bullet lists are wonderful things

There's so much I want to say.


I was thinking, before I even started this post, about what I wanted to write...I started to count how many different topics I wanted to blog about. The number was somewhere around 7, I believe, and is rapidly increasing as I think of more things I want to just get out there.


Now, I think you all will agree with me that if I go ahead and pour out my heart about all those topics and events, you will never reach the end of this post (neither will I, for that matter) and I will have merely accomplished a way-too-long-I'm-so-tired-of-reading-this-my-eyelids-are-about-to-glue-shut post that will bore you all to death.


So. The normal solution would be to pick out one or two things for this post and either forget about the rest or save some for later. However, I am not normal, if you haven't noticed. Thus, I am going to condense several of these topics to just a couple of sentences, throw 'em all (including some other things I think of) on a couple of bullets, and hope it all works out. ;) Here we go...

• Last week we had some very, very good family friends come down from North Carolina and stay with us for a couple of days. We had such a great time with them!! I wish I could tell you every detail...but I can't. :)
• Also, last Friday evening and all day Saturday (excluding Fri. night), I was with my friend's youth group (which I've been attending for over a year now) at Acquire the Fire!! We had such a great time. The worship band, the speakers, the drama, the concerts - they were all amazing. Christ was certainly present, and many people gave their life to Him!
• I am currently loving this song - heard it on the radio, looked it up - never heard of the guy, but, wow, his voice is amazing! Yeah, he's unique, but I think he's really great. ;) Here's a link to the lyrics, btw (you might need 'em).
• Oh, and this song. :) {click here for lyrics}
• My friend, her family, most of her youth group, and several college kids that her older brother knows (and I know most of them, too, incidentally - they are homeschoolers, you know) are all taking part in the Justice Revolution. The JR is a book that her dad and another guy (I believe) wrote, a kind of daily devo containing a 21-day challenge to raise awareness about several injustices in this world - poverty, abortion, human sex trafficking, child soldiers, etc. {Yes, slavery is definitely still present in this world, and more so than ever...it's heartbreaking.} You can check out some of the teens' videos on YouTube here and here.
• Mom and I spent some time together yesterday afternoon, one-on-one, and had so much fun!! :) We got ice cream at Coldstone and painted our nails at the park!
• We, my family and I, are most definitely planning to take a road trip this summer, for about two and a half months or so...and I'm so excited!!! :D Unless God tells us that this His not His Plan for us, right now we believe it is, and we spent some time last night as a family planning it out - we've already got almost the first week down! (Google Maps is an amazing thing.) My mom and dad already planned out the whole
  (tentative) route, but last night we just started from the beginning in more detail.

Sooo...that wasn't too long, right? :) Just bits and pieces of my life lately...


Hey, and thanks to the girls who said they were praying for Nicholas!! Trinka, Tess, and Emma - I showed my post and your comments to him yesterday, and he loved it. ;) He was allowed to play in the last basketball game for a couple of minutes, and he did great - speaking of basketball, both our JV and varsity teams get to play in the first round of the tournament this Monday (woot-woot!), so please pray that everything goes well and no one gets hurt!! We had one of our best varsity players fracture his wrist two games ago. :( Prayers for him would be great, too!


Love and blessings,
Nicole <3 John 5:24

rice krispie treats and such

Does this not look absolutely yummy? And it was, btw, just thought you should know. ;) My friend and I had the best time ever making them yesterday!! The first batch...well, you wouldn't want to see a pic of that. It turned out to be a hardened mess. But this is the second batch, and I hope you agree with me that they look particularly scrumptious, if I do say so myself. My brother had the idea of putting M&Ns (sp?) on top, and my other brother arranged them very beautifully!

We brought them today to the science class that we go to at a nearby church - it was our last day (thank You, Jesus!), so a bunch of people brought snacks and our teacher let us hang out and stuff our faces for about a half an hour. There are now 8 treats left - er, never mind, there are 7.  My dad just scarfed one down. ;)

And I just wanted to say, I edited that picture ^^ with PicMonkey! Very easy, completely free, you don't even have to register, and the only limitation (that I've found so far) is that with some special effects, they stamp their monkey logo in the corner of the picture. And let me say, I never did use Picnik, so I don't know how it is compared to that, but I just know that this is very useful and extremely simple & user friendly!

So...here are two other pics that I've edited with PicMonkey so far:

Before...

After! ;)

I've been wanting to do something like that with a pic of my desk since about a month ago, but I didn't really think about it again until I saw this feature that PicMonkey had - and, tada! It really isn't a good picture, but I really just wanted to the black-&-white-but-leave-the-flowers-colored thing. ;) But here's the pic I really like... (wow, I'm all over the "really"s today :P)

Before...

After!! {insert sparkling music...
...no, wait, music can't sparkle...
...you know what I mean}

Hehe. About this picture: we used to juice carrots ALL the time a couple of years ago, but we don't do it as much anymore. A month or two back, though, we were juicing quite a bit more often, so one day we took all the carrot peelings we had saved and put back in the plastic bags that the carrots came in, and we brought them to a nearby field where the cows roam, and the envelopes play...hehe, sorry. {When my brother was younger, he was quite convinced that it was pronounced 'envelope', not 'antelope'. ;) Ah, little brothers...}.

Anyway, we dumped out all of the peelings for them, fed a few by hand, snapped a couple of pics, and then left them to enjoy their juicy snack. We used to do the same at our old house, only it was horses we fed, because we had neighbors behind our house who were, like, the most amazing neighbors ever and let us feed their horses and play in their pool and pick their tomatoes...see, I told you they were awesome. ;)

This week has been and will certainly continue to be positively busy. And I positively enjoy it. To name a few, we have had and have yet to have basketball practices, games, youth group (for me), science class, going to the library, dance lessons (Mom), coupoun-ing with friends (Mom and I), dance competition (Mom, she can't wait!! a mini-match, her first), etc. And....well, I'll have to surprise you later with a bit of information that I'm just bursting with excitement about.

Now we're off to watch the boys' basketball games! JV and varsity. They're playing at a school where my friend used to go! ;) (Unfortunately, I heard that the other team has a pretty good height advantage over us, with two guys on the varsity team that are as tall as our tallest player, who's, like, 6' 3'' or something. :P) 

Love and blessings,

Nicole <3 John 5:24

Today...

...we went to Busch Gardens!  We had a blast...come to think of it, Nathan literally did get blasted - with water (ok, ok, that was cheesy...). :) He wasn't even expecting it - we were standing on a bridge over this water ride, the rest of us off to the side, and he was totally not expecting the water soaring into the sky to even come near him...but he got soaked.  It was so funny. ;)

Here are some pics from the day (no, I am not, and do not claim to be, any kind of photographer or anything, I just happen to have a camera and occasionally like using it :D)...

pictures from a tour called Rhino Rally

also Rhino Rally - hence the rhino :)

Nathan juggling some small basketballs at a gift shop :)
(this was a really annoying picture to take as the lens wasn't
 focusing right and the ball ended up over his face anyway :P) 

this pic was fun...i took it from a video of Nicholas riding the Pheonix
(ugggh...he's a nutbar - that thing would make me totally sick)
and i touched it up a bit with my photo viewer thing ;)

It was a slightly overcast morning for most of the day with a gentle breeze - absolutely beautiful.  It was starting to get hot when we left at around 2:30ish, and then went straight to Nicholas and Nathan's basketball games, JV first (Nick) and then varsity (Nathan).  The games were, unfortunately, outside.  In the now-scorching heat.  Lovely.


We still had a wonderful time, however, cheering the guys on, joking around, and just having a great time in general. ;) (BTW, we won. Both games. Their poor varsity team, tho, didn't have enough players, so some bigger kids from their JV team join them in their games, after they're already tired from their game. Poor guys. :P)


Hope all of you have also had a wonderful week!  Today was a great end of ours, like icing on the cake.  Oh, and Mom went dancing tonight at Fred Astaire (sp?). :) That was her icing. ;)  Love and blessings to you all!! <3