Chi Omega Yours Forever

Wow...what an eventful week it has been in the Adams family!  After a few days without power (more to come on that one later), I have found myself slipping further and further behind.  One area that has fallen victim to this is the blog!  I have about 5 posts needing to be written, and yet, I have none done.  So please forgive me.  The next five posts should have been written weeks ago, but I am going to try to catch you all up on our lives in different blog posts.  Because let's be honest, no one has time to read a fifteen page blog post...especially when it is authored by yours truly!

Since my last blog post, there was a reunion of sorts that occurred!  Chi Omega celebrated their 75th anniversary at Mississippi State University!  That's kind of a big deal.  When I found out about the party that would take place the weekend of April 2nd, I immediately began planning a reunion of sorts for my pledge class.  What originated with my friend Brittany as a fun way to see everyone, quickly turned into an owl party of sorts. 

Brittany pretending to be an owl

This party all started with some cute invitations that I made.  I, of course, blurred out important details that I didn't want to share with the world on here, but you can get the gist from these pictures.  Thank you to my wonderful hubby for writing the super cute poem for our invites.

The paper underneath the velum.

We showed up Friday night to put together our decorations and bake food for the party.  I'm so sad that I can't make these photos go in the order that I would like, but formatting is so difficult on blogger.  So you'll have to bear with me.

Super cute oreo cupcakes.  Recipe can be found here.  Of course, I took the easy way out and just used a box mix and icing.

I had this fabulous idea to create an owl tree of sorts.  I wanted it to look super springy in our home for the party.  So we gathered some branches and hung owls all over.  It turned out as a neat centerpiece. {more photos of it to follow}

The Chi Omega Symphony

Our picture/clothespin wall. 

Owl Peeps!  I found this idea online as well.  They turned out super cute.  I had bought a bunch of heart shaped peeps at valentines day so it worked out well.  Love My Peeps Pops.

We had to have an owl cheeseball.  I used just a basic cheese ball recipe, added sliced cucumber and squash for the eyes, the "neck" of the squash for the nose, and slivered almonds for the feathers.  I used this photo of a cake to get my ideas rolling. But I thought we had too many sweet things already, so I deferred the idea to a cheese ball instead of a cake.

Brittany made these OHHH so cute owl s'mores which can be found here.  I'm not sure if you can see the nametags for the food or not, but they are made out of the same paper as the invitation and include a stamped on red owl.  These we titled, "Makin' S'more Owl Memories"

Chi Omega's colors are Cardinal and Straw, so we chose a red and yellow theme for our drinks.  We made lemonade and fruit punch with strawberries and lemons. And if you are a frequent reader of the blog, you can see Captain Rodney's in the background.  It had not made it to the table at this point, but had already been eaten.  It did eventually make it to the table!

Owls in the tree:

You are likely to see most of these again when Christmastime rolls around and I put up photos of our Christmas tree(s).

My friend Megan of Happy Bakes made the CUTEST mini owl cupcakes.  You can read her blog post about the weekend o' fun here.

Yes, Brittany wore red and yellow.  I promised I wouldn't make fun of her on the blog! :)  So I'm not!

So, so glad y'all got to join us!

Meg wore red and yellow too, but we really should have expected this! In fact, I bet Brittany that she would!

This little guy is PRECIOUS!  He is one of the girl's sons. {It's a tad weird to me that some of my friends have kids...am I old enough for that?}

His family is moving back to Starkville {lucky kid!} and you can read his mommy's blog here.

Seriously so cute! He loved the cowbells in the background.  His dad would say, "where are the cowbells?" and he would point to them.

Now after we had so much fun catching up and hanging out, we were due to be on campus in the Union.  They had a big program planned.  I'm not one to love sitting in a planned program for 2 hours.  Yes, TWO hours.  Honestly, I was most excited about seeing my friends and having some of them spend the night afterward.  But I have to hand it to Chi Omega.  The program was AMAZING!  It was so enjoyable and entertaining.  From the pictures of the Chi Omega house being built to the rush skits that the actives did from years past--it was like a time machine took us back through the 75 years of Phi Delta Chi Omegas.  I had so much fun laughing at stories and rush skits.  It made me miss living in the Chi Omega house.  There were lots of people to see and meet and reconnect with. 

Some of the only actives left that I know!  Love you both!

Beautiful flowers from the tables.  {I love tulips}

This is the lady responsible for getting me to go Chi Omega.  Love her!  Love that they said "Chi Omega is Inter-generational Friendships." So, so, so true!

 A rush skit from back in the day.  It was the Sound of Chi O, based off of the Sound of Music.  I think it was from 1945. 

My little sis and past president. 

After an eventful afternoon on campus, my group headed back to my house to spend the night.  We had fun staying up late and remembering "the good old days."  Haha.  We told funny stories, talked about weddings that are coming up, and even acted like high school girls again at some points in the night.  I'm so glad that God blessed me with such incredible friendships!  The entire weekend was based off of our Symphony.  It is one of the most special things that I think Chi Omega has, and I hope I will always have it displayed in my house.  Not only is it important for a Chi Omegas college years, but I think it it something that she takes with her throughout her lifetime.

To live constantly above snobbery of word or deed;
to place scholarship before social obligations and character before appearances;
to be, in the best sense, democratic rather than 'exclusive', and lovable rather than 'popular';
to work earnestly, to speak kindly, to act sincerely, to choose thoughtfully that course which occasion and conscience demand;
to be womanly always; to be discouraged never;
in a word, to be loyal under any and all circumstances to my Fraternity and her highest teachings and to have her welfare ever at heart that she may be a symphony of high purpose and helpfulness in which there is no discordant note. Ethel Switzer Howard, Xi Chapter
1904

And lastly, you knew that Lacey was in attendance at the Chi O weekend.  So she had to have an accessory.  Her red and yellow bow was perfect.  However, about three seconds after these photos were taken, she used her paw to pull it out.  Needless to say, Lacey is not a big fan of bows!

Honored

I've been a really lazy blog poster lately.  I know it's only been a week or so, but I've had this typed since last week. So I thought I'd post it anyway. I apologize for the lag, and Brittany, I warned you! :)

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So apparently this award has been floating around BlogLand, and I had no idea!

In reading my friend Megan's blog the other day, I saw she had won the Versatile Blogger award. How cool, I thought.  Only after I got to the end did I realize my wonderful friend had passed the award on to me!  How insane is that!?  I was so honored that I squealed out loud.  I think Lacey thought something was terribly wrong with me!  It's a great feeling to know that someone actually reads the blog other than the three people who tell me they do!  And it was even funnier that I had JUST blogged about my friend the day before.  Go read it here.  Meg and I share a love of Diet Coke.  Mine has returned to an addiction, I'm ashamed to say!

If you want some cool insight into Megan's life, please go read her blog. She mixes up her life happenings with her mad crazy baking skills along with some fantastic favorites that she finds.  But more important than that, Megan has the ability to brighten any room and cheer up the lowest of people.  She can lift a spirit and make someone feel like they are the most important person in her life.  I'm honored that I am her friend, and I'm honored that she chose me as the Versatile Blogger.  Seriously, go read her blog.

I haven't been putting this blog off.  I have just been terribly busy since last Friday.  David and I wrapped up 3 in 3 last week...that is wedding number 3 in 3 weeks.  Whew.  Glad to be done with that, but SO thankful to be able to attend all three weddings.  God truly has blessed us to be able to travel even with escalating gas prices.  And we're so glad that we were able to make it to these weddings.  Last weekend was Mary Claire Mills and Tyler Winford. Mary Claire was responsible for my beautiful make up during my wedding and a bunch of the bridesmaids hair and make up. Mary Claire is on the right, and my beautiful make up is below.  This was a special time for us as Mary Claire and I were born a few hours a part in the same hospital. Mary Claire, Tyler, and I all grew up at Colonial Heights Baptist Church as little kids, and our families go way back.  So it was fun to get to see two people come together.

Okay, back to my blog award!  So the rules say that I am supposed to tell you 7 interesting facts about myself.  Well, I can't come up with 7 interesting facts about myself.  I've never been good at doing this.  So as I thought of what 7 interesting facts I could tell you {read Megan's, they are GREAT!}, I remembered that my friend Brittany Martin gave me a top ten list of myself on my bachelorette party.  She described me to a "T" and made me laugh so hard because all of them are SOOO true!  I hope you'll laugh too {especially if you know me...if you don't, WHY are you reading my blog?}  In sticking with the rules, I'm only listing seven of them, and I'll try to elaborate a little.

7. "Sara knows more about MSU baseball than anyone I know."  I hate to say it, but this may be true.  Now granted, this is from Brittany's opinion {and I didn't ask her before I posted these}.  There are more knowledgeable people on baseball, I am quite sure!  I just really like MSU baseball!

6. "Sara can out-talk anyone, anytime, anywhere." I don't know about out-talking them, but I do love to talk! :)


5. "You can name any person within a 500 mile radius and Sara either grew up with them, did Mississippi Showstoppers with them, competed in Junior Miss with them, was in Rat Pack with them, or is connected to them in some way." I just like to talk so I know a lot of people!  When I was a freshman at MSU, my best friend Bethany's Dad nicknamed me a Russian spy because of the number of people I knew and ability to connect said people with other random people in the grocery store, an elevator, at the beach, or 500 miles from home!  Brit may be exaggerating on the ANY person part.


4. "Who else can paint pottery and make it look like a K. Raye original?" I'm not sure it looks like the original, but I do love to paint pottery!  When I first started painting pottery, I didn't have a house to display it in, so I painted pottery for my mom.  It just so happens that she collects K. Raye.  So I began painting pottery to match hers.  My most recent pottery that I painted for my house can be found here.  I'm not sure it looks like the original, but close. I do own some K.Raye of my own and wanted it all to match! A few of her pieces can be found here.  It's the pottery looking pieces and not the aluminum pieces.


3. "Her scrapbooks are so creative that they could be sold at Hallmark." Um, so maybe not Hallmark, but Brit captured me so well with this one in that I LOVE to scrapbook.  Unfortunately, it's kind of been put on the back burner so I can finish grad school, but I do have a million scrapbook supplies.  See this post!  I love it. It's therapeutic to me.  However, never in a million years do I want to do it for money. I'm not quite efficient enough! 


2. "On multiple occasions, Sara has been known to predict the winner of any pageant after simply hearing the judges' bios." I laughed when I typed this one that Brit wrote!  I enjoy pageants. I never really did pageants, but through voice lessons and show choir, we knew a lot of people who did.  One day, our showchoir was performing for a school pageant.  We were the featured entertainment.  One of the mom's listened to the judges credentials, and looked at their faces.  3 of the 4 judges were blonde and happened to have daughters in the show choir (hence the reason we got the gig).  This particular pageant didn't involve any talent portion.  She said, watch this. I bet I can pick the winner just by the girls walking onstage.  So she did. At the end, she was right.  She told us every judge thinks that her daughter is the prettiest so all she did was pick a girl that looked like a mixture of those three ladies daughters.  Picking pageant winners has been a game to me ever since!


1. "Sara can turn a 3 minute story into a 3 hour monologue."  Duh...you already knew this just from reading my blog!


I'm not sure how much that helped you know me, but hopefully it was a fun way to let you know some different things about me.


And now it's time for me to pass on this blogger award to someone else.  I'm nominating

Danielle Atchley at Anatomy and the Atchleys

I'm honestly not sure if Danielle ever reads our blog, but hopefully she will see this one so she can pass on this lucky award to someone else!  Danielle's blog is a mixture of happenings in her life, her nephew, and my personal favorite, her decorating skills.  I'd love to be as good at picking out trash to turn into treasure as Danielle. One day I'm going to go with her to the flea market to find some awesome stuff!  Hop over to her blog and take a look!

What Megan & Lacey Have in Common

What do my friend Megan and my dog Lacey have in common?

They both share the love of Sonic ice!

No, I'm not kidding.

Yes, I'm serious.

My dog and my friend Megan LOVE this stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Sonic ice, just not as much as these two!  When she was so out of it on Monday after her surgery, she kept huffing and puffing like she was hot. She hadn't had food or water since the night before, but every time I put water in front of her, she wouldn't move to get any.  Luckily, I had some Sonic ice left over from my drink earlier that day.  I gave her some and it worked! She gobbled it up.

Today, I stopped at Sonic to grab a drink before leaving Starkville and ordered Lacey some ice. Did you know for $0.10 plus tax, you can score a small cup of Sonic ice?  I did!  Lacey had half of the ice gobbled up before we made it to West Point.  By the time we made it thirty minutes outside of Memphis and were at standstill traffic because two semis had collided, she had downed the whole cup!  Watching Lacey enjoy her ice brought back sweet memories of Sonic ice and my friend Megan.  Just wanted to share a few with y'all.  Who knew these two would have so much in common.  {Sorry Megs for comparing you to a dog, but you both are obsessed with this stuff!}

I think this love for Sonic ice began when we lived in the Chi Omega house. We had an ice machine in the basement that made Sonic style ice, and it was the most awesome thing EVER {besides being able to do four loads of laundry all at once at the Chi O house}.  Every day, Meg would have a cup of ice from the basement in her room and she would just munch on it all day.  Sometimes, she'd pour a diet coke in there, but for the most part, she would just chow down on ice.  It made such an impression on me that I too took up this habit. Now, you wonder why I know ice is $0.10 for a small from Sonic?  Our senior year, the ice machine BROKE at the Chi O house.  It had lived a long life. 1986-2008, I think.  But when it broke, we pitched a fit to Mama Jones that we HAD to replace it with the same type ice. None other would do.  She informed us of how much more expensive it would be and how much longer it would take to order it.  We didn't care.  I'm not sure if she politicked to House Corp or what, but somehow the Sonic ice machine was replaced with a new Sonic ice machine!  However, in the meantime to get our fix, Meg and I would head to Sonic and get cups of ice!  We were that addicted!

Now, while we always chomped on it alone, there was something about Sonic diet cokes that were just better than pouring our own.  And MANY times we would go to Sonic during Happy Hour and bring back diet cokes with EXTRA ice.  Meg taught me that trick. Who knew you could ask them for extra ice.  Meg is an admissions counselor for MSU and two summers I've lived in Starkville while Meg has worked Orientation.  It's kind of a tradition for me to bring her a large Sonic Diet Coke during her afternoon break on the first day of Orientation. I'm not sure what she's going to do this year without me!

On more than one occasion, we would all wind up going to see a movie at the movie theater in Starkville.  It was Megan's tradition to stop at CVS and get snacks and then head to Sonic to buy a cup of ice. She often got upset because the nice people would charge us 23 cents for a large cup of ice and when you paid a quarter, they'd assume you didn't want change. She never said anything to the carhops, of course, but when you hold a love for Sonic ice as much as we do, that's at least a dollar per month in change that Sonic kept!  Maybe not quite that much, but still. It was the fact that they assumed you didn't want your 2 pennies. And that just didn't sit well with either of us.  We'd smuggle in the cups of ice in our purse along with a diet coke from CVS and enjoy whatever movie Megan had talked me into going to see.

When Megan and I lived in Birmingham together one summer, the Sonic was forever away from our house!  Like so far away that Megan would rarely go get her Sonic fix!  So one weekend I had been to Starkville to visit David and when I left I stopped at Sonic and bought a Route 44 ice.  {yes, I really did}.  I then drove to Bham and brought Meg her ice.  It had not melted much on the two hour drive, and we stayed up and pretended like we still lived in the Chi O house!

It all started here, but thanks to Megan and the Chi Omega house, my DOG now shares a love of the Sonic style ice. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to visit Sonic again without getting Lacey a cup of ice!  She is, however, doing much better after her surgery.  You wouldn't even know she had major surgery on Monday if you saw her today!

Playing in the snow which strangely resembles Sonic ice!

Hi, My Name is Lacey

If you haven't met me, meet me.  My name is Lacey or as my parents often call me sweet Lace dog, Lacey Lou, Lace, or LayLay.  I'm not sure why they seem to think shortening my name is cute.  Then again, I have a really long French name that my originally breeders gave me. I'd hate for them to try to pronounce that.  

I came to live with Mom and David after they got back from the Gator Bowl and have spent most of my time with them learning how to explore new things.  David won't let me call him Dad.  He gets mad at Mommy when she calls him Dad.  I'm not a big fan of the backyard and would rather stay inside.  There is a big chocolate lab two houses over that barks at me through our cyclone fence.  Mom and David can't make out if he is a he or she.  They think he might jump the fence and come after me.  I used to ignore him until he said something one day that made me mad.  At 5am, I decided to wake the neighborhood and put him in his place.  For some reason, Mom didn't think that was too cool.  There is a Beagle on the other side of me.  He's smaller than me so I think I can take him.  I just ignore them both most of the time.  There's another big dog who lives inside the house behind mine.  We rarely see him outside, but his owner doesn't let him bark at me and makes him come inside if he starts. While I'm not a fan of the backyard, recently with the cool weather, David has been taking me on walks.  And I like walks.  But as soon as I get tired, I start lagging behind.  David's legs are much longer than mine, and I have to hurry to keep up.

I've really enjoyed my time with these people.  They are nice, they feed me, and they pet behind my ears.  David lets me get in bed and cuddle with Mom when he gets up to get ready for work.  I really liked these people until Monday....

On Sunday afternoon, I should have known something was up.  Mom cried to David all afternoon.  She doesn't usually do this so I didn't know what was wrong.  David got up to take me for a walk and when we came back, Mom had everything loaded in the car.  I suppose it was so I couldn't groan and whine while she did it.  We got in the car and she cried some more.  She even called people to cry to them.

We got to Starkville {my favorite of all of the houses Mom takes me to} and I barreled up the stairs.  Strangely, we slept downstairs.  We never sleep downstairs.  Mom always puts me in the big queen size bed with her.  We slept in a twin, and I made sure Mom didn't get any sleep because there wasn't room for me to stretch out.

Monday morning we woke up and she took me to the vets office.  I'm not like most dogs.  I like going to the vet.  There are a bunch of people there to pet me!  Mom was filling out paperwork and the nice girl that worked there picked me up and started petting me.  When she stopped, I took my paw and touched her to let her know she didn't have to stop.  Mom walked over, gave me a hug, said I love you, and left.  She wasn't crying, but she looked like she was about to.

Next thing I know, they are taking me to the back and drawing blood.  Then I don't remember anything except waking up with a terrible pain in my belly, drowsy, and sore teeth.  I realized I was missing a tooth and that there was a scar on my tummy.  I felt really woozy and was shaking, but Mom let me ride in her lap when she came to get me.  I barely recognized that it was my Mom.

When we got home, I slept a bunch and felt awful. I would barely move.  Mom kept calling people to see if I was okay and a bunch of people were calling to check on me.  She told me so.  I slept okay that night and woke up feeling a little better in the morning.

But all day I kept getting in trouble because I kept trying to lick that big scar.  Mom won't let me and she keeps threatening to go get my "eCollar."  Wonder what that means?  She acts like she really doesn't want to put it on me, but I think she's serious!  She watches me like a hawk.  She even caught me in the middle of the night trying to lick it.

I'm really hoping I feel better soon.  I'd post a picture of myself right now, but my hair isn't done, and I still feel bad.  And really, would you want a picture of yourself online for the world to see if you had just been "spayed."  I don't know what that means, but that's the word Mom keeps using.  She told me my teeth hurt because the vet cleaned them so my breath would be fresh.

I woke up this morning feeling much better. I ate all of my breakfast as soon as Mom put it in my bowl and drank a bunch of water.  Sometimes I forget that I'm sore and get too excited.  But then I stop because the pain hurts.

I really like it when people text Mom to check on me. I'll make sure she updates the blog to tell you how I'm feeling.  Until then, I'm going to sleep next to Mom on the couch.  She keeps petting my ears!