I know – I’m terrible at this. I’ve made backdated posts about graduation, subsequent car trips with my mom and sisters, my stay in WI with my family, and recent undertaken projects. Hopefully now that I’m caught up I’ll be able to keep up better. If I’m not regularly updating, you have my permission to hassle me about it, but I plan to be updating at least twice a week this summer. So hold me to it!
EDIT: added a few posts, but still need to add two or three more regarding my recent projects before I’m all caught up. Tomorrow I’m driving to La Crosse though to move into my summer residence, so it will probably be a few days before I’m able to update. I figure that’s alright because it’ll proly take you about that long to catch up on my posts!
My family got up to our summer dwelling, Blue Heaven, for Memorial Day weekend this year. I was going to take some shots of the house for you guys, but I forgot to. I did try to take some artistic-ish pictures of the lake that first night we got up there, cuz the clouds were reflected in the lake and it was cool looking.
While I was up there, I got to do one of my FAVORITE things – drive our 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Great car. It took my dad and I a few days to get it started, but we finally did. As my dad says, every year is the year you wonder if you’re just gonna have to shoot it cuz it refuses to work anymore. But we got it started, so it’s on for at least one more year!
As an excuse to drive it around, Moose and I took it out for a while. He LOVES riding in cars, mostly I think because he hates getting left behind. But he gets so excited to get in a car with you, and he’d never ridden in this one, so it was super extra exciting!
He wanted his head out the window but was too lazy to stand lol. This was how he spent most of the car ride.
Then apparently he was real tired from running around outside so much, so he just lay right down and put his head in my lap. It was real sweet!
We stopped to get gas at – where else? – good ole Energy Mart, and Moose was all anxious that I wouldn’t let him out of the car to visit.
Today, we had a productive day. My dad got up here and between the two of us, we managed to get our old Oldsmobile started, the Yukon started, and the Ski Nautique, the sailboat, and the fishing boat all in the water. Oh, and the flag up. Have to have the American flag up!
In the process of putting the fishing boat in the water, we started checking the side storage compartments, and look what we found!
A squirrel nest!
So we took the boat over to the dock, and my mom got some gloves and a bucket to get the nest out of the boat.
Video of the rescue attempt
So we did end up getting them all out. Here’s some supercute pics of them!
A grand total of three babies.
All snuggled down in their bucket.
We’ve got them downstairs now in the laundry room, all covered up. My mom called the wildlife clinic and they said to keep them in a dark, warm place til morning, then she could bring them in. Despite my mom’s musings over chipmunkness, the wildlife people said they sounded like red squirrels and that they have other red squirrels they’re raising for release, so they can just be added to those other squirrels.
All in all, a productive day!
EDIT: Around 9.00pm tonight, my dad noticed the dashboard lights were on in the fishing boat, so he figured I must have accidentally turned them on while I was driving it today and asked me to go turn them off. So I go down there, and not only could I not get them turned off (I pushed ALL the buttons), but I heard more squeaking coming from the side storage compartment! So my mom came down and we found a fourth little baby squirrel! The poor thing was probably freezing in there. So we took it up and put it back with the other baby squirrels.
We think they were chewing on wires back there and that’s why the lights were on, because we can’t figure out why else. They shouldn’t be on at all when the boat is off and we can’t figure out how to turn them off, so we just unhooked the battery for the night. And we were afraid there were more baby squirrels hiding in there, so my dad had me go down and check the compartments to see if I could find more before I went to bed, but I couldn’t. So I think (hopefully) we got them all now. Poor little things.
We can pack a car like no one else. And once we’re in, we’re in for FUN. On the way from NC to FL, we had the car so packed, Katherine and I could barely see each other, even sitting in the back seat together!
Mom told us to take a “normal” picture of us buried in the backseat.
Jennifer buried in pillows in the front seat.
What my seat looked like before I had to squeeze into it in the morning.
Our car trips are a lot of fun. We turn on silly music and blast it loud and sing along and dance the whole time. Or we turn on Disney music and sing our hearts out. We’re silly, goofy, off-the-wall, and keep each other entertained. I’ve never understood why other people hate car trips.
On our trip from FL to WI, Katherine took the backseat with the dog while Mom and I switched off driving. It made for some cute pictures!
Katherine and Moose sleeping in the backseat.
Katherine wiping the dogs mouth because Mom was feeding him apple and he was drooling ALL OVER Katherine.
Moose occasionally came to visit me (with an unfortunate tendancy to wake me up from naps by drooling on my head).
And he kept trying to climb into the front of the car by iiiiiinching forward along the center console of the car, as if we wouldn’t notice.
One last shot of Katherine and Moose snuggling in the backseat. So cute!
I know, I know, it’s like the oldest pun in the book, but for some reason when I saw it today, I went, “Awwww,” so I decided to share. And then I was like, you know what else is “Awwww”? The fact that I haven’t updated my blog in a few weeks. So I thought I’d let y’all know that I’m here and still alive and all. Hopefully this week I’ll get caught up on updates about my last weeks at school, graduation, my time at home now, and other random thoughts. At the moment my room looks like a category 5 hurricane swept through it, since I’m trying to pack for the next 4-6 months all at once. So I’m going to go keep working on that. But love and hugs and kisses to anyone that actually reads this blog!
Well, I’m officially graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with a B.A. in International Studies and minors in French and Linguistics. My mom and two sisters came up from FL a few days before graduation to hang out with me for the last few days on campus and we had fun. My adopted mom came over to UNC to take some family photos of us all (I should hopefully have some of those for you soon) and my whole family got to go to dinner with my whole adopted family, which was a lot of fun. And my mom and sisters got to meet and hang out with several of my other friends too. Fun times!
A few graduation pictures:
My oldest UNC friends! Friends since day 1 of freshman year.
Charles and I are super excited about being DONE!
My UF Kappa Kappa Gammasisters in front of the UNC Kappa house.
My dad and sisters and me in front of the Old Well on graduation day!
Ok, so I know this post is late, but you guys should be used to that by now. So here’s my belated description of an awesome weekend I had a few weekends ago.
BCM Semiformal
We met at University Baptist and danced the night away!
Our seniors.
Some of us girls being silly during clean up!
Central Asian Festival
And then Saturday, I went to this super awesome Central Asian Festival that they have at the fairgrounds here every year! My super awesome friend that we’re going to call Marvelous and I went together and Marvelous took some sweet pictures of the festival. It was SO AWESOME. They had super super yummy food and folk dancers and lots of exciting things to look at and tea to drink!
This guy was way into the dancing! And he was good!
A guy doing calligraphy!
This is how they get meat for their sandwiches. They just leave that up there rotating and shave off the meat (usually a mixture of beef and lamb) into slice-like pieces. Mmmmm yummy. It’s what Marvelous and I had for dinner!
This is a cake. Yes. A cake.
This is my favorite picture Marvie took. The colors! The composition! I have a tendency to sit and stare at it. I think it’s a really interesting photo.
So my conclusion is that I LOVE Central Asia. Going to the festival made me want to go there so bad! Marvelous and I had a, well, marvelous (teehee) time at the festival and then I got to go home and have a party with her and spend the night before she took me to church the next morning.
Game Day!
THEN on Sunday after church and childcare, a couple of us blew up the 72″ ball we found in the attic a month or two ago, and dude. It was cool. We couldn’t get it to blow up quite all the way and on top of that I didn’t have my camera charged, so once again Marvelous came to the rescue! She took some video of us.
Edwin and I got the ball to the tippy-top of the roof and rolled it off! The original plan was to get it to land in the hammock, but then it just became to throw it off. I love heights.
Posted by ~becky 
Then apparently he was real tired from running around outside so much, so he just lay right down and put his head in my lap. It was real sweet!
We stopped to get gas at – where else? – good ole Energy Mart, and Moose was all anxious that I wouldn’t let him out of the car to visit. 
Ardent Expectation 