hugs

I really like hugs. And kind of hugs. Friend hugs, family hugs, kid hugs, Philip hugs. Love them. I crave a certain kind of hug though. The kind that are...protective. Or...comforting. It's hard to explain.

Let's put it this way. You know how in a hug there's like the person who's leaning into the hug and then the person who's holding the other person up? Kind of both literally and figuratively. The one who needs the hug and the one who's fulfilling the need. Sometimes you both need a hug, and that's different. But I crave the kind of hug where I'm the one who needs the hug. The ones I get from my mom or stepdad or Phil. When they're holding and comforting me, and my only job is to be held.

Sometimes those hugs come from my girlfriends, but most of the time those hugs are excited, girly, we-love-each-other hugs. And hugs with kids are when I'm usually the one who's fulfilling the need. I don't crave those hugs yet, but I suspect I will when I have children.

Right now I haven't been home for two weeks and in those two weeks I only saw Phil for a few hours. Sometimes school and work overtakes my life. I'm heading home tonight and I get to spend time with Phil this weekend. I'm so excited for the hugs.

touch

One last Christmas dream for a little while.

I got and iPod when I graduated high school...and I may have been a little rough on it. The screen is pretty badly scratched, and for some reason, no matter what set of headphones I put in it, only one of them will work unless I press my finger on the part that goes into my iPod the whole time I listen.

If I ask my dad for money or gift cards for Christmas he'll get me something ridiculous because he thinks he has an idea of what I'd actually like when he totally doesn't. And he really likes giving tangible presents instead of letting me do my own shopping. So I was thinking I'd ask him for an iPod Touch. Something tangible, pretty straight forward, and something I'd really like.

If I'm going to get a new iPod, the iPod Touch is what I'd want. It's an upgrade from the one I have, but it's way, WAY cooler. There's apps. And lots of games. And wifi, which is my favorite feature. I'm aware I'm pathetic for wanting to be online pretty much all the time, but I really enjoy that option.

And, of course, the first thing I'd buy is a pretty case to keep my new iPod safe. I was looking at all the colors and thinking about purple or blue...but then I remembered my phone. And my room at home. And my bedspread at my apartment. Yellow it is.

keys

More Christmas dreaming. I really want one of the Tiffany keys. I feel like a bad person for wanting one. Haha. They're so expensive, and it's just a shiny key. But I really really enjoy the one on the far left. It's classic and pretty. I'm hoping they keep these around for a while so when I'm making lots and lots of money(maybe someday!) I can get one. Or maybe Phil will feel an urge to become a doctor and then buy me one. Maybe doctors can justify spending $250 on a key that doesn't open any doors.

I could so use some cheesy line about the guy getting the girl a key necklace and it being the key to her heart right now, but really, I just can't go that cheesy.

clean

I'm not a clean freak. Not even close. But lately I've become a little paranoid due to the whole H1N1 thing. Not because I think the swine flu is going to kill me, I don't worry about that stuff, but because I'm so so busy right now. And getting sick and making my world have to stop to get better would really suck. So I'm thinking I should buy a little hand sanitizer, to carry in my backpack/purse/gym bag. That way I can clean my hands easily after typing on one of the computers at school. Or going on the elliptical at the Kress.

And this one's so cute and even Christmas-y. I'll probably just buy the Purell one next time I'm at WalMart, but for the sake of a cute picture on the blog, I thought I'd display the Bath and Body Works version!

shoes

Christmas is coming up! It seems far away yet but my mom's nagging reminders to come up with a Christmas List proves I'm wrong. Mom and I always just go shopping together for things for me, because I like clothes and I'm so picky now it's impossible to shop for me. But I can't just go shopping and get whatever I like that day. I have to think about it in great detail and finally pick things I really love. It's my new rule with buying clothes, because otherwise I can come home with things I'm not really that excited about. And clothes can make me really happy outside of just serving the purpose of covering my body.

This year I've gotten a lot of shoes. I got black pumps and snakeskin tan/cream pumps, and brown sandal heels and black sandal heels. I love them all and I got them all at great prices(snakeskin pumps, $11!, brown sandal heels, $18!). I've found if you just keep going back to the clearance section and checking on your favorite shoes, they'll come down from the $50-$80 range to the $10-$30 range, which is much more desirable.

I already got one pair of shoes for the fall season that I'm in love with, knee high slouchy black flat boots. I wore them to all but one fall wedding and they looked super cute and helped keep me warm when we were shooting outside. They're perfect. Another pair of boots I'm thinking of is an ankle pair...these ones specifically, from ALDO. They're on sale for $39...but they still might be a little too much for me. I'll probably wait and see if they come down. Or maybe cave. I do love them, they'd be a perfect Christmas present. I love the grey, they're versatile and would look great with my skinny jeans!

Today one of the girls in my class had cute little blue flats on, and I really liked those too. They would've looked great with my cream/tan/navy outfit I had going on today, instead of not really knowing what shoes to pull from my closet to wear. Maybe these will wind up on my Christmas List too!

smell

I noticed something today. I've always hated when the leaves fall off the trees. It's okay when it's just some so there's really leaves everywhere, on the ground and on the trees and you're just surrounded in the yellow red happiness. But I don't like when there's more on the ground than on the trees.

Today though, when I was walking into school, I noticed that the smell of fall was much stronger today. All those leaves on the ground with people stepping on them makes the smell go everywhere. I guess if the leaves have to fall, at least they make the world smell wonderful!

hope

How amazing is this? Really, go God.

sweetest

Last year my friends started this tradition where we get dressed up in hot dresses and go out to eat for Sweetest Day. It's fun. It's all girls, and we dress up for ourselves, despite the fact that most of us have guys we could dress up for. The point is we like to look good for ourselves, and it's fun to erupt into giggles when we notice guys trying not to be obvious about following this great looking group of girls with their eyes when we walk by.

Whenever we do something like this we like to document our hotness with pictures. This time we went a little nuts. With Laura encouraging Janna and Amanda, I took quite a few pictures of all three of them. We got Amanda really laughing, Janna let down her hair to reveal a serious amount of sexiness, and Laura did what she always does, turning on her come hither face in 2.7 seconds.

Whitty got there just in time to change, so she didn't get any individual pictures, and Jilaney met us at the restaurant so she's not in any pictures. Sad face.

I put the pictures on facebook last night, and the reaction to Janna's supreme sexiness was insane. All of her friends commented on how great she looked. That's one of my favorite parts of this photography gift I have, that I can give my friends confidence and help them feel beautiful with it.

hookup

A few weeks ago a bunch of my girlfriends and I had one of those fabulous girl talk nights. Three of my friends are living together in a four bedroom apartment, and they have an extra in their room. And this particular random roommate is driving them nuts. They've been recommending I come over to meet her for a while now, so I finally did. We watched Glee, and afterwards all kind of ran into Janna's room and hopped on the bed for girl talk, minus the roommate. Made me feel kind of bad, but it's a hard situation when they don't trust her to be a part of the intimate girl talk we share.

Once we got in there, laughter exploded. EXPLODED. Janna's a psych major, and is currently taking a class called Human Sexuality. One of the books she has to read for the class is called Sex, Love, and Hookups. And the front of the book is a close up of a girl's back with a guy's hands unhooking her bra.

Well. Really. Throw five college girls in a room with a book like that and expect us to ignore it? I don't think so. We pounced on it and started reading aloud and laughing so hard we couldn't breathe. The book defined specifically what "fooling around" is -- how blow jobs can be considered "fooling around" but when sex is involved then it's considered "hooking up". When I read the words "blow job" out loud the random roommate went, from outside of the room, "OH. MY. GOD. WHAT are you TALKING about?".

Okay, we're all college girls. Such language is occasionally in our vocabulary. Her complete and total shock when anyone mentions anything minutely sexual is one of the reasons her roommates get frustrated with her.

But back to the book. One girl talked about guys hooking up to have more girls on their "tally". Guys apparently go to parties looking for different girls to add to their tally, while girls go to parties looking to hook up with the same guy over and over again so they can pretend they're dating. Like, instead of thinking of it as just going to a party, they think of it as going out with Mark or James or whatever. Drink a little(or a lot), have sex at the party or maybe bring them home first, and then don't plan on seeing each other til the next party, but the girl will feel like the guy loves her, and tell her friends he does.

Um, really? I don't think so. This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. I feel like if you think hooking up means someone loves you, you should not be hooking up. I know there's love stories out there where people start out just fooling around and then wind up happily married, but really? What are those odds? 1 to 1,000,000? Realistically, you're going to get hurt. And it's going to suck. It makes me sad to think that there's girls who really feel that way.

surprise

We have this thing that we do in my group of friends. During the school year, for anyone's birthday, we arrange a surprise party. Now, the problem with this is we can only do it so many times before the surprise element isn't so surprising anymore.

So when it was Janna's birthday last week we tried everything to keep it a surprise, but still when I was trying to get her to come over to my house for some "epic mac and cheese" and to see my apartment because we've been talking about her seeing it since I moved in months ago, she was questioning why. But I managed to get her to come over with Tina, her roommate, and we ate that mac and cheese.

After dinner she tried on some of my dresses to find one to wear out the next night. One of the dresses was strapless, so she borrowed a strapless bra of mine to try on with the dress, and was pleased to discover it fit her much better than the ones she'd been wearing. Like, very VERY pleased and excited about this discovery because she was fed up with her bras not fitting.

We got back to her apartment and she saw her other roommate Lauren, who'd been having similar bra issues, in the living room, she went, "Lauren! I found a solution to our problem! It's our bra size! I'm not the size I thought, I'm Kodi's size! We should go bra shopping and get measured together!"

And then she walks to her room. And everyone jumps out and yells "SURPRISE!!!!" And she falls to her knees laughing, and totally embarrassed. Officially the best surprise party ever.

thankful

Adam is my boss, and I'm so thankful for Adam. I'm thankful that God found me this job.

Adam text messaged me today and said that he'd just been looking at other photographer's websites and had convinced himself he sucked and needed to work to get way better. Now, he by no means sucks(check it out), but the fact that he's humble about his talent and wants to continually work to get better? This makes him a great man to work with.

I'm thankful that he's open to my suggestions and is allowing me, the not-even-out-of-college kid to have a voice in his business. He knows how to encourage me and give me confidence.

I'm thankful for the friendship we've created. I could have worked with someone who I didn't have any desire to ever see outside of the workplace, but instead I've got someone who I know is my friend, and who I know values the friendship we share. I'm new in the workplace, but I think that's a good thing.

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So, thank you God, for blessing me, for now, with a boss who has a mind that works like mine.

color

This weekend I shot a wedding with Adam in Waupaca. I'm thinking I could stand to get married there. It was so gorgeous with all the fall colors. I went down a day early and stayed with my aunt at her cottage on the water. We took a drive just for the purpose of catching some of those pretty fall colors, and I think we did a pretty good job.

Maybe someday I'll live in Waupaca. I really love it there, by the water.

family

To continue the pictures for my Grandma and Grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary album, we had to do our family. With a little tripod work and figuring out how the timer works on my new camera, we managed to get a shot of all three of us. Then I took some of my parents and my mom took some of me. We did alright. We also discovered that my stepdad is a total cheeseball when it comes to taking pictures, and when I'm the one looking at the camera, I can't seem to smile naturally for the life of me, until someone gets me all out laughing.

different

I'm one of those oblivious movie watchers. I watch movies to kind of zone out and not really have to pay tons of attention. To relax. Phil does too -- he's just so much more aware than I am in a relaxed state.

We'll watch a movie and it'll get to the part where most normal people are at least somewhat surprised at the outcome, and Phil will be all unimpressed. Like, oh, well, yeah, that's what was going to happen Didn't you see that apple they showed at the beginning of the movie and then that girl said that one word like 30 minutes in, and then that guy blinked 4 times in 45 seconds turning that one part -- so duh. And I'm all, what guy? There was a guy?

And they say girls are more detail oriented.

walk

I'm ready for the rain to go away and for the pretty fall days to start.

Thursday was a pretty fall day. My friend Alex and I went for a walk on the trails around campus. UWGB really does have a quite beautiful campus. I took a bunch of pictures because a) it's pretty and b) I'm looking to replace my dandelion pictures in my room with fall pictures -- my way of decorating. We had a blast. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Alex is transferring next semester, and I'm going to miss him.

Here's some of the shots.

Phil and I were going to walk in the woods by his house yesterday to get some more shots but to my disappointment, and to Flannel's(Phil's labrador who had lots of pent up energy), it was raining all day. Maybe another day!