Here's the thing...

Okay, so, bridges and I...it's a love-hate relationship. I completely ignore bridges over dinky little bodies of water like the one towards the bottom of this post HERE. BUT, when it's a wide, shallow, rocky river in a 20 foot deep trench spanned by a big mega huge bridge with all sorts of wonderful support structures...
This happens:

I am standing on a support beam of a totally justified bridge with a river about 30 feet below me. I am maybe 5 or 10 feet above my family standing on the bridge, taking the picture. There are some other bridges that I climb on, too. Stand by for more pictures! ;)

Birthday!

This last week, I turned 14! Yay!

Here's me at my family's new favorite restaurant, a nice barbeque place downtown. We went there for my birthday dinner.
Now that I'm old enough, I get to go to dances! I'm excited!

And, *sigh*, yet again, hair.

This is a big accomplishment for me, because this usually doesn't work very well, but I finally figured out how to successfully curl my hair without help! Yay! It took about 30-45 minutes though, to curl it all.

Again, the photo loaded weird.

Then I got a haircut, and figured out that I have to straighten my hair or it curls. :)

Birthday Shopping with Grandma

My grandparents are in town , so my grandma took my sister and I birthday shopping. It was really fun and I got a new purse and necklace.

Thanks, Grandma! :)

Je n'ai pas de 'Brace Face'

I got my braces off on Monday! Yay!
(The post title says, 'I do not have a Brace Face' in French.)

Cool picture

Which one am I? No, seriously. I don't know. :)

Finally! Again!

#1- I need to stop repeating post titles. I really, really need to work on that. Sorry. :)
#2- I've been waiting for Rick Riordan's newest book, The Mark of Athena, since I finished reading the previous book in the series, The Son of Neptune. (Rick Riordan is an extremely popular author right now.)
This book came out yesterday, and thanks to my amazing mother, who pre-ordered the book online, I got it right after school. I'm excited!

:)

 

Hair! Again!

Here's another hairstyle I tried. This was my first attempt at it. I did it by braiding my hair in pigtails, then I pulled them up and did some bobby-pin work. (The genius who invented bobby-pins deserves a Nobel Prize.)

 I also had to put in an extra-strong bobby-pin (the ones that are impossible to open) in my hair at the base of the braid behind my ear.

 

I hope these hair ideas are helping the majority of you! :)

The People I Love

Here are some of our most recent family photos:

Left to right: my mom, my brother, my sister, me, my brother, my dad

 All of my mom's side

 All of my mom's side

 My cousins, grandma and I on my mom's side

My family again

<3 These wonderful people are all very important to me and I'm so glad they're my family. <3

What I Will Put in my Hair

I have a butterfly clip that I like to wear often. One day some one told me I was weird for wearing dead butterflies in my hair when they saw the clip. Well, I won't wear dead butterflies...

 

But I will wear my pet bird! :)

Room Musical Chairs

My sister, since she is now in middle school with me, has to wake up an hour earlier than my elementary school brothers. So, we moved her into the basement, with me. She moved into my room, I moved into my dad's office, my dad's office moved to the kids' study room, the study room moved into my sister's old room.
Here's my new room. Love it!

Thanks to mom and dad for painting and helping me "re-theme." :)

WAIT!!!

Wait! Before you go on, read the post "Finally", then read the posts the opposite of the order they appear. A strange thing, blog chronological order is...

The Lake

On we go...
The rest of my family (EVERYBODY) arrived in the afternoon.
And so it begins...

The lake flooded like crazy about two years ago. (We could SKI in what used to be the PARKING LOT.) This year, it retreated somewhat. (Now the buoys are over the parking lot.) Here's what it left behind. My flip flops got caught in the mud and broke when I tried to pull them out.

 Feet in the lake...before the flip flops were destroyed.

Tubing...and fooling around with the effects...

At dinner, we all gather for a picnic.

If there isn't enough room on the ground...we take to the trees! :)

Family. With my cousin in the bottom photo is a girl we made friends with up there. She and her sisters hung out with us the whole week.

This is my cousin and her fiance. Congrats!

We were up at the lake for my cousin D's birthday.
We had a lot of cake...

The homemade Olympic Games after dinner. We also had an obstacle course and water balloon catapults. Yes, ALL of those people are my family.

One night, we stayed out late of the large lawn outside the condos.

What we're sitting on is a homemade human rubber band. Four people get in it, stretch it out like a square, and the opposing people take turns running towards each other and you try to stay on your feet as long as possible. We discovered it also serves as a "circle time" bench.

We are all little children at heart. I admit it, you admit it. :)
It wasn't REALLY that dark. We went inside before it got too dark to see.

My cousins and I also saved a water bug named Renches.

This was a teensy-tiny pitiful attempt at a summary of my EPIC vacation.
Okay, that's it people! For now...
Look for pics of my sister and I tandem skiing!!!!!!!!!!
Bye!

The First Morning at the Lake

Okay...second week...here we go.
My family (Mom, Dad, and siblings only) went to meet some old friends at the lake early. We tubed and boated with them the entire morning. SO much fun.

T & E, some friends a little older than I, "tube." (Or drown)
Yes. The water really is that blue. And so clear!

My siblings put-put at snail speed. *Sigh*

I got on with T & E and we tubed like one should. Back and forth, up and down, under the water...
This picture shows E falling off and T and I in the water.

Old friends.

On the way back to my grandparents' house, we stopped by a family friend's house. They have a daughter about my age and we're good friends.
Here we are:

It was fun to see you, M!
:)

Temple

Over the weekend, after WICKED, my parents drove us down to the church in which they got married. I love it. It's built into the mountain, and from the front it looks small, beautiful, and quaint, but in the back it has spacious lawns and is kind of medieval in my opinion. It was incredible.

 Thought this was a cool photo. The clouds break right above it.

 This is where the wall merges with the mountain.

 The front.

The side.