Saturday Night

I went out with a few of my friends last Saturday night....I'm going to show you a few photos I took. I'm usually not pleased with my night shots, but I liked how these turned out.

I've had a crazy weekend. My family and I went to the beach Sunday afternoon- I have lots of pretty photos to show! 

I'm going to wait to post them though- I'm awash in homework since my classes started last week. I'm really happy with my math class, and choir is simply a riot. I love it and am having a great time. My Great Books Class is, as usual- very inspiring.

Carpools have been figured out- public transportation is out of the question due to route problems;)

Mondays for me are now pretty chaotic. Everything just sort of stacked up:)

Anyway, I hope you all have a good week!

Natalie

Honest Scrap Award

Eeek! It's almost fall!

(Not my apple tree!)

On another topic......

I was award the Honest Scrap Award by Sarah.

So I have to tell 10 things about myself. 

Here are the rules:
1. Say thanks and link to the person who gave you the award. Thanks Sarah!
2. Share ten "honest" things about yourself.
3. Award this to seven people who's blog design/content I admire or who have encouraged me, and inform them of their win and of the rules of this award.

Okay....here goes.

• I despise cottage cheese. Never liked the texture.

• I'm obsessed with quotes by Chesterton, Churchill, and C.S. Lewis. It's become of hobby....collecting quotes and stuff. Odd, I know.

• NFL practically puts me into a coma.

• Rarely do I like contemporary piano music.....unless it's in a good movie soundtrack.

• I REFUSE TO MISUSE THE WORD "AWESOME." Sorry, no can do.

• I love thrift store shopping. Most of my favorite clothes are from used places. (Though I've found many things that still have the tags on them.) I love hunting for things and the satisfation of being economical. I've found stuff at used stores that I've never seen anywhere else. Plus there's part of me that says "Ha! See, it is possible to defy the materialistic trend of buying tons of new stuff we don't need!"  

• I've been singing for a little over 2 1/2 years. Every year I participate in a recital where I do silly things like dress up like a maid, screech Italian, and pick up bananna peels. Strange, I know.

• If I could learn only three languages.....I'd pick Arabic, Spanish and German. Or maybe French instead of German. I love the idea of writing all those fascinating Arabic characters. Spanish would be the most practical. And German and French just sound great:) BUT- I forgot! The glories of Greek and Latin! Oh never mind, I'll never narrow this list down......

• Only two authors have made me cry or almost cry. Dickens and Homer. And I'm not kidding about that last one. Seriously. The Iliad is so sad....And Dickens? Yeah, that kind of figures. How could you not love his characters?

• My perfectionistic attitude often causes me problems. Unfortunately.

Hmmm.....seven people:

Ellie

Autumn

Jessica

Cait

Elizabeth

Meg

Hannah

Have a wonderful weekend!

Natalie

Things

Last Saturday, Ellie and Autumn's brother Silas married our lovely friend Elisabeth.(Wow, that's a lot of links!) We were all sad to see them leave after the wedding. But that didn't stop the party. (Some of us have bruises to prove we were rocking out in a dark field after the bride and groom left.)

Anyway, I'd like to post at least one picture, because it is impossible to let hundreds of shots of amazing people sit around on your computer. (But don't worry-I'm in the process of burning a disk for the bride, and uploading bunches to Flickr.)

They all looked so glamorous....from left to right: Ellie, Margaret, Elisabeth, Christa, and Kate. Pardon their "headlessness." Guys never understand shoe shots. But I've never met a girl who didn't like this genre of photography.

Hope you all have a wonderful start to your week!

Natalie

Christa's Birthday Party

Today at 12:00 this afternoon we all got in the car and drove to Elisabeth's house, to celebrate the sixteenth birthday of her sister Christa, with their family and some friends from church. It takes about an hour to get there, and since our region's annual "hippy fair" was going on near the rout we had to take, we were slowed down considerably. Forty-five minutes were spent crawling down the road pontificating on things like veganism and tie-dye, and staring at the "coexist" bumper sticker that was pasted to a car crawling along ahead of us.

And this is just a section of the "parking lot" of the fair. I shot this picture as we drove by. Nice job reducing emissions, people-who-like-to-attend-an-earth-worshipping-fair. Niiice job. (Not that all of you go to the fair with this worldview- if you love premium unleaded and Buicks I wholeheartedly commend you for driving to get your vegan-burgers.

Finally we reached our destination.....and went down to the highschool field to play softball. It was pretty entertaining to watch Gabriel scrambling around the outfield on all fours, my mom and dad running to home base together, and Ellie miraculously surviving the perils that go along with the job of catcher.

Christa- the sweet and thoughtful hostess.

Ellie- and Gabriel? Posing in the background?

Maggie- so cute.

Autumn! Autumn made a prodigious effort to help her team by catching outfield balls, unlike me, who was too busy making a prodigious effort at scratching my ankles.

We went back up to the road to the house, changed, and jumped in the river.

There were some evil looking alligators in the water, but so far as I know, they bit no one. Except maybe each other. (And no, this photo was NOT taking IN the water.)

Left to right: Autumn, Moi, Margaret, Elisabeth, Ellie, and Autumn. 

Hmm. A ubiquitous feet picture. Except in this case our feet are super dirty. (Yes, it IS time to get that chipped pink stuff off my nails...)

Then it was time to eat.

This is Ellie and Autumn's amputee brother Abe, who really isn't an amputee at all. Sometimes I get the itch to stick my arm inside my shirt, too. (Well actually, that wouldn't be true. But we can all sympathize with faux amputees.)

Christa opening her presents.

Aaaand, one of the delicious chocolate cakes. (Which reminds me, I discovered another wonderful chocolate cake recipe online this week. I'll post it sometime soon with my pictures.)

Well, that's all for now. I'm looking forward to going to Handel's Messiah tomorrow with a few ladies from our church, as well as attending a track meet this Thursday where I will yet again exhibit my nonathletic prowess. (Ellie and I really wanted to do the pole vault- it sounds so much more thrilling than just running around in circles. But then we decided we wanted to be alive on Friday.)

Hope you all have a lovely Sunday,

Natalie

Independence Day

I apologize for the rather poor quality of some of these photos. My only excuse is that I was too busy eating cheesecake, frantically trying to get my camcorder to work, and watching people run around the house yelling to screw around with camera settings. Really.
Anyway, here are the collages:

On Saturday morning I did my city's annual 4th Of July walk/run with my mom and dad, brothers, and friends from church. The walk and run were separate events on different courses- but both ended in the same area. Ellie, Autumn, and Jessica participated-what fun!

Later that day my sister had a recital at a 4th of July outdoor festival. The performance was a culmination of a one-week-long "modern ballet" camp for kids 4-6. Susanna had a great time.

We walked around for a little bit, got to visit with some friends, then went back home to get ready for the "party."

Jessica and her family came over that evening. We barbecued and played with explosives. Technically only the boys did that though.....the rest of us were spectators.

Our neighbor's fireworks. They beat us every year. We just gave up trying to compete with them:)

All in all-it was a very, very fun day. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Church

Here are a few of us girls- from left to right, Autumn, Jessica, Elspeth, and Elisabeth.

A picture Jessica took of me...

Elisabeth talking about something....I can't remember what.

We had a really fun time today....excitement, coffee-cake, pictures, and singing:)