Oh Nuts

I know that we are just leaving the Christmas season and that you may be wondering why I am talking about themed gifts. Especially since this seems like a topic that would be helpful before Christmas day. The reason why I am posting this now is that because themed gifts work for birthdays as well as graduations, going away parties, etc. painted and photographed by me For a number of years now, instead of getting a present for every single sibling, as well as the parents, because it gets rather expensive, my family has started doing this thing where my mom puts all of the siblings names on pieces of paper and then puts it into a bowl. We are then supposed to pick a name out of the bowl and that is the sibling that we buy a present, or two, for that Christmas. And this year, once I had the name of the sibling that I was buying for, I slowly started coming up with ideas as to what to buy for my "person" as we have started calling them. My "person" this year fo...

Instead of hitting the beaches/pools for Labor Day, like we did (or attempted to do) last year, my family and I went hiking/walking instead. My mom was calling it a romp through the woods. After starting the day off with morning mass at the church that we attend and filling up water bottles and grabbing a snack, we set off to a forest preserve that is a couple minutes north of where we live. taken by me :) When we found a parking spot, there was a lot of people there, we started walking in the direction of the waterfall. *points to picture* Since it had been a number of years since any of us had been in this particular forest preserve we all forgot how far it was from where we had parked to where the waterfall was. By the time we reached the waterfall we had walked 3.5 miles one way. Since we were all rather tired from the long, hot walk we had just done, the cold water felt wonderful. After wading around for a bit my dad and brother ran back to where we had parked and drove t...

The topic for today made it easy for me to figure out what I was going to say here and that what I am going to say is more about someone that I miss rather than something. The someone that I miss is my grandpa. My grandpa died October, 2013 from Acute Leukemia and it was, and still can be, hard because no one really had the chance to say good-bye. My grandpa was always there for all 16 grandkids. No matter what the weather my grandpa would be there supporting all of us in our sports or plays. And when he wasn't working or spending time with his family, you could always find my grandpa having a cup of coffee with his friends. And if they weren't having coffee my grandpa and his friends were off fishing somewhere or playing a round of golf. My grandpa was always coming up with goofy nicknames for everyone or telling a joke. He even came up with a story about keeping a lion in the tool shed at the house. No matter what my grandpa was always laughing about something and ha...

While the picture really doesn't have anything to do with the semester ending next week I liked it and wanted to use a picture in this post. In case I haven't mentioned this before, a large majority of the photos that I include in my posts are from the website Unsplash . Since it is the end of the semester and finals are happening for a lot of people, mine are next week, I was going to write a post about it being the end of the semester. But I am not entirely sure if I would be able to do that without boring people to death with it. So I am not going to do that. Instead I am going to just write about a bunch of random topics like I usually end up doing when I don't have anything specific in mind that I want to write about. Of course the end of the school semester also means Christmas is almost here. And that means that I have to start getting Christmas presents. The parental figures are easy to get presents for since my siblings and I always get them something togethe...

taken by me Since my mom's birthday and Labor day were the same day, she wanted to celebrate this past weekend. On Saturday we started the day off, since the kids didn't have soccer, by going to look at a house that is for sale in our area. It was a pretty decent house and on a nice quiet street. After walking around the house for an hour we went out to a nearby restaurant for lunch. I have been to the place where we went for lunch a few times before and they have good food. For church on Sunday my mom wanted to go to the Byzantine Liturgy, so we went. If you haven't ever been to the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, I highly recommend that you go to one. Taken by my mom After that the plan was to eat lunch in the car as we drove to a beach that a lot of our friends had gone too before and go swimming for a couple hours and then have dinner later. But by the time we left church and got there it was full. So we drove another twenty minutes to a different beach, but ...

--1-- I would have posted something last week, but I forgot and couldn't think of anything to write anyhow. Not to mention my work schedule for last week was a tiny bit crazy, but that is just life and we have to deal with it. --2-- On Tuesday my friend Grace wrote a post on her blog My Spare Oom called What No One Tells You About College . " Talking about all the things people DON'T tell you about college - good and bad" (what Grace said when she shared the link on Facebook). --3-- --4-- Again on Tuesday I was reading another interesting article. This time on the subject of the words things that can happen to you in your 20s . Since I am in my 20s I thought that it was something to think about and potentially learn from. " The worst thing that can happen to you in your twenties would be if it were easy." --5-- "We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance...

--- 1 --- Last week on Saturday four out of six siblings had rehearsal all day for their upcoming Christmas play "The Conversion of Scrooge,"and Aaliyah was helping out at a food pantry in the morning. So it was just me, my mom and Amanda at home, so we decided to stop over at Hobby Lobby to do some shopping. --- 2 --- Even though I usually don't like to start my Christmas shopping until after Thanksgiving I found some crafts to add to presents. For the three kids that I nanny I got them each an ornament that you could color, though I already did that. For the oldest girl that I nanny as part of her Christmas present from me I got a canvas bag and decorated it. But now that Thanksgiving is over I can start looking for the rest of the presents that I need. --- 3 --- At the end of August we started doing a clean eating plan thing and one of the smoothie recipes that you get with it is a peanut butter smoothie and I really like it so I decided to share it here ...

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Before leaving for my brother's graduation Amanda wanted to do a mini photo shoot. Of course once I took several pictures of Amanda, she had to take pictures of me. She also took several pictures of Rosebud. Even though it looks like I am in pain I usually do one unattractive picture during a photo shoot.

Life has been well and I don't really know what to write about. Except that my cousin Grace is getting better. She still hasn't really woken up yet, though she has started talking, which is a good thing. Still pray for her please. I am going to be doing the July round of Camp NaNoWriMo and this time I am going to actually finish, or at least come close, to finishing the story that I have been working on for a while. Since I am doing three different stories lines based on three very different stories, I don't know how well it will be turning out. Though I think that it might be more interesting then how the little bit that I had written had been.

Though my cousin gave us a bit of a scare last night when she took a turn for the worse but at around 2:40 central time she started breathing on her own so they took her off of the ventilator. She is still holding her own this morning which is a good thing. But please continue to pray for her recovery. Update: keep praying because they had to put her back on the vent because they felt she was getting too tired out. Her stats still look good, but now they will be doing an MRI because they're worried there might be swelling at the base of her brain. Keep those prayers coming please!

Happy Easter week everyone!!!! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. I did :) Easter morning my mom's parents and one of our uncles came over early to our house for house for a breakfast that consisted of cold Polish Sausage, horse radish, that we all had to smell, blessed hard boiled eggs, Easter bread, and hot cross buns. Yavi's friend from school, who is from Ghana, came over on Saturday night and colored Easter eggs with us, she also came on Sunday morning for breakfast since she didn't have any other plans. After breakfast we went to mass. I apologize for all of the random stuff in the picture but here is a picture of the dress that I wore for Easter. Here is a picture of my Easter basket. Not pictured is the new earrings that I got since I was wearing them. After mass we came home for a few minutes and then went to my other grandma's house for dinner. All of the aunts, uncles and cousins were there. Dinner was ham, carrots, asparagus, bread and ch...

--- 1 --- Even though I kind of set myself up for this on accident, but I was roped into acting in "The 7 last Words of Christ." I was originally not going to help because my job didn't allow for me to make a lot of the practices. But then I had to say something about having to work so I couldn't make all of the practices or something along those line.       --- 2 --- I was going to say how I don't like snow, especially after the first day of spring, but I wasn't sure how I was going to word it. I was also going to mention something about the rain that we have been having as well, of course I couldn't figure out how to word it without making it sound weird. --- 3 --- I found this on Tumblr and I really like it so I decided to share it here :) --- 4 --- Last week my sister wrote a post on her blog about how she is a secret ninja, because she somehow managed to hurt her ankle. And last week my right wrist started hurting a little and I ...

On Saturday the homeschool group that my family is a part of had their 12th annual Daddy-Daughter ball, despite the snow. Friday night was set up night and Aaliyah helped two other girls set up this on one of the walls: I would have taken a couple pictures of the decorations that I helped set up in the bathroom but I decided not to because it was kind of dark in there and it felt a little awkward. Besides having fun setting everything up on Friday night we had fun on Saturday. Especially since there were a couple people who came to the ball that I hadn't seen in a while.  one of the table decorations they had a craft table where any of the girls could decorate hearts and then give them to their dads after each family was introduced and had their family fun fact read they got to put a rose into one of the vases that was in front of the statue of the Blessed Mother :)

--- 1 --- The Arctic weather that we had at the beginning of the week was a lot of fun. Especially since one of the pipes in our laundry room frozen and then burst, but we were able to take care of that quickly and we still have water in the rest of the house. --- 2 --- --- 3 --- On the 4th I threw a surprise party for Yavi. We had a lot of fun and Yavi enjoyed herself. And this is what happens when your younger brother gets a hold of several blow thingys. --- 4 --- found on pinterest --- 5 --- For over a year or so the Fairy Tale Novels Forum has been having a fun campaign to get new members and to promote the forum and Regina's books, the goal was to get up to having 1,000 members by the anniversary of the starting of the forum or when we reached 1,000 members (there is 1,023 members now). And I came in third place for the contest, I was surprised when I found out because I wasn't expecting that and I had kind of forgotten about the contest. When...

--- 1 --- Since it is now the time to start working on/getting Christmas presents for family and friends I decided to knit something for a relative, so here is a sneak peek at the yarn I am using for it :) --- 2 --- Last week Saturday Amanda and I went to a bridal shower for our friend Elena . It was Downton Abbey themed so it was a tea party with delicious sandwiches, scones, fruit, pumpkin squares and tea. The shower was put on by Elena's fiance's family. Before the shower Elena, Amanda and I were able to do a little bit of thrift store shopping at Plato's Closet and I found a couple pieces. this is what the tables looked like :) Amanda and I with Elena :) --- 3 --- I found this on Pinterest and thought that it was a neat hair idea that I want to try at some point. --- 4 --- --- 5 --- Sunday was the performances of "The Conversion of Scrooge" (A Christmas Carol with a Catholic twist) with four of my younger siblings we...