Sunday, August 16, 2009

Vacation


I know what you are thinking, Are you ever home? Aren't you always on vacation? It may seem like it but really we aren't! In my family the entire summer was vacation meaning the Horn's would not be home the entire month of July so don't bother looking for them in town or at church because they won't be there. It looks like it has carried over to me as well and the vacation bug struck again. The two of us went down to Brown County State Park in southern Indiana to camp in a non-electric campsite it even had only pit toilets by us (but flushing and showers at the end of the loop). I cooked all of our meals while camping even when it was raining or just horribly muggy over the fire in the dutch oven. Go here to see our menu for the vacation with recipes. Also in Brown County we went to the town of Nashville Indiana, mostly it is not my favorite place and I find these towns really annoying because people spend their ti
me in the shops with junk you can find at any hallmark store instead of going 2 miles down the road to one of the best nature sites in the state! It really bugs me, but not nearly as much as Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge in Tennessee. (okay sorry about the ranting) We didn't buy much from any of the shops while there because other than the fact it was mostly junk it was way over priced. But three stores did get our business the first purchase was for the car it was an air freshener because it smelled like a mixture of smoke and musty, not fun. The second was a music shop the was selling everything for 60% off so we bought cookie cutters and buttons for our hiking backpacks. Finally we purchased some paintings...Okay we're really cheap and don't own anything for a house except one chair, a kitchen table and an organ, that's it. So we found (right next to a really fancy art gallery where our favorite was a mere thousand bucks of our single digit savings account) a wonderful place Affordable Art where they sell rip offs of your favorites. They were having a sell for 50% off everything including frames so we decided that our splurge for vacation would be a painting. First we bought a nice painting of sunflowers with a pretty white frame then while walking back to the car we decided to go and get our second choice as well because we wouldn't have a chance to come back for sometime and that way we would have something of ours to hang up on the walls of our house, so we picked up Starry Night too. While we were at the state park we did a hike and a scenic drive through the park and spent a lot of time inside the tent hiding from the thunderstorms that were sending water into our tent despite our tarps. We got a decent amount of reading done, I had to steal Phil's Philanthropy books before we left the house and make him take fun books for vacation-if you bring books for school/work it makes it less of a vacation. Right? He ended up reading Bridge to Terebithia and I read Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, check it out here. After packing up and leaving the park we stopped by the Indiana State Fair got lots of free stuff and yummy grilled cheese sandwiches and crazy straws from the dairy barn. If you couldn't tell we had a great time and hope to head back south again sometime soon, hopefully when it isn't raining.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

A bragging moment...

I just need to brag a little bit here. I now have my entire life in scrap books! I have from baby through age 21! How amazing is that, I mean how many other people have that much stuff all in little books with pictures and notes. (Okay I don't really want to know and have my moment ruined.) Most of the credit goes to Mom who did from baby to senior in high school, though I did help. But today I finished off the rest of it, for now because sadly enough it will never be finished until I'm dead and somebody decides to put my obituary in it. I was talking to Phil about it the other day (scrapbooking, not death) and how it just makes a big mess and doesn't do much then he told me it is just a blingin' journal with pictures and junk. Now here is the dilemma: What do I do with everything that didn't make it into the scrap book, it might work in a page down the road or it might just be junk I hold onto for a year, What do I do?!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

To My Adoring Fans...

Okay so I know that there are probably like 5 people who will read this but still I can pretend that I am really popular. (right?) It is so nice to have July over and done with. I have been counting down for it to finish up since about my birthday, the beginning of the month. With Phil being busy working about 50 hours a week and me working about 10 I get really bored with being around the house and July means its going to be hot and sunny, two things I don't really like well I like the sun when it isn't super bright and blinding. My favorite season is winter, I mean really lots of cute thick clothes (that hide everything!), cute winter coats and warm hats, snow, ice skating, the dreams of school cancellations (which I still listen to every morning), no swim suits, sunburns, or any nasty type thing, oh yeah and No Yard Work! Except scraping the sidewalk only to the car, because they haven't heard of a thing called sidewalks next to the street. Some exciting news for the month though, I have officially changed my major! I am now a general studies major with minors in Elementary/educational studies, geography, educational technology, and human psychology, and maybe one more in biology but I haven't really decided. Textbooks are going to be expensive this semester but last semester neither of us had any so it will equal out. My schedule is so much easier than it was going to be with a practicum and all methods classes. I am taking Geography 101, Math 125 (I tested into a calculus class, but it has been 4 years since my last math class, so algebra will be good enough thanks), Educational Psychology 270, Some class on marriage, edtech 360-this is a class I am super excited about because the university provides us with a kindle for the class to decide if it is useful in a classroom setting! I am going to throw in one more class for good measure but I haven't decided which one it was yoga but they dropped the time that fit in my schedule. Well also this month our weekends were packed full of family and traveling all around Indiana. All of the pictures are from some of our random trips this month. The first one is of us on a boat ride on the Dixie in North Webster, the next one is a cake I baked for the anniversary of the moon walk (the yellow thing is the moon), The Dixie again, and a trip to the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo!