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These three photos where for an assignment in school. We had to take extreme close-ups of texture. 

I love my photography class at Unity. We have gone to Alton, Orange City, and an abandoned farm in Sioux Center to take pictures. We've done texture, still life, and advertisements. It's kind of sad that schools almost over. 

10 more days until I'm done with High school. For good. Unless of course I manage to fail my Health exam . . . .but don't get me started on that. To be honest, as much as I love summer and not going to school, I'm going to miss it. (except for PE, not going to miss that). There are a few classes I'll miss, like Art, and yearbook, and Comm II. But it's the students and teachers that I will miss the most. 

You are my Sunshine

Wow, day two and I still have motivation. Go me. Betcha didn't see that one coming! Tonight I really wanted to post photos of lightning. However, I don't actually have pictures of lightning. I guess I've just never had the desire to go outside in a huge thunder storm when it's dark, humid, and possible hailing. I'm rather protective of my camera so getting it wet isn't exactly my favorite thing to do. One of these days however, I will get a really sweet picture of lighting, hopefully.

Since I can't do lightning, I decided to do sunshine. I have lots of those photos! Sunsets, sunrises, no two are alike. Ever sunset photo is different, so I never get tired of taking pictures of sunsets. Sunrise on the other hand . . . .require getting up early. For those of you who know me, that doesn't happen very often. Unless it's for a very good reason. The only sunrise I've actually taken pictures of was as a "Sleepover" where we staid up all night, and then walked to the bakery at about 6 in the morning. Okay, okay, I'll shut up now and show you the pictures.

Sunrise in the Park
(really, really early!)

Spider Web

Corn Field Sunset

Old Churches

Trinity in Orange City, Iowa
I love the reflection of the tree branches in the windows.

It's May 1 today, and as I said earlier, time for some photos! Today I wanted to share three black and white photos that I took one really cold winter day and never got around to doing anything with them. 

Originally I wanted to enter them in a black and white photo contest. I never got around to it due to some minor procrastination/motivation issues. Surprise, surprise. The contest was for black and white pictures of old, historic buildings in Sioux County. Since one of the oldest historic buildings in Orange city was reduced to nothing but ash a few years ago,  I choose to do some churches. 

I am a little church (no great cathedral)

Far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities

I do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,

I am not sorry when sun and rain make April

My life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

My prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving

(Finding and losing and laughing and crying) children

Whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

Around me surges a miracle of unceasing

Birth and glory and death and resurrection:

Over my sleeping self float flaming symbols

Of hope, and I wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)

At peace with nature

I do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

I am not sorry when silence becomes singing

Winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to

Merciful Him Whose only now is forever:

Standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(Welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

EE Cummings

. . .and stuff

And I'm back. After a ridiculously long break, I'm ready to give this another try. My last post was way back in February. I hardly even remember February which just goes to show how busy and stressful March and April were. To get you caught up . . .

March was Prom, and that was forever and a decade ago it seems. Prom was way cooler then I thought it would be, and it was nice to have an excuse to sleep in until way past noon for once. To be perfectly honest, I don't remember what else was in March, so we're gonna call that caught up.

April flew by. I thought I'd be okay with skipping April and going right to Tulip Festival and graduation, but I needed April to do school. Crazy that there is less then a month left already! April basically consisted of me juggling three new jobs, plus my old ones, Theology projects and memory verses, the dreaded health test coming up, and of course, that good old Senior Capstone Project. 

I have never been more thankful that I only went one year at Unity. If I had to write about four entire years at Unity it would be a novel instead of a paper. I'm not good at briefly writing things. Actually, I'm not good at writing things at all. Never would I have assumed that it was even possible to hit so many walls while writing one paper, pretty sure I'm cursed with permanent writers block. However, I finished it, just in time! Due tomorrow, but it still needs a title. . .along with a good editing job. But, sadly, working on it all night and all last week has fried my brain, so editing starts bright and early tomorrow morning. 

 Aside from all those ramblings about capstone papers and flying months is the real reason I came back to this blog. For the month of May (which starts Tuesday already!) I want to try and do a "Photo a Day" thing. Mainly because I love photos, and have lots that I want to share! We'll see if my motivation lasts that long, but chances are it won't. May will probably roll around and I'll forget all about my idea, or get busy with graduation, work, senior trips, art projects, piano recitals, Bel canto performances, concerts, tulip festival, and all that other stuff I decided I could manage. Oh, and throw in step 3 of the senior capstone: The Presentation. But I'll worry about all of that tomorrow. 

We Are The Valiant Misfits

What a weekend! The Valiant Misfits got to hang together again this weekend for the award ceremony!! We didn't get to take home the shiny glass plaques, but maybe thats a good thing. The whole time I would be, "Don't touch the glass!! You'll leave finger prints!" That's a pet peeve of mine, dirty glass. They make door handles for a reason people!!! But that's besides the point.

Friday night we all dressed up, literally piled into my Jeep and went to Dordt for the night. We went from building to building watching different videos and taking pictures. (What else?) We went the the VIP party before the award ceremony, and pigged out on chips and gourmet pizza something or other.
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Oh, oops. Sorry about that .  . . I was just attacked by Kacie and Bella. :P

Anyways . . .We were getting super excited to see the winning videos. The winning high school group had some great filming, but their storyline wasn't quite as good. The college group that won was Providence Productions, from Pasadena California! Congratulations to Providence for winning the "Dordty" award.

While all this stuff was really fun, the after "Party" was five times as fun. We went to fruited plain caffe and I got TRIPLE CHOCOLATE PIE. Amazing. And, since we were in Sioux Center, we had to go the Number 1 party location. Walmart.

Now . . .I would not be liked in our group very much if I didn't ask you to vote on our video for people's choice. So, here is a link to vote. :D VOTE HERE

Also, Congrats to all the other amazing groups. See you there next year. Maybe . . .

A Rather Pointless Post with a Cool Video

Wow. It's February already. It's also a Thursday already. Almost a Friday. And you know what that means: "It's Friday, Friday, don't you dare sing this song".

But annoying songs are besides the point. Actually, come to think of it, I have no point in mind. None at all. But I figured I should write something so you didn't think I died or took the TARDIS off to NNNNNNNNNNNY. (yeah, okay, not everybody is gonna get that . .but my Doctor Who friends will, so it's going in there).

Anyways, it's February already! Where did January go? I felt that January only lasted a week, but a really good week. All four weeks were good. Hopefully February is just as good. So far the weather has been fantastic, no homework, and the flopped cookies happened in January. Which means we can pretend those never happened. But keep your fingers crossed and hope my mini-chocolate pies turn out, other wise that was waste of good Oreos. Which, in order to keep my sisters out, I taped the package shut in order to thwart them. And it was a good thing I did too!

Thursday. Normally not my favorite day, but today was actually pretty fantastic. We got left over donuts brought to our door, which was amazing because, regardless of the "cookies" I made, I was really in the mood for a donut. Work was easy, and I found out I don't actually have to work at Pizza Ranch Corporate on Friday. I got a $7,000 academic scholarship to Providence. My dessert turned out this time (hopefully) and tomorrow is Yearbook Food Friday. I have no more college comp, and except for Theology, my classes are a breeze. Can life get any better?

Actually, yeah, it could. But we won't go into this because then this would have a point and I have decided that having a point takes up to much effort. But, because I do want to make this worth your time I'm gonna put the new Hunger games trailer in here because that's just how much I absolutely love the books and can't wait to see the movie. Other then that . . .I'm going to bed and "May the Odds be Ever in your Favor" (If you haven't read or heard of the Hunger games, you won't get that. That also means you have some catching up to do.) Enjoy!

Solitaire

You would not believe how quiet my house is right now. It's rather freaky. After hanging out for three days with 8 people almost all day and night, what is "normal" is now a scary quieter then the grave sound. I would be so bored in solitaire confinement, and end up really batty.

This weekend was the weekend eight amazing people made one amazing video. Minus a few errors do to rushed timing. Turns out 48 hours isn't quite enough time if you need to include procrastination and computer problems. (Thank you Mr. Kaemingk for the filter and administrator password that messed us up.) Only a few minutes left to go, and we realize that the program doesn't work on apples, and you have to download an app. In order to do that, you need administrator password which no one has. Great. We end up RACING to Sioux Center to hand the video in.

Just hanging out with everyone, going to the last five minutes of class and seeing everyones reactions to the make up was EPIC. Some of those looks I will never forget. The whole process was a blast, writing, acting, filming, editing, goofing off on and off camera, laughing at stupid jokes and people's mistakes because of their sleepiness. All until we started stressing . . .that was a little over the top.

There was this cat, that when I first walked in, I thought was fake. And then I kept seeing it in random places, slightly freaky when you think it's not alive. By the end of Saturday, many of us where so tired (and stressed) that we couldn't keep peoples names straight. I kept loosing things and the basement looked like a tornado went through it. We spent 15 minutes trying to find my keys at 3 in the morning, only to find them in Tina's bag. We definitely need to do this again.

Yeah, you read that right. 3 in the Morning we were still awake and working. Well, kind of . . .we had to make a couple pop runs, but who wouldn't?

This was AMAZING to do, a huge emotional roller coaster! From hysterical laughter, to HUGE amounts of stress, procrastination, sleepiness, and a good dose of grumpy, nobody is gonna forget this. We won't forget the TEN cops we passed, who never pulled us over, thankfully, the crazy make-up, lava lamps and record players, car rides, the best (annoying) music ever created, and the jokes shared. Which will not be re-shared. EVER.

In the end, Thanks to the Kuipers, the Buntsmas, Mr. Kaemingk (even with the password problem), Pizza Ranch Corporate, Mr. Volkers for still accepting the video, and of course, to you, my fellow Valiant Misfits, we need to do this again. Soon. (After I sleep forever and a decade.) Now excuse me while I crash.

Some of my favorite scenes of Kat acting. (at least, I hope she was acting . . .)

This is mainly goofing off, which happen quite often.

The amazing actors.

Maxamillion, our "lava lamp" robot, and the record player