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Thursday, June 26, 2014

Whats up?

Well..... babysitting twice a week, strawberries, making jam, going to the zoo, watching an awesome production of Les Miserables...twice...playing violin, doing a "school" course, reading, thinking, being outside a lot, finding awesome stuff at Goodwill (dress, heels, shirt, yellow shoes, shorts) warning I'm chopping my hair tomorrow (well, cutting it.) taking lots of pictures, holding our naughty rabbit (she's bit a few people), playing piano... hopefully going swimming soon...sewing...

And loving all of it! I am so blessed to have my family.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Lassie

I got an email from Khan Academy. (a site on which I've done a lot of algebra on. :) The title of the email was "What makes Beethoven's 5th Symphony so amazing?"
I began to think "Because he's Beethoven, and he wrote a ton of amazing stuff." :) I don't think that's quite what they were thinking of though!

I'm taking a music conducting class through Coursera.org (which is another great learning site!) I am loving it! The teacher is very funny, without trying to be. It's a course I love learning about! (music!)  I've never really thought about conducting ensembles before, but I've learned so much even just about how to follow the conductors lead. And how to start songs and pieces. Which I guess could be helpful, since this week I'm starting a duet with a friend. (I was hoping for a quartet, but turned into a duet. Haha!)

My Dad took us all to a Tigers game. That was a ton of fun, and pictures to come! I have so many pictures to go through, it's not funny. 300 is a charitable guess. Although some, I'm sure, will be deleted.

I showed my younger siblings the movie Lassie. The 2005 version. It is incredibly well done. Honestly, I wasn't expecting a movie about a dog to be great, but the producers and actors did a phenomenal job. And, the music was super! So good, I'll put some clips of two songs on here.





Saturday, June 21, 2014

Baby!!!!

A sneak peek of the sweetest little baby in town, Miss Eiliana!





Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Father's Day

Happy Fathers Day! (to the fathers, I mean.) This is a bit late, because I thought I posted this, but just found I actually didn't. :)
I love my Dad so much, and am so thankful for him! My Dad is the best, hands down!
My favorite things to do with him are: hunt, fish, drive, (even if I do scare him... a lot. :) His nickname for me is Emy-Lou. (spelling?) And every morning he asks how I am, and hugs me. I love you so much Dad!!


This is my favorite "Father's" picture:




Friday, June 13, 2014

Enjoying today:

Over at this blog my friend wrote about some things she was enjoying lately, and asked what her readers were enjoying. I commented and wrote these things below, and than decided to make a post out of it! :)
I have been enjoying:
-Gardening. I have my own little plot in our family garden that I'm responsible for. I have onions, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce and broccoli. Some of the stuff is just starting to come up, and it's fun to see the little plants! I love to be in the dirt as well.
-Violin. Someone gave me some music  and in that music are some really awesome songs and etudes. I've been working especially on shifting. It's not as easy as Joshua Bell makes it look. ;)
-Books. I got some from the library. Most of them were by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I found out she wrote a lot more books than just the Anne series! Kilmeny of the Orchard was good, after all, Kilmeny plays violin. The Road to Yesterday is kind of a collection of stories of the people associated with the Blythes.
-Softball season has started! I was quite sore after playing for two hours. It's so much fun though!
-Driving. I have my permit, and am starting the long trek to getting 50 hours of supervised driving. :) I like to drive!
-Babysitting. I babysat a 3 year old, he's so cute! We played in the dirt pile with cars and tractors for about 30 minutes! I would hide the cars, and he would try to find them. "Where go??? Where go??"

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Ticks

I've decided to tell you about all the torturous ways our family kills ticks. It seems like we have a lot of them around our house.
1. Light 'em on fire until they pop.
2. Freeze them on an ice cube.
3. Put them in really hot water (My preferred way)
4. Eat them. (actually my dad did....once.)
5. Our neighbors microwave them for about 15 seconds, until they sizzle. (my brother tried this too..disgusting!)

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Friends

I got to spend the evening last week with one of my dear friends! She is such a sweet girl, and we've been friends for a very long time. (I don't really think we've ever had any fights either... :)
I just tried to find a picture of us frog hunting in the swamp(psst, that happened years ago. I think we were like 8 and 10), but to no avail. That was fun though! 

This was the best picture we got. The others were really blurry, and the other her dad totally photo bombed. 


So that was literally the only one that turned out!
We had a great time!

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The weekend

Wednesday we decided to go on a small weekend "vacation." Drive 6 hours for a friends graduation. We left Friday morning, and went to see friends for the day. Saturday we had breakfast with friends, and then went to the graduation party!
It was so much fun to see all our old friends and a lot of people thought I was my older sister! Friday night we had dinner with one of my best friends. We've kept up with each other through the years, and it was so awesome to have a chummy talk with her in person!!
We drove back Saturday night, and got home around 11pm. Nobody got to bed until after midnight, and the next day was church!  :)
We all woke up 30 minutes later then we usually do but still managed to make it to church on time!
And that afternoon our orchestra was playing for the academy's graduation.
That was a horrible idea! (taking three days off from practicing violin right before the performance.)
We played pomp and circumstance first. It went good, although we had to stop in the middle because the graduates were all on stage. Than Mrs. M provided us with a bag of suckers to pass around. (We were sitting in the very back so nobody could see us!) And my seat partner and I had a lot of fun trying to sneak the bag away from the concert master, who was probably in charge of it. :)
I wore my black heels because they matched my dress. They're only about an inch high. But I discovered that I do not like heels. They didn't hurt my feet... it's just impossible to walk quietly. I much prefer ballet flats, any day!
"Capriccio Espagnol" was the piece we played second to last, and it was... ok. Not great, but not horrible. "Jupiter" from the Planets, was awesome! It's a great piece, very slow and lovely.
Afterwards it was weird to say goodbye for the whole summer instead of just for a week. But I'll see some of them at string camp. (which I'm super excited about!) And one of the girls and I are going to be doing some duet pieces over the summer. It was going to be a quartet, but two of the people I asked couldn't do it. So it's a cello/violin duet. Which'll still be really fun!
Softball starts in one week! I'm really excited, as I love to play!

Here are some pictures of Chicago.. taken from the car, so they aren't great. :)

One of the funny things about Chicago is all the trains between the highways. 
We used to say "Hey batter batter, cake batter batter" whenever one went by. 
(I have no idea where that came from!)

 Tunnels are so fun to drive through!

 Bridge's even more so.
Landscape was very cool and fascinating, but I guess I'm just a country girl/small city girl at heart. :)
I would not like to drive in that.