october highlights.

Y'all. The tenth month of the year has already come and gone. I cannot believe it! How fast the time flies. Here's a few highlights from the cool, sunny month of October.

• My cousin, Amber was in the DFW area for business and we got to have dinner!! It was fantastic to get to catch up with her about life. She is such a good mom, sister, daughter, friend, and cousin. Love you, Amber!
• I signed up for my first half marathon (that I've been wanting to run for four years now). Pumped about it.
• My precious friend, Ilianna asked me to be her bridesmaid! So excited to celebrate her and Andy's wedding festivities. 
• And another picture from my weekend at Baylor...just because it was much needed and I can't describe how much fun I had with my girl, Hannah. BFFs. For reals.

Not pictured:

• My parents visited me the beginning of this month! We just spent time together and watched football -- it was great.
• I'm really starting to love my kids AND they are starting to love me too! Jesus answers prayers. O, how unworthy I am of His Grace. 

back to baylor.

that magical time of year.

Baylor Homecoming weekend truly is a magical time. Pigskin, Friday night bonfire, Saturday morning parade, Saturday night football game...there just isn't any other college HC like it! And getting to spend the entire weekend with one of your BFFs makes it that much more special and awesome. (warning: this post contains more pictures than usual) 

Hannah and I met in Waco Friday night and had dinner at our favorite hole-in-the-wall secret, D's Mediterranean. If you're ever in the Waco area this is the place to eat! Then it was off to the bonfire.

We ran into the Chabot's too:)

After the bonfire, we were pretty sleepy and if you know Hannah and I at all then you know we needed a good nights rest for our run early Saturday morning. So after meeting up with a few of my friends from BU, we went to Chloe's apartment at LL Sams (my old home!) to hit the hay.

On Saturday morning, we went for a lovely run, Starbucks for coffee and HEB for grapes! P.S. I can't live a day anymore without a substantial amount of grapes. Substantial meaning at least 25.

45 degrees was perty chilly.

Saturday afternoon I got to have coffee with my precious, Anna and got to see Sarah Long, Ryan, Philip and Alison!!! My long lost Highland church, CG, El Salvador friends. It was great. My heart was so full. :)

S Long & Anna. 

And Saturday night you know it was game time! Sic' Em.

BU vs Iowa State -- smoked em' 

Confession: we didn't stay for the entire game -- we were winning by a lot and we were starving so we figured it was time for dinner at our second favorite hole-in-the-wall secret, Baris Pizza. But we got salads, haha. They make their own special dressing and it's to die for so a salad is just as good as pizza.

We finished off our Waco Weekend with a Sunday breakfast at Cafe Capp and a walk through campus. Sundays are always the best for strolling through campus...it's quiet and there are more squirrels around than people.

Hannah and I were discussing on our walk how different Baylor's campus is from others we've been to. There is peace and joy that you feel walking along the side walks, swinging on the swings. We shared with each other that (we believe) it's because Baylor is rooted in Christian teachings.  A few days ago, Jesus lead me to a verse in a Psalm that I feel confirmed what we said.

"Blessed is the nation whose God is The Lord." Psalm 33:12 (ESV)

And Baylor has been a blessed nation.

It was such a fun, much needed, weekend getaway. Baylor will forever have a special place in my heart. After all, this is the place that Jesus captured my heart:) And I just loved my time with Hannah. We ran, ate, sang, laughed, cried, and prayed together. Incredibly grateful for her faithful friendship.

texas state fair, y'all.

Public transportation, fried s'mores, no time schedule, and seconds away from dialing 911. I think these are a few things that would allow me to classify this post as an adventure.

In front of Big Tex.

I had never been to the Texas State Fair that is held annually in Dallas. It was on my bucket list while at Baylor, but I never made it farther north than Hillsboro. Since moving to Dallas I knew I had to make it happen. And who better to accompany me than my new friends, LG (Lauren) and Tiffani?! We decided taking the DART would be the cheapest and most convenient way to get there. So we hopped on at the Trinity Mills train station and headed south!

The forecast predicted rain so we all wore our rain coats in preparation to get wet, but luckily it didn't rain at all. As soon as we got there we started hunting down the food trailers. Isn't that the whole point of a fair? I decided on a BBQ chopped sandwich, Tiff got a corny dog & LG settled with a pretzel. We walked around and looked at all the different booths, arts & crafts. Then went and viewed the livestock. It reminded me of home. :)  We figured we had had enough exercise and wanted to eat something really good for us. We all agreed a fried s'more was the only appropriate option. It. Was. Sinful. No. Words.

We also found some fun photo props. I've always wanted to do this too!

Favorite pic of the day. Hands down. 

I felt like I was on a real vacation the entire day. The last two times I've taken public transportation was in London and Boston so it definitely didn't feel like a regular day. I had such a fun time getting to know Tiffani and LG. They are both super sweet girls and I'm thankful Jesus allowed our paths to cross at church.

After our fried s'mores, we got pretty sleepy and decided to start heading in the direction of home. Oh, once we got back on the DART we stopped in downtown Dallas to have dinner. Since we hadn't eaten anything all day. LG's favorite place is Spaghetti Warehouse and she convinced us we wouldn't be sorry for stopping. It was pretty good minus the fact I was miserable afterwards! Now it was really time for PJs and my couch. We were all so ready to be back... we hopped off the train at North Carrolton station.

This is where our evening really got interesting. As we were walking through the parking lot headed to where we had parked earlier that day, we didn't see Tiffani's car. Then we realized we didn't remember exactly where we had parked. We looked around for a little while searching for her white SUV. Not alarmed, yet. We thought from all the calories and fried food we had consumed that our brain cells had been damaged and our short-term memory was gone. Then we saw a sign we hadn't seen before. There was a parking fee --- that we didn't pay. We. Had. Been. Towed. Tiff dialed the tow service number and described her vehicle to them. The tow service didn't have a white SUV. We. Had. Not. Been. Towed. The guy told Tiff to call 911 immediately. Okay.....now we were worried. We walked up and down every single row in the parking lot just to be sure we weren't overlooking her car. No white SUV in sight. (Insert reassuring statements to Tiff that her car had not been stolen here!) THEN I had the bright idea to check our train tickets to be sure we were even at the right place! We were at North Carrolton station....our tickets said Trinity Mills station. Ding ding ding --- we have a winner! We were SO relieved we were at the wrong station. Actually, Tiff was SO relieved we were at the wrong station. Long story short there was some confusion about which train we got on earlier that afternoon. We had some friends pick us up and bring us to Tiff's UNstolen car. (Insert Tiff's joy and relief here!) :)

It made for an interesting evening and many laughs to come! Y'all so need to go eat some fried s'mores at the State Fair next year and double check your train tickets.