Hot Air Balloons

Two days ago my mom came up to me and said, "you remember we're going to see some hot air balloons tomorrow right? We have to get up at 5:00 am" I was like, "what?? 5:00 am??" Getting up that early didn't sound too pleasant, but I went because I figured, it would probably be worth it.

So yesterday we got up and left around 5:40 am for Albany which was about 40 minutes away. I was pretty tired since I had only got 3 hours of sleep. Everyone seemed so alive in the car yesterday morning, I didn't know how they could do that.

We met up with the Pelkey's and Morton's. Bro. Steve told me he wasn't too crazy about getting up at 5:00 am either. It was really cold there and Ben wore a short sleeved shirt with shorts.

He told me to take a picture to show the Californians how us Oreogonians dress. But I wore a long sleeved shirt and pants, cause I'm not crazy like Ben.

I wore this piece of wood I got from Pioneer School (from years ago) as a necklace and Stephanie asked me if I went to Pioneer School cause she has the same thing. I said I did go and she was like, "oh, well me and Bryan have that wood too, but...we use it to play with, not a necklace."

There was a really cool balloon that was of Noah's Ark. I will show you some pictures of the balloons.

They're blowing it up.

There's Noah's Ark.

Bryan thought the giraffe was funny when it looked like that.

That balloon flew away and this guy was singing the National Anthem on his mic. It was really slow and I asked my mom, "are they going to sing that for every balloon?" she said no and I was like, "ok good cause that took forever."

It's cool huh? They call it "Arky"

The only one missing is Bryan. I'm not sure why he wasn't in the picture...unless he's behind someone. My dad set the camera to take about 8 pictures a second and Bro. Steve was kind of joking and said, "did he have to take 10 pictures?"

There was a wedding going on there and the bride and groom were going to fly away in the green and yellow balloon. My dad got a picture of them.

There was one more balloon that I think was called "Pointy" or "So Pointy" or something. It didn't go up though, they had some problem so they took it back down.

It was spinning and we saw that it had more sides.

We were like, "whoa, I thought it was flat." Then Sis. Valerie was telling us why it wouldn't be flat and we're like, "well it looked flat so we thought it just looked like that." Then Bro. Steve was like, "she probably thinks we're all morons." Then he pointed to everyone one by one pretending to be Sis. Valerie and said, "you're a moron...you're a moron....you're a moron.." it was funny.

Before we left Sis Valerie saw my necklace too and said, "Catie, is that from Pioneer School?" I said yes and she thought it was funny and cute that I used it as a necklace. So I guess I'm kinda weird for wearing wood around my neck lol.

The balloons were hidden behind the fog and were over Home Depot, so we couldn't see them anymore so we left. We went to Dari Mart to get donuts, they were huge. My donut was like bigger than both my hands, it made me super full.

I'm not sure why, but my parents stopped and went inside this Pioneer Photo Museum. Matt, Ben, and I were like, "why are they randomly looking at pioneers?" We waited in the car cause we were too tired and looked for funny signs. This sign isn't funny, but the way I read it is funny.

When I looked at it I thought it said "Rats." I was like, "there's a restaurant called Rats?? Gross who'd want to eat there?" Then I looked at it again and said, "oooooh, Roots."

There's that river Calapooia, so we were kidding and saying, "what if they got those quilts out of the river and when you bought them they were soaking wet?" People buy them and are like, "ahhhh, why are these wet??" Then the workers say, "cause we got them out of a river."

We filmed in the car for a little bit. Matt saw this sign that said "Iced Tea" and he thought it said "Toad Tea" and I thought he said "Toe Tea." That's at the end of this video though. There's a part in this video where Ben is looking at a picture of the Arky balloon, and you hear this kid say, "it's the attack of the haunted balloon!" Just wanted to tell you that that isn't Ben saying that lol.

We also made a short commercial. I had some chocolate milk and we made a commercial about it.

My parents came back and my mom randomly wanted to look at this camp site. It looked old but it had a cool playground. It also had like 7 basketball hoops.

Then we went home and I went back to bed for a while then got up and helped my mom get ready for my Aunt, Uncle, Janean, and Daneka for dinner.

Tessa's house and Cheree's Birthday

August 17th I went to my friend Tessa's house. She lives in Dexter and it takes about 40 minutes to get there so we met half way at HomeSource at 12:00 pm. Our mom's were talking for a little while so Tessa and I walked over to what we call "a fake tree" and talked. This boy around 9 years old came up to me and Tessa, and asked us, "hey, do you guys want the rest of my hot dog?" We were like, ".....no thanks....." then he said, "oh well, I'll just feed it to the squirrels." Then he threw his hot dog onto the "fake tree" and some of it fell to the ground. He saw something sticking out of the tree and told us that that tree is a climbing tree. He was like, "I could climb it but I'm too short to get up there, if only someone could lift me up, then I could climb it." He was looking at me and Tessa like giving us a hint. Tessa and I were like changing the subject, then he asked us to lift him up. But then he got distracted by ants. There were a ton of them on this soda bottle and he was like, "whoa there are a ton of ants!" He stood up and told me and Tessa that his house is infested with ants. Tessa's brother Ty came over to us and he accidentally walked through a spider web and the kid was like, "hey, you just walked in a spider web!!" Ty was like, "so?" Then the spider was crawling on his leg and the little boy was freaking out, so Tessa karate kicked Ty's leg to kill the spider. The boy's mom came out of the HomeSource building and told him that they were leaving so he said bye to us. When they left I looked at Tessa and asked, "do you know him?" She was like, "...no..." then we laughed.

Our mom's finished talking so I got in their car and drove to their house. In the car Ty told us that when he was at his friend's house, his friend wasn't allowed to say the word "bathroom" we were all like, "why??" it was so weird. Like, he can't say, "I have to go to the bathroom" he has to say, "I have to use the room where you sit on the toilet and produce stuff" we were like, "that's worse! And way too long!"

Anyways, lol. We got there and Tessa showed me around the house. I took some pictures for you guys but mainly of her room.

This is part of Ty's room. The rest for now are of Tessa's room.

Do you see that round purple cat head with the big eyes on her dresser? That is off of an anime showed I watched. She doesn't like anime she told me she found it on the ground somewhere and took it home.

That's all. She has a lot in her room, but I think it's cool. She also has a fish named Gilbert in her room.

After I got a tour of their house we didn't know what to do so we asked her mom. Then Ty suggested we play Scattergories. All four of us played. One time we got the letter "E" and one of the catergories said "heroes" I forget what everyone put but Tessa put down a villain mistaking him for a hero. Ty told her who he was and her mom was like, "Tessa, that doesn't count." Tessa was like, "but he's a hero to the villains." Her mom wouldn't allow it though lol.

Another time we got the letter "C" and the catergorie said "something in the sky." Ty and I put clouds. I tried to think of something else cause I knew someone would write that down, but I couldn't think of anything. Tessa said something weird and she was like, "why couldn't I think of clouds??" I was like, "Tessa, what else is in the sky that starts with c?" Her mom was like, "I put comets" we were like, "aww man, that was a good one." Then another catergorie in "C" said "a pizza topping." Tessa and I were trying to think what goes on pizza that starts with that letter. I put down celery. Tessa put down carrots. Ty couldn't think of anything. Their mom was like, "cheese" Tessa and I looked at eachother and said, "why couldn't I think of that??" It was so funny. One last letter was the letter "O" and the catergorie said, "a famous female." Ty and I were like, "that's so easy" and wrote it down right away. Tessa was all confused and said, "how is this easy??" When we read ours off me and Ty both got Oprah, Tessa was like, "oh man, I forgot about her!" She wrote down "Miss Oregon" Ty and I were like, "who's that?" She said, "I don't know."

We finished the game and Ty asked me if I wanted to play video games with him. We played Super Smash Brothers Melee on the Gamecube. It was soooo much fun. Tessa doesn't really like it because it's only about fighting and she thinks it's boring. Ty and I had a lot of fun though. These are the characters you can be:

Bowser

Captain Falcon

Donkey Kong

Dr. Mario

Falco

Fox (Ty said I'm good with him)

Ganondorf

Ice Climbers

Jigglypuff

Kirby

Link

Luigi

Mario

Marth

Mewtwo

Mr. Game and Watch

Ness

Peach

Pichu

Pikachu (Tessa's favorite)

Roy (also good with him, he's my favorite)

Samus (Ty's favorite)

Yoshi

Young Link

Zelda. She can also change to Sheik.

The people who don't really like video games were probably bored with this part lol. You can be a lot of characters, it's cool. It's a crazy game, but this video isn't crazy (compared to me and Ty, it also isn't our video I found it on youtube)

It's a long video so you don't have to watch the whole thing. Me and Ty liked these items called Pokeballs, and we liked the hammers. We would fight over them and try to get to them before the other, and we would throw a bunch of Pokeballs at eachother. It was so crazy.

Ok here is a video with the Pokeballs. Once again you don't have to watch the whole thing.

Doesn't it look fun? :D

Well we stopped after a while cause Tessa was getting bored with it. Ty wanted to play badminton but it was in the 90's outside so we said no.

We didn't know what to do after that. We wanted to make a movie so Tessa and I went into her room to think of ideas. We couldn't think so we asked her mom for ideas. Ty suggested we make a movie about us dressed up as Hannah Montana and making her look stupid cause he does not like her. Too bad we didn't have a wig though cause that would have been funny. We just made a short video of Tessa in front of the fan pretending to be a model. She didn't really know what to do, haha.

We didn't end up making a movie since our brains weren't working. But we did play Life while Ty and their mom went to get pizza. Their dad came home from work and he watched Nascar in their room. I thought the twins would like that, lol.

When they came back Ty joined us, and then I won. I became a millionare, mwahahaha. Ahem, anyways. We watched Race to Witch Mountain while we ate pizza. I took two pictures of them in the living room.

There's Tessa watching the movie.

Ty and their mom. He was looking at this really big comic book he has. It has all the characters from every comic book.

After dinner and the movie, Tessa, Ty, their mom, and I played badminton. It was a lot cooler outside than in the house (their air conditioner was broken) so it felt good outside. Their pool was a magnet to the birdie. It kept going over to the pool and it even fell in twice. Towards the end of this video we kept on hitting it over and over, it was the best play that day.

We played for a long time until it got dark and it was really hard to see. My parents came to pick me up about 15 minutes later and we went home.

August 23rd was Cheree's Birthday. She turned 14. We went to her house to have cake and ice cream and to open presents. I drew this for Cheree.

I know most of you think it's weird. My dad even asked me if I played bamboo music to draw it (since it's Japanese) His name is Lawliet but he goes by L and almost everyone that likes anime really like him. Including me, Cheree, and a lot of my friends. So I drew him for Cheree.

I didn't get pictures of all the presents but she got this hoodie from the other Pelkey family.

That is a little collage my mom and I made of us and Cheree.

That is a mixer from her mom. There is a story to it but I didn't hear it. Her real present from her mom was a bike. She got some photo frames for her wall from Sis. Shannon and Bro. Aaron (and Carson, hee hee) she got a basket for her bike from Bro. Don. They were like, "you need a little black dog to ride in your basket (Toto) then they were saying she should drive around with Minnie in the basket and she'd growl at everyone. (Those who don't know who Minnie is, she is Bro. Don's dog from the Salgado's)

That was a really yummy cake. Cheree, Bryan, Stephanie, and I ate in the kitchen. Then Cheree and Bryan were admiring eachother's braces.

Everyone left pretty soon after that. Both of those days were fun :D