Things we learned in April

New friends: We've had the privilege of making one! It's never too old for anyone, isn't it? Over this past month we've done a few things together, and it was just a time in our lives where we felt God calling us to reach out to this particular person. It's been terrific!

Let's get better: We're both pretty healthy and have been for all our lives, but this month we decided to see for ourselves- that is, make actual, adult doctor's appointments and be more proactive with our health. I (Holly) go tomorrow, even though I'm currently battling cold-like symptoms, and Kelly went earlier in April and, aside from some joint issues, received a clean bill of health :)

Honest conversations and realizations: Sometimes you have to have them, be it for setting the record straight or coming to that conclusion that you just have to let go. It's one of the many ways we grow as humans.

Cars are expensive: Both of us had some unforeseen car issues arise this month that left us needing to pinch pennies for a few days. Be prepared!

Mental illness is real: Our sweet, dear friend bravely shared her struggles with depression in a candid, honest way, because so often these types of conversations are brushed aside. A sobering reminder to always, ALWAYS be kind and considerate to others, because we never really do know what the other is going through. Treat others with compassion, and be grateful for what you have.

Birthdays can still be fun: For the first time since either of us can remember, we rang in 26 out of school, out of home, and actually...out of Kentucky! We spent our birthday weekend in Chicago, where we nearly froze to death, ate way too much, and just cherished the moments we got to spend both together and with Justin.

Those that we hold in our hearts never truly leave us: Our beloved Grandpa passed away on our birthday (April 9) three years ago this year. It's almost every day that something or someone reminds us of him.

Happy b-day from Chicago! 

H and K (and parents) visit the Sunshine State!

Holly and Kelly: This past weekend sis and I were in Florida for some baseball games and a day at the beach. It was the first time the two of us have seen the ocean since 2009, and let me tell you, when you spend every summer at the beach for as long as you can remember and then go 7 years in between without, it's a long time. We left Friday afternoon and flew out of Louisville into Atlanta then into West Palm Beach where we didn't get to our hotel until after 1 in the morning. Dad picked us up and we all just crashed once we got to the hotel. Saturday morning was spent sipping coffee by the pool, then we gallivanted a few miles up the road to watch the first of two spring training baseball games. Dad's a big Cardinals fan (don't hate) and the tickets came at a really good price, considering it was major league baseball. The weather was absolutely gorgeous too! A bit warm, yes, but there was a time where the clouds got in the way, so we all weren't sitting under the sun for the entire duration of the game. It was nice.  Very nice.

After the first game we ventured off to a small beach and found quite a few shells, and sis and I have a project planned for the shells we did find, so stay tuned for that! We had 3 nights of fantastic food, and I mean fantastic! The best food night was Monday night, where the two of us shared a pasta with mussels, scallops, calamari, shrimp and some kind of fish. We DESTROYED it! I (Kelly) put a pic of it on Facebook, and I'm sure I will gross a few people out. But you want to know what the best thing was? Family time. There's nothing like it. At the second baseball game, Holly was seated next to a family where a younger girl, in her words, was being a brat. She was whining, complaining, glaring at her parents and making rude remarks to her younger sibling. I wish I would have had the chance to tell her to enjoy the moments now, because when she gets to become our age and moves away from her family, you will die for just one more day. Sis and I see our parents on a good year six times, typically it's less than that, usually 4 or 5. We were talking about that one time, how when we were growing up and even in the first few years of college each time we visited we couldn't wait to get back to Berea. But like I said, what I wouldn't have gotten for just one more day at the beach.

Tuesday morning sunrise 

Family selfie! 

Colin and Brad: Take 2!

Holly and Kelly: A lot of you have started following us just within the last few months, so if you would be so kind as to allow us to indulge in a brief trip down memory lane: So remember way back in the day when we were a bunch of young college kiddos completely stoked out of our minds because we met Colin and Brad in Richmond almost four years ago? (In case you didn't remember....this may help jog your memory).  We thought for sure that this gut-busting night of improvised hilarity would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Make that twice-in-a-lifetime.  History repeated itself last Friday night.  Well...almost.

We packed a bag and road tripped down I64 to the city of Ashland, KY, so close to both West Virginia and Ohio that you can see it.  Yes, the dynamic duo of humor were doing a show there that night, and thanks to our awesome trip-planning-guru of a dad, we scored a nice hotel literally a stone's throw away from the venue.  But not before hitting up local eatery Fat Patty's.  Man oh man, that was one glorious open-faced roast beef sandwich! And our waiter was really nice and super awesome. Once we got to the theater we had to wait a bit for the stage to open. We had to buy our tickets separately, so our seats weren't together initially. Right before the show started though, we orchestrated a plan to move a few rows back to some empty seats so that we could enjoy the show together. So we did. And it was glorious!!!!

The sign! 

It was a really funny show! If you read when we saw them in Richmond, you'll see that Holly went up on stage for a game called "Fill in." Whenever prompted, the stage goer had to fill in an incomplete sentence with a word, phrase or whatever. The results were pretty amusing. Well, this time, Kelly got called on stage for the very same game! (There is a video but Holly has it). Then they did the Sound Effects game, which if you've seen Whose Line is it Anyway, you know how that game goes. But if you haven't seen it, you can figure it out. Anyway, our section got to do Brad's sound effects! (see video below). But it was utterly hilarious; and let me tell you having had the experience it is extremely difficult to come up with something clever right on the spot, know that we have both had the experience of attempting to do so. Then like they did in Richmond, they did the "Crime" game, in which Brad (without his prior knowledge) had to guess a crime he committed, verbatim, with a little help from the audience. The crime was as follows:

He duct taped a penguin to the ceiling, lit a cloud on fire in Paducah, KY at Terry's Polar Bear Shaving & Tires & Tubes with a ping-pong paddle. Ya'll, we are not making this up. And yes they did the mousetraps game again. And yes we cringed a lot. Unfortunately, they did not stick around at the end for meet and greets like they did in Richmond, but that's ok. We still had a really awesome time, and it was great for us to road trip, laugh and enjoy each other's company. The time we get to spend together is a treat for us, and we don't ever take it for granted. God has blessed us with a good relationship in which we share a lot of interests, including lots of funnies.

A break from Who: E-Town Wedding Weekend Adventure

Holly: We are taking a short break from our Doctor Who challenge, mostly for two reasons: 1. because we are dinguses and picked a really, really bad month to do a 30 day challenge, hence the reason why we are so flipping behind, and 2. because we wanted to share the tale of the awesome weekend we had.  We will resume our challenge starting tomorrow.

Yesterday morning Kelly and I woke up semi-earlyish and traveled to Elizabethtown, in the midst of some spotty rain and some fairly windy roads.  The occasion: a wedding that we've known about for quite some time now.  The bride is a friend of ours from Berea, and she worked with Kelly for a while at the Learning Center.  We weren't sure of the goings on in E-town, as known by Kentucky folk, so we left early and arrived at our hotel at about 11.  The wedding wasn't until 2:30.  Our first eyebrow-raiser is that we did not have cell phone service.  ANYWHERE.  Naturally, we needed something to do for a few hours, so we asked the front desk for a mall or something in which to occupy ourselves.  En route to said mall we found a Goodwill, so needless to say, we stopped.  Pretty rockin' Goodwill if I do say so myself.

We got to the mall and Kelly took it upon herself to try to find an outlet so she could plug in her cell phone and try to find where we were going, since, at this point, we still did not have cell phone service (it wouldn't be until just outside of Danville coming home that we finally got back in range).  We ate at an Italian express place and then shopped around for a bit.  Pretty decent mall; nothing like Fayette, but it got the job done and we enjoyed ourselves despite our lack of contact with the outside world.

Kelly: I will continue this story. After we left the mall we decided to make our way to the church, after writing down directions on how to get there. We were on this main stretch of road and the directions told us to go on a bypass, so we found one and were like "uh...is this the right one?" We went on it, not really knowing if it was the right one, but after about a mile or two we started seeing signs for where we were supposed to go. Not going to lie, we were pretty amazed. So then we arrived at the church, watched the wedding, celebrated and then decided to check into our hotel. We checked into our hotel, which was a very lovely Best Western in Elizabethtown (the wedding was in a small town outside of the city) and went from our hotel to the reception. Unbeknownst to me at this point, I left my wallet in our hotel room. The wedding and reception were very lovely and we had a blast at the reception! Lots of good food, a TARDIS cake and lots of dancing. We're still sore from yesterday, needless to say. It was then I realized I left my wallet at the hotel and was worried that I left it at the desk when I checked in. We stayed at the reception until about 7PM, then decided to go to Target and malinger around. We got back to the hotel around 8 that evening and relaxed in the hotel, watched Big Bang Theory and got milkshakes from Wendy's.

This morning we woke up in our hotel, had breakfast and left around 10:15 this morning. While we were driving yesterday it dawned on one of us that we should stop in Danville on the way home to poke around. So we did. It was a lovely day today, a bit warm, but a nice breeze and the sun was out. We walked around Centre's campus, had lunch at a local coffee joint and enjoyed the nice day. We've been home since 2 this afternoon and are still reeling from this really fun and awesome weekend. I don't think either of us are ready to go back to work tomorrow. I like living here in Berea; I love my church, my friends and my job but sometimes it's nice to just get away, especially since we haven't really had the chance to in a while. We always enjoy our getaways when we get them, and this one was no exception.

Post day-in-the-car, post mall trip, post realization-of-no-cell-phone-service, post more-driving, exasperated that we actually made it to the church and actually made it ON TIME! 

A prayer for the new family :)

"You may now kiss the bride." 

The best groom's cake in the history of groom's cakes

Us and the blushing bride.  Apologies for the grossness; we had all just finished dancing like mad :)

The Band Years

Kelly: Maybe it's because it's Christmas. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm graduating college in almost four months. I'm not entirely sure why, but Holly and I have been thinking a lot about our marching band years. We strapped on ridiculously hideous and hot uniforms, piled onto a small school bus and traveled all across the state to football games and/or competitions. And we did this willingly. Every Friday and/or Saturday from the end of August until the beginning of November for 6 years. And we LOVED it.

I remember when I was a little girl, getting dragged to high school football games. I would only go to see the band play. "Mom, I want to be in the band!" I remember seeing the local college at their homecoming parade. "Mom, I want to be in the 110 someday." In 7th grade, Holly and I both had a choice to make. Prior to 7th grade, we had both done gymnastics for a few years. The choice was ours; either continue with gymnastics or quit and pursue marching band. When I look back on it now, I realize that the choice was obvious...since I didn't think I was that good at gymnastics. I was not meant to be a gymnast; I was meant to be a band geek! So many fond and wonderful memories of high school were usually associated with the time I did marching band. The places we traveled to, the conversations we had, the sometimes drama that occurred, the friends I made and the experiences I gathered. Nothing can even hold a candle to what I experienced for those number of years. It's sad to say though, now that I'm in college I don't think about band as often as I used to; I haven't picked up my clarinet in almost four years. I'm not even sure I'd remember how to play it. As I look it's still sitting in its case behind my bed. It's not that I've forgotten about band, but I'm sad to say that that part of my life is over and has been for quite some time now. But I have not nor will not forget all that I did and the wonderful fun times I had. When I graduate in May, I'm writing something very special on my hat that I have carried with me.

"DO IT!"

Holly: We managed to summarize six years of insanity into a navy blue three-inch binder, packed with programs from competitions, our show music, pictures, random fliers, etc.  We call it our band book.  It's in our pile of stuff that's going back with us to Berea.

We endured horrendously hot uniforms, unflattering polos that were at least two sizes too large, uncomfortable shoes that were at least a size too small; shoes that felt every crack, crevice, stone, and grass.  We waited on "the band guy" whenever there was a ding, scratch, or missing key in our instruments (I particularly relied on him after I literally fell on my flute.....THAT'S another story! lol).  We heard the Mountain Dew story about 15 times.  The crazy weeks at band camp, staying up way too late and doing stuff that need not leave the walls of the dorms.  Blistering sun, pouring rain, snow, hail, freezing cold...sometimes all in the same day (Riverview, anybody???).  A concession was deemed good if it had something other than hot dogs and burgers (Cowtails, large dill pickles, and Sour Skittles were our favorites).  If your throat wasn't sore and raw by the end of a competition night, be it from screaming or laughing, you weren't doing it right.  We bagged on Waterford all the time.  Our leadership meeting senior year wasn't much of a meeting...it was comprehending how in the world we were going to carry on our Fed Hock band legacy without our "Big Papa" and his tent.  It was at a football game in Belpre my junior year when I found out that one of my best guy friends liked me back.  We met our best friend through band; almost 10 years later, we're still friends.   The small door of the RCA Dome in Indianapolis opened for the first time as we stepped onto the field for our pre-show at Bands of America Grand Nationals, and all of us wondered how we ended up there.  That dang dog whistle will forever be the bane of my existence.

I don't really know how to close all of this, other than the fact that the stories we could tell would go on for years on end, and the memories will last even longer.

What a beautiful wedding!

Kelly: Yesterday afternoon, Holly and I had the pleasure of partaking in a lovely wedding ceremony of a dear friend of ours, Ashley. We met Ashley our first year in college, and we've hit it off ever since! She wedded her high school sweetheart, Derek. The venue was Wea Creek Orchard in Lafayette, Indiana. So on Friday afternoon, we loaded up and drove the almost 5-hour drive with another dear friend of ours. The ceremony was just absolutely gorgeous; a very simple, "country" style wedding. It was a very small wedding party; only about 100 guests from near and far. Most of the guests were family, but there were some friends there as well (like us!). What was so great about this weekend as well is that it happened to fall during our mini fall break, here in Berea known as reading period. In other words, we don't have classes till WEDNESDAY. Holla!

The ceremony started at 2:37...PM, and I must say, the weather was GORGEOUS. It was a bit warm, yes, but the sun was shining and there was a breeze every now and then. I actually cried in the beginning (I always cry at weddings, such a joyous occasion.) However, I was also crying because I was just very happy to be there, considering we almost weren't able to attend. I really don't know what else to talk about; it was just a perfect weekend! After the ceremony, us and our three friends went to the hotel we were staying at, went to Steak and Shake in our PJ's, and just laughed and talked the whole time. What a blessing. Ever since they all graduated, I feel as if a piece of me has been left behind that only they can fill up again. I'm so grateful for my dear friends, and I wish Derek and Ashley the best of luck as they start their new life together! Cheers to them!!

Holly: I have absolutely nothing concrete to add to this.  The wedding was absolutely beautiful and lovely and fit Ashley and Derek to a T.   I am simply overwhelmed with joy for being able to be a part of my dear friend's new chapter in her life, as well as being able to catch up with dear friends who have also moved on to new chapters in their lives.  In one weekend I have never laughed so much and been so happy and blessed.    This weekend was the perfect reminder of why I am so grateful and blessed for my friendships, both near and far, and this quote from the wedding program sums it up perfectly:

Technically, you have no obligation to be here today or be there for us any other day; but the fact remains that you are here now, and you have always been there for us.
In a few months I will be recipients of these ever-precious words as I receive my bachelor's from Berea, and friends near and far gather for this as well.  So here's to Ashley and Derek, to wonderful friends, laughing, and remembering this special weekend we spent together! :) <3

A perfectly beautiful day for a wedding!

Mr and Mrs! :)

Our lovely newlywed friend! :)

cake!!

Beautiful wedding with beautiful people! :)