BAMA!

If I could do it all over again, I think I might want to be a bama girl! We were at the beautiful and enormous University of Alabama yesterday. What a gorgeous campus with historical charm and the appeal and ease of modern world conveniences, the main one being that they have a full out Publix on campus. Those of you, who live in the southeast, truly understand the magnificence of a Publix grocery store. The bakery alone is sheer splendor. This was an exciting discovery for us Publix loving gals indeed. Then we found a nail salon, hair salon, tanning salon- so many salons all in one place and all on campus! And just around the corner a smoothie shack, Kinko’s/UPS, book store (of course), restaurants, bars and even a dance club or two. Greek row happens to be right across the street from the stadium. Sweet! No cars needed at Alabama that's for sure!
(UA Student Services Center)After checking out the greatness that is the University of Alabama, we found our way to the Student Center ballroom for our program. We had the pleasure of speaking to 1,000 new members of sorority life at Alabama and got a chance to visit with one of favorite students from SEPC, Julia. What a great day! We are incredibly lucky and forever thankful to be doing the work that we do and to have the chance to meet so many wonderful student leaders like Julia. Thanks so much for the opportunity sister!

Bama girls at heart,
K & B

Luck is on our side...

Picture- At Grins with the lovely ladies of Panhellenic

If it's true what they say about crickets being lucky, then Texas State University could quite possibly be the luckiest campus we've ever been to! We heard it was "cricket season," a season which we had honestly never heard of before our visit to San Marcos, but it became hugely apparent soon after dusk. We had to be careful to watch where we stepped, because there were literally crickets everywhere; seriously. It was truly bazaar.
Enough about the crickets, we don't want to lose focus of telling you all about a truly amazing group of women we met while visiting TSU during this fabulously lucky season. : ) The smart, beautiful, respectful, polite and of course extremely hospitable ladies of Panhellenic at TSU were so good to us! They really made our visit a memorable one. We spoke to about 500 awesome sorority women. The energy in the room was empowering in its own right, the Greek women at TSU rock. Having the chance to work with this amazing group of women was an honor and another reminder of how lucky we are to have THE coolest jobs ever! The lovely and talented women who make up the Panhellenic Executive team invited us to join them for dinner after our program at this great local hot spot which is known for their $1 Margaritas. Yes, only $1, we could hardly believe it ourselves. No margaritas for us this time, but the food was excellent and the company was even better! (P.S.-Visitors of the lone star state should not be permitted to leave without partaking in some superbly delicious Tex-mex… hmmm, hmmm, good!) Not only did we have a great time talking with them about Greek life, Tamara's fear of crickets, Recruitment, life after college and the importance of taking advantage of every single minute of your collegiate career (God, I miss college), but we also had a chance to learn more about the new campaign they've started at TSU called SUAVE (Students United Against Violence Everyday). A fabulous name for an important cause; you go girls! We look forward to hearing how your first week of SUAVE events turned out.
Still feeling lucky,
K & B

Nacho, burrito, what's that up in your Speedo?

This is one of our favorite sing-a-long songs which we happened to learn while waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant years ago. Waiting tables, well, not so good. Sing’n in the kitchen, awesome! Come on; give it a try, we think you’ll like it too. It goes a little something like this: Nacho, burrito, what’s that up in your Speedo? You’ve got trouble, on the double… (then we usually just make up the rest). Fun, right? So why are we singing this oh so memorable and delightful song you ask? Well, its a little celebration of our minor on the road accomplishment, well I guess we can call it an accomplishment. We started our day in the Houston airport where we enjoyed a tasty Mexican treat, breakfast tacos. Yummy! In honor of delicious Tex-Mex throughout the land (especially in Texas) we decided to challenge our pallets by sticking with the taco theme throughout the day. You may be thinking, wow, that could get tough, but hey, we’re dedicated! So, for lunch, we found ourselves at Kirby’s Café, a hip local diner serving traditional Austin cuisine. This place was artsy, quaint and fabulous and we thoroughly enjoyed our bean-n-veggie tacos. Mucho Delish-e-oso. When dinner time rolled around, yep, you guessed it, tacos! The perfect ending to a truly fabulous day! The simple things in life make it so much fun.
Adios for now,
K & B

Success, friends and sadness.

Ok so today my pal Shawn's book comes out. I feel like I know a celebrity since everywhere I turn, there is another review of the D-Man's book (all good of course). So that makes today exciting. Besides, Shawn and wife Gwenn would make great celebs. It would make my buying the magazines that I know I should not buy a less guilty pleasure.

Naturally, I am psyched about tonight's Grey's premiere. I cried my eyes out watching the finale last night. This show is so good. My husband came into the room to see what was wrong. I love the writing and the development of the characters. So strong. But, mostly I cried because of the dog- Doc. For those of you who do not know, my dog fell very ill this summer and had to be put to sleep so watching that is still awful. However, giving the week I have had I found the flowing tears a therapeutic release and helpful.

I also chatted via this cool tool myspace with an old high school buddy yesterday. It was his birthday, "Happy Birthday". Tony is a guy who I always really liked and respected in high school and was sad that over time we had lost touch. No more thanks to this age of instant gratification.

Coming off a crummy week, I have to say that the next few days look amazing. Our Godson is coming to stay this weekend for his birthday and has no idea my better half is taking him to Tallahassee for a football game. He will be wicked pumped. Then I take off with Kel for a few campus visits that we could not be more excited about. The women we have chatted with there are out of this world. We are looking forward to learning and working with them.

In reflection I guess what I learned this week is, when someone or something gets you down you have two choices. 1. Either learn what you can from it and use the pain and anger to propel you forward or 2. let it erode who you are and subsequently let them win.

We went with 1.

Much love always-
Becca

Kitty City!

We have our first little break in the semester and we’ve been home all week, it’s a good thing, because it’s kitty city at Casa de Addington! My husband Court and I recently became the proud foster parents of 5 adorable baby kittens. Court rescued 5 abandoned kittens earlier this week and they're currently living in our guest bathroom. They seem to be enjoying cuddling up on blankets in the bathtub. (Sweet as peaches picture attached.) The little babes are so adorable and super sweet! They’re pretty fragile and understandably scared and nervous, but all of them are extremely gentle.
I contacted an amazing completely volunteer run agency, CAT CALL which rescues and cares for cats and also manages cat adoptions. Tonight, I took the in for their first check-up and we found out that we have 3 girls and 2 boys! We also learned that they're only 3 1/2 weeks old and they weigh about 13 ounces each. Tiny, tiny little lumps of love! Their guesstimated and now "official" birthday is September 1st. Just today, they've started to meow and play. They're becoming very social with each other and even with us. I don't know how much longer we’ll be able to keep them confined to the tub, but for now, its working. CAT CALL asked us to keep them until they’re 8 weeks old and ready to be adopted. How could we say NO?! The next 5 weeks should be very interesting, especially for my cat, Abby!

Proud foster parent of the fabulous five,
Kelly

Time with T.J.

Today was great, our mentor was in our hometown and we got to break bread with him and see him speak (always a treat) at The University of Tampa. He finally met both our husbands and gave us a big thumbs up- not that we had any doubts.

If you do not know T.J. or have not have the chance to hear him speak...PLEASE check him out on myspace or through CAMPUSPEAK at www.campuspeak.com. He will make you laugh and make you think.

Always-
Kelly and Becca

PS- The gorgeous gal in the photo with us is Casey the Director of Greek Life at UT.

Our Famous Friend Shawn

We were sitting on a plane in Baltimore waiting for the flight crew to replace what the pilot referred to as, “some minor navigational equipment” (thank God!). Becca was reading the USA Today and I was focused on a highly entertaining and newly important task of creating a wrestling name roster. What is a wrestling roster you ask? We weren’t really sure either, but we decided to strategically and creatively come up with wrestling names for some of our friends. We sometimes do imaginative, albeit strange things when we’re bored (read more about this on our blog entry titled, “A dog named Wonton”).

Anyway, I had a few names done and Becca gets all excited. I’m thinking, wow, she’s really into this- this is going to be fun. But, she was excited because she was reading the Life Section of the USA Today and our buddy Shawn, who we will now refer to as our Author friend, Shawn Decker and his book, My Pet Virus: the True Story of a Rebel without a Cure were mentioned in the new Books section of the paper. Awesome! But, not at all surprising. Now, if you have not promptly left this blog to purchase this masterpiece, may we suggest you do so very soon?

Seriously, Shawn way to go!! We will definitely have to work a bit harder on your wrestling name, to be sure it’s worthy of your celebrity status, but still relatable, humorous and edgy, just like you.

It's Fashion Week in New York

The students at Skidmore College reinforced why we do what we do. They took the Let’s Talk About “IT” message to a whole new level by taking it to the streets of campus, spreading the word and engaging the college community. The Skidmore peer educators were decked out in t-shirts that were made to spread the word about our program and more importantly, to get students to talk about “IT.” A special thanks to our sunshine sister, Carli for the t-shirts and for making our visit to Skidmore possible. Students like her are our inspiration.

8 to 1

8 to 1. A statisitc we learned during a recent visit to Berry College in Mount Berry, GA. So what does 8 to 1 mean exactly you ask? Well, let me tell you, it's 8 deer to every 1 student at Berry. Yes, I did say deer. Like, the one's that scamper through the woods. It was a surprise to us too! Kind of strange for us city girls to see deer straight up chill'n on campus. But they certainly fit right in and there's plenty of room since the campus is on acres and acres of gorgeous Georgia soil!
The campus was beautiful and the students were awesome (and beautiful too). We had a fabulous time at dinner with a very dedicated team of peer educators. Thanks for the good times ladies and keep up the great work.