Good Bye 2010! Hello 2011!

Well, another year is coming to a close! This has been a truely wonderful year! I have enjoyed all of the good things and realized that the bad things that have happened have happened for a reason. The five most wonderful and memorable things that have happend in my life this year are:
1. My gaining four --yes, four-- nieces this year! Three of which came into my family by adoption (which is a wonderful thing!)
2. The building of my barn! Even though it isn't finished yet! It has been and continues to be a wonderful learning experience for everyone that works on it and it has also provided plenty of material for my blog.
3. Getting my learner's permit! I read the driver's manual, studied for the test, paid to take the test, and passed the test all by myself! I was/am so proud!
4. Going to the Southern Regional 4-H Competition in Clemson, South Carolina and getting to compete in Hippology (the scientific word for the study of horses). And my team even placed in two of the five devisions! We got third in team problems and fifth in horse judging!
5.Going to the letterboxing event. It was so neat to see how a hobby can bring so many interesting and different people from all walks of life together.
After looking back on the past I feel that it's high time to look to the future! On my list of things to accomplish/do/work at/etc. is:
1. Grow closer to God through reading my Bible and praying. I hope to read through the entire Bible in 2011.
2. Live a healthier lifestyle.
3. Get/stay caught up in school.
4. Read more. More classics, review books, inspirations, fiction, fantasy, maybe even a couple of biographies!
5. Blog more. I've only written half of what I should have this year!
That's all I have to blog about for 2010! What are your momorable moments from 2010 and what are your goals for 2011? I'd love to hear about them!

Christmas

Oh my! I can't believe Christmas has come and gone already! This was the most wonderful Christmas yet! I had all of the family gatherings, shopping trips, delicious dinners, and of course delightful presents I could wish for! Let me start from the beginning! My brother and his family came up about a week before Christmas. While they were here we went on the Annual Sibling Shopping Trip (where just Clay, Paige, Stephanie, Jack, and I go shopping), The Butler family Christmas Party (my mom's side), The Eavenson Family Christmas Party (my dad's side), and the family photo shoot. The most exciting of all of those activities was definitely the family photo shoot! Oh boy! It was one crazy day! (You can read more about that event here.) We had a wonderful time together and I was sorry to see my brother and his family leave on Christmas Eve even though I knew they had to if they wanted to get to Paige's family's farm before Christmas. After they left we all got new pajamas on Christmas Eve and Christmas presents on Christmas day. I love everything I got and I think everyone else does too! It's important to peer behind the commercialism sham and remember, appreciate and give thanks for the real reason for the season! Christmas day commemorates the day when the Son of God was born and God's plan to save us began to unfold. Merry belated Christmas!

A Christmas Miracle

It was family picture day! Everyone got all dressed up and we posed away! We were having a pretty good time, but of course all good things must come to an end! We were out in the front yard right next to the horse fence and "friendly" Red Rock wanted attention. Everyone was at their wits end with him because he just wouldn't go away or leave us alone! That's all well enough until you ad the fact that we had all three of the family dogs out there and two of them were off leash and just happened to have hidden herding talents! Well, there went Buddy and Chase chasing and barking and biting at Red Rock. Red Rock was not about to be run off so easily though! He started kicking, biting, bucking, and snaking (an aggressive herding behavior used by dominant horses to discipline disobedient underlings) at the dogs. There were several close calls for both of the pups, but then there was one well placed kick and one poorly placed dog head that ended with Buddy knocked out cold. He slowly rose up after almost being stomped (but Red Rock changed his mind about killing Buddy after Buddy was incapacitated) to death. Instead of walking Buddy limped, the convulsed and kept falling over. We all thought he was a goner! There was a lot of Crying and praying as Jack and Stephanie rushed Buddy to the vet! Buddy isn't just any dog-- he's Faith's dog. Those two love each other to death and Faith would be heart broken if Buddy died! Here's the Christmas miracle part: Buddy is fine! Not a broken bone or even a concussion! The vet said he was knocked out for a moment and probable had a seizure, but everything else is fine! Whew we were all very relieved!

The Event

No, not the T.V. show, the letterboxing event. So, I've been looking forward to this event for months! I love to letterbox and I thought it would be cool to meet other letterboxers and to make some exchanges (you swap signature stamp images with other 'boxers). Mom and I went to the event today! It was so much fun! We got there early and were a little nervous, but the host made us feel perfectly at home. We went in, logged into the event book (the book that's there to keep up with everyone that came), and stamped the event stamps into our books, fixed a plate of food, and started making exchanges. We probably met around thirty people, exchanged with about as many and that was only half the people there! Everyone was super nice. We enjoyed explaining our trail names and putting faces with the stamps and trail names that we've seen before. It was a very diverse group of people! There were little kids, teenagers, twenty-somethings all the way through senior citizens! It was a wonderful experience just getting to chat with everybody! At one time the host walks up to me and asks, "Do you know what getting cootied means?" I said yes and asked if I happened to have any cooties on me (cooties are little itty bitty stamps that travel from person to person. They can be on clothespins, hair clips, in boxes, anything. They don't have to have logbooks and usually don't. Once cootied you log them in your book and hide them on another person, in an unattended purse or coat, etc.) it turned out that I had two attached to my hoodie at the time. I logged them in my book and infected someone else with them. Before we left I checked my hoodie for more cooties and didn't find any. Well, I had only thought I had escaped! When I got home I discovered three more cooties! Two in my bag and one on my hoodie! What fun! :)

Letterboxing at Stone Mountain

Today, Mom and I set off to Stone Mountain Park for some letterboxing and other fun stuff. We started with the ambitious goal of finding seven letterboxes in one outing. We started in an area of the park that we were pretty familiar with and we were pretty confident in our ability to find the two boxes there. Both clues mentioned the same very specific landmark. Well, we found about 6 such places, but none of them were the landmark. We had been searching for over half an hour when Mom mentions that the picture in one of the clues appears to have been taken from waaaaaaay up. So, we broadened our search zone and ,finally, I spotted the landmark! There were only a few obstacles between me and success! One of those obstacles just happened to be a huge (over five foot high) "step" up. After climbing up and over the ledge, I hiked the remaining seventy-five steep yards (after the first hundred and fifty yards) up the mountain to the first letterbox. Yay! Success! But there was one more letterbox and I had come way too far and taken too much time to leave without retrieving both boxes! Well, the mountain got steeper as I breathlessly climbed the last thirty or so yards and snagged that last box! Victory was mine! Now all I had to do was try not to break my neck as I made my way back to the landmark where Mom was waiting. By this time, my knees were shaking because I was both tired and afraid. We stamped the stamps and hid the first box. Then I had to drag myself back up there and hide the second box. The hardest and scariest part was the descent because there are tons of little rocks and a few ice patches on an already steep mountainside, but thankfully Mom and I both made it down safely. At the end of our adventure I reiterated the fact that letterboxing takes you to places you would never have been otherwise-- like halfway up the backside of Stone Mountain! Haha! Don't get me wrong- the view was great (I could see the lake over the treetops and a ton of the surrounding landscape) and the boxes were cool and the adventure was fun! Plus it only took us a little over an hour and a half!