Gone

Last Wednesday was my brother's farewell ceremony.  He is in the Kansas National Guard and is on the road to Africa in Djibouti.  I know where he is going is safer than Afghanistan or Iraq, but I am still worried about his safe return.  He proposed to his girlfriend the weekend prior and she said yes :)  I am so incredibly happy for both of them.  The farewell ceremony was very emotional for me and the rest of my family (his family), but it didn't hit me until after I was on my way home.  I stayed strong for him and didn't cry in front of him, I only wanted to make him smile and laugh.  I am going to miss my brother, a year is a long time but I hope it flies by fast.  God speed Matthew, God speed.

Proud sister!

My brother and his new fiancée, Ashley!

Part of the Legion Motorcycles

One of their last hugs

I love this picture

I wanted to make him smile before he left

I'm going to miss you

Very emotional goodbye

Final hug

One of many...

Heroes fighting and protecting our country

GOD BLESS AMERICA.  Thank you to all the soldiers and their families who sacrifice so much, so that we may live in freedom!

Kat

Finally Legal!

My Birthday was February 20th and I turned the big 21 this year!  It was quite the party and I had so much fun! All my closest friends came to celebrate with me, even my best friend and cousin came to surprise me! It was wonderful!  The night started off at about 7 o'clock with Calisa and Emily!  The ladies in the post below!  Then the guests started to show up between 8 and 10 to get the party started!  Needless to say though, I did not make it to the bars.  Wasn't really in a state to go into a bar, let alone stand :)

The pictures say it all:

Shotgunned my first (shot) for the shotbook!

The roommate! :)

Emily and I about to take one shot!

Two of my BEST friends!

The Other Roommate :)

Miss Calisa!

Clearly this shot tasted awful!

One of the final pictures of the night...obviously ha!

Almost My Birthday!

Woot! Only three days until my birthday!  It's the big 21 this year and I am gonna do it big!  I can't wait!  My friends and I are going to have a party and get all B-E-A-UTIFUL! I'll post pictures when the time comes!

However, I haven't posted for awhile, so I'd figure I'd catch everyone up on life as me!  Last weekend I visited Calisa in Emporia, then road tripped to Kansas City to see our friend Emily.  :) we had a great time and went shopping as well!  I cannot wait for those ladies to come down this weekend for my bday bash!

Little Girl

A poem I wrote a few months ago.  It's a sad poem but I hope it touches the hearts of some.

Little Girl

Little girl crying beneath the covers

Pretending she's somewhere else.

She tries to drown it out

And even though it never works

Rocking back and forth 

Seems to help the hurt

Still she hears the voices yelling

Crushing each other with words

She cries harder

Little girl sitting in the hallway

Shaking in her puppy nightgown

The linoleum is so cold beneath her

Sitting on that cold ground.

She tries to stay quiet

And swallows her cries

The yelling gets louder

Little girl stumbles to her feet

Fast as she can

As she sees him raise his hand

Little girl is yelling now

"Daddy why?"

Mommy's on the ground

Tears blur her eyes

As her knees hit the ground

She looks up to see your hand

Coming back around

Your slap stings her face

As mommy's pushing you to stop

You show no emotion

Little girl is crying now

As she looks into your eyes

She knows you see what you have done

Her mommy holds her close

Rocking back and forth

But even as her mommy holds her

Her face and heart still hurt

Tears overwhelmed Little girls life

Her memories still haunt her

She still cries and shakes

And gets tummy aches

Just thinking about you

Going Snowwhere

My snowy self!

Outside my house

Again

Twisted

A tree...

Snow ripples on my car!

Snow Day!

Two snow days in a row at Kansas State University?  Unheard of but definitely true.  Snow day number three tomorrow?  Today my roommates and I went to buy another game for my roommates Wii.  We got the Michael Jackson Experience!  It's actually a really fun game.  However, I am so uncoordinated that I look like Michael Jackson with a gimp trying to dance.  Oh well!  Ironically I just opened up my iTunes and randomly picked a song without looking and it so happened to be the Jackson 5.  Neat!

It is extremely cold out but I really want to make a snowman.  Or go take pictures.  I think that is what I will do. I will return with pictures to post on here of the beautiful snow.

See you soon!
Kat

Cheesin it, but not feelin it

This is my family.  Half of it anyway.  This is my brother who recently just left to go overseas and our father at my brother's going away party.  Last night and tonight I have done a lot of thinking about my life and everything good in it.  Clearly you can tell that I am cheesin it, it's what I do best.  And although I wear a smile and laugh a lot, sometimes I do it for others.  Generally though I am sincere in my happiness but there are times when I just need to break down.  I already miss my brother and he has only been gone for three days.  I wish I had that one person in my life that I could share EVERYTHING with.  I know I have my best friends and believe me they are the greatest people you can ever meet and have in your life (Gina, Cali, Krista, Jonathan, Shelby, Kim).  However, there are always things people keep from their best friends.  But when you're in love that person becomes your best friend.  Maybe I'm lonely.  Hell I don't know.  

Music makes me happy, sad, angry, regretful, and it makes me think.  Here are music quotes of how I am feeling right now that either remind me of my life in the past or relates to what is going on in my life now:

Somebody else was here before,

He treated you unkind. 

But broken wings need time to heal,

Before a heart can fly.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it,

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Leave me alone to pick up the pieces

A daddy to hold me, thats what I needed

And a part of you might hate me,

Sweety please don't mistake me.

For a man that didn't care at all

Wanting you back to not givin a damn

I felt it all

Didn't you know how much I loved you

Are you gonna kiss me or not?

Are we gonna do this or what?

Baby you're a firework,

Come on show em what you're worth

Should I give up? 

Or should I just keep chasin pavements?

                                                              Me Cheesin It Up Again

I'm pretty random with this posting because I'm about to share a poem with you all:

Dream

Here it is,

A dream come true.

A wish upon a star,

Shining bright,

Illuminating the sky,

My dream, a longing for you.

Nor does it dim or glimmer slightly,

You're a recurrence in my head,

Constantly.

Nightly.

Light headed I awake 

Groggy from sleep

In hopes it was you touching me.

My eyes close again

Weary and weak.

You fall back into my dream,

For in my dream is where you sleep.

The closest we get,

A longing within.

I don't want to wake up again.

Because in here your hands stroke my skin,

Ever so softly you tilt my chin.

But before our lips brush,

I wake up to your touch.

It was not a dream,

And there you are smiling down on me.

Smiling back I look into your eyes,

There I found my wishing star,

Shining bright.

I wrote this a few months ago in class.  I can never seem to focus, so instead I write and day dream. :)

The end.

Until next time.

Kat

Laughs

Success!  This weekend was mostly good than bad! On Friday I spent a great night with my friend Jonathan! We never cease to have a great day together.  And then later in the night a bunch of us went to Bob's Diner to eat a late night breakfast!  I FINALLY got to hang out with my friend Rod who I missed very much!  However, Saturday was a good day!  Calisa came down and we got to hang out.  Plus the KU vs Kstate game was on at six and KU dominated.  Amen for Thomas Robinson.  He did a great job and I'm sure many people were happy to see him play well.  I received some sad news after the game that made me pretty sad, but I know that things will all be well again.  Just takes faith and hope in that good things come to good people eventually.  Waiting sucks, but it will happen.  After I composed myself, I got ready to hang out with Calisa that night and meet some new people.

We ended up going to a house party where I met a really cool chick.  She and I are very much alike which is probably why we got along so great.  She's hilarious!  I also met her boyfriend and some other people that ended up being pretty neat and I'm sure I will keep in contact with them!  But if I had to choose, today was the best day of the weekend.  Cali and I woke up and got ready for the day.  We then went to eat lunch at McCalisters and caught up and talked again just by ourselves.  It was really relaxing.  After lunch we went to the mall and found ourselves in the bookstore.  Not good.  We love reading and we love books! We got this really cool book called the encyclopedia of birthdays.  It pretty much explains a persons personality and their destiny in life according to their birth date.  Mine was dead on.  It said my biggest challenge is saying no.  Its true, I can't say no to people because I like to make people happy.  Then we walked around the mall and Cali spent a shit load of money.  We got some protein shake stuff for working out.  Yay weight loss!  Gotta get in shape for spring break! :) It was just an overall great weekend.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened but it was fun.  Then this evening my roommates and I played the game Just Dance on the wii.  It was very entertaining and that's an understatement!  Then we went to Olive Garden and came home!  And now here I sit when I should be doing homework.  Which I will do after I do a little more dancing!

Until next time
Kat

Happiness

I love my job.  I do before and after school programs at an elementary school and I also nanny a 9 year old boy.  Today one of the little boys at school was working on his homework and he was getting frustrated because it was difficult.  He proceeded to say, "This homework is hard!"  Another boy said to him, "You're hard!"  So then the boy responded by saying, "I'm always hard!"  Now these boys are fourth graders so they had no idea that what they were saying to each other sounded pretty funny to me.  Had any other adult been there, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one giggling under my breath.  It was soooo funny!  I swear kids have no idea that they are awesome.  We made kufi hats today in clubs.  I taught them facts about Ghana and showed them artwork from there, so our activity for this country was kufi hats.  We looked pretty good in them too if I do say so myself!  I was having a pretty downer day until I went to work.  The kids make me smile.  It is a wonder to me how any parent could neglect or treat their children badly because they are such a true blessing and I get to spend time with them every day.  I understand they can be a pain, I nanny so I am around children a lot.  I see that it is not always easy, but in the end they will love you unconditionally.  Or make you smile when you need to.  They have the biggest hearts.  It kills me knowing there are children out there with parents who strip that away from them.  A little girl fell off the monkey bars today.  She was not hurt, I think it just scared her more than anything.  I felt bad for her, she started to cry pretty badly.  So I did what my mom always told me to do.  I held her hand, tilted her chin so she could look at me, told her she was going to be okay, told her to take deep breaths because that always makes it better.  She calmed down and I helped her up and we walked back onto the black top.  She wouldn't let go of my hand.  This is another reason why  I love working with children.  Not them getting hurt but just how much they entrust me, their teachers, my co workers.  I get hugs everyday.  The kids run up to me the whole way saying ,"Ms. Kate, Ms Kate, Ms. Kate!" their arms wide open.  Parents are truly blessed and its a shame that many parents out there do not recognize this.  I can't wait to have children of my own (it won't be for a few years) but regardless, I know that everyday I will love them and they will love me.  In the end that is all that matters.

Farewell

Today is Friday and while most people are excited for the weekend so they can relax, I'm dreading tonight because I'm saying goodbye to my brother.  He is in the national guard and is going to Africa for a whole year.  It's not like where he is going is going to be dangerous, his worst enemy is going to be the malaria, but I am scared nonetheless.  He is an upstanding citizen who went to extra mile to support his country. He has already been to Kosovo for a year and Iraq for 8 months.  He does this with pride and I love him for all of his sacrifices.  

Tonight is his going away party and I hope it all goes peacefully.  One thing that has never been peaceful in our lives is our father.  Matthew didn't grow up living with me, he lived with his mom and step dad and I lived with our dad and my mom.  Our father wants to go tonight and may have found a ride, but needless to say, Matthew does not really want him there.  He only wants to be there when its convenient for him and makes him look good which is selfish beyond a doubt.  I love my father.  I love my brother.  But they do not love each other.

On a lighter note...

Things here in the Little Apple have been white.  It snowed a great deal and the elementary schools were cancelled.  Due to the weather I got to nanny and be excused from my classes.  I'll take nannying over school any day of the week, especially if snow ball fights are involved.

It is now time for me to get ready for work.  Until next time
Kat

And classes begin

Here we go, another day another dollar.  Except unfortunately I don't get paid to go to class.  Full day on campus is definitely not ideal, but who knows, maybe the classes won't be so bad? Ha! Who am I kidding?

Bed early tonight!

Singing Our Hearts Out

My Best Friend :)

My New Friend :)

The Girls!

Caught Off Guard

Life in Manhattan, like any midwestern city is full of fun, different things to do daily.  First my friends and I went to this posh restaurant where we ordered meals that literally took two bites to finish, then we chatted up the boys next to our table and got their numbers.  They followed us to this swanky club and got completely wasted.  Diddy was headlining the show for the evening and girls were throwing themselves at him, and if they couldn't get Diddy, they threw themselves at anything that moved.  Then from there we got quite tanked and ended up at a cozy breakfast diner downtown and ate omelets and pancakes until we couldn't move anymore.  Okay this did not happen, but if you use your imagination it could.  

My weened ACTUALLY started off rather quietly.  I went to a friends birthday party and needless to say I'm pretty sure I was the youngest there.  Which is fine, had we been playing a game based on age, I would of won, but we didn't.  Anyway we played card games to drink to.  I taught a drinking game to everyone at the party, the birthday boy lost.  Probably because I was making up rules to specifically get him drunk.  After these intense games finished, Whip My Hair came on thus the hair whipping began.  I myself became rather drunk and whipping my hair only made me want to pull my hair back and vomit (I didn't though).  After this though I called it a night.  

Saturday my Jayhawks played.  I think I could have been confused with a sailor or my father because I was cursing like them.  We won, but only by the skin of our teeth.  

Roadtrip!  My best friend lives an hour and ten minutes away.  My other best friend, Jonathan, came along for the ride.  Luckily he was with me because I ended up getting lost anyway.  Apparently detours want to lead you out into the middle of no where, probably so they can take you to some wooded area and kill you.  Okay so I doubt that, but we did end up about 25 miles from the turn we were originally supposed to take.  Google maps didn't even have it on their map.  That lost.  So, we turned around and found the interstate and took it instead.  An hour and ten minute trip turned into two hours and ten minutes.  We saw four deer chillin.  When we got their, she had other people over from the college she went to previously.  They were pretty cool girls and a few guys.  We had an epic photoshoot.  My hair was full of static.  Not a big deal.

From here we got a little bit intoxicated and Calisa and I ate an entire large cheese pizza by ourselves.  I guess you could say we were hungry.  We went to a bar, it was a western bar with a live band.  Two stepping was inevitable and I made a fool of myself by being completely awful at it.  However, I did dance with the lead singer of the band, who was 33 with two children.  Don't get me wrong a like an older man, but not 12 years older than me, with children half my age.  After the bars Calisa and I went to tacobell and dominated some crunch wrap supremes and double beefy five layer burritos.  We did not want to return home with all this in our possession, so we proceeded to eat there so we wouldn't get made fun of.  After this, there was more hair whipping until about four in the morning, which was when we left to go to a hotel.  Me, Calisa, and Megan drove to this hotel to see the band that was at the bar.  Needless to say, it was just the lead singer who had on some tight jeans, but played the guitar so it was alright.  The guitarist in the band was there, he had a come over.  He looked better in a hat.  We had about an hour jam session before we decided it was time to go...to McDonalds.  I didn't eat.  They were serving breakfast though, sure sign it was time for bed.  When we got back to Cali's there was no where to sleep, so I got to sleep in someones lap.  We left and met Jonathans aunt and uncle.  PS, his aunt is an amazing cook and made authentic mexican food.  Heaven in my mouth.  We left and I did not get lost.  It was a success.

Sunday Funday!

We got home and I passed out at 3:30 until about 6:30.  Woke up and got beautiful then did it all again.  Except the night consisted of playing wii basketball and Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Another successful, chill night for the books.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  This confuses me, only because Black History Month is next month, so you would think we would celebrate an amazing African American civil rights leader during February.  Maybe switch that with Presidents Day?  I'm going to cook tonight, but cannot decide what I want to cook. Whatever it is, it's going to be completely amazing just like me! 

Until next time folks.

Kat