Game Face

It was brought to my attention that you can't look at Matt's pictures on his myspace. I will see what I can do.

We won our football game last night 12-6. I didn't have any spectacular plays. I just pulled a few flags here and there and cheered on our girls. We play again on Thursday night.

This was my "game face" before we played...

We lost our softball games today. We didn't actually get to play all of our second game because of lightning and rain. I had been getting a little discouraged because I wasn't really doing anything very productive on the team. I was just getting by, not making any mistakes. I was getting some good bunts but I could never run them out and that can get to be frustrating. Well today I got on base with a bunt, a hit, and a walk! I was real excited! I made it to third base each time but I never got the chance to run home. Oh well, it boosted my confidence a little bit. I like feeling like I am actually helping out the team. Here are some pictures from today's game...

I hit the ball!!Anyway, I just got in from the game so I am still extremely smelly. Therefore, I am going to "hit the showers". BYE!

More Videos

Here are a couple more videos from the Fair...

Another horse back rider...

The rodeo clowns teasing the bull...

How bout them... corn dogs?

Whew! I have a lot to cover. First I will go back to Friday…

FRIDAY

We had two softball games on Friday against Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee. We had already played them once this month here at OC and they absolutely killed us. They beat us in both games because of the run rule. Yeah, it was bad. Anyway, we played them again on their field on Friday. It was really hot that day and everyone on the team was kind of dead. It wasn’t looking promising. I think we all kind of just expected to get killed again. Well we did pretty well the first game which got us all a little more excited. We still LOST, but we played well. So then during the second game (all of our games are double headers) we got really pumped up and we were ready to play! WE WON! It was real exciting. That was our first game to win this season. I did okay, I guess. I didn’t do anything wonderful or all that productive, but I also didn’t mess up. I just had a couple of balls hit to me in right field and a couple of good bunts that I couldn’t run out (but advanced the runner!). It was nice to win for a change! We have two more games tomorrow so hopefully we can win again! Here are a few pictures from one of our games a couple of weeks ago.

I am number 14...


Standing out in right field waiting for something to happen...


Trying to avoid having my picture taken...

Friday was also the day that we let our new rushees know if they got into Pi or not. I remember this time last year when I was stressing out over whether or not I would get into Pi. I went back and looked at my old blog and read some of the posts about my experiences during rush week. It was pretty funny. Here are a few flashback pictures that made me laugh.

We thought we were so cool...

Spelling out our Greek letters for Pi Zeta Phi...

It was BLUE DAY...

I have a little sister this semester named Dusti. She is from Arlington, TX. I think that she will be a lot of fun to pick on this week. :) Nah, I won’t be too mean. She has two big sisters and the other girl is giving her a lot to do so I’m not going to be too bad. I have a few small tasks for her to do and I am making her take me to Moe’s. (Imagine that!) This week is “Greek Week” so she will already be VERY busy with other activities plus classes so I won’t be too mean of a big sister.

Me with my little sister, Dusti

Anyway, we had induction on Friday night. First the rushees went on a scavenger hunt or something. I missed all of that because I was getting cleaned up from the softball game. After they had to walk all over campus looking silly everyone met up at the coffee shop on campus. We did all of the “traditional” induction stuff there. We ate lasagna and did the “ribbon ceremony” and introductions and all of that good stuff. ALL the same stuff we did at my induction, haha! Once we finished all of that, everyone changed out of their pretty clothes and got ready for the MESSY part of induction! To explain all of the details of induction, I thought I would return to a statement made when I went through induction. This is from my old blog:
“Hey everyone! Now that I have gone through INDUCTION, (Bom! Bom! Bom!) I am officially one of the Women of Pi Zeta Phi! My first rule of Induction was “I will not tell anyone about induction.” Soooo, sorry y’all but I can’t tell you what we did! :) I CAN tell you that it was so much fun!”
Sooo… sorry! No details! It was a lot of fun though. We actually had an all night induction this year. Last year we got done around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. This year we set up tents out at someone’s house. They had a lot of land in the middle of nowhere so it was nice. I, however, was suffering from bug bites and allergies!! I caught a ride with some people around 2:30am and headed back to campus and went to bed! Here are some pictures from the night...

Kirby and dancing the Cha Cha in the Student Center. This was the dance that we learned on the cruise at the beginning of the summer...

Kirby and I met each other LAST YEAR at induction when I found out that she was my big sister...

Kirby, Jessica and me...

Kirby, Jessica, me and Deanna...

SATURDAY

Saturday morning I slept in, first of all. I took my time getting up and getting ready for the day. I was in no rush. We were going to the Oklahoma State Fair and we were supposed to dress western. Well I didn’t have anything fun and western to wear so I went to town to get something. I found a cheap western looking shirt at TJ Max so I got that. I really wanted some boots to wear but 1. I didn’t want to spend money on any, and 2. It was so hot that day and my flip flops were sounding real nice. I just wore jeans, a somewhat western looking belt that I got at a thrift store, and my western shirt. I wasn’t even that adamant about us all wearing western clothes but Jessica and Kirby had really been talking about it a lot and how they were going to wear their boots and cowboy hats. Of course I didn’t want to be left out so that is why I went to the store. NEITHER ONE OF THEM LOOKED VERY WESTERN! Haha! Jessica DID wear her boots… I’ll give her that. I guess they were a LITTLE western, but not as much as they talked it up. :) I went with four other girls, two of them being Jessica and Kirby. We got to the fair probably around 5:45. We walked around some to check out the different attractions until the rodeo. The rodeo was sooo much fun! We got to watch all sorts of fun things. After the rodeo we saw Gary Allan in concert. He is a country singer, in case you haven’t heard of him. He is one of those singers that I never like his songs when I first hear them. He kind of has a whiney nasally voice. Somehow, though, his songs usually tend to grow on me. He sounded even more whiney and nasally in concert though. It wasn’t great. Jessica and I decided to spice things up a little and have a good time. We were dancing around and acting crazy (and embarrassing the other girls that were with us) and having a good time. I’m sure we looked ridiculous but it was fun! We probably fit in pretty well, though. I’m sure everyone just assumed we were drunk like half of the other people there. There were definitely plenty of “state fair people” if you know what I mean. It was interesting just looking at the kinds of people that show up to the state fair! Anyway, I am just going to post all of the pictures and videos and explain them all as I go.

In Jessica's car about to leave for the Fair...

Can't you tell we are so excited about the State Fair?

We stood around and watched the Indian dances for a while. It was so cool!

Jessica and I eating our healthy corn dogs from the Fair! I watched the people making the corn dogs and it was really pretty disgusting. Not to mention that the woman that gave it to me had a beard... All things considered, it was still one of the best corn dogs I have ever had! There's nothing like a State Fair corn dog...

Kirby and I paid $2 each to ride this slide. Jordan got a short video of us coming down the second part of the slide...

Kirby got a giant turkey leg...

Our yummy funnell cake! Kirby and I split one..

It was yummy!

It was also very messy... :) We may have smeared some extra on our faces for the picture...

A video of one of the events at the rodeo!

I think this was called the "Texas Trip". You can't tell how cool it was from the video - but it was really awesome!


Jessica and I at the rodeo...

Rodeo again...

We got in real late that night, probably around 1:00am. So once again, after a long day, I went straight to bed.

SUNDAY

The more the Cowboys win, the better looking this man becomes to me…

That’s all I have to say about that.

TODAY

We had a killer softball practice today. Once again, we all seemed pretty dead for some reason. We were missing easy balls and making bad throws all over the place. Coach blames all of the rush stuff going on with club. I think that is probably a pretty valid explanation. A lot of our JV team are sophomores and most of them rushed a club. It keeps you occupied, that’s for sure. BUT because we were so awful we practiced real hard. We ran a lot and did a lot of drills until we got it right. It was pretty intense.

We also have our first intramural football practice today. We are playing the new girls club, Iota. This is their first year to be a club so we don’t know if they’ll be any good or not! I don’t think they are generally known for being an “athletic club” but you never know! We played them in softball and had a lot of fun playing with them, so hopefully it will just be a good game. I will let y’all know how it goes (if I don’t die from overuse of my body first!!!).

As you can probably tell, things are still in full swing around here. Everything is pretty nonstop all the time. I will be glad when Fall Break gets here! Only a couple more weeks! By the way, I’ll go ahead and throw my sales pitch here. On Saturday, October 13th we are having an event at our church. I hear there is going to be an awesome band there called the MATT PORTER BAND! I think I have heard good things about them, I can’t remember. (By the way they have new pictures up on their myspace if you haven’t looked recently. Just click on this link then click “Pics” under the display picture. (www.myspace.com/mattporterband) The new ones are under the folder titled “Photo Shoot” or something along those lines. Check ‘em out!) :) ANYWAY, we are going to have coffee and desserts and just hang out and listen to the band! It is going to be great fun. Here is the flyer that I made to get the word out! You should come… that’s right, YOU. No excuses.

Ok that’s all for now! More to come soon, I’m sure…

Joys of Softball

One of the many joys of playing softball is the wonderful tan lines that you get. I don't have much of a line around my knees because my shorts are so long that, during a game, my socks nearly meet my shorts. However, when I wear normal socks during practice, this is what I end up with...

AND if you look real close you can see my flip flop tan lines as well. Real cool, I know. Just thought I'd share...

Softball, softball, softball...

Softball, softball, softball...

So at first when Coach stood on the other side of the plate and showed me how to stand I thought she was just giving me a mirror image of how I should look. So when she finished talking I nodded showing that I understood what she said and was ready to hit the ball. She then looked back at me as if responding, “No, you don’t understand.” Confused, I looked at her with a look that said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She simply shook her head up and down giving me the sign that, no… she wasn’t kidding. So through this conversation of “looks” and some practice, I am now a left handed bunter. Yeah, that is probably the same face that I made. I don’t know what made her decide to just switch me to the left side, but she did. She was quite proud of herself for making this decision too because, as it turns out, I am a pretty good left handed bunter! I have always really liked bunting because I have never been a spectacular hitter. So now, luckily for me and apparently the coach, I am solely a bunter. I am more confident as a bunter, too, so that is good.

We have our first softball game tomorrow, but I’m not sure that I will get to play. I hurt my quad in practice yesterday but didn’t think much of it. I figured I was just really sore and maybe stretched it a little bit. I got some Icy Hot for it and just rested it most of the evening. I figured it would be all better before practice today but it wasn’t. I went out to practice and the first thing we did was run sprints. As I was running Coach said, “Lauren, you’re running a little funny there – are you ok?” So as much as I was trying to deny being “injured” in any way, I had to explain to her what was wrong. She had me stretch it some different ways while she looked at it and she thinks I pulled it. I’m not sure that it’s really that bad, but she definitely didn’t want me practicing on it today. Since she told me to rest it for a day or two, I’m not sure that she will let me play in our game tomorrow but I guess we’ll see. I knew I couldn’t get through one month of softball without SOME kind of injury! Let’s just hope that this is the worst of it.

More softball! This past weekend we had our intramural softball tournament! We usually have a whole season but our intramural field on campus is currently being turned into the new baseball stadium! They are building us some new fields but they aren’t finished quite yet. We went to a place called Boomtown Ballyards for an all night tournament. Since I am the athletic director now, that means that I had to be the coach! It wasn’t too bad but it was a little stressful trying to remember who had already played and who is good at what position! I was real worried about not getting everyone equal playing time, but it all worked out pretty well! Here are a couple of pictures from the tournament. Sorry if they are kind of small, I had to steal them from someone else!

The team listening intently to my instructions... (Haha! Yeah right!)

Our “Pi Zeta Phi Whoop Whoop Whoop PI!” cheer…

She’s OUT!

Our team picture (those are some crazy girls!!)

Well I don’t know too much right now. I just wanted to give a quick update on what has been going on and, as you can see, a lot of it is softball! This is going to be a crazy hectic month but I’m sure it will fly by!

P.S. Tomorrow is Brad’s birthday! Don’t forget to call him!

Arrg, Matey!

Well usually I’m with Elijah when I find myself saying, “Arrg, Matey!” Not this time, though!

We had a rush event for Pi last night that required us to dress up like pirates! Kirby and I got all decked out in our pirate gear for the occasion. Of course, after we were all dressed and ready to go we decided that we really just looked like gangstas… NOT pirates. I guess you could say that dats just how I roll. (I figured if I’m going to look like a gangsta, I might as well talk like one too :))

Here are a couple of pictures from when we were getting ready…

Whereas this one looks silly, it really makes a lot of sense. After studying this picture for a little while I realized that Elijah is really a lot more like his aunt Laur Laur than we thought. I mean, really… look at these pictures. At least we know now where he got it. :)


So for the rush event we went to a girl’s house that lives right by campus. It took us about five minutes to walk there from our apartment. We got there and met up with everyone else who were, you guessed it, dressed like pirates! We all looked pretty silly and we got a big kick out of laughing at everyone! We had sloppy joes, Capri Sun and cookies… random mix, I know. Still, I didn’t hesitate to fill my plate. After that Kirby and I found some eye patches! I think someone had brought a whole bunch for people to take. Well, at least that is what we are hoping. If not, we stole someone’s eye patches! So then, of course, we had to take pictures with our awesome eye patches…


In this one, Kirby was acting like she had a hook and kept poking me with it! I think I was saying, “Kirby! What are you doing?!” Haha!


Karlie and I posing for a picture…

So after mingling with everyone for a while the party was starting to become pretty dull. So, in order to keep ourselves entertained, a few of us decided to provide our own entertainment. We went over to a section of the yard where no one was hanging out and decided to take some crazy pictures. First, we decided to attempt to take pictures of us standing on our hands. In this picture Karlie had just helped me get balanced, and she was about to help Kirby…


Kirby and I both standing on our hands (this pose didn’t last long – it’s a good thing we had a quick photographer!)


Doing handstands turned out to be quite difficult, so we decided to move on to something a little easier. Something like… jumping off a ledge and making crazy poses in the air while someone takes a picture! When I told my mom about this and showed her these pictures, she simply responded, “Y’all are retarded…” She may have somewhat of a point there. I’ll put up the pictures and let everyone else decide for themselves…

Here we are preparing to jump…

First jump! Karlie has us beat – she is way up there!

Kirby and I jumping…

After looking at these pictures again, I just honestly can’t see why someone would think we are strange. I think they are perfectly normal pictures! What do y’all think?

I’ll end my pirate stories with a nice normal picture of a lovely group of girls…


Ok, maybe not… I like this one better. :)

"Matty Mattster" Weekend

Matt came to see me this weekend! As for the title of this entry, two of my roommates, Jessica and Kirby, like to come up with different names for Matt when he's not here. "Matty McMatterson" was a popular one, but I think in the end "Matty Mattster" was the most popular. :) Anyway, we had a good time getting to hang out and tour good ‘ol Edmond, OK. When he got here on Friday I was pretty worn out. I had just gotten back from my first softball practice and I was pooped! I’ll tell a little bit about that first.

We only practiced for about two hours but it seemed like a lifetime. I am so severely out of shape! If I imagine myself in the shape that I was in during high school, it would’ve been an easy practice. But of course, I am far from being in as good of shape as I was in high school! I had been really nervous about practice because I haven’t played in such a long time. I was pleasantly surprised that, when I’m not huffing and puffing for air, I can still throw, catch and field a softball! We didn’t practice any hitting so I’m not sure how that will go, but I did okay! I am VERY sore, and I’m not sure that I’ll be in much condition to practice tomorrow afternoon but I guess I’ll have to try!

So anyway, after I got cleaned up I took Matt to Moe’s. Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love Moe’s. We hung out there for a while then came back to the apartment to hang out. We watched TV for a little while then decided to go drive around. I took him to a park in Edmond that has a neat little pond and gazebo and cute little ducks. J It was already pretty dark outside and we were walking out on the deck area by the pond when I saw something on the ground. I just thought it was a wad of trash or something and I almost stepped on it! I have a little light on my keychain so I put the light on the ground to see what it was. All I saw were eyes staring back at me! It kind of took me a minute of looking into its eyes before it hit me that this thing was alive. When it did hit me I jumped and possibly screamed like a little girl. After I scared myself and Matt with my screaming I couldn’t help but crack up laughing. It was just a silly frog! In my defense it was a HUGE frog! I think I also scared the frog a little bit because it took off for the water!

After that we went and saw a movie called Superbad. It was funny at times but mainly it was just very filthy. I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s all I have to say about that.

Matt stayed with a couple of guys here at OC that were in his youth group in high school, Jordan and Ryan. They are both a year younger than we are and they just transfered to OC. I got the chance to go to camp with both of them this summer and they are really fun guys! At first I had planned on Matt staying with someone at the apartments, but I think he felt more comfortable staying with people he knew! :)

The next morning I went and picked up Krispy Kreme donuts! They were sooo yummy. So after we stuffed our faces with donuts and strawberry milk we went over to Quail Springs mall to look around for a little while. We didn’t really find anything there that interested us much so we decided to leave. By this time it was almost lunch time (keep in mind we didn’t even wake up until around 10:30 or 11:00 or so!). I took Matt to a place called Café de Taipei. Mom, dad, Jason, and Summer have all been there with me before. My favorite thing to get there is a Thai Tea with cream smoothie! I couldn’t wait to get it in my hands and I couldn’t wait for Matt to taste its greatness. Turns out, they were out of thai tea! I was so disappointed. So instead I got a Black Tea with cream smoothie. It was pretty good, but nothing compared to the other!

We went back to the apartment and got a few things, and let Matt submit an assignment for one of his online classes then we took off for our next adventure! We went out to Lake Arcadia. I had never been there before but I had been told it was nice. We walked around the edge of the lake for a little while then found a bench shaped rock in the shade! It was very hot, so finding a place to sit in the shade was very refreshing. It felt kind of like a chick flick to me… you know, holding hands walking along the rocks at the lake with the water washing over our feet while looking at the cloudless sky and abundance of green trees? I’m sure Matt was thinking, “How much longer are we going to be here?” :) Haha! No, we had a good time just hanging out together at the lake. We had been told that there was a restaurant on the lake that had an outdoor patio seating. We were planning on going there but it turns out that the closest thing to a restaurant that they had there was a concession stand that had hot dogs and cokes. We decided to go somewhere else.

Well, where else but Texas Roadhouse! The food was, of course, wonderful. I suppose the only downside was all of the ou fans that were sitting at the bar watching the football game. When we first got there the game hadn’t been on long and ou was beating UNT by two touchdowns. I knew it wasn’t real likely that UNT would win but I was sure pulling for an upset. So I decided to make it known to the entire restaurant that I was pulling for UNT. So I sat up straight in our booth and shouted, “WOO! GO MEAN GREEN!” Everyone started looking at me and I had a few rolls thrown at my head, which I wasn’t complaining about because… well, have you had their rolls?! Ok, ok… maybe it didn’t QUITE happen that way. But I did say in a slightly louder than normal voice, “Go Mean Green!” After only a few minutes ou had extended their lead by about four touchdowns. I did get a little excited when ou fumbled the ball and UNT recovered. I only got one look from a lady nearby for my excitement about the play. It could’ve been a lot worse… those of you who know me know how much I love my college football! My dad would’ve been proud of me and found it slightly amusing and my mother would've been hiding her face behind a menu. Oh the joys of growing up with two older brothers…

After dinner we went and saw the movie Bourne Ultimatum. It was much better than the movie we saw the night before! I was worried that I would just be confused through the whole thing since I couldn’t clearly remember all that happened in the first two. It wasn’t too bad though! I thought it was a very good movie. We were pretty worn out after that so we just hung out at the apartment for a little while then went to bed.

This morning we went to a church that neither of us had been to before. It is called Church of the Harvest. It is a non-denominational church. It was different from what both of us regularly attend but it was pretty nice. The people there were very friendly and made us feel very welcome. Matt analyzed each member of the band then told me how “stinkin’ good” some of them were on certain parts. You can’t just listen to a song with Matt… he has to pick it apart. :) I usually don’t know what in the world he is talking about when he talks about certain progressions or diminished chords or whatever it is, haha! I just smile and nod… smile and nod. :)

We went to TGIF for lunch. I had never been there before, so Matt insisted that we go. It was very good! We both got the Jack Daniels chicken. I’m not sure that Matt even looked at the menu! He just kept saying, “This is one of my favorite meals ever!” It was, indeed, a very good meal.

This afternoon we just sat around the apartment. Matt just wrote a new song so he played that for me as well as a few other requests that I had. Then we played a few songs together. If it is a fairly simple song I can play the basic chords then Matt throws in all sorts of cool things with it. We did a few Colbie Caillat and Jason Reeves songs. They are some of my more recent favorite artists! They sound amazing when they sing together and they have awesome songs! We did a couple of those, then a song that Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood sing together! It was a lot of fun, but I got a little frustrated at times when I couldn’t figure out how to keep up on guitar! :) You can check out Colbie Caillat if you want… one of the songs on her list that Matt and I sang together is called Realize. www.myspace.com/colbiecaillat and you can hear Jason Reeves at www.myspace.com/jasonreeves

Then Matt had to leave. :( He had to drive back to Sherman this afternoon so he needed to get on the road. I was really sad at first but I think we might get to see each other again next weekend if things work out so that helped a little. I also ate a miniature pecan pie that my mom sent to me… that helped a lot too. :)

So the weekend is basically over for me! Back to a busy week of classes and meetings and practices! Oh man, that makes me tired just thinking about it! I’m sure it will be long, stressful, busy, and painful if my muscles don’t start feeling better!

Well that just about wraps up my weekend! We have a lot going on this week here at OC so I’m sure I’ll have more to post soon!

P.S. Here is a video of Colbie and Jason singing a song called Droplets. This is one of our favorites to sing together! We sang this one together at mom's birthday party!)