Trip to Illinois!

Hey Y'all,

I am back and have been for a long time now. I had a great trip in Illinois with the Candlers it was so much fun spending time with them, meeting their friends, and just hanging out! :)

This was my first time to fly by myself and the first time I would be anywhere for an extended time without my family. So I was a little nerves at the outset of the 2 week and 5 day vacation I was embarking on, but by the end of it I was trying to figure out where "ALL" that time had gone.

The main event of the first week was the Pumpkin Festival, it was so much FUN! We went Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday! Each night there was a different group of the Candler's friends that we go to spend time with and of course go on the rides with. :) We had a very fun and crazy time. In the end the top three favorite rides were the Zipper, Rock-O-Plane, and the Hurricane, I don't know how many times went on them but it was a lot! :)

The main part of the second week was spent in baby sitting, the church rummage sale, and ping pong! :D Tuesday night one of the Candlers friends Emilee got to spend the night, so we watched Wives and Daughters together, and of course talked a lot! It was lots of fun! :)

Then Friday evening we went over to the Neisen's house. The first activity of the afternoon was saddling up the horses and heading out to ride. Their horses are very pretty and they have some of the cutest little ponies! I did not do to good when riding, in fact I did horrible and was limping afterwards, but the others did really good and it was fun watching them. :) The next big event was when we got on the X-Box and hooked up with my brothers for some Halo 3, YEEHA!!!! The first game was Calvin and Robert against Garrett, Sierra, Lenna, and I. Now I bet y'all are sitting there going "Oh that is so not fair!" Well to tell the truth I agree 100% and so did the others, so after that Calvin and Robert were FORBIDDEN to be on the same team so that we would not get CREAMED again. :P Later on, Robert, Garrett, and I become another banned team combination. :) Playing was so much fun! Then after about half a hour or more Cal and Rob had to go, so we set up Call of Duty World at War (is that the right version?) and that was tons of fun too! X-Box is always fun but when you're right there with your friends laughing and talking it is always so much better! Call of Duty was ended when Mr. Candler came in and said it was time to go....but to our surprise it was not the end of the fun. :D We got all our stuff together walked to the door and saw a very dense fog (which all of us kids just knew we could not even think about driving in) so once Mr. and Mrs. Neisen said that we could stay, we focused in on Mr. Candler and pleaded until he gave in so that we could stay the night! :D Once that was settled lights were set up in the front yard and a game of Ultimate Frisbee was started! It was hilarious, all the jokes and slipping in the wet grass, it was just too much fun! :) I don't know what time we were called inside to go to bed but I know it was late, the next morning we were all very tiered and after we got home Sierra, Lenna, and I had to crash for an hour to catch up on sleep! (but I would still do it all again!. :)

Monday was Sierra's birthday and us Girls spent the morning by going down to their creek and taking lots (and I mean lots) of pictures together. :) Then it was time to go shopping. Now most the time I find shopping very boring, but when your with Sierra and Lenna it is very hard to find anything boring! :P They had me laughing almost the whole time. The rest of the day was spent at home talking and watching a movie.

Thursday we went to the Kings place to make homemade apple cider. I don't know how many apples we cut but the end result was 14 gallons of amazing cider and a lot of good memories.

Then Friday we went over to the McDonald's house for dinner, which of course meant lots of talking, fun, and games! Oh, and some music was thrown in there too! :)

Then there was Saturday the day of my return home, but before I could go home there was a three hour drive in the car. :D Unfortunately Lenna was sick so she had to stay home but Sierra was able to come along so we talked in the car and then Mr. and Mrs Candler took us to Cracker Barrel for a very good lunch. We ended up getting to the air port two hours early to make sure I would not be late, encase it was busy. But since there was almost nobody else there we got to spend most that time together. Of course since it was our last moments together, we could not just sit and act normal the whole time, so Sierra and I decided we would go up and down the escalators! :) It was hilarious to see some of the looks people gave us as we just happily talked while going in circles! :P After a while Sierra started to get dizzy so we moved our conversation over to Star Bucks, which was a yummy improvement! :D After that it was time for us to say good bye, so we got our last picture together and then I headed off through security.

I shall now conclude my post. :)

The Texan~

P.S Sorry that I did not put up any pictures. I did not take many and the ones I did take did not come out too well, but Sierra has some up on her blog. :)

Bye for now

I am just real quickly saying good bye to y'all. I will be leaving tomorrow morning to see some of our good friends up in IL for two weeks and five days so do not expect to hear form me for a while. When I get back I shall make a post not only on my trip to IL but also of our our other good friends stay down here. Anyway, adios till some time in October.

The Texan~

Quiz

Well I was bored so I decided to make up a quiz thing to see how well y'all know me. Now if you end up wondering how I came up with some of the questions I shall tell you right now, my brothers and sister helped me come up with almost all of them. Hope y'all enjoy taking the test, even if it is kinda odd. :) I will post the answers to the quiz some other time.

Click here to take test

P.S Please leave your score in a comment.

My latest doings.

Howdy Y'all,

It has come to my attention that I have neglected this blog for some time now so I am going to give you a update on what has been going on. I will start at August 14, the first part of this day was spent in rushing around the house packing and making pizza, the next six hours were then spent in the car eating the pizza, then we arrived in Arlington where we were staying with some of our dear friends for the next few days. It was a lot of fun, we talked, played games, danced, and simply enjoyed every moment we had together.

Lauren and Savannah while teaching me and Jo to play Hand and Foot

Julia helped Johannah out and yes Lauren and Jo needed every bit of that help. :)

Savannah happy during the half time brake in our game, so far she and I were winning.

(and we did win)

Lauren and Johanna

Savannah and I

The whole East Tribe, well all but Mr. East he was already at work.

All the girls

and all of us kids together

We had a wonderful time, thank y'all so much for having us.

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We are now going to skip forward to last night.

Last night was a time of fun and sadness, fun because all our friends were over but sad because it was the going away party for our pastor who has been called to another work in Burlington N.C, which means that our mission work is being left without a pastor and might possibly be shut down and there is no other church that we could go to that is closer then two hours away. We are hoping that we will be able to set up a web connection between us and another church in our denomination so that we can have teaching and be able to stay together, please pray that this can be done, it will be very hard on us still but it is better then being cut off and left with no where to go, I don't know what my family and the other four families that go to our church will do if we lose our mission work. So please pray for our mission work, and our pastor as he and his family are moving, Pastor Otis has been down here four years and before that he had been coming down a few times each year since I was two years old, so we are very close to him which makes it even harder that we are losing him.

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Then today when Calvin, Jo and I were going over to help the Otis' pack up and clean their house and the car started over heating so we pulled off in to gas station and filled the radiator with water, went to start the car but since Calvin had left the A/C running the battery was dead and we had to wait till someone came along to help us get it jump started. Not much fun, I am starting to not like gas stations, out of about the last 10 times I have been to a gas station 3 of those times was because something was wrong with the car.

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Okay I am going on to a brighter topic, it turns out that our friends dad has some work to do down here so he is coming down the week after next and here is the really great part he will be bringing Lauren, Jay, and Savannah with him! We are really looking forward to it, I have been making plans for things that we can do together and practicing my guitar so that Savannah and I can play together. :)

I shall now end this post with that last little bit of happy news.

The Texan~

A Fun Day

Last Saturday was a very fun day! In the morning we got together with our friends from church for a beach party. We got there at about 11:00 I think (late as always) and after wadding out in the water and talking for a while we came back to shore and started volley ball, we played three games before we broke for lunch. After lunch we went out in the water to throw the Frisbee back and forth to each other, once we came back to shore some sand castles were built while we were waiting for my brother Robert to come so that we could play some Ultimate Frisbee. (Robert had been working earlier so he had missed out on the before activities) It did not take him long to come and we headed out to an open space of the sand and started the game, we ended up only playing for three points though because by the time that it is 1:45 PM the sand is very very very hot and it was a bit painful to run on it, and kinda hard to throw against the wind. After the Ultimate Frisbee it was time for us to pack up and head home but the fun was not over yet....

....After running about gathering up food and sound systems then driving about an hour we arrived in Rockport at some of our other friends house for a dance party! After saying hello to every one (including our friends we went to the beach with :D) there was dinner and a time of singing, then I and my siblings ran outside to quickly set up the music and once every one was gathered we started in on a long fun night of dancing. It was great because it was a huge group and just about everyone loved dancing and learned all the dances very quickly. My siblings and I taught the Virginia Reel, Gay Gorden, and Posties Jig, and we learned two Jewish dances which were a lot of fun. The dancing lasted form 8:00 to 11:45 and in the end Posties Jig was voted the favorite, we even got to do Posties Jig extreme a couple times. So Saturday was a wonderfully fun and active day, and there are already plans to do another dance in August. :)

Sorry that I did not get pictures I was a bit busy instructing and dancing to really even think about it.

I hope y'all have a great week!

The Texan~

Conference Pictures.

Here are the pictures I promised of the conference, sorry it took me so long to get them up.

My friends that I spent most my time with.

The Chapel

Sitting on the grass talking and enjoying the lovely weather.

The mountains are really pretty up there, this picture does not do them justice.

Here are a few videos of the dancing, they have odd endings though because I had to trim them down to get them to fit on here.

The first one is the Virginia Reel, then the Gothic Reel, and the last is a Square Dance. I wanted to get the Posties Jig on here too, but it would not let me. :(

Johanna with our friends we stayed with after the conference.

These are our friends who were at Trinity Presbyterian Church.

These last two are Jo and I waiting for the guys to get the tire changed on the car, it was really hot and as you can see there is no shade. So since it took a while we ended up crossing the street, slipping through a barbed wire fence and sitting under some trees in a cow pasture. :)

So those are the pictures from our trip. It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to going next year. :)

Reformed Family Bible Conference

June 16th I with half of my family packed up the car and headed out towards Georgia, then to Virgina, for an elven day vacation to go up to the Reformed Family Bible Conference in Bluefield Virgina, which my family has been going to since 2004. We made it to Georgia with only one adventure which was that one of the gas lines sprung a leak and poured out one whole tank of gas. After going to church at Calcedon on Sunday and up to the Georgia mountains on Monday, we packed up Tuesday morning and headed out to Virginia.

We arrived in Bluefield around 2:45 and before long we where laughing and talking with old friends and having a great time! The thyme of the conference this year was on John Calvin. The talks where very good and I am hoping that we will be able to get the DVDs of them so that I can hear them again because there was so much in them I know there is much more for me to learn from them.

In between the morning lectures and the one in the evening there was time of great fellowship, I spent my time with three other girls my age during the conference and I really enjoyed getting to know them as we talked together, we also joined into the games of Ultimate Frisbee, and a little of the Nerf. After the last lecture we would head down to the gym where the dance practise was held every night, then Friday night the Barn Dance was held there too, the dancing was really a lot of fun we learned a new dance called the Posties jig which was so much fun! The Virginia Reel and the Square Dance where the other two that we did the most of and the each of the following we danced once, Salty Dog Rag, Gay Gorden, and a Gothic Reel which we had not done before.

After the conference us girls got to stay with the Carey family and it was so much fun! We arranged flowers together, went on a walk, and of course while doing those things and others we laughed and talked with each other of one subject and then the next. I hope we can do it again some time! :)

Sunday we went to Trinity where we got to talk with more then a few of our friends from the conference, which was a lot of fun. After the fellowship meal we had to say goodbye to everyone and point ourselves towards home, which at first was a hard thing to do but once we were on the road I was ready to be there.

After driving a little over a day with a tire that was no longer fully there and then having another blow out so that we had to have them both replaced, we arrived home at about 9:45 Monday night, where my mom, oldest brother, oldest sister, brother in-law, and nephew where waiting to greet us! :)

This shall conclude my post for now I will try to put up the pictures later.

The Texan~

Texas

This is something that my oldest sister passed on to me and I just had to post it on the blog!!!

Hurray for the Lone Star State!!!

Have you ever looked at a map of the world? Look at Texas with me just for a second. That picture, with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast , and the Red River and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will be. As soon as anyone anywhere in the world looks at it they know what it is.  It's Texas .  Pick any kid off the street in Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in the dirt and he'll know what it is. What happens if I show you a picture of any other state? You might get it maybe after a second or two, but who else would? And even if you do, does it ever stir any feelings in you? 

In every man, woman and child on this planet, there is a person who wishes just once he could be a real live Texan and get up on a horse or ride off in a pickup. There is a little bit of Texas in everyone. 

Texas is the Alamo . Texas is 183 men standing in a church, facing thousands of Mexican nationals, fighting for freedom, who had the chance to walk out and save themselves, but stayed instead to fight and die for the cause of freedom.

We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis and James Bowie and Davy Crockett, and do you know why?  Because those men saw a line in the sand and they decided to cross it and be heroes. 

John Wayne paid to do the movie himself . That is the Spirit of Texas . 

Texas is Sam Houston capturing Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana at San Jacinto . 

Texas is huge forests of Piney Woods like the Davy Crockett and Sam Houston National Forests . 

Texas is breathtaking mountains in the Big Bend . 

Texas is the unparalleled beauty of bluebonnet fields in the Texas Hill Country.

 

 

Texas is floating the rivers of the Hill Country on a hot summer day.

 

Texas is the beautiful, warm beaches of the Gulf Coast of South Texas.

 

 

 

Texas is beaches you can drive on and have many memorable bon-fires with close friends.

 

 

 

Texas is that warm feeling you get when someone asks where you're from. 

Texas is the shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas. 

Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork .

Texas is Mexican foods like nowhere else, not even Mexico .

 

Texas is chicken fried steak and world famous Bar-B-Q.

 

Texas is the Fort Worth Stockyards, Bass Hall, the Ballpark in Arlington and the Astrodome. (guess now the Reliant Stadium too)..

Texas is larger-than-life legends like Michael DeBakey, Ann Richards, Denton Cooley, Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, Gene Autry, Audie Murphy, Tommy Lee Jones, Waylon Jennings, Farrah Fawcet, Janis Joplin, Sandra Bullock, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Landry, Eva Longoria, Darrell Royal, ZZ Top, Eric Dickerson, Earl Campbell, Nolan Ryan, Sam Rayburn, Howard Hughes, George H. Bush, George W. Bush, Lyndon B. Johnson, and let's not forget GEORGE STRAIT- PANTERA, the Big Bopper, Tex Ritter, George Jones, Clay Walker, Mark Chestnut,Frank Hotz, Sandi Taylor  to name ONLY a few.

Texas is great companies like Dell Computer, Texas Instruments, EDS and Compaq, Whataburger, Southwest Airlines, Bell Helicopter and LOCKHEED MARTIN AEROSPACE, Home of the F-16 Jet Fighter and the JSF Fighter, Valero. 

Texas is NASA. 

Texas is huge herds of cattle, beautiful horses and miles of crops.

 

Texas is home to the world famous King Ranch

 

Texas is home to the most amazing sunsets of gold over an empty field.  

Texas is hundreds of deer running around neighborhoods and fields. 

Texas is skies blackened with doves and fields full of deer. 

Texas is a place where towns and cities shut down to watch the local high school football game on Friday nights and for the Cowboys on Monday Night Football, and for the night In Old San Antonio River Parade in San Antonio. 

To drive across Texas is to drive 1/3 the way across the United States .

Texas is ocean beaches, deserts, lakes and rivers, mountains and prairies, and modern cities. 

If it isn't already in Texas , you probably don't need it.  

No one does anything bigger or better than it's done in Texas . 

By federal law, Texas is the only state in the U...S. That can fly its flag at the same height as the U.S. Flag. Think about that for a second. You fly the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland , California , or Maine , and your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17 feet. You fly the Stars and Stripes in front of Klein Oak High or anyplace else at 20 feet, the Lone Star flies at the same height - 20 feet. Do you know why? Because it is the only state that was a Republic before it became a state. 

Also, being a Texan is as high as being an American down here. Our capitol is the only one in the country that is taller than the capitol building in Washington , D.C. And we can divide our state into five states at any time if we wanted to!We can become a republic again at any time the voters of Texas choose, and we included these things as part of the deal when we came on. 
That's the best part, right there. 

Texas even has its own power grid!! And don't even lie to yourself... Did I mention Live music capitol of the world? 

If you are a REAL TEXAN, you won't even need to be told to pass this on.

 

GOD BLESS TEXAS !