five friday favorites #15: week of march 27, 2015

I'm late on the Friday Favorites again because ... speech. We had state speech yesterday, and after I got home, I crashed. Because I'm not motivated enough to get the Friday Favorites finished before Friday, they're late ... again.

1. Getting retweeted ... by Sean Lowe!
As we all know by now, I love the Bachelor franchise. So of course I was going to read former Bachelor Sean Lowe's book! After I reviewed it, I linked to my review on Twitter. And then this happened ...

After having a fangirl moment, I went to my blog stats. Almost immediately, my review had more than 100 page views. At the end of the day, it had more than 300. At this moment, it has nearly 500. My stats are going to look really great this month :-)

Thank you, Sean!!!

2. These kids

As you've probably gathered by now, speech has been consuming my life for the last three months. The season ended yesterday with the state meet. (Insert happy dance here.) Last week, we had our district meet, and we had a completely amazing day. We took 14 entries, and 11 got medals. Of those 11, 8 qualified for state and 3 of those 8 were event champions. Because we had two duets and one OID (drama) in our state qualifiers, we ended up taking 12 kids to state! And on top of that, we won the district championship as a team!!!

We didn't have a great day at state from a results standpoint, but the kids gave it their all, and I think most of them really enjoyed the day. Also, we're a very young team--of the 12 kids who went to state, only four had been in speech prior to this year--so the future looks bright for the Nebraska Christian speech team.

3. Three healthy cats
Last Friday, I posted this photo on Instagram:

We all survived the vet visit and are now back in our happy places.
For the cats, that means basking in the sun. For me, that means #MarchMadness.
I swear, going to the vet is one of the most stressful things... #catsofinstagram

Unfortunately, I posted that photo too soon. About five minutes later, Skaara (in the top right corner) started throwing up. I ended up rushing him back to the vet, and he got a steroid shot that finally stopped the vomiting. Poor guy wasn't himself until about midday Saturday. I'm very thankful that the other two didn't have a reaction like Skaara and that he's feeling better!

4. "The Ballad of Serenity"
Basically, this is two fandoms colliding. After Joss Whedon donated to the Kickstarter for The Letter Carrier, Jesse L. Martin, Carlos Valdez, and Rick Cosnett from The Flash recorded this thank you video. All three are majorly involved in The Letter Carrier.
Actors from my favorite new show of the season singing the theme song to one of my favorite gone-too-soon shows? Magical.

5. For the Right Reasons

So of course this has to be my book pick of the week!

For the Right Reasons is such a fun book! Whether you love The Bachelor, hate-watch The Bachelor, or just wonder what all the hoopla is about, you should read this book. It gives a behind-the-scenes look at this fascinating series, and it's written from a Christian perspective, so there aren't any salacious details.

Check out my review here.