AM I DRUNK OR IS HE DRUNK?

*Disclaimer, a CRAP TON of photos!!*

Ah, the twenty first birthday... Where to begin?!

I decided earlier this year that I wanted to have my birthday as a girl's get-a-way! I immediately knew that I wanted to go to Hermann with all my girls! 

I put a lot of work into my birthday, like I do every year, but this birthday was quite possibly the best one yet! We had seven of us (was suppose to eight but poor Mindy was sick as a dog!). 

We met at Cracker Barrel on the morning of my actual birthday and pigged out on carb filled food! 

Kayla and Heather

Mama and I

We then left from there and drove (car danced all the way) to the first stop on our list, Robller Winery!

 Heather driving and car dancing at the same time.

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I asked the girls to wear giant hats for the wineries- Mama and Jen wore theirs on the way down.

Our next stop was Robller winery, it was beautiful and a great place to have my first legal drink and learn about how much I really do not like dry wines!! The lady there was so sweet and helpful and she even gave me a birthday present! A wonderfully useful wine glass, cork opener and a bottle stopper! And a job offer... apparently if I ever want a job there, I just have to come back!

All of my ladies! Love them!

I put Heather and Kayla in charge of pictures, they had fun taking pictures of each other!

 Before my first legal drink!

 It was a little too dry for my liking!

Me and my girl Erin! I love her!

 My Mama and her best friend Jen! Love them!

Pouring wine for the first time!

I apparently am very skilled! Enter the job offer! 

\

Getting wisdom from my "Mama's!"

After Robller we drove to the cottage we were staying at! DeFlorin Stone Cottage Inn is beautiful and worth every penny! We opened some presents there after we got all of our stuff inside and settled!

They just kept handing me water bottles and having me down them! Thankful for that!

Mama and Jen found a very fancy Penguin and were attached to him!

After the present opening, it was time to catch the Trolley to take us to Oak Glenn. We rented the Trolley out for the day and it was so nice to not have to worry about driving around and having a DD and what not!

We had to wait for a few minutes for the Trolley, so we had some hitch hiking fun!

 I am a terrible hitch hiker apparently!

Me and my girl Kayla!!

My EF being all EF like.

Kent, our Trolley driver. He took care of us!

We went to Oak Glenn first because it was the farthest out (ish) and the view was supposedly fantastic!

 The property was beautiful!

And so was the view! We are blocking it right here, but it's beautiful! Go there!

However, while the view was grand, the wine was not the best... It was good, but just not the best.

The lady at the winery wasn't the best/most informed about wine, but she was funny!

 My first glass at Oak Glenn.

Me and my EF... And Kayla photobombing the background!

Heather and her sparkling juice!

Kayla, her sparkling juice and her pretzel!

Is that wine named Naughti?!?! :)

Jen gave an amazing toast for my birthday... I love her.

Me trying to keep my tears back from the toast. It was lovely.

After the Oak Glenn fun we went to Hermanoff, because Cindy and Erin hadn't been there before and they sadly had to leave half way through the day to get home.

Me and my Jen!!

Erin imparted some wisdom on me at Hermanhoff. Apparently, if your nose starts to go numb, you are definitely intoxicated. I was trying to make sure I could still feel my nose.

Erin: "Can you feel your nose?"Me: (reaches out and touches my nose) "No, but I can feel your's, does that count?!" 

 This was the first person to card me!!

 They became friends!

Apparently I was giving Kayla a stern talking too!

Kayla loved taking pictures of me drinking!

Things started to get a fuzzy! :)

After Hermanhoff we were two people down, but we continued on our adventure! The Trolley took us Adam Puchta next, where I honestly had the most fun and fell in love with Adam's Choice- it's delicious!

No matter where she is, if there are animals, she will find them.

This is a glass of a dry wine...

This is my reaction. It was GROSS.

My hat got to be too much, so EF took over for me. She is styling!

This was Larry, he was awesome!!

She does not like cats, but they apparently love her!

We were suppose to go to Stone Hill after Adam Puchta, but it was getting too close to their closing time and we were hungry and made the executive decision to head back to the cottage! The Cottage was so beautiful! Thanks to Kayla for taking these pictures of it!

And finally, here are some pictures of the party back at the house!

 These two were cracking us up!! Oh the life lessons we learned!

I quickly changed into comfy clothes!! And rocked the pig tails! 

 Heather got me a truth or dare game and it was a lot of fun!

My bubble blowing camera!

 It didn't get too cray cray but it was perfection. Laughter, jokes, dancing and singing and just a good time celebrating my big day with my girls! 

The drive home was more car dancing and rapping and just making fun memories!! 

I have realized as of late, exactly how lucky I am and how loved I am. Girls, I love you. 

xoxo Jess

DORM LIFE.

*Disclaimer, there are lot of pictures in this post!*


So I finally moved into my dorm at school on the 18th! 

The move was easy! I am still getting settled in, but below are the pictures of the dorm as of right now! I might move some things around, but I'm not sure yet!

I am really enjoying living on campus, it's a lot of fun and so nice to be on a small campus and less than four minutes from any of my classes! 

My roommate is really sweet and we are getting along great so far! 

I am so excited for this new stage!! 

xoxo, Jess

You'll Never Have Your Fill....Things That Just Won't Fit in the Suitcase.

In less than an ten minutes this beautiful EF of mine will be turning 21, and I can't even believe how time flies.


When we were young, stressful things amounted to not being able to pass notes in class, or another friend acting stupid. Things were easy. We had our rough moments, and we've both done things we regret. Yet, here I am, ten years later, still standing next to one of the most inspirational and meaningful people in my life. Yeah, she's a little OCD, a little bit of a worry-wart, a little bit of crazy-mom-personality with a ton of awesome thrown in. She's organized to my messy, she's the country music to my hip-hop, she's the modest to my revealing, the brunette to my blond. She's my JESS LYNN CONDERMAN, and I love her SO MUCH.


Tomorrow we're all going on this little trip to some wineries to celebrate her big 2-1. In buildup to this trip, Jess and I have established a list of things I, Heather Rae, am NOT ALLOWED TO DO. We'll see how this goes.


NUMBER ONE:
I am not allowed to dance like so;

http://www.1000funnypictures.com/photos/Weird-Pictures/192-1.jpg

(I lost the original picture we took for this, but I think this guy pretty much covers it...Thanks bro).

NUMBER TWO: 
I am not allowed to throw down. (We didn't explicitly cover the extent and rules of this one, so I'm going to have to use some judgement here. But basically what I think she meant was I can't be like...)

NO WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!! SAY IT AGAIN!! (or something).

okay, so we didn't actually develop this list as much as we had said we would, here are a few things that I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to do during my EF's birthday celebration...


NUMBER THREE:
I am probably not allowed to dress incognito and stare at strangers;

NUMBER FOUR:
I am probably not allowed to eat an apple and use that as an excuse to ignore the things people say to me;

I am eating an apple, therefore your argument is invalid. 

NUMBER FIVE:
I am probably not allowed to put on a high school football helmet and run around ramming random things with my protected skull. 

But I might try to get away with it anyway.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESS LYNN!!! Thank you for putting up with antics like these for ten years and counting. I wouldn't have it any other way!!! Here's to the official start to another year of awesome. Cheers!

<3 HR

NICKEL CREEK. OBSESSED.

To say that I am obsessed with Nickel Creek would be an understatement. 


The two songs below are by far my favorites!

                                                      When You Come Back Down"

                                                                  "The Hand Song"


I am fully blaming Mindy for this obsession and the fact that my most listened to song since Saturday is "The Hand Song". It's her fault. 


Annnnddd, my children will listen to their albums as lullabies, they are amazing artists and are so soothing and meaningful songs. 


LOVE them.

New words.

"I am both a contradiction and conviction, lost and purposeful... But I am trying to live each phase of  my life in a way that feels right to me."


So, as time is quickly flying by and Fontbonne is only 33 days away, I have begun thinking about how the next two years are going to be a new stage in my life. How the relationships in my life are going to change, how I am going to grow and discover myself and the people around me. 


I am all together thrilled and terrified. This is a whole new stage and place in my life. One that I can't wait to explore with myself and John and friends and family. 


I am counting down the days and seconds and yet, thanking God for the ones that are quickly passing through my fingers. 


The next few weeks are going to be stressful and crazy, but the next two years are going to be WORTH IT. 


xoxo, Jess

Because Frozen Yogurt Does Things for You That Your Boyfriend Never Could—The benefit of an EF’s encouragement and the dichotomy of attention

I’m sure that some of you may have noticed that once you are out of high school and into the college scene it becomes especially difficult to maintain any kind of fitness pattern, particularly if you were never in the sports scene, like me. So after about two years of playing the ten pounds on ten pounds off game, I guess me and my EF finally got fed up and decided to get serious. Jess happened across this really AWESOME running program for smartphones called “Couch to 5K,” and it is tailored to those of us who have had about as much exercise as lifting the remote control. And I would like to just tell you, it freaking works.

A Butterfly that I saw during one of my runs at Lakeside 370 Park. Running is a great way to explore parts of your town you never even knew you would like.

My first run was tough, but not so tough that I could not complete it. From there it just builds you up and up. I kind of suck at consistency, so I’m actually just now moving into week two after two weeks of week one, one week off, and another week of week one (when you work three jobs at once, running is hard to make time for). Eventually you start wanting to work in other activities, like long walks, and cycling. I actually find myself getting anxious if I don’t get out and do something physical every day. And none of this would have happened without the encouragement of my EF.

That all being said, I’m addicted to Frozen Yogurt and it’s all her freaking fault. I didn’t even LIKE frozen yogurt until she was all: “ooooh come eat at Yo My Goodness with me” and I was all “ewwwww” and she was all “no it’s so much better than FroYo” and IT IS. We go probably two or three times a week. Lucky for us they have a rewards program, so I don’t feel quite so guilty about spending what I am sure will eventually equal the cost of a year of education at OU. So it’s a GREAT thing that she also introduced me to C25K so that when I stuff my face with the frozen goodness I’m not gaining a jillion pounds too.

So a couple weeks ago we were at Yo My Goodness (as usual), and we are sitting on the bed of her truck talking and indulging in the gift from the yogurt gods, when something happened that has just stuck in my mind. Now don’t get me wrong—I’ve seen my share of boys acting silly. But this was straight up RIDICULOUS, and it really made me think about some things.

We were sitting on the bed of Jess’s truck when this boy walks by and is totally eyeing me—again, not really unusual. But then he heads back past our spot to his car, and suddenly *notices* something on his shoe and just *bends* over to *rub it off* and then gets up all *slow like* and you can see that he’s hoping some killer background music will start playing. As he gets up, he is looking directly at me to see if I was watching this little display he put on. Seriously? A male version of bend-and-snap? I feel somewhat bad that after all his hard work we basically just burst out laughing at him. I mean, sure. That’s one way to get my attention. It’s also one way to ensure that I will never think twice about turning you down.

Anyway, this little event got me thinking about attention. Ask anyone who knows me—I am definitely an attention whore. It’s nice to be paid attention to, and I feel like as long as you don’t cross certain lines, that it’s not an issue. Until, of course, you find that one person whose attention you want more than anyone else’s, and then no one else’s really matters. That, my friends, is the dichotomy of attention. On the one hand, you love it and it’s fun and makes you feel appreciated. On the other, unless it’s coming from the source of choice, it’s worthless. I see it a lot in relationships, for instance, your guy friend might spend a ton of time with you until he meets a girl he likes. After that you don’t really hear from him much except for facebook chat and group events. If they break up, suddenly you have a buddy around again. I’m not saying it’s wrong, it’s very normal. I just never really noticed that it was such a pattern before.

So that’s what’s been on my mind lately! Now that I’ve posted my EF will be happy. There’s a rule or something that she doesn’t like about consecutive posts. J Things are getting crazy now that school is right around the corner. At the moment I actually have no place to live at OU, but you can be sure I’ll blog about it if I end up living out of my car.

<3 HR