World Trade Center being builtWhat Ground Zero currently looks like..
Memorial AlterWhat it should look like after everything is built.


Well that concludes post numero uno! The next one will be about the NJ Devils vs Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game! Which was SO fun! People treat hockey up there like the South does football! So keep your eye out for New York City...Part 2/4! :)

December/New Year Celebration in a nutshell

Hello all! Hope everyone's Christmas and the ringing in of the New Year was as great as mine! I promised a post over the ice skating and lights, and made a mental promise to post about Christmas, so why not throw the New Year weekend in there all in one! :)

Cameron and I joined his good friend Joey and his girlfriend Kristin in Bricktown a few weekends before Christmas to ice skate! I think it was every one but mine's first time to ice skate, and the boys were immediately comfortable on the ice and left Kristin and I in the dust! (Just for the record, the ice was seriously run down due to not having the Zamboni out on it for a while, thus making it very hard to skate on...a couple of weeks later we went to Stillwater and got to ice skate on some nice, smooth ice, and I liked it much better ;)) After we had enough of the bitter wind chill, we stopped at the Bricktown Brewery for dinner before we headed to the Chickasha Festival of Lights! Here are a few pictures from the day:

A few pics of the rink..

Joey & Kristin

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The week of Christmas, we had the pleasure of going to Stillwater to visit Cameron's dad, step-mom, and brother and sister. It was such a good time! As mentioned before, we also got to ice skate there and enjoy some Hideaway Pizza and Eskimo Joes. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures while there. The following weekend was Christmas, and we spent Christmas Eve celebrating with my family at my mom's first with my sister and her group, then later with the rest of the fam at my Grandma and Papa's! Saturday Cameron and I exchanged gifts, and he surprised me with tickets (and other goodies, too) to the touring Cirque du Soleil show, "Alegria!" It was nothing short of wonderful.

My nephew, Hudson, loving a rolling horse my mom got him

Grace modeling her new helmet for her bike from Santa (My sister sent Santa a text message asking him to drop off their presents a night early since they were going to be away from home on Christmas Eve ;))One of my favorite gifts :)The gift I put together and made for mi madre!The tree at Grandma and Papa's...and that is only half of the gifts!Grandma and Papa opening their gifts...(My sister got better pictures of them two and of all the families grouped together..I'm going to try to get a hold of them and post them later!)Family Christmas Tradition: at the end of everyone unwrapping their gifts, we have a major paper throwing war. While opening gifts, it's best to prepare and start rolling up your paper in balls, and keeping any boxes you got for a shield. It's always a fun time! :)Cameron smelling some Polo body spray I got him!
Some of my goodies from Cam in my stocking at his house :)

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I spent New Years Eve in T-Town at my sister's! Unfortunately Cameron was working, but I was still happy to celebrate with my family. My niece Grace even made it to midnight! Barely, but she made it. :) I didn't get many pictures from that night, but we stopped at Wal-Greens before that evening and got some decorations and confetti poppers, and Grace got a light-up champagne glass that she drank milk and water out of throughout the night. :) Here is a picture of her posing with it:

The next day the Sooners played int he Tostitos Fiesta Bowl...and won!! (Boomer!) Grace and I were decked out in our Sooner get-up and red lips (her fav) and Hudson was in a new OU shirt too! :)

Next week school starts back up and things will get busy again, which is bummer because this break has been SO nice. I don't have much exciting going on between now and the end of February/ the beginning of March (a trip to Austin for Cam and his friend Clint's birthday and then a trip to NYC for Cam's birthday also and our one year anniversary!:)) I may or may not get a post between now and then, but if I don't, there will for sure be one after that!!