Selfies

Last night I ran into a great friend of mine, Emily Walker. She got on to me about my poor blogging habits, so I decided to blog today for her.

I was uninspired until just a few minutes ago though. Two of my roommates who share a room {Heidi and Audrey} are making a "selfie board" for an empty frame they have in their room. It's quite a funny little idea actually. If you're unfamiliar, a "selfie" is a picture taken of one's self by one's self; usually on a camera phone for the purpose of sending to a friend for a good laugh.

In my experience, selfies are not pictures that you take yourself too seriously in. They were asking for any selfies that I had of myself of friends to add to their collection, so that got me looking through my phone's camera roll....I had quite a few selfies of myself and others to help them out, but what I had even more of were mirror pics that I had taken to send to friends when they ask me what I'm wearing that night.

You know how it goes...you don't really know what to wear, don't want to be over dressed or under dressed, so you ask your friend what they're wearing and you attempt to match their fashion genre. After one time too many of taking an hour to type out in great detail to a friend exactly what I was wearing, I found it much more efficient to just snap a picture of what I was wearing and send it on these nifty little smart phones we all have these days.

So, all of this is to say that today I expose my selfies, as shameful as they may be. The hilarity comes from the NUMBER of these that I have........So...here we go...

(High school 50's party) "Amy, is this too much?"

Senior "golf pro" themed party "Amy, this is what I came up with. What are you wearing?"

Wedding summer before freshman year of college 

"Amy, I took the straps off, changed the waist, and brought in the sides. Can you tell it wasn't supposed to look like this?"

"New Years 2011, you?"

These next few are GREAT. I started sending "I love you" hand messages to the friends who received the outfit updates". I am so stupid. 

Not my best outfit

Getting my sister to "okay" my outfit for my interview at Free People

Getting my sister to "okay" my outfit for my second interview at Free People. The must have not been feeling it. I do not work at Free People

Do I look less dumb when I make that face? No, more dumb

"Too much for a lunch date??" sent to roomies

"Look what they're making me wear for the Taste of Addison performance. The girl they ordered it for originally is 12."

"Annie, is it ok if I borrow your boots?"

"Which shoe do yall think?" sent to roomies

"Rina, is this too much color?"

"What are yall wearing tonight? Are the wedges too much?" group text to allie, amy, and audrey

"Amy, I think it's going to be coldish in NY when I get there. Is this a good plane outfit?"

"Do yall like this dress for dinner on Friday?"

"Laren, wachu wearin?"

So...those span from high school to now...but dang...that's a lot of mirror pics. And I still remember all the text conversations about them. My life is too exciting for my own good.

You know you do it too.

Nothin but love,
Bethany

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday to my dear ol' dad! Not every girl can say she's got a dad who rides a motorcycle and holds the title of "America's Funniest Dentist".  But Sarah and I can.

Nothin but love,
Bethany

After April 11th

Yesterday my dad asked me when the last time I blogged was. Shamefully, I admitted that I didn't remember. I held on to the thought for about 20 seconds and then I continued to watch USA dominate the world in the olympics.

This morning, a friend reminded me that I had not blogged since April. This series of events has led me here. to my first blog post of the summer, just a day shy of August.

Gahlee where do I begin? I guess I'll start with New York, though that was not the beginning of my Summer adventure. I left for the Big Apple at the end of May and stayed until the end of June. New York changed my life.

I went to dance with a company called Parsons. I lived in a little Marymount Manhattan College apartment with several other girls and I loved every minute of it. I danced Monday-Saturday from 9-4 and I explored the city by night.

Representing A&M in ballet class

Rooftop bar/lounge in Manhattan

I don't believe there was one moment that I did not enjoy myself. The people are nicer than they get credit for, the crazy people are crazier than the Dallas crazies, and the tap water is more delicious than anyone leads you to believe. This is coming from the biggest water snob you'll ever know- I filled my water bottle up with tap water to take to dance every day and I didn't make a nasty face after drinking it down. I genuinely enjoyed the taste of tap water. I could go on and on.

The company members were wonderful and beautiful and talented. They taught all of our classes. Every one of them could have a full time job modeling in New York. They are THAT good looking. The sickening part is how decent they all are. Not just decent, legitimately good people.

I came a long way in my dancing and really fell in love with the Parsons style. However, on the very last day in the studios I fell out of a jump and sprained my ankle pretty badly. Forgive me for posting a pictures of it.

Only beginning stages of the bruising and swelling...

I had to wear this brace. What a beaut

Thank goodness my mom and sister came up the day it happened to spend a few days with me. Hobbling around that city was super uncomfortable, but I was determined to not waste my time there...even though I had to go back to the hotel a bit earlier than the group to ice my ankle a couple times.

Mom, Sarah, and I eating in little Italy. Bum foot conveniently hidden under the table where it is awkwardly propped up on the extra chair 

I was fortunate to not have anything happen earlier than it did...I would have really missed out on some good stuff at the intensive...but it was sad because all I wanted to do when I got back was keep going without losing momentum- I was so inspired! However, I guess God decided that the only way He would get me to slow down was to sprain my ankle to keep me off of it. Oh well, guess I did need the rest. I've been seeing a great physical therapist (Landan Webster fyi) who has gotten me feeling exponentially better every time I go in!

I'll let this be my New York post, and maybe try to think of a few good stories I can go into detail about  for my next post. {Oh gosh, I'm verbally committing to another post in the near future. Remember when I posted every day two summers ago? What happened to me?}

There has been much more excitement between April and now that I hope I get the blog fire burning inside of me enough to tell ya all about it! Thanks for the reminders, guys.

Go USA! {And by the way- screw the gymnastic judges who are out to get the women's team. Jordan Wieber not being in the all-arounds is a conspiracy if you ask me}

Nothin but love,
Bethany

Dad got a blog

Everyone check out my dear ol' Dad's new blog! Any flair I have for writing has been a direct deposit of him in me. Seriously, this man is eloquent. He's funny, too!

You can find his blog at drstutsman.blogspot.com...or click HERE!

Just felt like doing a little photo montage.

Nothin but love,
Bethany

"What Makes you Beautiful"

The title of my current blog post is the song title of a new, pre-pubescent boy band called New Direction. Shamefully, I have just recently become obsessed with their song "What Makes you Beautiful". I do not use the word obsessed lightly in the last sentence.

It's not like a listen to it a hundred times a day or even have it stuck in my head all the time. (This also isn't the same Jesse McCartney situation that I found myself in in 7th grade- this is much less severe, thankfully) It's just that every time I hear it, I cannot help but stop what I'm doing, sing every word, and abandon all formal dance training I've received in the last 18 years to flail my body without care and punch-dance myself to exhaustion. ((punch dance should not be confused with fist pump))

If you haven't heard it, it's better than it's chart-topping rival, "Call me Maybe". Pshhh.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a top 20 girl. I like real music sung by real people. There's just something about the beat of that song that makes me weak.

Check it it out HERE

Here are some harsh realizations that I am making while I watch this video for the second time:

1) The boy in the first shot looks like a girl I know
2) Said boy from #1 loves to point at the camera and at the air. Watch for it
3) My favorite is the boy with the fluffy hair. You'll know who I'm talking about.
4) Said boy from #2 is also probably the youngest. Cool.
5) I am coveting the one boy's red pants.
6) Said boy from #4 looks like a sailor
7) All of their shirts would be too small for me
8) Boy bands LOVE capri pants
9) Those girls totally know they're beautiful. I don't buy it

I definitely didn't have time to write this blog post tonight. And it's embarrassing that with all the cool things I have to fill you guys in on, "What Makes you Beautiful" took priority.

I hope that, even if you didn't like the song as much as I do, that you at least got a laugh or two at my expense.

I'm going to bed, but tomorrow I'm gonna be smiling at the ground all day in hopes that the right boy might witness this mindless ground-smiling and fall in love with me because I must think I'm ugly.

Nothin but love,
Bethany

Drew Jacoby

Yes, I know that when I decided to come home to Dallas over spring break it was because I needed to rest...but then I saw something online about a master class by Drew Jacoby near by so I had to sign up.

This post won't be lengthy (seeing as how I started it on Sunday), but I just want to make it very clear how cool this class was.

I'll do this by showing you very impressive pictures of Drew, the girl who taught my class.

I'm not sure that she knows how to NOT take an impressive picture. Anyway, it was a contemporary class, not ballet, but wow......it was just so cool. She seems to be a real weirdo, herself, but the kind of weirdo that you want to be more like yourself.

After class she came up to me and was all like, "Oh my gosh, I live in New York, submersed with the best dancers and talent in the world, but I have NEVER seen the likes of you! You must leave here with me and let me take you to New York to let people learn from you." And I was all like, (in my head) 'ha I just made that entire scenario up while I watch her stand 10 feet away from me talking to someone else that she doesn't know about her awesome class.'

Yeah, if that was confusing, just know that I lied about the things Drew said to me about how good I am. She said nothing of the sort.

Well ok, wait I'll give myself some credit. When I went to thank her for class, she asked me if I danced on pointe, and I said that I hadn't in a long time, and she said "Oh, darn, yeah you were amazing in class and I need dancers who are comfortable dancing pretty technically on pointe." I think I'll send her my info anyway, knowing that she will probably never contact me...but I've got nothing to lose.

Anyway, that's Drew Jacoby. Look her up- she's got some awesome videos out there!

Nothin but love,
Bethany

Woah...a lot just happened

So when was my last post? I don't even know (because I can't see the last post from where I'm typing...you can just look down to see how big my gap has been)

Giving you every detail would undoubtedly loose your attention, so I'll narrow my focus and talk about dance. So dance has been absolutely running my life since I got back to school after Christmas break. I was at the studio every day all day in classes and rehearsals. I literally got into the habit of replying to friends when they asked if we could grab lunch or something with, "How about in March?" It was crunch time. The dance program's big annual show, Perpetual Motion, was on the 24th and 25th of February. Normally we do a show on Friday night and a show on Saturday night, but after selling out both of those shows, they added a matinée show on Saturday afternoon. I danced in 5 of the 8 dances each show, so needless to say, I was EXHAUSTED after it was all over and done with.

Funny thing about it being all over and done with was that after we finished our last show on Saturday, it was definitely not over and done with.  We had Sunday to rest and pack, and on Monday 8 dance students left in a 15 passenger bus for Laredo, TX. We were going to a college dance conference called ACDFA, or American College Dance Festival. I think I talked about it a bit last year. However, this year, it was hosted in Laredo. Hmm....Laredo, TX? You might recognize the ring of that from the commercials for the television show featuring Laredo. It's called "Border town Laredo: the war on drugs". We were all pretty alarmed to say the least.

Laredo ended up being a lot less drug-infested than we anticipated...although we never went farther than walking to the huge, white, miniature bus...to the school...and back to the hotel in the creepy white bus. The campus where all the classes and performances were held was A&M international. TAMIU. This got a bit annoying because we were never sure if we were making ourselves clear enough that we came from TEXAS A&M (not to be confused with A&M International). So we always found ourselves over-explaining. "We're from A&M...Texas A&M. In College Station....the real one..............ya know? Gig em." No one really cared to pay much attention to the explanation.

We performed on the first day and then took classes for the rest of the week. We got back yesterday and I slept from about 2 in the afternoon to 8 this morning, getting up a few times in there for food. The whole week (starting on the bus ride there) I read the Hunger Games. I finished the first one in a couple days, and now I am in the middle of the second one. Wow. I really didn't want to like them because I'm a diva and would rather not be caught up in the same trendy books that everyone else is, but there's no denying it- I love the Hunger Games.

If you haven't read the series, there are two boys who love the main girl, Katniss. One is Gale, and the other is Peeta. The author has a way of making you love both of them equally, but in different ways, and I finally realized that the main reason that I was so into the books was that, in the back of my head, I had convinced myself that I would get to have whatever boy Katniss didn't end up with. There were lots of problems with this mindset, apart from the fact that these are fictional characters in a fictional book. However, it reminded me of when I used to watch Ryan Sheckler in junior high and get upset when my friends talked about how cute he was because I felt as if Ryan and I were together. As if he the feelings that I had for this skateboarding teen heart throb were in some way mutual. Embarrassingly enough, this situation reminds me of my Jesse McCartney phase. We won't get too into detail. I'll I'm saying is that remnants of this phase still hang from my ceiling. Now Jesse McCartney pictures seem completely arbitrary, but my bed used to be positioned under the pictures where they still hang....even after we re-decorated and moved my bed. And I'll also add that I wrote him a birthday card on this 18th birthday. He never wrote back. Phase over.

Well I've officially gotten myself on a tangent. I'll add some pictures from ACDFA and Perpetual Motion. If I can get a video up from rehearsal I'll do that too!

Feast your ears, dear readers...I've got lots of free time now :)

Nothin but love,
Bethany

Pray

Hi friends!

I've been wanting to post about this for some time now, but I guess I just haven't had the time to give it what it deserves.

One of my closest friends, and roommates, Heidi, received a panicked phone call from her sister on the Wednesday night before we were to leave school for our Christmas break. Her sister let her know that their mother had suffered, what they later learned was a stoke induced seizure, in the living room of their home where she and her mom had been watching tv that evening.

Less than an hour from receiving the phone call, before even learning what exactly had happened to her mother, Heidi and I had loaded her car and sent her on her way to her family's home to be there for her sister and family.

Thankfully, Heidi's dad was at the house when it happened, and was able to take control and get paramedics to the house asap. Heidi's mother was taken to the hospital where the doctors ran tests and concluded that she had endured a stroke in her brainstem, which is known to be an especially serious area of the brain to be effected.

Heidi's mom stayed in ICU for a couple weeks, and the last week or so in the stroke unit of the hospital, thankfully, she has now been released to a rehabilitation facility where she will remain anywhere from 4-8 weeks.

She has remained completely aware for the most part through the entire process, however because of the trachea tube in her throat, she is unable to speak. Slowly she has gained enough control over certain parts of her body to move them minimally. Heidi's dad has done an awesome job of giving friends and family daily updates on facebook, and when being asked about their home's ability to have a functioning wheel chair for her, they responded by letting doctors know that she planned on walking out of rehab!

The Thomson's are one of the most spiritual and faithful families I know. There is no doubt in my mind that God used them, and Mrs. Thomson, because He trusted them to take a situation like this and make it point back at Him. They are 100% optimistic and hopeful that, eventually, Mrs. Thomson will gain complete functioning. And when she does, I know she will give full credit to her Jesus.

Please pray for her swift recovery.

Last New Year's Eve...she had ALL of Heidi and her older brother's friends at their home to ring in the New Year  2 years in a row!

Nothin but love,
Bethany
craftybethany.com

I MADE A WEBSITE!!!

Attention, attention! I finally did it! I made a website! 

Check it out, spread the word and let me know what you think!! {Suggestions welcome}

click here!

It's called craftybethany.com because "nothinbutlove.com" and everything else I tried was already taken...hoping to think of something more creative, so if you have an idea for that it is also welcome!

Kinda weird putting yourself out there like that, but hopefully I will find it beneficial......crossing my fingers!

Nothin but love,

Bethany