Family Photo

Our church had its annual strawberry social this evening. While there, I asked a lady (my photography teacher, actually) if she would take a family picture of us.

Clockwise from lower right: Annetta, Joanna, Lydia, Joshua, Hosanna, Erika, Mom, Dad, Katrina, Jessica.

Picking Strawberries!

Mom and Katrina

Everybody

Joanna

Katrina

Josh

My mom and the berries

We went with our friends to a U-Pick strawberry field on Thursday. Our family got 40 quarts in about an hour...not bad! It was really funny-- after we'd been there for about a half an hour, Josh said to my mom, "I'm full now; let's go!" However, I think the rest of us (excluding Katrina) saved more than we ate.

Summer is...

...bare feet...

...sleepy cats...

...meadow flowers and grass and sky...

...and more flowers...

Braces

I think I shall forego a photo of my braces update. I now have a cricket (which is a bracket on both sides of my lower jaw, connected by a wire, whose purpose is to widen the lower jaw) in my lower jaw, and an RPE (Rapid Palate Expander. Title is pretty self explanatory) on the top of my mouth. When I got my cricket in, they put in 8 separators in my upper jaw, in preparation for inserting the RPE. It still hurt, getting it put in, and the annoying thing is that I take a bite, and about half of it disapears between the roof of my mouth and the RPE. I am also having to relearn how to swallow, chew, and talk. However, Jessica assures me that I should be able to talk normally in a month or so. I'm not sure how long I'll have the RPE and cricket in, but I imagine it will be quite a while.

Pictures that didn't fit in...

I wonder what they're looking at.....

Daddy!

Jessica got very sick of bugs, as you can see! (I don't think the jacket-on-the head idea worked very well)

Jessica and Daddy (pushing the stroller)
Jess looks like she has some sort of limp!
Caption, anyone??

Allegany State Park Weekend!

Last weekend (May 30, 31, and June 1), our family went to Allegany State Park for their annual nature pilgrimage thing. It was a nice, pretty place, but I wouldn't recommend the event because of the very prevelant new-age mindset. However, I did learn a lot of stuff and met a lot of nice people. The Wilderness Survival Hike with Jim Bruchac was worth the bugs :) Anyhow, here are some pictures and a short narrative of our weekend.

Friday:

Pretty self explanatory, those pictures. We got there and we registered. Then, Jessica, Annetta, Lydia, and I were dropped off to go on a 5-mile hike, while the rest of them went to our cabin

to unload the overlooaded van. I though that maybe the hike would take an hour and a half, but I didn't count on the break, or our trail guides having ADOT ("attention deficit-oh tree!"), ADOP ("attn. deficit--oh plant!)", ADOB ("attn. deficit--oh bird"), et cetera :). This meant that it took us a really long time to get back to our cabin. And when we did, we found that the cabin was locked, our things (which we wanted) were inside, and the key was with Mamma and the little kids. Thankfully, they had left a window open, so we were able to "break in." After supper, Jessica and I took the two littlest kids, Joshua and Katrina, down to see a DVD on Presque Isle. It was well done. Then we met up with everyone else in the Big Tent (aka "Camp Allegany") for some opening speeches. Those of you who have camped know that getting back to your campsite at bedtime means that you still have to Get Ready For Bed!! ***Not fall dramatically into bed and fall asleep instantly, to awaken refreshed and anewed just as the sun's rays kiss your georgeous face, like what happens it the movies (and don't even think about morning breath!)***. We hiked down to the bathrooms, past our partying neighbors, and then back up. And then we had to get everyone in bed, comfortable, and *then* fall asleep, or try to :)

(^The bathrooms were our only civilized comfort^)

Saturday: Getting up involved trekking down to the bathroom (with a halo of bugs), and back up (with a halo of bugs.)

And then breakfast, and then clean-up. And brushing teeth. Several Snells went on a 9 o'clock event, and Jessica and I joined them at 10 for a "short" hike to Bridal Falls. Daddy drove down that morning; he didn't stay nights because of chores, but he came up and stayed all day Saturday and most of the time we were there on Sunday. It would have been a short hike if the trail guide hadn't been so long-winded :) Bridal Falls was pretty, though. After our hike, we had lunch at our cabin. The next class was the highlight of the trip, for me. It was a Wilderness Survival Hike with Jim Bruchac. He taught us about navigating without a compass or GPS, survival shelters, and he demonstrated ways of starting fires without matches, which was way cool. But all good things have to come to an end, and plus, it started raining (random fact: did you know that you can start a fire with paper birch bark, even when it's raining?), so when it ended, we went back to our cabin. Around 5'ish, we all went to the Big Tent for a chicken barbeque dinner. Mamma and several other kids went on a Salamander Walk, Animal Stories, and a Bugs by Night event Saturday evening. Daddy left to go back and do chores, and Jessica decided to go back early with him. So, I got to be 2nd in command.

Sunday: Sunday morning, aside from the normal getting-up routine, we went, ourselves, to Bridal Falls.

^ Hosanna and Lydia ^Hosanna, Lydia, Joanna, Annetta
^ Mamma and Katrina

Then all the kids but Josh and Katrina went to do nature games. I went with them, but sat at a picnic table, froze, and read my Civil Air Patrol Aerospace Education Module 4. Daddy had come up at about 10 (without Jessica), and so at noon, we all crowded back into the van (loaded with all our stuff), returned the cabin key and went to:

There was a little island in the lake. Below, you see the brave Robinson Crusoe:
And the fearless Friday:

And the fearful Friday:

After we got done, we gathered for a shot of our lovely bracelets before heading for home.

Josh is the little hand without the bracelet, and clockwise from him: Annetta, Erika, Daddy, Lydia, Joanna, Hosanna, Mamma. She took the photo, because we all had our bracelets on our right hands, and she, being left handed, had her right hand free to snap the picture.

So that was a brief synopsis of our trip. I hope you enjoyed it!

Random Spring Picture

This is Daddy and Josh, cleaning up some manure outside the barn. It was a couple weeks ago; now, if the picture were retaken, he would be minus the coat, and the trees would be considerably greener.

Annetta

I took these a couple weeks ago, and just now realized that I had never uploaded them. So I can assure you that as I look out my window, there are leaves on the trees and flowers inthe grass, finaly!

Flying

Well, on Saturday, I finally was able to take my orientation flight with the Civil Air Patrol. I was thinking that I might experience some "not feeling good," but I really didn't expect to want to go back to the earth after roughly (pun intended!) a minute and a half. My pilot, Lt. Kangaroo-- I mean, Lt. Whantuck (I think) was a very nice guy, and an excellent pilot. He said that it was a bad landing, but I was about to kiss the asphalt, so I didn't really care.

Anyhow, I went to the Chautauqua County Airport at about 10:30, and waited around with two other cadets for our pilot to fly in. We watched him come in, and heard him over the radio. Then we went down to the FBO and waited for him to walk in. When he had taken care of some paperwork, we went out to the airplane. It was little. He said it was just like a Volkswagon. Having never seen a Volkswago, I took his word for it. It was a 4-seater, so we got our pictures taken and hopped in (note: I shall try to get those pictures emailed to me so that I can post them). I was in the left front seat, and he was in the right front seat. The other two cadets were in the back. We put on our headphones and taxied to one of the runways. Then, Lt. Whantuck said, "Let's go flying!" and off we went. We hurtled ourselves off into space, and it was like riding in a see-through elevator, only at 2300 feet above ground. I hate elevators. I have also had trouble with carsickness. Put the two together, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it was like.

Anyhow, I managed to not puke (mostly, I guess, because there was nothing in my stomach) for about 1/2 hour, until we went back to the airport, landed, and I elected to wait in the main terminal rather than go back up with my fellow cadets. I don't think they would have appreciated seing me die or jump out or something. But I had fun with two prospective cadets until my sister picked me up to go clean at my great aunt's. That was the first time that I skipped lunch, but I made up for it at supper time.

So to recap, I'm glad I went up, because it was a learning exerience. It's not something that I would do again very soon, though. I'd like to go up in a helicopter, though, just to see what it's like. Jessica says that it might be a little more choppy. (Groans are appropriate here.) Watch for pictures!

Kelly Hill Times

Well, it's about time I wrote another one of these. So I believe I will go into detail about what I did on Sunday. As many of you are no doubt aware, this week is Armed Forces Week, and Buffalo has the second-best in the nation celebration. Naturally, the Civil Air Patrol was there. I had heard of the ceremony a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't yet made up my mind whether to go or not. Then, last Thursday, Captain Maternowski (my squadron commander) told me that there was an opportunity for her to drop me off from Buffalo at the Akron airport. From there, I would fly to the Jamestown airport with two seniors. This would be my orientation flight, and double as my prize for being Cadet of the Month of April.

However, Sunday morning, the weather was windy enough that the O-Flight was cancelled (drats!!) and so I went up to the Armed Forces Day ceremony along with 6 other cadets, a visitor, and two senior members, all from our squadron. It took probably an hour and a half to get there.

There was another squadron there, and a lot of other people--Boy Scouts, AF JROTC, Marine ROTC, a Canadian colorguard, Veterans, et cetera. Basically, we did a lot of standing. We didn't stay for the whole thing, but we stayed long enough to hear the 21 gun salute. I thought that it would be 21 guns exploding at once, but they fired 21 guns, separately, not sparing a single one. I counted. It was cold. And windy. And I was in my short-sleeved blues uniform, so I shivered the whole time. I was able to wear a fellow cadet's jacket, but I was still cold. Probably Buffalo had an earthquake Monday morning, generated from all the shivering.

After we shivered and shook for an hour and a half, we hopped in the van and drove off to McDonald's. There, we got lunch, and drove home. This was when Captain Maternowski had the radio on, kind of quietly. Suddenly, a cadet lieutenant sat up and said, "[*Bleep*], turn that up! I think that's (insert guy's name here; I forgot it already)!" She did, and he started singing along with it. Then, he turned around and made some sort of comment to me about the singer. I think it was Ray or Roy something. I said, "Who's he?" He about had a stroke. "You don't know who he is????" (Apparently, the singer is some famous rock icon.) So they had a jolly time finding about how much I really live in a cave by asking me the names of various bands and singers. Naturally, I hadn't the faintest clue who Kiss or Poison or any of the many others were, and they were all practically having myocardial infarctions and going into cardiac arrest. It was really funny, because I have no desire to listen to that stuff, and I can't understand someone whose life is so controlled by a little iPod or MP3 player. There are better ways to go deaf!

So anyhow. We kids have all been practicing singing for the Mother/Daughter Banquet, which is this Tuesday. I'm having a ton of trouble with one of the songs that Jessica and I are singing. Thankfully, it's the song that everybody cries through, so it'll be the best one to mess up on. Seriously, if I see one dry eye in the audience during that number, I am going to duct tape half an onion under that nose. Then I will be laughing so hard that I will make mistakes, but it won't matter, see. There's one problem, though, which we might not be able to work around: There is a cold going around, and Jessica nearly lost her voice. It's getting better now, but I think I'm coming down with it. I just hope I don't lose my voice. But, the only song they really need me on is the song that I have already established won't matter if we mess up on. Regardless, it will be a unique and learning experience.

I shall try to get pictures form both the Armed Forces Day thing and the Mother/Daughter Banquet and post them here.

Josh and Katrina

Does anyone have a caption for this last photo?? Katrina always shuts her eyes, so I told them both to, and this is what happened!

Spring!

It's here!! This is Grandpa, on the John Deere.

I asked the camera-shy Josh if I could please (please!) "picture" him, and so he shut his eyes and smiled for me.
"Birdie birdie in the sky, Dropped some whitewash in my eye. Me no laugh, me no cry, me just glad that cows don't fly!" The girls have been saying recently...
And myrtle. You know spring is really, really here when the myrtle blossoms.