20th Birthday Celebrating!

I celebrated my 20th birthday on Tuesday (27th) but actually have been celebrating since last Thursday, the 22nd. I didn't intend on celebrating 5 days straight but hey something exciting happened everyday so I would call it a great few days :)

For weeks Austin has told me that he had a surprise getaway planned for my birthday and that I would have to be ready to leave by 10am on the 22nd, but whouldn't tell me where we were going or what we were doing (he did end up telling me the night before to make sure I packed everything). We ended up going to Galena! Back in March we took our first little trip together to Galena and since then I always told him that I wanted to go back in the fall to see all the trees changing colors so thats exactly what we did :) He even wrote up a cute little agenda for the trip 

On Thursday we headed up to Apple River Canyon State Park and went hiking for part of the day :) we brought a little picnic lunch and ate it along the way! The park was so so pretty and the trees were perfect! I'll insert some pictures below :)

 

This picture is my favorite one from the trip! 

 

 After hiking on Thursday we went and walked around downtown Galena for a bit before going to the hotel to get ready for dinner! We ended up going to Procentos Pizza for dinner which was SO SO GOOD. I had some alfredo pasta and Aust got a calazone and they were both delish, definietly will be heading abck there!

 The plans for Friday got changed because of rain :/ we ended up just heading home a little earlier and stopped in Rockford for some lunch!

Saturday was such an exciting day... MY BEST FRIEND GOT ENGAGED! 

I am so so incredibly happy and excited for them! Eeek! :)

Austin and I also spent our afternoon, well until I had to go to work, being festive and carved some pumpkins! Mainly just to get the seeds ;)

 Austin of course had to help me because it was taking me two hours to carve a pumpkin from a stencil, what can I say pumpkin carving isn't my specialty

Sunday morning we were up bright and early with my parents to run the Sycamore Pumpkin Run! It was my dad and Austin's first 10k race and they both killed it! We finished in an hour and five minutes. Well my dad ran ahead of us a little bit and ended a few minutes earlier but he came back and found us and ran across the finish line again hah. It is always so much easier to get through a race when you have people running with you :)

After the race we went out to lunch with my family then got ready and headed to Rockton to spend the rest of our night with Austin's family celebrating his sister, Emily's, birthday! It's always so much fun getting to spend time with them especially seeing little Brayden and Ella :)

Monday night we had Brianna and Joe over to celebrate my birthday and have a family dinner :) 

Tuesday was my actual birthday. I was treated to a facial first thing when I got up...best way to start the day! Then my mom and I headed to St. Charles and Geneva to do some shopping and get lunch! We got back in perfect time for me to head to work haha.

I had such a great birthday and so glad that I got to spend time with so many people that are so important to me! I got to catch up with a few people who had texted me to say happy birthday which was so nice! I am so lucky to have such a great family and boyfriend (and his family) to get to celebrate with :)

Columbia, Missouri Oct. 15-18, 2015

Well Austin and I covered another state this passed weekend! We went down to Columbia, Missouri to visit our friend Ashley at Mizzou!

We got in pretty late on Thursday night and decided to just go to the downtown area to get some Chipotle (Mine and Aust's favorite) and call it an early night.

Friday morning we were woken up at 6:30am to the tornado sirens going off, I guess the fire department set them off on accident haha, but anyway we got up on Friday, had some breakfast then it was off to explore! We of course had to go to the downtown area to do some shopping! There were several super cute clothing shops, some Mizzou spirit stores and a couple home-ish stores :) I always love going to cities with cute downtown areas. We checked out Lakota Coffee downtown which Austin and Ashley really liked! Little too strong of coffee for someone like me who usually drinks their creamer with a little bit of coffee ;)
On our way home from shopping we went to a little hiking area which was super super pretty and had a great view

Friday night we went out to pizza at Shakespeare's Pizza..so so good. We also went to the Dan & Shay concert at the Blue Note. Super small venue but it was awesome because we got to be so close to the stage! Dan & Shay were so good live and also sang some rock songs which was really fun :) Shout out to Austin for coming with us and dealing with a bunch of screaming girls ;)

Day 2, Saturday we went hiking again! We went to Rock Bridge State Park for a few hours and it was so so pretty! All of the leaves were changing so it was perfect! The only downside was that the caves were closed for bat hibernation but it was still a fun day!

After hiking we went to Panera (our second favorite) and made a coffee stop. The rest of the day was a lazy day. We watched a couple movies and made some monster cookies!

We took off earlyish on Sunday and made a pit stop in Champaign to have a late lunch with Kayli, Jake, Hannah and John :) always so good to see them and stop at one of our favorite places :) and of course we stopped at Aroma Coffee before leaving, can't stop in Champaign without going there! ;)

We made it home a little after 7 I think on Sunday night and we were both EXHAUSTED, but of course were procrastinators and still had a little bit of homework to do, so that was fun.

On Thursday we will be heading out of town again for an overnight trip! Austin has a surprise planned for my birthday, so I have no idea where we are going or what we are doing, I'm sure it's going to be a great trip! :)

Fall Sticker Haul

I got some new fall stickers for my planner :) Fall stickers have to be my favorite and I was super pleased with all of these stickers! Links to the sticker shops will be linked under the pictures!

Custom headers! second time ordering from this shop, love her stickers, Kayla (the shop owner) is so sweet and always responds to messages and questons. Love her little sample sheet that always comes with orders!
http://ohhelloco.com/

Both from One Orange Snowflake, First time ordering from her shop but will definitely be ordering again! 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/OneOrangeSnowflake

These are all from Bella Rose Paper Co. She has so many functional stickers, these boxes are so so cute. Love that she has stickers that look like they're glitter stickers but they're really not so you don't have to deal with the mess :) can't wait to place another order! 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BellaRosePaperCo

First Half Marathon!

Well, it's been about a week since I ran my first half marathon and well I can't say that I have a huge desire to run another one.

First off for some of you who don't know, I ran cross country and track in middle school and since then I have just ran for myself...for fun. I have ran several 5K races and a couple 10Ks. A lot of people told me "oh yeah you'll be fine running a half marathon since you already run so much." Boy were they wrong.

I typically run a 9:30-10 minute mile, however for the half I ended up averaging 11:34 per mile, which I understand I was running double what I usually run but I thought I would still keep a pace closer to a 10, a little disappointed. I wanted to finish the race in under 2 and a half hours and I finished 2 minutes passed that, but whatever it was my first one right? Anyway, I also told myself I was only going to walk during the water stations....I walked a lot more than that hahah again a tad disappointed.

I generally enjoy running, however knowing once a week that I had to go run 7,8,9 miles did not sound appealing to me whatsoever and to be honest half the time I didn't do it. Training for this race really made me dislike running. I don't think that I'm dedicated enough to running, I have a weird school and work schedule so trying to fit in a run wasn't always my top priority as it should have been, I definintely learned my lesson.

I don't want to ruin the experience for people who are reading this and are considering running, but I had such bad leg pains throughout the race and stomach aches. And I was also sick and couldn't hardly eat the rest of the day or the next. So just a heads up.

Honestly who knows if I'll do another one, we'll see. Maybe later in life when I feel a little more dedicated and can actually get myself to train properly for it! I am running a 10k at the end of the month with Austin and my parents so hopefully that goes better :)