Birthday & Easter

I turned 21 this past week. April 19th. The night of my birthday, I went bowling with a group of friends. Unfortunately, we got there at 9pm only to find out that the lanes were closing at 10pm. So we only got in one game, but it was still a fun night out with the guys.

The next day, my roommate Nate Olson, took mee to see Arcade Fire at the Starlight Theatre. I had honestly never heard of the, but they won album of the year, so they had to be good. The opener, The National, really wasn't great live, but then Arcade Fire came on the stage and blew the crowd away. The whole show was just so well put together. Nate O. love ya man! Thanks for an awesome birthday!

Thursday I flew back home to Colorado. After Holy Thursday Mass, I went back to my house and the driveway was plastered with chalk. My little sister had decorated the entire thing with birthday wishes for me. Best sister in the whole world. Opened some gifts that night...got some stuff for the summer camp that I'm going to be working this summer. My dad took me and my brothers golfing on Saturday and, I hadn't been golfing in about 2 years so I did about as well as I would have expected. Although, I did not expect to be losing to my 11-year-old brother after the front 9. I did improve on the back 9 by 18 strokes though. That's bittersweet. I did so awful on the first 9 holes that there was room to improve by 18 strokes on the back 9. With that performance, I was able to pull out a come-from-behind victory over my little brother. Beat him by 7 strokes. Still gotcha David!

We hosted the extended familiy the next day for Easter. The whole day was great. The highlight is in the video. Here's how the Langfield family celebrates Christ's resurrection - juggling flaming torches! We do birthdays, anniversaries, and reunions too!

Formal

April 16th was my fraternity's formal. We went to a really nice event space in downtown Kansas City called Nara. It was by far the nicest place we've been to over the past three years that I've gone. We ate dinner, gave out awards, and danced the night away. One of the highlights from the evening was that the event space was above a restaurant; well, we danced pretty hard and a rock fell from the ceiling of the restaurant and landed in someone's sushi. It was awesome because the manager wasn't upset with us at all. It was actually the opposite. He told us that we should probably tone it down a little, but he was more impressed than angry.

Certainly can't go without mentioning what a wonderful date I had as well. I had been really excited to take Colleen Smyth in the weeks leading up to the night - that was before I had seen her break down her dance moves. She stole the show. I've never seen anybody burn up the dance floor like she did. Realization...my two left feet. We had to leave the event space at 10:30, but that certainly didn't mean that the party was over. We went over to one of my friend's houses and continued the dance party there in his basement. When 1:30am rolled around, I was about ready to leave with my roommate to go back to my house and make a late-night pizza. I went downstairs and the dancing was still going with a few people. Colleen, Ryan Marian, and his date Kelsey Carver were down there having a private dance party. This was more my scene. Less crowded, more laid back, I had to stay. Nate Yaffe, the host for the night, came down and joined us for a while too. We kept it going until about 4 in the morning; that's when we decided to watch the Princess Bride.

Headed back to the house at around 5:30 in the morning. Had an incredible time. Shout out to Colleen for being an awesome date!

Greek Week & Initiation

This is by far the craziest week of the year. Fun. But oh so stressful at the same time. Quick overview of how my fraternity performed this week:

Banner - 1st place; Chalk Drawing - 1st place; Greek Games - 1st place; Skit - 1st place; Fraternity GPA for Fall 2010 - 1st place; Penny Wars - 3rd place. There were two events in which we didn't place, Capture the Flag and Canstruction, but with our small numbers we made an incredible showing. All of these added up to us getting a very close 2nd place overall. With half the amount of people in our organization as everybody else, I couldn't be more proud of our guys. And to the girls who pulled it out just ahead of us (3 points) Congratulations! We'll be back for ya next year! Oh and Greek Formal, awesome.

Finally, yesterday we initiated seven great new members into the fraternity. I stood back and watched after everything was over. I just watched as everyone interacted with each other, sharing stories, laughing, and making memories that will last a lifetime. The whole scene was so surreal.

I'm at kind of a weird spot right now, coming to the homestretch of my college career. One more year. The end is lurking. But the thing that made last night so awesome was seeing the men that were coming after me. Having such confidence that they will be more successful than we that came before them have been. That's what I told one of the guys. I said, "Your responsibility now is making this fraternity better than it is tonight. At the end of your time here, if you can look back and say you as a class did that, then you've succeeded." I'm really excited for next year. There will be many memories made to be cherished. Furthermore, I can't wait to come back as an alum to see the great things that are going to happen in the future.

Hawk Hunt Winners!

I participated in a huge scavenger hunt put on by Residence Life the weekend of April 1st and 2nd. When my team heard all of the rules and the technology, we thought we were going to be at quite a disadvantage because none of us had a smart phone of any kind. We had to receive all of the clues via text message.

It started at 5pm on the 1st. Again, I thought we were going to be at another disadvantage because I didn't get off of work until after 8. We pulled an all-nighter, looking for clues on campus until 5:30am on the 2nd. After that, we started about town, searching for clues around the KC Metro Area.

We were starting to get a little drained after our noon check-in, but were rejuvinated with a strong finish of solving clues for the final three hours of the hunt. We were all confident that we had made a strong showing. "Maybe we got second or third." I was being extra positive (and at the time I even thought maybe a little overconfident) when I assured my team that our strong finish had bolstered us into the lead. What was awesome was that, regardless of whether or not we actually did win, I had such an awesome time. The points took three days to be counted until they let us know....VICTORY!!! More or less a Cinderella story because there was a couple of teams that we thought had the advantage on paper. We had good talent on our team and worked great together throughout the night. It was so much fun. Oh, and the $250/person prize money was also pretty cool.

Repeat next year?