Over Half Way Through

Well guys, the summer is almost over; with a month left of no school, I'm thinking about how I've spent so many days doing nothing. But that's what summers are for, right? Right? But I haven't been lazy the whole summer.

As most of you know, as soon as school got out I hopped on a plane to Arizona. I spent over a week there having fun with my family.

On the 4th of July instead of buying fireworks, we decided to travel downtown to watch the big show they do every year (and by we I mean Teacher, her boyfriend, RC, and me). We got there a couple hours early and swerved through all the people to Dockside to get gooey's. Then we sat by the water to watch fireworks. It was a blast.

Yep, we were Camp Champs!

Mid July I spent a weekend at the youth camp with my church. It was pretty fantastic! We played games, ate good food, and worshiped Jesus! It was definitely the best summer camp in the history of ever.

I also went camping a couple of times, hanging out with the fam, fishing, getting dirty, the works.

We made pickles one day and my shirt smelled like dill for a couple days after that, until I did laundry of course. Teacher and I went on photo adventures, we tried new baking recipes (including some delicious rhubarb pie cupcakes), and trying yogurt instead of oil, which is super tasty.

The yogurt substitute for oil was because my parents took the oil camping with them and I wanted to make brownies. So I scoured the internet to find a suitable substitute. The options included melted butter, other kinds of oil, fruit purees such as applesauce, and yogurt. Seeing as how we were out of applesauce, I used vanilla yogurt, and I was fantastic. (So fantastic that the mice in the trailer bit through the bag and ate a huge chuck of them). Needless to say we threw out the brownies and bought mouse traps.

Comic Con happened. I didn't go, but it happened. I spent a couple days after it was over watching all the videos and getting the scoop on my favorite TV shows (this is an acceptable time to call me a nerd). I spent a week geeking out over these things.

I also had to say goodbye to one of my amazing friends, MarMar. Right now she's in Thailand learning and having fun. I miss her dearly and I can't wait for her to come home. You can check out what she's doing here.

I also went to go see an amazing play called Bye Bye Birdie at the Kroc Center. One of my very best friends was in the show and let me tell you, she's pretty fantastic! It was Dancer and me that went and I had to sit next to the old guy because I'm older.

So here I sit in my room listening to Spotify, it's lunch time and my stomach is growling. There's yearbook camp stuff sitting next to me and I need to go to Target. Tomorrow I'll wake up early and leave for yearbook camp, which is exciting! We're going to learn all about how to make a yearbook amazing and how to use so many different programs and how to make great layouts and everything. This next school years yearbook is going to be amazing.

Speaking of this next school year, can I just say "blech." I'm not looking forward to going back to school. Having to do things and talk to people is not my idea of a good time. But it has to be done. And who knows, I might actually have fun. I am excited to create the yearbook though. So many good things are going to happen for the rest of the summer and the next school year, I can feel it.

RC, Teacher, and Me

Rhubarb Pie Cupcakes
(Spice cake with rhubarb-strawberry jam filling
And a scoop of cream cheese frosting)

Arizona

Fishing, day One

Robinson Lake