Awesome Friday Evening!

Tonight was small group night and it was epic and awesome. Let's just say that Michael and I have the best small group ever. The reason I'm writing my blog so late is due to the fact that I was with my awesome group for the entire evening!! 15 of us hung out all night!

We first met up at the Mall Food Court and enjoyed our own individually picked out dinner. Michael was on call tonight but luckily he arrived only 20-ish minutes after everyone else. We enjoyed the always awesome Sarku Japan Teriyaki Chicken. MmMmMmM!

After everyone finished up their meals we had some time to waste because we were going to the Lexington Green Cheapies for movie night. The creative juices in us were definitely flowing because we created a mall scavenger hunt on our own and on the fly! Yes, this is definitely something a high school youth group would do but we totally rocked it, up until the mall closed and basically all of the lights had been turned out. We split up into 2 teams and ran all over the mall. Examples of things we had to find were, a confederate flag belt buckle (which our group created on our because apparently these buckles are a very popular thing at the Fayetter Mall, thank you Kentucky), a naked mannequin, and a bear wearing a tutu, just to name a few. Another item we were supposed to find was "Santa", well we found a Santa hat and asked an older gentleman with a beard to wear the hat, he was confused but the cell phone pic was pretty spectacular! It was definitely fun and we all had a good laugh. Luckily for the competitive couple that Michael and I are, our teams "tied", so there were no sore losers for the evening!

The group had originally planned on splitting up after the mall for girls and guys night at the movies,  but unfortunately the movies that had been decided on earlier in the week had changed so we had to pick a movie on the fly. Everyone decided they wanted to see the same movie, so we all went together like a big happy family, it was wonderful! The girls sat in the row in front of the guys while they tried to throw popcorn down our shirts, and yes we were the rowdy ones in the theater, it's okay to act immature, no one knew our ages! :)

Nicole, our "leader", had the awesome idea of buying the large free refill popcorn and split it amongst the group. What a wonderful idea, no one had to fork over a ton of money for overpriced popcorn and each row of girls and guys had their own bucket.

The movie we ended up seeing was "Due Date" and I thought it was hilarious, some of our group was even seeing the movie for a second time and still cracked up seeing it again. I think a comedy was the right choice for us tonight. Also, I can't complain about a $2 movie ticket.

Let's just say I loved this night. I loved getting to hang out with my small group and having real fun together and acting like big goofballs. I loved that my husband was able to make it and spend the evening with us too. I am blessed to be around a great group of friends! YAY Friday!! Now on to an awesome weekend!

hmmmm....

Well it's getting to that time of the night where I realize, crap I need to write something in the blog. Today was pretty uneventful and I don't have anything that is really begging me to write about it. I guess I could bore you with the stuff I did today or just keep you waiting at then end of your seats.

I guess the one thing that I will mention is that Michael and I got "Inglourious Basterds" from our Netflix recently because I had never seen it and we watched it tonight. Oh, my goodness, what a LONG movie. Michael was telling me that his Dad didn't like the movie because it was not historically accurate, well he was definitely right in that! No where close! But I still enjoyed my bag of popcorn during the movie and turned my head and gagged every time they scalped a Nazi or engraved things in people's foreheads. GROSS! Although, the movie did have it's funny parts, I will give it that. And I love Brad Pitt, he is hilarious! "arrivederci" *with super country accent* :)


My professor mentioned a movie today, in class, that I had never heard of, "The King's Speech". Has anyone seen this movie? My professor (accounting professor mind you) said he ranked it up with "The Social Network" for movie of the year but I had never heard of it, he showed us the trailer in class because we were discussing presenting skills. The movie does however have Colin Firth (who was in 2 girly movies I do love, "What a Girl Wants" staring Amanda Bynes and "Love Actually" starring a slew of British actors) AND Helena Bonham Carter (many of you may know her as Bellatrix Lastrange in Harry Potter or Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd"). So my professor has peaked my interest and I may see this movie. Here's the trailer:

I hope you have a great Thursday evening! I am super pumped about my 4 day weekend ahead of me, lots of fun stuff to do, people to see, and maybe a little homework here and there! :)

Forgetfulness and Dragging molasses clocks!

2 things for the day:

First of all, I hope I am not the only one that has done this but it happens to me all the time...

So remember in high school when it used to be cool to write stuff on your hand, like "Ashley loves Michael"? Well remember when you were in college and you wrote stuff on your hand merely to remember things because you're brain was starting to leak gook because of all of the knowledge you were consuming?

 

Well remember when you were in grad school and nothing you did could help you remember? Case and point below.

So yes, writing on your hand is kinda not very professional, but sometimes when the only resources you have is your skin and a pen, you have to "make it work", in the words of Tim Gunn. My Dad used to get on my ALL the time about writing on my hand and how it was trashy, so yes, I understand.

Back to the story, yesterday I wrote 2 different items on my hand that were extremely important to remember. Well the thing about writing on your hand means you must be concise. There's not a whole lot of space to work with. Well when you are crazy, like me, apparently one word to describe something important is definitely not enough, or maybe the word I chose to describe this was too vague? But when I went to look at my hand, I had no clue what my descriptors were telling me to remember. FAIL right? I feel old at the ripe age of 22, is that sad? Frustrating yet funny at the same time

Item #2 - today, in class, it felt like the clock was literally stuck in a glass of molasses or was really tired of being a clock and took a nap during the 3 hours I was in class because my day DRAGGED. I felt like I was looking at the clock every 3.4 seconds. That was dreadful. What is more dreadful is when you are hungry in class with a slow clock and it's getting dark outside *yawn, look at clock, yawn, gurgle of stomach, look at clock, yawn*.

 

What makes it worse was that in the 10 minute break we had between classes, I decided to try to fix at least one of my problems. I ran as quickly as I could to the vending machine to grab a quick snack. Well I think God wanted me to save my money or he was playing a not so funny joke on me. I quickly picked out some cookies that looked yummy and went to throw my money in. OK, well it spit out one of my quarters and it wouldn't take it. so I asked for my money back, silly machine only gave  me $1 out of the $1.25 I inserted. I had my mind set on these cookies and asked the UK dining dude for my quarter back, which he did. So I tried the same process with all quarters this time, well the vending machine was very rude and decided it did not like quarters and spit all of them out. Let's just say that my snack crusade was another FAIL for the day. I reluctantly pouted back upstairs to class for another hour-twenty starving and tired.

Thankfully I survived the eternity that was class today and am very thankful to be at home lounging with the computer trying to remember what I meant by the 2 words written on my hand!

Amachi

Well right now my husband is out with Mr. Steve Schutzman shoveling sidewalks to make some extra cash, so tonight has been slightly lonely but somehow I have been able to totally forget about my post until like 11pm, please forgive me blog readers, it will be posted before midnight though to keep to my resolution! 

*I will go ahead and warn you, this is a long post, but I believe it'll be worth your time to read it*

So today I wanted to talk about a program that I am involved with in Lexington. The group is called Amachi. Many of you probably have never heard of Amachi because I had never heard of them until they came to CSF recruiting. Amachi is a part of the Lexington Leadership Foundation and is a non-profit grant funded organization kind of similar to Big Brother, Big Sisters with a little twist. 

Amachi means,

who knows but what God has brought us through this child

Amachi's main goal is to "assist children of incarcerated parents in achieving their highest potential by engaging them in consistent and committed mentoring relationships with people of faith and/or good will."

Basically, Amachi matches a Mentor (me) up with a Mentee (child) meeting the conditions above. One of the things that immediately drew me towards Amachi was that it is a Christian Organization. It's ok to talk about church, God, Jesus, etc. with our Mentees and I love that. I  originally heard about Amachi at a presentation given at CSF's Synergy fall of 2009 I believe. I am a huge service oriented person and had been wanting to be in a Mentoring role for a while. I knew when I heard their announcement that it was something I was definitely interested in. So I applied, interviewed and went to the 2-3 hour (dinner provided, always a plus) training.  I was sooo ready to meet my mentee. What I didn't realize was that there is a matching process, which matched me with a mentee who had similar interests as me,  and that took time, I was finally matched in the Spring of 2010, although some people's matches are much faster.

Let me introduce you to my mentee, Adrielle: 

We have made 2 visits to the Lexington Humane Society, we love animals!

Playing with Bubbles at the Explorium Kids Museum in Lex

Adrielle excited about her Christmas present

Dressing up like a Jockey at the Explorium

My mentee's name is Adrielle and she is 9 years old and absolutely hilarious! She tells the funniest stories and loves to be a mommy to our puppies.  The dogs actual listen to her and let her dress them up in her coat and stuff, it is hilarious, they look miserable but they don't fight against it at all! :) Adrielle and I have done things like painted pottery, gone to the explorium, walked the dogs, played tennis a few times, gone to the park, eaten out, consumed a lot of ice cream, and the list goes on. It's a great experience for me to have such a positive, fun-loving person in my life weekly too, I feel like our relationship benefits the both of us equally! :)

  Amachi asks that you give your mentee at least 1 hour a week, or see them 4 times a month. Which is easily done because we have so much fun together! Amachi also requires that you keep your Mentor/Mentee relationship for a full year, at least, in order to allow your mentee to have something stable, reliable, and constant in their lives and to allow them to open up and connect with you.

Last November I was asked to join the Advisory Council of Amachi. I accepted right away. Today we had a meeting and I learned some stats that I thought I could maybe share on my blog and maybe see if any of my friends are interested in having an Amachi relationship with an awesome kid!

One thing that I heard today is that there are about 40 boys/young men right now, still waiting to be matched. Amachi doesn't have problem matching the girls because they get plenty of eager women to be mentors. I just really hope and pray that maybe a guy friend of mine will read this and find a yearning in their heart to take on this mission and mentor a young gentleman. I can think of plenty of guy friends off of the top of my head that would be an excellent mentor, it doesn't take much to be a mentor, you should, ya know, just hear me out! ;) PLUS mentoring a boy seems pretty easy to me, basketball, baseball, video games; guys really, it's not like you're not doing this already, why not bring a totally cool kid along with you and have a blast while doing it?

Adrielle has a brother that is a year older than her and he had been waiting for months upon months to match,  I would let him hangout with me and Adrielle a lot because he was jealous. Thankfully, he was matched about a month ago, but he had been in the Amachi system for a while.  I can tell you Adrielle's brother was SO excited to be matched with a really cool guy. So far that I know, his mentee has taken him to a basketball game and Adrielle's brother LOVED it. Every male needs a positive male role model in their life. As do girls with a positive woman role model.

Another thing that was mentioned to me today was that they are in need of a Spanish speaking person to help them with interviews with potiential mentees and their parents. It has been harder to reach this community because they don't have anyone to help out with this. If you know anyone who may be interested let me know. We are definitely wanting to reach out to the Cardinal Hill area in Lexington, it's just hard when you don't know much Spanish!

If you don't have the time to commit to a relationship like this there are so many other ways that you could help this AWESOME organization. For example, Amachi just created door hangers that they will be distributing in their target neighborhoods around Lexington. They will definitely be needing help distributing those (they printed 1,000 hangers, that's a lot of doors!). Another way to help is to donate. You don't just have to donate money, you can also donate things like basketball tickets, movie tickets, giftcards, sports equipment, games, fun things, etc. Things that help a lucky mentee/mentor group have a fun activity to do that they probably wouldn't have been able to do without your help. Lastly, if you are connected with any media outlets or would like to advertise Amachi at your church, small group, etc please feel free to contact me or go to the Amachi website that I have linked at the bottom of  my blog.

Just think about how you can positively affect a child in Lexington's life. I promise you, it's worth it!


http://www.amachiky.com/

Sweaters and Bird Poo

So instead of boring you with another day full of Ashley, I'd like to discuss two things that kind of annoyed me today. 

1. Hungry Sweaters - Hungry Sweaters you say? What does that mean? I think you know very well what that means. You know when you are wearing a cute sweater and throughout the day the sweater continues to grow and stretch and then by the end of the day the sweater has basically eaten you?

Yes, well this happened to me today and I found it rather annoying. Michael got me this cute sweater for Christmas and I really like it so I wore it for the first day of class today. Well as the day progressed I had to keep adjusting the dag' on thing to keep it from falling off my shoulders, exposing my bra strap, etc. Not to mention that I also had awkward stretched out elbows. You know the kind where you straighten your arm and you have elbow boobs? Yes. They aren't fun, they aren't comfortable, and I do not like them. From all the stretching and tugging to adjust my sweater downward all day I ended up with what may be fashionable now-a-days but totally unintentional, a sweater dress. My sweater was so stretched out it definitely could have become a trendy little sweater dress with tights. FAIL. 

With the thoughts and self consciousness surrounding my sweater all day I was left with this lovely and addicting song in my head all day!

Yes, Weezer's very own, Sweater Song, called Undone.

2. Complaint/Annoyance #2 from the day has to do with birds and their unsightly, clumpy poo.

Birds, may I ask you a question? Ok, why do you feel it is necessary to group up into your big groups of friends/bullies and release everything you have in your body on ONE car at once? I feel it is completely unnecesary and rude! What did my car ever do to you. And why do you always pick my car?

I walked out to my car today to find my white little snow-white (that is here name) covered in icky brown bird poo. gross. WHY birds WHY?! I had breakfast with my Dad this morning and he made me feel real cool when we were walking out of the restaurant.  He felt it necessary to mention "how good I was taking care of my car".  Thanks Dad, I didn't realize my car was super nasty, I love driving a bird toilet around the city! :) Yeah, so my once white car is now a lovely brown color and since we are anticipating a snow storm soon there is really no chance of me rectifying the poo situation.

I am so sorry Snow-white, I hope you forgive me :(

K, so, this isn't my car and it wasn't this bad but still, birds are bullies, uncool!

There ya go, now you know what REALLY was annoying me all day. Were you attacked by hungry sweaters or fiber filled birds today?! I hope you weren't ! :)

Overfed and Underexercised

Sundays --- OH Sundays....how you make me feel fat and lazy (Yes, i know it is the sabbath, the day of rest, but I think I may rest too much?!). These days always begin with good intentions and end up with laziness and bloated bellies! Let me just describe to you a typical Sunday:

1. Wake up, drop the dogs off at Gma and Gpa Kasten's house (Michael's parents) and go to 11:30 church at Southland (which I love, and it gives you plenty of time to bum around in the morning!) This weeks message was awesome. They are doing a series called "There's an App for that" and this week they spoke about religion. If you are interested in hearing it, it's most likely on Southland Christian Churches' Website! :)
2.  After church all we have to do is conveniently drive across the street to the Kasten's home where we have Sunday "lunch", which should be more properly titled "Sunday Feast".  "Lunch" doesn't normally occur until around 2pm. Many of you would qualify the amount of food we consume as a typical Thanksgiving meal. Michael's mother is an amazing cook & every Sunday she prepares delightful food in large proportions. For example this Sunday we had: Chicken, Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Roasted Veggies, Peas, Corn, and Brussel Sprouts (which were for Mamaw and Jan :) ) & that was just lunch. For dessert Jan whipped out Peanut butter and chocolate fudge & individual homemade blueberry or cherry tarts. Jan is known for ALWAYS having multiple dessert choices.  Me being the sugar fanatic that I am always ask for the "sampler". Let's just say after a Kasten "lunch", a nap is normally needed & recommended.  
3. During the prep of lunch we all lounge and our dogs watch Jan cook, clean and do whatever she does in the kitchen. The dogs get spoiled at Grandma's and get lots of leftovers or scraps of meat to fill their bellies. So after a day at the Kasten's our little guys are pretty sleepy too!
4. That is why it is always the opportune time to watch Sunday afternoon football! Sadly this Sunday another one of my teams lost and this time it was the Philadelphia Eagles in the playoffs. Let's just say this weekend was a BAD weekend for ALL of my teams!! :( 
5. After we get a good rest in we head back home with a drowsy, food-drunk dogs and maybe watch a little more football until around 6pm. At this time we head over to a small group. Our small group consists of about 8-10 newly married (0-3yrs) couples from Tates Creek Christian Church (this is the church where Michael and I got married). Our group is awesome and full of hilarious, fun loving, Jesus loving couples that I have come to adore more and more each week. We all definitely have a good time every week and are able to learn a lot from each other and about God along the way. This group is one of my favorite things during the week. We have become close enough to be friends outside of group too :) . We have had board game nights, girls movie nights, Christmas parties, and Thanksgiving Parties with. We are so blessed.
6. Around 9pm we are finished gabbing and chatting at small group and head home for the evening where Michael and I crash from our utterly exhausting lazy days. 

We are spoiled people, but thankful for it. I love every bit of our lazy Sundays and wouldn't change it for the world. Maybe sometime in the future though I could fit in a workout to negate a little bit of my over-eating on this day! :) I hope you all had a lazy, enjoyable Sunday. Whether you were snuggled up at home all day watching movies or football, hanging with family, or whatever! Tomorrow is the first day of classes for me so it's looking like it's about bedtime! Goodnight!

Snow, Football, Basketball, and Gymnastics

On this lovely Saturday morning, Michael and I woke up to a snow covered world. I had recently just said our snow accumulation had slowed down a bit and then here came the snow! Michael immediately headed outside to capture his photo of the day with our spiffy camera and snow hungry puppies! Here it is! I like it!

Our doggies LOVE running as fast as they can through the snow. I think Willis really likes it because it feels good on his feet. I don't know if you all know, but Willis' feet turn out, kind of like a ballerina's, and sometimes I think he has a lot of pain in them because he licks them a lot, but yes, that is why I think he is so snow crazy. He is sooo cute in the snow too, since he's all black he comes inside with a white snow covered nose and it's adorable!


Since we got a good amount of snow I took the authority to decide that we were going to go sledding! Michael and I have never been sledding before and we got snow tubes and a sled for Christmas and we HAD to put them to good use. We blew up the intertube (which took forever), loaded up, and drove to Shriners on Richmond Road.

Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

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 We had a great time, we were definitely the oldest ones there by far, I think the oldest kid there was probably 7 but we had a good time any way!

Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

Next we headed back home to watch the UK vs. Pitt bowl game. Let's just say disappointment, for those of you who don't know, we lost, and yes it was embarrassing. Well, it was just a disappointing day overall for UK sports, we next headed to a cigar bar in Jessamine County (Michael's friend from high school opened this place and Michael and our friend Andy Yocum wanted to check it out, smoke is definitely not my favorite thing to hang around) to watch the UK vs UGA basketball game. Which sadly again, we lost and shouldn't have lost. Sad, sad day. 


Immediately after the heartbreaking loss, Michael dropped me off at Memorial on campus to meet Amanda Myser and Brittany Meyer to watch the UK gymnastic team's "excite night", which is their first meet of the year. It was fun to catch up with the girls AND I LOVE GYMNASTICS! What these girls can do is amazing! I totally wish I had stuck with gymnastics as a child, I wish I could flip myself around 10 times at any point in time! Well these girls rocked it, We were up against #13 ranked Illinois and Northern Illinois, we were ranked #20 and we were awesome. I love the girl's floor routines, especially the UK girl's routines, they are very soulful and fun! At least one UK sport won today! GO GIRLS!


Well as much as I'd love to type more, it's late and I'm sleepy, it's been a long day!