How do I even Life....?

Stress. This seems to be the common theme among myself and everyone around me lately. Exams. Reports. Pracs. Grades. Deadlines. I can see these weighing down on everyone around res and I have felt this weight myself. It's been killing my mood and making me question myself more than ever. I needed to find a way to lessen this weight, this stress. Slowly, throughout the week, I found a way.

Jacob took Katie and I on an impromptu trip to the beach. Although it was freezing, just feeling the sand under my feet, between my fingers, hearing the waves roll in and just smelling the salt in the air while the sun sunk slowly behind us, was enough. There's nothing that quite compares to the euphoria you feel when being at the beach.

In case you haven't notices, my friends are weird. Like, crazy weird...but I wouldn't have it any other way. Because, I mean, hey...I'm crazy weird too. 

Such an intense netball game this Saturday for the A-Grade girls. Although they lost, Dayle rolled out of a backwards somersault pretty nicely. :)

Thanks to the generosity of Morgan Pumpa, Katie and I were able to go the the Boy & Bear concert at the Lighthouse Theatre last night. Patrick James and his band opened and although his voice was beautiful, I couldn't really get into the music. The only time I really felt the music was when his band left and he played the keyboard while singing. At that point, I felt the music and what he was trying to convey.

After a 20 minute intermission ("The bar is now open," typical Australia!), Boy & Bear were finally on stage. Leading up to the concert, I made sure to listen to some of their music on YouTube, to get a feel for their sound. I knew that I liked their music, but I wasn't overly amazed by it after watching the videos. I wasn't expecting what I would feel when they started to perform. From the first song, I was engulfed by their music. The singing. The instrumentation. The emotion and passion they were showing was all encompassing. At some points, I forgot that I was in a theatre and just felt like I was the only one in the room. 

Between one set, the drummer wished all the moms there a happy Mother's Day and was talking about how they didn't get to see their moms that day because they were a "fair bit" away from home. If only they knew what a fair bit away from home really felt like. 

I know that you probably saw these posted on my FaceBook, but I felt the need to post them here as well. My one and only, older brother graduated from Iowa State University this past weekend. This will be the first time that he's not going to be at a school I'm going to or plan on going to. The fact that he's now an adult terrifies me, because that means that I'm that much closer to being an adult as well. I don't want to be a grown-up. I don't know how. I'm not prepared to be completely responsible for myself. Anywho...my cousin, Brenden, also graduated this weekend from Coe College. It makes me sad that we're all growing up. My cousins are my best friends. My brothers. My sisters. Soon we're all going to be adults with our own families and aren't going to get to see each other as much. We try and tell ourselves it won't happen. We've promised each other infinity amount of times that we'll never let anything between us, and I hope we won't. I don't know what I'd do without you guys in my life. My family is my rock.

Last but not least, Mother's Day. My mom is the best friend I could ever ask for. I have tried to come up with the perfect combination of words to encompass what she means to me, and failed so many times. She knows what she is to me. Everything. I love you mom and miss you so much.