To Maci

Dear Maci...

Here is the post you asked for...it will be short, cuz I don't have much to say. Uhh...today I am going to guitar...hopefully we don't have to do rythym again. I'm sure you, of all people, know what I mean by that. Oh oh, guess what? On my new phone, my wallpaper is a really cool red and white electric guitar. Can you believe it, it actually came with the phone! I was totally stoked when I found it. I got some t-shirts for really cheap the other day. Uhh, yeah...anyway, that's all I have to say.

~Caitie

Braces...and Brisingr...and a Cell Phone

Well, today was pretty good...another busy day. I had an ortho appt...lame, lame, lame, lame...a couple weeks ago they put in this strange looking (not to mention intimidating, and very uncomfortable) spring-looking (spring, as in, like, slinkys) device to help permanently fix some junk in my mouth...anyway, it made these crazy huge sores in my mouth, and because I have a way-higher-than-normal pain tolerance, I didn't notice them until I could hardly open my mouth cuz they hurt so bad...needless to say, my orthodontist was pretty dang upset with me ( well, maybe not with me, but he was upset) so I have to do a whole bunch of stuff so they'll heal up...anyway, that was an uncomfortable experience that you probly didn't need to hear about...yeah...ok, I think I'll move on.

Today, we also went shopping @ Gottshalks...I love Gottshalks! I always seem to come away with an abundance of cute clothes I really didn't need, but also didn't pay for, so hey, I won't argue! ;) Today, some of the fruits of my labor (and shopping is labor...despite what some people might tell you...but good labor!) were some cool like vintage-ey 80's lookin' t-shirts, and a pair of skinny jeans. Yep, it was pretty fun.

We went to TKD...it was normal...we did some self-defense getting-out-of-a-chokehold type stuff. Yeah, pretty hard-core...not! I mean, I definitely take the sport seriously...but the self-defense stuff, we don't do very often...and it takes doing 20 bazillion times before you can do it out of instinct. Anyway, we were laughing and slightly overexaggerating everything today.

On Saturday, the 20th, Brisingr, by Christopher Paolini, came out. For those of you who don't read much (cuz if you do, I'm sure you'll know what I'm talking about) it is the 3rd book in the widely (but recently) renouned Inheritance cycle (aka the Eragon series). Anyway, I've had a copy reserved since April, so I got it Saturday and I'm enjoying it. He (the author) put one thing in there so far that I wanted to sock him for...you know, when you follow a series, and the author does something and you're just like...aww, why did you have to go and put that in there???...that type of thing. But I like it...so far, he hasn't put anything too stupid in there. I would hate him for ever if he did (but I would probly still read the next book). I took my copy to church on Sunday...to show it off to all the kids who didn't reserve a copy...let's just say, William doing a happy dance as soon as he saw it was pretty amusing...I wished I had it on video to post it. :) Annie wasn't quite so enthusiastic.

Oh yeah...I almost forgot...on Friday I got a cell phone!!!!!! I have to share it with Paige of course...but it's gonna be split about 80/20. Just cuz I do more. It's not for calling friends and stuff, pretty much just for calling Mum and Dad when I'm gone. But still, it is a cell phone, and I am excited. It's not even a cool phone either...just a Nokia 6085...it's fat-ish and not small, but I'm still excited...after all, it is my first phone. And it's nice not to have to carry my mom's big bulky black Nextel phone around any more...yeah, I won't go into that, it's too painful a subject. Plus this new phone has bluetooth and takes pictures...features none of our phones have had before. So yeah I'm pretty excited.

Tomorrow we have ladies study. I think we are taking some of the banana bread I made the other day, if the girls haven't eaten it all...my mom said this batch was perfect...I think that means it was my best so far. I have never messed up on banana bread, although usually I don't eat it myself, cuz I don't like bananas. I must say, though, it is a pretty good way to get rid of 6 rotten bananas. (Those are the only kind to use in good banana bread) Anyway...oh yeah, my mom is going to fix my new dress for me tonight so I can wear it tomorrow. It is hot pink with yellow flowers and teal leaves...it's on the border of old lady, but I think it can pass for funky 80's because of the style and the spaghetti straps. Anyway, that's all I have for now.

Ok, I am such an awful blogger! I'm so sorry to anyone who keeps up with this thing...probly no one. I can't believe I haven't posted in a week! My mom told me today that if I was a good blogger I would have posted about all the stuff we've done the past week. So I am. This will most likely be a longish post to catch myself up, but I'll use lots of pictures so you will be sure to stay entertained. (I hope.)
Since I'm such a horrible blogger and haven't blogged since Monday, I'll start with Tuesday. Tuesday we had pictures at TKD. I hope they turned out good. I took a couple by myself cuz my mom thought I might want them later. She's getting them all done up...it'll probly turn out really cool.......if the pics are good.

Wednesday was good too. We had our second week of ladies' study. It was just James, Mandy and I this week. We got our "legit" nametags. :) We also "turned" 2 moms to homeschooling! Woo hoo! My first Wednesday night was last week too. It was pretty good...I enjoyed myself. I can't wait til I'm in a set group.

Thursday was good too. (I guess I've had a pretty good week...) We had guitar, during which we practiced "that funky palm-muting part" in Happy Day. Then we had TKD, which was good. And I had ASL, and a test...:( Shelbie and I have I think officially decided that our catch phrase is "detest the test". Sorry....what can I say? I was learned at home.:)

Friday.....Ainsley split her chin open. Bailey growled at her and she took off running thru the kitchen, I think she tripped on a water bottle, and hit her chin on the table leg. If you look at the pic, you can se a little pinkish line behind the new cut...that's where she split it a month or so ago...before vacation. This time she had to go in...it took 3 stitches, but she's fine now and is very careful of her little wound. She was incredibly proud of herself for getting 2 suckers in the emergency room. Friday night we went to Lessa's for dinner. It was fun.

Saturday, my uncle got married. It was a nice wedding. I was a bit bored though. I don't have much in common with the cousins on that side of the family. I honestly don't really know them. So I was bored...but it was nice.

Sunday was good. Morning service was good, the teaching was great! Evening service, we learned about Noah, so Annie, Esther and I took the kids outside to give them an idea how big the ark was. I have only done that once before, and that was years ago...it is crazy how much effort those guys must have put into building that boat. Esther and I decided that they must have had a lot of faith to keep going...I mean, 100 years building a boat to prepare for a flood, when it had never even rained before! That would take some serious faith.

Today (Monday again) was good too. (I really need to get some more words in my vocabulary other than good...) Fisher had some ice cream today. I think he liked it (he always gets that disgusted look on his face when he eats something, whether he likes it or not :)...) He had it all over his face! That's all I have for now...

Monday

Well, today I didn't do much. Mostly homework...boooring! I had a looot of biology...I absolutely loathe biology. It is sooo lame. Anyway, tonight I had babysitting, which was fun. The little boy I babysit is soo cute! His name is Owen, and he's 2. Tonight we played play-doh, which is a rarity for him, so he was like really really excited. We made all kinds of stuff (e.g., a mama, daddy, and baby boat, various kayaks, airplanes, frogs, dolphins, birthday cakes, etc.) He had me make a birthday cake this one time, and I'm not very good with play-doh, so it ended up looking like a couple of fat pancakes stacked on top of each other. Owen asked me what it was, and I told him it was a birthday cake. (He had, after all, asked me to make it for him!) He told me, in what I assume was his most condescending voice (he is only 2) "Oh, it's...cute." Then he proceeded to rip it into little bitty pieces. Yeah, it was pretty funny...I laughed. It was so funny this one time I was cleaning play-doh out of my nails, and he's all "Hey hey, whatcha doing Caitie?" (That's what he always does to get my attention, even if I'm not doing anything!) I told him I had play-doh in my fingernails and I was getting it out, and he decided he wanted play-doh in his nails too, so he started shoving his fingers into a ball of play-doh and picking at it with his nails until they were coated in play-doh. We spent almost 10 minutes cleaning play-doh out of our nails later! Anyway, yeah, it was a pretty good day.

I wanted to experiment with some video...sadly, this unfortunate (not to mention, entirely embarrassing!) specimen is the best production that the girls and I have created yet...please bear with our silliness. We have not had nearly so many moments of movie-making genius as my wonderful cousins have...(sigh).

See, I told you it was silly...we thought it was funny though. Amanda came up with our inspired title...oh, btw, we made this @ my 13th birthday party. Picture credits go to Paige and my mom. In case you don't know...from left, it's Bailey, Micah, Shelbie, me, and Amanda.

More Vacation Pics

These are some pictures that we took on vacation that I thought needed a little bit more of an explanation than just going in the slideshow.

Enjoy!

These are a way-too-much-loved pair of flip flops. They are-excuse me, were-my mom's. She had had them since last summer, and had worn them almost daily since then! The heels had holes worn almost all the way through them, and she (as you can see) ripped the strap out of the front. You can see how thin they are in places. We told her she could never, ever, ever wear a pair of flip flops that long again! They now reside in the dumpster at the KOA in Holbrook, AZ.

This is me with a really cool Chevy that we saw in Arizona. I kept commenting on how cool it was, so my mom made me take a picture with it.

This is an old car we saw in the middle of the desert. I thought it was kind of cool. We saw like 3 or 4 of them while we were driving through Arizona.

We've had a pretty busy couple of days. Monday was Labor Day, so we went to church for the labor day picnic and baptism. Bailey and my dad both got baptized, which was pretty cool. Later, Shelbie and I were standing against a wall, near her mom and Shyloh. We were just talking, and then we both stopped talking for a minute, which isn't unusual. Then Shelbie started to sit down, and I didn't think anything of it until she started sitting on Lolly...then I looked at her face, and she had just passed out. I was soooo scared! Shyloh and Mrs. Ney grabbed Shelbie, and Mrs. Ney handed me a handful of pretzels, and said 'Can you take care of Lolly for me please? Thanks.' and her and Shyloh walked Shelbie off to lay down. I had basically no clue what was going on, but I was freaked out, I mean, my best friend had just passed out while standing right next to me! I didn't know what else to do, so I just sat down with Lolly and started praying. It was so sweet, Lolly kept asking me 'Shelbie ok? Shelbie ok?' Then Shayden, Shannen, Shadd and Poppet all came over from off of the playground, and sat with me. They asked me what was going on but I didn't really know so I didn't have much to tell them. I told Annie what had happened, and then my mom, who helped me herd the kids over to the grass, where Poppet and Lolly sat with my mom, and the boys played football with my dad, and me and a whole bunch of other people tried to figure out what was going on. I had just gotten myself to believe that Shelbie was fine, when the ambulance showed up, and then I kinda freaked out again. After all the Neys had left, I kind of moped around and didn't eat and my dad finally told me, 'You know what, go call Annie, find out where she's at, and go hang out with her.' So I did, and I hung out with her and Katie O. for the rest of the day. We had a lot of fun. So it ended up being a pretty good day. Yesterday, Tuesday, we stayed home, and did lots of schoolwork, and I got a letter. It was from my cousin Steven in Missouri. We are going to write now, I think, which should be fun. Our siblings have been writing to each other for about a year now, so we thought it would be fun to write to each other too. Today, we were planning to stay home and do school again, but my mom woke me up at 7 this morning and said 'Get up, we're going to bible study', so we did. I am serving in the Toddler's room with James and Mandy. Alyssa was in there today, but I think she's going to the 2 yr. old's from now on. It is such a fun class, but today being the first day, it was a little hectic, especially since we had 25 kids, all 1 and 2 years old. Plus I had to hold Fisher almost the whole time cuz he wouldn't let me leave him in the Infants room. I would have let him crawl around, except for with so many kids in there, even the littler ones who were walking were getting trampled. The class was a lot of fun though. It will be really great when we get settled into it a bit more... A couple nights ago, I watched Batman Begins. It was sooo good...I really enjoyed it. I want to see the Dark Knight, but I probably won't get to until it comes out on DVD. Oh well, I'll wait. Anyway, that's all I have for now, hope it wasn't too long...