stuff is coming together /// January Recap

Life Things:

Lots happened.

I'll do my best to keep it all in order.

Lydia and I were able to get registered for college classes. Both of us are trying out the full-time student deal. So far so good for me. I'm taking four classes, only one of which is online, and going to the same college we have been attending, just at one of their other campuses, which happens to be a 76 mile drive round trip. We were able to organize the classes so that they would only be on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I am over the roof excited because I like all of my professors.

We went skiing up in Colorado. We were going to go to New Mexico, but they didn't have any real snow, so Mom was able to figure out changing us to Colorado. All of us ended up happy with the change of plans, even if it meant a few more hours on the road. We got there on a Friday and left the following Friday. The drives were both uneventful. We stayed in Pagosa Springs, and skied at Wolf Creek, where about 11 years ago we had roadtripped up on Christmas day (would not recommend roadtripping on Christmas day unless your car never needs gas because nothing will be open).

Somehow a nasty cold managed to work its way through some of us. Christian and I took the hardest hit, Gabe and Mia both had a fever at one point, and I think a few people had sore throats. We were also going through a ton of kleenex. So that kind of got in the way of a few things (we weren't sure that Christian and I would be okay to ski the first day on Monday, but we did anyway, and ended up miserable the next day).

Mom and Uncle Phil both don't ski, but everyone else went that first day. It was very warm. We didn't really even need gloves on for most of the day, and we all ate lunch outside without our coats on.

Those of us who had first learned 11 years ago and hadn't skied since, and those of us who flat hadn't ever skied spent the day in ski school where they taught us very helpful things like how to stop and how to put your ski back on and how to stand and anchor yourself on a downhill slope while the one person who had bad luck getting their skis fitted correctly to their boots trial and errored their way very slowly down the hill that took us all an hour to get down but should only have taken about 20 minutes (not any of us). *cough*

Aunt Lauren and both Nana and Grandfather all enjoy skiing, and so does Dad. All of us kids decided we wanted to at least try it out the first day before thinking about doing a second one. Lydia decided not to ski the second day, as did Nana and Grandfather. Christian had fun snowboarding.

On Tuesday, those of us not sick went out to Durango to walk around and see The Greatest Showman.

Wednesday was game day. Uncle Phil had organized a Quiddler tournament (quiddler is a word game), and everyone had fun participating. Ava, Mom, and Gabe won.

Thursday was a second ski day for those who wanted. We all enjoyed it much better than the first. Ava and Gabe were little speedsters. No joke. I was the slow one for the first few runs. Mia also did fabulously. It was nice and sunny for the morning, then clouds rolled in and we got some light snow in the afternoon. It was all so pretty!

Crashes and falls on the slopes:

Lydia had a few royal wipeouts the day she skied, and even ended up in a ditch a couple times.

Someone crashed into me from behind (*hears it coming* "sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrry!" *kerflump*) the first day, and I almost hit a tree. And of course a few more small ones. I didn't fall at all the second day.

Dad had the biggest humdinger though. He and I were a little further back from the rest on the second day, and Dad's just gracefully going along, minding his own business and considerately making sure that he's not cutting directly in front of anyone, then along came a couple snowboarders. I saw it in slowmo. The guy crashed into Dad. A cloud of snow poofs. Dad goes down. The other guy ends up in front of him. Dad's skis are way up the slope, and he has no idea how he ended up where he is.

And Friday we drove home. Guys, I love mountains. There are some things that Texas just doesn't have, and one of those is snow-covered mountains.

College classes started on the 16th. Like I said, I love all my professors. All of them are on the older side and remind me very much of my grandparents. I am taking Horse Evaluation 1 (to put it in basic terms, being taught how to look at a horse to determine how well built it is), Farm and Shop (teaching skills you would need to have around a farm or shop- pretty self explanatory), Horsemanship 1 (which is, by far, the class I have been looking forward to the most, where they teach riding), and lastly, online College Algebra, which I am not exactly pleased as punch to be taking, but I needed to take four classes to be able to join any of the teams; speaking of which.

The college has a competitive judging team for horse-related events, which has scholarship opportunities as well as other general life skills as benefits, so I will be a part of that this semester.

The Civic is complaining about how many miles he has to go now, and gas is kicking me in the shins, but everything is going great and I love every minute of it!

I've still been looking for a job. I lowered my bar from horse related work and applied at food places. I got pretty far into the interviewing process for Panera, but before they could give me a definite answer, Chickfila offered me a job. Well I took it, mostly because I had thought it would be a good fit (never needing to worry about working on Sundays sounded nice), and I am still determining whether or not I made a good decision. I am working an evening shift and then two other closing shifts, and they've put me on making the salads, wraps, and fruit cups.

The last shift I worked just about did me in. It was slow to start because it was the middle of the afternoon and the morning crew had almost overdone the amount of stocking that needed to be done. Then they had me make something, and in the process of making whatever it was, we ran out of one of the favorite salads, and I didn't have enough of all the things I needed to make it, so I had to restock the things I had run out of before I could do anything else. But then other people were ordering other salads omitting an item or two, so I had to make those too, and over all that we ran out of fruit cups. And it was the dinner rush, and I was the only one doing prep for salads etc. To top it off, one of the managers asked me to stay and help close, so instead of getting off at 9, I didn't get off until a little after 11, and I didn't let Mom and Dad know because my brain pretty much shut down and I completely forgot, so they were freaking out because I wasn't answering my phone. This was also on a Monday night. I have a class at 9:30 an hour away the next morning. Needless to say, I was extremely stressed. So that was fun.

Mom, Dad, Lydia, and I all got new phones (heavens no, not the X, I like my home button thanks very much). Dad's and Lydia's phones had both kind of been acting up, and since half of us with iphones needed new ones, Mom and I decided to go ahead and get new ones as well. Lydia took her new one in to the Sprint store first, then I took Mom's, Dad's, and mine and waited for almost three hours in the Sprint store for the old ones to be backed up and the information transferred to the new phones. The real kicker was that Dad's phone had over 30 gigs of photos on it, so it took forever and a half to back up.

Wow, I've been kind of a Debbie Downer. This isn't good.

*addresses self* I have a way to get money and a new phone, this is awesome!

Now wait a minute, I know there was more from this month.

It's warm enough for the windows to be open some days.

I started a photography instagram, if that is something y'all would be even remotely interested in. (here)

Random Stuff:

Lydia: *comes over to my room to ask a question about one of her classes* "Can you please confirm that I am doing the right thing?"
Me: *not even looking* "You are doing the right thing."
Lydia: "That... that's not what I meant."
Me: *grins*

Me: *gets out of the car and notices that the rooster is outside of the fence* *clears throat really, really loudly* *rooster skedaddles to the gate*

If y'all think I'm not the kind of person to roll all my windows down and drive slowly through the middle of a town blasting Les Mis, think again. Because I've done it on the way to and from class just about every time. No odd looks yet.

Barnyard Things:

One of my hens is trying to go broody, either that or she just really, really likes sitting in a nesting box with eggs in it for no reason. She kind of had to convince me to let her sit on them. I noticed her spending a lot of time up in the nesting boxes, but she would always let me take the eggs out from under her. So after a little while of her doing that, I finally told her that she could keep them. And she sat on them for several days, then decided that she didn't like the nesting box, so she moved over. Well, the six or seven eggs she had been sitting on weren't going to be good to eat anymore, so I cracked a few of them to see if any chicks had started, and at least one of the three had something in it, so I moved the three remaining eggs over to her new box and used them to replace the duck eggs she'd decided to sit on. So far so good.

I hope she is a good mother, otherwise it will be difficult for the chicks since it's still not even close to spring yet and if I incubate any I don't like to start them until around the end of April or the beginning of May, because Texas weather is temperamental and I don't want to take any chances of the chicks dying from an out of the blue cold snap.

Fred thinks he's a rooster. He's like that duck from Babe, except he doesn't want to crow. I've had to chase him away from the other birds if he's being particularly rough. I've even had to put him in a pen by himself for a few days. Jeesh. If anyone has any advice on how to tell him that he's not a chicken, that would be very helpful.

Music Stuff:

I didn't really listen to a bunch of new things this month. I didn't even make a playlist. Wow. After making a playlist for every month since August of 2016, I can't believe I broke the streak. o.o

Well, I mean, I did listen to music. After months of telling myself that it was going to be awful, I finally sat down and listened to the entire soundtrack of Broadway Newsies, which wasn't half bad actually.

Now there are some instances where they use words I'm not allowed to repeat (not nearly as bad as Hamilton, I must clarify. Man. I felt like I had to wash my ears out after listening to Hamilton), so that's why I'll not put it up on here. I don't want anyone surprised and then freaking out because I said it was good.

Yeah, but really I'm pretty sure that was the only really new thing I listened to this month. So here's my Broadway playlist instead. It's really long (13.5 hours). Perfect for driving to and from classes.

Posts of January:

The Liebster Award Hey look! I got a tag done in a timely manner!

Cats /// photo day My darling cats who hate each other.

I'll be honest with y'all.

I'm not particularly proud of how this post turned out.

I forgot things, and will probably remember them two days later and not be able to put them in.

I sounded depressed, even though a ton of really great stuff happened.

I should have started this post at the beginning of January and added to it during the month, or at least wrote down notes, instead I've been working on it off and on all afternoon, and then I scheduled it instead of posting it right away.

All that aside, how was your January?

What is one of your favorite songs/albums right now?

(I need suggestions!)

If you could bring anything from your imagination to life, what would it be?