Two of my closest friends have moved.

You think you’d get used to it, you know. People walking in and out of your life. It’s part of life, especially that of a military kid. You move, you meet people, you love people, you leave people, you start over.  It should get easier, shouldn’t it?  The pain of separation should lessen. After all, it happens all the time. We should be used to it, right?

It doesn’t happen. That pain doesn’t lessen at all. But it’s always worth it in the end. Every time. You never regret getting close because the memories you create make the ache worth it all.

Like the time we threw a Secret Santa party and all had to dress up “Christmas-y” for it.

Or the time Cliffy and Chris and I sat in the park listening to music randomly.

Or how Matt and Gabe would take these balls of sand home and stick them in the freezer just so they could carry them back the next day to make them bigger. This lasted about 2 weeks.

Numerous bowling trips.

Many beach days.

Countless memories.

Yeah, they’ve moved across the county and are living in the big apple now. But that doesn’t mean our friendships are over. Each of us still carry these memories, even as we all grow up and continue our lives. We will never forget our good times, or the ways we have impacted one another over the last year.

They say that friends are the family we choose for ourselves.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.
- Helen Keller

Mom had to remove any potentially harmful objects from my reach so I wasn’t tempted to take drastic measures. This included Fruit Rollups.

And not only that, but my wonderful family followed suit, and then my friends (who are always trying to be just like me because I’m obviously awesome) decided they would pick up the sickness too. One right after another. Christian for four days, then Cliffy for three, and now Chris has got it.

Guess what day Chris got it?

Two days ago.

On his birthday.

Happy birthday.

Love,
Karma
XOXO <3

I swear I’ve texted the question “How are you feeling” at least 8 dozen times over the last two weeks. They started looking into restraining orders for texting. Luckily such a thing doesn’t exist so I was able to bother them effectively.

So now, a week and a half later, I’ve yet to have my birthday party. I have no idea when we are actually going to have it. Luckily, I just don’t really care that much.

Plus I managed to go outside on the porch for a few minutes to talk to Clifford on my birthday and we got into a food fight.

Then I made him clean it all up.

So that was pretty much the highlight of the day. Nothing else happened.

Nor has anything happened since. Except the Superbowl. We watched that. That was actually a pretty good game, even though being the Steelers fans that we are, there really was no winning for us. We were happy when the Ravens won though. Can’t have those 50minus1ers tied for SB wins with us.
Course, the power did go out. Everyone was quite confused at that moment.

We were all waiting for Bane to come out and be like “Hello citizens of New Orleans”

Sadly(?) that never happened and 5 minutes later they had fixed the issue and the game resumed.

Really I was just hoping for this.

Also never happened.

Since the both of the boys missed half a week of school, they spent the other half making up for the homework they missed.

Needless to say, we haven’t seen much of them.

Hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

Until then, I have to find other ways to entertain myself. Like watching 5 seasons of Malcolm in the Middle and having  text conversations like the one I had last night with Christian.

Christian: We are done playing.

Me: Ahoy matey.

Christian: Yeah

Me: I turned into a pirate while you were gone.

Christian: Sweet. Did you find any gold?

Me: I wish.
I did get a sweet hat though.

Christian: …Photoshop…

Me: No way. This is legit.

Christian: Arrrrgh

Me: It’s contagious! Are you going to be a pirate with me?

Christian: Heck yes.

Me:

Now we can rule the seven seas.

Then this morning I sent this as school started:

Have a spectacularly awesome and piratey day!

Needless to say, today has been a pretty good day so far.

I don’t expect you to get it unless you’re really awesome. If you do get it, you win.

Mom’s yelling at me across the house at the moment because of this post’s title. “NO Kait just because it’s not snowing doesn’t mean Florida hates happiness. That means it LOVES people who can’t take the cold. I can’t believe you hate Florida.”

My response?

“JERRY DID IT. DANGIT JERRY!”

I’m sorry. No more Parks and Rec references. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know.

So the Herd, as we call ourselves(and by that I mean, I call us the Herd and no one argues because they’re kinda scared of me. It was inspired by Ice Age, ok?) decided a few weeks back to do Secret Santa this year. Mom helped out and was the moderator. We each drew a name out of Chris’s fedora and had two weeks to get a gift for our person.

What did we learn from this experience?

Most of us are really bad a secret keeping.

By the time we exchanged gifts, I knew who Ian, Chris, Christian, Joe, and Gabe had as their people. And several knew who I had.

What else did we learn?

We are really a pretty darn awesome group.

It wasn’t originally going to be a full blown party, but Christin and I decided that we should because that was the only day that we all were going to be around this whole Christmas vacation. Matt and Chris left for the whole break this morning and won’t be back until the day school starts.

After deciding to go ahead and throw a party, the plan was to order pizza. But Christin insisted on making something I could eat, I’m on a gluten-free diet right now(long story) so instead we ran to the store and got stuff to make sloppy Joes.

Best. Gluten free meal. EVER. Sloppy Joes on Fritos was so good…definitely a new favorite of mine. Nom nom nom.

Happy day after Thanksgiving peoples. Hope your holiday was filled with fun, food, and fantastic company, as mine was.

Secondly:

Yes I am still alive. My lopsided legness has not cost me my life, yet, and after three weeks of physical therapy I am finally done with all that.

Of course, Gabe(who recently turned 12, happy birthday dude) did just sprain/fracture his foot. Poor kid is on crutches which he found cool for all of 30 seconds before realizing they’re a pain in the butt. It only took us twenty freaking minutes to get to the bus stop to pick up Chris and Christian.

Five minutes into our trek to the bus stop, we've made it across the street.

Also I found this on Pinterest, which pretty much is our group motto.

I rest my case?

Did I mention that a few weeks ago Christin and I baked 4 dozen cupcakes, 2 cakes, and 5 dozen cookies for a cake walk for our Halloween party?

I say Christin and I since we planned and organized everything, but really we couldn’t have done it without Christian and Chris. They were two pretty awesome helpers.

The Halloween party was a success, and our friends showed up the day before and surprised us. That was awesome, and we all had a (for me, crazy, insanely busy ) fun weekend.

Wesley pulled off the Greaser outlandishly well. Taylor was an FBI agent.

And of course Cliffy in his Steelers Fan get-up had to make himself known in this picture. Thanks Clifford.

Speaking of Clifford, the shirt I got him for his birthday, which I mentioned in my last post, finally came in and he wore it last weekend for the first time.

 

It’s basically totally awesome.

That’s pretty much all that’s been going on. This is my last normal week for a while, as the Johnsons are coming again in a week for Thanksgiving(yay!), and after that we have December starting and some surprise visitor/s coming, and then Christin is home for three weeks starting the 14th and schools out starting the 17th. I’m so excited, I can’t wait. Then after that, we have the birthday month. Ben, Jesse, Christian, and I all have birthdays. It’s gonna be awesome.

 

On a closing note, we are half way done with Dad being gone. Hooray, yet at the time I wonder how the heck we are only HALF way done. Only 4 1/2 more months…

Also Lucy stole my socks.

Dangit Lucy, I thought I’d be out of the house before I had to worry about you stealing my clothes.

To start out, a few weekends ago I got to celebrate two of my friend’s birthdays with them. Christin and Cliffy both had birthdays one weekend, so you can imagine there was a lot of partying going on then. On Christin’s birthday I went out to eat with her and her family. It was a lot of fun, and we had the most hilarious waiter.

Then we came home and a bunch of people came over. We ate cake and opened gifts, and then we played a shot game(with Coke, no worries people. We are good teenagers) and while some of the guys played Minecraft, the rest of us played volleyball with balloons.

This all lasted until midnight, when we fairwelled Christin’s birthday and welcomed Cliffy’s. The next morning, I went across the street and helped set up all of the decorations for Cliffy’s party that afternoon. After that we went to get a movie, then came back and watched Puss in Boots with some of the neighborhood kids. Later we all had pizza and cake and opened presents. My gift for Cliffy(a t-shirt) was still on it’s way so I drew him a picture of him and pasted a picture of the shirt over it.

Then we went bowling. I was so close to winning both times, but once fell short by one point and the next by two. So close…

The next day we were all pretty tired. Christin headed back to college and the rest of us just kinda hung around. The next day, my family headed to Orlando for a mini-vacation. We didn’t go to any of the parks, but the hotel we stayed at had a water park and little arcade and stuff. The best part for me was meeting my friends who I’ve known over the computer for years now. They came to the hotel on Monday night and we all played cards and had pizza and stuff. It was so cool finally getting to meet them — easily the highlight of the trip.

The boys had a blast at the water park on Tuesday. We went down the bigger slides they had. Two of them were fun enough, but one of them was insane.

It felt like you were about to fly off of the slide. In case you were wondering, this is not a pleasant feeling.

All of the time in between doing stuff I spent watching the news(politics) and football. Yep I’m weird. I did watch a few other shows, but seriously…there is nothing good on TV anymore.

Tuesday night we went to Downtown Disney. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say I don’t like crowds. And there was crowd.

Wednesday morning we packed up and left, stopping at Waffle House for breakfast on the way out. We got home around 3 and were able to surprise Cliffy at the bus stop, since he didn’t think we would get home until that night. We were originally going to go to Ikea before we left Orlando, but we decided against it on Wednesday morning and decided just to go home.

It was a fun trip, though weird without Dad with us. But we all had a great time. It was good to be home and see our friends again, though.

Now we are all planning for our Halloween party next Saturday. Christin is coming home for it so that’s exciting. We’ve got a bajillion things to bake for it, since we are providing treats for the actually party AND a cake walk we are doing, so we are going to be pretty busy that Friday and Saturday morning.

The other day I had a doctor’s appointment. Well, technically it was a Physical Therapy appointment because I went to the doctor a month or so ago because of this bad joint pain I’ve been having in my legs and shoulders. The doctor told me then that he thought one of my legs might be longer than the other, so I need to go to PT to get it adjusted, but that nothing was wrong with my shoulder. Naturally I was like “Umm dude, people’s shoulders don’t just pop every time they move them and ache 24/7 and keep them up at night”. Also naturally I didn’t actually say that because I don’t really talk to people I don’t know unless I have to. And by “have to”, I mean I’ll die if I don’t.

WebMD, the not-have-to-talk-to-people-alternative wasn't helping much. A broken back? Seriously, I think I'd know it if my back was broken.

So we made an appointment for PT for my leg. I went in the other day and was handed this paper that asked me all these questions and had a diagram of a human where it wanted me to circle all of the places I was experiencing pain. Since my doctors appointment, my right shoulder had gotten worse and now my wrists and even occasionally my elbow have also started to be bothersome. Basically, my entire right side was falling apart. So basically every joint from my hip up was circled. Then my PT dude was like “Well, it says here you’re here for hip/leg joint pain.” and I was like “Well, my right shoulder hurts a lot and the doctor said nothing was wrong but it hurts so obviously something is wrong.” And he was all like “Alright well let’s see here…”
And I had to do all of this different stuff so he could test my shoulder. He realized that my right shoulder sits higher than my left, when it should sit lower because it’s my dominant arm. Then he felt my spine. And he stopped.
Long story short, I have to get an x-ray done to see if I have scoliosis because he thinks my spine might be crooked and get blood work done for some stuff, too. And I have SI Joint Dysfunction, which is my leg problem (and, unknown to me beforehand, also the source of my back pain) , so I have to go to PT twice a week for three weeks to get that fixed. Whoohoo. Because I love the doctor’s. Not.

So yeah, that’s what’s been going on. Time has been flying by for us, which is awesome because we are uber excited for the Johnsons to come for Thanksgiving again this year. 34 more days! So that’s the next exciting thing happening after Halloween.

That’s all that been happening. Besides Piccola texting me and telling me that half and half was made of half cream and half sugar.

That’s it though.

The end.

Anyway.

Christin came home for the weekend(yay!), and we decided we were going to make a Minecraft cake that we saw on Pinterest. This cake, to be specific.

Yeah we’re adventurous.

So not only did we have to make the cake, but we decided we would also try making our own fondant. And that is why this cake took about 4 hours to complete.

Here are pictures of the process after we went shopping for all of the stuff.

Before we started.

After melting the marshmallows, we had to mix powdered sugar into them until it was a texture we could handle. Then we had to knead it on a powder sugar covered counter.

Christian joined in and "helped" us. A.k.a played with the dough and got it everywhere.

Yeah this is what Christian did with the fondant we let him use. At least my phone is happy.

Kneading...so much kneading...

Then we added food coloring. Aaaaand lots more kneading.

So after a lot of kneading and trying to get our balls of fondant the right colors, which was just about impossible when it came to brown, we put them in the fridge and went to the beach. It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

Then we came back, got all cleaned up, ate dinner, then got back to the cake, which Christin had baked while we ate dinner and was already cooling. The boys went to play kick ball and man hunt and we got back to cake making.

So we got out the fondant and rolled it out. One of the blobs didn’t really work out that well. We tried adding chocolate to it for the brown one because working with red, green, blue, and yellow food coloring wasn’t working out very well, but I guess the chocolate…messed it up. Or something. Because it turned into weird tasting fudge like…stuff. Christin thought it tasted good, I thought it tasted weird, and Christian thought it tasted like death and spit it out so we ended up just throwing it away.

The light brown, where we only added a little chocolate, turned out okay though so we rolled it out and attempted to cut squares into it. That was an adventure. Christian stood over our shoulders criticizing the whole time. Most of them did not look like squares of fondant, but more like strangely proportioned rectangles of bologna.

After we got all of the fondant square/rectangle things done, we cut the cake and got them into square shapes and started dirty icing them.

Handyman/critic Christian took a lot of pictures for us.

After that, we started applying the fondant.

Nailed it.

Okay so they may not look perfect but all four of our brothers knew what they were and said they were awesome, and so did the other neighborhood kids that came over to try it.

And then it all kinda turned into a party.

And then yesterday evening we all hung out again, doing nothing really. We rode Ripstiks and tossed a football around. Some of the guys played basketball. It was nice.

And then today we played cards. For hours. Christian, Joe, Gabe, and Ian played Minecraft while Christin, Cliffy, and I played Garbage/Golf, later joined by Chris and Matt. When they arrived we started playing Spoons. It was so fun.

No idea what is going through some of these people's minds.

And then after Christin left to go back to college around 2:30, we played four square and messed around with Ripstiks again and after dinner we played basketball, aka took turns making hoops, which I am actually starting to get fairly good at surprisingly enough.

So basically, we had a fun Labor Day weekend. It was nice having Christin back — another girl amidst all these boys I’m surrounded by.

That’s about all that’s been going on. In 9 days I’ll be going up to South Carolina again, as has become tradition, and staying with my aunt for a week and a half. I am really excited to go see all my cousins. It’s sure to be fun!

Now please excuse me while I go watch more Bones. I’m totally not obsessed with this show.

Many, many beach days. Seriously, we went at least 20 times in the last month.

There was a lot of burying people this summer.

Found a giant spider. I also saved Cliffy from walking right into it.

Multiple trips to Walmart.

Messed around outside. A lot.

Epic photo bomb, Matt.

Christian and Joe think they're so cool. I guess they kinda are though.

Late nights inside.

Don't even ask. I have no idea.

The night we rented The Muppets

...they both wanted to sit on the spinny stool.

Of course we are not too old for play dough.

Trolling. Mehehehehe.

I am very sad it’s over. But it’s actually not that bad. Every day Matt, who is usually already at our house since he’s homeschooled and finishes around noon, Joe, Gabe, Christin, and I go and meet Christian and Chris(Matt’s brother) at their bus stop right after 2:00, and then we all hang out until 4, then we go meet Cliffy at his bus stop, then we all hang out and usually play four square until dinner and then hang out again after dinner.

The first day after school, we all played four square in the pouring rain. Words can’t express how awesome it was.

Only thing missing was Cliffy because he was still in school. Sad face.

Anyway, that’s all that’s been going on. Lots of four square and bus stop meetings.

Well, it’s almost time to go meet Chris and Christian. So, until next time!

Then on Saturday my friends and I are getting together to play ultimate frisbee. It has FINALLY worked out to where we’re in town when one of my good friends, Aaron(who is in law school right now), is also in town for summer break. This time hopefully we can avoid the flu which spread through the Curdy family and destroyed the plans we had a few Christmases ago to get together. But alas, I’ll be meeting up with my bestest friends — the Curdys, Whites, and Kellys — on Saturday. I’m so stinkin’ excited! It’s been so long since the old campaignin’ team was all in one place — two years! It’ll be great to get together again.

Plus my sister will be there! YAY! I am just so excited to see her.

Not to mention that in between that I’ll get to spend tons of time with one of my bestest friends, Sarah!

We’re really crazy. No seriously, it gets pretty bad sometimes. Occasionally we just have to start smacking each other to knock sense back into one another.

Or apparently pulling someone off of a fence by their ear. As Sarah is having so much fun doing above.

So yep! Now I must go pack, for I have a busy weekend ahead of me. Until next time!

I miss my best friends.