Graduation and Twenty-One

Though many memorable things have happened in the last few months, I have no real desire to recap all of them.  However, two major events happened pretty recently that are worth mentioning. 

First, my baby brother graduated high school!  He was in the top 10% of his class, a leader in JROTC, a lifeguard, captain of the swim team, Lead Altar Server, and took several AP classes.  I genuinely can't express how amazed I am at the person he's becoming.  From the shy little kid who wouldn't order his own food at restaurants and was content to hang out with mom all day or play video games, to the smart, popular, outgoing, kind, funny, high-schooler that he's become, I can hardly believe how much he's changed.  What's really awesome though, is how close he and I are.  We've always gotten along well, but in the past few years we've become friends.  I love hanging out with him and hearing about his life, and he makes time to come visit me and spend time with me when I'm in town.  He's headed to UF in the fall, and though I have no doubt that he'll excel there, I really am going to miss him being at home when I go back. Basically, I couldn't ask for a better kid brother.

The second major recent event is that I finally turned 21! I'm not a big drinker, but celebrating was wonderful.  So many different people in my life came out to spend the evening with me at Jellyrolls-a dueling piano bar at Disney.  I didn't drink a lot, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere and spending time with so many people that I care about.

Always Look on the Sunny Side of Life

I'm doing reading for my Social Psychology class, and right now I'm learning about self-fulfilling prophecies. It's something I've studied before in other psych classes, and it's pretty interesting. Basically, in Psychology, a self fulfilling prophecy is when you have an expectation about a person or a situation, so you alter your behavior (often unconsciously) according to your expectations, thus evoking exactly the behavior or experiences that you expected.

An example:
In one study, school teachers were told that a few of their students had done exceptionally well on a standardized test and that those students were likely to excel academically. Throughout the year, teachers paid those students more attention, allowed them more time to ask questions, and encouraged them to try more difficult assignments. By the end of the year, those students were outperforming many of their classmates. However, no standardized test results were ever actually found. It was the teacher's expectations that the students would excel that helped them do so.

Obviously, not everything in life is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and sometimes our expectations turn out to be true simply because they are true. However, cases like this make me wonder if people who have positive outlooks on life really are going about it in the right way. If we always tell ourselves that every new person we meet will be kind, worth talking to, and interesting, perhaps it will be more likely that they will behave in that way. It seems to me that maybe people had the right idea when they said "think positively!"

Ringing in 2010 in Miami

I had a great start to the New Year! On December 31, I drove down to Miami with Ris, Paul, and Tommy to see Mel and her family. It was a long drive, but we were lucky and didn't hit traffic or run into any trouble (except at Wendy's, where Tommy got yelled at for using the bathroom).
Mel's house is absolutely beautiful and we had a great time celebrating. Her family through a New Year's/Birthday Party (her dad turned 40 on January 1). I had a blast just hanging out, enjoying the fire and the fireworks and just relaxing with friends.
In the morning, Ris and I went to Mass (and managed to stay awake!), then Mel took us on a tour of Miami, which was really cool. Ris, Paul, and I hit the road and headed back to Tampa in the afternoon. We all pretty much crashed as soon as we got back. It was a long two days, but a fun way to ring in 2010!

Blessings

On May 21, 2005 Corpus Christi Catholic Church held it's first Mass in the cafeteria of Celebration K-8 School. My family attended (though I was in Colorado at the time). Zach and I both became altar servers and served often for several months as the church grew.

Later in 2005, we outgrew the K-8 school and moved to the cafeteria of Celebration High School. For over 4 years, we celebrated Mass there every week.

Last September, we broke ground on our new church building on Celebration Avenue.

And finally, on December 24, 2009 we celebrated Mass in our new church for the first time. The regular daily Mass was held at 9 am, and there were 586 people in attendance. Zach and I served with Michael Garcia, another parishioner who's been here since the beginning.

Mom and I attended the Children's Christmas Eve Mass at 5 pm...there were almost 12,000 people there. The whole family came back for Midnight Mass.

It's been absolutely amazing to watch our church grow so much in such a short time, and I feel very blessed to be a part of it all.

Now...pictures! The marble and the wood of the altar are from Spain. The Crucifix is also from Spain and was hand carved from a single piece of wood; it's six feet tall. The stained glass windows were made in Italy.

The altar, all decorated for Christmas

After the first Mass

Our beautiful new home!

The Holidays, So Far

In summary:

Thanksgiving was great. I celebrated with my roommates in Tampa, then came home for Turkey Day. We picked out our tree on Friday and decorated the house, which was lovely. Saturday I was back in Tampa for the USF/Miami football game...lets not talk about that though :(

After Thanksgiving break, it was back to school. I had one last week of classes, then exams. I finished out the semester with straight A's, but I was exhausted. However, even finals didn't put a damper on holiday fun. The Palace was totally decorated with a tree and lights and everything. Plus, Mel bought stockings for us all and we spent an evening decorating them together, which was wonderful. Just like for Thanksgiving, we had our own Mock Christmas Eve and Mock Christmas!

Once all the craziness of being in Tampa passed, I was thrilled to come home. Friends came with me to see the decorations at the Disney hotels and the snowfall in Celebration.

It was great to celebrate with everyone, but now I'm glad to be relaxing at home with my family. There's a lot more going on, but I'll wait until I've uploaded the pictures to my computer. Plus, I'm getting ready to watch It's a Wonderful Life with mom and dad!

A Fantastic Weekend!

Monday hit hard this week after an awesome weekend!

Friday my roommates and I hosted a Halloween Party (no, we didn't lose our calendars, it just worked better in our schedules this way and allowed everyone to wear their costumes twice!). We had about 40 people at our apartment, and it was a blast. People danced and laughed and just had an all around great time. I even got to see some of my old high school friends, which was fantastic! Becaue we live at the Palace, my roommates and I went as princesses: I was Cinderella, Mel was Belle, and Marisa was Ariel!

After a great night, I finally hit the hay around 5 am, which wouldn't have been a big deal, except that Saturday was the CSU camping trip! I woke up at 8:30 to finish packing and getting ready, then met up with everyone and we drove to Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton. We spent the afternoon plying volleyball and frisbee and just enjoying the beautiful weather. We of course had a relaxing campfire sing-a-long, and I got to sleep out under the stars. Sunday morning we had a pleasant prayer service, then packed up the tents and headed out.

Coming home was like coming back to reality-I had homework and a lot to do, but I'm getting there. This week is going to be busy, but only a few more weeks til the holidays, so I'm pushing through!

Downs and Ups

The weekend started out not-so-great with a rough loss against Cincinnati on Thursday night. It was a dissappointing game not only because we lost, but our crowd was basically silent and most of the fans left towards the end of the third quarter. We had a record number of student attendees (over 14,000) but that doesn't mean much if we aren't into the game. But, that's over now, and hopefully the team willl pull it together for a win against Pitt this Saturday. Our season certainly isn't over!

On a better note, yesterday I got to spend the day playing outside with friends at the Ropes Course at Riverfront Park. We spent the morning doing team building acitivities on the ground-we played Alaskan Baseball, group juggle, and other fun games. For one of the games I had to be blindfolded and wasn't allowed to talk...it was difficult, lol.
After our lunch break, we all got harnessed up and hit the High Ropes Course, which is basically a giant jungle gym, but 50 feet in the air. It takes a good bit of physical effort, and a lot of trust in your equipment, but it's so much fun. Then, when we finished playing around, we all got to zip line back to the ground!

Swinging across the "toxic river" during low ropes.

All set to climb!

On the High Ropes course

Zipping back to the ground.

To top it off, I got to sleep for 11 hours last night, so I'm rested for the week ahead!

Now off to hang out with the roommies!

Instead of Doing Homework

Nothing too exciting to report today, but it's been a while since I've updated and I don't feel like doing my reading for my Child and Adolescent Social Development class.

For the past few weeks, I've been doing some discerning about what I want to do for the next few years of my life. I've been trying to figure out what God's plan is for my life and I've come to a few decisions (I'm just praying that I decided correctly). Though I'm supposed to graduate in Spring of 2011, I've decided to take an extra year, so I'll finish in 2012. I'm going to pick up a double major in Communications (my first major is Psychology). I'm also hoping to study abroad next Spring, and then hopefully work and travel my last two semesters.

So yeah, that's the life plan for now. We'll see how it goes!

In other news...FOOTBALL!!! Tomorrow night we play Cincinnati here at Ray-J. We're the only two teams in the Big East that are undefeated this season, and we're both ranked (they're number 8, we're 21). We've lost to Cincy the past three times we've played them, but hopefully tomorrow we'll break the streak! The student section is entirely sold out, and I can't wait!!! 1 day, 3 hours, and 11 minutes 'til kickoff!

Zach's Senior Swim Meet

Yesterday afternoon I dug my purple and silver out of the back of my closet and drove home to see Zach swim in his last home swim meet of the season (since he's a senior, it was his last home meet ever). However, there was some miscommunication and the other team never showed up. It actually turned out to be alright though; they still did all the senior night events and I got to take some cool pictures. Plus, since he wasn't swimming, I just got to hang out with my little brother for a while. He's only been on the swim team since last year, but he's team captain, and from what I hear, a "beast" in the water (I've never actually seen him compete). Watching him with the team yesterday, I couldn't be more proud. For those of you who remember shy Zach who wouldn't say more than two words to anyone he wasn't related to, you'd be shocked. He's become such a leader and such a people person and is growing up in so many ways (notice in the pictures that he's a good 6 inches taller than me). I'm so excited to see the man he is becoming; I am so blessed to have such an awesome little brother.

Bulls Win Big!

I feel as though this is rapidly becoming a blog about Bulls football, rather than a blog about my life, but whatever.

This weekend was fantastic! In case you didn't hear-the Bulls beat the Florida State Seminoles 17-7 this Saturday! It's by far the biggest win in the 13 years of our football program and we came in as the definite under dogs.

Why our victory was so huge:

1. Though we won our first three games of the season, it was always by huge margins because we've only really played less difficult teams. FSU was our first real challenge of the season.
2. On top of that, the Noles were ranked number 18 and are part of Florida's "Big Three." The last time we played a Big Three team was when we lost to the Miami Hurricanes in 2005.
3. Our senior starting quarterback, Matt Grothe, tore his ACL last week and is out for the season.
4. It was the first career start for our back up quarterback, B.J. Daniels, a redshirt freshmen who happens to be from Tallahassee.
5. We didn't play home at Ray-J, we beat the Noles on their home turf at Doak Campbell Stadium.

Our defense was unstoppable. George Selvie and newcomer Jason Pierre-Paul plowed into Noles QB Christian Ponder and the rest of the Noles offensive line again and again holding on to a 14-0 lead until the third quarter. Watching B.J. Daniels dominate the team he grew up supporting was fantastic. He made some rookie mistakes, which is actually kind of awesome because it means despite how great he was and the victory he brought us, he's going to get even better!

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the game and had an absolute blast (though my throat kind of hates me right now). It was disgustingly hot for most of the game, but we barely noticed, and sometime in the third quarter the clouds rolled in and the rains cooled us down. To be honest though, it could have poured the entire time or been 30 degrees hotter and it wouldn't have mattered, the game was just that good. And it wasn't just good, it was CLEAN. I was thrilled by how the FSU fans acted towards us, and want thank all of them for their hospitality; it was great to be in Tally with you all. I'm just thrilled that pretty much everyone was able to have a healthy competitive spirit without being ugly about it.

A word from the head coaches:
Bobby Bowden (FSU): "Dangum, they're good. They beat the heck out of us today."
Jim Leavitt (USF): "It changes history."

Hanging out with our Noles friends (who were kind enough to let us crash on Friday night) before the game.

The Bulls enter Doak Campbell ready to play!

The final score! Bulls-17 Seminoles-7!

Paul and I after the game; we didn't want to leave!

Basically, I'm still riding the high from yesteday's game and looking forward to the rest of the season and watching B.J. Daniels come into his own as starting QB.

This Saturday we play Syracuse away, and our next home game is Cincinnati on October 15th! We also get to take on the Miami Hurricanes on November 28th.

Water, water everywhere...

The gang, before getting in the river!

Big splash!

This weekend I went tubing on Rainbow River with CSU. It was a really fun day! It started raining about midway through the trip all the way through until the end, and the river is spring fed, so it was pretty cold, but we still had a relaxing day.

Afterwards, some of us came back to watch the USF/Western Kentucky game. Bulls won, so we're 2-0!

Bulls vs. Wofford

BULLS FOOTBALL HAS FINALLY STARTED!

Saturday night we played Wofford and won 40-7! Our kicker, Bonani, is out with and injury, so our former kicker played last night and managed to go 5 for 5 (a serious accomplishment for the less than consistent Alvarado). Quarterback Matt Grothe will be graduating this year, so we got to check out B.J. Daniels (one of the possibilities for next year's starting quarterback) for a few plays. He looked pretty solid, so I'm excited to see how he does next year.

I had a blast at the game and yelled myself hoarse. My friends and I have decided that you can judge your fan-quality and dedication based on how much of your voice you have left after game day.

Also, we tailgated before the game, which I've never done. It was a blast. Tommy and I (along with Anne, for one of the games) won four games of corn hole in a row against John and Paul. It rained for a while, but passed quickly and didn't stop us from having a great afternoon.

After months of waiting for football season to start, I'm totally satisfied with the outcome of the first game and I'm so looking forward to the rest of the season. For those of you who don't know-we play both FSU and Miami this year, which we're all really excited about.

Next Game: @ Western Kentucky on 12 September

GO BULLS!!!

Just Livin' for the Weekend

I'm officially done with classes for the week and now I'm hanging out with my adoarble niece! Other exciting stuff coming up this weekend:

1. Babysitting for some of my favorite kids in Celebration
2. Washing and vacuuming my car (I'm far more excited about this than I should be)
3. Dinner and other birthday Celebrations with John and friends at Disney
4. Tailgating and the first FOOTBALL game of the season!!!!!!!
5. A homework/sleep catch-up day
6. Maybe ice skating on Labor Day

I know by next Tuesday I will have no desire to go back to class, but I have four days to enjoy before I have to think about that!

Let's See How Long This Lasts

I've decided to enter the world of blogging!

Now, knowing my attention span this may be the very last thing I ever post on here. But, knowing my love of talking about my life, you all could get sick of how often I end up posting. We'll see how it goes.

For a quick recap on what I'm up to these days: I'm living in Tampa and going to USF (that's the University of South Florida for all you non-Floridians, and yes, we realize that Tampa is not actually in south Florida, but whatever).

I'm living in a three-bedroom town house with 2 of my close girlfriends from church. Our place is called The Palace because, in the words of our friend John "princesses live there." Moving in was quite a process and had to occur in several stages due to summer jobs and such, but we're all settled now with pictures on the walls and food in the pantry. Here's a few shots of my bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and dining room, and the playground next door!

We've pretty much become the hang-out house for all our friends and I'm never quite sure who's going to be in the place when I walk through the front door.
Since I'm such a shy and reserved person, this is a little disconcerting.
The constant company rocks, but it makes things like being productive and sleeping a little difficult. I'm not complaining though.

Speaking of being productive, classes started last week, and so far they're...fine. I'm taking American Sign Language with my roommate, which is really cool. And in all honestly, my other classes are good too. I just wish I could go to collge without having to go to class. But, since that's not exactly possible, I'll live with what I've got, which is still pretty darn good.

And, now that I've started talking about homework, I should probably get some done!