photo challenge pic

Here's the picture I'm entering in Ireland's photo challenge:

The photo challenge ends on the 15th, and even though I knew about it last month (when Ireland posted about it), I decided to wait until now, just in case I happened upon a better picture than any of the ones I had at the time. I'm glad I waited, because about a week and a half ago, I noticed these flowers outside of a library my mom and I went to, and I snapped a few quick pictures before hopping in the car. I'm so happy it turned out so great! (In my opinion, anyways, which might be just slightly biased.) I really didn't edit it all that much - it didn't need it. It's a beautiful flower.

Speaking of flowers...I have fallen in love with them. Ask my family; they'll immediately start complaining about how I constantly lag behind on nature trails nowadays because of my tendency to stop in delight of finding a new flower. And then take a million pictures of it, of course.

Please tell me you do that, too. No? Oh. I must be special, I guess. ;) Just kidding!

Back to what I was saying...I've taken so many pictures of flowers that I believe I'm going to do a flower post soon. But it'll have to be before we get back because I'll be too busy then, with school work and catching up with friends and all.

Anyway, I hope you liked the photo, and that you've had a wonderful start to your week! Love and blessings to you all. 

Pictures/Slideshows!

Since we are finally at another campground which has free Wi-Fi (the last two or something didn't), I can finally post pictures! We try not to upload pictures using our Verizon Mi-Fi hotspot thingy, because it uses a ton of data (which means we can't watch YouTube videos either :( phooey), so that's why I had to wait until now.

But now means now, and so I proudly present you with two slideshows I created, with helpful input from my family, of course - one video is of our time traveling in the month of June, and the other of our time in the Grand Canyon! Enjoy!

Sorry about the weird thumbnail in that video^^ :P - YouTube is being annoying and won't let me pick my own thumbnail (it only gives you 3 choices, and it's taking a while to load the one that I want, so for now it's stuck on this one, cut halfway between two pictures of my dad and my brother in the pool)...the thumbnail on the video below, however, worked out great! I was happy about that. :D

These slideshows were a lot of fun to make! We went to the Grand Canyon three different times (which is why there are so many pictures): the first day we went in the late afternoon and stayed there for the sunset. We went back the next day and spent most of the day there, hiking around the rim and having fun. We rode on a bus for about a half an hour out to almost the furthest point of the rim, and had some very interesting conversations with some very interesting people while we were driving out there. ;) And the last time we went was the next morning, at roughly 5:00am. Yeah. I know. We all got up at about 4:30ish to go and watch the sunrise...and it was freezing!! It being so windy didn't help either. :P That's why we all have jackets tightly wrapped around us in one or two of the pictures towards the end of the slideshow.

Oh, and I'm entering this picture of the sunset in the Grand Canyon in KayleeBeth's photo challenge:

It was a hard pick, because there were a few others that I really liked as well...my brother and my dad liked another pic better than this one (you could see the Canyon better), but I loved the sun rays in this one, and I just had to use it. :) The sunset was absolutely gorgeous!

Annnnnd...that's all for now! We're heading today from, uh, somewhere in California (about an hour outside of LA) to Yosemite National Park! I can't wait! :) Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far!

recent happenings {and a different direction}

Hello, peoples! I've kind of been dreading writing this post, not because I have bad news, but because I have way too much good news to share! :) We've been having such a great time on our trip, and I'm afraid this post will be a mile long! However, I will try to summarize *coughicannotsummarizecough*.


To start off, last Tuesday I had an amazing time meeting Sarah Elizabeth! She and I are both part of the wonderful community of teen girls led by Mrs. Rue at this blog, and for the last couple of weeks we've gotten to know each other better via email. My family was staying near her family, so we arranged to meet up at the Cafe Du Monte (sp?) for beignets - never had them before, but they were delicious! :) Kind of like fry bread, only they're shaped in little squares, with mountains of sugar on top - what could be better? (Unless...they were filled with chocolate! ;) just kidding...) Anyway, here are some pics.

this is Sarah Elizabeth and I...
(not Sarah Elizabeth and me, not I and
Sarah Elizabeth, Sarah Elizabeth and I ;) haha
...and, by the way, if you doubt my grammar, click here)

...and her adorable little brother :)

Here is her blog, by the way, where she posted about our time together (because hers is much better than my pathetic attempt at describing our wonderful time together!). It was really such a blessing getting to meet her, and I had a great time talking with her, as my mom did with her mom and older sister. My dad had so much fun playing around outside, throwing the frisbee and such, with my brothers and her younger siblings - my dad is so great with little kids (and he's not too bad with teenagers either). :)


Oh, and before we went to meet her, we visited a very cool glass blowing and printing place. They were in the middle of a summer camp so there were a bunch of young teens in there making glass beads and shaping metal and making their own ink prints (to print on paper), which was all very entertaining. :) They were not glass blowing at the moment, but they had some amazing displays of tons of different glass creations, which are what the following pictures are (obviously) of (sorry if some of the pictures in this post are messed up...they weren't cooperating with me :P).

Later that afternoon, we drove on the 2nd longest bridge in the world! And...we didn't make it all the way across. It was slightly boring. Beautiful for a couple of minutes, boring after many. So we went grocery shopping and headed home. :) Here is an example of the view from pretty much the whole bridge:

sorry for that annoying black dot :P
it's on my camera lens and I have not
been able to get it off - any suggestions?

The next day we went to a Children's Museum, which was pretty awesome. :) Pictures: 

Noah and Nathan in a bubble

Nathan in a huge bubble (!!!)

Me in a pretty big bubble :)

Here's Nathan standing on...
some sort of blocks that we built up.
we're not sure what they were made of :P

Nathan's pic of me sitting on our little block creation - a very unsteady creation...we felt very brave of ourselves ;)

We found a whole lot of interesting stuff there, and had a great time - unlike the Children's Museum of Houston that we went to yesterday. Oh, trust me, that place was huge and had a ton of stuff - but I was kind of extremely tired, and it was kind of extremely loud and kind of extremely crowded. With little kids. {Today I learned how quickly you can get a headache...just kidding.} Anyway, my mom and I sat on a bench (we soon figured out why it wasn't occupied - it was conveniently placed underneath the AC vent blasting freezing-cold air), and we people watched. Basically, there were a lot of young moms dressed like teenagers (annoying), a lot of young girls dressed like teenagers (very, very annoying), and several grandparents who looked almost as bored as I was. Almost.


But, really, when I say that the dressing like teenagers (and I'm not talking about modest teenagers) was annoying, I don't mean annoying in the normal way you would say annoying, as in describing your brothers' incessant chatter. No, I mean it was saddeningly heartbreaking. My heart breaks for the lack of modesty, morality, and above all, the knowledge of the God Who loves to the point of His death - the lack of this in women in this age. The lack of a relationship with the one true God Almighty, Yahweh, Savior, Who loves more deeply than any boyfriend could, Who makes you more beautiful than any amount of makeup or clothes could, and Who fills and fulfills your life more than anything or anyone else could ever, ever even pretend to.


God has given me a deep passion and burden for the young women of my generation, the lost, the ones who seek security and love and pleasure in all the wrong places, who are ever searching but never finding. What can I do? Where will He lead me? I don't know. But those aren't even the right questions - those questions are focused on me, what I can do. I believe I should sound more like Christ, and how He acted...

^"8 First He {Christ} said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings You {God the Father} did not desire, nor were You pleased with them” (although the law required them to be made). ⁹ Then He said, “Here I am, I have come to do Your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. ¹⁰ And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."
--Hebrews 10:8-10

words in {braces} are mine; also, I capitalized pronouns describing God

I don't want to act as if God is a tool for me to use in order to lead others to Him. {paraphrased from this post by Michaela Danielle - "We put emphasis on ourselves...using God as a tool."} I want to be, in every way possible, in Spirit and in truth, a tool for Him to use in order to bring others to Him!


And, while I wanted to finish there, I cannot. It would be quite hypocritical of me. I want to clarify that I have, in no way, become a perfect tool for Christ. I am definitely not perfect; I am, however, made pure by Christ's sacrificial love for me. And, oh, how often I forget that! I turn from Christ, trusting in myself, my knowledge, my ability - all weakness compared to His Almighty strength. I pride myself in spiritual-sounding language and good deeds, and totally miss out on God's amazing plans for me.


So let me make this plain (to myself as much as anyone else reading this). I have sinned. I will continue to sin as long as I am here on this earth (oh, how hard it is for me to say that, to accept that, that imperfection in me). And yet, Christ has died and rose again in love for what I so often try to justify by my own good works. I have believed in His love and forgiveness and embraced Him as my Savior. And I do this continually, every day - reminding myself that I have been saved by Him, not by myself, and I, in His grace, try to make every effort to live in His.


Thus the meaning of forgiven mess - in a nut shell (a coconut shell, that is, not a peanut shell). :)


In love and peace and blessings in Christ our Savior,
~Nicole


P.S. Well, this post went in an entirely different direction than I had originally planned (guess Whose "fault" that is?). I think it like it.

summer vacation! =)

Well, I'd say we're off to a good start! A good start to what, you might ask? To our summer trip!! I'm quite excited, to say the least. ;) I feel like I need to have pictures or something, but...there's really not much that I can take a picture of. :P I mean, I guess I could take pics of the RV we're renting...it's kind of difficult to take good pictures of the inside, though. Maybe in the next few days, m'kay?

Anyway, the RV is really great, despite the small inconveniences we've discovered, just like any home, temporary or otherwise. For example, the closet that we all share? When the slide in the back is slid in, the bed is shoved up against the closet doors, and you can't open it up. Thus, you cannot get into the closet unless the slide is out (which means we have to be parked somewhere). :P Ah, well. One thing, however, that's really, really nice is that we now have bunk beds in this rented RV (as opposed to our other RV, which we are selling) - that way Nathan and Noah share the bed over the cab, I get the bottom bunk, Nicholas gets the top bunk, and my parents (of course) get the "master" bedroom. ;) Also, we have lots of storage, which is quite nice. :)

And there are three TVs in this thing! My goodness, we only have one in our entire house! Who in the world needs three televisions in little more than 200 square feet??! My hope is that we'll be spending quite a bit of time outside - probably even more so when we get up north and into cooler weather.

Oh! That reminds me (don't ask why; I have a weird train of thought) - there is one thing that I have pictures of: my hair! Er, more specifically, the haircut I just got. ;) I got it cut two days ago, on Thursday, and while I'm still getting used to it, I like it. I'm going to donate my chopped-off hair to Locks of Love (3rd time!)...as soon as we take the time to mail it out, that is. :P Anyway, here are the before and after pics:

Sorry about that 2nd picture - how it's kinda blurry and I'm not really smiling well and all that...we are driving on the highway, you know, and I just took that pic in the bathroom because it was well-lighted in there and I wanted to do it in the mirror, so I had to brace myself against the sink and focus on not pitching into the shower while trying to quickly snap a half-decent picture (wow, was that a total run-on sentence!). :) Ha, I didn't even have my glasses on, either. :P And, as you may have guessed, the bags underneath my eyes are from packing all day and getting about, ah, 6 and a half hours of sleep...you should have heard Nicholas and I last night. Boy, were we punchy. :D

So, yeah...I like this haircut because it's so much easier to take care of, makes for quicker showers (for which my 3 brothers are quite thankful), and will keep me a bit cooler this summer. At the same time, however, there's not as much you can do with short hair (and today I just left it down because I was being lazy and it's easy that way). And I was hoping that this haircut would make me look a bit older, as it has in the past...well, this time I think it made me look about 2 years younger. :P Ah, well.

Anyways....hmm, reading over this post, it sounds kinda choppy and not all that well written. :P Well, whatever...you'll just have to deal with it, ok? :) Hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!

Love and blessings,

Nicole <3


P.S. I wrote this post earlier today, but am just posting it now - at, like, 10:55pm...which would be 11:55pm EST time - we're in central time now. Yeah... :P. But, I just wanted to add real quick that we're staying at this wonderful little campsite in the Panhandle, and had such a lovely time walking along the beach earlier, during sunset (we walked to the beach! it's only, like, a 5, 10 minutes walk - how awesome is that?! I'll post pics tomorrow or something). We'll stay here another night, and then head onto Louisiana. Oh, and my mom is updating her blog on our family website (where my old blog is, on Weebly)! Be a sweetie and go check it out, maybe even leave a comment! (Please?) ;) {I'm quite liking these handy little post scripts. I always seem to want to add something but don't know where to stick it!}

photo/editing challenge and loveliness

Welllll....I just found this lovely little blog, Designed to Inspire, created by the lovely little lady, Britt, "to help others use their talents and creativeness for fun and help them grow and learn different techniques" {quoted from her 'About My Blog' page}. It's positively lovely! ;) (I'm finding myself quite drawn to that word today. Along with the word 'quite'. Just a random fact.)

And, they just happened to be having a photo challenge there! "They" being Britt, Hannah, Hannah Frank, and Ruby (the other contributors) - the photo challenge, however, was posted by Ruby. This is a bit different from typical challenges, however. In this contest, Ruby has posted a picture that she took, and we all have to edit the picture. Cool idea, huh? I thought so, too. That's why I'm taking part in it. ;)

Sooo....here is the original picture in all of it's amazing original-ness:

And here is the edited picture in all of its amazing edited-ness!

I used PicMonkey to edit the photo. Tell me what y'all think! (Yes, I'm a bit of a country girl *wink*) Oh, and my wonderful younger brother, Nicholas, helped me edit this. ;) We had fun doing it together....unfortunately, the prize is a blog button, so I can't give him half of that. {Aw, too bad...if I win, I get all the amazing blog button-ness to myself! Mwahahaha! ...ahem.}

Now then, go and take part in this lovely photo editing challenge! (Did I mention it was lovely?)

P.S. My youth group went to IKEA today! Last time I'll see them all before our trip. :( But we had so much fun...it was my first time there, along with at least one other person (so I didn't feel too left out). Oh! And I had ligonberry juice. Apparently that is a popular Swedish berry or something, because there was ligonberry juice, ligonberry sauce, etc. It tastes kind of like cranberries. But I digress...after lunch and looking around for couches, rugs, etc. for the youth room, we had a scavenger hunt, created by our very own youth leader - and it was amazing!! I'm not sure who won, though. :P Anyway, we had fun, took lots of interesting pictures - which may or may not come up later. We'll see. ;) Love and blessings to you all!! May you all rest in God's peace and joy...what a wonderful place to be, agreed?

quick post & prayer request

Hello, all! (speaking of 'hello', i have that song by Shonlock stuck in my head...who, by the way, i got to see in concert on Saturday! more on that later)

So sorry I haven't posted! I have been SO busy, but having so much fun! :) I'm kinda tired - haven't gotten enough sleep for the last, ah, several days - and I'm not sure that a decent blog post right now would be the greatest idea ever (i'm not completely functioning, i don't think..just enough to stay awake). :P Plus, I burned my tongue hours ago with hot (HOT) chocolate, and it still hurts. Still.

But I just wanted to check in and ask you guys girls people (tho my few readers are prob mostly girls) if you could be praying for my brother, Nicholas. He got hit in the head with a baseball bat earlier this afternoon, so my mom went to an after hours clinic or something with him. They're still gone, but she called to let me know that he's doing OK and that he got three stitches on the small yet deep cut on the outer edge of his eyebrow (a first among us kids! the stitches, i mean). Anyway, here's a pic of my little bro (at Busch Gardens):

isn't he cute?
{he's going to kill me for saying that}

So, yes, your prayers would be greatly appreciated! And, hey, if - when you read this, if you could just drop a quick note saying, "Praying for you, Nicholas!" or "You're the most adorable ahem, handsome thing ever," or something, I'm sure he'd love that. ;) (JK about the latter. He would also kill me for that. :) Anyone else have younger siblings they love to tease?? Gotta love 'em...they bring so much joy, do they not?)

Anyway...the water for the spaghetti is about to boil over (I can hear it...it's coming...). Noah's electronic chess thing is beeping constantly, and quite annoyingly (beep, beep...beep...beep, beep, beep). I'm tired. I'm hungry (*rumble, rumble, growl*...right on cue). I'm getting a headache from the beeping. And did I mention I'm tired?

....Don't you just love life? :D I sure do. How's your life?


**Update from 4/24 -- Nicholas is doing great and loving the attention from the stitches (thanks for the comment, Trinka!!). ;) I just took some pics of him (below).


And, hey, I know that y'all have time to say you'll pray for him! I mean, don't say it if you don't mean it, obviously, but I thought it'd be really great to surprise him with a whole list of people who are praying for him in a couple of days or so. :) A little help, please? Thanks, and love and blessings to you all!

sorry about the poor picture quality :P i just have to say, tho 

- i don't know, however, if you can tell too well in this picture - 

but our family all pretty much agrees that he got all the good genes -
my mom's beautiful, tanned skin tone as well as the gorgeous brown eyes,
long eyelashes, slim, athletic build, etc. :)
the hair here could use a little work...
;) not that he cares

...and the puppy face
(he's about to burst into laughter)
;D

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

life

singing....

Remind Me Who I Am by Jason Gray

God Girl by Jamie Grace

Stay Close by Fireflight

enjoying.... {taking crummy pictures and not caring at all} ;)

dipping carrots in dad-made guacamole...mmmm....

watching the guys play ping-pong at sunset
(i spy...a flying round object!)

a new skirt and old toe-nail polish :) actually, this is the
first time i've had a skirt in....i can't remember :P
(btw...i love it)

the budding flowers out front....a lovely spring welcome

and...life. sorry, no picture for that. :) love and blessings.... <3


p.s. thanks, Brooke and Lindsey Madison, for following...love your names, btw ;)

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