The Very Busy Year of 2010!

Christmas has come and gone and I am sitting here watching the new year roll in. 2010 has been one heck of a ride and I don't think 2011 is going to be any slower. Here's a little summary of what happened within the last 365 days:

January: I started taking college classes. I only took two and one of them was on a subject I'm rather good at, so it wasn't very stressful. I loved my teacher even if I wasn't terribly fond of some of the other students.

February: My dad went to Fort Worth TX because he had gotten a job there. The rest of of my family was planning to move there after I finished my classes. We did some packing, not very much and I buckled down and worked on finishing up high school as well as college.

March: Very busy month. My Home school group put on Pride and Prejudice and I was Mr. Bingly's snobbish sister, Caroline. We learned eight dances from that time period and although I could dance all of them, the director thought that my character would not care for dancing, so I did fill-ins for missing actors during practice, but did not dance during our final performances.

April: I found myself home alone a lot. Or mostly. With dad still being in Fort Worth, my mom was kind of miserable. Dad was miserable too I might add. Mom went to visit him a few times and took two of my siblings with her each time leaving me home with one of them. The reason we did not all go is because we had animals to take care of.

April was pretty boring. I read Abby the story of Pinocchio and decided that for once, I liked the movie much better.

May: Spent a lot of time with Rebekah. I also graduated high school with other homeschoolers my age. I find it funny that I went through school without once setting foot in a public or private school classroom. Hats off to my mom for putting up with schooling me for 18 years.

June: I spent most of this month reading. That tends to happen in June. June seems to constantly be my best month for reading. Haley finally got me to read Harry Potter and I read books 1-5 during the course of this month.

I also did a lot with Sarah and Rebekah. Dad was STILL in Fort Worth and we were no closer to moving there then we were in February.

July: My lovely dear friend Jen and her brother Adam spent two weeks with us. We went all over the east part of New Mexico (the part where we lived) and into west Texas.

I also turned eighteen during this time. Truth be told, I still don't feel like eighteen. But I'm not really sure what eighteen is supposed to feel like.

August: Here is where my life slows down and speeds up at the same time. Dad came back from Fort Worth. It wasn't possible for us to live separated like that anymore. It was KILLING us!

Of course, Dad didn't have a job anymore and wasn't able to find one where we were living. We literally lived on Faith during August. And obviously, I'm still here, so God was good to us and provided. During this month we found Theo and Sophie. Or rather, the two darned cats found us.

September: I've always liked September the best out of the months of the year because it is a transition from summer to fall. But September has never liked me. I have Four journals to prove that.

It was clear we were not moving to Fort Worth anymore. Every time we tried, we were met with a closed door. So instead, we went back to our original idea of moving back to Maryland. We started packing more boxes and fixing the house up so it would be ready to sell. We also found our buyers.

October: Packing and lots of paperwork. Here's a tip, when selling a house, use a Realtor. they are worth their weight in gold.

I'm not sure when Dad and Nathan started to work at the Calf Ranch. It might have been in September, it might have been in October. My journal doesn't say. I guess I failed to record it.

Anyway, October was very full of packing and painting and packing and more packing and even more packing...and my dad and brother's smelly clothes. Cows stink and are often times dirty. Having to wash smelly laundry made my dislike of cows grow considerably. We also said good-bye to our livestock. The Goat, the Llamas and the Chickens. We had to give Sophie to some friends, but were able to keep Theo.

November: More packing. And then finally a very very very long car ride. In Indiana, Dad's truck got backed into by a grain semi. It was pushed it back a few feet and the front of dad's truck was all smashed up. We had to leave it and the trailer my dad was pulling behind and get a rental van to finish the move. Dad went back to Indiana a few weeks later when the truck was fixed.

We moved into a rental house and have been here ever since. I think packing is a pain, but unpacking is even worse. I will be very happy when we find a more permanent residence. This rental is kind of small for Six humans plus 4 dogs, 3 cats, and two rabbits.

December: Holidays. Christmas. Friends we haven't seen in ages. Christmas Shopping with Jen. Complete and utter exhaustion. That has been my December. I keep waking up in my new room and expecting to find myself back in New Mexico. Being back here after having been in another state for nearly four years is kind of weird, but I'll get used to it.

2010 has been a very full year for me and my family, and without God, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. I'm not sure what I would be doing. I'm not sure I want to know.

All At Once

Note to Self: never sit at the library request ten inter-library loan books on all at once. The reason? Well, had I still been leaving in Portales, it would take me two weeks or more just to get one book. I forgot that in Maryland, or at least in my county, all the libraries are interconnected and they do inter-library loans constantly and they do it quickly. I now have eight of those ten books I asked for sitting on my desk. I'm kind of staring at the intimidating pile and trying to figure out where to start. I shall have to read like the wind to finish them all...or I can just renew the ones I don't finish.

On a another note, I haven't been to the movies in what feels like forever. Mostly because I didn't want to see anything that was in theatres. Then, all of a sudden, all the things I wanted to see come out all at once! So in the past two weeks, I have seen HP Deathly Hallows pt1, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and Tangled. YAY! I think I'm done with movies for a little bit though.

Project Christmas Card

My mom found this old picture that I panted I don't know how long ago and asked me if I wanted to use it for this year's family christmas card. I just looked at her and blinked. "I can do a lot better than that now." I said. I took the picture from her and scanned it into the computer and began to re-do it. It took me most of the morning but I ended up being rather happy with the result.

Ah the beauty of photoshop. So anyway, now she can use it and not make my friends and relatives wonder why the quality of my artwork suddenly decreased. Heh Heh.

A Useless Holiday Ramble

So, Winter is more or less here and biting harder than ever. It's the start of Holiday shopping when everyone runs around like crazy and people trample over others just to get what they consider good deals. It's the time when people put up their inflatable snow men, plastic candy canes and light up Santas. Nearly all the music that is heard this time of year is Christmas music. Small evergreens sit in parking lots, their roots wrapped in gunnysacks. Artificial trees pop up everywhere in stores with white and yellow tags hanging from them declaring that they are pre-lit.

People bend under the weight of their holiday shopping and gasp at the quickly decreasing amount of money in their bank accounts. In-laws come to visit, stress levels are high and children point at every shop window they pass and ask if that toy, or that toy might end up in their stockings. Many look forward to this holiday season and yet they dread it, wishing it would end quickly so they could get back to their normal lives.

As for me, I sit back and watch it all, do a bit of shopping of my own and roll with whatever is thrown at me. After all, this only happens once a year and it is better to enjoy the chaos then it is to fight it.

The Move

Let me see, what has happened?

We managed to get everything packed up and left New Mexico for the last time on the second. It took us nearly a week to get to Maryland and the trip was no picnic. It's a bit difficult to take one moving truck, one suburban pulling a trailer and one pickup pulling a trailer and three cats and four dogs and two rabbits and seven people anywhere I think. Plus, when we were in Indiana, some jerk driving a grain semi backed into my dad's pick-up rendering it un-drivable. We had to get a rental car and leave my dad's truck and trailer in Indiana while we continued on our way.

We got to our rental house and were greeted by a handful of friends and family. They helped us unload the moving truck and then we spent the next few days trying to maneuver around the house without knocking into boxes.

My Dad recently went back to Indiana to pick up his truck and we finally unloaded THAT trailer last night. My room is mostly box free now, but the basement is another story. I don't know how long it will take us to unpack it all. or if we will. We are in a rental after all. We are hoping to find somewhere more permanent.

I have lived in Maryland for ten days now. I must say it feels like slipping on an old shoe. After all, I grew up here. It's interesting seeing familiar places. some of which have changed drastically and some which have not changed at all. I am very happy we moved back.

I do hope we can put a new shower head in the bathroom though. it's driving me crazy!

Random Post While Cookies Bake

Right now, I am making chocolate chip cookies. They're in the oven, so I have a while before I pull them out and stick in the next tray.

So we still haven't moved yet. Surprise Surprise. Note to self: NEVER try to sell a house without a Realtor. It's nothing but a big headache.

I was hoping the weather would have cooled down some. I'm ready to start wearing long sleeved shirts again. It's been in the 50s at night, but during the day it's still right up there in the 80s.

I don't really have anything of note to really say right now. Heck, I haven't had anything worth saying in a long time. Oh! there goes the timer! better get my cookies!

Sour Milk, Laundry, Boxes, and more Boxes

So, this month has been crazy! Since my last post, I have unwittingly drunk sour milk, modeled for a professional photographer, packed a bunch of boxes,read nine novels, folded a ton of laundry, washed a lot of dishes, vacuumed the house I don't know how many times, and played "Baby if you love me". I'm not going to go into details about the milk or the game of "Baby if you love me".

Anyway, I did some modeling for this photographer who is recently getting his portfolio back together. (johnbpritchett.com. That's me in Gallery 4) He likes the runway type of thing, so it was like nothing I’ve ever done before. I had a lot of fun. The makeup his assistant put on me was a little on the thick side and my mom didn't like it that much so if I do it again, I'm going to see if I can apply my own makeup.

As far as boxes and moving goes, well, trying to be outta hear by the 30th aint gonna work. At the rate we're going, we're not going to be gone for another month. there are a lot of issues we hadn't planned for that have come up and it's driving my entire family insane. I've packed all of my books thinking we were going to be gone and now I'm wishing I hadn't. My bookshelf looks so empty.

We no longer have the chickens. seeing as we are moving, we have given them away. YAY! I hate chickens. We also tried to get rid of our goat, Maya, but that didn't work too well. The people we gave her to called us about four days after and asked us to take her back. Apparently, she was knocking over all their sheep and eating their trampoline. Typical Maya.