Happy Birthday Minion!

Today is Bella's 3rd birthday!! Her one request was to go to the park, so we did.

Happy birthday little nonkey ninin!

(By the way, the spot that is really polky is one of the many spots where she took the liberty of cutting her hair. :D That is also why her pony tails are uneven.)

Bill Jack and APACHE 2013

Bill Jack is a wonderful speaker and one of the founders of Worldview Academy. Caleb and I planned ahead for meeting him. We listen to Radio Worldview (That's Crazy Talk as Bill Jack likes to call it) and know some of his antics. :) I made signs to heckle him with during his lectures, just for the fun of it. One of them said 'That's Crazy Talk' and the "crazy" was in a strange font and glitter glued in different colors. It was quite...well...crazy. Mom had the idea that we should make posters (8 1/2 x 11 size pages) that said one of the four killer questions that Bill quite likes using. How. Do. You. Know? This is how he says it and it amuses me greatly. I made them the team colors of Worldview Academy (red, green, blue, and yellow) just to add that little bit of Worldview to the mix. We gave him his "That's Crazy Talk" sign after his first lecture, just to let him know what kind of kids we were, which for anyone who does not know, that is mischievous. We waited patiently all day Friday to use our "How. Do. You. Know?" signs. We knew exactly which lecture was best to use them because he was teaching the four killer questions. (If you want to know what those are, leave me a comment and I will be more than happy to tell you!) Unfortunately for us, it was the keynote speech, where everyone attends. :'( We made them small, so hopefully Bill Jack would be the only one to notice, but he started laughing and made us stand up and go to the front of the room to show everyone. It was not pleasant, to say the least. Afterwards, I found it funny, but in the moment I was not too happy about it. We enjoyed teasing him in small ways through the rest of his lectures on Saturday and he enjoyed teasing us back. Overall, it was very enjoyable and worth going and being extremely social for that amount of time. :)


By the way, if you want to know about Worldview Academy or would like to attend, which I highly suggest if you are between the ages of 13 and 18, let me know, and I will give you all of the information. Here is the website www.worldview.org.

APACHE 2013

Last weekend was APACHE (not the Indian tribe, the homeschool convention). Even though I have pretty much finished high school, I still went because of one speaker, which I will talk about in a later post. :) APACHE is a very small convention and there are not a lot of people there. We drove down Thursday night and stayed at a hotel. The conference did not start until Friday morning and lasted until Saturday evening. At the hotel we were staying at there was also an undercover operations training class going on. It was a little scary having all of the police officers walking around. :) One of the classes on the schedule was listed as 'I shot the guy, now what?' This was humoring me every time we walked passed it. On Friday morning, we went to breakfast, which is very difficult to find in downtown Peoria, and then went to the convention. This year I was goatle. This means that I was registered for the convention ahead of time, but still did not really know what I was doing. :) (If you want the classification of the name tags, you can look under 2013 and there is a blog titled 'Name tag classifications') There were many interesting booths and vendors there, but of course my favorite was talking to the people at Worldview Academy. Friday was not too hectic, other than the venture of finding food. We listened to lectures by one of the Worldview faculty members and highly enjoyed ourselves. My social levels were at absolutely zero by the end of the day. After the keynote session, we went back to the hotel and watched some tv until we fell asleep. Saturday was very similar, except we knew where our food was. We listened to lectures, looked around at the booths that had not been set up Friday, and some other assorted things. Caleb got a huge axe type thing made of pvc pipe, pool noodles, and duct tape. I will post pictures later. :) We signed up for a really cool book club where you pay a certain amount a month and they send you books to read. It is kind of like a Netflix for books. After the last session, we headed home. On our way we listened to a Christian audio book. It is by Lamplighter publishing and is really, really good. Our story was about a family during the French Revolution who is trying to avoid being imprisoned. I liked it a lot. When we got home, we picked up Misty, who was staying with a friend, and went to our house. I went to sleep pretty quick after arriving home. This was my weekend at APACHE. (minus a few things, which are going in the next post.)

Civil War Ball

In late January, we had a civil war ball for school. We had to dress up in civil war era clothes and learn the era accurate dances. It was a blast!! Here are some pictures!

All of the group being serious like the old pictures.

The Vulcan Llamas :)

The Vulcan Llamas llamaing

The girls in all of our pretty dresses and hoop skirts. (which none of us particularly enjoyed wearing)

All of us dancing. :) The best part.

Me and Caleb. (If you cannot tell in the picture, Caleb has his hand on a sword.)

A new car!!

Right before the ski trip, we got a new mini van! Her name is Sparkles. :) She is a blue Honda Odyssey. Here is a picture of her the day she came home!

Isn't she gorgeous!?! She does have electric side doors that are taking a long time to get used to, but overall, she is a wonderful car!

Ski Trip

It has been a very long time since I have posted, but I am going to start from where I left off. :)

In February, some kids from my church went on a ski trip to Michigan. It was a ton of fun! (except for the car ride home. :) There were the tumbles and falls, but overall, for a group who (mostly) had never been skiing before, we did really well. The slopes were fairly small and easy to get down without falling. Credit to Josiah, Caleb, Mr. Davidson, and Dad for the best falls. :) Since pictures explain more than words ever could, here you go!

The girls at the bottom of the bunny slope. (We lived!!)

The guys with their instructor.

Keagan being...well...Keagan.

Me being goofy at the bottom of the slope.

It was so much fun and we all had a really good time, as hopefully the pictures show. I am hoping that we are able to go again next year!