July 5

No picture! Yet another intense day at work. We hit capacity at 3 pm and I had to answer angry phone calls all day. Not good... One thing that made me happy was that I found this lost girl who was about 1 1/2 years old I would guess. I was holding her and walking around to try and find her mom and many people at the park were concerned and immediately started helping me by asking around. We found her mom quickly! Still frustrating that she was lost in the first place, but to get help instead of havoc at the waterpark is such a nice change of pace. I also took an intense splinter out of this kids hand. He was extremely thankful asked if I was a doctor. I said no but I will be one day :) It was very heartening lol. I guess I can't take a picture of everything!

Fourth of July

The 4th was a CRAZY day at work. We hit capacity in the afternoon and on top of all things it was 95 outside! The heat combined with the holiday made the patrons crazy. Talk about stress! Between the fights, missing children and angry customers- I was more than happy to go home and be with my friends later that night. Kp, Erika, Babs, Jared and I went to Kaitlin's neighbors to watch the Sylvan Lake fireworks. They are always my favorite because they have such unique fireworks that I have never seen before.

Baby ducks on the jetski :)

After the fireworks Babs made us hot chocolate from Germany which was delectable! Erika and I were being so hyper, I loved it! We gave each other foot massages. Oh did I mention Jared gave me a foot massage eariler? It was lovely haha. I am too spoiled!

Summer time and the livins easy... (for today at least)

I would love if everyday could be like last Saturday :)
Work out w/Kp and Jared in the morning and then we went over to Jared's with Babs and Erika. Laying in the sun, on a beautiful lake with friends, food and drinks ;) it was just lovely. I need to get pictures still from the girls.
I am glad I got to hang out with Babsi for a long time!
The fireworks on Lake Oakland this year were pretty awesome. The boat we were on was right underneath them and it looked like they were going to fall on us. The only bad thing was that I had a terrible head/neck ache : (

July 2

Worked all day- can't remember anything significant that happened which I suppose is a good thing. I came home exhausted! Claire surprised me with her gorgeous new haircut :) She is wearing one of my favorite shirts in this pic, but its ok because she looks good in it lol

We watched Boston Med which is just about my FAVORITE new show :) Even though I know I may never make it to a big time hospital in an awesome city like Boston, I hope that I can at least make it to being a doctor because I can see myself doing what they do. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

You are as wonderful as your dog thinks you are :D

Thursday was yet another day that I had off work. Woooot! I woke up pretty early and texted Kaitlyn Campbell to see if she wanted to hang. I went and picked her and her adorable puppy Lucy up to go to the Bark Park. I forgot how much I love that place! I think that I could go there to settle a divorce and somehow still be okay. (If that makes sense- to me it does)
Poor Lou was too sick to go :'(  last year when I took him he nearly passed out. I didn't expect that other people and their dogs could make me so happy! Before we got there, Kaitlyn bought me Caribou Coffee in exchange for me driving out to Lake Orion. It was soooo good! Like I posted before- Caribou cups have cool affirmations on them- one I posted as my title :)
Anywho, I got some very cool pictures! I am so thankful for dogs, parks, sunshine, and good friends :)

Beautiful day

Lucy (on the left) making new friends :)

Look at that goofy dog on the left haha

Run Lucy Run!!!

Lucy learns to swim:

Testing the water...

a little push...

oops!

You can do it puppy!

Yay she can swim! (Thank God lol) She was a very good swimmer too :)

This guy was having lots of trouble haha. He was so cute though!

 After swimming, Lucy found a new friend who was also a puggle (beagle/pug), named Miley. I do not understand how dogs have such endless energy!
Back home I spent 3 hours trying to make bread that failed... I refuse to post a picture of it until I get it right! The yeast was bad and let me advise you all- Kosher salt and Iodized are VERY different. I will redeem my failed attempt sometime soon if anyone is interested in joining moi :)

Totes Magotes

Wednesday (the 30th) I got to sleep in till 11- no work, yay! :) I stayed in my sweats all morning/afternoon. Claire and I watched, I Love You Man, a movie I fell in love with when her and Araena came to visit me at GV :) I just think that movie is soooo funny. Brilliant. Kp wanted me to go work out with her and Babs but too much coffee hurt my tummy and I was being laaaaazy. Oops.

 (yucky picture! haha)

I finally got dressed and worked out for like 2 hours at Mott. I was so proud of myself! Except this fricken girl I work with who was like in the army before was working out next to me and all pumping iron and running 20 miles. pshhhh. Oh well.
Shower at home and then Karla came over! :D Her, Claire and I went to church at 7:30. It was nice to finally go, I have been bad lately! The music was pretty good, but my voice has been gone so I did not sing along. Lammmmme. (And I hate singing in front of ppl unless I am at school). The message was about Revelation 3. How the different churches are dead, and lukewarm.... to be honest it was brutally long and I tried sooo hard to pay attention but it was just not my night.
On the way home, the freeway was closed so I kept driving into downtown Rochester and we noticed people parking everywhere and sitting on the side of the road, which could only mean one thing- fireworks! We decided to be spontaneous and join everyone. We ate at Arby's and layered on all the extra clothes I had in my car because it was cold out. The fireworks were just "okay," but I still had a lot of fun. I forget how lucky I am to live in a city surrounded by lakes! There are different fireworks every night for about a week and they are always amazing :) I am really glad that this summer I am getting to hang out with my sister's more. It seems like we were not that close for a couple years and we are finally at the age where things that happened in the past don't matter anymore. Love it<3

Ooh I almost forgot about the bug tragedies at night ROFL. Poor Claire saw a huge spider and no one believed her, so all night she was paranoid because she is like deathly afraid. She woke me up because she thought she saw a spider twice, one was a moth and one was a mosquito so I squashed both. Later I woke up because she screamed and ran to my room. Sure enough there was a HUGE spider in the bathroom that was black and hairy, so I killed it. THEN when I was finally about to fall asleep I heard her scramble out of bed and burst into my room because there was and earwig about her bed. EWWWW! Poor girl. I could not help but to think that it was absolutely hilarious. Why are people afraid of such little creatures? Anyway- I let her sleep in my room with me which made for an interesting night of sleep. To help forget about the bug troubles we stayed up and watched If I Can Dream. Lovely :)

You Say Goodbye- I Say Hello

Tuesday reminded me of The Beatle's song, HelloGoodbye (Yes the song that the Target commercial overplayed and tainted) I dropped Gram off in the morning at the airport and Kp picked up Babsi at the airport in the afternoon.
I woke up at 6:30 and grabbed some breakfast to go. We got to the airport just in time for Grandma to make it to her gate. Sleepy me forgot my camera and my phone! So many photo ops I missed that week sheesh. It was beautiful weather out this time! I had to try pretty hard to not get sad when I said goodbye :'( Have you ever had to hold back tears and it almost hurts worse than just letting yourself cry? Well that is how I felt. I didn't want to make mom upset though.
I got to go back to sleep when I got home because Rachel and I switched shifts and I didn't need to be in to work till 1:30. Very nice! Being back in my cozy clean room was nice :) I took this picture before I left to work of a squirrel sleeping in my front yard. The first mess up picture actually looks pretty sweet I thought.

 Can you blame me for being in love with squirrels?

Work was pretty simple, wooot! When we were cleaning I was so confused because someone was calling my name. I look up and see Kp and was like,"what?" and then I saw she had Babsi with her, which I had completely forgot about! I probably freaked her out because I ran and gave her a huge hug. I feel like I know so much about her from Kp but she barely knows me lol. Oh how soooo much has changed the past two years...
I was kind of bummed back home I think because I was missing Grandma already, and because although seeing Babsi was awesome, it reminded me of a sad time in my life :( . Ok this song is super sad but I REALLY love it and I listened to it on repeat before I went to bed. It seemed fitting and the guitar part is absolutely beautiful. Listen to it if you get a chance :) City and Colour is amazing<3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b-cazkmLnU&feature=related

Bubbles and Bats

Monday morning I woke up with Ziggy (Karla's cat) licking my face : D He is sooo adorable! He is probably the nicest cat in the world. (Marvin you lost your 1st place spot when you left me for St. Louis!) If you don't know who Marvin is, you might as well not be reading my blog lol.
Anywho, it was a lovely peaceful morning in Karla's apartment, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE her big comfy bed! I went home and made a lunch before work and a squirrel followed me to my car and I swear would not come out. I was so occupied with watching him I was almost late lol. I was so happy because the lovely managers let me leave at 5 : ) !!
Back home I was still pretty mad at my dad so I stuck with Gram all afternoon. When she went out to smoke, I went outside with her with intentions of blowing bubbles..0o0o0 :) I made a bucket list a while back with I believe 54 items (and counting) and one was to get to know my Grandma Purdy. I feel like I can now check that off of my list! She has such happy presence and I feel like I can talk to her about anything- even if she does not agree with me on certain things.
It was super nice because when I got home Karla was there! The kiddies were at their grandparents for the week, which I think made Karla sad, but I was happy to have sister time. I get in a bad habit of only paying attention to the little ones when they are over. Karla and I went outside and jumped on the trampoline and talked for a bit. We stayed out until twilight-ish when the bats come out and we laid on the trampoline and watched them. We kept screeching at them (eeek eek!) and it would mess up their echo location or whatever and they would swoop down. Haha, I was very slap happy so I thought it was beyond entertaining. I was bad and forgot to take a picture :( but here is a picture of the next day when Claire, Karla and I again where being silly.

Family, Friends and Food :]

Sunday was the big day- Claire's Open house! It was at Bay Court Park in Clarkston. As all you readers can tell- this summer is very Claire focused. I don't mind but my parents sure do lol. As the time line gets closer and closer to bye-bye day, their mental health deteriorates. Oh dear.... Mom seemed to pull through okay, or at least she pretended to because Grandma was here. 

Lots of food preparation and primping. Although the weather claimed it was going to thunderstorm all day- somehow I knew that it wouldn't actually happen. Thank God I was right! I got gas early in the morning and stopped at TJ Max to grab a sweater. I made friends with a happy old lady while waiting for the store to open. I love that kind of thing :) Note-to-self and world; must go back to that store! Nifty things in there. Back home I packed up my car with what I could and drove to Bay Court to help set up. Poor Araena and Claire must have been freaking out because the tornado sirens started going off! No tornado though, phew!

Besides the humidity, everything turned out pretty nice. I was worried that no one would show up because of the predicted weather so I was going to round up the best friends and force them to endure the weather with me- luckily I didn't have to ask any of them- they just showed up anyway :D To you girls that came, I appreciate it more than you know!

Another awesome thing was seeing my cousins from my mom's side of the fam. I won't go into detail, but my mom is super odd and does not keep in touch with them. Luckily Gram invited everyone and I got to see my older cousins that I adored growing up, that I have not seen in years! 

My oldest cousin Russel (on the right) is married to his highschool sweetheart Jenny, and they have the cutest son Kyle! It is so weird because I remember looking at their Prom pictures as a kid and playing "Prom" with my barbies every day after that. Hahaha. It is odd to go back into a setting where you are the younger one again

Anyway-  I will stop talking so much. Here are more pics:

The girls with their cake

  Kaitlin and her mum

My Grandmothers (a picture of them together is a big deal because I see them both very rarely!)

Some nature pics-

My favorite part of the day was watching the kids play. I wish I could've gotten a picture of Araena's little brother Luke and Grace playing together. I think Grace had a little baby crush lol. But the kids were sooo entertained my the hill on the side of the pavillion and the center peices from the tables. Too cute!

These ones are all mine :)

The day was an overall success I would say. I think Claire and Araena were happy and all their hard work paid off :)  

Remember the mental health I mentioned above? Well a tear filled argument with the father landed me at Karla's apartment for the night. It turned out fun though because the girls were at their gma's for the night and Karla and I watched 500 Days of Summer which I love!! Plus I got to sleep in her big comfy bed :)

Cause windin' up with no one is a lot less fun then a burn from the sun...

Ok Saturday was KILLER. (not in a good way) I have to use a little humor. My day reminded me of the episode of Spongebob where he rips his pants on the beach. Rofl. Don't ask! Hence the title of this post. Go listen to the song lol

Kp and I woke up at 6:30 and made breakfast at her house. She packed me a lovely lunch and I headed off for work. Inservice started at 8 am and lets just say it did not go so well... I worked 12.5 hours and wanted to curl in a ball and cry when I got home. Not only was my boss watching my every move all day while I was dead tired, but I had to deal with 3 different groups of hooligans and nearly kick them out of the park. Not cool! I seriously was non stop running around all day- I didn't even have time to eat my lunch. What was the happy part of my day? Probably eating Nutella on a bagel at Kp's. And the fact that she brought me coffee and I was hyper during inservice- despite the fact I got in trouble for both later. Ooooopsy Poopsy.
Here is what I have to show for my crazy day-

Please don't make fun of my face. I realize now that this is a terrible picture... Moral of this post? Even though I got a nasty sun burn, at least I have good friends at work like Kp who will help me through the day. Sunscreen next time!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx1PXKoYlI0&feature=related
hehehe :D