The Berry Patch

We got baby ducks!!!! We didn't actually get them on purpose. We were volunteering at the Caprock 5K, 10K, and a girl who lived in the house where we were stationed was telling us about her baby ducks and how if she couldn't find someone to give them to soon, she was going to throw them in the lake about 3 months early! In other words, if she threw them in the lake they wouldn't survive and so she was going to kill them! So we saved the ducks!!!

They were adorable! Really fuzzy and really cute!

Ashlyn recently got attacked by a cat, she's okay but we now make them stay in their coop at night.

We named them Ashlyn and Spencer. Ashlyn is the yellow duck, she's a Pekin. Spencer is the brown one and he's a Runner.

Once mom came outside and found Ashlyn on her back!!! We didn't find out till later she had slipped and she couldn't move.
She looks ridiculous!

We found a huge box to keep them in. Spencer is in it right now.

And Ashlyn

We found a broken pool for them, although we ended up having to buy them a new one anyway because this one was too broken to fix.

They kept trying to sleep with their heads under their tiny little wing stumps.

Taadaa, they have feathers! For a while, they were half fluff and half feather. We didn't get any pictures of them like that.

You wouldn't know it, but ducks are not very smart. They will forget where their food is and resort to instincts like digging for bugs in the dirt and eating grass.

This is after they were in the dirt.

Ashlyn is huge Spencer is smaller, This is Juliette holding Ashlyn.

Ducks are CRAZY about peas!!! We aren't actually feeding them peas in this picture but they love peas. When we have peas they will follow us around the yard, they usually kinda run from us ( I am pretty sure they hate the "love" my siblings give them most of the time, that's why they run).

We bought them a new pool for mothers day, my mom wanted them to have a new pool.

This is the pool at its cleanest. We clean it every four days by emptying it with buckets, scrubbing the sides, rinsing it, then refilling it. It takes about 30-40 minutes with two people, we kids work in pairs and take turns.

I also got mice!! This is their cage.

This is Kailey running in the wheel.

This is Kailey too.

I originally had two mice but unfortunately Kailey's friend, Bailey died of heat stroke and I have now replaced her with two more. I don't have pictures of the newest arrivals at the moment, sorry.
Ember (I decided not to use rhyming names for the new mice) is black with adorable big ears.
Tiger, looks like a tiger... color wise. She is the sweetest of all three mice and only ever moves half as fast. She is the only one I will pick up at the moment ( though I am going to start punishing them with boredom in a plastic container every time they bite! The worst part is that they bite hard!!! When Kailey bites I drip blood, gross huh!) because Kailey has started biting and taught Ember.

This is Bailey before she died.

Kailey is an escape artist!!!

Tiger and Ember both look almost exactly like Kailey body shape wise; just about the only differences are the color of fur, personalities, Ember's ears :) I love them, but they do bite and they stink like crazy!!!! I call them my little stink bombs :) I clean their cage once a week, but you smell them again four days later!

Mice are also very smart, this is Kailey waiting for me to try and open the top area of the cage so she can run down the tunnel. That is her little tail in the tunnel entrance.

Last week I got to go to Washington D.C. with my 8th grade class!!! It was a ton of fun, we saw a lot of cool stuff and I took a lot of pictures!!!
I'm sorry it took so long to post them, it's my fault, I kept slacking.

Saturday April 13, 2013: This is the very first plane ride out of Grand Junction to Denver.

I sat next to Andrew Bench, I was actually assigned to sit next to him for 3 of the 4 flights, but switched seats with a friend for one of them! the sky is dark behind him, we got to see the sun rise (sort of) while flying to Denver.

Those are mountains far below the plane.

The sun rising.

We took a ride in the train used for taking people to various gates. Sorry, its blurry.

This is a picture of the long speed walk runways in airports. In Denver we had a 2 hour layover and spent a lot of time riding these.

Elizabeth (hiding behind Alexa) , Alexa, Kaila (left of Alexa), Andrew (in the baseball cap) and Mr. Hirshbual/ Scott (far back, Elizabeth's dad)

Elizabeth (farthest) and Kaila (closest )posing

This is Scott making a face

She is not in pain , I promise she's just being crazy.

During the trip we decided to find a code word for the phrase "cute boy." :)
This is the first victim, Scott stopped him to ask what his middle name was because apparently we had had a bet on his middle name. (Scott did this to several other guys as well) After spotting a mango (the code word), and hunting him down, (:):):):):):)) we would ask for a picture with him.

My next flight was with Kaila

Cool clouds

Kaila fell asleep :)

We had our own bus!!!

Mr. Sherrill was the guy in charge, he usually stood there every morning after breakfast and explained the days plans into the mike

The Washington Monument

This roundabout used to be the border between Maryland and D.C.

WW II Memorial

Drew

This is my day group, Scott was our chaperone :) (he took the picture)
From left to right is Elizabeth, Me, Katie and Kaila.

This is still in the WWII memorial.

The Vietnam Memorial (it was pretty dark outside so its kinda hard to see but the wall is really long)

The + after ---- B. Goodman's name means he /she, he probably were/ was missing in action

This is the Lincoln Memorial

The Washington Memorial and its reflection across the Reflection Pool.

Sunday April 14, 2013 :We rode the metro,

We rode down this mega long escalator in order to get underground ( the actual metro/subway was underground)!

This picture was actually taken a little higher then halfway down ! Crazy right?

The metro tracks

I found a different, better setting on my camera for the underground lighting.

We could tell that the metro was arriving even before we could even see it because sounded like thunder in the distance.

This is Mr. Roenicke, he was another chaperon and is the other 8th grade teacher.

We visited Ford's Theater and the House were Lincoln died.

This is the inside of Ford's Theater.

These are pictures of the inside of a boarding house across the street from Ford's Theater and is the building that Abe Lincoln died.

There were actually several places that we were not allowed to take pictures in or else I would have had even more pictures ! :)

This is the bed that Lincoln died in.

This is Jeremy Wade.

Abe Lincoln's coffin looked like this.

I was pretending to be the murderer.

These are all the books that have ever been written about Abe Lincoln, that's four stories!!!!

This was a souvenir shop outside Lincoln's death place, that is a cardboard picture of President Obama. Sorry if I fooled you.

This is me trying on a hat.

This is the old post office that we did not even get go into.

That's Benjamin Franklin

These are the different souvenir hats and sweaters that my friends bought that I thought would be cool to show my siblings.

This is Andrew, I told him looked like a hobo so he smiled and I gota better picture of him.

We visited the Air and Space Museum.

This is a picture of the airplane (possibly the Write Brothers) not the guy.

Amelia Earhart's plane

This is Elizabeth and I trying to make the same face as the guy on the poster.

That is Brenna

This is the bottom of the Washington Monument

Sadie, Brenna and Emily

Sadie

Monday, April 15, 2013:
This is the Capitol building

That is Lady Freedom

This is my class

This is the Congress Building

These were two statues outside of the Congress Building

This is the Library of Congress, it was really pretty

The ceiling

This is the "check in for tourist's place, Aaron had 4 different pieces of paper unknowingly stuck to him :)

Those are my shoes, we got to stand in the middle of the Capitol building!

There were a lot of statues in the Capitol but I'm only leaving a few, I'm serious, there were a lot.

Abe Lincoln

The dome on the Capitol.

This was our Capitol tour guide

I'm not sure what she was

This was the old Congress room, now its just full of statues.

It was really pretty in there too.

Like I said, a lot of statues.

This was the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial.

This was my friend Destiny's idea of how to make memory's :)

This is Vannessa

Madi

Emily

Hayley

Destiny

Pretty flowers

A waterfall

A smaller waterfall

This is me

Group photo

Eleanor Roosevelt

Me and Elizabeth

The Jefferson Memorial

Jeremy Wade

There were flowers growing inside this tree, it was really pretty

The Washington Moument

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

This was my favorite quote

more pretty flowers

Some of the boys with me on the trip.

Devin (in the gray sweater) shoved Rudy (I'll bet you can find him all by yourself)

A couple of the boys poked a hole in the tops of there water bottles and began squirting each other I hope you know where to try and make it look like the person they aimed at had peed their pants! They got Scott, it was really funny. Elizabeth (Scott's daughter) innocently asked her dad if she could borrow the camera sitting on his lap, when the he gave it to her (and she was a safe distance away) the boys attacked!

This is Scott looking down at his wet pants :) !

Tuesday, April 16, 2013:

This is a statue of a photographed image of the battle of Iwo Jima. I thought that this statue was really cool.

I was experimenting with the punk setting on my camera.

This is Drew.

Far left is Rudy, I'm in the middle and Oksana is on the for right

This is the transportation vehicle we used in Arlington cemetery. I took a ton of pictures ( I erased a lot ) in Arlington because I wanted to be able to show just how many grave stones there were, not one picture is of the same spot.

Crazy huh

This is the cite were John F. Kennedy is buried (don't worry he was actually a serviceman).

This was my favorite quote.

This is John Fitzgerald Roosevelt's grave site.

This is the Ever- Burning Flame, it is assumedly burning for all the dead soldiers either/or for President Roosevelt.

This was a really pretty view from Kennedy's personal grave.

This was the changing of the guards at Arlington cemetery, it was really cool but really stiff and incredibly formal. i started to get a video but got bored and stopped it.

(Scott, red shirt, has a sticker on his back which someone probably suck to him as a joke)

This is one of the two Smithsonian Museums
we visited.

This is a pocket mouse skeleton in the Natural History Museum.

This is a huge doll house.

We visited the zoo on Thursday, our last day in D.C.

The D.C zoo is one of the only zoos in America with panda bears.

This (above, the clicker wouldn't let me click on that picture) is my friend Vannessa and I kissing the statue of the panda bear :)

I bet you can't guess what this is.

This is a red panda bear

This is the Elephant Trail, there were about 7-10 of us all walking on the foot prints like little kids!

This is a blurry picture of an otter.

Leemer

Tiger

Monkey

Squishy starfish

Jellyfish

This is the U.S. Air Force memorial, it was really big!

This is Vannessa being a goof.

This the 9/11 memorial for the Pentagon. Each bench represents someone who died, if the bench is facing toward the Pentagon the person was inside the Pentagon when the plane hit and vice versa. The youngest person killed was about 5 ( I can't completely remember).