Vacation '08

Wow, I haven't posted for a long time! Well, we are back, for those of you who didn't know it. We were gone for 3 whole weeks! Our vacation was soooo much fun! I'm not going to go into all the little details (that would take forever!), but I'll do a brief post on it. The first day, we got up at an ungodly hour (3:30 am) and got on the road. We drove pretty much all day that first day. Nothing much happened. We got to a KOA (Kampground of America) in Williams, AZ @ around 6. Next day we saw the Grand Canyon...so amazing! That is something that everyone should see in their lifetime! We stayed @ a KOA in Holbrook, AZ that night. Next day we drove through NM. Wednesday we got to a friends house (the Gribacs) in McKinney, TX @ about 8. We stayed there through Friday. Saturday morning we left early to go to my mom's friends (the Cartwrights) house. The story of how we know them is long...in short, this was the first time any of us has met any of them. They live in West Fork, AR. They have 4 kids. We stayed Saturday night with them, and left early Sunday morning to go to church with my dad's cousins at Calvary Chapel in the Ozarks (yes, that is what it was called). That was in Rogers, AR. We were planning to meet my dad's cousin Linda and her family there, but when we got there, my dad's other cousin, Donna and her family were there too. Paige, Bailey and Laine have been writing to her daughters, Sarah (who's 12), Libby (10), and Erin (7). Their older brother Steven was there too. He's 15, and he came to CA one time like 4 years ago, so it was fun to see him again. Also there was Libby's twin brother Sam. Linda and her family were there too. I got to meet my cousin Lydia, who is 16. We went to my Uncle Burl's and Aunt Oleta's house. (Just a thought, if you're confused, it's nothing compared to what I was when I was there! To quote my cousin Lydia "you know you have a crazy family when you take vacation and keep on meeting family members that you didn't have a clue you had!" I completely agree with her!) Anyway, we all hung out at my aunt and uncle's (actually, great aunt and uncle's) house all afternoon. I hung out with Steven mostly. It was fun. We played frisbee out in the backyard...which was pretty amusing...Steven went into the bushes when the frisbee went over my head about 20 times (okay okay, not 20, more like 3), and all the kids who play guitar (Steven, me, Lydia, Paige and Sarah) all gathered in the back bedroom to play Steven's brand new electric guitar for a while. We had a lot of fun. We stayed @ my great-aunt and uncle's house for a couple days, and was I bored! Mostly I just sat on their couch and played electronic Yahtzee. My Great-Aunt Oleta told my Granny after we left that I never smile. Well, I was bored...I had nothing to smile about! When we left their house, we went to my dad's friends house (the Knox's) in Sparta, MO, which is right near Springfield, where Steven and his siblings live, so we got to visit them again (although Steven wasn't home, so I was bored). Also resident to Springfield, Missouri, is Bass Pro Shops! How fun, right? Haha, not! Thank goodness, we got to go with Steven & his siblings, so mostly Steven and I just talked. We had plenty of opportunity, because we had to be "buddies" (everybody had one). We made a huge joke out of it. It was a lot of fun. Funny, my dad made the whole family wear our Bass Pro t-shirts to church the first Sunday we were back. After MO, we drove up through a whole bunch of states, which I can't even name in the right order, so I'll just skip that part. Besides, all we did was drive anyway. Did I mention our main destination was Idaho. Oh, on the way we visited Mt. Rushmore, which my dad made us do a report on, so I now know way more than necessary about a huge slab of rock. So if you need to know something about Mt. Rushmore, you know who to ask, right? Once we got to Idaho, we went tubing almost immediately. The boys (poor guys) had been preparing the tube and boat and everything, and spent almost all day getting stuff ready to go boating with us, and then we were like 2 hours late, so they had to wait around for us to get there! We felt so bad. We (Jared, David, Paige and I) went with Grandpa Chuck (I've always called him that) on the little boat to go tubing. Jared drove. David and Paige wouldn't let him do anything, so when I got on I told him he could do whatever he wanted, which probably wasn't smart, but it was fun! He flung me (still on the tube) about 4 feet off of the water multiple times. It was crazy, but I had a blast! (almost literally) We had a lot of fun with them. The night before we left, we all stayed up til 11:30 playing poker in the living room of Auntie's cabin. We had to get up @ like 4 to leave for CA. We drove all day, and stayed the night at a KOA in Shasta, CA. We got to Modesto for my great grandma's 90th birthday party @ like 2 pm on Saturday the 16th. We were completely exhausted, so we didn't stay for very long. Pretty much only enough to eat a piece of cake and take a whole bunch of pictures with Mimi. We went home (our house was spotless!) and unloaded all our stuff out of and off of the car (then the house was a mess!) and crashed. I spent a couple hours playing my guitar (I wasn't able to take it, so I missed it a lot!) and then another couple hours knitting (I missed that too!) and watching the Olympics. We continued our habit of 3 weeks of not going to bed before midnight for another week while we stayed up watching the Olympics. (Why, may I ask, do they have to play the women's gymnastics, diving and volleyball all in the 10 pm-12 am hours? It's not right.) Need I say that I have still not caught up on my sleep? Wow, this was not as brief a post as I had planned. Oh, well, I guess it takes a few paragraphs to sum up 3 weeks out of state, right? Hopefully you're not bored out of your mind after reading that...

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Busy Week

Well, we didn't get to rest last week. Last week was crazy. It was supposed to be our week off to kind of relax and prepare for VBS and vacation (haha, yeah right!) ;) but we ended up being really busy anyway. We went swimming at Shelbie's on Wednesday, which was a lot of fun (and I didn't even get sunburned!). Then on Thursday, we had my two cousins, Jordan and Nathan, spend the night. They do that every summer because we don't get to see them that often. We basically spent 2 days playing video games...because, what else do you do when you have teenage boys over? I got my mom to buy me a second dancepad for DDR so that we could compete against each other. It was a lot of fun! Then Friday Bailey had 2 friends over to stay the night. I took some pictures and made a video (we call them "picture movies") of them. It was pretty cute. It was called "Mighty Man's Rescue" (I didn't make it up; they did!) and I put in the Mighty Mouse theme song for most of the background music. It turned out really good. Paige helped them with a little red riding hood one. I put that one together too, and I thought it turned out good. Bailey's friends are really cute! Then today VBS started, and it was crazy. I had to get up @ 5:30 to get ready, because I'm on the game team and we had to be there @ 7 this morning, and it takes us 1/2 an hour to get to church. The games were so fun!! We had water, even though it was pretty cold outside. We got pretty damp, but it was fun! I got sunburned really bad on my shoulders and neck. My face is not burnt at all because I put sunblock on it, I just forgot my shoulders because I had a sweatshirt on. So now they are really burned! :( oh well. After VBS today we had Taekwondo and guitar. Mom crammed everything into this week because we're going to be gone for 2 weeks after VBS, so we are going to Taekwondo like 3 days this week, and I have an orthodontist appt. tomorrow. We are going to be so tired by the end of the week!

Black Belt Camp

This week we had black belt camp. We had an 8th Degree black belt, Master Amber, Hannah, Emily, Master Whitlow, Me, Paige & Deborah Whitlow, come down from Tennessee to do our camp. It was a lot of fun but the hours were horrible!! :( I got up before 6 every day, and we didn't get to bed til almost 11 every night. The first day was only 2 hours, but then we worked about 8-10 hours for 3 days in a row, with about a 4 hour break in the afternoons. Wednesday Paige and I went to my grandma's for the afternoon, and I hung out on the couch and watched "Fiddler on the Roof". Thursday we went to James' house for swimming and BBQ. It was a lot of fun. I hung out with Deborah, and we sat and talked for like 3 hours at the kitchen table. There was only 6 girls at camp, and we all came from 2 families!! We all hung out together all week. We were really separated all week long-guys on one side and girls on the other side. We joked that we were the cool people because we had food on our side. :) I was really glad because usually I get really overheated and turn purple during camp, and since last week was the hottest week of the summer, I was nervous that it was going to be even worse than usual, but I didn't hardly even turn red!! I was so excited! I guess I just kept myself hydrated better than I usually do. We had the tournament Saturday. I got 3rd place in patterns because I messed up, and 2nd place in sparring. Then I did board breaking. I was going against a lady who is like a lot older than me, and several inches taller, and heavier. I broke 2 boards with an upper body strike (it was an elbow, and I have a huge bruise and a scratch to prove it!) and so did she, and then she broke 3 boards with a sidekick, and so did I, and then she broke 4 boards with a sidekick, and I was going to just tie her again, and try to get her to go for something harder and mess up, but I was really pressured by almost everyone except my parents, to go for the win and do 5 boards. I tried but I didn't break them so I got 2nd place. I wasn't too dissapointed though, because I'd never broken even 3 boards with a sidekick the first try before, so I was excited anyway. Each of the girls (Paige, Bailey and Laine) got a 2nd and a 3rd too. It was a pretty good week, but I am sure looking forward to sleepin in this week!!!






This pic is of me at my last test, in December, but I decided to put it on here anyway.
I was doing a sidekick, and the reason it's so blurry is cuz I was going so fast! ;) (yeah right. I wish)

My First Post

Yesterday was Shelbie's birthday, so I went to her house to stay the night. It was a lot of fun! When I got there we changed into our swim suits and swam for like 2 hours. We practiced doing dishwasher in the pool.....most of the time either I ended up sitting on Shelbie's head, or she would kick me in the face! It was very funny. We also practiced balancing on one foot on each other's knee. That didn't work out to well either....but it sure was funny! Later in the evening Shelbie opened her presents, and we had ice cream sundaes. Shelbie, Shyloh, Shaylah and I slept out in the tent in the backyard. After we watched National Treasure 2 inside, we all got more ice cream (Shyloh's idea) and went out to the tent and watched High School Musical 2. (And no, I'm not afraid to admit it, I did like that movie!) Shyloh and Shelbie conked out halfway through, but Shaylah and I stuck it out (Shaylah cuz she wanted to stay up late, and me cuz I wanted to see the end of the movie!). It ended about 2:15 am, but I was up for about another hour listening to Shaylah snore. ;) We got up late and watched half of The Little Mermaid before the battery on the laptop died and we had to go inside to finish it. We didn't eat breakfast until like 10ish. We sat around and drew a little before Shelbie's aunt Lynette got there and brought us Starbucks. After lunch we went swimming again. We didn't put on any sunblock, cuz we didn't think we'd need it......we thought if we checked each other we would be fine. Well, I got home and I am burnt. Not too bad, and at least it's even, but still...kinda lame. We hopped out when the clock by the pool said 4, because my mom said she'd be there close to then, but when we got inside (after we'd changed) we discovered that it was only 3, and the clock by the pool was an hour fast! So we missed out on an hour of swimming but oh well. We played basketball with the boys while we waited for my mom to get there. Those boys sure are a lot better than me! I'm not a big sports person, though. It was fun. We played horse.....but when Shaylah won after 2 rounds, we decided to play "purple octopus" instead. (same thing, just more letters) It was fun! Then we got hot and went inside. We put together the border of a puzzle before my mom got there. We had a blast! It was our first "official" sleepover at Shelbie's for like 2 years, so it was cool.