Apple in the eye ...or Apple of the eye?

Note: this post is posted on both of my blogs, so if you've read it on one, then no need to read it on the other.

First of all, I apologize. I haven't written in about a week, (besides my report on marshes) and I have said I was gonna write more often ...as I have said, very hypocritical.

Second of all, I want to thank Mrs. Crickl as I call her, (hi there!) for explaining to me how to use the strike-out html. Isn't it cool looking?


Thirdly, everyone go to Tottalyhorsecrazy.Blogspot.com and tell her to keep up the new posting!

And now for the actual post.
Apples are the most common fruit, right? I mean, we all know what apples are. Right? So I got to thinking... I wonder, when are the times that apples are mentioned in The Bible, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Lord of The Rings? (which, as hopefully you know, are my favorite books).
If you think about it, there are actually a lot of materials in these books about this fruit that we take for granted.
Lets check out some bible verses first.

Psalm 17:8
Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings.

Proverbs 7:2
Keep my commands and you will live;
guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.

So it's pretty obvious that even back in the bible, apples were popular. But you know, I once heard that really, we don't know that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple. We just assumed it. Defiantly a difference. I wonder what the fruit really was though. Well, maybe it was some fruit that isn't here anymore. I mean, it was the forbidden fruit, and you don't exactly go to the grocery store and find a barrel of fruit labeled: Forbidden Fruit, or: Fruit of Knowledge.

Anyhow, moving on.

If you've ever read The Chronicles of Narnia, you will realize that there are a couple of places in some of the books that mention apples to a very big extent. One of these places is in The Magician's Nephew (you can read a little of this book in one of my earlier posts on Dragons Fly), the other book that I'm thinking of is Prince Caspian. This book, especially in the beginning, is loaded with apples!

"...They (the Pevinsie kids) noticed a delicious smell, and then a flash of bright colour high above them at the top of the right bank.
'I say!' exclaimed Lucy. 'I do believe that's an apple tree.'
It was. The panted up the steep bank, forced their way through some brambles, and found themselves standing round an old tree that was heavy with large yellowish0golden apples as firm and juicy as you could wish to see."

"...They tried roasting some of the apples on the ends of sticks. But roast apples are not much good without sugar, and they are too hot to eat with your fingers till they are too cold to be worth eating. So they had to content themselves with raw apples, which, as Edmund said, made one realize that school suppers weren't so bad after all..."

"...'What's to be the target [for bow & arrow shooting]?' asked Peter.
'I think that apple hanging over the wall on the branch there would do,' said Susan.
'That'll do nicely, lass,' said Trumpkin [a red dwarf]. 'You mean the yellow one near the middle of the arch?'
'No, not that,' said Susan, 'The red one up above - over the battlement.'
The Dwarf's face fell. 'Looks more like a cherry than an apple' he muttered..."

"...'Apples, heigh-ho,' said Trumpkin with a rueful grin. 'I must say, you ancient kings and queens don't overfeed your courtiers!'"

So, once again, we see that apples are a popular writing material!
Now, lets check out two of my favorite parts in The Lord of The Rings, The Fellowship of The Ring, that, of course, mention apples:

"...Sam was chewing an apple thoughtfully. He had a pocket full of them: a parting present from Nob and Bob. 'Apples for walking, and a pipe for sitting,' he said..."

"...Sam turned quickly. 'And you, Ferny,' he said, 'put your ugly face out of sight, or it will get hurt.' With a sudden flick, quick as lightning, and apple left his hand an hit Bill [Ferny] square on the nose. He ducked to late, and curses came from behind the hedge.
'Waste of a good apple,' said Sam regretfully, and strode on."

I love that line! "Waste of a good apple"! I can't remember if it's in the movie or not though. It seems like I've heard Sean Astin (the guy who plays Sam (or Samwise) say that line in the movie before. At any rate, I can certainly hear it in my head. But I can't remember what part he does it in the movie.

Anyway, here I will post the morals:
1: Duck sooner than later when someone throws an apple at you.
2: Don't roast apples without sugar or proper roasting tools.
3: Remember that you are the apple of God's eye -- not the apple in God's eye ...biggg difference...

Now I shall go and devour an orange apple!
-Animal Lover/Dfly

Ducks and Things

Good morning!
I'm doing school right now, so no time to explain why I haven't posted for a week (and after saying I'd post all the time & more often ...how hypocritical...).
Instead, I gotta right a report on Marshes and four birds that are sometimes found in them. This all relates to chapter 5 of The Silver Chair in The Chronicles of Narnia, because I do a study guide on those books for school.

So without further ado, I give you:
MARSHLANDS AND THEIR BIRDS*
(*all info & pics from Wikipedia ...so not all that professional)

Ahem.

What do you think of when you think of a marsh? Do you think of sludgy, slimy, swampy water that's stiff with mud and bacteria?
Well actually, instead of all that nastiness there are many different types of beautiful, living, breathing, flying things. And no, I'm not talking about mosquitoes.
Take the Black Heron, for an example.
Now, this bird has quite the talent for thinking up smart ways to get a meal!
Have you ever noticed when fishing, that the fish tend to stay in the shade, away from the glare of the sun, and away from being very visible? Well, these good-sized birds got the idea of making a big canopy with their wings to lure the fish, and then snapping the fish up when they're attracted to the shade! Pretty smart huh?

Another bird that you may be able to see in marsh-like places, and that are a classification of the heron family, is the Bittern. These birds are more shy, secretive, skulking birds. If the American Bittern (pictured below), senses that its been seen, it will stop, stand stock-still, and point its beak up to blend in with the grasses surrounding it.

According to Wikipedia, American Bitterns are found in 'soggy' areas, like bogs, marshes (of course!), and wet-meadows (whatever those are).

Moving on in the safari of marshish birds.
With a very sensitive, long bill, the Snipe uses its gifted little beak, to figure out what's on the menu in the mud, even when it can see the menu in the mud.
Another interesting thing about this bird, is how it got its name. Owing to its camouflage in the marshlands, and its queer flight path, only a extremely good gun-man would find hunting this bird easy. Hence, it was called a 'snipe' since only a
sniper could shoot it.


So far, so good. Now for the last of the marsh-birds!
Okay, okay, everyone could tell me what bird makes a quacking sound, but here are a couple interesting things about Ducks that you may not have know:

There are both salt-water ducks, and fresh-water ducks, the salties called 'diving ducks'; because they mostly dive deep for their lunch. And the fresh-waters call 'dabbling ducks' because they feed mainly on land of the surface-water.

Quacking isn't the only noise for ducks! And according to Wikipedia, only females quack. The other common sounds are whistles, yodels (??? ...never heard a duck yodel...), grunts, and cooing.

There was once a myth that duck-quacks didn't echo, but that was proved false.



So hopefully you have learned a bit on marsh-birds, fishing techniques, and duck-quacks!

Thanks for reading!
-Animal Lover

Of Posting, Flies, and Communacation

I know, I know, what's the rush with all these posts, and writing so fast & furious??
Truth is, is that I don't have much of anything else to do on the computer. And of course, I, like all the other American population, was born with the instinct to attract to computers. Kinda reminds me of flies & food...
Speaking of flies, their population seems to be increasing in our backyard. I think this is actually the bug-of-backyard-life-cycle, because I remember last summer (or was it two summers ago? Or even three??) when a buddie of mine came over one day, and the flies were driving us crazy as we moseyed around outside!
So what did we do about it?
It just to happens that my dad had trimmed a bunch of branches off of the honey-suckle plants in our backyard. Now, the thin, whip-like branches make excellent fly-swatters.
...So now, picture me & my friend, armed with switches & a broom, waving them wildly around, swatting a all these extremely irritating little flying things, with my dog going on with it, having a very fun time! After doing that for a long time, (and it was fun running through the grass, watching the flies all pop up like grasshoppers) we stopped, and decided that the bug population had gone down a little bit.
Anyway, I just now thought of that, and I'm glad that there aren't as many of those pesky things in our yard yet, as there was then (I'm just glad that they aren't the giant, biting & blood-sucking horse-flies & deer-flies).

So back to the constant posting.
Today I'm making an Animal Lover record in the history of this blog! I have never made more than 5 posts in one month! but today, that's an exception! I think I'll be posting a lot more often, basically because I don't have much else to do, and because I feel as if blogging is a good, productive type of thing to do. Much better that time-wasting games & social net-work gossiping... (you can read my post titled Social Net-Work Madness, for more input on that).
Besides, don't you enjoy having more to read, and more to read more often? And hopefully, you're rejoicing over my better spelling & punctuation, though I have quite a long way to go yet...
But anyhow, I hope you do enjoy reading this kind of mindless typing & what my fingers have to say -- in contrast to how I'd say it with my mouth. I've often found that typing things can be a better way to talk, purely because you can undo errors, and put words in better form, and make it sound the right kind of personality that you want it to be. That when it comes to presenting it, I sounds better to the one who is listening to it ...or in this case, reading it.
But maybe, that's the reason why people have struggles with communication...
I have an example of that:
A couple hours ago, I was up in the Sissu tree, just enjoying myself, reading, but also feeling a little lonely as I often do (although my very thoughtful dog will stay in the side-yard as near as that gate as he can so as to keep me company). So then the neighbor drives up in her nice white car, and opens up the door. This neighbor is one of the only people who have actually seen me climb up and get out of the tree. So I thought I'd say good afternoon to her.
"Good Afternoon!" I said
Then I see her look around, trying to figure out where the voice came from.
"Up here" I explained with a little laugh.
But uhh... nope! She still just looked around on the ground, and I guess she decided that she was hearing someone else's conversation.
The worst thing about that, was that it made me feel pretty dumb-sounding. You know how your voice never comes out in the sound that you want it to? Well it does that all the time to me, especially when I haven't spoken in a long time...

See what I mean? there's a great example of miss-communication!
I often see how other people are not communicating right, but almost never see it in myself until it too late! Pitiful! So maybe that's because of the way that us people, who live in what we call a civilized nation, hook ourselves up to gadgets that let us type, and then re-type our thoughts and words. And then, when we actually use the vocal cords that God gave us, maybe we don't realize until it's too late to 'backspace', 'italicize', & punctuate our errors.
But then maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself.

So the morals of this post are these:
#1. Know that my posts will be pouring on you quite often.
#2. Beware of fly-season.
#3. Before talking to people out of a tree, please try not to make a fool of yourself like I did (this is a warning).
#4. We should fear the future of communication, if the future of the world is to have people hooked up to their little gadgets all the time.

Oh! and one more thing, tomorrow I plan to make a post about a new book that I'm reading (thanks Mrs. C for reminding me about Jo's Boys in one of your comments!).
Of course, that's only a plan, and even though I don't plan to get abducted by aliens from Neptune tomorrow, I could still happen (on second thought, I don't think it could because aliens don't exist, but oh well...).

-A.Lover

Being Branchish

Taa Daa!
This is my newest place to hang out -- in the front-yard tree!! One of the worst things when we moved (at the time I was six) was that we had to leave our old mulberry tree behind. Ahhhh, that was one of the greatest climbing trees! we had to make a rope ladder to get up to it, but once you were up, since the branches were all strong and big, you could venture all over the place. It was perfect in the summer (when it gets 100+ degrees) because the giant leaves would shade EVERYWHERE.
Of course, being a mulberry tree, it was horrid in the spring time because they are really really bad allergy trees. But aside from that, it was great!
After we moved to a newer neighborhood, I was disappointed because with newer neighborhoods, there comes younger trees. So when we got a little Sissu (neat name for a tree, huh?) tree I was pretty impatient in waiting until it could be big enough to climb.
Well the day has come!
The tree has a couple little window-like spots that look out at the rest of the neighbor hood. And it's very hard to see that anyone is up there -- so now I can plot a little water balloon revenge...
It's still not very big, and can only hold one or two people in its branches, but I love my little Sissu hideout!

Keep leafy!
-A.Lover

Listening & Rambling

La la la!
No, I'm not exactly in la-la-land, but I'm just listening to a song on my computer while typing. The song is that song at the end of The Voyage of The Dawn Treader film. I think it's sung by Carrie Underwood (yes it's actually a song with words), I really didn't like it very much, and I'm usually not a big fan of female vocalists. But I really really like the lyrics for this song. And I know that Carrie Underwood is a Christian, so I think it's good that she did this song. And it is kinda catchy. And now it's over.
Hang on, let me press the replay button.
What? I said it was catchy! and anyway, since I like the lyrics so much, I'll try to memorize them...

So new things, new things:

#1) Today I spent a lot of time building card-houses, and climbing a tree.

#2) If you've noticed, I am spending more time blogging.

#3) There is a good chance that... (hang on, the song ended again...) ...I'll be able to ride a horse that will be boarding at the stable I ride at. This horse has been here before, I think for training, and then her owner moved him to another stable or something. Anyway, I think that I'm gonna be allowed to ride her whenever I want. Hopefully this will turn out kinda like the half-lease that just ended this month that I was doing with another horse named Lady.
It also just so happens that when this horse that's coming (I think) was here before, I took a picture of her and I put her in a post. You may remember her, her name is Jazz. You can... (gotta press the re-play button...) ...see that post back in January 16, 20009, or you can... (hang on again...) ...just look at that picture posted right here:

#4) Umm. What else? I've decided that I didn't... (Ya know what? I'm just gonna make that song play itself over & over again. Instead of making myself do it. Why in there world didn't I think of this sooner??) ...really like the Eragon book, on which you can read my review three posts ago, but then I haven't read the next books. So maybe that's not really a fair judgement.

#5) Today I showed off my duck tape bag-backpack thing I made yesterday afternoon and evening.

#6) I am still extremely happy about there being behind the scenes interview stuff on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader double disc pack. You can read about all that at my other blog DragonsFly99.

#7) Me & a friend (you can read her not-so-recently-updated blog at Totallyhorsecrazy.Blogspot.com) are trying to write a book out of our heads. And currently, I'm trying to put it together on a blog, but I am very against people reading it because for one, I think people might think it's weird & kinda dumb sounding. And for another, it's outta my own head, so for now, I will keep my head a secret!
In other words, I'm not gonna tell you the address! (unless of course, it turns into a published book, that's when I will give you a signed copy).

#8) That 8) makes a very silly-looking face... I've rebelled against making faces out of typing thingys, just because it's not really original -- I mean, it seems like everyone uses those! -- But ya'know, it is kinda neat. Just this post I will do a bunch: 8D 8) :7 :) :D L= |= O= d= =7

#9) I have now listened to this song on repeat five times (it's on repeat for ten times) ...oh wait, it just started number 6!

#10) I have now written ten things. (Oiy) My computer time is almost up, and ten is a good number. I'm finished with this!

That was quite rambling.
So anyway, this is my 79th post, I'm excited because on my 100th I plan to do the traditional write-100-things-about-yourself! ...That might be easier said then done...

Well, see yaz!
-A.lover

PS: I may write the lyrics to this song on another post.

A Wednesday 'o' words

I just think this is extremely funny! (If you have read 'Footprints in the Sand' you'll think this is even more hilarious!).

The Strange Prints In The Sand:


One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, "What have we here?"
Those prints are large and round and neat,
"But Lord they are too big for feet."

"My child," He said in somber tones,
"For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait."

"You disobeyed, you would not grow,
The walk of faith, you would not know.
So I got tired, I got fed up,
and there I dropped you on your butt."

"Because in life, there comes a time,
when one must fight, and one must climb.
When one must rise and take a stand,
or leave their butt prints in the sand."

It's really funny and really true. There are times when just sit there pouting, but someday we have got to get up!

-A.Lover

Mr. Pitter-Patter-Paws' Profile

Isn't my dog so good-looking?
Good afternoon! I just finished with school, (yeah, I know, a bit early isn't it? but don't forget, I'm home-schooled, and this is one of the advantages...) so I thought now is a good time to show you the newest pictures I took of Arlo (notice the new collar).
I been thinking about what I would say if I wrote about my crazy dog, so I shall finally put it down here. Besides the first post I ever wrote, which was about him, (way back in 2008 when I didn't know how to write good at all) I haven't really told you about him.
Well wait, let me correct myself, I talk about him, but not about him ...you know what I mean right?
Well anyhow, as I posted before, I got Arlo in Tucson Arizona (close to where I live) from a lady who buys dogs from animal shelters, then fosters them until she can find someone who will give them a home. Well, after having Arlo for a few days, she may have realized what a task she had cut out for her with that 'find someone who will give them a home' ...easier said then done with this dog!
Of course, I don't know if that's true, but we are talking about a pit bull-boxer mix puppy, who got his training too late, and who will knock you around, scratch you up, and will literally pull a nine-year old around on their face while chasing a rabbit (hey, that's what happened to me...).
So anyway, she had her work cut out for her! So the for years and years, ever since our old dog, named Doogie, died, (and he was the most phenomenal dog to have around kids) I wanted another dog. I have been a dog-lover since before I could remember, so naturally, I begged my parents for one. Being very little at the time, they told me that they will wait until I can feed, clean up, and give enough attention to a dog all by myself (with their help if I really, really needed it). That was disappointing for a while, but one day, my aunt told us about a friend of hers who was fostering a dog (yes, you-know-who). I was extremely excited because my parents had been saying that maybe we could get a dog (this was about when I was seven by the way). So after my aunt went back to where she lived, she called her friend, saying that we were interested, and would like an interview... well to me, instead of interview, I was more thinking a time to meet, and buy my dog. There was a problem with that though, the lady who was fostering this dog already had an interview scheduled, so we thought we had slim chances... Nuh uh! Boy, I am so happy and thankful my dog is the jump in your face, I-don't-care-how-many-times-you-tell-me-not-to-do-it type of dog, because after those people's scheduled interview, my aunt called, and said the people weren't interested! Right after she hung up, I called a friend to announce that I had a dog!! (of course, I didn't but I thought I did then). It was quite ironically awkward when the friend asked me what my dog looked like, because I didn't know!
So a few days after that, we drove down to Tucson, and met the dog and foster at my aunt's house. All of my wanting to get a dog excitement made me completely blind to this puppy's faults (and when I say puppy, I don't mean little, cute, snugly puppy, I mean, big, almost full-grown, hyper puppy). You'd imagine a little kid's first dog to be the calm, collected, be there for you always, older, experience dog... uhhh, well, that's the opposite way to describe this dog! but I loved 'im anyway!
We took him home the next day, and got him a dog house the day after, (which is still standing on our porch, but much, much nastier then it was when we first got it).
That summer was one of the most fun summers I've ever had! I spent a big chunk of the day out in the 100 degree weather, just hanging out with my new dog! It was then that we got to know each other, and that's when I became his closest buddie. See, we don't have any other dogs for him to hang out with... in fact, he's what anyone would call (ahem) 'anti social' so I became the dogglikeyest friend that he had!
We've had Arlo for about five or six years now, and in that time, the pink skin that spotted his black muzzle got white fur, and the white fur got in bigger and bigger patches, and now it's flecking all the black, but that white fur is turning gray now!
Another thing that's different, is that over time he has gotten slightly more mellow, but only with people he's met many times before!
My dog has taught me a lot... Most of the time I know what he's thinking, by the way he has looked at me, or pulled back his ears, or pawed my arm, trying to get me to shower him with attention, (I think he's right-pawed most of the time, but pretty ambidextrous). After reading books that people have written about dog body-language, and watching how Arlo behaves, I can read almost any dog's thoughts, and I often feel as if sometimes Arlo understands what I say out loud... for example C'mon (Come on) will often get him to follow me around when said the right way, and other little things like that.
Anyhow, Arlo does have some very bad habits, for example, after teaching him how to bark (he never did before we got him) so that we could add 'Speak' to his amount of tricks, he has turned into a very barky type of dog... Oh why did we do that?!?
When we first go him, we didn't realize that he was going through his chewing stage, and of course, we hadn't really dog-proofed the yard or anything! So after we got him, we went through with chewed up water-noodles, a rug that had is borders riped and un-raveled, (we just threw away that rug last week-end) wood beams that had bite-marks in them, chewed flip-flops & socks, pool toys got demolished, and once he even chewed a hole in the bottom of his food-container, so that it would spill out unending like a bubble-gum machine! To this day, he is still obsessed with food, and we still have to keep his precious little kibbles in a metal trash-can container, with the lid tied down!
Well, as I've said I've learned a lot about Arlo, but one thing I've realized, is that though I know how to push his buttons, he knows how to push my buttons! In fact, Arlo's best communication is with people! he knows how to maneuver you to give attention, food, and playtime to him... and he is still perfecting his techniques!
So I'll wrap it up with another one of his pictures!



See ya!
-A.Lover

A bit on a book reveiw (and more)

Well, Hello! Been a little while since I've posted huh? I've been wanting to make a new post for a while, but I decided it would be good for me not to get on the computer for a week (besides to use it for school). Well, I think that was a good thing to do, but it did keep me from blogging...
Anyhow, I have a couple things just to type down. First is that I am getting my nose poked into Eragon. A friend of mine, in bloggy town she goes by the name of Dbug, (Doodlebug97.Blogspot.com) who is crazy about the series of books Eragon belongs to. So of course, she lent me the book (more like forced me to take it, stating the "my life was not complete until I read it"). So of course, I took it home with me (by the way, you may have never seen a book so 'used' before). Okay, so this happened Sunday night, and if you don't already know, it is Tuesday evening right now. Now this is a 60(?) chapter book, (I'm counting the prologue as a chapter) with the chapters averaging 5 pages. That makes it 497 pages long, and I'm on Chapter 46(?) which is page 333. I dunno, ...do you think that's impressive? I s'pose it is (by the way I have learned the I love saying and typing the word s'pose).
So what do I think of this book...? I'm trying to figure it out. My friends and my brother know that I can be extremely critical with movies, (you can see that on my other blog Dragons Fly) and it's really hard for me to find a book that I really really like for longer than a month. Of course, my never-will-be-less-favorite-and-always-close-to-my-hart-books are The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of The Rings. Actually, fairly recently I've found two others that I do like very much: Little Men and My Side of The Mountain.
So to figure out how much I like this book, I'll compare it a bit.
These are 5 thoughts on it:

1) This book seems interesting
2) This book is kinda violent
3) This book is a mix between The Lord of The Rings and Percy Jackson & the Olympians series
4) This book is written by a okay author, but no where close to CS Lewis or Tolkien
5) This book really does mention a lot of people bleeding and dying

The book is set in a world not too much unlike Tolkien's, in fact, (I'm sure the author didn't intend this) some of the names can be found in both books. This isn't really a good sign. Books need to be original, so maybe the lesson here is to be careful if you are writing where other authors have already touched down.
The setting is a teenage boy, who's only family is an uncle and cousin, finding a dragon egg, then, when the egg hatches out comes the dragon, and he learns he can use telepathy on it to communicate. Well, the creepy, evil, weird bad guys try to find him because they don't want him to become too dangerous. His uncle gets killed and dies and all that, then he runs away with some old guy who knows a TON about the old secrets about the elfs, dwarfs, and dragons, and all that other stuff. The kid gets trained by the old guy, and his world is completely turned upside down. Basically, in the beginning it's a story of revenge, then it gets turned around to a story of being hunted. Quite a lot has happened in this book since I started reading it almost two days ago. And you start to learn that you can't be sure of who is going to die in it.

Now, I need to organize my critical thoughts on the good and bad about this story.
For me, It's just a little... weird. I know this sounds hypocritical, because of course, 'Narnia, and 'Lord of The Rings is kinda strange too. But somehow for me they are different. The Lord of The Rings books are a bit weird at parts, but not too bad. And The Chronicles of Narnia are really great (and when I say great, I mean awesome).
But Eragon just seems a little weird at some points...
On another hand, this book (so far, remember, I haven't finished it or anything) is really kinda cool. I mean, what's more neat than a kid who can talk to his dragon in his head, and is a awesome sword-fighter?

So all-in-all, this is an okay book, that I may\might read again but I'll have to read further into the series... Another thing is that the series isn't even finished, and of course, I'm only on the first book! I'll have to check back with you later on all of that.

Next off, I'll type a bit about Mr. Pitter-patter-paws as is one of his new nicknames. Of course, you know that I'm talking about Arlo right?
My crazy dog is doing great! in fact, after I'm done here, I should probably feed him... Anyhow, I don't know why I keep lamenting on this but we got him a new collar. I know, big deal huh? but it's an actual store-bought collar! Lately, we have been making him home-made rope collars (which are really cool, but don't look as sharp). I'll have to get a picture of him on here with it on before he makes it nasty and grimy like I know he will...

Last Saturday was really fun, we spent the whole morning on cleaning our yard (it's all nice 'n tidy now!), then I jumped into the pool for the first time this year (let me assure you, it was cold). Then, when it started to get dark out we made a fire (in the fire pit) and burned up a bunch of the dead leaves and thorny twigs we've had sitting in the corner of our yard for a very long time. And, of course, you can have a bon-fire without roasting marshmellows and makeing s'mors. I did attempt to re-heat the left-over hotdogs from our refrigerator over the fire, but that only left one side cold and one side hot... (I have little open-fire roasting experiance, save for roasting marshmellows).

Oh! by the way, Dbug's (one of my friends) mom has a very neat blog that I am trying to catch up on that you can see at Cricklsnest.blogspot.com so check it out!

Bye for now!
-A.lover