My sister has a diseased toe.

We went to the lake over July 4th weekend, and Maggie got a splinter in her toe. Only, it wasn't exactly a splinter. It was more like a plank. Only the end was in her toe, but there was about 4 or 5 inches hanging out. My dad pulled it out, and we were hoping that would be the end of it. We got back to the lakehouse, cleaned it, bandaged it and thought it was okay. Then it started turning yellow, and gunk started coming out. She squeezed a splinter or two out, and once again thought it was okay. She finally went to the foot doctor (only we call it the Toe Doctor), and he gave her some medicine that was suposed to bring whatever was in there out. One day, she was squeezing gunk out of it, and a good sized splinter shot out. We thought that's what had been causing all the trouble, but we didn't know for sure. She went back to the Toe Doctor, and he x-rayed it, but you can't see wood very well in x-rays apparently. He sent her off with more medicine. Well, we went to camp last week, she cleaned it every night, but it kept getting more painful, and  more stuff kept coming out. So yesterday she went back to the toe doctor. He discovered that there actually was something else in there, and scheduled an appointment today to get it out.  This is what he found.

Yes. That was in her toe. 

Then he took it out...

notice that he is holding the splinter next to the gash on her toe.

Now, she has a cute little foot protection device shoe thingie to wear so that her toe doesn't get hit and the stitches don't come out.

Hopefully, her toe is healed now. She is very thankful that she didn't have to get it cut off. :)

Cleaning out the Puppet Closet...

It was a long job. Especially since it was a tragic disaster. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we cleaned it the day camp ended, and right after a lock-in. We were all zombies, but it was a lot of fun. I forgot how many puppets we had, plus lights, props, fabric, PVC pipe and random junk. It was a MESS. Mr. Bob even found a mouse (alive) in there. But it ran away and thankfully didn't come back out.  We found a bunch of cool stuff to put in the youth room (that we are about to re-decorate :) like a mini fridge, blow up movie buff, plastic hub caps, disco balls....It was great.

Puff!

Da Moouse

It took a loooong time. But we got everything moved around. I almost got attacked by a giant spider, but Da Moouse killed it for me. And thankfully Daniel was there to kill all the wasps that escaped from the closet before they could try to kill me :) By the time we were finished, we were all exhausted but it was worth it.  

SOS 2011 :))))

So. I haven't blogged in a looooong time. But that's okay because this one is gonna be long. This was pretty much the best week of my life. First of all, I'll explain what we did. SOS = Service Over Self. It's a work camp in Binghampton. We are given a group leader (who just happened to be a guy from my youth group who loved SOS so much the past two years he decided he would work there the entire summer). We are also given a house to work on.  This year it was NASTY. We pulled down the wall, cabinets and the ceiling in the kitchen. There was 50 year old shredded insulation mixed with rat droppings that fell from the wall and ceiling. (Enough that if we didn't keep vacuuming it would have probably filled half the kitchen. )

The wall

The Ceiling

We put up drywall to fix the giant holes, mudded the ceiling, and put in new cabinets. It was a little difficult because the walls were crooked. (And we are not professional drywall cutters). 

    

 

In the bedroom, we mudded, sanded and painted the ceiling. We got to move their bed in and out of the bedroom every day because they still had to sleep there.

 Christian and I washed the dog :) He did NOT want to be washed, but he was a sweet dog and didn't bite or anything. He had ticks all over his back and neck, so we found some flea and tick shampoo (that smelled like men's cologne) and gave him a looooooong bath. I was soaked, but the dog was clean :) Of corse as soon as we were finished he went and rolled in the mud. But at least he got a bath. 

Christian, Blackie and I

We also had a lot of fun on our half day. We went to the Peabody and had a scavenger hunt, went to Huey's downtown for dinner, walked around some and went to the river. It was beautiful and I had such a wonderful time with my youth group.

Somehow, my youth minister got a new nickname. We lovingly call him Da Moouse. I have no clue why Moouse is spelled like that. But that is the correct spelling when referring to Paul. :)

It was altogether just a great week. It is amazing how much of a difference we can make as clumsy, crazy teenagers, who have no idea what we're doing. These people's house was so messed up that they were willing to let us weirdos come into their house all day everyday for a week to work. It was a great experience. Aaaaaand for the record I am very thankful that even though Paul and Ashlie have only been with us for a little over a month, they were willing to come put up with the six girls that went for an entire week. With all the singing and strange things we come up with, we can be a lot to handle. :)

I am a mermaid with a pink sparkle tail. Oh, and my name is Flower of Magic.

Before you think I'm completely crazy, you have to know what really happened...

Tonight, we had a giant surprise party for my grandfather's 70th birthday. There was over 100 people there. Afterwards some of the kids went swimming.  I was playing with Sandra(6) and Abbie(8). They wanted to play mermaids.

We lived in a magical place called Sparkle Palace. Abbie's name was Joy, and she had a purple tail. Sandra's name was Sparkles of Pink, and she had a Pink and Purple tyedye tail.  Yes, I know I'm supposed to be a big kid now. But I've wanted to be a mermaid for forever! It was nice to get back in touch with my imagination. Abbie told me I need to come over and play Barbies...I'm thinking I may need to take her up on that :)

I think Crick-rantulas are completely disgusting.

It all started when my sisters saw a nasty looking bug in the garage, and mom sent them down to kill it. McKinley was screaming and jumping around, and Maggie was trying to kill it, but instead it got lost. Fast forward a few days.

Mom and Dad cleaned out the garage and we thought we had lost the nasty little bug. We were no longer afraid to take out the trash. Little did we know, the disgusting thing still lurked somewhere closer than we thought.......

ANYWAY.  Maggie and I went to get the trash out of the garage that had been building up due to the fact that my sisters forgot to take out the trash last week while I was at orientation and we missed the trash men. Great right? NOT.  All the sudden, I hear Maggie scream! "IT WAS ON MY FOOT!!!!!" Then mom killed it.

Later, Maggie and I were talking about the awful experience. She told me it was like a mix between a spider and a cricket. Apparently (according to Maggie), it had like, seven legs. I told her it could not have been a spider, because spiders have eight legs. She said, "Well crickets have six! It was a mix!! It was a crick-rantula!"

And that's it. Maggie was attacked by a crick-rantula and lived to tell about it.

I have *helped* slay a cockroach.

Yes. Believe it. Even though I never technically got near it, I think it should count anyway because it was my idea....

See, it all started when I saw the nasty BIG roach crawling across the floor. I held it together pretty well and only screamed quietly. There were 5 girls in the house, and none of us would get near it. Then it hit me! TUPPERWARE! So I ran to the kitchen, got a big tupperware bowl, and Maggie showed her mighty braveness and courage and set the bowl on top of the roach. Then we all ran away and peeked in to make sure it was still there. It was crawling reaaaally fast in circles, but it was still in the bowl. So we sat a book on top for good measure. The contraption looked like this.

See the roach?

Then we moved in in the sun so it would roast to death. We left it there until mom got home, and I gave her the answer to the question she always asks me. "What are you going to do when you move out and there is a bug in your house?!" My answer? Tupperware and sunlight :) Only that wasn't good enough. She said she wasn't picking it up this time and it was going to stay there until one of us picked it up. I said tough luck cause there is NO way I was getting near it. Then Maggie showed even MORE bravery and courage and knocked it into the bowl with a paper towel and flushed it down the toilet. Yay for brave younger sisters.

I have a verrrrry messy bedroom...

...Well at least I did. This was the fourth full day of cleaning. And now it's done. Except I have to clean under the bed, vacuum and dust tomorrow. My friend Corinne came to help out, but mostly to hang out. :) The makeup drawers were the best. They were soooo messy.












This took several hours to clean and my my "smell good drawer" was soooo full. . Apparently I have a WHOLE lot of perfume, lotion, body spray and even body glitter from middle school.

Yea. It was a lot. We found some reaaaaally interesting random junk...Corinne decided to put it all together and make a "Catholic Batman's wife who left Batman for a Prince". Notice the cross necklace, glitter mask and tiara.

Cute right?! Yes, we are just that cool. It was all going pretty well until we had a perfume fight, and she just HAD to pick the nasty smelling pink body glitter spray. My room smelled pretty funky by the end, but on the plus side my room is clean.. Thanks Corinne :)

Mimi&Papa's house is clean now.

My entire family and I (4 families) went to my grandparents house today to clean. My Papa has been in the hospital this entire month, and just went home a few days ago. My Mimi has trouble standing up and moving around too much, so their house and yard was in need of a little bit of help. My sisters Maggie and McKinley, and cousin Tiffany and I were in charge of the house. We cleaned all three stories.  Everyone else worked very hard outside, and did a great job in the yard.

Even though we were busy, it was a great day. I got to spend a lot of much needed time with my family. I got to give Mimi and manicure and a pedicure, and it was wonderful to spend some time with my Papa outside of the hospital.

He makes me so happy.

I got to play with my adorable little cousin Tommy, who is three. He always makes me happy. The best part is, he can't say his "f's". ex. instead of "fish" he says "dish". For firetruck he says "diretruck"... It's great. He loooooves cheetos (that's what he was eating when we took this picture) He is so precious.

Spending all this time with my family makes me so thankful for them.  A lot of people have lost their families in these storms. Also, today being Memorial Day, a lot of people have lost family members in the war. I could have lost Papa this month, but God let him stay with us. I'm so blessed to have a family that sticks together, and that loves each other. God is good. :)

I survived an hour in the car with Maggie driving!

We went to my grandparents house today, and my 15 year old sister, who has only driven four times in her entire driving career drove the whole way. (It is one hour away). She actually did pretty well (okay, very well. Better than I did when I first got my permit.) She can already back out of the flat driveway, and the giant hill driveway without dying.

 It was a pretty normal drive, except for that one time she almost ran into the back of an eighteen wheeler, and the other time she gave me whiplash at the red light. We even stopped by Kroger, and she parked without hitting any cars. (that's more than I can say for myself...) I am so proud!The best part? The little stories my dad makes up while she is driving. 

On the main road : "Don't get so close to that motorcycle! Agh! You just him him. There is blood everywhere and his guts are coming out of his nose!"

On the back roads: " Don't get to close to the side! If you get too far over we will crash into a ditch, roll ten times, hit a tree and die. Then the buzzards will come pluck our eyes out!"

On the plus side, we made it there safely... But it made for a very interesting drive. :)

I have wonderful cousins :)

I got to babysit pretty much the coolest kids ever on Friday night. We watched HSM 3 (With commentary form me...Aaron seemed to think it was pretty funny, but my sisters made fun of me...).

After the baby went to bed, I got my hair and nails done, compliments of six year old Sandra.     

She also did nails and makeup on my two sisters. It was a very eventful night, but I can't say I've had that much fun in awhile. 

Orientation was not as cool as I expected.

So. New blog. And this is the awkward first post. Good luck to anyone who decides to actually read any of this. :)

Orientation was soooo boring. We basically did nothing but listen to people talk about the same thing for two days straight. There was a party that was pretty fun, and I got to go swimming. So it was all good. Also my bed looked cute.

But that was only cause of my cute blanket that I brought just in case the real bedding was ugly. Good thing I did. Cause it was really ugly.

And I am happy my bestfreind went with me. 

Yes I know. Coolest friend EVER.

All in all it wasn't all bad. I even got my classes scheduled, and only had one MAJOR conflict...I don't think I can help with Scrabble Club this year. As big a freak as that makes me sound like, I really do love  the sponsor and am super depressed that it might not work out. But I guess it's my fault that I'm in the stupid people math class.....

I'm so excited about college, so it's all okay. This is going to be wonderful. :)