Sister Road Trip 2009

Well Katya and I embarked on our first ever road trip on Monday. It was quite an adventure. We headed to Hanover P.A. around nine-thirty in the morning with a small Agenda list thingy.

We listened to all our favorite music, sang along at the top of our lungs, and we talked and talked and talked.

Katya became quite the photographer in the car...I suspect she was a little bored. So here is the world from her perspective.

Oh and did I mention that red lights are perfect for sister photoshoots?

Katya seemed to like the yellow cars. I, however, am still partial to gunmetal gray.

Another Duckie Truky as we call them.

Well I forgot to take pictures I guess of our time with Aunt Joy. Haha somehow we managed to complete the entire road trip with only pictures of ourselves...anyways, we had a lovely visit and then around five went to my grandparents house for the night. (But before I go on I must state that I hate one way streets and think cities should learn to function without them. They make for very long, confusing trips through town.)

Ah yes...a sleepy picture for you.

And a silly one.

Coloring in the kitchen.

I was excited to be going to bed while Katya seemed a little less thrilled

Tuesday morning we spent time with Aunt Phyl and Uncle Bill and watched the inaguration with our grandparents. Then we headed home...and listened to all the same music. =) We don't like change.

We had an uneventful drive home and will be planning our next road trip soon. Probably sometime in June. Maybe next time we will venture farther out. China is still in the planner for my 35th birthday!!!

(I just like this pic and pretty much had to include it.)

First time

I took the trash out for the first time in my life today. And I felt like everyone should know.



~Josie

To Maintain a Healthy Level of Insanity...

Someone my dad use to work with sent this to my family...

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point aHair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.
3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Frieswith that.
4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In."
5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone has GottenOver Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.
6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Smuggling Diamonds".
7. Finish All Your sentences with "In Accordance With The Prophecy."
8. Don t use any punctuation.
9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.
10. With a serious face, order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat.
11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go."
12. Sing Along At The Opera.
13. Go To A Poetry Recital And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme.
14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play tropical Sounds All Day.
15. Five Days In Advance , Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend TheirParty Because You're Not In The Mood.
16. Have Your Coworkers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.
17. When The Money Comes Out of The ATM, Scream "I Won!, I Won!"
18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking lot,Yelling, "Run For Your Lives, They're Loose!!"
19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner. "Due To The Economy, We Are Going ToHave To Let One Of You Go."
20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity......Send ThisE-mail To Someone To Make Them Smile.

It's Called Therapy

Am I Strange?

Photo Credit: Anna L.

So the other day, I was thinking about those getting to know you games where people make you write down something wierd about yourself, you place the paper in a hat or basket or something, pass the hat around....you know the drill. Anyways, so I was reflecting on how I didn't really like those games cause I could never think of anything to write down except, "I don't know how to start a car." And now that I do know how.....

So....I asked myself the question......am I strange? And here is what I came up with.

1. I can clean bathrooms, mop up throw up, scrub windowsills infested with dead flies and cob webs, scrub the bathtub with nothing but a toothbrush, and even enjoy doing it, but I simply cannot stand to wipe off the kitchen table. It’s not that I find it gross or anything. It’s just a pet peeve I think. From getting a paper towel or wash cloth wet with warm water, to emptying crumbs into the trash can…it just makes me feel sick. I do everything in my power to get out of cleaning the table. Sometimes it involves paying my little sister to do it, or offering to make my mom’s bed for a week. But I will do almost anything in order to stay clear of that chore.
2. I write the date and my name on every piece of paper that I use. And it really pays off. Recently I’ve started writing the time on documents that I know I won’t be turning into a teacher. Like journal entries, devotions, study material, class notes etc. It helps me remember the important things that were going on. It’s totally worth taking the extra 20 seconds to write Josie – and 9-12-07 and 3:00 pm…or whatever.
3. When sitting in a chair, on a sofa or in the car, I almost always have my right knee up…like with my right foot on the seat of the chair. (Unless I am at a class, with an employer, in a dress, or with people I don’t know very well.) This is absolutely the best way to sit when relaxing.
4. I have taken the trash out twice in my entire life. There is an easy reason for this. Because I have two older brothers. It’s not that I refuse to do it or don’t like to or anything….the reason is that it’s just something I have never had to think about. If I ever live by myself, someone will have to call me to remind me to take out the trash.
5. I started drinking coffee when I was nine. For a while it was just twice a week. Then when I was eleven it became a daily habit. Now, I am enslaved to it. If I don’t drink a cup before the first thirty minutes or so of being awake, I will be sick for the morning, or until I get coffee. One Wednesday, the coffee wasn’t made by the time that I had to leave, and I had a headache until 5:30 pm. Which was when I finally made another pot of coffee….so yeah.
6. I color coordinate my closet…and other peoples too. I like to look at my clothes all hung up, and see them all neatly organized. If I have colored hangers, I try to put them with clothing of the corresponding color. (Once like three years ago, I bought an orange shirt just because I didn’t have any orange in the orange section. I never wear it though.) Before Jen, Lizzy, and Katie had so many closets, I use to organize theirs too. I have also color coordinated some of the closets for ppl that I babysit for. (Don’t worry….I get permission to go in the closet first.)

That's all. Everyone watch the Really Rosie videos. They are movies from my past....=) I like the top one best.
~J

A Summer Picnic with Friends

One warm day in Summer, Kristin had Liv, Lidsey, and I over for a picnic! (And it's taken me this long to put a blog post up about it!) Kristin made us this super good chicken, served with salad, potatoes, iced tea and many more yummy things. (She is an amazing cook!) Anyways, after a hike out to the perfect picnic spot, which involved crossing a river with two picnic baskets, a huge towel, four purses, two cell phones, eight pairs of flip flops, and four lauging girls, and a lovely meal and LOTS of talking, we decided to do a short photoshoot with Liv's camera! Here are the pictures. We played this senario game, where each person takes a turn shouting out a senario right before the timer on the camera goes off. Here are the good ones.....
"You just got the part that you wanted really bad in the musical!"
......Haha, I don't remember this one! But I like Kristin's face the best. =)
"You just got proposed to!"
"A bird just pooped on your head!"

Well that's all. Have a good week everyone!
~J

The Daily Puppy

I would like to introduce you all to Alfie the Jack Russell Terrier. (No...he doesn't belong to me...I wish!) The other day, Evan showed me this. It's called The Daily Puppy, and everyday you can read about him and look at adorable pictures. Alfie is my favorite one so far. You can check out more pics of him at: http://dailypuppy.com/index.php?itemid=1295.

Hope you all enjoy your last bit of summer....

~Josie

YAYE! =)

"Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya! Tomorrow! You only a day away!"

Cape Cod!!!

On Monday, Anna and I leave for Cape Cod!!! We will be driving up with Uncle John and Aunt Nancy to meet up with the Silards and Kristen to spend six days at the beach...shore...whatever. Ahh! I can't wait. Yesterday, Anna and I went shopping to get last minute things and I finnaly used my Boarders gift card to purchase the O.C.R. soundtrack of Beauty and the Beast! We are going to wait to listen to it until we are in the car on the way to the Cape so that we have something to look forward to about the eleven hour car ride. It is very tempting not to open it up, and stick it in my cd player...but I think it will be all the better if I wait. =) Lizzy has a blog full of beautiful pictures of the water, and the sand and the dunes and stuff. http://sandyneckfotos.blogspot.com/.

While I am away, I hope to read through All Things For Good, by Thomas Watson. It's a wonderful book that Anna let me read while we were at the beach together in the beginning of the summer. Then she bought me my very own copy, which I have been saving to read for Cape Cod. I highly recommend it! (Though I have only read the first twenty pages or so.)

Summer has been amazing...I have like ten hours now, so that's good. My dad finnally let me put on the radio while driving!!! So that was exciting.

Enjoy your summer!
~J

Summer is Here!!! =)

I realize it has been quite awhile since I've posted. Summer has been awesome. Way greater than I ever expected! God has blessed me soooo much! I actually just got home from the beach yesterday. I did a wonderful job of allowing the sun to burn me...hopefully the swelling will die down soon. (And yes, I did put on sun screen...it just didn't work I guess.) It was so great to spend time with my mom, sister and my mom's sisters and thier kids. I have like 27 cousins on my mom's side and every year we get this great beach house for two weeks. We don't all fit in it anymore. So for the first four days of the two weeks, it was just my Grandmother, my mom's two sisters and thier kids and us. One of my cousins is living in Ocean City this Summer but other than that I was the oldest cousin there. That was just strange, cause I'm like ninth in the line up. But we had a blast. It was good to be at the beach with everyone again. On the way home we listened to the Orginal Broadway Cast Recording of Les Mis. I forgot how good it was. I found myself in tears most of the time because of how beautiful the music is. (Is "is" a preposition? Cuase if it is then I just broke a grammer rule.)


I got my permit about a month ago, but I still have 57 hours to go...so it'll be awhile! But driving is fun. My dad is constantly telling me to use the gas pedel...cause I forget about it. (scary....I know.) And I cannot understand how to fill in the manuel thing that keeps track of your hours....so I have to like figure that one out still....

I've been zipping through my booklist. Right now I am reading Lost Moon. It's about Apollo 13 and written by one of my mom's friends who writes for Time Magazine. It's quite good.

~J

Edit: I just realized I said, 57 hours to go...what I meant was 53...

Well, we've done it again...

Yes, I know. Anna and I are just strange sometimes. But guess what? Now we have a reason. But first a little backround...

Anna and I have known eachother for about eleven years, so we are pretty much the same. We speak similarly, though her grammer is much better, we say similiar expressions, we get eachother into things, and out of them etc. So, the other day we decided to make Tuesdays, "do everythng out of the ordinary day." And believe me, we did.

First it started when Anna wanted to walk in the street to avoid getting grass that someone had mowed all over her shoes, or I should say mine, that she was wearing. So she walked in the street. I stayed on the sidewalk however, and pulled her back. Then, I realized she was right, and I wanted to walk in the street too. So we both started walking in the street. Once we had passed the newly mowed lawn part of the sidewalk, we went back on the sidewalk. Then we realized that our neighbor who was mowing is lawn was lauging hysterically at us. So, we determinded we would rather appear insane than blonde, so we walked in the street again and so on and so forth until we got back to my house. We needed an explination for our behavior, so now, as I said, Tuesdays are do everything out of the ordinary days.

We contined this throughout the afternoon by doing our history questions either standing on the bed or lying on the floor. We also sang dreadfully out of key for a bit, and a few more things.

That's all. There isn't anymore.

Pictures from Spring Break

This is a stump. That I took a picture of.
(And yes I just ended a sentence with a preposition. Kill me.)

Frederick is so beautiful. There is this little pathway

to the, no joke, one-room library. .

And Katie let me take some picures... but I shall have to post the rest later...

P.S. Everyone go to Anna's blog. She posted a wonderful bible verse in a creative way. Her blog is listed in the "links section."

Just Because....

Mike Catoe, Mike Bowden, Mike Catoe, Mike Bowden, Mike Catoe, Mike Bowden...everyone happy?

~J

P.S. For anyone who is wondering what that was about please see earlier post. Thanks.