Prayer request

One of my dears friends younger brother, Noah, has struggled his whole life with a mitochondrial disorder. It is a very serious disorder and has no cure. He's only five years old, and been through so much. 

His oldest sister, Hannah, messaged me and told me he's very sick, and not responding to medication, which might mean kidney failure. She said they'll be trying medication one more time, but if he doesn't respond, they may only have 2-3 days left with him at the most. Please be praying for them.


If you want more info, you can go to his blog : http://www.prayingfornoah.com/

three days until Christmas O.o

the house is full of secrets 

older brothers teasing you about gifts

little sisters begging to show you the gift they got for you

                         

hyper little brothers eating too much candy

a mother who can't stop laughing at your begging

a father who wants to give the biggest Christmas surprise away early

                                                       
                                                 dogs who have no idea what's going on
                                        a cat who will soon be waiting on the roof for
                                  Santa if she doesn't quit waking everyone up at night.
                                                        a leetle turtle who just eats and sleeps
                                  a snake, who pretty much does the same thing as the leetle turtle

                               
                                      bedrooms doors are being slammed in peoples faces
                                         half a million random trips to Wal Mart
                                    because somebody forgots a whole bunch of stuff.

And now.. I have to go find a gift, I hid it so well, I can't find it.

wooooow. 

I do not think Aaron and Elijah are capable of being serious in a photo

                                                     
                                                         he's "all cited for Christmas'

                                                           
                             Rachel : "mawahaha. *starts laughing like crazy* lets make weird faces."

 
                                          he's all "super duper cited for Christmas"
       

                                                      I have the best siblings ever.

                                                             Sooo it's almost Christmas.

I'm really liking black and white pictures!

Surprise pictures are so much fun. I'll go running around the corner and yell at Rachel and then take a picture when she looks at me. I got a little close in this one :P

                                 Micah dropped and broke my ipod screen [twice]
                                       so Joshua put a lovely new screen on it <3
                 Eeeexxxcceeepppttt. He left two fingerprints on the LCD screen.
                                           He's trying to make me go crazy.

                                                       Monday is candy making day.

                                These little sparkly Styrofoam thingys make greeeeaaat Bokeh.
                                                                 Bokeh is a weird word...

        I think this stick is having a hard time deciding whether he wants to cry or smile.
                                              

                                                                      Hm.

 A few months ago I came across this song by Jon Schmidt. I then looked up a few other songs by him, and I was completely amazed. Then I happened to come across his youtube channel. [it's not *just* his channel] And from there, I just kind of kept going. For a while I wanted to stop piano, the music was getting harder and I didn't want to sit down and learn it all. But then I heard this  [by the way, that is my favorite song by him <3] song, and I was kind of like "Ah! I have to keep playing!" So here is one of my favorite video's Jon Schmidt has done. I suggest you listen to it, it's pretty amazing. [He is accompanied by Steven Sharp Nelson in most of his songs.]

                 


                                      And if you have a few minutes, go listen to these..
                                                          Rolling in the deep
                                                            Linus and Lucy
                                                    Michael Meets Mozart <<< [<3]
                                                            To the Summit
                                                              Waterfall  <<< [<3]
                         [I'm trying to decide if I want to do that one for a recital..]
                                                         Christmas Medley
                                                     Where are you Christmas?
                                                            Homecoming 
                                                              Ridin' West
                [this one is hilarious. He wrote it when he was 16 [somewhere around there?]
                               and he was inspired by a Tuna Fish commercial! :D]
                                                                 Dumb Song


                                                     

a post, from Rachel!

This wasn't my idea. Anna wanted me to make a post. I really don't know what to say. Actually Anna forced me to. She didn't shove me in the chair and say "Make a post" she just told me to please make a post so you see I was really the one who made the decision. Now do you see what I mean? It's really confusing. Okay, back to I don't know what to say. I had a blog, but the site that it was on changed. So I don't have one now. It was called Always Little. A friend made the template for me and that was deleted. I was so sad when I saw it. And all of my posts were deleted. I think you get the picture. Micah, one of my little brothers, is so cute! He's the cutest baby ever! He has curly blond hair and the bluest eyes and the cutest smile. I need to go. Bye!

and that concludes Rachel's post..

[i have decided. If I can't figure out what to post about, I will force ask one my siblings or parents to write a blog post for me]

I love shooting during golden hour, but nobody ever wants to pose for me or do hair flips. Rachel wanted to yesterday, so I took a few pictures of her, but they ended up turning into"oh, lets make faces and stomp on ant hills and have fire ants crawl up our feet" pictures. [by the way, I'm in the middle of redesigning my blog, so if things look weird...]

:P accidental shot

            aha. ignore my expression. I was trying to mimic Jack Sparrow and failed miserably.

a post :)

I've had quite a few people bug me about writing another blog post. So this post is for the people who have bugged me about it for weeks. [ you know who you are ;) ] Now that I sit down to write a blog post, I don't know how to start it. November has been a very very busy month for my family. And it's not even over yet! November 5th - 9th, I went with Joshua and some friends to a Pro Life camp in Denton Texas. Justice for All  goes to many different college campuses, so the "camp" isn't just in Texas. Though this is the second time they have been to UNT.  [ My mom took us all, Micah tagged along :) ] It was amazing. I didn't want to leave. There's so much stuff I could talk about, but that would make the longest blog post in history, so I'll just write a short version. 


 Sunday we arrived around 11:00am and began training around 1:00pm. We trained until about 6:00pm, not stopping at all. Our heads were crammed full by 3:00pm :) All of our mentors were amazing. 

very beginning of all the training :)

all together, I think there was about thirty of us, not including our mentors.


Monday we went out to the University of North Texas. I have never been on a college campus before. Well, I have, but for a seconds, not all day. This was not what I imagined college to be like. Justice for All sets up a huge two story museum quality display usually, but the weather wasn't very great, so they set up their smaller 8ft display, polls tables and the free speech board.

                                     

Basically what we did on Monday and Tuesday was stand around the display and start conversations with the college students. Almost all the college students we talked to wanted to give their opinion. Everyone had at least one interesting conversation. One of my mentors had a three hour long conversation with a student.

Joshua and a friend talking with one of the college students,
this conversation went on  for about an hour.
We usually started a conversation with "What do you think of the display" and usually the answer was "It's disgusting." Justice for All uses very graphic images to get across just how horrible abortion really is. 

a group of feminists set up a few tables across the sidewalk from Justice For All's exhibit. There was a bunch of chanting, circling around JFA's exhibit chanting, and a whole bunch of  rather heated conversations. [heated on their part.] The guy in the blue shirt was one of our mentors. 

    

all the people that went with us. [awesome] By the way, I am as tall as my mom, but I was leaning because Micah wasn't letting me hold him. Just thought I'd let you know that...

Along with going to the Campus and talking about Abortion, the four days consisted of a bunch of random conversations with friends, mini golf, basketball, ultimate Frisbee, practicing our chipmunk voices [ooh yes.], campfires, singing and a million games of Do you love your neighbor.
I really really really want to go into detail about this trip, but this post has taken me five days to write, and I can't imagine how long a full detailed post would take. So I will leave you with this post, and I'll try to write another one soon :)

-Anna

did you know....

you can't melt eggs?

Fail.

I need to post.

Yep. I do.

And I will. When I get back from Texas.

Remind me >.<

aye, that be my family.

The iPhone

Mom got an iPhone.

I never thought she'd do it.

Mom, texting?

Yikes.

The guy at the store was laughing at me.

Because I knew a whole lot about phones.

And mom was like "Uhm. is this one good?"

So I helped her set up everything.

And we sat on the couch next to each other and texted each other.

Which was weird.

Considering we were sitting right there together.

Emma said I needed to update.

I will.

Soon!

I promise!

Meet Malee..

After two years of waiting.. and waiting.. and waiting... we finally got our elephants back. They were sent to Tulsa for what was suppose to be a year, to meet this male elephant..... Finally, after two years, the Oklahoma City Zoo got what they wanted. A baby elephant! <3 Guys.. Meet Malee.. And her mom and aunt.. [I can't remember their names..]

I took about 50 pictures of her with her mom and aunt..

and about 120 of her all by herself.

♥

-Anna

yeah... well...

normal egg - Jeffrey's egg

ahaha. the picture kind of explains everything..

dear summer and fall...

Dear Summer,
I hate to say this. but I'm so glad you're almost over. I didn't enjoy you this year. well really, I'm not a huge fan of yours. you make it incredibly difficult to take outside portraits, with that big bright yellow thing stuck right in the middle of sky. but I suppose its not entirely your fault. I'll make a deal with you. if you aren't as hot next year, as you were this year, I shall not complain about you.

Dear Fall,
Thank you for arriving just in time! I think I would have done something horrible nice to Summer if you didn't show up soon. Today was lovely. thank you very much. now if you'd be so kind to keep it that way, I'd much appreciate it.

love,
me.

A picture loaded post [Part 6]

this was Tuesday. we went to mooville. in other words, we went and got ice cream. ice cream that had caffeine in it. caffeine. I like that word. a lot.

Rachel cracked me up when she sat on the barrel and posed like this.

half of my ice cream. I had eaten half of it before I decided to take a pictures.

the flavor is Java Chip. caffeine. again. I like that word.

Rachel held my ice cream while I took this picture. its harder than I thought, taking a picture and holding an ice cream cone. especially since it wasn't on auto focus. my bad.

Elijah made a bigger mess than Micah!

Grandma and Aaron

Dad was teasing me and said the cow's name was Annabelle.

"Annabelle"

Okay. this pig freaked me out. you'd walk near his pen, and he'd [she?] squeal and run towards you. and follow you around the pen. Micah had a weird fascination with the pig. I don't like pigs

O.o his teeth...

ahaha. you'll never guess who this is.

Justin Bieber!

One more post after this =)

-Anna

A picture loaded post [Part 5]

Tuesday we went to my dad's uncle's house. he has an amazing garden. pears, apples, peaches, blackberries, raspberries.. [just to name a few] he sent us home with a whole bucket full of blackberries and a huge basket of peaches. [I don't like peaches]

Joshua picking peaches

picking blackberries. [mom took all these pictures. she wanted me in the pictures.

though I *cough cough* have picked pictures without me in them]

Aaron, Elijah and Rachel picking blackberries

he was like "eat eat eat eat eat" the whole entire time.

Abi and her two favorite blackberries...

Dad and Micah

Uncle Ron with his grapes. [Concord Grapes] he makes the best grape juice ever. and those grapes are... too good.

this picture cracks me up. Micah walked around saying

"eat" the whole entire time we were there!

Grandma and Micah

Mom and Micah

eat!

he said "mine" whenever you asked him for a bite

haha. I never knew he could eat an apple like that

Aaron. He ate three apples!

our big basket of peaches. ew-yum.

and.... cookies, rootbeer and this rhubarb stuff. [yes, its pink. yes, its got rhubarb in it. but its like my favorite dessert ever. I had way too much of that...]

Just one or two more posts. I promise!

-Anna