Flashback Friday- More homeschooling pics. :)

 

 

 

 

I thought I'd squeeze in one more trip down memory lane, before next week hits and I'm face-to-face with the fact that I have to do college-level work now.  :)  It's not bad, but I still have a few more days where I can pretend I'm in high school, and I've been thinking a lot about how much I've enjoyed being homeschooled thus far.  It's been great!  I have lots of family time, cool field trips,  the ability to write a grammatically correct sentence*, and awesome friends.

 

That brings us to the topic of my post today.

 

 

Through the years, we've been part of a wonderful co-op.  Actually, we're still part of it, but it has changed in scope and shrunk in size as we've gotten older.  Don't worry about the shrinking part: no one died, there was no drama, it was merely that life gets busier and sometimes things have to go.  Anyway, I was looking through some old pictures I'd taken when my first digital camera was new, and I found a lot of cute ones.  I couldn't keep them all to myself.  So, like it or not, here are some pictures of my friends when they were smaller...  and very cute.  I mean, almost as cute as they are today.**

 

 

 

 

Looking at these photos makes me so happy...  I'm thankful for the people God has placed in my life, the ones He's given to me as friends, and some of the ones pictured here are especially dear to me.

 

Who are you thankful for?

 

 

 

*Sorry, public schoolers who also have that ability...  I do know that you exist.  Sometime Facebook makes me overly cynical about the human race and their grammar/spelling skills.

 

**  Nice save, think you not?***

 

***There goes the grammar again!  Thanks A Beka!  lol

Assembly line- October 2007

Wow, I seem to be only reminiscing lately on this blog...  All the flashback posts,  pictures of my pen pal that were taken last year, playing a game where you guess things from old posts.

I could apologize for that.  I won't.  Instead, I'm going to run with the theme, because I have some pictures from a field trip our co-op took in 2007 to share with you.

The entire line in action

 We were running an assembly line!  Well, not really.  We made miniature cars, but that's okay, because we were miniature people.

If memory serves me correctly, we did the activity two or three times, in order to let everyone run a station.  However, there are more of the first assembly line (I think it was the first, anyway) because I was participating in the second. Somehow, though, I have this picture of Max:

Thank you, random citizen who grabbed my camera in order that the second assembly line formation would not be forgotten.

Here's how the assembly line worked, using my much more complete collection of pictures from the first team to illustrate:

The person at station one grabs the body of the car, a piece of wood in a square shape.  I know you can't see the sign for it, but station one is the farthest to the left.  Also, you cannot see the face of the person manning it.  There are at least two possible theories for that.  Either 1) he is a secret agent, or 2) I was a bad photographer.  I am not at liberty to say which one is true.

At station two, the car was elongated.  Stations three and four added the front and back ends of the car, which looked identical.  They also have tabs that will hold the wheels in place, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Close-up of number four, because she's adorable.

On a side note, I find the looks of concentration on their faces amusing.  Although, now that I think about it, there might have been a timer going.  Maybe the teams were racing each other?  I can't remember.







Here we have my beautiful sister.  She's got wheels. Literally.  They're in her hands.

Okay, that was lame.  :)  Moving on.

At station six, we had Nick scurrying to put the last two tires on the car, before handing it off...

To station seven, where the window was placed atop the car, and then Molly took them off the line- they're done!

This picture reminds me that there was also, apparently, a station 8.5 where the person owning that white sleeve cranked the line, causing it to move much like your average grocery store check-out center.  I don't have a not-blurry picture of him.  I'm sorry, since I'm sure you were hoping for one more picture.

Here's exclusive action from an entirely different crew.  Silent film, anyone?

You also get to see how terrible the lighting was...  Exactly what I was trying to disguise with that nostalgic black and white filter.  :)





We have (finally) reached the end of our tour.  Hope you've enjoyed it!

A guest post by Allison and Julianne's past self

When Julianne was maybe eight or nine, and I was maybe six or seven, we invented the time machine.  We made it out of a huge cardbord box that had held the dryer our parents purchased when the old one broke.  The time machine had small windows with shutters, crayon artwork inside and out, little pieces of paper dangling from the ceiling via little pieces of yarn, and even a "television".  Each paper had the name of some place we could travel to written on it.  If we wanted to go someplace that wasn't already  on the ceiling, Julianne would write it out on a blank piece, tape it to a piece of yarn, tap that to the ceiling, give it a gentle yank, and off we would go.  It was high tech, I tell ya.  The "television" consisted of a rectangle drawn on the wall with some scribbles inside it. Julianne carefully recorded everything that happen on our adventures in her notebook. This is what she wrote on our very first adventure in time travel.  Original spacing, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization has been retained as much as possible. 

It all started the day before Easter.  I was tired, no, not the tired as in sleepy, no, I was tired of studying, tired of drywall dust, tired of just about everything that was at our home in Michigan.  So, My sister, Allison and I went into our box, that we call the time machine.  It's the day before Easter, so we are going to the first Easter. Right now, we are traveling though darkness complete dark ness ecept for a few multitudes of stars.  My sister, is watching movies, and entertaining herself with strings, & tying my hair into knots.  Oh, I'm sorry, she is reading over my shoulder and insisting that she was only braiding my hair.  Whatever, I think she is making excuses. 

We have three more hours left to go.  

I hope my sister gets over this coocooness she is goin through.

When we got off the time machine we got off at mary Magdelene's house.

She came out , and seeing us said, "My, you two are very young to be out this late".  My sister replied, well your out late too. [-Somtimes she is so rude!] Mary Madilene after looking at Allison turned to me an said,"thats a very cute little sister you've got there".  "Thank you" I said.  So, Mary Magdelene and Allison went went to the tomb together, and I lagged behind.  

When we got there Mary Magdeline exClaimed, "Someone has stolen Jesus' body!" My sister said, I will catch the thief!  And she marched in the tomb.  When she had just went in she came running out.  "There's a man in there" she said, before getting behind me.  Then, the angel [Who was what my sister thought was a man] came out, and said, "I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified, he his not here, he has risen, come and see tho place where he lay.  Thon go tell his diciples."  So, Mary Magdeline, Allison,& I ran back to town.

My sister ran up to a high priest and said, "hello, disciple, He has risen!" I whispered in her ear, "That's a high priest, not a disciple!" Oh, she said.

Right now, she can't wait for our next adventure, I remided her we have to color easter eggs, she still doesn't understand.

Well at least she doesn't call me mom anymore.

Contrary to what this story would have you believe,  I was, at that time, familiar enough with the Easter story to know that Jesus' body was not stolen, and therefore would not have volunteered my detective skills.  I would know the man in the tomb was the angel. I also probably was not bold enough to witness to a high priest.  Apparently, making me look bad in her story was her way of venting her irritation toward me. You see, when you are traveling back in time, it is essential that you remain in the time machine until you arrive safely at your destination, and you cannot arrive at you destination until Julianne has finished writing down everything that is going to happen when you get there.  Now this may not look like very much to write, but in the notebook it takes up three pages, and took quite a long time for Julianne to think of and then write down..  I was extremely bored while she did it (Did I mention that the television she says I was watching was drawn on the box with a crayon? It held my attention for maybe one tenth of a second.  Maybe.)  Anyway, it frustrated her that I kept interrupting her to insist that we were still in her room and it was therefore possible for me to go get _________ toy from my room.  She did get one thing right, however.  I don't call her mom anymore. 

This post has been read and approved be Julianne's current self. 

Plot Summary

     We recently vacationed in Florida.  It was beautifully sunny, in case you'd wondered.  :)  As a result, we missed one of our literature co-ops.  You may think that I cheered and yelled, "Yeah, homeschooling!"  Actually, I was a little sad.
      However, all is not lost.  Although we missed talking to everyone else, our teacher emailed us the activities and homework assignments, so we'll be on track for next month.
     One of the activities was to pair up and write plot summaries from prompts.  I figured we could do that at home, since there are two of us.  At co-op, we wouldn't be paired up, because siblings tend to feed off each other, but we weren't at co-op. 
     I love writing.  Allison does not.  I wish she did, because when she occasionally chooses to write something, I love it.  She has a knack for being hilarious and unexpected.
     I think you might agree with the "unexpected" part, after you read one of our plot summaries.  I apologize for the lack of description, if that bothers you.  Allison told me that I must be brief.  :)
  

     Exposition:  (The prompt that we selected.)  Sara notices that a stranger is following her.  She pretends not to notice.  He follows her home and watches her go inside.  When he leaves, Sara turns the tables and starts to follow him.

     Rising Action:  She follows him to a duplex, and sees him practicing his ("What is it that Larry plays in the theme song?"  Allison asked me.)  tuba.  It's super loud.

     Climax:  She enters the house.  He discovers her.  Oh, no!

     Falling Action:  He explains why he was following her:  He had mistaken her for a noted brass band conductor and wanted to inquire about a job.

     Conclusion:  They laugh and she leaves.  The End.


     "I wouldn't laugh."  Allison said, noting my addition to her narrative.
     I would.  Would you?

Playing with Picmonkey

 I have a love-hate relationship with photo editing.  I love the idea, but I often find that my edits do not look any better that the originals, and possibly weirder.  ;)  But after the recent photo shoot, I played around with some online editing software.  These are the results...

I'm still not sure about this whole editing thing.  What do you think?  Which one is your favorite?

A photo shoot with Allison

 One of the reasons that I did not perform my promised posting last Thursday was because I attended two classes one photography at our library.  Yes, two classes.  Three hours of my life.

It was worth it.

The instructor gave a lot of great tips, including how to use natural lighting to the best advantage.  In class, I thought I got the concept.  However, I wanted to put some of it into practice before I forgot it all, so I asked Allison if she would let me photograph her the next day.

Photo shoots can be painful, but she very kindly agreed to do it.

Apparently, I did not get the concept as well as I thought.  I kept getting weird shadows.  (See the photo above and the one directly below)

Then I remembered that he said you don't want a lot of contrast...  I tried shooting in more muted light.

I got a few that I really liked....

Isn't she beautiful?

Of course, with as long as it took me to figure out what I was doing, the craziness had set in...

Yeah, we'll just blame it on me.

This time.  ;)

I hope you like blue eyes...

She's still rather adorable...

Oh, and see the glint in her eyes?  That's what I was going for.  :)

Thank you, sis, for your patience!  I am super pleased.

Now, I am on the lookout for my next victim...  bwahaha  ;)

Psst... Molly

I am about to be cruel.

However, I will soften the blow by saying this:

WARNING:  If you are brunette, know me in real life, love rainbows and Owl City, and your name is Molly, read further only at your own risk!  You may become regretful that I did not kidnap you before you went to Florida with your family.  ;)


For those of you who are not Molly, here's the background.  I am blessed with some wonderful friends.  Molly is one of them.  Chelsea is another.  They hear about each other a lot, but they have never met.  And, until Molly and I finish that tunnel from her house to Chelsea's yard, it looks like things might stay that way. 

Just kidding about the tunnel, by the way.

Anyway, earlier this month we had the privilege to spend some time with Chelsea and her family in the mountains.  It was beautiful, and I enjoyed the visit so much. 

So, for those of you who, like Molly, have never met Chelsea, allow me to introduce her.
Everyone, the lovely girl on the right is Chelsea.  :)

 Also, Chelsea is very fond of coffee, and introduced us to Sheetz, a gas station that sells amazing coffee drinks that you order on a touch screen.

Actually, I like their frozen cremes, but Allison also loves coffee and is very grateful.

A sign at Sheetz, and also possibly Allison and Chelsea's motto.  :)

My dear coffee fanatics

I've already linked to it once, but Chelsea also has a fabulous blog.   It is definitely worth checking out.

So, Molly, I'm ready to go back.  What do you think about a tunnel?  ;)

My sister's awesome map (At the beach -part two)

In case you've forgotten my last post, I was talking about a recent trip to the beach with my friends.  It was so cold that my feet wished that they were in Tampa Bay.

Thankfully, my sister had a solution.

Actually, she, too, was cold, and did not see any point in freezing herself further by wading in the water.  Instead, she drew this amazing map in the sand: 

 See her up there in the corner?  She's drawing Alaska.  This is Hawaii, which was off to the left and much closer to the waves.

 Alaska, complete.

 Once upon a time, I also knew how to do this.  I'm afraid that my map falls apart at Kentucky and/or Wisconsin whenever I attempt.  I was impressed by her memory, and also the look of it in the sand.

Good work, Allison!

A response

I Have a Demanding Sister

My sister is making demands
For some pictures that she'd like to see.
And, with the way that it stands,
Meeting them is all up to me.
I could boycott and say, "Go ahead.
Try to post them online for yourself!"
But, after what I've just read,
I might want to do it myself. 

P.S.  I love you, Allison!  You are now a successful motivator.  

WE NEED PICTURES!

This is a motivational post by Allison.  Lots has been going on in the last week, such as church camp, our eight-year-old niece coming to visit and my birthday (which is of great importance of course:)  Sadly, Allison has NO PICTURES!!!  :(  This was very sad until it occurred to Allison that even if she did have pictures she would have no idea of how to post them.  Therefore, she undertook to write a post in hopes that it would spur Julianne on toward writing a post with pictures(and because she just enjoys posting for Julianne)  :)  Thank you for reading.