life lately, according to my iPhone pictures

A lot has happened in 2 weeks...

I graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas with my MBA!

Some of my extended family came into town for the occasion

and my mom cooked an amazing meal.

A lovely co-worker treated me to lunch

at a precious teahouse called the Chocolate Angel.

These guys have been helping me plan my India trip for

Ashish's wedding - and I leave in less than a month!

Doesn't this look like a Norman Rockwell painting?

What a great Christmas.

And we had my aunt, uncle and cousins over to my parents'

house for Christmas dinner. I love my cousins - haha.

Oh, and I got a new car! Although I don't have a picture of it yet...

Forts, Feathers & Finishing

Hello there!

Oops, it's been a month since I wrote last. What have I been doing? Good question. Let's see...

My dad is amazing & ran 100 miles on the Elliptical,
raising $6,400 for the National MS Society.
18 hours, 28 min.
He is my hero.

Plus he got a really snazzy belt buckle.

I went to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time in
ten years and immediately got a headache.
(pic of my roommate haha)

The Gamenight Groupies cheered the
Lake Dallas Fightin' Falcons onto another b-ball victory!
(While posing for the pic, some of the players were like,
"Who are these people?" Haha - We are obviously beloved.)

P.S. We were awesome cheerleaders and we even
(almost) did a human pyramid! And the middle school girls
asked us to lead the crowd in the "Falcon Rumble" cheer.

We have now hosted our first two Standard dinners, raising
about $200 for A21, an organization that fights human trafficking.
We will continue to host dinners every 2nd & 4th Thursdays.

Oh yeah, and I survived the blizzard of 2011.
My roommate and I made a fort (which we slept in),
I invented a new sport (snow surfing), and our group ended up
throwing paper balls at each other to try to knock over plastic cups.
Cabin fever, shall we say??

Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep up with school,
getting involved at Gateway, and hanging out with friends and family.
BTW, one of my friends who is a new Christian was baptized tonight!
So excited for her! (2 Tim. 2:8)

Country Music & Being Lazy

Now that we're about 2 wks into 2011... Happy New Year!

"What are my New Year's resolutions?" you ask? Well, this year I just have one: BE LAZY.

I have decided that I invest waaaay too much energy and effort in things - with little marginal results. It comes with the territory of being a partial perfectionist. Last semester I stressed out about school and then found out that I got all A's and aced my Finance mid-term (which I thought I had failed).

Haha, we'll see how long this lasts before I start color coding my closet again (I wish I were kidding).

I'm also turning over a new leaf this year - Country Music. I used to make fun of the "hicks" who listened to country music. But I now have 2 country radio stations programmed in my car and find myself singing the Zac Brown Band, Tim McGraw & Rascal Flatts. And I must say, I like the song "Good Directions and Turnip Greens" ; )

Anyway, here are some pictures from the past few weeks that make me happy!

Our pretty tree - complete with the 1980's,
wooden Mississippi state Christmas ornament : )

Me & my awesome (and highly energetic) 2nd cousins.
Don't know if you can tell, but Ethan had chocolate ALL over himself.

bahaha - Nancy w/Angel Tree gifts

My Cohort went ice skating after finals and we were
transfixed by the Zamboni...

...and I love that someone took not 1, but 2 pictures of us.

So, funny story - This pic is of the American Airlines Center before
the Trans Siberian Orchestra show. I walked in and started to
legitimately freak out. I normally do fine with heights,
and it doesn't look like it from the pic, but these seats were
high up there. Nancy tried to distract me with funny stories from
work while I tried to look at my shoes and not get dizzy.

I was glad when the show started.

Trans Siberian Cookies!

Instead of a girls trip to the Nutcracker Ballet this Christmas,
we got our group together to go see the
famed Tran Siberian Orchestra.

We felt so grown up hosting
appetizers at our place.

The guys

The girls
(Can you tell the guys have been MIA lately??)

Me and my roomie

***

Making cookies!

Me & Nancy, our amazing baking queen

Thanksgiving in Pictures

This post has been a few weeks delayed due to finals (which are now over!)

Some of my fellow cohorts came over for their
first American Thanksgiving.
Three guys from India and a girl from China.

Delicious food!

Homemade sweet potatoes = YUM

In keeping with the Christmas song,

my cousin's kids and I told "scary ghost stories."

As always, Callie assumed everyone
came over just to see her.

International Student Dinner

Two weekends ago, my family had the pleasure of hosting three international students for a dinner at our house. My mom is involved with the International Student Fellowship @ UNT and we had three girls over (from South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan) for some good ole' Texas BBQ and peach cobbler. I think they were most impressed with the brownies & ice cream though!


The girls were so funny because they started taking pictures almost the minute that they walked through our door. I was Asian for the night and held up my peace sign for all the pictures. ; )

After dinner I tried to teach them how to play dominoes, but realized I don't remember how to play! Where are Hannah's grandparents when you need them?? So instead, we set up all the dominoes in cool designs and watched them fall. Lol - Momo kept knocking them over before we were ready, so she was banned from touching the table.

I made new friends. Yay : D

Totally feeling this song

Mercy Me - No More, No Less

Life Lately

Things have been so busy and I probably should be doing homework or reading instead of blogging. Such is life.

Last night I went to my first Gateway Pink event (their women's ministry). It was a night of worship w/Kari Jobe and it was absolutely amazing. I went with some ladies and had a wonderful time worshiping the Lord. He is so good!

On Wed, we did a scavenger hunt for OB. My team went to the mall. The highlights:

• Find 2 ppl in conflict & guess the reason why: We chose what looked like a rich Plano mom and her spoiled daughter arguing outside a Bath & Body Works. The reason for the conflict? It was, in our opinion, bad parenting.
• Do something creative: Matt did an indoor wake boarding thing for 30 min! A good b-day present.
  
• Eat the weirdest food we could find: pickles with salt, chile and lime...nobody wanted a second bite.

In school, I finished midterms and I'm now working on projects. The highlights:

• Turned in a 67-page Stats project - got an A
• Submitted a group ratio analysis project on Fluor Corp - got an A!
  
• Took the accounting final (8-week course) - grade TBD
  
• Took tests in OB (Organizational Behavior), econ and marketing
• In Prog: Marketing project - Dallas Guitar Lessons. Going to the Guitar Center on Sun to pass out surveys. Oh joy.
• Start Finance next week - kinda nervous, heard it was challenging. My college finance prof was a new teacher and in his class, a 65 was curved to a B...

There's a lot more, but that's all for now, folks!

Being Italian

Coffee shops are my weakness.

I don't drink coffee, but I absolutely love going to hang out with people. It's what I like to call "being Italian." When my family went to Italy in 2003, we were so impressed at how the Italians would simply sit outside in the piazzas and people watch for hours. They would talk and laugh, drink coffee, eat a delicious dinner with family and friends, go get ice cream and take a quiet walk - it was amazing to watch. Their pace of life is so much different.

It's like that with coffee shops - everything seems to slow down and become less hectic when you sit and talk over a nice chai tea latte or cup of hot chocolate.

I had one of those evenings at my favorite restaurant (Fadi's) this weekend. My 'sister' Bashorat came into town and took me to the ballet to see Cinderella! We had a few hours between church and the ballet, so we were able to catch up over some wonderful Mediterranean cuisine. The ballet was amazing, by the way! I never knew the story of Cinderella had fairies or dragonflies. lol - and the evil stepsisters were played by men! They made it more like slapstick comedy.

What a good night. : )

Birthday Celebrations & People I Love

Mr. & Mrs. Turner! - We went to this great Italian restaurant (the home of the singing waiters) in Fort Worth to celebrate Zane's 21st. He's married and legal now ; )

Lauren's 24th! Brownies, ice cream, popcorn & a movie. Check out that flame - and, yes, Ryan and Josh are holding the candles (the brownies & ice cream weren't sturdy enough lol)

Me & my awesome roommate Diana

Christina's House Warming Party - ORU girls reunion

Labor Day Kickball Extravaganza! So we kicked a hole in the kickball and had to go to Wally World to buy a new one. But there weren't any, so we had to settle for those cheap, plastic bouncy balls that were totally unpredictable in the Texas wind...I pitched a mean game and Team APR (the Annexation of Puerto Rico) won!

Why I Eat Celery

a) It tastes good.
No, not really. I mean, compared to chocolate... Is that really fair though? After all, celery is a vegetable.

b) To lose weight.
Studies have shown that you actually burn calories when you eat celery (the action of chewing burns more than the 15 calories you are consuming). That's nice and all, but I always eat celery with peanut butter and that definitely undermines any weight loss goal.

c) To attract guys.
Studies have also shown that when you eat celery, your body gives off a certain scent that the opposite sex finds attractive. I have no idea how they thought up this study, but as college girls we thought it was a great idea! Why not? So my roommate and I stocked up on celery & PB and I introduced my Swedish friend Matilda to the great American tradition: Ants on a Log. Good times!

Does it really work though? Hmm...the jury is still out. I'll stock up on celery & PB again and let you know.

My Future Husband

How easy is it to mail a package to Sweden?

Three weeks ago, I visited Tulsa to see one of my best friends - Matilda - graduate from ORU. She is from Sweden and while packing her bags for the return flight, she realized she simply could not fit a small stack of pictures in her bags (3 of the 4 bags were already 20 lbs. overweight and nearly bursting at the seams. You can imagine the travel fees she racked up.) So I calmed her fears and proclaimed that I could just mail them to her. "Really?" -"Sure. No problem."

Back at the Lewises place in Louisiana, the post office is on the other side of town. It took 3 weeks before I was able to make the long journey. I got ready one Monday, only to realize I didn't have her address. After several phone calls, Skype attempts and emails, I got a hold of her in Sweden.

Confident that I now had all I needed, Bekah and I decided go to the post office the next day - she needed to mail a stack of envelopes and buy stamps. So, at 4ish we were finally ready and headed out to my car. From the pool Ahava yelled, "WHERE ARE Y'ALL GOING?" Annoyed, Bekah answered, "TO THE POST OFFICE!"

Suddenly, I realized aloud, "Oh no! I don't have the package! That would have been a tragedy." Bekah laughed, "Oh my gosh, Katie! Seriously." ...and then realized she didn't have her envelopes. We sheepishly scurried back to the house, gathered our items and ran back to the car.

We finally made it to the post office (we brought a book to read out loud for the car trip). We got our things and made it to the door, only to realize - it's 4:34 and the post office closed at 4:30. Dumbfounded, we stood there staring at the posted hours on the glass door, then looked at each other and began to laugh. Bekah ailed, "Man! This is the 2nd time I've done that this month! I can't believe it!"

We ambled back into the car. "Hey, isn't there a UPS or FedEx store on Cypress?" I asked. Bekah responded, "Yes, you're right. Let's go there." We found the FedEx store and Bekah got her stamps - which she had to pay $8 tax for b/c it was a FedEx place and not a USPS. I walked up to the counter and told the man I needed to mail a package to Sweden. He stared at me and said, "We can't do that here." - "Oh, okay. So you can't ship to Sweden?" - "No." ...I later asked, "So out of curiosity, why can't you mail this to Sweden?" -"I don't have an international postage machine here."

Fabulous.

"Hey isn't there another mail store - a UPS - on Cypress?" I asked Bekah. -"I don't know." -"I think there is! Let's find it."

And hooray, there is a UPS on Cypress! I walked up to the counter, "Hello. I need to mail this package to Sweden. Can you do that here?" The guy gave me a blank stare, "Uh..." A kind lady walked up from behind , "I think we can do that, hun. Let me check." She went to the back. (tick tock, tick tock) She looked at me uncertainly, "We can mail it, but it will be $14.78." -"Okay, great!" With relief she finished the process and handed me my receipt.

So how easy it to mail a package to Sweden? From Louisiana, it's just that easy!