I will start updating more. I will start updating more. I will start updating more. I will start updating more. I will...

Maybe if I write it enough times, it will stick. ;)

So. My health has been doing a lot better, overall, as has my sisters' health. However, the past couple of weeks have been a bit rough as all the pollen came out. I always get migraines this time of year. Also, something that doesn't help...apparently, Zyrtec makes me sleepy. Very sleepy. A whole pill was too much, so I tried half of one. Still too much. After a few days of taking a quarter of a pill every night, it makes me so tired, I sleep all day. So no more Zyrtec for me. I don't think it was really helping my allergies anyway. :P

I'm trying to keep up with all the books I read this year. There are a lot of deeper books I want to read, but haven't been reading, because it's hard for me to concentrate enough when I'm sick and getting bad headaches. I've been reading quite a few Agatha Christie books, which I love. Hercule Poirot is great.

We're getting settled in a new church, which is really nice. After church hunting for a while, it's great to have found the place we want to be. :) We already knew some people there, which helped as well. It's easier being at a new place if you already know people there.

I need to keep on top of my updating, but maybe that will be easier now with my new computer! ;)

My old one was dying, so a couple of weeks ago, I got a brand new MacBook, which I love. :D It's so nice and pretty and awesome and wonderful. I really wanted a Mac for my next computer, and I like it even more than I thought I would. It's been an adjustment, getting used to a different operating system, but I like it a lot. However, I haven't really spent a lot of time on the computer, between being busy and now coming down with a respiratory virus going around the house. I've been spending lots of time resting, and giving my hands and wrists a break from the computer. I've been putting off updating because I wanted to get pictures of my new computer to post, but finally decided I'd just go ahead and write, then maybe post pictures later.

I got a free printer along with the computer. Well, free after the rebate. I named my laptop Riley after National Treasure's Riley Poole, and named the printer Ben, after Benjamin Gates of the same movie. Riley is one of my favorite movie characters. :D

Just got some cool news! Friday of next week, my dad's taking off work, and we're all going to San Antonio for the day! I'm really excited. I love San Antonio! I went there June 2007, and absolutely loved it. This time, I have a really cool camera and can take lots of pictures. :D I need to take it easy for the next week and rest and give my body plenty of time to get better. But I'm pretty excited. We're going to the Alamo and the Riverwalk, both of which are awesome. :D

I know I keep saying I'm going to start updating here more, but I've been sick a lot and not up to doing much. You would think that would mean I'd have more time to write, but I never know what to write about then. Ever since that trip back in December, I've just had one thing after another. I went to the doctor for a sinus infection last week, and they did tell me my lungs sounded clear, which is good. I'm still fighting a lot of tiredness, though, and having some days I barely feel up to getting out of bed. I guess the flu and bronchitis stuff I had really wiped me out.

But, something I have been up to... I decided to try something new and start selling things online. I opened an Etsy shop, and a shop with another site called ArtFire.

My Etsy shop
My ArtFire shop

I've put up some jewelry on Etsy, and some of my photos on both. I'm trying to decide how much to put into all this, because I don't know if any of it will sell or not. It's something I'd love to do, but I also don't want to stay broke because I put all my money into it. So, we'll see. It's fun, anyway.

We've been going to a "new" church the last couple of months, though I haven't been able to go much since I've been sick so much. I say "new" because we went there a bit several years ago. Anyway, we're wanting to join the church, and Saturday night, we ate dinner with one of the elders and his wife. They have four Clydesdale horses, so I had fun taking pictures. :D I plan on uploading them to Facebook soon, then I'll post the link here. They have some quarter horses at out a different farm as well, and said we can go riding soon. I'm looking forward to that.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them. ~ Samuel Butler



This is part of my old book collection. I'd like to take more pictures of my books, try to get some really good ones. I'm still pretty sick, though, and haven't been up to doing much, so this is what you get for now. It was either this, or a bad picture of my houseslippers, so I opted for this. ;)

This is my day 5 of Project 365, which you can follow here. I think I'll really enjoy it, but it will be better once I feel up to doing more.

I wrote this post for HSA and thought I'd share it here too.

I haven't made any New Year's resolutions, per se. However, at the start of this new year, I have been rather contemplative and have several goals I'm working toward.

In general, I'm working at becoming more disciplined, both in my spiritual life and in other areas. I'm trying to become more diligent in studying the Word, memorizing Scripture, and generally reading, watching, and listening to more things that are edifying. I want to be more purposeful in studying and improving in the things I'm interested in, such as web design and photography.

To sum it up, I want to spend my time wisely, to live to the fullest serving God and others, to grow and advance, both in my walk with God and in my hobbies and interests. I want to be able to look back at the end of this year and see ways I've done these things, to see ways I've grown and changed and things I've learned.

It's also been a time of reminiscing, thinking over ways I've changed over the last year, and even two years. I can see ways I've examined standards and preferences we have, and adopted my own. Not that I didn't do that before, but I've fine-tuned them a lot in the past year. Though, in some ways, I feel like I'm turning into an old fogey, especially when I realize I'm almost 24. ;)

Oh, and another thing I want to work on this year: getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. ;) I had started getting to bed and getting up earlier several months ago, but, well, old habits die hard. :P

One of my absolute favorite quotes:

I have already remarked, with all the restraint that I could command, that of all modern phenomena, the most monstrous and ominous, the most manifestly rotting with disease, the most grimly prophetic of destruction, the most clearly and unmistakably inspired by evil spirits, the most instantly and awfully overshadowed by the wrath of heaven, the most near to madness and moral chaos, the most vivid with devilry and despair, is the practice of having to listen to loud music while eating a meal in a restaurant. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I heartily agree. ;)

Okay, so to pick up where I left off back in August...

I had a great trip to Dallas. Spent time with lots of awesome people and went to some fun places. We played Ultimate Frisbee and Capture the Flag, went roller skating, went to downtown Dallas, and just generally had fun hanging out and talking. And...I got to fly for the first time and loved it! :D

In case anyone is really interested, here are my pictures from that trip:

Album 1
Album 2
Album 3
Album 4
Album 5
Album 6


In September, we evacuated for Hurricane Ike. We stayed with family in north Louisiana. Thankfully, we had little damage done to our house and yard. We were without water for a few days, but really fared better than so many people. The following are pictures showing what Wal-mart looked like when we got home:

Wal-mart after Ike


Then a couple of weeks ago, I flew up to Little Rock to see forget_me_not_8 get married. I'm so glad I was able to make it to their wedding! I'm friends with both the bride and the groom, and they really mean a lot to me. I'm so happy for them, and their wedding was beautiful. She made a beautiful bride too. :D While there, I stayed with my aunt for several days, and got to see my cousin and her new baby.

Wedding pictures
Baby cousin pictures


So yeah, I like taking a lot of pictures. ;) If anyone is interested, I can be found here on Flickr.


A few more random things I might mention later:

• We got a Wii for Christmas, only we got it a few weeks early. MarioKart and Wii Sports are cool.


• I got a computerized sewing machine as an early birthday present.


• We got a cappuccino maker today.


• I'm building a website for the small company my dad works for.


• I'm taking up watercolors,


• I still ♥ my camera.

Oh, also, I have the flu. I came down with it Christmas Eve, and it hasn't quite left yet. I was feeling somewhat better for a while today, but I'm feeling bad again tonight. Hopefully it will leave soon.

That's all I can think of for now! Hopefully you will all hear from me often. :P

Hi, everyone! I haven't updated here in so long. I will intend on keeping up here, then just...don't. :P I do intend to now, and to blog more throughout the year, so here's to keeping that resolution! ;) I'll write more later, but I knew if I wrote a quick entry now, there would be a greater chance of me coming back again later on. ;) Happy New Year's, everyone! Have a great night!

I'm getting really excited about the trip this weekend. :D I can't believe it's just two days away! I'll leave Friday morning, on my first plane trip, and get back Sunday evening. I lived in the Dallas area when I was little, but don't really remember it, so it will be fun to see Dallas again. Then, of course, getting to spend three days with my awesome friends will be just grand. :D

It's really quite insulting to be walking through the mall and have someone offer to straighten your hair. There's a kiosk at our mall that sells hair straighteners, and there's always someone standing there offering to straighten people's hair. Said person always asks me. I like my hair the way it is, thank you very much! I'm going to tell her that someday. :P Instead, I usually get perturbed, say "No thank you," and keep walking. But someday...

Also, I finally found shoes! Two pair, at that! I like them. :D I've been having the hardest time finding something besides Riley shoes or running shoes. Slipons seem to be the fashion, and they're really cute, but I need a strap to hold them on my feet. I have high arches, narrow heels, and problems with the tendons in my right foot. All that makes it very hard to find shoes. But I got smart tonight and checked the girls' sizes at Payless. I wear women's 7 to 7.5, and I found a girls' 4.5 is about that size too, and fits perfectly. Most of the girls' shoes have straps. So I found shoes. :D It's such a relief to have that over with. :P

Seriously, anyone who enjoys shoe shopping must have perfect feet that can wear anything. :P

Posting via text, making sure it works!

The storm wasn't as bad as we thought it would be! And the worst of that even went around us. We really needed the rain, and I like rainy days like that. :D It's been a welcome relief from the heat too!

I posted pictures from my new camera! Here. I ♥ my new camera.

Edit: I need a new photography userpic, maybe me with my new camera...

Well, it's not a hurricane yet. Tropical storm, anyway. If you haven't heard about it yet, don't feel bad. Many Houston residents didn't hear about it until today, and it's hitting us dead on tomorrow. It mostly developed yesterday. Hopefully it won't be too bad when it hits. We're on the west side of Houston, and will be on the bad side of the storm, the side that spawns tornadoes. :| We're watching this thing very carefully. Please be praying for Houston and the gulf coast area!

I got a camera on ebay tonight! I'm so excited! It's a Canon 20D, and I really got a great deal on it. It comes with a lens and seven filters. I can't wait to get it! It's a better camera than I was hoping to get. It's discontinued now because Canon upgraded, but it's in the pro-sumer line, which is a step up from the amateur cameras I was looking at. I found it an hour before the auction ended, and really didn't expect to get it. I was pretty excited at the thought of getting an SLR at all, but this is better than what I thought I'd get! I've been really enjoying learning more about photography and taking photos with my point and shoot. It will be a lot of fun to take it to a whole new level and start learning so much more. :)

I've been away from here for too long, and now I'm trying to catch up on people's lives by reading recent entries. I'm so out of the loop now!

I'm sleepy. I feel like I have a cold. Not good. I feel like Bilbo Baggins when he had the cold and things came out sounding like, "Thag you very buch." That's about how I'm talking now. Hopefully plenty of rest and vitamins will help kick this thing soon.

My cat locked me out of the house today. I went to get the mail, walked up the front steps, and grabbed the handle of the screen door. The door wouldn’t open. I knocked on the door and waited while one of my sisters came to open the door. When I stepped inside, there sat the cat, blinking at me. She had actually flipped the switch to lock the door. She was sitting on the table beside the door wearing an expression too deep and catlike for me to grasp. But I know she was laughing at me. I think it was payback for the pictures of her bath.

I'm trying to get back into regularly updating and reading blogs, so I thought I'd post an update about what the last month or so has been like.

January 16, I turned 23. That's taken some getting used to, but I've determined I like that age. :D For my birthday, my parents chipped in to help me get a digital camera. I ordered a Canon A570 IS from Amazon(after an ordeal of trying out and returning a few cameras I bought locally). I got that a week after my birthday, and absolutely love it! The day I got the camera, I also came down with a stomach virus. I got over that after a week and a day, and the day after that, I came down with the flu. Ick. Horrible stuff. That's lasted a couple of weeks, and while I'm mostly recovered, I still have a cough and I'm really tired. That's supposed to last a while though. Between all that, I haven't yet gotten to use my new camera as much as I hoped, but I do love it!

This is my favorite picture so far:



Then this is one of my cute kitty, Belle:



She's a lot happier there than in the pictures I shared earlier. :P

Oh, and latest favorite tv show is Heroes. I watched it all online during the last couple of weeks in December(hey, I was sick, and didn't feel like getting out of bed anyway). It's awesome. My favorite currently running show. :D

Most definitely not a happy cat. She's pretty good about it though, and will stand there and let my sister clean her up without much fight. She just gives out an "I will kill you look" while doing so.



One more picture. I dare you.



A little less angry after the bath, but still not happy.