Chelsea Goes Out!

Yesterday, my mother's office was holding a fundraiser for the American Heart Association and my sister and I went to volunteer with her. So I decided to make a photo blog of my day. Enjoy!

My day isn't complete without my morning coffee!

And some more coffee!

We went to the most charming bakery to get their donation to our bake sale!

My weakness: strawberry shortcake! 

They made us wait for an hour, so we got some free ice cream! 

There are no words to describe how wrong this is!

Who doesn't love a little extra touch of Disney? 

Selfies while volunteering!

First time trying Shula Burger! Total perfection!

Then to end my day, I got to face time with my soldier! 

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Favorite Books

If any of you guys know me, you'd know that I am a massive bookworm! So this is a tiny peek into my list of all-time favorites that I could read over and over again! 

1. The Outsiders

2. The Harry Potter Series

3. A Walk to Remember

4. Getting Rid of Rosie

5. The Night Huntress Series

6. The Percy Jackson Series

7. The Kane Chronicles

8. The Nanny Diaries

9. To Kill A Mockingbird

10. The Vampire Academy Series

These aren't all of my favorites but the list could go on forever, so these will just have to do for now! 

Disney Days

I decided to take Kelly on a day trip to Disney World as a last hurrah before school started, just the two of us! Kelly loves photography and most of these photos were taken by her. We had an amazing time and hope that you love the pictures as much as we do!  

Hotel. :)

Kelly by the castle. 

Me by the castle. 

On the Astro-Orbiter

So pretty!

The Tremaines. 

Our favorite!

He wanted to hear a story from his new mother: Kelly!

Kelly loves Goofy. :)

This guy was such a ham!

On Goofy's Barnstormer! 

Ariel!

People mover.

I have wanted to meet them for so long!

Dumbo!

On Dumbo!

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Facebook Deactivation

***Disclaimer: If you like and/or enjoy Facebook, that is fine. I am not bashing you. I am just sharing my personal thoughts and opinions and I respect yours as well.***

So yesterday I did something that, for some odd reason, is a bigger deal than it should be: I deactivated my Facebook profile. This is something that should be a minuscule event in my life, almost unnoteworthy. However, with how much social media has become a "seemingly integral" (and I use that phrase loosely) part of our everyday lives, it has had an immediate effect on my life and how I spend my time.

Honestly, I don't really understand why Facebook is such a phenomenon anyway. Most of the people on my friends list were people that I hadn't spoken 2 words to in the last 5 years and most of what those people had to say was nothing but complaints about their lives, which were full of horrendous grammatical errors. (That is one of my biggest pet peeves.)

Plus, Facebook has that "addictive yet boring" quality. People are on it all the time, for hours a day and yet, they are doing nothing and most of the time, they aren't enjoying their time. But there's this incessant need to check on what your sister's best friend's cousin is doing on his Saturday night. And why is that? Is it our intense curiosity? Is it our love to lurk/stalk other people? Do we have nothing better to do with our time than look at other peoples' lives through a computer/phone screen? Call me crazy but I'd rather be making memories than posting selfies of myself doing "the duck face."  I only wish that I had done this sooner.

So even though it's been less than 24 hours since I deactivated my account, I have significantly decreased the amount of time that I spent on the computer today. The most time that I spent on it today was to write this blog, in fact. I actually ended up using the extra time that I had today to work on a novel that I started outlining a few days ago. See already, in less than a day, I have already used the time that I would have normally spent playing Candy Crush on Facebook and lurking my high school friends, to do something productive and I already feel so much better.

As an introvert, I am drained easily by other people and their drama. So not looking at other peoples' useless drama or big family problems (that people really shouldn't post about on the internet) has helped keep me extremely energized today. I am so happy because all of the productive things that I've done today and I did not miss looking at Facebook at all today. I'm not sure if I'll stay away forever. Who knows, one day I might end up missing it. But with school, work, writing a novel and trying to take care of things for my husband while he's away, I don't have time for anyone else's drama and if my attitude stays this way, then that's okay. However, until then, I hope that my productivity, happiness and energy levels stay up as I live my life away from a computer screen.

Mathews Family Name

When I was growing up, I remember constantly asking my grandmother to tell me stories about who my ancestors were and where I came from. For some reason, I was fascinated by it and to this day, I still am. It saddens me that I don't have tons of information about my family tree but it doesn't stop me from trying. However, it has to be done one step at a time and there is no guarantee that any of the information that I find actually pertains to me; my name is far too common but that doesn't make me any less proud to have it.



Now if you are one of my relatives that is reading this blog, hold your horses: I know that this crest does not spell our name the way that we do. But, in all actuality, it kind of does. See, when I asked my grandmother about our name, she said that we used to spell our last name Matthews but that it was changed less than 100 years ago, which in the grand scheme of time, isn't very long. Apparently, one day my great-grandfather got into a massive fight or some type of feud with his brother and wanted to be "separated" from him permanently. Hence, the slight name change: from Matthews to Mathews. Simple, yet effective.

Matthews seems to be the more common spelling of it, as I had to constantly correct people because they spelled my name wrong my whole life. It used to really bother me but now that I'm older, I realize that it isn't such a big deal. However, to me, the idea that I might never truly know where I came from is a big deal.

I can infer that Mathews is a British name, however, back in the early 1600s, they didn't have things like dictionaries or methods to record the spellings of names. Spelling just wasn't of importance. They basically wrote things however the words sounded to them, so your family members could potentially spell the last name that you share together, differently. Sometimes the name Matthews, could be spelled like Mathews, Matthewes and in some cases, Matthewson. So even though I would like to believe that my family sailed from England to the New World to escape religious persecution, the name can also be traced back to Scotland, which makes the journey a bit more complicated.

So it looks like if I'm going to continue to try to research my family tree, that it is going to require a lot more research and patience. However, until this morning, I didn't know half of what I posted in this blog. I relied on family stories and word of mouth. So it is refreshing to feel as through I have made some progress in finding out who I am and where my family came from. I just hope that once I learn everything that I can, that I can live up to my name. :)

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"That Friend"

Did you ever have "that friend"? The one who, when you were growing up, you thought was so cool and so loyal to you? And did you think that you were so lucky to be a part of their life because they were such a great friend? And did you ever look back at that time in your life and realize how blind you were and that they weren't as great as you originally thought that they were? Well, that happened to me.

I had a friend, who shall remain nameless, that I thought the world of. I would have done anything for her, even died for her if it came to that. (I'm a very loyal friend.) For years I worshiped this girl and I was so jealous of her because I thought that she had everything that I wanted.

But strangely enough, that wasn't the case. In fact, it was just the opposite. She was jealous of everything that I had. But instead of talking this through with me, she would tear me down and sometimes it was in such small ways that I didn't realize how badly it hurt me until years later. She tried to make herself feel better by attacking my insecurities subtly but also by making herself available to me as a friend when it was convenient for her, preying on the fact that I didn't have the ability to make friends easily.

Although I could go on about the feelings of manipulation that I felt for so long. I take responsibility for not speaking up and telling her how I felt and how badly she hurt me. I just wish that my self-esteem had been better at the time and I wouldn't have put up with it for so long. But you live and learn and now I know better than to ever let that happen to me again.

Sometimes people come into your life as lessons and when you're done learning from them, they leave. This person taught me what toxicity and negativity can do to a person and that I don't want them in my life. She is no longer in my life and sometimes I miss what I thought that we had. But people don't always live up to our expectations but don't forget that there are still amazing people out in the world that will bring you up instead of tear you down. However, I'm actually glad that this person came into my life because I value the lesson that she taught me.

Since she has left my life, I have surrounded myself only with people that care about me and want to see me thrive as a successful woman and I've never been happier. I can only hope that if you have experienced the same things that I have, that it has gotten better; I truly hope that it has. <3

How I Met My Husband

Early dating days, at Disney World of course! 

The story of how my husband and I met is not very original; in fact, it's quite common. We met at work but no matter how common the beginning of our story together is, it still led us to our very own personal happily ever after.

I was in high school and had just started working at my first job at the local grocery store and so was Kris. However, he had started working there when he was 14 years old, so he had been there years before I was. We were scheduled to have break at the same time and we had never spoken before. When I walked into the break room, I saw him and immediately got nervous. I hated meeting new people. So I hoped that he would act like everyone else did when they saw me (the new girl) enter the room and pretend that I wasn't there.

He didn't. I felt like my worst fears had been realized because of my huge list of insecurities and social awkwardness but I was oh so wrong. It turned out to be one of the best things that had ever happened to be. He had been listening to his iPod and eating his dinner but then he saw me, pushed away his food and said, "So how do you like working here?" and the rest is basically history. We discovered that we had mutual friends and the chemistry was unavoidable. Obviously we are still going strong and I can't wait to share more cute memories like this in the near future. :)

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