happy birthday blake!

happy 24th birthday to my wonderful husband!

we'll fling our green and gold afar

today begins baylor homecoming!! i am so excited to join in all the festivities with all my fellow bears. AND we are having house guests! super exciting. in honor of baylor and to kick off homecoming weekend (our 100th homecoming!) i will share some of my favorite things about baylor.

1. the campus. in general. if you have never seen baylors campus, you have really missed out! its so beautiful.

beautiful pat neff.

view from the burleson quadrangle.

2. the bears. we have not one but two live bears on campus. how cool is that?! their names are lady and joy and one of mine and blakes favorite things to do on campus is go visit the bears. (in fact blake goes to visit them on a very regular basis.)

lady and joy doing a "sic em"

3. the traditions. from the baylor line running onto the field before every game to cheer on the football players. to the homecoming bonfire and homecoming parade (largest collegiate parade in the nation thank you very much). and dia del oso where baylor students get a day off from class to play! i just love baylor traditions. i hope i can join in the tradition of starting a family line of baylor-goers in the future!

blake and i with two very famous bears at the homecoming parade last year. jeremy wariner and reggie witherspoon (part of the 2008 olympic gold medal relay team) and me wearing a gold medal from bejing!

4. sing! anyone who hasn't seen it/been in it probably doesnt appreciate it. but let me tell you, its awesome! sing is a giant off-broadway type singi ng and dancing competition. and its a HUGE deal at baylor. all the sororities and fraternities spend months preparing and its all a big secret until the opening night. the top 8 acts go on to perform in pigskin revue the next semester during homecoming.

before one of our shows during my senior year.

alpha chi omegas sing act last year. choreographed by one of my besties laura! it was awesome!

5. friends. its where i met my best friends. i met the most amazing people of my life at baylor. i lived with the same group of girls all four years. they and my other amazing friends, our "honorary roommates", are the greatest friends a girl could have! im so lucky to have such amazing people in my life who i know always will be.

hanging out at our apartment junior year (me, katelyn, amy, katie, stefanie)

at the homecoming bonfire i think junior year (briana, me, katelyn)

at alpha chi semi-formal senior year (katie, amy, me, laura)

our "senior pics" (katelyn, me, stefanie, amy)

6. its where i fell in love with my now husband! we knew each other from back home and had gone to school together since 1st grade but it wasnt until we ran into each other on campus that any sort of romantic relationship began. he transferred at the beginning of our junior year from the university of kansas. and im so happy that blake loves baylor just as much as i do and shares my same desire for our kids (and grandkids, and great-grandkids) to go to baylor!

going to diamondbacks for our 1 year anniversary.

at a baylor basketball game

at our last alpha chi formal

blake and i at my graduation

and then at blakes graduation

and those are some of the reasons why i love my baylor! i cant wait to make many more baylor memories this weekend.

"That good ole Baylor Line, that good ole Baylor Line.
We'll march forever down the years, as long as stars shall shine.
We'll fling our green and gold afar to light the ways of time,
and guide us as we onward go.
That good ole Baylor Line!"

have a great weekend!
xo,Lindsay

the perks of being a texan.

this weekend blake and i attended the heart of texas fair and rodeo. it was a real last minute thing but oh so fun. his dad got some free tickets to the vip tent so blake and i figured since we didnt have anything better to do on saturday night we might as well head down to the fairgrounds for some free dinner, free drinks, some rodeo action, and a little live music.

we got there early so we decided to walk around and check out the rides and food vendors. we of course began our day with the petting zoo. thats right, we were the only adults in the whole thing without a 3 year old with us. but what can we say..we love petting zoos! and when blake saw they had a llama in there, he really couldnt resist.

blake and his new friend

random...

after the petting zoo (and washing our hands with TONS of soap) we ended up stumbling upon the livestock show and was that a treat or what! talk about feeling out of place around all the kiddos showing their "heifers". then we headed over to the locked and loaded tent for some free georges. now this tent is about a dream come true for blake. free food, free crown, big screen tvs everywhere playing all the football games, what more could a guy want?!

we then headed on over to the colluseum to meet his parents for the actual rodeo. blakes first rodeo to be exact. before kicking off the festivities (rodeo finals..there were definetly festivities to be had), there was a prayer. before the prayer, the guy made a little intro and ive been thinking a lot lately about what he said. im so proud to live in a country where i can go to school where i want, go to church where i want, and that we can pray together publicly! how great is it to be an american?!

so being the rodeo finals, we got to see all the best cowboys in all the different events (my favorite of course being bull riding). for anyone who has never been to a rodeo, about my favorite thing in the world is the mutton bustin. basically little kids (we're talking like 4-7 year olds) ride on the back of sheep. yes you heard that right. they ride sheep! how cute is that?! towards the end of the rodeo, one of the horses collapsed and we were later told he had a heart attack. that just broke my heart. poor horse. i have definietly said my share of prayers for him.

after the rodeo, we headed back to the tent to finish off a fun night with some tracy lawrence and more free drinks. hows that for a texas saturday night?!

tracy lawrence concert.

me and hub.

but in all honesty, it made me re-realize how much i love texas. as blake and i get excited and plan for our future, the idea of moving from texas has come up often. it would probably present us with better job options and it would give us the opportunity to blaze our own trail and discover something new together. and although i love those ideas, i just love living in texas. i love to live in a place where people are proud not only to be an american but to be a texan. i love living in a place that supports our country, our soliders, our God, our neighbors, our children, and each other.

so that being said, no matter where i live i will always be a Texan and proud of it!

xo, Lindsay

austin city limits

this past weekend was one of the greatest weekends of the year in austin. austin city limits music festival is a HUGE musical festival (i mean we're talking like 8 stages, 130 bands, 3 days). it started when i was in high school and i have only missed 2 festivals since then. since last year was one of those 2 years, i was even more pumped for this year.

when early bird tickets went on sale (over a year ago), i realized it was over my bday weekend so i talked blake into buying our tickets waaay before we even knew who would be playing. so when 3 of blakes favorite bands just so happened to show up on the lineup a few months later (dave matthews, pearl jam, and the toadies) he was just as pumped as i was.

our weekend started out by picking up blakes brother ross from the airport and heading to my friend lauras to get her and katie. we enjoyed the nice weather and the pretty grass on friday while listening to kings of leon, reckless kelly, and some other amazing bands.


saturday was a very rainy day but that didnt stop us from having fun! luckily we were able to find a few panchos (every single store in austin was sold out..luckily my dad had 2 in his car?) so katie, laura and i stayed fairly dry. blake and ross on the other hand...

going into the festival before the serious rain began.

waiting for dave matthews to start. (by this time blake and ross found trash bags to wear as makeshift panchos.)

after all the rain on saturday, sunday was a complete, muddy, mess! talk about the largest mud pit ive ever seen. wearing shoes was pointless because the mud was so deep that it would just suck your shoes straight off! (dont worry...none of us contracted any diseases)

me, laura, and katie watching the toadies

i told you it was muddy!

last picture of me and the sunglasses. rip ray bans. we had some good times together.

sometime this week, the realllly cheap tickets for next year will go on sale. im crossing my fingers really hard that we can get them! who knows where we will even be this time next year but i really want to still try to go and if we absolutely cannot go, we should have no problem selling them.

happy birthday to me

im one year older and one year wiser. ha!

i had the most amazing weekend at austin city limits music festival (more to come on that later) with blake, ross, and my good friends laura and katie. for my birthday on sunday, i opened some presents and then went to brunch at the iron cactus with my family. and then finished the day off with lots of live music. what could be better?!

blake and i after brunch at iron cactus. and my new boots blake gave me for my bday.

with the fam after brunch.

heres to a new year and all the exciting things to come during it.

well now all of our muddy laundry is calling my name. ill post about acl later...because in all honesty, putting up all the pics and talking about all the fun makes me a little sad right now because i miss it so much. so more on that later after i have some time to recover!

xo, lindsay

ps. i got my first "happy birthday to my wife" type card yesterday and it just made me so happy! i like being a wife. :)