Schools starts tomorrow! It will be my last first day of school.. bittersweet, I guess. I AM excited to be done with school but have no idea where I will end up afterwards. The world is my canvas, I guess!

The past two weeks we have had two-a-days for soccer, and as a team we have had ups and downs. We have a lot of talented new players (3 freshmen and 2 transfers), but we have also had a lot of injuries to deal with. BUT, as of right now we only have two players out with injuries and one should be good to go by the weekend, which is a huge sigh of relief. However, the other player out right now is my roommate April.. she fractured her wrist at practice last week and is out until as least September 13th. And of course, it was on her right hand, so she is getting used to doing everything (or at least everything I don't do for her ;P) with her left hand. She is a very valuable player on our team and one of the best (if not THE best) defensive player on our team. So she will be missed dearly during our first part of the season.

I have actually been learning a new position this year, outside back. I have never played a defensive position before.. I have always been an outside mid or forward, so its a lot to learn. Some days I feel like I'm progressing really well, while other days I feel like I can't grasp anything. Its been frustrating but as soon as I can play in a game and get a real feel for the position I think I will improve.

Our first games are next weekend. We are playing in a tournament called the Culver-Stockton Classic in Canton, Missouri. I am excited to go and excited to play! It will be nice to take a trip and sight-see, as well as hopefully win some games! The winner of the tournament gets a trophy, so we definitely have our eyes on it!

My class schedule this semester is pretty odd. I only have one morning class, 11am MWF. All my other classes are in the afternoon 1-4pm. And I have two night classes as well. Its going to be a struggle with soccer to get to all these classes and make up work, but I've done it before and can do it again.

Besides tomorrow being the first day of school, its my 22nd birthday. I don't think I will do much for it since I will have class and practice. My mom and youngest brother came to visit yesterday and my other brother just got back from Montana yesterday and met us here in Yankton, so he had pretty perfect timing. I may go out to eat with Isaac or something, but who knows!

Wow.. I think I spaced off the entire last month of the summer. I haven't blogged in exactly 3 weeks and 3 days.

This is my last week of summer. Soccer starts on Monday, and its gonna be a killer two weeks of practice. Coach emailed us all and said we will be having fitness practice in the mornings, a meeting or lifting in the afternoons, and soccer practice in the evenings at the fields. BY THE WAY, we have NEW fields this year! Ones to call our very own.. I am very excited about this!

At work the past few weeks I have been busy designing. I made posters for the new archery program that is starting here this fall, postcards for last minute financial aid reminders, finished up the orientation materials, made a few newspaper and magazine ads, and lots of other fun stuff. This is my last week of work, which is sad because I will miss the paycheck and actually getting to make finished projects. But alas, I still have one more year of school before I can be let loose into the real world.

Next week will be my last week as an RA. I just hope that when the fall sports kids move in they don't cause a ruckus! I have lots of posters to make for orientation and really need to get started on that. Kelly, the other summer RA, has been busying making posters, so I need to play catch-up.

School starts on August 30.. aka, MY BIRTHDAY. I am okay with it, I just hope with classes and soccer practice I can still find room for a little fun :) I feel so old.. a lot of my friends just turned 21 this summer and I will be 22! But my roommate April turned 22 yesterday, so at least I'm not as old as her!

Tonight I made tatertot hotdish for the few of us still living in the dorms. Kelly had made some for a potluck we had a while back and I wanted to one-up her and show her how it was REALLY done :) So, I worked my magic and it was a hit! No leftovers!

I think I took too much time off from blogging! Its been about two and a half weeks since my last one.

Last weekend was the best weekend of my summer! My friend Theresa got married! And I was a bridesmaid! We have been friends since middle school and she graduated from MMC. I followed in her footsteps in coming here, actually.

Anyways, last Friday I went home for the rehearsal. Isaac and our friends Jordan and Becca came with. The rehearsal was at the church in Jackson and didn't take very long. The groom's dinner/rehearsal dinner was at the golf course in Lakefield. We had tacos lol. How sophisticated ;P After the dinner, we played yard games are Theresa's parents house. Becca and I teamed up against Isaac and Jordan for very intense game of ladder ball.. and we won! Although I would like to think it was a big feat beating these boys, they are notorious for being a bad ladder ball team :P

After the lawn games, we went back to Jackson, but this time to see my friend Lucia. She was a foreign exchange student at my high school two years ago when I was a freshman in college and I got to know her really well and hadn't seen her since then. But she came to the U.S. to visit this summer and I was so happy to see her again! It was really great to catch up and she finally got to meet Isaac. She had talked to him on the phone but was never able to meet the person with the voice.

Saturday morning, I had my hair done at the salon with the other bridesmaids. My style was half up with spiral curls and "little" poof. Lets just say, I would hate to see what the "big" poof looks like! Theresa's sister Laura and I both did similar hair styles, while two of the other bridesmaids did side ponytails and the other two did up-dos. So, we all had hairstyle partners!

We got to the church at 11:30am for pictures. Our bridesmaid dresses were "marine" blue.. somewhere in between royal blue and navy blue. The best part about them was that they had pockets! So we didn't have to haul around a clutch with everything we needed. Anyways, we tooks bridal party pictures for almost two and a half hours in the church as well as outside. It was such a gorgeous day out.. sunny but not extremely hot.

The wedding ceremony was amazingly precious. The groom (Mike)'s dad is a pastor and precided the ceremony. His sermon was awesome because he was able to give personal stories about Theresa and Mike.. like how they were caught smooching in the back of the bus in middle school and how when Mike wanted to transfer to USD, he told his dad that he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life, but he was sure he wanted to be with Theresa. Isn't that just adorable??

The reception was a blast. It was at the Windom Community Center, by the lake (which we, of course, took more pictures by!). The bridal party made their grand entrance (I was escorted by Derek, who I graduated high school with and it was great to see him and catch up with him), then the bride and groom cut the cake (they didn't make a mess of their faces, thankfully!), then we ate some amazing food (catered by the Hi-Lo, where I used to work), and danced the night away. I kept saying that the reception was like a school reunion because there were so many people there from high school.. alot of whom I hadn't seen SINCE high school!

The next day, Isaac, Jordan, Becca and I went to a place called Red Rock Dells. Its about 45 minutes from my house, near Sanborn, MN. Its a beautiful little sactuary in the middle of corn fields. There is a creek that runs through these hugh cliffs and there is even a waterfall! The rocks are about 30 feets high and there is a pool of water at the bottom (where the creek empties into) and you can jump off the rock into the water. So thats exactly what we did. I did this when I was in high school too, so I was the expert. It is so much fun. Isaac and Jordan did it probably a dozen times and they were so sore the next day! I guess the impact of the water was just too much for their sensitive bodies ;)

Here are some pictures from Mike and Theresa's wedding:

Theresa with her bridesmaids after the wedding (so she is a Mrs. in this picture!)

Becca, Jordan, Isaac and I (Becca's dress was unintentionally the same color as our bridesmaid dresses!) (also note the beautiful bouquets we had-purple daisies with green roses)

Guess who is walking down the aisle??

Theresa before the ceremony!

Here are some pictures from Red Rock:

Me with the smaller waterfall.. there was one ten times bigger too!

Becca jumping off the cliff into the water!

I have been really busy with work, giving tours and going to Isaac's baseball games. He pitched his team's first win of the season! That was really exciting. His brother pitched their only other win too. Talent must run in the family.. that, or they are really lucky. ;)

This week I was asked to play in the orchestra for the community theatre's production of "My Fair Lady." I missed the first rehearsal yesterday because my flute was locked up in the instrument closet at school, but I retrieved so I can go to the next rehearsal on Thursday. Isaac is also in this play, but he is in the chorus.. so he gets to sing and dance on stage!

Tomorrow Isaac has a baseball game in Dakota Valley, so we are going to go shopping in Sioux city in the afternoon and have lunch with our friend Heidi. I asked her to find a cute little place for us to eat at, so hopefully she comes up with someplace cool!

It seems like all my paychecks are disappearing so fast because of gas, food, wedding gifts, summer fun and everything else I have to pay for! BUT there are still things I need to go shopping for at the mall :)

My friend Theresa's wedding is in less than two weeks! I know she is getting VERY excited, and that makes me so excited! I should really start practicing walking in my high heals.. I'm nervous about walking down the aisle in them! I would probably be the one to break an ankel during the ceremony.. ;) I am excited to get my hair done and just be a part of the festivities. Some of my friends and I are thinking about going to Red Rock on that Sunday. Its this really cool water hole with a waterfall and gorgeous scenery. The point of going would be to jump off the rock, which is probably 50 or 60 feet high. I have been to Red Rock and done this before, so I will have to be the expert instructor when we go :) It should be fun!

This weekend was my friend Jordan's birthday and he came to Yankton to celebrate. My friend Kelly also came this weekend to help celebrate, which was nice because she lives in Omaha now. We are planning a get-together with Gina for the end of July and will go to the Omaha Zoo!

The mosquitoes are horrible here right now. I think I counted almost two dozen bites
on just my left foot after this weekend! I hope I don't get west nile, because apparently its
going around the area.

I am running a 5K roadrace on the 3rd in Crofton. It will be my first one since August last summer! I am excited to see how I will do and hopefully I can win my age division! I don't know what else I will do over the holiday weekend.. but all I care about is that its a long weekend and I can do nothing and still be satsified :)

Another week down. And only two months left of summer vacation! I can't believe soccer starts so soon. There are a few guys staying at the dorms this summer who are working for the National Park Service and they played soccer with me this week. I need to get more touches on the ball.. but I think I am on pretty good track as far as training goes.


Isaac and I aren't going to Colorado anymore for the 4th of July weekend because he has to work. Even though this will save us probably 3oo dollars (in gas money!), I still wanted to roadtrip, go to Colorado for the first time, see the mountains, and visit my aunt and uncle. Oh well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be.. we will have to find some other time for the adventure.


Last weekend was my friend Beth's wedding. The ceremony was.. different. They did a "foot washing ceremony" which pretty much speaks for itself. And there were THREE pastors presiding the ceremony. We didn't stay for the dance because it was almost ten when we left and it hadn't even started yet! We ended up going to the late showing of "Get Him to the Greek" which was hilarious! I definitely recommend seeing it! We stayed at my friend Laura's apartment. We got up early the next morning to go to Isaac's baseball game but it ended up getting rained out, so we got to hang out with Laura a little longer! She showed me the house she is buying, too.. she is growing up so fast! (She graduated from MMC in 2008 and is a math teacher in Iowa, in case you were wondering!)

Yesterday I went to the beach for only the SECOND TIME this summer. Usually I go to the beach MUCH more, but with the consistently rainy days, its hard to find time to go when it actually IS nice out. We were only there for less than an hour, but I still managed to get a little red.. its better than burning to a crisp or not getting ANY color, but I wish I could just tan like normal, non redheaded people do :P

Today Isaac had another baseball game in Vermillion. He pitched the whole 9 innnings and they won! It was the Zips first win of the season and I was so proud of Isaac for playing so well. I know he is excited that he pitched their first and only win ;)

I don't have much on my agenda for the next two weeks, but I will be going home on July 9th for (my best friend from high school) Theresa's wedding. I am a bridesmaid and honestly cannot wait! Its going to be such a fun time! The time between now and then will pretty much consist of working and going to more of Isaac's baseball games. He has one in Dakota Valley so I think I will take the afternoon off from work so we can go shopping in Sioux City.

ALSO, my German-exchange student friend Lucia is coming to the U.S. to visit next week!! Its so exciting because I haven't seen her in two years! I will have to make a very special trip home to hang out with her for a while because who knows when she will travel across the ocean again to visit!

TGIF.

For some reason the weeks are flying by, just not as fast as I thought they would be. I mean, this was my fourth week of work already, but it seems like I have been working for WAY longer than four weeks. Some projects I have been working on include the covers to the new students planners, a poster for the new bede art gallery exhibit schedule, and I actually am finished with Paddlefish! We uploaded it to the printer yesterday.

I also re-vamped my resume.. now it looks like a real designer's resume! And I finally accomplished the feat of getting all my information on one page.. at one point in time it was two full pages, pushing three.

This weekend Isaac and I are going home for one of my best friends from high school's wedding. She is getting married outside at Lake Okoboji and I am really super excited for this. Its gonna be great to see her and all my other friends from high school and just to celebrate her special day with her. After the reception Isaac and I are going to stay at my friend Laura's house.. a sleepover! :)

The concert last weekend was amazing!! The venue was really nice and pretty small.. and Motion City played such a variety of songs.. it was the best concert yet. It was the fifth time I have seen them live, so that's saying a lot.

My aunt and uncle have invited Isaac and I to come visit them at their ranch in Colorado for the 4th of July weekend. It would be so awesome to roadtrip there to see them! Isaac just has to make sure he can get that weekend off.. and we're there! They live on a ranch with horses that's on an orchard with apples and pears and other fruit. I'm sure its gorgeous there and I can't wait to see it!

I get my first paycheck of the summer this week.. I can't wait! Don't worry, I'm not going on a huge spending spree.. my savings account just looks so empty right now, so it will be nice to actually have something in there!

Last Friday I left work early to hang out with Gina who came up for a few days. We went to the beach (first time this year!), Dairy Dock (raspberry sherbet!), and then treked out to Dell Rapids to see our friend Briana. She was having a nice little get-together. She grilled burgers and veges and her mom made an awesome homemade ice cream cake. A bunch of people from school showed up, which made it even better.

My brother Tyler was here in town all last week. He needed a place to stay before he headed out to Montana for the summer, so Isaac's place was his pick. He left on Sunday afternoon and made it to Flathead Lutheran Camp yesterday afternoon. He made multiple pits stops along the way, to see and stay with friends, including his roommate who lives in Montana. He is going to be a camp leader/counselor/etc etc there. He said they have a different age group come and stay each week so it will be a new experience each time. He is excited for hiking in the mountains and camping.. he bought lots of gear for it all: hiking boots, a rain coat, a sleeping bag, a pocket knife.. I think he is set!

This Friday (two days from now) Isaac, Gina and I are going to a Motion City Soundtrack concert in Omaha. Its pretty cheap and I think its at a small venue, so it should be a really good show! I always prefer the small shows to the huge ones. We are going to stay at our friend Kelly's apartment in Omaha.. she just moved in and wants to play hostess! On Saturday we are all coming back to Yankton to celebrate Gina's birthday. Should be a fun weekend.

As for work, my three jobs have been keeping busy. Being an RA in the summer is pretty stress-free, which is nice. I have been giving a couple tours a week for ADMIT, and at college relations I have done everything from press releases to designing freshman orientation materials to reading the newspaper to find MMC articles. Ahh.. all in a day's work.