As Summer Starts To Wind Down

All day Tuesday my family was busy getting ready for Jake's Birthday party. Cleaning, cooking, scrubbing, washing. I've never understood why exactly we are to clean BEFORE company comes over and not after. lol

I can't believe my little brother is 12! I remember when the nurses were checking him over after delivery, and now he is a big kid of twelve! It's crazy to see that he is one of the biggest kids at church. O.o When oh when did that happen?!? I used to carry him around EVERYWHERE and now he can pick me up! Alright enough of that.

Yesterday was a very very lazy day. I was still trying to recover from my week in Prescott watching some little ones at a missions conference, (I never knew a 2 year old little girl could kick my butt so bad!) and flagstaff to visit the Grand Canyon. After sleeping for what was probably an unhealthy amount of time Jake and I got up and went to horse back riding lessons. Yesterday I started to learn the most fun and terrifying thing I know to do on the back of a horse.
... Loping!

If that doesn't get your blood pumping, I don't know what will! I couldn't help but laugh really hard every time I tried loping. I was sure I wanted to stay on Maggie, but I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to do that. Yes, I know.. Maggie doesn't sound like the name of an animal that you're worried about falling off of. But I LOVE this horse. She has spirit! She's not mean spirited. But she will let you know that your will and her will are totally separate in her eyes. We are still trying to learn to work together. :)

I'm a little sore today and have a few bruises on my thighs, but nothing too bad.

Just recently I decided that if I'm going to attend a cowboy church and get involved in the cowboy culture I should probably invest in a good pair of boots. And invest I did!
Look at them babies! Purty ain't they?



This morning Mom announced while we were milking the goat, "We're going to make prickly pear Jelly!" Ughh.. Okay Mom.. So after quite time and talking to my friend Amanda in Texas I dutifully pulled on my cowgirl boots and plunked Dad's hat on my head and got in the car to drive into the desert by our house to pick prickly pear fruit. Welp.. That's a great idea in theory.. BUT, we couldn't find fruit ANYWHERE!!

Me wearing Dad's hat. Don't I look cute? lol (Not truly the best photo. But you get the jest! :))


I'll tell you a secrete but be quite about it. We finally found fruit on different empty properties and then we got a little adventurous and would pick fruit from prickly pears along the side of the road coming into the neighborhood. Shh.. :)



My Mom asked me once as we're getting out with our long tongs and bucket to pluck some fruit off the cactus, " Do you think anyone lives here?" my reply you ask..? "Just repeat after me Mom. Say in the best hill billy voice you can muster , "Officer, we weren't looking to snatch any of their fruit. We just pulled into these heres peoples yard to share the good news of Jesus, kinda like them their Jehova's Witnesses! We come in and pluck their fruit because they're ripe for harvest!" Bhahah! Who could possibly argue with that?!?!

That catches you up with this week.

Last week however.. That is another story.

I can maybe sum it up with one photo.

That is Gugi. The adorable bug obsessed four year old that I watched at the missions conference in Prescott last week.



And that is Miss Abi. She's a very engergetic two year old and has quite the little personality for being only two. Do you notice though that I'm not above bribing the two year old with candy so that she'll like me?

Those were my two kiddo's for the week. We had fun. I introduced "bubbles" and "playdough" into Miss Abi's vocabulary. And I tried my best to keep Gugi from putting beetles in my hair.

It was nice because I had quite a bit of down time at the conference. So I was able to hang out and visit with different people. I'm so glad that I was able to go!

Last weekend I was invited to go with the mission team from La Mesa to Flagstaff and visit the grand canyon. We drove up to the Canyon on Friday right after the conference was over.

I met a new friend his name is squirrel. (Inside joke)



And I had an awesome time with the team. During sunset we sat on the edge of the canyon singing praises to God and had a time in prayer.




The next morning the group of us woke up and had a time of group prayer before we headed off to a friends house for an amazing breakfast. Ken who is the leader of the group (and my friend Erika's Dad), quickly bought himself a fond place in my heart. I was just grumbling to myself before the group prayer that is was almost sacrilegious not to have coffee during prayer time. :) And in walks Ken with a couple travel carriers of Starbucks coffee and milk and sugar! YAY!



I couldn't have asked for a better prayer time with an awesome group of like minded believers or a better breakfast! :)

Saturday we spent our day at Saver's thrift shop and Walmart. There was a little girl in Saver's that sounded exactly like Miss Abi and I kept having to remind myself that Step and Andy had already left. I kept wanting to go look for her! lol

Sunday morning we all stopped at this cute beatnik coffee shop in Flagstaff before making our final decent into Tuscon. I was so happy to ride with Beto and Ale, because most of the way back to Tucson I talked with Beto about alternative medicine and then he was telling me different stories from the clinic in La Mesa. That's what every nursing student likes to hear about! :)

:( Even though I'm looking forward to getting this last year of school behind me, it's still sad to see the summer go. I have a week from Wednesday left of summer vacation. It will probably be the quickest year of my life to date. But I'm also excited for it. I'm curious as to what new things God has for me in this coming year.

Always in Motion

Oh man! It's been almost a year since I've posted a blog entry!

This year has been a HUGE learning experience. Nursing school put the hurt on me like a grade school bully demanding lunch money. Technically I know nothing of this analogy since I was home-schooled. But I figured it was a good way of putting it! lol

My family has been attending the Tanqe Verde Cowboy Church for just about a
year now and I LOVE it there! It's the first time in years that I've
felt comfortable and loved at a church. At my old church I didn't get
that. Which was a bummer, but live and learn!

For me attending a cowboy church is like visiting a different planet inhabited by really friendly space aliens, who enjoy a relationship with Jesus. When they talk about the Bible we speak the same language, but when they get wound up talking rodeo I'm lost. Typically I smile, nod and ask questions. Thankfully they are very gracious in answering all my rodeo questions without blinking at my inexperience with such things as "bulldogging" and "Bucking Chutes".

My Dad is by far the most gun-ho about the cowboy ways. I will say, I'm very fond of our fresh produce from the garden, all the yummy food from scratch and I'm having a lot of fun taking horseback ridding lessons from a girl in our church.

One of my friends calls me and my family "crunchy" because we make a lot of our own cleaning products and dehydrate fruits and veggies and make things like tinctures that can be used as antibiotics. I call my friend "a typical consumer". But that's okay. Sooner or later she'll become "crunchy" too!

My Dad likes to call our property (it's only an acre)"a homestead" but more and more I'm liking to call it a petting zoo!

My wacko parents decided that it would be a great idea to get a couple milking goats. But only one is "in-milk". I don't understand this term "in-milk".. They indeed are not standing in milk. You actually have to squeeze it out of them! So now I don't understand why they call it "milking the goat", I think they should call it "squeezing the goat". That way we can offer guests some fresh squeezed goat! Well this long standing idea came to flourish within a couple days time last week. And while goats milk is pretty yummy, we know where our milk comes from, what conditions the goat lives in, food the goat's fed and now we never have to buy milk at the store again. Sometimes I think this idea is better in theory.. Well.. At least at 6am when my Mom who is a morning person bounces into my room saying, "Wake up Ash.. It's time to go milk the goat!" Ughh! No Mom, it's time to turn over and sleep another two hours. LOL It's not too bad right now since Booger (My brother) and I are taking turns waking up every-other day to help.

Now my Mom thinks it would be a "brilliant" idea to get a rooster! You know those things that decided to "sing" at early morning hours?!? However singing is a relative term.

I would already like to put the donkey's across the road out to pasture. At sun-up and sun down they go at it like newlyweds but are as loud as an old married couple arguing. It's laughable when you're working around the yard. But it's a little weird to have to explain to company what they are hearing! By the way the neighboring donkey's have a now 2 month old baby who is really cute! Gee.. Wonder why? :)

My Mom really wants baby chicks to add to her chicken harem. My Mother however will not allow me to dye the chicks awesome colors. To this I say, "Fie on YOU!".. I've always wanted one of those chicks that they dye colors at Easter. And how much better could it get than having blue, pink, purple, green and yellow chicks running around your petting zoo?!? lol

A few weeks ago Booger and I started taking horse back riding lessons from one of the young ladies at our church and we're both really enjoying it. I've learned that staying in the saddle is more difficult than I thought! By the second lesson we were learning to trot and this "matching the horses gate" is both fun and painful. lol We decided after hauling horse panels all weekend to help horses displaced by the fire in Sierra Vista. That it might be a good idea to actually know how to handle horses. Then we can be of actual help if someone with horses needed a hand for whatever reason. Plus since we go to a cowboy church we know it will come in handy to not look like such a city slicker. But maybe at some point my Daddy will decide to add that pony I've always wanted to the petting zoo! Thus knowing what to do with said imaginary, pipe dream pony would be great! lol

Skipping back to church, currently I'm getting involved in the kids ministry.
And when I say "getting involved", I actually mean I'm the kids ministry coordinator.
lol There are four of us who are taking turns teaching the kiddos.
But the kids ministry is my favorite place in the church to serve! Always has been and probably always will be. That's just where God has always lead my heart.

Now aside from church and my crazies I call parents. This is what I've been up to...

God willing and the creek don't rise and I'll be
graduating from nursing school this coming May!

I can foresee this next year FLYING by me. Last thursday I just
finished a six week job as a nanny for three little girls (They're
2yrs, 3 yrs and 9 yrs). It was a challenge at first but I think I'm
going to really miss the girls! At some point I might post some of the hilarious stuff Princess P. and Miss Koda would say and do! The picture with this post is of me playing dress up with Princess P. (Sorry it's kinda fuzzy!)

Next week I'm supposed to take a 24 hour refresher so that I can
re-up my EMT certification when it's up next spring so that I
don't have to worry about it and finishing out nursing school.

The following week is VBS at my church.

The week after that I'm going on a missions trip to Chihuahua Mexico
to do a VBS in a brick making yard with the Indians that come from the
mountains looking for work.

And the week after that I'm going up to Prescott to help take care of
two little missionary kids (2 yrs and 4 yrs old) at a
Ameritribes/Pioneers missions conference. But hopefully I'll get a
chance to meet people and network a little.

That will bring me to August! And school starts back the 24th. So that
will give me a little time to recoup and get stuff together to start
school. :)

Holy Monkies! December here I come!