Miscellaneous Updates

This post contains a bunch of random updates on various things in my life. Like my "What I'm Loving" posts, it probably follows some theme that a lot of bloggers use, but I'm too lazy to hop on the trend bandwagon and link up to a theme.

House Projects

I finally finished with getting my side gate fixed and replaced with new wood. This whole project started as a result of some hail damage from a year and a half ago. I finally finished fixing everything a few months ago and I'm just now posting about it here on the blog.
Here's an old shot from the back...pretty ugly eh? This is with the old wood and before the metal had been repainted.

And here's the new wood...

Weddings

I've only got two weddings on my calendar for 2012 (so far) and of course they were back to back weekends.
I was a bridesmaid in the first wedding.

And for the second wedding I'm flying up to Washington this weekend to attend my cousin's wedding.

eReaders

Despite not wanting to depart from my love and "real" books, I bought a Kindle for taking on trips. I'll probably have to devote an entire blog post to my thoughts about Kindles now that I have a better opinion of eReaders. I read three books on my Kindle in the first week of owning it.

Photo Editing

Lastly, PicMonkey is an awesome tool for editing your pictures. Obviously something like Photoshop is ideal, but if you don't own any software or are looking for something that you can use from anywhere, I really like PicMonkey. Especially since Picnik is no longer available. I just used PicMonkey to quickly do some photo editing as part of a wedding gift I made and it was really quick and simple.

Oh Tradition

Back in 2003 I was standing around with some friends on the last day of camp. Like usual, everyone was taking pictures and so we decided to take a picture of ourselves. And then the boys decided that they wanted to do gang signs in the picture. Why? I have no idea, but my friend Natalie and I just stood there and smiled like normal people. Sadly, I can't find this picture because this was during the stage of my life where I didn't have a great digital camera, and even though I had one at the time, I wasn't very good at organizing and saving my pictures.

In 2004 camps rolls around again and at the end we start to take a picture of the four of us again. We comment on how we took the same picture the year before with all of us standing in the same position. This time Natalie tells me that we should at least do something if the boys are going to insist on doing gang signs. After realizing that neither of us knew any gang signs we just crossed our arms and laughed. And the tradition began.

It was this past year (2011) that my picture frame ran out of room for the next picture and I've had to start a new one. It took me until the end of April in 2012 to get around to buying a new frame to start filling up.

But back to 2005. I wasn't at camp in 2005 due to the fact that I had skipped a grade in highschool, so that year is our gaping hole in this whole tradition. An then in 2006 only three of the four of us came back as counselors. But we still took the picture on the last day when Steve came up to see everyone.

And after that we lost Natalie. But that's also when Bryce came into the picture (get the pun? eh?). He dutifully left a spot where Natalie should be, but filled in as the fourth person. The rest is history...

 

 We even had a special guest in 2008. ;)

So you might wonder why a bunch of counselors would take a picture making gang signs every year. Now you know.

Steven & Rynata's Wedding

This weekend I had the pleasure of being a bridesmaid in a beautiful wedding. One of my childhood friends married one of the best girls I know. It was a backyard wedding and it was one of my favorite weddings ever. I'm excited to see what's in store for these two and what God has planned for them. God is good!

Good times...good times...

Bride's brothers

The best man - another childhood friend

Probably the best bridal party picture of the day ;)

The groom agrees

I didn't get a good picture of the bride and myself on my camera, but more pictures later!

What I'm Loving - April 2012

I'm loving being in that down time in between Summit and camp where the Awana part of my life is just a little less hectic than normal.

I'm loving reading World Race blogs. Foreign missions has such a strong place in my heart right now.

I'm loving the fact that I'm wearing either my strappy heels (work) or my flip flops (anything outside of work) all the time now that the weather is warmer. Yay Spring! Except the allergies part of it, of course.

I'm loving that baseball season is upon us!

I'm loving that I got my bridesmaid dress back from the alterations place today AND I got it pressed at the dry cleaners in the same day. BAM!