Tackling a Bucket List

So the month of July is supposed to be where I pursue a passion. Well, you know how some people really love to craft? Or play music? Or stick with one thing?

Welcome to the mind of Andi where my brain has a difficult time fully completing one thought before moving on to the next. I don't think there has ever been a time in my life where I have focused all of my energy on one thing developing a "passion". 

SO. Here is where my brilliant idea began. I'll walk you through it. 

We'll start back in December when I was developing my Happiness Project. I got to July and decided I wanted to "pursue a passion". Well my first obstacle came about when I realized that I didn't have a passion that I could really focus on for an entire month. I mean, everybody knows that I would just get bored if I picked one thing. So that's when I decided I was going to make a BUCKET LIST. 

Yep.

I've seriously made probably 50 Bucket Lists in my life so far. I think it kinda dawned on me that doing awesome things in my life that will create a story to tell is my passion. Let's be honest, I can tell a story. Though it may be way too long and detailed and not very interesting to most, by golly I love telling stories. 

I realized that a Bucket List would be great for me because I can literally do a different thing every single day if I wanted to and have every activity fall under one category. Genius, I know.

Fast forward to about a month and a half ago.

I'm laying in bed one night thinking about my Bucket List idea for July when ALL OF A SUDDEN I have an even more brilliant idea. 

Okay what I say next is important. Well, it's important to me. Only because it is ANOTHER project that I'm extending from this one because I have loved writing about all of my adventures and I'm not quite ready to stop in just a few short months.

ANYWAYS.

I'm going to make my Bucket List extend through my 20s. That's right. Nine whole years of Bucket List shenanigans. And I'm going to do one item from my list every month. For nine years. Yes, I do know that is a lot of Bucket List items. 108 to be exact. Makes me excited just thinking about it! THINK OF ALL THE ADVENTURES I AM GOING TO HAVE. 

So here's the part that is slightly ridiculous about my Bucket List project. I'm going to write about it. All of it. Like, every event that I do. Not on a blog, though. Some of them, maybe, but not all of them. Why you ask? Well, I'm going to write a book. LOL. I turned this project into a masterpiece. The last item on my list is going to be to complete the book. Do I know if I'll ever let anybody read my book? Who knows. It's more for my own satisfaction of completing a project this big. 

Anyways.......I don't have the entire list complete yet. But I start next month. I'm not doing any of them in July because I'm going to start when I turn 21 so I have a complete nine years to work with. 

BUT, here is what I have so far:

1. Skydive.

2. Go surfing.

3. Ride an elephant.

4. Go a week without using my cell phone.

5. Run a half marathon.

6. Run a marathon.

7. Complete a triathlon.

8. Complete a half iron man.

9. Sing karaoke.

10. Swim with dolphins.

11. Ride in a hot air balloon. 

12. Make a quilt.

13. Learn to play the guitar.

14. Hold a snake.

15. Go on a police ride along.

16. Go either scuba diving or snorkeling.

17. Attend a presidential speech or debate.

18. See the town my dad was born in (Bitburg, Germany).

19. Attend an African American church.

20. Give blood.

21. Plant a garden (one with food, not flowers).

22. Donate hair.

23. Research my family history.

24. Have my palm read.

25. Eat an insect.

26. Be an extra in a movie.

27. Go on a date to a drive-in.

28. Crash something (wedding, party, ect).

29. Take a dance class.

30. Complete a 1,000 piece puzzle.

31. Take a self-defense class.

32. Live in a foreign country.

33. Visit every state in the USA.

34. Go on a spontaneous road trip.

35. Go on a mission trip to Africa.

36. Go on a mission trip to Haiti.

37. Walk on a glacier.

38. Learn to drive a stick shift.

39. Go paintballing.

40. Be a big sister (big brothers/big sisters).

41. Be on the field at a NFL game.

42. Write thank you letters to those important to me.

43. Learn to golf well.

44. Go to Harry Potter World.

45. Graduate from Mizzou with my undergraduate degree in Health Sciences.

46. Graduate from grad school in Physical Therapy.

So that's all I have so far. If you have any suggestions of something interesting to add, feel free to let me know! I am very open to suggestions. Or if you would like to do any of them with me, I love company! Unless it's the puzzle. I'm doing that bad boy alone.

Sorry, I just really love puzzles. 

Just Checkin' In....

So June marked the halfway point to my Happiness Project. Kinda bittersweet. I'm having so much fun doing this project and don't want it to stop! 

I guess it's a good thing that I have a plan to keep it going for a much longer time and it will be much more fun and exciting than this year..... ;)

ANYWAYS. I figured I would do a little check-in for the past six months and where I am with keeping up with these goals. I'll go ahead and say that some are great while others still need a bit of work.

JANUARY: This month was all about getting organized. I wanted to start a blog, "spring clean" my apartment room, and start a great devotional.

Wellll, score one for Andi because I started a blog and I AM STILL DOING IT. That's right. I think this is the first project I have ever stuck with. Especially for this long. Is this what growing up feels like? It feels great. 

LOL real hard at me spring cleaning my apartment room. That was a shot in the dark though. My room is never clean. Except I actually did make a pile of stuff to throw away/take home.....it just never actually left the corner I put it in. But I'm all moved out now so TECHNICALLY I followed through with this one because by golly that apartment is spotless now.

The devotional is at about 50% accuracy. I'm still doing Jesus Calling and I absolutely LOVE IT. I highly recommend it to anybody looking for one because it is perfect. It's weird how it says exactly what you need to hear and the verses that you look up for it are amazing....obviously. I say it's at about 50% accuracy because like I said I'm really bad about keeping up with projects and things. I just have a really bad attention span and I forget to do it every day. I know, I know, I shouldn't forget something that important and I'm working on it.

FEBRUARY: I was trying to get on a health kick this month. You know, working out, eating real meals, and drinking more water and less soda. 

I honestly didn't do too shabby with this month and am still sticking with it the best I can. The whole working out thing has been put on hold because I was dumb and tried to play soccer, as you all know. But before I hurt myself I was on multiple rec teams at Mizzou and was just pretty active in general. I'm finally getting slightly better with my knee and have been set free to go on BIKE RIDES. HOLLA. 

Eating healthy. LOL. I'll never eat strictly healthy. I love chocolate and chips too much. However, I really did quit eating fast food so much (okay this is partially because I'm broke but SO WHAT) and the majority of my meals were rather healthy. As for drinking more water I've rocked this. Yes, I still drink soda but not near as much. I quit buying it because it was just a waste of money. You know what that did? Gave me a bit more pocket change to do fun stuff with AND I got healthier. Win win. 

MARCH: This month I wanted to focus on school, read more educational books, and subscribe to/read Time Magazine.

I rocked that school thing that apparently is SO important this month/semester. Seriously. I made a pact with myself that I was only going to skip a class if I had an actual reason to. I did realllllllly good with this too until about the last two weeks of school when I lost all motivation. I only skipped one class before that and it was so I could go with my brother on his college visit. Other than that I think I only missed four classes or so at the end. Which I am proud of. 

Reading wise, I subscribed to Time and I read the magazines when I get them. I love it. Educational books.....well I'm taking a Harry Potter class this fall so I'm rereading all of the books. Do those count as educational? I'm going with yes. 

APRIL: In April I spent my time focusing on my relationship with Christ. I did this because I don't feel like I can be truly happy until I'm in a place I feel good about with Him. However, I really don't think this can ever really be reached. I'm just enjoying the journey. 

I really wanted to spend more time serving others, praying, and reading my Bible. With Phi Lamb I was given so many opportunities to serve. I truly love my sorority for all that it offers. As for prayer, I've just never been very good at it. I spent my whole spring semester in prayer group talking about how I just get so distracted and it never turns out how I hear all of my sisters talking about their prayer life. Needless to say, my crazy brain hasn't changed any and I still get super distracted, but I've found things that work for me. And I've read my Bible every time I do Jesus Calling, sooo....slightly succeeding I suppose? I should really read it more. It's got some good stuff inside.

MAY: I really wanted to focus on being in the present this month and in the future. This was something that I'm really just going to have to continue working on. Mainly because technology can be so addicting. I wanted to reduce my use of social media, watch the news more, and just pay better attention to daily life.

Well the social media thing is hard. Cell phones are crazy and it's hard to stop using it so much. If you ask my family they would tell you that I'm still really bad about using it at home. But when I'm in new places or out with friends I do my absolute best to keep it put away. I've done pretty well so far and I have had some great conversations with wonderful strangers because of it. This has helped me pay better attention to my daily life because when I'm out and about I notice more now. And I trip and fall a lot less. Let's not get carried away and assume I'm not clumsy anymore though because we all know that will never change. Ask Andy Etzler. That pirate preacher knows how to call a girl out for being clumsy. It's cool though because I can do neat things like call him a pirate preacher in return. Keep on keepin on, man. 

I didn't have TV at my apartment so I don't know why I said I was going to watch the news. I've caught it a few times at home this month while mom is watching it though.

JUNE: I wanted to focus on my family this month. I spent lots of time with cousins and went to some family suppers and attended an amazing family reunion. WHERE I BECAME A WORLD CHAMPION IN THE BLACKWELL FAMILY OLYMPICS. That's right. World Champion. There is only one duo a year in the whole entire world crowned the Olympic Champions. TOTAL DOMINATION. Germany ain't got nothin' on me with that silly World Cup. Basically, I really love my immediate and extended families on both sides. I'm super blessed to be surrounded by the people I am. God gave me some keepers. 

So I'd say that these first six months have been pretty epic. And I feel like if I was going to give myself a grade I would give myself a B. You know, there's always room for improvement but I don't like bad grades so I wouldn't want to give myself anything lower than that. Get into that C range and you might see a rare occasion of me crying. So I'm a bit of a nerd, whatever. 

So if you've been reading these past six months, THANK YOU SO MUCH. Special shout out to my girl KB because she tells me every time she sees me that she stalks my blog and it makes my day every time. If you don't read my blog, well, you won't see this and I think you're really missing out on some goofy stories. 

Keep it real, homies. 

The Road to Glory: Blackwell Family Olympics

Who doesn't like a little friendly competition? 

Every year at my family reunion we have the Blackwell Family Olympics. This is no joke. Completely serious. It's legit. And it is a big deal. 

We've had the games for many years now. A few years have been individual winners, but then we started teams. My cousin Steven and I quickly paired up. This is our story of glory. 

2009:

The first year for teams. 

The Olympics this year consisted of a giant relay race. We had challenges like: eating a doughnut hanging off a string without using our hands, finding a specific crayon in a bucket of crayons, swimming back and forth between docks in the lake to match up ducks with names on them, filling a tub with water using a sponge, and a few others leading up to......a word scramble. 

Let me just tell you that we had a huge lead on every single other team until the word scramble. As soon as we picked up our pencils, we fell apart. 

And that's the first year we did not leave victorious.

It was a rough day. And year. Considering we were made fun of for our word scramble failure from then on out. 

After a few years of single champions, we are brought to last summer. 

2013:

The second year for teams.

We were tired of being the Family Olympics joke. This was our year. We were in it to win it. 

The Olympic games this year were individual events with a running total of points. First place in an event received 10 points, second place 9 points, and so on down to last place receiving 1 point. Some of the events included: family trivia, pogo stick, a luck of the roll dice game, bowling, hitting a baseball after spinning around 10 times, water balloon toss, and a few others.

Just like in 2009, we took first in almost every event. The dice game and family trivia were our downfalls this year. However, I would like to add that Tara and Chandler cheated in multiple events.

For the second year, we came in second place. 

We'd grown tired of these "fun" family games. We planned on taking a trip to Vegas instead of joining the family in Branson this year. 

However, team asthma showed up. Third times a charm, right?

This year I was pretty sick. I was doing a breathing treatment for my asthma every four hours and just couldn't get any energy. The day of the Olympics I slept until 2:15 only to get up to drive over to the site for the games. 

Chandler told me I had to pull a Michael Jordan and compete like he did in the legendary "flu game" of the NBA finals. 

All of the doubt was in our corner. I was practically dying and Steven has bad asthma as well. 

The scoring for the Olympics this year was the same as last year. Individual events with a grand total of points.

We had to complete a 40 piece puzzle. We rocked it and got first place.

We had to balance 3 dice on a spoon without touching them. This was a last team standing event. Despite our perfect zen, we came in last place for this one which really hurt our total points. 

We had to complete a Soduku puzzle. I have never been so thankful in my entire life for being a complete nerd in middle school. I did these puzzles for fun. Probably because I didn't have much of a life back then. Oh well. It came in handy because we dominated and took first in this event. 

 

This one we had to use straws and suck to carry a smartie from one end of the table into the jar at the other end. We actually came in third place in this event. After we finished, Steven threw up in his mouth because he couldn't breathe and I had an asthma attack. All in good fun, right? 

There were a few other events. For instance, we had to eat an entire box of milk duds then chug a drink, fill up a jar with water by transporting the water with a cup carried only with our mouths, a memory game, and maybe one or two others. 

Then the last event......the dreaded word scramble. We just knew that we were done for. We're terrible at word scrambles and we were down in points because of the dice. 

BUT WE ROCKED IT. AND WE CAME IN FIRST IN THE WORD SCRAMBLE.

That's right. Sweet, sweet redemption. 

However, it wasn't quite enough. By getting first place we tied it up with Tiffany and Alex. We had to go into a tie breaker. 

Things just got real.

We had to bounce or throw ping pong balls into a jar a few feet away. The first to make four balls in the jar would take over as champion. 

Now everybody would automatically look to Alex and Tiff to easily win this round. I mean, we know how they were in college. This is life size beer pong. (Sorry, guys. Love you.)

This took serious focus. And it was a lot harder than you would assume.

BUT

......

.....

.....

VICTORY WAS OURS.

THAT'S RIGHT. WE WON.

BLACKWELL FAMILY OLYMPIC CHAMPIONS.

I've never been more proud to display a trophy in my life. 

That one was for you, dad. 

#glennyaward