My Week(s) In Pictures

We will begin with pictures from July 16 through July 21 when my extended family was up.


Here are three of my cousins: Adrienne, Michael, and Jon. Adrienne and Michael are siblings. All three are quite fun and entertaining. Also, when they play beach volleyball with Derrick, it is intense.


Next we have the amazing rainbow that we saw on Monday after a nice storm. It was a compete rainbow with both ends seeming to touch the lake. After a while, the second rainbow was visable on top and they both began to intensify and brighten. Ross was there and witnessed it.


Two hours later there was a lightning show across the lake. I managed to get one picture of it.


This is Kathee and my cousin Heidi. Kathee is my aunt, but apparently she doesn't enjoy it when I refer to her as that. She and my uncle Darren are only 15ish years older than I am. Heidi is about 18 months old here, I think. She's definitely cute.


And this is Will, my cousin (he's Heidi's older brother). He's four years old, almost five, I think. Will was incredibly fun. When we went out in the lake with him, he would always say "we're going to the open sea!" in his cute little Will voice. And one time Adrienne and I had been out swimming with him for a while and Will was having so much fun, but we finally convinced him to go back to shore. When we got to shore he was so cold and tired that he wouldn't even take a step. So Adrienne wrapped him in her towel and I picked him up like a sack of potatoes and carried him up to the deck and his mom.


On the last night we were playing Catch Phrase. That was fun in itself, but Will was there with us until close to 11pm. After a while he walked over to me and tried to get on my lap. He didn't succeed, so I pulled him up and sat him down on my left leg. He just sat there with his blanket and his thumb in his mouth until his mom came and got him for bed. It was adorable.




Next we have Ross's and my trip to Ann Arbor on Tuesday.


This is me putting coins into the parking meter. The Administration Building is in the background. West Quad is in the farther background and South Quad is barely visable in the top right corner.


Ross... spinning the Cube:


Ant graffiti:


A beautiful scene from the Arb:


The source of last blog's title:

Life is Good

I finally won a game of soccer on my PS2. Of course it was a 5 star team against a 1.5 star team and the final score was 1-0, but at least I won. I got a few yellow cards and one red card.

The campout was ok. Badminton between the geezers (me and Kevin) and the losers (Ross, Jake, and Grace) was fun. Kevin and I definitely won... even though we weren't keeping score. Dutch Blitz was also intense. Grace and Jake turned out to be fairly good players. They were certainly much better than Kevin. And then True Colors back at my house until 1:30am was nice. I think Ross won.

I really like speeding down State Road. It's like Need For Speed III in the hometown track. Ahh, I like driving.

...And today I got to drive a lot. Ross and I went to Ann Arbor. We did a ton. We went to the OIP to see about money I owe, Noodles & Co for lunch, UHS, my old house to drop off the DVD cords, Border's for books, Dawn Treader Book Shop for more books, Main St and Thousand Villages for browsing (and some buying), an art gallery, and finally we went to the Arb and walked around for a long time. Ahh, it was nice. I spent over $60 in books. Some of them were in German. It was an intense afternoon. Ross led the way in the Arb and took us up a big exhausting hill. It was an adventure. Now I'm tired. The only annoying part was the idiot driver from Ohio who could not keep a constant speed, cut me off needlessly so that I had to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting him, and prevented me from passing him by speeding up when I was almost ready to pull in front of him and thus almost making me run into the back of a semi. Grr. I was more mad at him than I've ever been at anybody on the road... and that's saying something. The Burger King lady near Saginaw was dumb too. She needs a hearing aid or something. But anyway...

Here at the end of the week...

Careful, this might be disturbing to some. I think I inherited my dad's sense of humor. ...And my dad's stubbornness and hot-headedness, though he won't admit that he has either.

Alecia and Joel's bridal shower was nice. People seemed to like my chocolate covered raspberries.

I reached the lull in my week around Wednesday. Everyone was lethargic. My cousins and extended family were up for the week. It was fun. We swam and played games and played volleyball and ate and did even more.

My back was quite burned. It hurt to move and for anything to touch it. Thankfully, it is now quite better. My face is peeling. Lovely.

Now I'm bored. It's cold. Everyone is gone. Ryan is at work. I don't know where Ross is. Maybe I'll call him. Tina is in Australia. It makes me look forward to Germany. I can't believe I'm going to Germany. How did I ever get sucked into this?

Anyway, not much to say.

The Bad with the Good

I've been working on cleaning my room for 8 days now, and yesterday it was finally done (for now). I haven't really done the closet, the chest, under the bed, or the TV stand yet, but those aren't noticable... and I can actually see my floor! I have a TV, VCR, DVD player, Playstation, CD player/radio, lava lamp, bean bags, and more! I like it. :) My room is finally a wonderful place to be and I'll only be able to use it for another 1.5 months. Bah, that is kind of sad.

Now for some truly bad news. Sadly, I'm losing my cell phone next week. I guess I don't really have any reason to object since I'm leaving the country in 1.5 months anyway and can't take it with me, but I'm still going to miss it for that time. Everyone knows that phone number and now I'll have no phone to myself (for phone calls that I can't have my parents knowing about). My sister suggested that I use my mom's phone because she rarely uses it anyway, but I don't know about that. I'm thinking about getting a track phone (like Rossy). I could use it for the 1.5 months, let it set for a year, and then pick up where I left off when I get home. It could work. We'll see what my parents think. So the moral of this paragraph is if you try to call my cell phone next week and it doesn't work, that is why.

My cousins are coming up on Sunday! YAY! I'm excited. It should be fun... and I'm sure it will be. You can come hang out with us if you want.

I'm working on a college scrapbook. It's fun. Freshman year was fairly simple, but sophomore year has gotten sticky. It's a sticky wicket. There's so much stuff. Right now I'm just trying to get it all glued down and then work on the extra touches later.

To attract by arousing hope or desire.

At this very moment I am looking into DDR for PS2. DDR was actually a big reason why I wanted PS2. Hehehehe. It excites me!

I went to Bay City yesterday and only bought a DVD tower.

On Sunday, Ross, Alecia, Joel, and I went to Hsing's Garden for lunch after church. Ah, it was almost like the old days.

So today was another day of reading and cleaning. I read A Brother's Journey by Richard Pelzer, the brother of David Pelzer (the author of A Child Called It). The book was ok. I read it entirely this afternoon. It was interesting to see another view of life in that house. Then after a short bike ride this evening, I began cleaning my room again. There is so much stuff. I don't think I'll ever be done. It makes me sneeze.

Oh well.

I'm going to try to make chocolate covered raspberries and homemade beef nuggets (instead of chicken nuggets). Maybe tonight... maybe tomorrow... who knows.

There's this fleamarket thing where the students that were in Freiburg this past year sell stuff to the incoming students. It's enticing. I want a lot, but I don't know if it wouldn't be just as easy to buy the stuff new when I get there.

Road Irritation

First of all, my road rage isn't really road rage because it fits perfectly with my personality to be that way while I drive. In fact, if I was less annoyed on the road, people might think I was on Valium or Ritalin or something. And it's not really 'rage', it's just annoyance and irritation.

Today I went with Ben to Ann Arbor. I really enjoyed being there again and I got some things done. But I didn't get to go to the Arb with Ben. He didn't seem too enthused about it and so I didn't make him. I got to see Jaye P before she left and I bought a shirt. On the way back, we stopped in Bay City (Ben wanted to play DDR) and spent some time (and money) there.

Lyne, being the wonderful person that she is, gave me a Pride & Prejudice poster with Mr. Darcy in the mists. Ahh, I like it.

So my mother annoys me. She wants me to clean up my stuff. Fine, I will. And I am in the process of doing that. But there is 10 months worth of stuff built up and so it takes some time. All I asked was that she not touch, move, or mess with anything until everything was in its place. She agreed, and yet I come home to find a huge screwed up pile of my stuff in place of the organized mess that had been there before. Arg. I am annoyed.

The line for POTC:2 was huge. Ross and I plan to see it Wednesday.

I had much more to say, but now I can't think of it. Oh well... until we meet again...

Night and Day

These past few days have been ok. Saturday was Ross's aunt's 4th of July party. The fireworks were especially impressive. Jake's adventures with the frisbee were also entertaining. Sunday I went to Saginaw and bought some French learning materials and some colloquial German learning materials as well as a couple other books and CDs and a game.

Sunday night I went over to DJ's with Vanessa. It was sad to miss Ben's bonfire, but I had a good time with Vanessa, DJ, Vanessa (the other one), and even Greg, a little of Glen, and some kid from Grosse Point named Andrew who we randomly met on the beach at 2 a.m.

Monday started out boring, but then I went over to Jen and Kev's and saw their adorable babies and fun family. And after a while Ross somehow tracked me down over there and we decided to go swimming. Swimming was relaxing and the evening ended with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Tuesday, July 4th, was fun too. Ben, Ryan, Ross, and I watched the soccer game at 3pm while we played True Colors. The game was fun but the soccer game was not. Oh well, at least Germany got to the semifinals. After that, we went to Bay City to see The Break-Up (which wasn't great), played games at Walmart, and ate at Chen's in the mall.

Today I went with Ryan to his dentist appointment and then we putt-putted at Hubie's. Ryan won but only by 7 points. Later we visited Ben at Bay Video (where I might apply) and then went to the used book store in town where I found two books. Before Ryan left for Bible study, we watched Madagascar and those crazy penguins. I began reading Three by Ted Dekker tonight. ...But that's enough about my boring life.

Ok, one more thing. Apparently I got the Baden-Württemburg Scholarship, which is 600 Euros per month while I'm in Germany! I'm excited, but now I just have to make sure that they got the form that is due by July 15. So hopefully everything turns out ok.