Wait! Don't leave me! I finally came back!

Wait, what?  I'm not dead?  Then why haven't I been blogging??

No reason really.  I would say that I was secretly called by the government to go undercover for whatever you go undercover for the government for, and then after that my brain had a heart attack and my spleen suddenly erupted and I had to be in the hospital for however long I haven't been blogging, and then found out that my cat had a seizure and started going on a rampage and eating peoples' big toes and so I had to take her in to a cat doctor to get her checked out only to find that it was only a silly little infection that had gone into her brain and taken over it and it would wear off in just three days and 22 minutes.

But I would be lying if I said all that, so I'm not going to.  In other words, I have no excuse other than laziness and lack of self-motivation, which I suffer from quite often.

I've been thinking though.  I, for one, am quite interested in the things I do in my life.  For example, vacations.  But does anyone other than me care about the road trips I've been on?  Because I'm fairly certain that no one else really truly cares about the octopus I saw at the aquarium in Oregon.  They get bored of scrolling through 20 pictures of zoo animals and sunsets.  Am I right?

I don't have an interesting life.  I can't mask that fact through the pictures and words.  I'm not a professional lion tamer and, believe it or not, it's true that I don't go undercover for the government.  But I am going to take a stab at writing more interesting blog posts.  Not literally.  I don't want to have to buy a new laptop.

That was supposed to be a joke.  If you didn't catch that.

I'm actually not entirely sure where I'm going with this particular blog post.  I just felt like I had to make sure you understood my philosophical thoughts on writing blogs.  Even though they weren't at all philosophical.  But that's about as deep as I dare go with an audience....I mean, I don't want to intimidate anyone with my scary-deep thought processes.....

Let's play a game.  It's called: how often can Erica stray onto completely random rabbit-trails while not even having a solid topic in the first place?  Is it possible to get off topic when you're not really sure what you're talking about anyway?

Well, I'm off to catch some bad guys and get into gunfights and perform epic acrobatics to knock out some teeth.  Don't worry, I'll blog about it later.

(Let's play another game.  This one is called: how many questions can Erica fit into a short blog post that her viewers can't actually answer because Erica isn't actually talking to them?
**Spoiler Alert!**
Answer: 7, but she could probably fit more if she wanted to.)

The zoo and other things

I suppose it's safe to say that I have been neglecting my blog.  I haven't been feeling super inspired these past few weeks because, well, school.  You should know how it goes.  But I felt that I should finally take some time and post about something, so I did.

So, as you know (if you have been reading my past posts, that is), we journeyed over to Idaho Falls over the summer to visit some family.  Well, believe it or not, trampolining isn't the only thing our trip consisted of.  I.......

Ate a huge pile of dilapidated eierpuffers,

Watched the painfully slow process of a tortoise walking five feet,

Oogled at this adorable...thing,

Squeed at another adorable beastie,

Went "aww" at the cutest baby lemur I ever done saw,

Watched as this lemur had a freak attack while the other lemur looked to us for help, 

Held a staring contest with this monkey,

Felt an urge to hug this little white-mittened, thumb-sucking monkey, 

Attended a whatever-you-call-these assembly, 

Was slightly disconcerted under the gaze of this demon-bird,

Watched a mama wallaby carry her baby wallaby around in her pouch, 

Kind of wanted to join the king of the jungle as he slept in the sun, but was, at the same time, content on the other side of the glass,

Saw lots of zebra butts,

Wanted to be friends with this lonely-looking baby zebra,

Encouraged this guy to do an award-winning dive into the water, only to have him turn his back on me and waddle away,

Still can't decide if flamingos are cute,

Was weirded out by the camels,

Almost lost a cousin,

Won my first game of Khet against the cousin previously mentioned, but then got stomped on the rest of the time by that same cousin,

Observed the same cousin as he hid behind a napkin,

Was excited by my turtle napkin holder,

Petted Madeline as she chilled in her house,

Played a few rounds of disc golf,

Watched as my dog enthusiastically enjoyed the cool grass,

Attempted to balance on a fence but failed miserably,

Went to my first drive-in theater and saw Despicable Me 2,

Ate popcorn,

And ate popcorn whilst watching Despicable Me 2 in the drive-in theater.

I again apologize for the lack of posts recently, but I will try to start getting into the habit of it again!  (Getting into the habit of posting, rather, not getting into the habit of failing to post.)

   

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! :)