More family and fun pics

This is one of my favorites, from left to right, Robert, Amy, and Stephanie Shenk and Kathleen Henderson. Kathleen is Tim's cousin and she and Amy are best friends. Us Shenk kids grew up with the Hendersons and they are our family's closest friends. That's how I met Tim too!

This is of Amy and Kathleen with our younger brother Tim in the background.

Here is Steph, Seth, and Amy.

And I just had to put one of my older sister from a while back. I'll write a post about Rebecca soon, there's a lot I can say about her! :)

I'm sitting here watching "You've Got Mail" with Libby because Tim is up at his lab working on the finishing touches for his thesis. Libby is keeping me entertained by running around on top of and behind the couches and chewing on my papers and notecards. She also has tried chewing on my favorite pen, the phone, tv remote and the wall. Yeah, I know, she's crazy. Hopefully its just a stage she's going through. Ha! I feel like a mom! And what a cute little hairy baby I have.

Well, since the last post I put up here was so overwhelmingly popular, I am going to post some more pictures of my beeeutiful family. Tim's brother Seth recently went and visited them for the girls' birthdays and he sent me some great pictures.

Okay, well, I hope y'all enjoyed these pictures. Have a great weekend and a good rest of the month.

My Family

Today I thought I would write a little bit about my family. I've been thinking about them a lot because Monday (the 17th) was my little sister's birthday and tomorrow is my other younger sister's birthday. So I guess today I'll focus this blog on them.

Stephanie will be twenty tomorrow and she's the sister right under me. She's going to the community college by our house (Go Tomball!!) and is doing extremely well, hey, what else would you expect from a Shenk? She's involved in the leadership at Tomball and even works there as well. Poor Steph, she's up there waaay too much. :) Steph is going to major in Education/English and she wants to be a high school English teacher. I think she'll do very well in that and will be very popular. Stephanie also has a wonderful boyfriend named Robbie who is in the Air Force and all of our family loves him, he's really a great guy. Lessee, what else...she loves to read and loves bright colors and looks cute wearing them. I'm sure there's much more I could write about her but I will keep it at this, I don't want to embarrass her too much. :) But I love her very much and I'm so proud of all that she's accomplished. Happy Birthday!!!!

Amy was sixteen on Monday and I simply cannot believe that! She's the baby girl of our family and will always be our little puke (SP? It means "bellybutton" in Maori). HAhhaha, poor Ames, she'll never grow out of that one!! Amy is excelling in her classes this year and is developing an interest in kineseology which is what she'll probably pursue in college. She's a great driver and will probably get her license soon. Amy has also been saving for more than a year to buy her own horse and she has very nearly accomplished that! Hopefully she will be able to gain ownership of a tall, dark, and handsome horse named Dan. She loves to ride barrels and is really getting very good at that. Well, once again, there's more I could write but I don't want to go on too much. :) Amy i is now about an inch and a half taller than me and calls me "little brown monkey" but she will always be my little pet. I love you girlie, Happy Birthday!!!

I'll write more about all the rest of my family. As I have one other sister and three brothers this blog would take on immense proportions if I wrote about everyone one of them. That will just have to wait. For now you will have to settle with the little bios of these two sweet girls and a couple of pictures.

Libby

After many requests, I am finally going to post some pictures of our new little darling. Her full name is Libertas and we got her about a week and a half ago. Tim's sister works at a vet clinic and someone brought her in after finding her. Mindy generously gave her to Tim, who's always wanted a pet squirrel. I don't know how long we'll have her as she could become pretty wild. We're hoping to have her for a few months at least. Okay, enough verbage, here is Libby!!!

Day of rest

Today has been a day of rest and relaxation. I had Yoga and Latin this morning but after lunch I slept for 2 1/2 hours! It felt so wonderful! I also have not done a lick of school work today! I had my Latin I final on Friday and my History mid-term yesterday. So needless to say, I've been psycho busy studying and cramming my poor little brain with all sorts of interesting facts.

So today I have not done anything useful and have watched "Freddie", the Astros game, and now Jay Leno. More TV in one day than the whole semester! As usual, Leno is making fun of Bush but not in the spiteful way as I hear so often. Anyway, don't want to get onto that tangent...

School is going good, I think that's what primarily on my mind these days. I finished Latin one on Friday and am half way through with the rest of my classes.

Hope everyone has a terrific day and a great weekend!!

Cats!

Finally, I am writing again. I was trying to go to sleep but I've been staying up so late recently that I cannot go to sleep at a decent hour! Plus, Tim is studying with a friend in the livingroom and that is one very thin wall away from our bedroom.

Anyway, I just thought I would write a post on our cats: Sniper and Sammy. They are two of the neatest, cutest, and funnest cats I know. Sniper is Tim's cat and he can be pretty mischievous. He climbs onto our tall armoire and swats the back of your head as you walk by. He also climbs up there and wines and complains in the morning when he doesn't have any food. Sammy is my cat and he's a very sweet and mellow kitty. He loooves to have his neck scratched, especially in the morning and late at night. He's always been chunkier than Sniper and maybe because of that he has no jumping abilities at all. He used to try but I think he's all but given up hope. Like they say, gray cats can't jump!

Here's some pictures of our darlings, Sammy is the chunky gray cat and Sniper is the black one. I think these pictures will be pretty telling of their personalities.

I have so many more pictures and I might post some more later. Hope you enjoy!

Latin translations

I've translated some interesting sentences this semester while learning Latin and I thought I would share some of them with y'all.

Me philosophiae do.
I give myself to philosophy.

Philosophia est ars vitae.
Philosophy is the art of life.

Immodica ira creat insaniam.
Excessive anger creates insanity. <- I like this one. :)

Fortuna viros magnos amat.
Fortune loves great men (heros).

These are just some short ones that we've translated for homework. We've also translated some old myths such as: Pandora's Box, The Tragic Story of Phaethon, The Curse of Atreus, and Cleobis and Biton. Of course they've been simplified but its still fun to actually read stories in Latin. :)

We're using Wheelocks Latin and 38 Latin Stories in our class and I would really reccomend those to anyone who would even like to learn a little about Latin. If you take some time to work on it, I think you can learn at least the basic grammar rules and a whole lot of vocabulary on your own just using this book. I found a hardback copy on Amazon for $19.

Great Speech

Wow! Two blogs in one day! Does that mean I'm a nerd yet? :) Well, I was trying to go to sleep but wasn't succeeding so I started to look at some webpages I had bookmarked. Here's a speech that Charlton Heston gave at Harvard Law School several years ago and I couldn't pass up posting it on here. http://www.conservativenews.org/culture/archive/CUL19990316a.html there's the link. I don't know how to make it into a direct link, I'll have to get Tim to show me how. Anway, it's a great speech about the culture in America today.

Craziness!

The craziest thing happened today in my Latin class. Probably one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me at school even!
Okay guys, here's the scene: two ladies sit directly to my right one behind the other. On our last test day Lady A (around mid-30's) sat in Lady B's (around 50's) seat. Lady B asked Lady A somewhat nicely to get out of her chair and Lady B complied, I think, I don't really remember that part. It doesn't really matter though, it just sets up the scene. :)
Anywho, Lady A was missing for the next two class days after the test and during those days Lady B complained before, during, and after class about Lady A taking her seat.
Well, today was the apocalypse of the Ladies in Latin. Lady A arrived and sat in the much coveted seat. When Lady B arrived she told Lady A that she wanted her seat back and she needed to quit stealing it from her. So Lady A replies in a snooty manner, "I didn't realize we had assigned seating in this class!". After some childish bickering (that was only the beginning!) about whether or not Lady A should get up (and after her refusing) Lady A then stormed out of the room. All the rest of us looked around in amazement but that sentiment os shock was not about to end.
The teacher then arrived and made his way up to the front of the room. Within seconds Lady B stormed back in and told the teacher that "there is a problem!". She then proceeds to complain to him about Lady A and telling him that they cannot work it out. He tries to hide a smile and asks Lady A to please move back as there are plenty of seats available. Lady A then refused because she "got here first". Lady B then stomps back to the seat behind Lady A and they begin to mutter under their breaths things like "shut up!" "you shut up!" "I got here first!" and other such mature statements. Finally, in order to start the class and get some sort of semblance of peace back in the classroom, the teacher moves first Lady A to another chair and then Lady B to a chair on the other side of the room.
I could not believe their behavior! They were some of the oldest people in the classroom and they could not resolve such a simple conflict.
I wonder if that says something about how the rest of our nation is. So self-focused and immature. What are your thoughts on this, guys?
Well, I thought I would post something other than "what I did today". Hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as I did experiencing it. :) Tim said he wished I had had a video camera to catch the whole thing. :)

Ramblings

We were supposed to go down to Magnolia to visit my family yesterday but our plans were changed with the pending arrival of Rita. As it turns out, my family's house was barely affected with only a few small sticks scattered around the yard. We were concerned with being able to get back in time for classes on Monday so its probably better that we stayed here. Also, I have a Logic test on Thursday (HELP!) and I should be studying for that right now.

Anyway, life is good. School is screaming along at a snail's pace and work is as slow as ever. The latter is not good for my boss but good for me in that I am able to study while I work. I hope to not have to work after this semester but I may have to in the spring.

After frying my brain studying for Logic then I will probably make a trip to the grocery store, how exciting, huh? :) Oh yeah, and our apartment is pretty messy so I will be cleaning that as well. So I guess that is how my weekend is going to go. I keep wanting to write more interesting posts and I will eventually but this is all for now!

Susan!!

Today I got a call from my best friend Susan asking me if she could come see me this weekend. And of course I said YES!!!!! She will be on her way very shortly and we will have two days filled with fun and frivolity. Here's a picture of Susan...lets see how this turns out. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing her. She's my best friend (after Tim of course!)

Latin

Today I had my first Latin test. I'm taking both Latin 1&2 this semester, don't ask why, that's just how they have it set up. Plus, I can be through with 14 hours of a foreign language in only 2 semesters! It also allows me to take 18 hours yet only really take 14 at a time. I will be done with Latin 1 next month and will then progress on to Latin 2. Anyway, enough about that. My teacher is incredibly interesting and makes the classes that much more enjoyable.
I am also taking Critical Thinking, History of Civilization I, State & Local Gov't, and yoga. I'll write more about those classes later.
Tonight Tim and I are going out to supper at Pappasitos. Some very sweet friends gave me a giftcard for there a few weeks ago for my birthday and I am finally using it! *Thanks, Chris and Katie!*
That's all for now. How does one sign off?
Farewell?
Until we meet again?

First post

Well, I'm finally doing it...I'm starting a blog. I guess I'll write more later when I have more to say and more time in which to say it.