GRADUATE 2015

I'm late in posting about it, but I graduated in May with Meridian Christian Home Educators & we had a whopping class of 29 graduates!

Whoever invented the graduation getup was an idiot. There. I said it. Congratulation on all of your accomplishments! To reward you, you get to wear this horrific looking angel suit along with a piece of glorified cardboard on your head. And to make it even better, we're gonna add a tassel that will get stuck in your lip gloss every time you walk. Not to mention this dish towel that you get to drape across your shoulders and try to no avail to keep in place... Thanks.

My table

The piece of paper with an official looking sticker that I worked for for 12 years.

we had a little too much fun with the props at the party after graduation. ;)

The Class of 2015!

Throwback to Valentine's Dates

Apparently, being single on Valentine's Day is the worst thing since the sinking of the Titanic....
Like having Oreos with no milk.
Worse than that.
It's like biting into a chocolate chip cookie that ends up being a raisin/craisin deal that tastes disgusting. 
People just think it's the end of the world if they are single on Valentine's Day...
Well, not THESE people. :) We, all being single, decided to take ourselves out on a date for Valentine's Day. We dressed up all fancy shmancy and took our little single selves to Olive Garden for lunch. Oh yes we did.

After getting lost knowing exactly where we were but wanting to take a scenic tour of the city, we went to a charming little coffee house and drank coffee and borrowed their steps for a few photos. :)

This is the place where we decided to take pictures, and upon arriving at said destination, we decided that it was FREEZING COLD and we would take pictures elsewhere later. (coffee house) So we snapped two or three and jumped back into our warm vehicle.  Call us wimps. Watch us not care.

Approving pictures.You know how it is when you get that many girls together to take pictures. "Delete that one. I look like I've been dead for three days. DELEEEETE!! Delete that one too. My hair wasn't cooperating with me...DELETE! For pity's sake, I look like a whale!" (note - no person in this party in any way resembled a whale)

I really don't know what we were laughing about, but apparently it was of utmost hilarity. I feel like this picture sums up our friendship. ;)

                       So there you have it, folks... Being single on Valentine's Day AND having fun. :) We just proved that it's possible.

Welcome to Reality.

"Send us a Christmas card!" they said.
"It'll be fun!" they said.
They were wrong.
Every year, we take (or attempt to take) a Christmas card picture to send out to friends and family and loved ones... and people we've only met once (on our family vacation 10 years ago). and also our local librarian (she's nice, like really nice) and people that we haven't seen in fifteen + years.
We go through the same struggle every. stinkin. year. Somebody wasn't looking in that picture. Johnny was crossing his eyes. Susie had to use the bathroom, and it was apparent to everyone. The wind was blowing Mom's hair. Somebody wouldn't shut their trap long enough to not get a lovely tonsil portrait. Sally looked like she was trying to be Barbie. Sally failed. Bobby's peanut butter and jelly that he ate for lunch is still with us. It goes on and on. And on.
 It's never easy to arrange six people. But usually it's not this hard.
You can't laugh, just smile.
Don't smile like THAT, it's too fake.
For Pete's sake, look natural.
I didn't say homely. Don't go that natural.
Okay, completely cut out the natural. It's scaring me. 
OPEN YOUR EYES.
Not THAT much! 
You look like you're staring into my soul. Just shut your eyes.
Child, stop putting your fingers in your nose; that's not gentlemanly.
Don't put your fingers in your mouth either!!
All in favor of not sending out a Christmas card this year, say "aye" and make a mad dash to the van.  (Mother was the only dissenting vote. darn.)
So here are some of the worst, and most embarrassing, and just all around terrible pictures that did NOT make the cut for the Christmas card. Enjoy.

Arranging the problem child.

Thanks, Abi.

This was not our proudest moment.

Idiot face competition starts NOW

"Now I know why yer Mama called ya 'Nutsy'." - The Honorable Sheriff of Nottingham (To all of you who get this, bless you.) 

 

Gun show! There wasn't much of a turnout. :(

Bible Conference 2014

The Tero's (or some of them) singing and playing.

We had our annual Bible Conference this past week and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! The preaching was amazing and the fellowship with like minded friends was superb!! Sadly, I only got a few pictures (seriously, only like 40), but here are a few of the few. :)

Miriam and Sarah

BJ and cousin Malachi... the poor dears played hard and could only sit through so much preaching before sleep took hold on them. :)

from left - Elizabeth, Julia, and Miriam

Just some people standing around admiring the talent of Amanda and Daniel on the piano... Jealousy is a sin...Jealousy is a sin...Jealousy is a sin....

Lauren, Lauryn (and baby Lilly, who is quite enjoying her spaghetti and garlic bread), Rachel, and Abbie

Me and my little buddy, Asher. This child is simply gushing with adorableness. I may or may not have been completely overcome with him and his blue eyes....

Rachel, with Lana, Asher, and Kaitlyn.

Of Kindred Spirits & Their Adventures

 So one of my dearest friends was in town a couple of weeks ago babysitting her cousins for a whole week. And since said cousins were in school for the better part of every day, we picked up said babysitter on several occasions that week and went gallivanting off to see what the charming city of Meridian had to offer.

We had many delightful adventures, some of which were planned, and some of which were, well, unplanned. Like having a lovely tour of nearly the entire "rather dangerous", "don't go there after dark", "Are we armed?" side of town, all in the name of attempting to locate a book nook. Yes, all of that for books. I personally am not a huge fan of reading, but when two of your most kindred spirits are both slightly attached obsessed to the point of fan-girling/hyperventilating over books, you find yourself consenting to things you never thought you would ever do. And just for the record, we were NOT lost. The GPS knew exactly where we were...

We visited a darling little coffee shop, pigged out and probably committed the sin of gluttony enjoyed ourselves in moderation at the local Baskin Robbins, and raided any and every thrift store that we could find. The book section of each thrift store was appropriately picked over by before stated book lovers, and you should've seen them when they had to leave their precious piles of books upon books to go into the dressing room to try on clothes. With deep, sincere looks in their eyes, (closely resembling the look a King would give you when he hands you the only key to his exquisite palace overflowing with gold and diamonds and Dove chocolate), they entrusted me with their books and whispered "Guard these with your life, or else." And so I did.

After her babysitting duties were over, Lana came and spent the night with us Saturday night. Rachel and I proudly introduced her to Pride and Prejudice (the movie) and we spent much of the rest of the night woefully bemoaning Mr. Collins and the real life Mr. Collinses that we've met. The rest of the night was spent gabbing and late night exercising routines (with jumping jacks interrupted by gales of laughter), story telling and future wedding planning. Long live sleepovers! :D

I somehow missed the "duckface" memo...

 And these weren't the only pictures that we took. While we were at the mall, we spotted one of those cute little photo booth things and thought "Why not?". Apparently those darn little things only have a maximum capacity of a person and a half who weigh approximately 84 pounds combined... But three squished ladies later, we fit ourselves into the thing and tried to stop laughing long enough to take a decent picture. I somehow got voted to be the lucky one who sits awkwardly on top of the other two and has their face all up in the camera. Attractive, really it is. Sigh. I'll spare y'all the gruesome details. And gruesome is right. In more than one aspect. See, it was supposed to let you choose which background you wanted for your series of pictures, and being the cheery little preachers' daughters that we are (who all hate Halloween and firmly believe it's creepy and devilish and creepy, can I get an Amen?!), planned to opt for a daisy field background or something. But that possessed piece of junk, of it's own accord, selected the Halloween background with some sort of Satanic symbol smack dab in the middle of it. Thankfully, Sharpie markers can blot out the sin of Satanic Symbols, and we laughed all the way home about our mistake.

We also had the privilege of taking Lana on her first bowling trip ever. Sadly enough, Abigail completely and mercilessly beat us without pity in almost every game we played. Okay, so it's been a while since I've pulled out the ole bowlin' ball. She didn't have to get so smart aleck-y about it! Why are some people so good at everything they try?! We tried to be happy for her. We really did. But after a while, we could only take so much losing, and started cheering when she missed a pin. Evil, I know... But somebody has to be the #1 loser, after all.

Sometimes he threw it with enough force to knock over the entire bowling alley, sometimes with just enough force to knock over a baby ant... And sometimes he kicked it. And other times he just kinda flopped it, as pictured here. Let's just say I don't think he has a professional future in bowling...

BJ looks thrilled.

Bowling Shoes. They are so hideous, so painful to look at, so terrible, yet so patriotic. So UGLY. They were so bad, in fact, that we made commitments to each other like "I won't look at your feet, if you won't look at my feet." "Deal." I'm of the opinion that whoever invented those things should be forced to wear them everywhere.

For your first time, you did a fantastic job, Lana! Even though your ball had a special and annoying desire to always be united with the left corner. ;) (Thus the exasperated hand motions)

Long live bowling and late night talks and Pride and Prejudice and everything in between! :) We had a splendid time making memories!

Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church Homecoming 2014

Our church celebrated 110 years of establishment last Sunday, and we all ("all" meaning everyone who had access to such clothing) dressed up in 1904 attire in honor of the celebration! The gentlemen donned colorful bow-ties and black suspenders, which I personally think should be worn all the time. But nobody asked for my opinion, so let's move on, shall we? :)
Our pastor (who is also my Uncle Thomas, whom I love dearly) preached the first sermon, then Bro. Roger (also my Uncle, whom I also love dearly) preached the second message. We then had dinner on the grounds and enjoyed an abundance of scrumptious food (which I also love dearly). And after that, the Tero family brought us some special music! We also enjoyed a slideshow of days gone by, and got to play the guessing game of "Guess who that church member was who had a head full of hair back then" along with "HE had a MUSTACHE??" type of thing. Gotta love it.

From left- Penny, Sarah, Rachel, Abigail, & Lauren. And Kaley in front

To explain the various facial expressions.... We were told by whoever was taking the picture to keep solemn faces (because that's how they took pictures way back when). However, after approximately 3 seconds of "Solemnness" we all lost it and starting laughing. All except for Penny, that is... Solemn all the way. To the death. I'm thinking she took "solemn" to a whole new level. Like, "death glare" level. She don't play.

Bro. Roger (red bow-tie), Bro. Bobby (black bow-tie), and Bro. Thomas (yellow bow-tie). Have I mentioned yet that I love bow-ties?

I, being the devoted sister that I am, awoke and arose quite early in order to assure that everyone's hair looked appropriately "Edwardian"... Several you-tube tutorials later, we all were sufficiently "Edwardianized". I love that word. Edwardian. Anywho, there was a slight disagreement full blown Laird debate over whether or not Abigail had to wear that "hideously large" bow, as she put it. She just didn't believe me when I told her that girls her age would have most definitely (NOT defiantly!) worn those bows back then. It was a hard battle, but, as you can see, I won it. :) She wore the bow. (Although it suspiciously "disappeared" after lunch).

Pretty sure he's the cutest little bow-tie wearer EVER :)

Sarah, Rachel, & Penny

Just a few ladies chatting...Probably about how long it took to do all that hair and iron that much dress. ;)

The Tero family singing and playing after lunch

 There are times (few as they may be) that I get these absotively-posilutely genius ideas...They usually don't work out (In fact, quite rarely do they ever work out.), but sometimes they do. Well, after church was over, I got one of those ideas. It dawned on me.. sorta like the feeling you get when you FINALLY understand a math problem. Wait... I've never had one of those moments. But it dawned on me, all the same! I suggested that (insert trumpets playing and sunlight beaming down from heaven and oohhs and ahhs here) we go to our local WalMart and simply walk around in our 1904 Edwardian get-ups. And so, we did. :) Okay, so it may not sound so spectacular, but let me tell you...Ladies and Gentlemen, I can say without a doubt (and probably with a British accent ;) ) that that was the most fun I have had in quite a while! It will definitely be one of those memories that you "cherish all your days" and "keep close to your heart" and "look back on with fond remembrance" and all that stuff.

SELFIE SUNDAY! I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry about that duck face that my brother is making... I think I'll laugh...

We probably completely threw off our "Edwardian air" by taking selfies with an iPhone, but who cares??

We traipsed over to the camping supplies in search of a kerosene lamp, (because that's what they would've done in 1904, is go to their local WalMart to purchase their kerosene lamps), but only found these battery operated lanterns. (Mine was Hello Kitty) And in the background, Abigail and Kyle abandoned all "1904 related" objects and are checking out air-soft guns and equipment. :) Sigh

We enjoyed walking past all the iPhones, iPads, iPods, & i-everything-else with shocked expressions & stating "What IS this thing?" only to reply with "I don't know!" We pretty much creeped out every sales associate in the store... Note the sign in the background... I'm not sure our facial expressions could be classified as "game faces" or not, but...

Let me just say that the ONLY reason we went to the toy aisle was for BJ to look around. That's it. Nothing more.

As you can tell, BJ was having a lot of fun.

I went up to one sales lady and asked her if they sold any "souvenirs from this time period". She looked at me with a mixture of confusion and "Should I call security"and said "No ma'am, we don't carry any souvenirs." To which I replied "NONE? But this is WALMART!!" What happened to Satisfaction Guaranteed, for Pete's sake?! Despite what she told us, we found some souvenirs to take back to 1904 with us... "Happy Happy Happy" "Team Jase" "I ♥ Si"

We were quite the crew, let me tell ya.

 Right as this photo was about to be taken, BJ shouts "Everybody say TUNA FISH!!" while holding up his box of Swedish fish.

And so we all lost it.

for several minutes...

He looks quite pleased with himself.

 After we left WalMart, I had to go get gas in the van, so I decided to have a little fun at the gas station too. I mean, if we're gonna have to burn up in these clothes all day, we might as well get all the fun out of it as possible. I say go all out or not at all. 
Gas Station Clerk - "Can I help you?"
Me - "Yes ma'am, I was wondering if you had anywhere for me to water my horses?"
Clerk - "Your horses?" 
Me - "Yes ma'am." (trying desperately to keep a straight face)
Clerk - "Yeah, we got a water hose outside"
Me - *dies laughing*
Clerk - *also dies laughing* with the realization of what she just fell for.
After we cleared up the fact that I was joking and didn't really have a thirsty horse waiting outside to be watered but thank you kindly anyway....
Clerk - "Where are y'all from?"
Me - "We're Time Travelers." 
Clerk - "REALLY??"
Me - *once again dies laughing* "Nooo! Not REALLY." 

That poor lady probably would've believed me if I had told her that I was the Queen of England. But let me just put in a good word for the Chevron gas station of Newton, because if you have horses that need watering, they will let you water them with their water hose all day long. That's what I call service! :)

One poor man thought we were Amish (apparently long hair and a long skirt makes you Amish these days). But I suppose it could've had something to do with Kyle's suspenders and top hat. ;) 
Two ladies thought we were fresh out of a church play and one older gentleman thought he was back in the 30's. I'm no History buff, but even I know that 1930's apparel didn't look like that! Bless that poor sir's heart...

There was another dude that kept staring at us. (Surprise, Surprise!) And kept staring at us. And kept staring at us. So Abigail smiled and waved at him...and he slowly crouched down and disappeared behind a rack of shirts. I think I'd be on the safe side to say that we scared the living daylights out of him. 


Just for the record, I had several other good ideas, but didn't actually get the chance to carry them out. I wanted to go up to a random person and ask "Do you want to know how to live forever?" (In a British accent, of course). And then witness to them and present the plan of Salvation! :) 
I also wanted to go up to someone and say very seriously "I am your great great great grandmother." Pat their hand, and walk away.

Who knew it would be so much fun to walk around WalMart acting like you just got out of a Time Machine...? :)