Surprise! · 6:31pm August 21st

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I had considered making a blog for the tenth anniversary of my FIMfiction account, but stuff happened and I forgot. Oops. So, I decided the next best thing would be to make one on my birthday.

_{Yikes, I can't believe I'm 30 now...}

Anyway, just want to let you peeps know what's been going on since you last heard from me.

~ I got a new job: A substitute lunch lady (same as my first job haha). The only thing I really hate about it is waking up pretty early in the morning, but other than that, it's kind of fun, and I get along with most of the lunch ladies I meet. Also, I get summer break off, so I don't have to worry about asking for time off when we have a summer vacation.

~ More lambs have been born over the months, and they are always the cutest things. Despite the fact that we have the butcher come to take them when they're roughly 6 months, we still name them and love them. My sister Artsy Notes gets especially attached to the ones that get rejected by Mama Gabby (who we've dubbed the worst mom out of all our animals who became moms, thanks to her pattern of rejecting one of her twins every time she has lambs), thus Art picks up the slack and bottle feeds the reject. It's been three who have been rejected thus far (Angus, DeMandi, and Oreo), but it's a big enough problem that Dad's getting annoyed and is thinking of getting rid of Gabby.

~ We got plenty of snow the last couple of winters, enough that the spring runoff caused quite a bit of flooding. Even the river behind my house was running fast and full, and it even swept someone away who was unfortunate enough to fall in it (when Dad heard the news of a woman in her 20's falling into the river he was worried that it was my sister Marshmallow Wings, given her tendency to visit the river; he was relieved when it wasn't her).

~ There was a period of time last year where my mom and sister had been spinning wool (hey, we had to do something with the sheep's wool). We even got a couple spinners and other tools to help with this task. We ended up with quite a bit of homemade yarn.

~ I've also gained a reputation in my family for making macarons... which, to be fair, I've gotten a little fond of, especially on occasions where I can share them. Heck, cousins say that they'd take mine over store-bought any day, especially since I've gotten the art of making those things (which have a reputation for being a bit tricky) mostly down, though sometimes they come out wrong and I'm left scratching my head over where I messed up. Oh, well, they're always delicious.

~ Brother and Sister-In-Law have been moving around a bit (military, that's all you need to know). Currently, they're in Maryland.

~ Cousin Golden Tree had been talking a lot about a Hot Springs resort that she often went to with her in-laws, and for my birthday last year, we decided to finally go to said Hot Springs. It was actually quite relaxing, even though some of the pools were closed for one reason or another (maintenance, beginning of the school year). We went again a couple weeks ago, this time with Golden Tree and her husband, and we got to experience the other pools (and the water slides, yippee!). She recommends to visit it in the winter, especially on a snowy day, because it's magical.

~ Mom went on a trip to England with her sister last fall. She had a good time.

~ Also went into a haunted corn maze for the first time last Halloween. I was alternating between screaming and snarking at everything I saw. One moment that stands out to me in that adventure was when I noticed a little girl crawling on the ground behind me. I wanted to ask if she was going to bite my ankles, but it came out as, "Are you going to eat me?" And she answered, "Yes." That exchange makes me giggle whenever I think about it.

~ Golden Tree had a baby (I'll refer to him as Corn Muffin) last fall, a couple weeks before Halloween. He's such a cutie! He gets bouncier and gigglier every time I see him, and he's now at the stage where he's crawling everywhere and getting into stuff. Since we're one of the closer relatives to their house, we're a babysitting option for when Golden Tree and her hubby go somewhere they can't bring Corn Muffin. Mom does have a bag of baby toys for him to play with (but the Muffin will play with anything he can get his hands on).

~ For Christmas last year, we discontinued our practice of having one real and one fake tree because the real ones are getting to pricey, so now it's two fake trees. I booked a train ride for our family months in advance and it was a nice ride with some delicious hot cocoa and cookies, and some fun Christmas songs. We even had dinner at a nearby restaurant afterwards. Though, we ended up having a couple extra tickets because my brother and sister-in-law were unable to fly over for the holidays that time. However, we did make use of one of the tickets, giving it to my sister's fiancé. Which leads me to...

~ Artsy Notes got married. Somehow I missed that she had been dating someone for the past few years, at least until last year when I actually met the guy (I think I'll refer to him as Cowboy, because he comes from a ranching family in the country three hours away). Pretty chill dude who seems to get along with basically everyone and barely bats an eye at my and Marshmallow Wings' quirks, so it's nice to have him as part of the family.
The wedding day was on May the Fourth ('cause they're Star Wars fans), and the weather was perfect. Brother and sister-in-law were able to fly over here for the wedding, we took a lot of pictures and enjoyed the weather and flowers and such, and even had a random impromptu dance circle while the groom's family took pictures with the newlyweds. Had a barbecue dinner (with not much for picky me to eat, but oh well, what could I do), and then we had a nice little reception at the church (I made lemonade cookies that were served there--I wanted to contribute, okay?). True, Marshy decided to go nuts when the bouquet was tossed, to the point of pretend stabbing everyone around her with her prize.
Overall, it went quite well. Hilariously, it snowed the next day.

~ While Big Bro and his wife were still here, we went down to Arches National Park (except the newlyweds, they went off on their honeymoon), and I finally got to cross "seeing Delicate Arch up close and personal" off my bucket list. We even got to enjoy a close up view of Double Arch too, and enjoyed a few other formations before we got tired and headed to the AirBnB for the night. Went to Dead Horse Point the next morning, and it's a beautiful site no doubt, but for the sake of my sister-in-law, who needed to have lunch that we didn't pack, we skipped Canyonlands (and now I have a desire to have a fresher memory of that park, as the last time we were there, I was nine).

~ Then, in mid-June, we visited Bro and Sis-In-Law in Maryland (and yes, we had the newlyweds with us). It was my first time ever riding a plane and I was really nervous the entire day leading up to that. We departed from Salt Lake close to midnight, and arrived in Baltimore three hours later as the sun was rising there... that kind of time zone change gave me some wicked jet lag, and the first thing I did when arriving to Bro's house was... actually to take a shower, but I took a nap straight after.
Of course, over that week, we had to go see as many of the historical landmarks as we could--Fort McHenry, Washington D.C., Gettysburg, Mount Vernon... as a family of history nerds, that kind of thing was irresistible to us (Bro and Sis-In-Law had work, so it was us visitors exploring the area most of the time, though our hosts were available to go to Gettysburg and Mount Vernon).
There's a lot about our Maryland trip that I could be talking about, but I'd be rambling a lot about some standout moments that were either funny, profound, or irritating, and I better move on to the next point (you are free to ask for one of the standout moments).

~ We had a steam train called "Big Boy" roll into Utah on the Fourth of July, and Artsy Notes (who's been driving back and forth between us and her in-laws since getting married, as she still works at the amusement park) was so excited to see it, as she's been fixating on trains lately. We saw it again on the 20th. It is indeed a big boy, with a big whistle to match.

~ And to close things off with our last big news: Big Bro and Sis-in-Law are expecting a baby. The little guy is due in December, and how could we ask for a better Christmas present than a grandson/nephew?

M'kay, that's all. Aside from wanting to draw more of my original content, I can't say much else. Have a nice day.

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