I suppose I should update this every once in a while. LOL. Nothing exciting has been happening since I got back from my trip... Oh yeah, my trip! I should say something about that. But first: I'm back to babysitting from 6 to 10 in the morning--or whenever Nathan feels like going to the B&G Club. Yesterday it was 10:45. Today it was 9:00. At any rate, it's nice to get a nap after his mom leaves (usually around 6:20). Except that if I fall solidly asleep I won't hear him when he gets up.

Is there a template out there somewhere that has to do with popsicles?

Mmm... Perfect summer template. Bright colors on white and delicious, cold-looking popsicles.

Sorry. It's really hot today and I just got back from doorhanging.

I got my drawing for this entry up on my blog. Sad to say, you can only post comments on the site if you have a Blogger account, but you guys can always leave me a note here telling me what you think. ;)

Oh... I was going to talk about my trip. Okay... ::wanders off:: Here it is--I wrote about it in a text document.

My trip was a lot of fun! Way too short, but really fun. Natalie, my pen pal, was unfortunately very tired from the cruise she just got off of, so we didn't do a lot, but we still did some stuff. We went to an outdoor marketplace, and that was the best part. They had fresh fruit and fresh flowers ($5 bouquets!!) and little handmade trinkets and good food around, all right on the water. My favorite trinket stand had flat, smooth rocks with little sayings in them. I nearly bought a rock that said: "I love you more." It reminded me of God. When we say we love Him, He can always reply, "I love you more." :)

We didn't get to go see the major landmark, but that was okay with me; I've seen it once before. I liked the marketplace better!

Visiting my aunt was fun, too. I saw her at Sam's graduation, but it's even more fun to visit her in the city where she lives. We always go to the nicest restaurants and go shopping. Aunts are great at spoiling their nieces. :D

On the drive home, we got to go past a beautiful waterfall. We usually stop there, but this time we had to get home, so we just drove alongside the falls, close enough to hear and feel and smell everything. The waterfall is HUGE and so powerful! It takes my breath away every time. And all the beauty surrounding it... Ferns and trees and moss and flowers... I think that waterfall may be my favorite place in the entire world.

That's really all I have to say. I'm so tired. :P Oh yeah--Natalie. She's nice, and actually pretty conservative--a difficult thing to find in the state she's from! Her boyfriend was a tad less conservative. It was SO FUNNY, though! Every time Kehli (that's her boyfriend) said something remotely crude, she would get after him and glance at me. I'm telling you, it was hilarious! Yes, my dear, I have heard the word "crap" before... :D Man. Last time I wrote her I must've been super super conservative (it's been a while since we've actually written).

Natalie gets a kick out of my small-town upbringing. She loves little facts like we have just one high school and lots of school spirit. She laughed so much when I confirmed to her that we do just have one street that has, like, all the stores on it and stuff. When I told her the population of the town, she said that was, like, her whole block. WOW! And she thinks 65 mph is slow... That is positively insane.

I realized while driving on the freeway to my aunt's church that this is probably what they do all the time in Natalie's state--drive from place to place by way of the freeway. Can you imagine? (::watches people smiling at me who live in big, huge metropolitan areas::) The freeway is what we use when we GO to big cities, not what we use to go to Wal-Mart or whatever!

Another interesting comparison was when we talked about restaurants. Kehli mentioned Applebee's with a laugh when we were talking about restaurants, and Natalie agreed, "Applebee's is ghetto."

Our Applebee's is fairly new, and it's one of, like, three dine-in restaurants in our town. (Okay, maybe that's a tad understated... We might have, like, six or seven. I don't frequent dine-in restaurants--except on Sundays--so I have no idea.)

What are Sundays to the big wide world out there? People here usually go to church on Sundays and usually don't bother to make an evening meal ("supper"). For dinner ("Sunday dinner"=lunchtime) people usually go to a nicer, dine-in restaurant.

The very fact that we still call it Sunday dinner is probably distinguishing... I suppose in the big, wide, fast-paced world outside sleepy old towns like mine, everything is "Want some food?"

Ah, anyway... What a world it is. I'm glad I grew up here. Sometimes I wish I'd grown up on a farm. I would hate to start working on a farm now, because I know it's a heck of a lot of work and I'm pretty lazy, but if I'd grown up with parents who told me to go work in the fields and such, I wouldn't have minded it so much. I know farmers know the meaning of patience and earning a living. I'd like to have that.

But, alas, I grew up in the urban world--however slight--and on top of that with a soft-hearted mother who gave us nearly everything we wanted. Patience is still something I struggle with and working hard is definitely a tough concept to grasp! (Hence, part of the reason that I didn't get a real job till I was 19 years old.)

Oh! That reminds me. Mom's started giving me chores to do again, and I have to go clean off the back porch.

One last interesting city-town comparison: I have a huge, green front yard with big trees, and just past my back yard is a field where we used to keep Appy, Grandpa's old appaloosa. Natalie says they sometimes don't even have yards in her state.

I can't imagine. Life without grass? HOW DO YOU LIVE?!!

That's all. :)

-Stephanie