Updates + Snippets + Lots of Random Photography

Hello everyone!

Since I haven’t been posting very much lately, I thought it would be good to have my next post be kind of an update and snippets post. And I have a good amount of random photography to show you, so why not throw that in too? 🙂

Shall we begin?

We have a new internet plan that should be fast and I can upload pictures! So yay! Maybe I’ll be posting more then. Although it depends on me having post ideas and motivation. 😛 I might do flamingo-y and room decor-y posts soon!

This summer has been fun! I did some posts about things we did in June, but one exciting thing that happened at the end of June and beginning of July was that Aria and her family came for a visit!

We had a lot of fun with them – walking along our stream, doing a photoshoot, and playing games were some of the things we did. I also photographed Aria and Allison canoeing and took pictures for their best friends photoshoot. We did many other things, and Allison and Aria did even more, and it was altogether extremely fun! 🙂

(anybody know what book that’s from? :))

I might have written over 100 pages of letters this summer! I love pen-paling and I think I would consider it my favorite hobby. Although that may change whenever I get my DSLR… XD

ALLISON ISN’T DOING SCHOOL ANYMORE AND IT’S NOT FAIR. Well, it actually is, but it’s still annoying. XD WHY DID YOU HAVE TO LEAVE, SUMMER?? But her graduation party was a ton of fun! Lots of helium balloons + chocolate cake + games in the giant hay barn with friends from where we used to live and where we live now. It was nice to be able to introduce our one side of friends to our other side so they know who we’re talking about when we mention them. XD

Over the summer Allison and I took turns cooking supper each week. It’s been a lot of fun, actually! I think I like cooking better than baking. I’m not quite sure why though. I think partly it’s because there are so many different things to make and different ways to make them, and with baking it’s a lot of mixing and then sticking it in the oven. It’s so fun to be able to just make whatever I want for supper! (Being reasonable of course. We don’t really have steak every night. ;)) Even if it’s fairly normal things like deviled eggs and baked corn which we don’t have often, I really enjoy making it.

We also got a few veggies from our small garden this year. Lots of cucumbers (until they succumbed to squash bugs) and tomatoes especially! It’s been nice having tomato sandwiches and homemade zucchini relish again.

I haven’t been doing terribly much photography this summer, and I kind of wish I had done more of that. I hope to get a DSLR soon, and that will be fun! I do like macro and close-up photography, but I think I prefer capturing memories, which DSLRs are better at. 🙂

Oh yes, hay. And straw. We’ve been doing a lot of bale deliveries this summer and I can’t say as it’s my favorite thing to do, but it isn’t horrible. I mean, I was able to buy a donkey! XD Scratchy straw and humid heat don’t go together well so it can be a little miserable, but it certainly makes you appreciate pick-up trucks with AC and cold water. 🙂

It feels like 25% of my summer was spent in a vehicle. 😛 Driving 20 minutes to get somewhere used to seem horribly long, but now that’s about the shortest amount we drive to get anywhere down here. Plus hay deliveries can be an hour away, and we’ve made a couple 4 hour round trip drives up to where we used to live. I shouldn’t have a problem getting enough driving time when it comes to getting my license! XD

Can anyone guess what that is? 😀 Jeff and I worked on it for a long time and it’s much brighter and shinier now. Although I may have made a rather loud racket in the shop when I was grinding off all the rust…

It’s currently kind of windy with some rain, thankfully. We thought we would get some of hurricane Florence here, but it missed us mostly. I’m glad Dad’s corn didn’t get blown flat!

With all my letters I’ve written I’ve also done a good amount of envelope art. I’m not the best artist and I don’t really make art just for art, but I do love decorating envelopes. 🙂 I typically like combining lettering with doodles and sketches rather than making intricate paintings on them.

I don’t have a phone or an iPod, and you can’t exactly stick an iPad in your back pocket, so I decided to buy an MP3 player. 😛 It might be a little less snazzy than a phone, but it certainly doesn’t cost as much! 🙂 It’s much more fun to go out to the mailbox with dc Talk and NEEDTOBREATHE playing in my ears.

I cut out the “light shines” part of this little lyric thingy. At first I was kind of annoyed at how scraggly it was, but then I realized that it matched the words even better. 😀

Speaking of music, Aria recently introduced us to a new band called The Gray Havens. I really like both the lyrics and the music of their songs. My favorite is This My Soul: 

then the perfect son of man
took the place the voice had planned
since the garden and before
he took the swords and cursed the grave
there’s nothing more to separate us from the promise
the words of a living hope

and this my soul you were born
you were born into
what this man has done
it all extends to you
let the words shake on down along your spine
and ring out true that you might find new life

I really like how it starts out telling about the fall and then says the chorus (this my soul you were born into), saying how when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, all mankind fell with them, so we are all born fallen and sinful. But then it ends with telling how Jesus, the perfect son of man, died on the cross and rose again and now there’s nothing more to separate us from the promise. 🙂 GO LISTEN TO IT! (I also really like At Last, The King.)

We cut down three giant trees in our yard because we didn’t want them to smush the house when Florence came. It was pretty amazing to watch the huge trees topple and crash to the ground. Though Florence actually didn’t make it here, it looks like a hurricane came through. Branches are scattered everywhere and one of the trees is still laying in the yard. Dad used a giant track loader and chain to sort of pull the tree the way he wanted it to fall, so the grass is all torn up by that. But all the trees fell the right way! That’s good.

Our cousins come down to our farm for sleepovers fairly often since my older cousin can drive, and we always have a lot of fun. 🙂 They came about a week ago and Jianna and I decided to write a letter to Trenton Lee Stewart, the author of The Mysterious Benedict Society. Allison and Leisha and Carmen helped and Allison made a fantastic envelope illustration, so we’re hoping he’ll read it! 🙂

We went to the county fair with our cousins a couple weeks ago which was a lot of fun! We ran into (but not literally) some friends from our church while we were there which was also great! 😀 Sadly we didn’t come on a day when the rides were cheap, so we only went on a couple. Five dollars for two minutes of a ride doesn’t always seem worth it. XD

While we were there my cousin Jianna wanted to win a fish, so she paid $2 for 10 ping-pong balls to try to get a ball in one of the many little vase thingies. She was down to one and didn’t have a fish yet, so she asked if anyone else wanted to try. One of our friends did and he got it in! It was very hilarious, and Jianna named the fish after our friend. 😛

I don’t like rain. It’s almost always gloomy and sad. Although I guess I don’t mind quick thunderstorms – it’s just the drizzly rain that drags on for the whole day that gets on my nerves. But we’ve been having a lot of sunny days this summer along with the rain, which is great for Dad’s corn!

EEP. Eeyore is fantastic! She’s getting so much friendlier and she’s so adorable! We kept her in her pen for the first week or so because we wanted her to get used to a little bit at a time, and we needed to get the electric fence working.

I GOT MY BRACES OFF! Whoop whoop! It feel so nice not to have braces anymore. And soon I won’t have to wear my retainer either!

The braces-off process was a little more painful than I anticipated, (mostly it was the glue grinding, that made my sensitive teeth hurt so bad, and it smelled like smoke) but it’s done now and I only have like two or three more orthodontist appointments until I “graduate”!

Wow, this is a very scattered and random post. 😛 I’m not that good at coming up with post ideas and I’m not that good with words. My thoughts don’t like to be written out, which can be annoying. I read bloggers’ posts with beautiful descriptions and poems and stories and I wish I could get words to cooperate for me like they can. Whenever I try to write things like I’m writing now it just goes around and circles and gets dizzy and falls down so I end up backspacing, but this time I shall not backspace! HA! SO THERE! XD

I remember one summer several years ago we found this tree with giant leaves by our grandmother’s house. The leaves were far bigger than our faces and I thought they were fantastic! For several years after that I’d check back to see if I could find it again but I never did, much to my dismay. About couple months ago, on our new farm, we found one of those trees again! You can’t really do much with the leaves, but we picked them anyway and marveled at their hugeness. Jeff and I dubbed it Polynesia because it’s a Royal Polonia tree but I kept forgetting the actual name so I just called it the polynesia tree. Tragically, Logan bush-hogged it down a few weeks ago. Jeff and I were crushed, but we’re hoping it’ll come back!

It’s always kinda sad when summer is ending and the lush beans and corn turn yellow and you don’t instantly sweat whenever you step outside. I like fall when it actually comes, but I’m guessing summer will always be my favorite. 😀

I think Eeyore mostly ate hay where she used to live and now that she found out about grass she loves it! Even though it was raining today she was out munching away! She also loves to eat bunny food, so I can sometimes get her to follow me if I rattle a bucket with some bunny food in it. And I bought her some horse treats which she loves as well! She happily munched on them and then got annoyed when I didn’t give her any more. XD

I made her a temporary halter to lead her around with. Sometimes she’ll be fine with it and (slowly) follow along, but then she’ll spot a good patch of grass and absolutely refuse to move! Maybe donkeys are a little more stubborn than I thought…

And that concludes yet another random post from yours truly! Now that I’m caught up perhaps I’ll feel more like blogging. 🙂

do you like letters and envelope art and donkeys?

is hurricane florence affecting you?

P.S. This post is over 2k words! Yay!