Sandy hands (fact of my past self #3)

As a young'un, I was a clean freak.  Well, as much of a clean freak as a small-child-who-has-not-yet-experienced-reality can be.  In other words, if you put a picture of me in a high-chair eating cake and a picture of my sister in a high-chair eating cake side by side, you would notice that there is considerably less cake on my face.

According to my mom, I had quite the....scarring(?)....experience when I went to the beach for the first time.  I was just a toddler at the time, so there I was, venturing out into the sand for the first time with legs that had probably never seen anything but carpet, and *plop*, gravity gets the better of me.  My physical state was a-okay, but my mental state was having a slight breakdown as I noticed the unfamiliar, sticky, grainy substance that had happily stuck to my palms.  I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but I knew that whatever was on my hands at that moment was definitely not something I wanted there.  So I proceeded to violently shake my hands in a panicked manner with a look on my face that was probably a mix of Ron Weasley being faced with a hundred over-sized spiders and me when I found out that there were worms in my salad (which, coincidentally, also occurred at the beach).  I don't know what that expression would have looked like on my small self, but I can imagine my parents were rather amused.

Needless to say, my sister always did the dirty work when it came to the serious business of making mud pies.

*Insert creative title about trampolining here because I can't think of one*

My family and I took a drive over to Idaho Falls to visit some family this past weekend.  It was an absolute blast.  We did things like paint over my aunt's huge canvas (she did a painting herself on it a while back and ended up very much disliking it, so she told us to get out the old house paint and let our minds loose on it...but I'm bummed because I forgot to get a picture of the final product), watch their pet craw fish swim/crawl around the kiddie pool we were sticking our feet in, visit the zoo, go to a rock show (as in actual rocks, not music...it's where rock collectors can show off and sell their rocks and things they've made out of rocks...it's quite cool), make hemp bracelets and anklets, and of course, jump on their trampoline.

I've always wanted a trampoline for myself, but we never got one.  So whenever I visit my family in Idaho Falls, it's impossible to resist the temptation of jumping on the trampoline.  Now I know that you're not supposed to have more than one person at a time on one, but really, who does that?  It's way more fun to have three or more people at a time on it, and everyone knows it.

We played lots of games on the trampoline, such as chicken wars, crack the egg, waterfall, and whoosh whoosh.  I know what you're thinking: "What the heck is whoosh whoosh??"  That's one we made up.  And there's a bajillion more games that Paetra and Collin (my two cousins) made up as well (and waterfall might be one of them...and maybe chicken wars...I can never tell because their imaginations are always running wild).  There's also something that we do called "giving" and "stealing" bounces.  And it's just what it sounds like.  You have to time your bounce perfectly to either give someone a super high bounce or to steal someone's bounce to give yourself a sky-high bounce.  Bounce.  I don't think I said bounce enough.  Paetra is the master at giving and stealing bounces.  Well, Collin is too, but he's smaller and so his "given" bounces aren't quite as high.

By the end of the four days that we spent there, my body was sooooore.  We probably spent three or four hours everyday on this thing, at least.  Probably more.  I ate a ton while I was there, but I'm pretty sure I burnt all the calories that I gained just from trampolining.

And if you haven't fully wrapped your mind around how fun it is to jump on a trampoline, here's some pictures...

Invisible couch....

....invisible stool....

....invisible...car?

I adore Collin's face in this picture.  He just looks so undeniably happy.

Doing flips is always fun.  It makes you feel ninja.

Oh no!!!  Don't fall into the black pool of....bouncy nylon....

Piper (our dog) was extremely worried about us when we were up there.  She normally just barks and whines on the ground at us, but this time she actually wanted up with us.  (There was a chair right there, which is how she got up.)  After that she kept trying to get up on the trampoline, even after we moved the chair.  She was quite desperate.

She wasn't quite sure what to think of it.  We made sure not to bounce her so she wouldn't break her legs, but she was still really wobbly.

Collin was getting bored while Piper was up there.

Oh yes, and when we tried to get Piper off of the trampoline, she tried her darnedest not to let us put her on the ground.  We finally got her out of the net, but then she circled around the outside of the net around the rim of the trampoline.  I sadly didn't get any pictures of it, but it was quite funny.  Then she gave up and almost broke herself jumping off.  She's a complicated sort of dog.

Levitating!

Belly flops....they're painful.  I did them a few times but I apparently can't do them right because breaking my back seemed like a terrible possibility.  Collin loves doing them though.  It makes me nervous.

That was Lauren's attempt.  She was starting to go down on her belly but then decided that wasn't such a great idea.  I would have done the same, so I have no room to laugh. :)  But I still do anyway.

Just being silly.

Long hair was a pain on trampolines.

I wanted to lessen the amount of pictures, so I used my method of smushing a bunch together into one picture!

Flips flips flips!

Because we're secretly ninjas.

I hope you have as much  fun jumping on trampolines as we do! :)

Dream on (Fact of my past self #2)

I used to have an infatuation for spies.   My parents knew about it, and so they were kind enough to buy me spy-related things such as a Barbie doll spy and a spy gadget set (which included a flashlight/pen, "night-vision" goggles, a watch with some nifty accessories on it, and a motion-sensor alarm), and I thought I was set and ready for action.  My fascination with the idea of becoming a spy (of course, my idea of a spy was more equivalent to the Spy Kids version than to the government's version) got to the point of arguing with my best friend at recess in third grade about whether we played kittens or spies yesterday.  ("We played kittens yesterday.  It's my turn to pick what we play today and I want to play spies!"  "NU-UH.  I remember playing spies yesterday.  I want to play kittens." Etcetera, etcetera.)
I also started writing a story about my American Girl Doll, who I named Ebony.  According to my smaller and less knowledgeable self, Ebony was a kid who magically earned the police's trust, causally asked them if she could help with a burglary case that she read about in the newspaper that morning (and the police readily agreed to let her help...naturally), and with her spy kit that she received for Christmas, went off in search of the "bad guy".  Unfortunately, I didn't end up finishing it, so I'm unaware as to how Ebony managed to catch the thief.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to read a completely pointless story about my past self.  I know I have a pitiful amount of followers at this point (4, to be exact), but I would like to thank those who are following my blog. :)  Even if you're not following it, but you still bother to read my posts, you are equally awesome, I'll have you know.  But anyway, that's not where I was going with that.  I was trying to say that I apologize to my followers (and readers) for being so unpredictable with when I post a post.  I keep telling myself that I need to pick days out of the week to for-sure have a post ready to publish, but my laziness keeps getting a hold of me and dragging me away from being productive.  But I promise you, I will eventually have set days in which I will publish things, so that way you don't have to check every day to see if I posted anything or not (because I'm sure there are so many people who are concerned about missing one of my blog entries....).

Have a lovely weekend, my friends. :)  (I'm trying to enjoy my homework-less weekends while I can....only have a couple of those left.)