Random

Ok, so I've had a bunch of random pictures I wanted to share that I've taken over the last couple of weeks, but I felt like I had to get real stuff taken care of first (like graduations, reunions, and engagements). So here are the random pictures I've wanted to share... they're mostly funny, so enjoy! :)

My odometer on the way to church the other day... is it safe to try to take pictures of your odometer while driving?

Truman's new favorite spot outside... high enough to see, and to be out of the way of the d-o-g!

Josh finally put together the grill his groomsmen bought us for our wedding. It works awesome! So we spent a night christening it with chicken thighs and legs, corn on the cob, Mom Price's potatoes, and homemade ice cream. Isa helped us shuck the corn, and played with her new toy: a stretchy, squeaking, rattling rott (sorry, Sarge!).

Ok, so who takes a picture of their toilet and puts it on their blog? Well, if you look closely, you'll see massive amounts of toilet paper in the toilet. That's because the ENTIRE ROLL was unrolled perfectly into the toilet while we were gone one day. Nobody home but el gato, Truman, who was apparently bored that day. That takes a lot of dedication and skill from a cat with no claws and no thumbs! It's enough to make any mother proud... of course, I don't think Josh was as proud as he pulled dripping toilet paper out of the toilet, but, hey, at least it's the guest bathroom, it doesn't get used much! Note to self: Put the lid down ALWAYS!

A really cute picture of Ethel the sheep from when I fed her last weekend. It looks like she's listening to me... but really I'm just holding sassafras leaves underneath the camera, and she's seeing how far she can jam her head out of the fence! But, it makes a cute picture! :)

Exciting News!

Well, we had some very cool news this weekend! Josh's little sister, Jessica, is engaged! Her fiance's name is Luke, and we are really excited for them! I don't know many details, but they are planning to get married next summer. Josh and I got to meet Luke at the family reunion a couple of weeks ago, and we're excited to welcome him to the family!

Whoops

Well, I just looked back over my blog and realized that I didn't blog about Ruth's graduation several weeks ago, and the Looten Family Reunion the weekend after! So here are pictures from both... (those of you waiting on belly pics, here are a few, though they're several weeks old, and that's a big difference at this stage!).

Ruth's Graduation

The family... missed you, Jess!

The whole gang!

Ruth on the jumbo-tron (she was sitting right next to the camera, which was awesome! :)

The prizes of graduation!

The big party the next day!

Nice boots!

And the Looten Family reunion... we had a great time hanging out at Windermere, but I wasn't very good about taking pictures. Except for when Jessie, Luke, Josh, Aunt Shell, Mallory, Danny, and I went to a putt-putt place at the Lake for some fun! Needless to say, I didn't do any go-carting or bumper cars, but we did have fun with the putt-putt!

Ready to rumble on the go-carts! (Jessie won, in case you were wondering)

Apparently, Josh still had some latent animosity after his bruising loss in the go cart track, so he challenged Jessie to a duel during putt-putt.

The boys, laughing at something...

There are no words...

Though I forgot to blog about both events, we had lots of fun with both families! Congratulations on graduating, Ruthie! It's hard to believe that the last of the four of us is all done with high school. As for the reunion, we're excited for next year, when we'll have a baby to bring with us! :) I wonder if anyone will want to hold her...

My Husband

For those of you who know him... no words are even necessary! :) But you gotta love him!

Sheep Show

Well, Josh and I got to experience something new this weekend! Ruth had her first sheep shows on Friday and Saturday, so Josh and I headed to watch on Saturday morning. I hadn't ever actually seen a sheep show, so I had no idea what I was in for! The picture isn't from the show, because I forgot my camera, but those are the infamous sheeps at Ruth's graduation party. Apparently, at a sheep show, you have to walk the sheep around this ring, then make them "stand pretty" (I think that's called bracing in sheep terms) while the judge watches. The catch is, you can't have any type of halter on them and sheep don't really learn to "heel" like a dog (no dog I've ever owned, but I hear there are dogs that will do that). So you have to grab the sheep by the head, with one hand under their chins and one hand behind their ears and drag them around hunched over them. Needless to say, I did not envy Ruth and Stephanie as they drug their sheep around the ring! But Ethel and Alice were pretty well behaved for them, all things considered! There was one poor kid who was barely taller than his sheep, and the sheep got away and was bounding around the ring, running over other people and their sheep. It was actually pretty entertaining! The whole event was surprisingly entertaining, actually, and I'm sure Josh and I will get to see a few more sheep shows before this summer is over! It was a little weird, though, because after the judge picked the winners, he talked about each of the sheep and why he'd put them where he put them. But it wasn't like a dog show, where they talk about how well-behaved they were or what pretty fur the dogs have. Instead, the judge says things like "this sheep will really hang a good carcass" or "when you get your hands on it, there's a lot of meat on that sheep." So it was a bit disturbing! But fun anyway!

Other than the sheep show, Josh and I made it a point to NOT DO ANYTHING all day Saturday. Well, actually, that's not really true at all. We made it a point to not leave our house. Instead we stayed around here and worked. Josh put together my hammock (his birthday present to me) and the grill his groomsmen got us as a wedding present (3 years later) and we did some cleaning and unpackng, and decided where we're going to put furniture in the spare bedroom (we have WAY too much furniture in that room, but that could be because I have ridiculous amounts of books), and where we're going to hang pictures (we ran out of time for the actual hanging). We also broke in the new grill by cooking an awesome summer meal... we had chicken legs, Mom's potatoes, corn on the cob, and homemade ice cream with strawberries and peaches. So it was a wonderful day to just get things done, the house is much cleaner, and it's nice to have the grill and hammock put together. It was a weekend off that was much needed and we enjoyed it and each other! Now it's back to the busy-every-weekend life we're used to! :)

Settling In

Well, everyone in the house is settling in, though it means something different for each of us! For Josh and I, we are slowly getting everything unpacked, and this weekend we are going to spend Saturday hanging up pictures and unpacking the last few boxes. We are loving our new house and our new yard, and I'm so excited to get everything put away so I can start thinking about decorating the nursery!

For Truman, however, settling in seems to involve finding all of the new napping spots, and all of the good places to hide. Numerous times over the last couple of weeks I've found myself racing for the camera before he moves from whatever nook or cranny he's found. Most of the time the little rat moved before I got back, but I did manage to capture the following pictures...

In our closet and In the entertainment center

In a bag and In the tiger lillies... where else would a tiger be?!

Isabelle has had a tougher time settling in, since she spent the first 9 days locked up at the pound. But she is home now, and happy, and seems to be adjusting well. She didn't have such a good day at the vet on Thursday, but she is much happier now. She has a new pool, a new dog house, and a huge yard. I think she misses her friends next door, but I'm certain she doesn't miss the bark collar, so it's probably a good trade off. Josh and I just make sure we play with her more so that she doesn't get lonely. And she certainly seems to have found her new favorite napping spot, one day when I got home from work this is what I found...

So, if you were wondering, we are all settling in and loving our new house and yard! :)

New Yard

One of the coolest things about our new house is our new backyard. It is HUGE, and it has a 6 foot privacy fence, so there will be no jumping or racing up and down the fence barking for our lovely dog! We took her out there right before we moved just so she could explore, and I think she liked it... she was so worn out, that we got her ice cream on the way home (she loves vanilla frosties).

So we were really excited to move and see how excited she was to live there. She really did enjoy the yard while we were moving, she raced around, got lots of petting, and, when we moved inside, howled at us from her pool (she could see us through the window).

Unfortunately, she also got a little overstimulated, and when one of the guys from church helping us move bent over her to pet her, she jumped up and bit him on the cheek. I don't know if she meant to or not, but the people at animal control didn't care. And, since I'm a horrible pet mother, her rabies shot is expired. So now our poor puppy is serving 9 days in doggy jail at the Humane Society. Josh and I had to take her in Tuesday morning, and it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. We had to take her back and all the dogs around went crazy barking and she was scared, and we had to leave her and she started barking as we left, and I was sobbing by the time we got back to the car. It is very sad, especially to look out onto the back porch and see all her stuff just sitting there... we miss her lots! But, we get her back at 0700 tomorrow morning, which means we will be there at 0659 banging on the door. And we're taking her to a park, before we take her to the vet for her shots, then we're getting her ice cream!! I just hope she still loves us... :)

Our sad back porch :(

Senior Retreat

We love the senior retreat because it's a chance to get just a few kids out of town and away from the craziness of the end of the year for a weekend. We also have a little trouble with it because it's such a small event, we don't take planning as seriously as we should, and usually forget something... this year was no exception! This year our only senior who could go was Ruth, which ended up being a really good thing by the end of the weekend! We headed to Ha Ha Tonka State Park, which is just outside of Camdenton. It is known for its karst topography (caves, sinkholes, rock bridges, etc.) and is a really neat place to hike. The not so nice part about it is that the only camping available there is for Boy Scouts and youth groups, so there isn't any running water... that's right, no showers, no flushing toilets, no place to wash hands, etc. But the latrines they had weren't too bad (except for the one right by our campsite... that one was horrible, and required super-human breath holding abilities in order to use it). Anyway... we got to the campsite and set up camp, and realized that the rain flies for our tents don't fit in the bag, so they weren't with the rest of the tent! Seeing as how it wasn't raining, we didn't worry too much about it... we just left our stuff and headed off to enjoy the park. The cool part of this park is that at the turn of the century a guy bought it and built himself a castle there. The castle burned, but the ruins are still there, and it's really neat. So we headed first to the castle. Here's a picture of Ruth and I at the top of the bluff... check out the Frankenstein hair, clearly it was windy! :)


Josh and Ruth at the castle ruins. By the way, my husband is a huge dork...

After we explored the ruins, we decided to just hike a big circular route all around the park (yes, the pregnant lady was hiking, it wasn't pretty). It was beautiful, and we got to see this really neat natural spring that has water at like 56 degrees all year round. Unfortunately, we couldn't get in the water, but we had fun hiking anyway. Until it started pouring down rain. At which point we sat under a shelter and thought of all of our things in our tents across the park with no rain protection... But we figured at this point, there wasn't anything we could do, so we just enjoyed the rest of our hike, during which it rained off and on. But the hiking part was really neat.
Ruth in a tree...

Unfortunately... when we got back to the camp, everything in our tents (sleeping bags, clothes, pillows) was pretty much soaked. And it looked like there was more rain on the way. So we found the best available spot for drying that was still under a roof, and managed to hang two sleeping bags, two pillows, and a sweatshirt underneath it! Then we had to figure out something to do with the tents, since it was obviously going to rain again. We found a fly for a different tent that had been left in our trunk since last year's float trip, and rigged it over the tent Josh was sleeping in. Then we took the 3rd tent (our tent is 3 tents that zip together, one big and two little) and draped it over the top of Ruth and I's tent. It looked... well, interesting, to say the least, but you judge for yourself! :) Between the tents and the shelter draped with sleeping bags, I'm sure the boy scouts (always prepared, you know) were laughing at our camp!



But we decided it was good enough, so we left to go fishing. We found a spot with a cement retaining wall and fished off of it. It was horrible fishing (thanks to the drunk idiots in boats blaring rap music and screaming and scaring all of the fish away) but after the amount of hiking we had done, we were happy just to sit down. There's no doubt we looked like a couple of Huckleberries sitting on that wall though! :)


After we headed back to camp, we decided to go ahead and make a Wal-Mart run. We realized we didn't have paper to start a fire, or lighters, and everything we owned was wet. So Ruth and I headed to the Walmart in Camdenton, where we picked up the necessities (lighters, paper, lighter fluid-all the charcoal was wet, too- and towels to dry stuff off). We also got to enjoy the luxury of flushing toilets and sinks! Of course, when we got back to camp we realized that we had also forgotten plates... but we worked without them! We grilled burgers and brats and corn on the grill, and set our "table" with napkins instead of plates! Hey, it worked!


As we finished up dinner, the storm clouds started to roll in, so we packed everything up and headed for that little tiny shelter where we hand hung our things to dry! There, Josh, Ruth, and I huddled in bag chairs underneath the shelter and played with Josh's new toy, an ice cream ball. It's this ball that you put ice in one end and ice cream mix in the other, and then shake and roll it, and it makes homemade ice cream. It worked wonderfully... of course, with rain drops pouring down our backs, we weren't really in the mood for ice cream, but it tasted awesome anyway, as we all three ate it straight from the ball (napkins don't really hold ice cream). Oh, what a night...



We sat for a long time making and eating ice cream, waiting for the rain to stop, but it seemed the storms had settled in for the night, so we eventually just gave up and went to bed. Our sleeping bags and pillows were (mostly) dry, and the makeshift tents were holding up, so sleeping wasn't awful. I didn't sleep much because I'm supposed to only sleep on my side, and my shoulder kept going totally numb. And at about 1:00 am, it started monsooning, though the tent stayed pretty dry, all things considered. But it was certainly not a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed crew that woke up the next morning! We did manage to get the fire lit (thanks to lots of lighter fluid, because, of course, the wood was wet, too) and we got the grill going. So, in our one skillet, we cooked bacon over the fire, then moved it to the grill for french toast. Then, we discovered another flaw in our plan... napkins don't really do well with syrup, either... so we ended up cleaning out the skillet, filling it with syrup, and all of us dipped our french toast in that. Hey, we were all family! :)


After breakfast, we broke down camp, went fishing again (pointless, again) then headed to Camdenton for some mini-golf. We found this course that was all about Blackbeard the Pirate, so, of course, Josh and I had to do some sword fighting with our golf clubs (pretty sure that's not an approved activity, but oh well!). Josh kicked all our butts in putt-putt, but we had a good time anyway.


Afterwards we headed home, exhausted, but we actually had a good time, despite the rain, the forgotten staples of camping, and the horrible fishing! We definitely got to get away from the craziness of the end of the year, even if it was just for the craziness of camping. It was still great to enjoy God's creation, even if His creation was raining on us! :) Despite the general general chaos, we all enjoyed it!