You guys, I could cry. I hate to start another post out with “ya I’m actually not dead just inexcusably BUSY” but almost a year later, here we are again. I would say a lot has happened, and for me it has, but mostly it’s just college being college in that I really don’t know what free time is anymore. No but in all seriousness, most of the blogs I used to follow have eventually died off, and that is not at all my intent with this, even though it certainly looks like it. My blog is still my baby and always will be, and I have SO appreciated everyone’s support over the years. Every time I wonder if maybe what I’m doing with this doesn’t matter, you all prove me wrong, and to repay you, I write once a year, so I am truly so sorry for that.
But, thank God for winter break, and I am starting back up again. I’ve also learned through a lot of trial and error the level of busyness I can maintain and the level that I’m actually comfortable and balanced at. Going into my next and hopefully last year of school, this blog will be much more of a priority for me in how I schedule and spend my time. For now, I’m still so appreciative of all I’m involved with now and just savoring this break to hopefully start making a crack at getting somewhat consistent with my writing again.
Enough on that, now; I’d really like to hear how all of you are doing. I want to share some pics with you of what I’ve been up to as a little preview of some of the things you can expect me to write more in depth about later. The good news is that while I am SO behind on blogging, I still journal regularly and take tons of notes and pictures, so I will never run out of blog post ideas. I also am constantly coming up with ideas for videos on my YouTube channel. There’s only one right now, my generic welcome video, but I still have plans for that, too. I’m just slow, but I’ll get there!
Anyway, a huge source of blog post ideas for me in the future is college so far and my experiences with it. I’m still at Iowa State but studying advertising instead of graphic design now, which has been a nice change. I’ll write more on that in itself. College has been a positive change in several ways but it has also made me feel things I wasn’t prepared to and, in the process, made me reflect on and reconsider a lot of things. Obviously a new season brings new deliverance but also lots of new challenges, so that is something I will start recapping and writing about extensively. By the way, even though this post is going to be very life update-ish (the title doesn’t lie hahah), these other posts I’m referring to will be more of what you expect and enjoy—I always say “my lessons learned” and I really need to come up with something new, but essentially, they will be posts on how my faith has continued to grow, what God is teaching me, how I’ve overcome certain things and struggle with other things, etc.
This summer, I also had a beautiful season of answered prayer and wonderful joy. I got an internship with Parks Marina in Okoboji, working in retail at two of their boutiques: West Boutique, which was a new gem to me, and Palm at the Park in the Emporium, which I’ve wrote about here, AKA the store that sells LILLY PULITZER that I love. I never could afford anything there before because Lilly Pulitzer is really expensive, but that all changed with their generous discounts and my first Big Girl Money.
I got to stay in Estherville with my grandparents, which was such a blessing; they were SUCH generous hosts and I will always be so thankful to them for that time. I didn’t get to actually see them as much since I was working most of the time, but it was so nice still being close to family throughout the internship. I also know and love Estherville, and while I’ve loved Okoboji, too, I didn’t really know it as well because we spent most of our time in Estherville. This summer, I got to really know and fall in love with Okoboji, too. I worked with AMAZING people; Nancy and Carlee were amazing managers! It was all around an amazing time of my life I’ll always cherish. It showed me a lot about what I love and want to be doing in life.
Now I’m back at school but on break for several weeks yet. College the second year has definitely not been as joy-filled. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of things are better and enjoyable, but there are so many challenges that come from being at a public university at this day and age. I’ll write a lot more about it in the future; I’m definitely always being challenged to grow more in my faith. For now, because I know all I’ve done is talk about my life and what I plan on writing about, I’ll share some pictures of the summer. I always want to do a post like this when I haven’t been active in awhile, just because I feel like it’s weird to show up suddenly and be like here’s a post on quotes about feeling lonely—which is a post I’ve had ready to publish for a year now but never got time to. So that will be the next post after this. 🙂
One of my favorite parts about this internship was the involvement I got to have with the store’s social media and styling because of me being an advertising major. For West, particularly, I got to post to their Instagram Stories almost every day, and my managers let me pick out clothing and accessories to take pictures of and model, too. West, in particular, is located in a stunning location, right by West Lake, so it was a blast getting to walk around by the store and find locations to take pictures in. Parks Marina also owns the convenience store right by the boutique and some of the docks, where their cruises and rentals are, so there were tons of possibilities for modeling and photography. I feel like that’s something every girl dreams of, doing some modeling, and at least I’ve always wanted to, but not in the yucky, exploitative way most professional modeling is done, so this was such a fun outlet.
Another fun opportunity I was blessed to be part of were the two wine cruises Parks Marina held, one promoting West and another promoting Palm. My managers and several of my coworkers all got to model various outfits from the boutiques while the guests got to taste various wines. We got to cruise around West Lake on one of the marina’s yachts, so that was definitely special. So many little dreams I’ve had of things I’ve wanted to do around Okoboji came true, and I give all thanks and glory to God for that, the One who promises to provide our desires when we seek after Him (Matthew 6:33).
One of the main ways God was faithful was how He provided me with a car. I got to have my mom’s old Acadia in agreement that I would pay the rest of the loan off and then it would become my car. It was (probably still is…) a horrid time to buy a used car, and for awhile I really thought that’s what I was going to have to do, but my parents were very generous in looking out for me and wanting me to go through them instead at this point of my life, what with not knowing how stable my credit would be and taking out a big loan on my own. My mom ended up getting a new used car instead, which kind of worked out for all of us because her Acadia is getting older and eventually going to do something we won’t mention because she’s a great car and she’s going to be with me as long as I need her. I was so worried about all of that for awhile but God really worked it out perfectly. Again, much more on this to come.
Another experience over the summer was this FREE Jake Owen concert right at Arnold’s Park! Some generous donor had paid for the whole thing, and I thought oh my gosh, he’s a big country star right now and it’s going to be FREE; how could I not go?! We only heard him on Grandpa’s country station every day! I talked my cousin Kir into coming down for the weekend and we went when I got off work, and one of my super sweet coworkers had actually gotten their boat anchored nearby and invited us out to watch the fireworks afterwards. Another dream!!! The concert was quite the experience that deserves its own post in the future complete with several observations because my word, was it crazy. I would never do something like it again, but part of that was my own fault for venturing into the pit. Still, it was fun, and more than anything, I was so grateful for the time Kirsten and I got to spend together laughing and talking. I don’t get to see people as much as I’d like to anymore, so I’m really glad we had that time together. Her mom got to come down, too, and even Grandma made it out to the concert! It was wonderful seeing Corrine, as well, and they got to see some other relatives at the concert, too. They listened from the comfort of their lawn chairs like we’d planned. 🙂
See, look at all the people around us below. They were EVERYWHERE, clear out by the park. We were only in the pit to take a video of him first starting. Waiting was almost unbearable, so we bailed as soon as we got that.
I worked a lot of hours over the summer for two reasons: one, being in a retail position up there over the summer requires lots of hours, especially on the weekends and the 4th, their busiest times. That was no big deal for me; of course I expected that. But I also asked for as many hours as reasonable because I have a spending problem I intended on making the most of during the summer. That’s right, I never bought anything from Lilly Pulitzer before; when you finally get an employee discount, you take advantage of it. It was another huge answer to prayer for me. Obviously it’s just clothes; the answer to prayer for me was more so in seeing how God can open amazing doors to delight us when we trust in His timing. That will also get its own post. But I was so grateful for all the clothes, too; He does know I enjoy them and has been so generous in blessing me on that front. I wanted to make sure I had disposable income left over after my car payment and gas were paid for. Gas was so expensive over the summer; I still think it’s too expensive now, but it seems like it’s finally on the decrease. While my grandparents still paid for way more food than I wanted them to, there were still some other expenses I needed to make sure I had money for, but other than that, I wanted to keep a couple hundred dollars every time I got paid to buy clothes with my discount!!! I’ll show you a picture of everything I got at the end; it’s a little insane. I definitely don’t feel the need to spend that much anymore, but it was my first big job, and actually it was an incredible experience for me in starting to learn to manage and budget my own finances, which I’ll also write more on later.
So after this concert, I had my two days off. It was on a Saturday and I was going home on Sunday to go to an ortho on Monday. My grandma was going to travel back with me; it was the only night I spent home all summer. I definitely missed my family, especially MY DOG, but it was also such a fun summer that I couldn’t dwell on that. So after going home for the night, I came back and went to work Tuesday, where I started feeling incredibly sick. I thought I was just run down from all that running and the concert, but then I started feeling more dizzy and congested than I ever had in my life, and I had to go to the hospital after work. And that was it, I had the ‘vid. The worst part was that as much as I tried to isolate myself as soon as possible, I almost killed both my grandparents because they got it in a matter of days. Thankfully, my mom came up during my quarantine to drop my brother off at our uncle’s up north, where he sold fireworks for the summer, because the three of us just dropped like dominoes one after the other. She took my grandma to the hospital and calls me on the way back saying something to the effect of Grandma may have COVID but wants you to know she’s not afraid to die and I’m like UHHH no, that’s not going to work for me; I’m not going to be the one who killed her. 🤣 I felt so bad but they were such troopers.
Somehow, my mom didn’t get it, thankfully.
COVID was horrible for all of us, though thankfully not life-threatening. My grandparents were able to get medicine right away, and I just had to power through it. I also had two other random injuries that were weird and awful on top of it that I may or not share in the future because one is rather embarrassing but remains one of the most painful things to have ever happened to me. I was back to work after my quarantine of five days, and I was ready to be back by that point.
The drive from Estherville to ‘Boji and back was one of my favorites. So many beautiful views of the landscape, listening to Christian music that I now associate with my time up there. Iowa does have some of the best sunsets.
My time doing social media marketing with Carlee’s tripod opened my eyes to the possibility of getting photos all on my own, so when I went home, I took one of my brother’s tripods back with me and put it to use. It’s still in my car and, this summer, if I stay home, I want to go on tons of sunset photoshoots around our area because I may be biased, but we have some of the prettiest views where I live. They’d make great photos for future posts.
My mom came up by herself one other time when we were all doing much better, thankfully. My cousin Amanda also came down for a couple weeks around that time, so we all had some great time together, too.
Yep. There’s all the stuff. Couldn’t even fit it all on the bed. To me, it just again shows the faithfulness of God. Obviously this was only possible because I’m young enough where I didn’t have a lot of bills, I got a very generous discount, and I budgeted like I was on a mission to accomplish this, and I was. I definitely don’t expect this going forward, which is a big reason for why I wanted to go all out over the summer. Living on less than $10 between pay periods and spending your whole check within 24 hours just isn’t sustainable forever, but for a season, maybe. 😂
My last big update…over Thanksgiving break, my 10+ year journey with orthodontics and braces finally ended! This is my last picture with braces:
It felt so weird the first time I saw my teeth; at first, they didn’t even look natural to me because I wasn’t used to seeing them finally “naked” and actually aligned how they should be! But I am so grateful—I love them.
Here are some of the photos that Parks Marina’s awesome social media manager, Megan, took of me and posted on the stores’ social media. She was so kind and fun to work with over the summer.
It was such an amazing season I will always thank God, my family, and the whole team at Parks Marina for. I’m also grateful to still be continuing my education at Iowa State and for the other jobs I’ve had since. I am also so thankful to YOU, for reading all this! This post has been very “me” heavy and recap-ish, so I would love if you please leave a comment on this post or on my social medias about what’s new in your life. Let me know how I can pray for you, as I know life always has ups and downs. And of course, I’d love to celebrate your wins with you, too.
Now that you’re up to speed on where life has taken me over the past several months, I feel a lot better about catching up on the “usual” content! It’s really exciting to have so many ideas for posts and videos, and I’m so eager to get to work on all of them for you. Please never hesitate to let me know what you want to see, too; I’m very receptive to your requests, if you have them!
With all that being said, I want to wish you a very merry Christmas. I can’t believe it’s only in a couple days!! I know this season can bring a range of emotions, between society’s expectations of the holidays and the fact that life’s difficult circumstances don’t just stop for the holidays. My family has really appreciated everyone’s prayers for us and my grandma Cheryl as she’s battling cancer. It’s been a different, more difficult season for us with that, but it reminds us to always be thankful and grateful for each other and God above all. Please remember that the beauty of Christmas is that Jesus and our hope in Him are never dependent on circumstances. He is here with us and at work through the very real mess and hurt that life can be, and He has been and always will be victorious. I’m very excited to continue writing about Him in the future. Thank you all for bearing with me!!! I pray for all of you. You are such blessings and I pray that your life will be filled with them—His presence above all.
