I finally bought a sewing machine- something I've been wanting for a long time. The only problem is, I didn't have a clue what to do with it. So I brought it to my friend Desiree's house, and she showed me how to work it. Kirsten came too, and we had a lot of fun.

I decided quite some time ago that I'd like to start sewing items to sell at the Saturday market. I was thinking about purses, but a lot of people sell them at the market, so I decided on baby carriers. I did a lot of research, and I started sewing. My friend Ameera had a baby shower last weekend, so I took it as the perfect opportunity to test my skills. This is the carrier I made for her. Its very sturdy- we tested it out a lot to be safe. And best of all, she loved it.

Ameera is eight months pregnant. Its really hard to believe. This is the first time I've seen her since she's been pregnant, and it was pretty shocking to see one of my classmates like that. She's super happy, and I'm so excited for her.

The shower was in Houston, so I got to stay with Robin. We went bowling with her friends and I had one of the best nights I've had in a while. Her friends are so much fun.

Last week I met my new little sister, Heather, from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program. Yesterday we hung out for the first time at Chuck E. Cheese. She had a blast. Here she is in front of the camera on the stage up front. If you look up top you can also see her on the tv screen. Next week we're going over to my Aunt Kassia and Steve's for swimming and b.b.q.

My mom and Susan just bought me a new laptop. woo-hoo! Its super nice- thank you!!!!
On Labor Day Kennedy and I shared a bowl of popcorn. She likes to shove it in her mouth as fast as she can, so I had to keep getting her to show me her tongue to make sure she was done with her bite. She's just so cute. Last night I was on the phone with Susan, and I heard her saying, "stacey, stacey, stacey". It almost made me cry. I'm so excited she's at the age that she can talk on the phone. Its so much more fun that way.

Last weekend Carl and I went to Hallettsville. We had a lot of fun. Here are Samantha and I in our rubber boots. She'll be so embarassed to see this picture, but I think we're cute.

These are my siblings. I don't think I've ever had any pictures of them all on the blog before. Sam is 15, Ryan is 13, and Ariane is 11. They're really great kids.

We all went down by the river and shot skeet. I actually hit a couple, and I was stoked! Carl gave me a pretty good lesson. He's awesome. He hit almost every one of them. It was Ryan's first time, and he did pretty well himself.

Carl rode with me on a 4-wheeler one time, and he swears he'll never do it again. He thinks I drive too fast, but he has NO IDEA!! Samantha is the scariest driver you've ever known. She likes to race, and I'm not one for an adrenaline rush- so she rode home by herself.

Last weekend I went to Oklahoma for a family reunion. It was such a blast! Pretty much all of our family was there, including my mom, kennedy, and susan. It was so much fun to see everyone.
This is a picture of my beautiful mema and her absolutely wonderful and wild twin sister, Aunt Sharon. They had the best time. They're so much fun to watch when they get together. Something hilarious always happens, but I won't mention what that might be, Aunt Sharon.

On Sunday evening, we all went on the back porch and shot clay pigeons. It was a lot of fun, but the gun was a little too loud for Kennedy's ears. Here's Papa taking care of her.

And here I am attempting to shoot a moving target. Its a lot harder than I thought. I'll definitely have to do some practicing- and make sure I use a left-handed gun cause my ears were ringing like crazy.

But of course, the most fun of all was game time! I love games so much, and I think one of my favorite things about the family is that most everyone else loves to play games too. We got a game of cranium together every night.

This is my cousin Heather. I thinks she's acting like a bird or something, but I can't really remember. A part of cranium is that you have to do cherades, which our family is very experienced at.
Okay, that's it for now, but I've got more reunion pictures, so check back.

Things have been pretty crazy lately with school and everything, so I haven't had much time to do anything fun. School's going really great through. I made all A's on my mid-terms. I'm so happy to be where I am. I'm continually overwhelmed with the feeling that I'm on my path and doing exactly what I'm meant to do. Its a really awesome feeling.
These pictures are from about 3 weeks ago. Carl and I made an over-night trip to the beach. We didn't catch much of anything, but it was still fun. Here I am with the only fish I caught, a Spanish Mackerel.

This was on our way down to the beach. You can't see it too well, but in the left corner, River's nose smudges make a really creepy looking face of a man, and it looks just like a ghost in the picture.

When we're at the beach River always digs a hole in the sand to sleep in. But the weirdest thing is how she gets her snout absolutely covered in sand, and she just leaves it like that and falls asleep. It seems so uncomfortable, but I guess she doesn't mind it.

A couple weeks ago Carl surprised me with some flowers and a bag of my favorite goodies. It was very nice and very unexpected.

I also wannna say hi to my Mema and Papa. Thank you guys so much for reading my blog. I love you so much!

where to begin? its been entirely too long.
well, one of the most exciting things for july was that i got to make a last minute trip to oregon to see my family and friends. i had so much fun. it was just absolutely wonderful, and i feel like i really needed it. even though portland's not where i grew up, it still feels like i'm going back home when i go there. and it was such a blast to hang out with kennedy. she's at the best age. she's so much more interactive than she was the last time i saw her (march). we had so much fun together. if you ask her what sound different animals make, she imitates them for you. my favorites are the owl, elephant, and pig.

on saturday night we went out to dinner with susan's parents, joe and rene. we had a great time, and kennedy was the center of attention, of course.

robin and shelly were in seattle for a week, so robin jumped on the train and came to portland for a couple of days. here are kennedy and i waiting to pick her up.

and this is a picture of mom and robin before we went to go pick berries. we had such a great time doing that. i'll put up some pictures of that next time.

on saturday night, robin and i met up with some of my friends that i haven't seen in ages. here we are before we met up with them, having girl talk. we had a lot of fun, but the night ended not so great because robin's purse was stolen. it seemed horrible at first, but everything has worked out.

somehow i left town without any pictures of susan. i don't know how that happened, but i'm pretty bummed out about it. sorry suz.
until next time......

Kirsten and I finally got to do something together on Thursday. Our work schedules just never mesh, so we hardly ever get to have time together. So on Thursday, I picked her up from work at 2:30, and we headed to Mountain Breeze. Its on the Guadalupe River, and we try to make it there at least once a year. We had hoped to be able to float the river, but the water is not moving- at all. They ended up giving us some tubes so we could at least sit in the water, and we never had to paddle. We stayed in one place the whole time. It was still super fun though.
After the water, we went back to camp to set everything up, and we realized that I had forgotten to bring the tent. I brought the poles, but no tent. Kirsten almost peed in her pants. Luckily I brough a blow-up mattress, so we just blew it up and slept in the open air. And it actually turned out to be quite nice like that. Except that I got bit by something bad, and I have a huge, red welp on my back that won't stop itching.


Here's a picture of the little fire we made. We cooked hot dogs over the fire, and they were so good.

Then we just played some cards. That's pretty much a tradition now. We had a really great time. Hopefully we'll be able to go back again before the summer's over.

Well, I caught a little bit of heat for what I said about the whole shark fishing thing. Apparently I sounded a little bitter. No, he was just playing, but I did get in trouble for not putting up the picture. So here it is.... Carl's 5 foot black tip. He released it after the photos.

I had the day off today, so we went out to Medina. It was a little bit cooler this time because we had the kayak, so we weren't so limited as to where we could fish.


I actually didn't do any fishing today. I was in the mood to just sit, relax, throw the ball for River, enjoy the sun, and read. And that's exactly what I did. We had a really great time.

And so did River of course. Every time Carl brings his fishing poles downstairs, she knows something's up and gets super excited. She sure loves the water.

Wow- long time, huh?! So sorry. This month hasn't held too much excitement for me. I got a new job, and I've just been working quite a bit. Its paid off, though, because I already got a promotion. I'm working at a new steak house as a bartender, and I just got moved up to bar supervisor. It hasn't gotten super busy yet, but once it does, I'll be the bar manager. Pretty cool. Oh, and the most exciting news I have, I got accepted into the Academy of Oriental Medicine. I'm sooooo stoked! I start in July, and I absolutely cannot wait! Its a four-year program, so I'll be there a very long time.
Other than that, Carl's in summer school right now, but he has his weekends off. So he's been hitting up the fishing pretty hard. He got some new shark poles and reels, and shark fishing is all he thinks about, talks about, and dreams about. He even did a speech on it in his speech class. So far he's only caught one shark worth talking about. It was a 5 foot black tip. Don't have a picture of it right now.
I did get to go with him one time this month, and we had a lot of fun. We were joined by his brother Brian, Jamie, and Matt, and River of course.

This is Brian wading out in the water to cast his bait. I used to do that with no hesitation, but with all the sharks I hear of being caught, I'm a little more nervous to do so.

Carl bought a kayak with his birthday money. He loves it so much. Now he can paddle out his shark bait super far.

Here he is paddling out to sea.

And here I am with my first-ever Spanish Mackerel.

Alrighty- thanks for being so patient. I'll write again soon- hopefully.

I had a really great Memorial Day weekend. Friday after work I headed down to Sheridan. Cousin Shawn graduated from high school on Friday, so we had a party for him on Saturday. It was such a fun time, as usual. We played Balderdash for a while, and had a blast! I didn't get a picture of everyone, but here's some of the fam being their crazy selves.




Saturday evening I left for Round Rock to go to Carl's birthday bash at his mom's house. I didn't get a picture of it, but they made the best crab and shrimp boil ever! I mean, it was awesome, and so beautiful. We poured all the contents out onto a table and ate outside. It was really nice.
Carl and his niece Kayla actually share the same birthday (May 25). One of her presents was a tent just her size. Carl, Kayla, and I all climbed in. It got kinda squishy so Carl got out and played the big bad wolf.

This morning we got up and drove to Inks Lake to check out some camp sites with Carl's parents and Kayla. It was a super cool place. We're planning on all going camping out there in July, and we're stoked. They have everything from fishing to volleyball to cliff diving. woo-hoo!

i don't know why this picture came out sideways, but i'm not really sure how to fix it,nor do i care to try. but, if you turn your head a little, you'll see a beautiful picture of the cake carl got me for my birthday. it was supposed to be a tres leches cake, but they messed up and just gave us a regular birthday cake. it was still good though.

we all went to medina lake for my birthday evening. kirsten reeled in this catfish while i chatted with my mema.

then we swam about halfway across the lake. it was quite a distance. this is a picture of kirsten and brian out in the lake with river.

and the most exciting part, the next day i got to pick up my new ride! its my aunt's 4runner. she just got a new acura mdx, so she gave me her car. i love it so much! its so awesome to have wheels again.

carl, river, and i went fishing on padre island last weekend. we had a blast! the first spot we picked, we caught a whole lot of seaweed, and that's about it. so we decided to head up a couple of miles, and within five minutes our poles were going off. carl caught this huge sting ray.

and at the same time, i reeled in my line to find that i had not one, but two fish! i caught this baby hard-head and a keeper red.

but my favorite catch of all was this jack fish. i just fell in love with it. i think its so beautiful.

river was exhausted, and she made herself comfortable in the back of the truck in quite a weird position.
we've never tried that spot before. usually we drive all the way to south padre island, which takes a lot longer. we're definitely going to be trying this spot again.