JetSkiing

In my book, blogging and journaling fit into the exact same category.  I run into the same problem of being so excited to document it all right after something noteworthy happens. But it seems like I never have the time then, and when I have the time, I loose interest and can't remember all of the stories exactly the way they happened. Or you could say I'm just too lazy to try to remember. I still have several sessions and shoots that I could blog, but I have decided I'm not even going to make myself because... well, because I'm going to apply the same advice my sister gave me about journaling to blogging. The short story goes... one time a while ago I didn't journal for like a whole month, and it was a time in my life when a ton of changes were happening and a lot of interesting stuff going on. (I seriously don't even remember when or what it was because... like I said, I didn't journal it ;P) I was telling Alyssa about it, and saying that I felt like I just had to catch up on journaling, but I really didn't want to even though journaling is something I normally actually enjoy (to the most extent). Her advice: "If you don't feel like doing it... don't make yourself. Pick it back up someday and fill in a few points along the way, but don't force yourself to detail it all out." I can't say that the piece of advice she gave is anything that will ever help anyone else out... but for me it meant peace of mind because it let me excuse my lack of regularity in journaling. And helped me to realize that if I don't journal a month out of my entire life, it's not that important in the whole scheme of things anyway. 

So with all that said, this week I marked several pending blog posts off my to-do list even though I haven't ever got around to them. And I'm going to move forward and try to blog as soon as I can in the relation to the time something happened. If, I don't get it done soon... then I really don't need to worry about doing it at all. :) Haha

Yesterday we went jet skiing out on Monkey Island with such an awesome group of girls.

 It was pretty much everyone's first time on a jet ski except for myself and it was so funny to see the way everyone was acting. Nicole was definitely the dare-devil and decided it was so much fun to throw her passengers off the jet ski! Audrey didn't like this so much and wanted more to be in control of a jet ski herself. Amy was pretty cool and collected about the whole experience. I giggled the whole time. And I have to say the person who just overall had the most excitement about it was Kiki.

Follow this link to watch the video on YouTube

-MarLeahJoy

NF State Park

Down through the years I've discovered that I have wayyyyy too many hobbies. So, naturally some will (and must) come and go. But hiking and exploring nature trails has absolutely always stayed at the top of my list. Sometimes the most challenging thing is trying to find someone who is willing to go with me. So if any blog readers out there are also fellow nature enthusiasts... hit me up!!

Ranelle said she would go with me on my latest adventure to find out exactly "where the red fern grows". So we took a weekend trip down to West Siloam Springs, OK at Natural Falls State Park.

I would go on and on about what awesome kabobs Ranelle made... but to be honest, I don't really even remember if they were good or not. I'm sure they were, but I had suddenly developed the worst sickness and really didn't even feel like eating, though I forced myself to.

Chillaxin' :)

Excuse all the pictures of the kabobs... XD

We set up the tent, but we never actually slept in it. Rather, I slept in it for 10 minutes when I was so sick, but after I started throwing up, I had to go sleep in the car. Which is where we spent the rest of the night due to flash-flooding and tornadoes. Yes, we like to really keep it on the adventurous side!

We finally asked some other hikers to take a picture of us... Or rather, they offered to take a picture after they watched me sprint from my spot where the tripod was and try to make it in the picture within the 10 seconds. Yeah, I nearly killed myself trying to get over there in 10 seconds. Haha! 

The whole time were were exploring, I was doing more videoing than anything. So I also used my GoPro to snap a few stills.

On the ledge overlooking the falls.

At this point we were already going against the rules... um... oops!

Yeah, whatever... who cares! We weren't supposed to get off the board walk at all, but as you can see in the next few pictures that I really bent the rules and got in the water and walked behind the falls. 

It was actually a tab bit scary because I had to walk on a small ledge in the rock and keep from slipping off into the pool. I'm not really sure how deep it was right under the falls, but from what we could judge, it looked quite deep. Plus, I had several spectators on the boardwalk who were watching me trespass... and I really didn't want to cause a splashing scene. Haha!

When I got home that evening, we had the most beautiful sky over our house. Which is actually really rare to see since we live in a valley. But the storm had left us with a really beautiful sky the whole way home.

-MarLeahJoy

P.S. - hopefully I will make a video of the whole trip later... I haven't even looked at the footage, but surely I can pull off something :)