Throwback Thursday - First 3 months of 2013

December is a great time to reflect back on the past 12 months and everything that life has brought to me. I think it's so important to take time and reflect on how your past 12 months of life have helped you grow. 2013 wasn't my best year yet, but it also was by far not my worst. I'm so excited to link up today with Lauren from Peach State of Mind to talk about the first 3 months of my 2013! The Cheers to a New Year link up will happen each Thursday through the end of the month, each time highlighting the next 3 months.  

Okay I wrote that first paragraph earlier this week when I first found out about the link up, but then I started to try and think of what I actually did in January, February, and March and it was really hard. I can actually only think of one thing I did between all those months; took a last minute road trip to Kansas City in March. This was actually one of the most fun things I did in all my time at college, so I guess it makes up for the fact that it's the only thing I can remember.

Unless you're an Ole Miss fan, or intense follower of March Madness you probably don't remember that the Rebels won the SEC basketball tournament this Spring, guaranteeing them a spot in the NCAA tournament. Well that spot landed us playing in the Kansas City regional. It was really an exciting time for us because we hadn't made the tournament in years, so we were all so excited even though we weren't favored to win our first game. The first game was on a Friday late morning tip off, so a few friends and I decided we'd skip Fried Friday at the sorority house and go grab lunch and watch the game on the square. Then the unthinkable happened: we actually won!

Caught up in all the excitement of actually winning two friends and I decided we were going to make the road trip up to Kansas City to watch our next game. Within 15 minutes of that first game ending we'd bought way over priced tickets and booked a hotel room. We mapped it out and were all set to make the road trip in the morning. We would drive all day, watch our game Sunday and then drive home through the night to make it back to class on Monday. It was the perfect plan, until it wasn't.

Suddenly at about 11pm Friday night our game got moved from a noon tip off to a 6pm tip off. Now when you're making an 8.5 hour drive in the night that change of game time was huge. But we'd already invested way too much money to just not go, so we had to change plans. We'd leave right after our game and drive to St. Louis to spend the night and then get up at day break to make the rest of the trip putting us back in Oxford with about an hour to spare.

We woke up Saturday morning and after having to double back to each other's apartments to grab forgotten items we finally got on the road about an hour and half behind schedule. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but we were trying to beat a freak snow storm that was projected to hit Missouri that night, so every minute counted. Our drive was pretty non eventful, just 3 sorority sisters jamming out cruising up the highway. Even with our delay we made it to Kansas City right as the snow started to fall, so armed with Chipotle and a case of Lime-a-ritas we settled in for the night at our hotel.

We never could have predicted what we woke to find. Snow. Covering. Everything. If you'd put together all the snow I'd seen in my life prior to that it wouldn't even be half of what we saw that morning. So abandoning hopes of hopping around to taste different BBQ before the game we very slowly made the drive to the Power and Lights district after the hotel employees assured us the roads would be cleared because this was the 3rd snow storm of the month for them!

This is after a good 15 minutes of brushing snow off my car. STILL COVERED

We found a great covered parking garage right across from the arena and next to the bar that everyone said we had to go to to have a pregame drink. It was a really great atmosphere and we met lots of really nice Kansas fans who thought it was crazy that we'd made the drive. We probably got asked about 25 times each who we were dating on the team (PS the answer was no one).

Our seats for the game were on the very top row behind one of the baskets, seriously I think I could have touched the arena ceiling we were so high up. But after the first game, UNC vs. KU the place emptied out and we were able to move WAAAAY down. We watched to Ole Miss game from half court, 5th row. Even though the game wasn't great (we lost) it was a fun experience.

But that's not were the adventure ends (unfortunately that is where the pictures end). During the game we find out that the snow storm that we'd gotten over night had hit St. Louis way worse and there were roads closed. When we were already going to be getting a late start driving on roads we didn't know this was the last thing we wanted to hear. After much debate and only minimal fighting we decided we'd go the long way back to Oxford, adding an additional 1.5 hours to the trip. This meant getting in the car and driving down the other side of the state, spending the night in Joplin (where thankfully one of our sorority sisters is from so we were able to call her and find out about how safe the roads were), and then driving the next morning through Arkansas home.

It was one of those trips where nothing seemed to go right, but everything ends up working in the end. We over payed for everything but I kinda think it was worth it. And we got to drive home through the Ozark mountains which were seriously beautiful. Oh and we somehow managed to just miss 3 hours worth of standstill traffic in Little Rock when an 18 wheeler over turned and caught fire; I'm still not sure how we managed that.