Plethora of Names

Do y'all want to hear something funny?...In my long life of only 17 years (:D) I have now collected at least 17 nicknames. lol...and now I will precede to try to name all of the nicknames that I have picked up. Here it goes....

1. Ally Crackers - this is a little nickname that my family has called me.
2. Al - obviously just a shortened version of my name.
3. Big Al - this is what I am called when we play baseball
4. Al Kaline - another name I'm called when playing baseball, named of course after the famous baseball player.
5. Scoop MaGoop - I'm can't remember exactly how this one came about, but my one brother started calling me it. I hate the name because whenever I hear it the first thing that pops in my head is pooper scooper, don't ask me why.
6. Little Duck - a name my dad started calling me. This is one of the most common nicknames.
7. Ducky - a slight variation of the above name. My family calls me it so often that some of our friends will occasionally call me it too. lol
8. Dr. Duckster or Dr. Leanardo Duckster - another variation that my brother started calling me.
9. Moose - a nickname dad created.
10. Goose - nickname dad created.
11. Newt Ud - this came from a book my dad and I read together when I was younger. With the above to names we came up this little jig we would say to each other (Moose, Goose, big fat pig who always on the loose and plays in the mud, ud. Newt Ud...weird, I know, but it was so much fun.)
12. Trimmer McCoy - yet another name my dad created for me. This one occurred at one of our paint jobs where I was painting lots and lots of trim.
13. Trigger McCoy - the name dad called me the very same day because he forgot the above name. :D
14. Rae - this was when my siblings and I was going through a random phase of calling each other by our middle names.
15. Alfred - the name that I got when my sibling went through another weird phase where we called each other by random names. (My sister was called Mervin and my brothers’ name was Rapunzel and Thumbelina.)
16. Putz or Moron - this occurs when my sister and I want to reenact "Grumpy Old Men".
17. Tiny Dancer - dad named me after the Elton John song and because I love to dance.

This is all the names I can think of right now, but I do believe that I have had more. It's really funny. My dad has a great imagination and is great at making up new names to call me. However, since I'm called three different animals and many more names, I figured that I would probably suffer identity crisis soon. lol. Just kidding, but it is amusing to say. As y'all proably have figured out my now, I find many things amusing.

"That's All Folks!"

Awesome Verse!!!

I know I just finished a really, really long post, but I just wanted to share with you an awesome verse that I read the other day...

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those that love Him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9

I just find that verse so awesome because it let's is know that God has something so great planned for us that we can't even imagine it. Think about whatever your largest, crazest, awesomest dream that you have, whatever that is, God has something even better prepared. How awesome is that? So keep dreaming! Keep believing! God is awesome and faithful!

"That's All Folks!"

The Last Few Weeks

I just realized that January is almost over and well, I've barely posted anything, so I decided I would sit down and write something. Many things have occurred since my last post where I shared the fact that I looked like a baby orangutan (I still find that so amusing and that one picture of an orangutan is so cute :D). Now I'll briefly (or maybe not so briefly) catch y'all up about what I've been up to....


The first major thing that has happened between now and then was I got to spend 15 hours in an airport or an airplane on January 17th. Yep, Christmas break was over and my sister and I were trying to fly back to college in Maine. We got dropped off at the Moline airport earlier than need be because the fam wanted to get home before weather conditions got worse. That wouldn't have been so bad, but our plane was delayed leaving there, so we spent hours seating at Moline airport reading books. The reading books part made the experience all better because I LOVE READING!!!! However, the experience also back up our hypothesis that Moline is really a fake airport was confirmed. That's a running joke on my family because it never seems like Moline has any planes...Anyways, let's get back to the story. FINALLY, a plane showed up that flew us to Chicago O’Hare. However, since that flight was delayed, we missed our connection and the only other plane flying to Portland, ME didn't leave until eight at night...so we ended up spending between six and seven hours there. While there, I read even more books (By the time the day was over I read four books and some of my Bible with plenty of time doing other things. lol. I'm truly a book addict)...our plane left O’Hare roughly 9:30ish, but we get on the plane and an announcement comes over that the planes is going to Portland, but might have to land in Syracuse because of fog. When that happened my sister and I turned to each other and were like, we are NOT going to Syracuse (even though it would finally get us out of Illinois). Luckily we landed in Maine with no problem and a friend picked us up from the airport at 12:30a.m. Wednesday morning...the really amazing think was I didn't get to sleep 'till close to two in the morning and I had Physics at eight a.m. Oh. The. Joy...surprisingly, it wasn't too bad and I made it through all my classes without falling asleep. :D...


The second major thing that has happened is....I'm back at school. It's going good so far. It took until about yesterday to start really getting back into the rhythm of being back in classes. I'm only doing four classes this semester: Physics II, Chemical and Physical Oceanography, Calculus, and Writing the Modern World. However, I also have two work study jobs. The first is painting on campus which I've done the whole time I've been here. That has been really fun. The other job is working at the Marine Animal Rehabilitation Center on campus. I've yet to actually start there because my first shift was cancelled due to lack of things to do. Normally the place is hopping, but this has been a slower time. Hopefully this coming Monday, I'll have stuff to do...


Another thing that is new is I'm doing ballet twice a week. The university offers cardio classes and ballet is one of them and since I always have loved to dance I'm doing that. I actually took this class last year, but didn't do it last semester because I had a class at the same time...It is really fun to dance, even though I'm not that great at it...


Lastly, since the last time I posted I've gone to the movies twice. First I saw the second Sherlock Holmes with my brother. I thought that was a very funny movie...my favorite part (for those who have seen it) is when Sherlock is riding the pony. It is so hilarious. :D...the other movie I saw was Haywire. This past weekend my sister and I went to see it. We were so looking forward to it because it seemed like a cool kick-butt action movie. Boy were we wrong, it was a terrible movie!!! Everything about it was done poorly and the fighting was pathetic in my opinion...I want those hours of my life back. To me it ranked right up there with watching Michael Clayton on theatres and that was an excruciating experience.  lol.


Ok, now that I've bored everyone...Do I hear you sleeping?...How rude!....lol...just kidding...I'll let y'all go now...oh wait, I just remembered some other exciting news....my sister and I bought the first two seasons of Gilmore Girls for twenty buck. YIPPEE!!!!


"That's All Folks!"

Baby Orangutan

 My mom made each of us kids a scrapbook when we graduated high school and today I decided to look through them. I love looking at all the pictures that have been taken because there is such great variety. My family traveled a lot so we have pictures from all over the U.S. ranging from Newport Beach to the Grand Canyon to the Badlands to New York City to Maine and many more places in between. We have been extremely blessed to have been able to travel that much (an awesome benefit of homeschooling). Then of course, there is all the pictures taken around home. From all of us in costumes for Halloween to us dressed up for a wedding to us four kids wearing military fatigues (that was always so much fun :D). However looking through all those pictures I realized one very important thing...Are you ready for this life-changing thing?...Here it comes...wait for it...wait for it...drum roll please...I LOOKED LIKE A BABY ORANGUTAN WHEN I WAS A BABY...yes, folks you heard it right, a baby orangutan. I'm not kidding, just ask my family. See, seriously life-changing info. Now when people ask me what I was like when I was a baby I can tell them I looked like a baby orangutan. Oh. The. Joy. :D...this info might embarrass some people, but I'm so wierd that I just find it extremely amusing.

From Yahoo Images

F.Y.I This isn't one of my baby pictures, it's an actuall orangutan

"That's All Folks!"

Stuck in a Tree

Happy New Year Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I know I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. I have just been taking a break from doing anything but sleeping in, reading, and playing and hanging with family and friends (oh, and I worked two days. lol). And let me tell you, it has been extremely amazing. It really amazes me how exhausting college can be, so it is nice to have a month to recuperate before I dive back into another semester of college. It feels so weird to already have three semesters of college under my belt. It seem just like yesterday that I was starting college. Time sure flies by. It's already 2012, my one brother just turned 20 on New Year's Eve, and my sister turned 22 today. SO WEIRD!!!! (By the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATALIE AND ZACH) Even more, I turn 18 in a couple of months. Yikes! What all this has made be realize is how precious time is and how we should enjoy every moment of it. That's why I love the following quote: 

"Life isn't measured by how many breaths you take, but by how many moments take your breath away"

Which brings me to the story of how this post got it's title. Are you ready? Here it goes....The weather has been incredibly nice this winter in Iowa and the past couple of days have been in the mid to high 50's. This of course means that we (my family and me) have had to take advantage of the B-E-A-U-tiful weather. So today my siblings, dad, and me played some football in the yard. Since there is only five of us and only a small yard, we only do pass patterns, but it still is a lot of fun and included lots of good nature ribbing (not the food. lol). Then after that we decided to play some street ball with a wiffleball bat and wiffleballs wrapped in duck tape. It was going along so well until one of us got a ball stuck in the tree in our yard. To get the ball out we decided to throw a football at it. Yeah, didn't work the best. After a couple times of missing we got the football stuck in the tree. Then us being brilliant and everything, we decided to throw another football at the football already in the tree. After a handful of times trying to dislodge the football, a second football got stuck in the tree. Then we decided to continue playing street ball, while praying the wind would knock the footballs down. Want to know what happened? The footballs were still stuck in the tree after we finished playing. So we grabbed an extension ladder and placed in on a branch and my sister climbed it and tried to free the stuck footballs. She was to short, so we had Zach climb up. He couldn't reach it either, but we still had another football. So what did we do? Yep, you guess it, the third football was thrown into the tree. Guess what? Yep, it also got stuck. So here we are with three footballs and a wiffle ball stuck in a tree. Eventually after shaking some branches, two footballs came down, but the third one was too high so Zach got off the ladder and we started throwing baseballs at the football. However, that didn't work and actually  a baseball ended up in the tree. So now we only have a football, a baseball, and a wiffle ball stuck on our tree. Great story right? So the moral of the story is: DON'T THROW FOOTBALLS INTO TREES!!!!!!!! (kind of like, no more monkeys jumping on the bed. lol)

Now you may wondering how that story relates to the quote. Well here's how: this afternoon playing football and street ball and throwing things at a tree was one of those moments that took my breathe away. Not by its incredible beauty, but because I lost my breathe from laughing so hard. :D It was one of those memories that will last a lifetime.

"That's All Folks!"