home.

i haven't posted anything in 2 weeks. i know. truth is i've been avoiding my blog. maybe i'll tell you why later.

anyway, i'm home. leaving school was not nearly as difficult as it was last year. i just crammed my car full and left. on my way home i stopped in st. louis to see my friend brittany from camp, and then i drove to branson to meet up with my family and to stay with my aunt and uncle. we went to silver dollar city and a couple shows. it was fun. now i just sit around and read blogs and bake cookies and stuff. most of my friends are still in school, so it will probably be a little more exciting once they come home.

nothing too exciting. just how i like it. friday i drive to oklahoma to see my sister graduate. saturday we come home. and sunday i fly to milwaukee to spend a glorious week with my precious friends, laura and courtney. laura is graduating from bible school and courtney has da whole week offfff. it will be fantastic.

i leave you with some instagram pictures. because that's the cool thing to do these days. mmkay?
ko.

passing the st. louis arch on my way to see brittany.

krispy kreme in branson. cause the hot light was on. duh.

my mother made us do this at silver dollar city. you are embarrassed for me, i know.

i am recently obsessed with omelets. i can even flip them in the air.

traditional lay in mom's bed and watch tv all day. i do it every break.

i reffed mud volleyball for my old high school. i got dirty. but it was fine.

kansas skies are the best. try and argue with me about that. warning: you will lose.

there has been lots of cookie making going on. cause i'm domestic, okay?

this isn't actually an instagram picture, but i'm sure you'll get over it.
sweet caroline is too ecstatic to be with me again.

summer.

my papers are finished.

my finals are finished.

my friends are gone.

my room is feeling empty.

summer is here, and it came just in time.

ko.

last week of classes.

okay. so, today is monday. monday is a day that i generally do not appreciate. but, today, welcoming monday means welcoming the last week of classes. i am welcoming this week with arms wide open. kinda like this:

except without the boat. and the necklace. and the boy. okay, really its not all that much like this except that my arms look like that. kinda. 

speaking of titanic, it has recently been re-released in 3D. who wants to go? annnybody?

 i love that movie. 

anyway. i am out of my mind excited about school being over. yes, i am sad that i have to say goodbye to my friends for the summer, but summer isn't all that long and we will be back again. 

i was a bit nervous about all the homework that i have due this week, but my professors heard my cries and pushed all the big things back to next wednesday. i have never been so relieved. to celebrate, i read blogs about people i don't know in mcconn for a few hours. i know, it's a problem. but i just love reading stranger's blogs. it is one of my favorite hobbies. after that i celebrated again by taking a nap, and then again by reading the paper in my bed like an old man. 

date night with paige rounded out this joyful monday, and now it is time for work. my very last monday shift. ever. also, i get to read the entire book of revelation in one sitting. doesn't that sound like a fun way to end your day? you know, by reading about the ending of the world? yeah. no. 

ko.

p.s. i realized a few moments ago that i walked around the student center for like an hour with a price tag hanging from my armpit. classy as usual. but so embarrassing. 

my cousin paige.

new student orientation - freshman year.

i have mentioned paige in my blog several times, but i randomly felt like she deserved a whole blog just for being so great. so, here is the story of paige.

paige and i met at registration in the summer of 2010, right before our freshman year. we didn't really hang out at registration, but we had made mutual friends at registration, so when school rolled around we started to hang out. we were hoping to be suitemates, but that didn't work out. i cried. but it ended up being okay, and we both loved the dorms we were put in. paige's last name is oler which is basically the same as oyler, so we tell people we are long lost cousins except her dad forgot the y. paige likes to say that my dad added the y. to keep it fair we just say someone spelled it wrong. sometimes people believe us and it is funny. 

paige and i didn't really know anyone else at the beginning of the year, so we were together a lot. we walked around the school saying "we go here" constantly. we both love our school, and its just so nuts that we go there! eventually we started to make friends in our own dorms, so we weren't together as much. second semester we had registration family dinner every monday with other girls we had met at registration. it was so fun to get to see each other every week since we were spread out all over campus. 

this year paige and i live in the same complex and we share a lobby, so we see each other all the time. i love it. we have date nights on monday nights which include delicious dinners in baldwin and bikes rides if its warm. we like to go on "tour de IWU" and race around the campus. it's great. last semester we would go running or biking together almost everyday, but it hasn't happened this semester. we also like to go on dates to things like FNL, mr. wildcat, and JK. usually we go to mcconn and buy drinks before. sometime we'll even buy each other's tickets and drinks so its a real date. 

i love having my long lost cousin at school with me, and i often dream of the picture we will take together at graduation. hopefully we are smiling just as big. it will be sad to part ways, but paige is the kind of friend you keep for life, so i'm not worried. and we aren't graduating for two years, soooo i should probably calm down. 

some things i love about paige is her giant heart for africa and freshman, her good taste in music, her laugh, her honesty, her sense of humor, how she calls me her IT girl, blogging together, our mutual love for mommy blogs, and her mom. her mom is great. :)

i love you paige! thanks for taking me to the airport! 

ko.

puppies.

i have been home for 3 days now. it is fun to be home, but it can also be tiring since i usually squeeze as much into a few days as i can. 

thursday holly and caroline picked me up from the airport. i haven't been home since december, so i was shocked at how big caroline was. we went to dinner, and we shopped. typical. 

friday, i took laura and lynne lunch at school, and i said hi to some teachers and coaches. then i went to maria's house and we made cuppy cakes. that is a fancy way of saying cupcake. yesterday was also good friday so the fam went to church for a good friday service. it was a bit unusual this year, and there was a jewish man there from Jews for Jesus. he gave us a presentation on passover which was interesting. just a little bit different from our normal good friday service. 

today, i had breakfast with alexis which made me so happy that i could cry. me and alexis used to be together practically everyday, and i miss her so much. in highschool (how bizarre is it that i can say that? am i seriously in college?) we aided together during the lunch hour. so we did a lot of lunching and not a lot of aiding. we went out to lunch almost every single day, sometimes to multiple places. we would also go shopping during our lunch hour. we were ridiculous but we had so much fun. man, i miss it a lot. anyway, we had breakfast and then... we went shopping. obviously. the bad thing about us shopping together is that we buy things that we don't need and we encourage each other way to much. "oh my gosh, lex, that's so cute." came out of my mouth way to many times today. we are impulse buyers for sure.

after we reluctantly parted ways, i came home and my neighbor invited me, laura, and lynne to his backyard to play with puppies. (that sounds soooo creepy.) they were 3 week old labs, and i honestly thought i might die. they were so cute and there was 8 of them. i don't even like animals, but i let them lick me anyway. they were adorable. here are some pictures that i took for you to drool over.

this last one was my favorite. he was sort of red and precious. oh my word.

now we are going to eat dinner. yes we are eating dinner at 9:15pm. 

that's how we roll.

ko.

30 days.

in 30 days i will be done with my sophomore year of college. holy. smokes. 30 days is not that long at all. in fact it seems really soon... until i think about how much will happen between now and then. i have papers to write, people to see, places to be, grades to keep, i don't know how i am going to get it all done. right now i should be writing a paper that is due at midnight. buuuuuuuuuuut blogging sounded like way more fun.

i like to keep track of the days. these are the things i'm currently keep track of:


   4 days until my mommy comes to see me at school
  10 days until i go to kansas for easter.
  17 days until i go to wisconsin with my friend quinn to see our friends, laura and            courtney.
 30 days until my summer officially starts, and i go home for 17 days.
 48 days until i leave kansas for alaska and get to see laura and courtney again.
 51 days until i arrive in alaska.
135 days until i am home from alaska for a week.
142 days until i have to be at school for ra training.

never a dull moment. in order for all of those ^ things to happen successfully, i need to write a paper about basic christian doctrine. joy.

keep it classy.
ko.

a new paige.

my precious friend, paige, decided her blog needed a facelift, so she asked me to help her with a template she found. it was way more complicated than i thought it would be, but her blog looks great now, and she is really happy with it. i like messing around with blogs, but i wish i knew more about blog design. i had to mess around with a lot of html to redesign paige's blog which i don't exactly understand, but thankfully, google always helps me with anything i don't understand. 

so, you should take a look at paige's blog. and when you're done reading all the posts on that blog you can go check out her other blog, called to koinonia. 

chow.

ko.

spring break.

Charleston, South Carolina

for spring break this year i went to charleston, south carolina to visit rho. she graduated from IWU last year, and it makes me sad that i have to get on a plane to visit her instead of just walking down the hall. she lives with her sister, jennifer, in mount pleasant which is basically charleston except not. 

here we are on the pier in downtown charleston. they have gigantic porch swings which i enjoyed very much. after this we went to mama kim's. my favorite place to eat in charleston. i've only actually eaten out at three places there, but this is my favorite of the three. i've been there twice, and it was delicious both times. mama kim's is a hibachi grill style place but it is express, so they don't cook the food in front of you and it is way faster. i like it. probably i will go back every time i am in charleston. 

i flew to charleston on friday. i drove to the airport unaware that there was a tornado warning in my area. so adventurous. on monday, britta and jamie drove down. they both go to IWU too, but they were visiting other people on their way, so we didn't travel together. we went kayaking on wednesday, and we saw a dolphin! it was cool. i like kayaking. but i have no muscles in my arms, so that makes it a little bit not enjoyable. i hope i will be able to kayak some more in alaska this summer. maybe i'll have muscles then. and no mom, i didn't take my camera in a kayak with me. jamie has a point and shoot. 

we took that. 

 

jamie and britta left on thursday afternoon. i don't exactly remember what else we did all week. actually that's a lie. i wrote it all down. but i will spare you the details. something that stinks about living in a dorm is the lack of a kitchen. actually, we have a kitchen, but i live on the third floor and it is not very much fun to drag everything down to the lobby. so i was excited that i would be able to have a kitchen at my fingertips all week at rho's. we i made lots of food. it was great. i am not very good at delegating tasks to people when i am cooking. so i kicked everyone else out of the kitchen, and i just did everything myself. it occurred to me later that it might have been more fun if we would have cooked together. oh well. maybe next time. 

something that i did not particularly like about cooking was buying food. not because i don't like grocery shopping, i love grocery shopping, but i do not like paying for it. holy. cow. food costs so much money. so. much. money. i added up how much i spent this week and almost died. when i am a real adult i will have to be much better about buying and planning food. every thing adds up super fast. one day i was putting my milk back in the refrigerator and noticed that it was almost empty. 

a few thoughts crossed my mind:

how did i run out so fast?

oh yeah, i drink an entire glass of milk at every meal. sometimes more. 

i'll just get some more.

i don't want to pay for it. 

what if i have to not drink as much milk when i'm a real adult so that i don't have to pay for it?!?

that would be awful. 

seriously. everything cost so much money. i hate that. booooooo. oh well. here is some of the food we ate. basically everything came off of pinterest. that's right. i finally made stuff from pinterest. i'm not just a pinner, i'm a doer. what an accomplishment. i would also like to thank my mother for answering my gagillion phone calls when i had ridiculous cooking related questions. thanks mama. 

taco night with homemade guac and salsa (lovingly referred to as "plant salsa"), lasagna roll ups, sourdough french toast, chicken parmesan, and chicken cordon bleu. yay food that's not from baldwin.

note about the salsa: don't use a magic bullet to mix everything. you will end up with spicy pink baby food. gross. 

on saturday, courtney joined us. she didn't know i was in charleston. she thought i was in kansas. sneaky sneaky. she was very surprised to find me laying in the back seat of the car at the airport. happy smiles all around. we went to the beach with jennifer to watch the sunset because rho had to work. it was cold. and windy. and there weren't that many clouds, so the sunset was sort of sub par. total bummer. oh well. we had hot chocolate and waited for rho to come home. she jumped on us as she ran through the door. she obviously wasn't excited at all. the three of us haven't been all together since august, but that doesn't even really count cause we were only together for a few hours. so really we haven't been all together since may. dumb. i have no idea when we will be all together again. dumb.

jennifer took these pictures of us before church. i think the bottom one of depicts us more accurately.

 rho went to work on sunday too. there was much sadness. i left that night to go back to school. the weather is just as good at school as it is in charleston, so that makes it easier to go back to school. 

but only a little.

this is incredibly long. lucky you.

ko.

i'm alive.

i was gonna write a blog.

but then life happened. 

some how it is already 11:29. 

i should have been in bed 59 minutes ago. 

i hate it when that happens. 

tomorrow. maybe.
ko.

guess what.

this... 

and this...

and hopefully this... 

are happening again. this. summer. that's right. the rumors are true. 

i'm going back to alaska for another round of camp.

i am out of my mind excited. there are several counselors from last summer returning, and i am so excited to spend the summer with them again. two of them go to school with me, so i haven't had to miss them too much, but it will be great to be in alaska again where we can wear our xtra tufs without being looked at strangely. it. will. be. great. 

unfortunately, not everyone will be returning to camp, so it is guaranteed to be different than last summer. but hey, that could be a good thing. i am especially going to miss my tweedle twin, laura. 

i just finished writing, printing, folding, stuffing, sealing, and stamping my support letters. you may have noticed that i didn't mention addressing my envelopes. well, that is because i figured out how to print addresses onto envelopes with my printer! i didn't have to address a single one. it was so easy. and now i feel like a grown up. because grown ups do that sort of thing. after i was done printing the envelopes i remembered that i like addressing envelopes. oh well. i guess that is what a summer in alaska with snail mail is for. by the way, if you would like a support letter from me, just let me know. i would love to print a envelope for you. :)

spring break starts the day after tomorrow. i am so pumped. breaks are so good. i had a little preview of a break this past weekend when i went to visit my lovely friends kaitlin and courtney. they were my adoptive roommates before they graduated from iwu last year. they had a fantastic couch which i miss very much. kaitlin got married at the end of last summer, and she lives about an hour from chicago. so, we decided to have a roommate reunion at her house. we went into the city, and it was freezing. kaitlin wanted to take us to some hole-in-the-wall pizza place but that didn't exactly work out, so we ended up going to good old giordano's. which is always fine with me. did you know you can order giordano's pizza online for the low price of $47? ha. right. it probably wouldn't even taste the same, but it is oh. so. tempting. 

here is a lovely photo from last weekend:

aren't we precious? 

now, i must do homework. it is very tempting to start spring break early and do nothing all week, but then i would fail my classes and not be able to graduate on time. which would be terrible. obviously.

i hope you enjoyed all the pictures. i should probably do that more often. 

ko.

2 days, 22 hours, and 24 minutes until...

i am free for a whole week. spring break cannot come soon enough. 7:50s are getting old. homework is getting old. reading is getting old. working is getting old. baldwin is getting old. vanilla chai is getting old.  spring break is the greatest invention in the world. a week away from school is so good. usually by the end of a break i miss school, and i'm ready to come back. lets hope for that. 

ko. 

40 days.

today: lent.

what i gave up for lent: facebook and other various social medias.

times i have automatically typed facebook into the address bar on the internet: 2. maybe 3.

it will be a long 40 days. but i've done it before. and i can totally do it again. right?

right.
ko.

dang it.

i spent the entire morning thinking about how much i was going to get done this afternoon.

it is 4:11pm right now. the only thing i have accomplished is finding new interesting blogs about people i don't know.

side note on that: where did all these blogging mormon mommies come from? and why do i love them so much? i mean holy cow. are they the only people who blog? and why are they so good at it? 


i will now engage in 42 minutes of homework before my date night with paige.

ko.

great.

i am sick. dumb.
i have to go to cvs and get a prescription. dumb.
i avoided going to the health center by calling my mommy. not dumb.
i am going to lay in my bed and do homework all night. only kind of dumb.

it is friday. so. not. dumb.

ko.

new.

i gave my blog a makeover. i was tired of it being the same. i think it looks fancy now. the only thing that bothers me is the header. the website i made it on wouldn't let me upload high resolution pictures, so i don't think the pictures look as good as they could. probably you didn't really notice. my favorite part is the menu bar at the top. if you click on "alaska 2011." you can read all of my blogs from last summer. you can even look at my pinterest!

i hope you like it!
ko.

test.

i figured out how to let people subscribe to my blog by email. (just for you, mom.)

this is only a test.

pinterest.

i like pinterest. a lot. but, it makes me want real food soooooooo bad. don't get me wrong, baldwin has lots of good options. but sometimes i am tired of eating spinach salads and peanut butter toast every day, and i just want some mommy food.

so, if anyone would like to mail me a casserole, i would be more than willing to accept it.

love a deprived college student.

ps. every time i refer to myself as a college student, i do a double take. it still sounds weird.

humpty dumpty

let me tell you something you shouldn't do:
put your macbook on the edge of your dresser and trip over the cord. bad things will happen. i speak from experience.

lucky for me, i have applecare (literally the best thing in the world!), and what should have cost me $900 cost me two trips to indy instead. i was without a computer for a week. it was annoying, but i managed. it feels so good to have my precious little baby back, but it is also much easier to get distracted. so, i'll be working on that.

on my way back from indy i saw some blue skies, and the sun even came out for a little bit. it made me crave warm summer so much. one of the downsides of working in alaska last summer was missing all the warm weather. but its definitely worth it.

now: homework. yippee.
ko.

writer's block.

i know that i haven't blogged in a very long time. but i'm struggling with something we like to call writer's block. (also, a little bit of laziness.)

classes are good. so much reading. but so much goodness too. my schedule is ideal. it is summit week. (that's what we call our spiritual emphasis week at IWU.) all of these things make for a happy kimberly.

things are starting to pop up for summer plans. it is annoying to me that it is only the second week of classes, and i am already thinking about/planning for the summer. welcome to college. we'll see what happens.

speaking of summer, the weather finally does not feel summer/spring-like outside. it is winter. no doubt about it. my winter coat is actually being used. go figure.

now it is time for a pb&j.
meow.

for maximum enjoyment, play repeatedly.