PING!!!

About a six months ago I was looking out side, when I saw my little brother running down the driveway, with a box in his arms. What was he carrying? Hmmmm... He came inside and said, "Guess what we got?" I started to say I do not know, when I heard, "Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!"
 I grabbed his cheeping box, and opened it. Lo and behold  their was a duck. Two, actually. One was mine, and one was Cole's.  I have never had a duck before.

This is Ping.
He is one of my favorite pets I have ever had.  I love him. when he was little, he would follow me around the house, quacking, and waddling as fast as he could. Oh yes. I had a DUCK in our house.
You must be thinking, " Oh! He must ave pooped everywhere!" No, actually . I had a solution.

TADA!

My little sister had a baby doll diaper that was perfect for him. Now, he could follow me anywhere and I didn't have to worry about poop.  I am a genius. Duck Diaper. Perfect.  Once he reached 5 weeks old, i could give him baths. Oh yeah.

Look who is getting his first bath! He LOVED it. He swam, he splashed. he drank the water, he splashed some more, and he preformed the aquatic Olympics for us. Once we pulled him out of the sink, I wrapped him in a towel, and sat with him by the fire until he was dry.

All dry! Shortly after his bath, he fell asleep in my lap.

 Baths are exhausting. Now he is all grown up, but he still gets baths, 

and I still paint his nails. 

My little duckling is huge,  but I love him.

Love,

Shelby

Christmas Explosion!

I am an elf.

 I'm in total Christmas mode.

 In November we get out all of our Christmas decorations, and we have a LOT. This year, Mom and I did the inside of the house, while my brother Parker and the boys next door did the lights on the outside.
 They put lights on the bushes, on the doorway, along the gutter, turned the pillars into candy canes, and outlined the house. So now, we are a beacon of light, brightest house in Bedford.
 And they are not finished yet. They are going to Walmart to get more lights to do the other half of the house.
 Anyway, each year my Dad goes deer hunting at a camp with
 his friends, and stays for a few days. While he is gone, we turn into Santa's merry little elves, and explode Christmas all over the house.
While Mom, Parker and I are trying to make room for the Christmas decorations, packing them away into boxes and such, my younger siblings carry all the boxes of decorations they can hold into the kitchen.
 They unpack them, grab what they want, and horde it off into their rooms until the day after
 Christmas.
In the past, decorating the house has taken days, since Mom had been doing it on her own.
NOT THIS YEAR!!!
This year she had Parker, and, most of all ME. All in all, we finished in about three hours.
 Team work!

We put little Christmas trees all over the house, decorated with ribbons, bows, ornaments,
and lights. I think we have at least five spread throughout the living room, and kitchen.

One of the best parts of Christmas is probably the food.

What you see in this picture are some of the best cookies you will ever eat. My little sister Andie Kay made them, and may I just say she did a wonderful job. 

We make a pair of stackers every year since I can remember. My Mom was an art major in collage,
so crafts are kind of her thing. We also give them away as Christmas presents. This year, we are making home made candles made from our own, home grown, beef tallow. For these of you who don't know what beef tallow is, it's beef fat.

Our fireplace is the highlight of the house each year. We do lights, ribbons, stockings, wreathes,
ornaments, throw pillows, and more lights.
And, we have a real wood burning fireplace. That means chopping wood in the cold, snow, wind  and rain to get a fire. But that also means, burning the Christmas tree on Christmas day!
 It is a tradition we got from my Grandfather. My Mom says he burned the tree each Christmas morning.

This is the ADORABLE snowman my Uncle made for us! He was so excited about giving it to us, He couldn't stand it. He cut the wood, got the mittens, found the perfect sticks for the arms, and painted it himself. He was very proud of his snowman.




Love Ya'll!
Shelby

I Love My Pets

Since I live on a farm, I have a lot of pretty cool animals. When we first moved out to the farm, we had 

no animals. Two years later, we got chickens. My brother Parker was nominated Chicken Daddy, and 

 takes care of the chickens. 

Next came along our beloved Puff Ball. She is a little grey and white cat that we named Sophie when we first got her, bus is now, Schnitzel, Puff Ball, Potato, Chunky Monkey, Le Snitch, Hologram, Mrs. Claws, Pooh, Pooh-tat, Poof Ball, Big Mamma, or  Weenscr.

Here she is!

This is Ping!  He came from Tractor Supply, as a little week old duckling. My mom and little brother came home one day with a little box of chickens and- wait. Two of the chickens have bills, and are three times bigger than the rest. Can it be?! A DUCK!!! Me that one of them was for me. I made a noise that somewhat resembled, a squeak\ yell , scooped the duckling up out of his box, put a diaper on him, and named him Ping.

When I say I want a dog, this is what I think of. A fluffy, big, puffy, dog. 

A cute, active, let's go on a walk, dog. NOT-

.

This. This pathetic excuse for a dog, is Duke. 

He is my dog. No, he will not play with me. No, he will not fetch the stick. No, he will not sit, stay, jump, role over, play dead, etc. But he will sleep all day and night only moving to go outside every two hours. As my brother Parker says, "He has a PHD in sleeping."

These are two of my cows, Gwen and Rosie. Gwen is bigger now, but I couldn't find any recent pictures of her. Gwen Is the black one, and her mom, Rosie is the blond and white  one. Wright now, we have six cows, for at our house, and two stating at a friends farm.

You can go back to your nap now, Rosie.

Love,
Shelby

Beach!

No, I am not at the Beach, and I'm not going any time soon.Then why are you posting about the Beach? you may ask. Because I like the beach! DUH. Also, because I have a lot of cute pics from vacation.

This is all of us kids on my Uncle John's boat. He took us into the Gulf of Mexico!

 This is my sweet, adorable, little brother Cole.

 This is me, and as you can see, I had decided to LIVE in this bathing suit.

 This is Andie, my happy, bouncy, bundle of joy, little sister. She is looking for seashells.

 This is my big brother Parker,(were only a year apart, Parker!) after we got back from getting caught in a storm in the middle of the ocean. Hehe. Is some one wet?

This my awesome, funny, cool Mom, if she does say so herself.(witch she does) We all kind of decided to live our sunglasses that week. I don't have any pics of my Dad, sorry Dad, but he was there!

Enjoy the pics!

Love,

Shelby

Bury The Survivors

So, my brother Parker and I, decided that we should start a band. I play guitar and piano, and he plays guitar, and is starting to pick up bass. After it was official, that we were going to actually do this, we called our friend Nate. He is a drummer,(A really good one) and asked him if he would be interested in playing with us. He was very excited, and said yes. Yay! Now all we had to do was find a pianist. I couldn't do it since I could not play guitar and piano at the same time. So we called our friend Kevin, since he plays piano and asked if he would like to be in a band. He was pretty excited about it, and said yes, so VIOLA! We had a band!

This is a snapshot of Parker and Nate. Yes, I know it's a pretty bad pic, but it's the only one I have of them. I swear, it's like those two hide from cameras. Parker is the one in the red shirt. I don't have any pictures of Kevin, but that's just as well since he decided to play soccer instead of being in a band. So now we have my friends mom subbing until we find a piano player.

This is me and my sister Andie. Were on my Uncle John's boat.

This the guitar\bass player, the one and only, Parker!

The piano sub's daughter, Reagan, is singing with me till we have an official piano player. So I guess she's an honorary band member for now. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, I'm singing till we find a lead singer.

So, yeah. Now I have a band. We have already played at two parties, and both times it went great.Nerve racking, but great! It took us a while to come up with a good name, so long that my mom started to threaten us, saying she would name us "George And The Pigs." We all vetoed that name immediately, and finally decided on "Bury the Survivors". The name came from a riddle I told the boys. It goes like this:

"A plane takes off at New York. Then it crash-landed between Kentucky and New York. Where do you bury the survivors?"

If you haven't guessed, the answer to the riddle is that you DON"T bury the survivors! You bury the dead. Duh.

 Right now we are covering the songs; Its Time by Imagine Dragons, Wagon Wheel by Darius Rucker, I'm Yours by Jason Maraz, Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People, and Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison.

 The guys want to write some music, so that may be in my future, but we'll see. The guys gave all of us nicknames.Oh yes they did. Nate is Grammy,(don't ask) Parker is Uncle Bob, And i'm Cookie. I got no choice in choosing my nickname, and it kinda stuck. So now I'm Cookie.

Hope you are as excited about this as I am!

Love,

Shelby