Catch Up 3: Everything Else

So, the past two days I covered everything from the holidays that I'd missed, today, I'm just going to finish it off with everything that happened between January and May.

First up: I learned to knit!

On my way back to Ames for the Spring semester, I stopped at a Barnes & Nobel, where I found a really cheap knitting kit on clearance. I had been talking to a couple people about how I'd kind of wanted to learn, so I impulse bought it on sight.

And I made a scarf!

After I started knitting grandma found this (very) old skein of yarn in a desk and gave it to me. I took me well over an hour, maybe two, to untangle it. :p

Then I started buying more stuff and started a new scarf.

It was done in just a couple of weeks!

I was pretty happy with it!

Then I got some ring looms to help me knit hats.

These were for Shaina, and she loved them. :)

There was a flock of Canada geese on central campus one day!

They just made themselves at home.

There was a lot of melting happening, so maybe they thought it was a lake?

In late January I came home for a family get together, (where I took no pictures) but since I was going to be home, and since we'd had so much fun at the last one, and since we'd already been planning to binge watch the brand new Netflix Series of Unfortunate Events, my cousins decided to throw another themed tea party.

It was not quite as themed as before. No real decorations or costumes.

A lot of it was just stuff they wanted an excuse to make. Like more scones. :p

And eat. :p

Some of the sandwiches had mushrooms on them.

And some had horseradish.

If you've read book 11, then you know why these things are appropriate. :p

I don't think the tea was themed. I just wanted a picture of my cup. :)

Peppermint cream cheese bon bons.

Peppermint being the themed ingredient. Book 3, the Baudelaires were allergic. :)

We also had cold soup. (See book 3 again. :p)

These were basically Little Debbie cakes with gummy snakes frosting'd on.

A nod to the Incredibly Deadly Viper from book 2. (And 13!)

And that was that event. Like I said before, I didn't take any picture at the family thing I'd come home for, but Jackson was with us too, and I did get a couple pictures of him. :p

He was getting swaddled. :)

So cute! :p

The next big thing might be news to you if you haven't seen me in awhile: I got contacts!

I've had glasses since I was 6, so this is kind of a big deal.

This was a picture I took to text to Shaina when I first got them.

The next event was another trip to Minnesota. I was doing a job shadow at my cousin Kyle's workplace, and Shaina and Sasha came along for the ride so we could visit Mandi and Co. Sadly, I again neglected to take many pictures. :( I did take a bunch this one night though. :)

Trinity decided to bury Shaina alive. :p

She wanted me to document it.

Shaina found it hilarious. :)

Then Trinity decided that wasn't enough.

She wanted to model.

And then she wanted my phone. :p

And proceeded to take pictures of everyone and everything.

Most of them were of the floor and halves of faces, so I pruned before posting. :p

Mandi knows what kind of kids she's raising: Goofballs. :p

Awesome goofballs. :)

My last big event was another job shadow, and I did take a few at this one. I was applying for an internship at IPTV. (PBS) I didn't get it, but I had fun that day anyway. :)

I sat in on two episodes of Iowa Press.

In the first episode they were interviewing former governor of Iowa and former US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.

It was so interesting learning a lot of behind the scenes stuff!

They had these guys standing in the offices.

I think I remember them from PBS pledge drives when I was a kid!

And that's pretty much it. I didn't photograph much else. I am however photographing a LOT of things this summer as I am building a portfolio of my work, photography and otherwise. To do that I'm going to lots of different places and taking a ton of pictures, hoping I'll get just a few awesome ones I can show off in a portfolio. But that means I have tons of other pictures that don't quite make the cut that I can just post on my blog for fun! So stay tuned! I've got lots of stuff coming! I'll leave you with this one picture I took after I got back to Harlan this summer. :)

Minnesota Adventure!

In August my cousins Shaina and Sasha and I went to Minnesota. We wanted to go to the Mall of America, and visit my cousin Kyle, who works at an awesome graphic design company. My cousin Mandi also lives near the twin cities so we stayed with her for almost a week.

The first day we were there we ended up babysitting while Mandi was stuck at the cell phone store getting her phone fixed. Which apparently didn't even happen and they kept her there for hours. We didn't go anywhere that day, but we ended up having a lot of fun anyway.

The girls took to Shaina right away. They were like instant best friends. :)

Trinity insisted I take a picture of her handiwork here for some reason. :p

And also herself.

She is a ham. :p

Here she told me that this was a mother carrying her baby in her mouth.

It did not look that way. :p

Sasha went to Walmart and came back with coloring books and craft supplies for the kids.

Trinity and Afton ended up coloring with Shaina and Sasha, while Tanner, Cody, and and I played video games on our DS's. I think we accidentally segregated ourselves. :p

On one of the days, not sure which, Mandi and I noticed that we accidentally wore matching shirts.

I didn't get a picture, but she posted on Instagram, so I borrowed that. :)

The next day we went to the Mall of America, where I finally broke down and bought what would become my first Funko Pop figure. The first of many. I bought a bunch more before the end of vacation. I should do a blog post about those one of these days.

I also took this picture to send to my cousin Sarah who wasn't with us. We both love Kid President, and I found this doll of him at the mall.

The next day we went to visit Kyle at Ultra Creative.

Shaina found their arcade machine from the 80's and was hooked.

Shaina has a huge thing for all things 80's. :)

Before we took the tour, we went out to eat at an awesome brick oven style pizza restaurant.

Trinity was more interested in playing with Shaina than eating her pizza. :p

Later that night, back at Ultra Creative, we all got the grand tour.

Kyle's brother, Trent came along too. :) Uncle Dick was there too, but I've been through my pictures like three times, and apparently I didn't get any pictures with him in them!

Ultra Creative has all kinds of awesome surprises. :)

Kyle showed us some things that his company has been working on.

And some stuff that he's done himself!

If you see any of these halloween monster cereals out there, just know that Kyle drew the box art!

There are so many cool rooms around Ultra Creative.

This room has soundproof padding, windows that turn opaque, and a TV hidden in the table!

These look like wood or something, but they're actually kind of a soft foam.

Ultra Creative has a huge library of creativity boosting books and magazines.

There are also scooters that you can use to quickly get around the entire office. I rode one, and I managed to do a full circle around the entire floor, but I don't have any pictures of it. Which is probably for the best. I was probably within inches of killing myself. I felt like I was anyway. :p

And that's all my pictures! We did other things on our trip, but a lot of it was just shopping and playing with the kids, so I didn't have my phone out to take pictures. I guess we were just having too much fun. We loved spending time with Mandi and the kids, and everyone loved hanging out together. Mandi and Shaina were instant kindred spirits, just like I knew they would be. (Seriously, I'd actually been saying they should be friends since I was a kid. :p) We all had so much fun that we're already thinking about going back. We'll see what happens next year! :)