College Life with Katie: 2013

Alrighty folks, it's time for round two of 2012 through pictures!

On March 24, my cousin Nicole was married to Jordan Lesausky. It was a wonderful wedding and we had so much fun seeing family again!

This is my dad being all professional as the President of the Kansas Choral Directors Association.

As it was 2012, the Summer Olympics were in London this year. We are not the biggest sports fans, but when the Olympics are on, we get very excited! Carol, the expert nail artist in our family, painted her nails to celebrate and I make a fruit pizza with the Olympic rings. It was very tasty.

Sarah went to the zoo several times and enjoyed herself very much! She really liked to get close to the animals.

This year I moved back on campus and got an apartment with a kitchen! Needless to say, I was pretty excited to get new kitchen supplies.

At the beginning of September, Carol and I took a road trip down to the Dallas area in Texas to visit her very good friends Shell and Alan and to see the A Capella group Pentatonix. It was great to take some time off and Pentatonix was, of course, AMAZING.

A beautiful small town street in the midst of fall.

When our family carves pumpkins we usually go all out and this year was no exception. Sarah/Mom carved a cat, Anna carved an owl, I carved the Mocking Jay pin from the Hunger Games, and Carol carved the Lizzie Bennet Diaries logo (the LBD is a modern setting of Pride and Prejudice as a web series. I would recommend watching it! http://www.lizziebennet.com/). She posted a picture of the pumpkin on Twitter and it went viral in the LBD fan base after the LBD retweeted the picture.

Annelise and I performed Thriller for the SC Basketball game right before Halloween. It was a blast!

I made some more soap this year, but I've been so busy I haven't had much time recently to make or sell my soap (although if you're interested in buying some, just talk to me and I'd be happy to help!).

Here is some proof that my mom does indeed spend time with Sarah (quite frequently I might add) despite her busy schedule.

Thanksgiving:

This year we had the Sizemores over for Thanksgiving.

Sarah turned 6 years old this year!!

Here is my newest venture in the snowflake cutting world. Snowflake ballerinas! My friend Glynne and I had a great time making these.

Jasmine Jackson has been living with us since the fall and we have really enjoyed having her in our family!

This semester, dad had three of his daughters in his choir! It's been so much fun singing all together. (Mom joined the Christmas concert to sing Handel's Messiah)

And here is our official family Christmas picture:

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."
Psalm 46:1

I hope all of you have had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's, I certainly enjoyed the time I spent with my family!

Since it's still close to New Year's Day, I thought I'd post a review of the
year through pictures. I have a number of pictures, so this might take a few posts!

Here is a picture from New Year's Eve in 2011. We're eating the traditional Gardner cheese fondue to ring in 2012! That stuff was amazing. Seriously.

I got new reading glasses for college! I was getting pretty bad headaches while doing my homework, so I was very excited for these (now I have no excuse for not studying...).

Our wonderful friends and my parent's mentors from Tucson, AZ came for a visit while in the Midwest. It was great to see "Uncle" Tom and "Beautiful Aunt" Barb again!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Carol's graduation from Southwestern College. Dad even got to hand her the diploma. She is now working towards her Master's degree in business administration at Southwestern.

For Carol's Graduation, Grandad and his wife Margaret, and Grandma came to visit.

May is always an eventful month and this was no exception with Carol's graduation, Annelise's dance recital, and Dad's 50th (I mean 30th) birthday. Mom put on a beautiful party with over fifty guests and two huge cakes. Many lovely things were said about Dad and the whole party was a success.