A Chocolate Facial

Okay... So last night Olivia and I were up late baking and cooking lots and lots of.... stuff... for Emma's late tea/birthday party. We made chocolate covered strawberries, and we had quite a bit of the milk chocolate left over. So, we decided that it really needed to go on my face. Hence, the pictures below. Then... I saw the bag of flour... :D























































My nose is NOT that huge!!!!

Out of Town!!!

I am in West Virginia!! On Friday night, Mr. Clarke drove me down to St. Clairsville. I talked about graveyards and dead people for most of the ride, until we got into a discussion about... theological issues. After that, there was an awkward silence for about five straight minutes. Then I started eating bagels to take my mind off the silence. I stayed with the Clarkes Friday night. Rachel and I slept in a twin bed on the top bunk with no rails, as is our custom, and talked until two in the morning.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Clarke drove Rachel and I to Wheeling WV, where he dropped us off at Jordan's house. It was quite humorous when lunch time came around, and there was no food. So, we got some chips and cheese dip, bean dip, and salsa, sprite, homemade cookies. Mrs. Connor wasn't home, so Mr. Connor dumped the entire bag of chips on the table, and people ate them off of that.

Saturday afternoon we went to Target and bought mascara (which I recommended to Jordan, and now she loves it) fake nails for fun, lip gloss, etc.. We topped off the trip with Strawberries 'n Cream frappicinos from Starbucks.

Jordan had a part in this play called I Remember Mama and she did well. The play was thoroughly enjoyable.

We came home at about eleven PM and talked a lot... or at least until three, by which time I said:

"You guys, do you mind if I go to sleep? Because I stayed up Thursday night until 1:30 or 2:00 with Chloe, 2:00 with Rachel on Friday night, 3:00 tonight, and Olivia's going to want me to stay up late tonight with her! So I really need to get some sort of sleep!"

Of course they were laughing at me, and they were so hyper, but I went to sleep anyways. So we got up this morning and went to church, and I was so happy that Titus (age 1) let me hold him all the way through all the singing, and actually wanted me to! :D I love babies. During the sermon, though, a lot of my nails came off, except for the thumb ones, my index finger on my right hand, and my middle finger on the left hand, and I cannot get them off at all! It looks awfully funny.

We came home and tried on all my dresses... Jordan was particularly crazy about this Retro dress that I made, and Rachel was too, so then they just decided to try on every single one I had. Jordan ended up borrowing my red and white flower dress, which she declares every five minutes she "loves to death."

Mrs. Clarke just came to pick up Rachel with Jack. Last night Mr. Clarke and he were playing catch, and somehow Jack got hit in the mouth with a baseball bat, and this morning Mrs. Clarke called the dentist at home to see if he could look at Jack's loose teeth, which are fine, except for a broken one.

And now the Howard's will be here in about forty five minutes to pick me up, and I'll be with them until August sixth, where I'll spend the night with Rachel, and then Mr. Clarke will take me back to Cleveland (because he works up there sometimes) early in the morning on August 7th.

Okay, I'll try to post more updates, and possibly some pictures. We'll see.

~Ruby Jean

An Odd Picture

The Joy of the Lord

Have you guys ever felt so happy that you could just burst or sing really loud so the whole neighborhood could hear you? Well, that's how I'm feeling right now. SO happy, that I feel like I could read through the entire Bible, and sing all the way through the Trinity Hymnal, and memorize every word of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. But... "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

Nehemiah 8:10 says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." In the past hour and a half, this has been proven to me so much. I am no longer "lethargic" as mommy says I am (and it is completely true) and I so happy and joyful and like I have all the strength in the world!

Even though the following could set me down...

1. The van is broken... again. And we need a new one.
   
2. We may not be able to go see Batman tomorrow.
3. A good friend lost a baby.
4. We are all exhausted and stressed out from our trip.
   
5. Some of us are getting over being sick.
6. Peter might not be able to come in September.
   
7. We didn't get to see the Shepherd's in New Wilmington.
8. Daddy has a gig on my birthday.
9. Miscellaneous.

So you see, all these things could make me feel rather down. Very down, I might say. But I am so happy, I am bursting with joy and happiness, and I feel like I cannot express it!

There wasn't a point to this post, I was just so happy I had to say something.

Sunset Shoot with Rachel Part Two

This is Rachel.





















This is me. (I wasn't sure about posting this picture... But Rachel wanted me to... :-| )




















I like this one.





















Rachel likes this one.

























Aww, she's so pretty!

























She looks like a pirate!!!

























hmm...

The Good Old Days

Olivia Rose.

























Luther Whitfield. (Isn't he SO adorable?)

Someone Has Strange Siblings....

...And I think it's me....

The Fool's Prayer

by Edward Rowland Sill

The royal feast was done; the King
Sought some new sport to banish care
And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

The jester doffed his cap and bells
And stood the mocking court before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch's silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as wool;
The rod must heal the sin: but, Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

"'Tis not by guilt the onward sweep
Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;
'Tis by our follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven away.

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept—
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung!
The word we had not sense to say—
Who knows how grandly it had rung!

"Our faults no tenderness should ask,
The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders—oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;
Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!"

The room was hushed; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

(Sometimes blogger makes me mad because it won't let me do tabs!!! ahh!)

Wow We Look Stupid....

Might As Well Make Use Of My Time....

Hello World....

It's 1:20 A.M. and I can't sleep. So instead of pacing our bedroom floor, I came down here to post about something. I'm not sure what it is. I think I'll tell the dream I had last night..... or, the night before, because it was Friday night...

Anyway, mommy had a baby. It was the sweetest little girl I had ever seen. Sweet, healthy, etc.. And she had the roundest face. Mommy put her into my arms as Chloe and daddy helped her with something. I forgot about everything in my life except that little newborn baby, gazing up into my eyes, and I marveled at God's creation. "Behold, I am fearfully and wonderfully made." It was amazing how those tiny little fingers grasped my pinkie, how those little tiny feet kicked and squirmed, how those eyes sparkled and shone. I thought, as tears came to my eyes, "This baby is real. This is not a dream. At last it's not a dream!" You see, the past few months (when the would-have-been- birthdate for the poor little baby was near) I've been having dreams that mommy has had a baby, or got pregnant, or something along those lines, and my thought was always, "This must be a dream. It's too good." This time it was, "It's too real and good to be a dream." I can still feel the warm, soft skin of the baby that I was holding in my arms, and I see her sparkling eyes as vividly as though it actually happened. It was the strangest dream I've ever had. We named her Cassandra, and it suited her perfectly round face and eyes wonderfully.
The rest of the dream is vague and incoherent. But that one part.... I forgot everything, everyone, except that little baby girl I was holding, that was the only part that was clear, and remains vivid in my mind, and that I can still feel in my arms.

Okay, I think I'll go read now....

Praise the Lord!

The whole story started like this.... A year and a half ago I started writing Travels to Inverness, which is supposed to be a 400 paged novel. (Something like that.) A very good friend gave me a laptop last October, and I was so happy that I had it, because I needed something to write on other than the computer that everyone else needed to use. Lately the laptop has started shutting down on me right in the middle of writing, and the screen clouds over and stuff like that. Also it isn't connected to the internet, which I need because I have a lot of research to do, especially since I recently decided to put a war in my book.

Well, obviously I can't afford the expensive laptop that I need, and I don't really want to use the one I have now for fear of its shutting down and never starting up again, and then my whole book will be lost, as I don't have it anywhere else. Daddy and Mommy decided that until God provides a new Macbook laptop, I should write on a different computer and make do with what I have. Since I didn't have an Ethernet hookup, or a flashdrive, I had to type the whole thing out. I started doing this and I was so happy because I can edit as I go along, and in the first four pages I added several things, changed several things, and really made drastic changes.

Well.....

Later that night, Gabriel was cleaning out the hard drive on the computer, and it broke. Every single bit of information was completely lost, and gone. The computer couldn't restart, or do anything. It was completely broken. Of course I was upset. I was furious. I was too upset to cry. I couldn't remember any of the changes I made, my school papers that I had studied so hard for on John Smith, Christopher Columbus, and others, and four pages worth of notes on the Reformation and the Renaissance were all deleted. Plus a few poems which I hadn't copied yet, and I couldn't remember. I was too frustrated and mad and upset to even think about trying to make every possible change that was necessary, though it was different from the previous ones I made. I was really wondering what God was trying to show me. This whole incident completely ruined my entire day, and I got really tired and stressed out, had to go to bed early, and couldn't sleep.

The next day was better. I made a few changes, and daddy said the computer could be fixed, although Gabriel called the Apple store and they said we would have to get a new part which would cost 300 dollars. That was not an option. I didn't work on my book for a few days. I became happier, especially since a lot of people said that it could be fixed, though it wasn't easy at all. And then....

Today Gabriel decided to work on the computer. And he fixed it! He got all the information back, and the computer works great now, without any new parts or anything! Praise God! I can't tell you people how happy I was. Chloe had gently tried to tell me that I "shouldn't get all worried about it" the day the computer broke. I yelled, "If you were a writer then YOU would be worried!" :P But I see now that there was no cause for saying that, or being worried at all. I see that it was all a lesson in trust and faith in God. And praise God that I have all my information and poetry and papers back!!!!!

Extremely Excited,

~Ruby

Sunset Shoot with Rachel

When I went to visit the Clarke's in May, Rachel and I took lots of time to try out different photo shoots in the sunset. (She loves photography, and is very good at it.) She also used this time to teach me some things about taking pictures, which I forgot when I came home. :-|



















This is one of my favorites... :)




























Rachel and Asher.





















Rachel.

























I LOVE this one!!! :)

You Have to Wonder When You See Pictures Like This...

An Update

For the past two days my mother has been reorganizing, rearranging, and cleaning our living room like crazy. We've taken a couch out, we're stripping and refinishing a bookcase that belonged to my great great great aunt Annette B. Hopkins (author of "Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life and Works) and countless other things. In the midst of it all we happened to notice that Olivia wasn't acting the way she normally does. Her eyes were droopy, (though they're always like that, they seemed droopier this time) and she whimpered. We decided that she must not be feeling well, and promptly took her temperature. It came out 101.8. Okay, so she has a fever. But she insisted on getting her "babing suit" on and running through the hose with the kids, and we went on cleaning.

That night Chloe and I stayed up a little late. She was talking online to someone, and looking online for wedding dresses, bridesmaids dresses, etc.. (Ask her, not me. She's got this thing for it.) Anyway, I was too tired to watch anymore. I went upstairs and daddy asked me to carry Olivia from their bed to her bed in the attic. I picked her up and she felt pretty hot. I covered her up with a blanket, that she stubbornly kicked off in her sleep. I then proceeded to do "my things" i.e., read my bible, write in my journal, etc., etc.. I was just on the brink of sleep when I heard a moan, and then crying. I came back to reality, noticed that Chloe wasn't upstairs yet, and then went to Olivia, who lay crying in her sleep. I picked her up and started to sooth her. I noticed then that her skin was as hot as coals, and expected every minute for her to blow up. (Just kidding.) But she settled down, although she was really restless, and then I covered her up and went back to sleep.

Chloe came upstairs, but because the air conditioner was on (she cannot STAND air conditioners) she went downstairs to Peter's room. Olivia started crying in her sleep again, but I combined it in with some weird dream I was having, and didn't wake up. (I only know she was really crying because Chloe told me so the next morning.) Today Olivia's fever is gone, but she goes around telling everyone that it isn't in her skin, it's in her blood. She is still a little weak, and tired, and lays around on the couch, while we continue to arrange, clean, etc.. Hopefully this will be our last day. Mommy has this thing with vacuuming, though... She's always at it.

I can't really remember what the point of this post was supposed to be... But it's just a post, so I'll leave it at that without any point, except that now you know what happened with me and my sister last night. :)

A New Blog

ruby-hopkins.blogspot.com

This is a new blog where I will post short stories, poems, and miscellaneous things that I've written. Hope you enjoy it.

Do You Look Like This When You Wake Up?

I just want to take a brush and comb my hair out SO badly whenever I see this picture! It drives me crazy! :)

A Fun Parody

Chloe and Duncan made up this parody a few months ago... I thought it was rather clever, hence my posting it...

The original song was Johnny Cash's Cry Cry Cry, which doesn't necessarily have the best lyrics... But just so you know, the first verse and chorus (to the original) goes like this...

Everybody knows where you go when the sun goes down
I think you only live to see the lights of town
I wasted my time when I would try try try
'Cos when the lights have lost their glow you'll cry cry cry.

(Next Verse)

You're gonna cry cry cry and you'll cry alone
When everyone's forgotten and you're left on your own
You're gonna cry, cry, cry.

Here's the parody...

I think we all agree that feasting 's lots of fun
But it seems we only live to get the dishes done
For every pan that mama uses to fry fry fry
I scrub it clean and then he wipes it dry dry dry.

We're gonna dry dry dry
And we'll dry some more
Until the counter sparkles and there's nuttin on the floor
We're gonna dry, dry, dry....

Clever?

.....For Those Of You Who Still Aren't Convinced....

Molly accepting Roger's proposal in Wives and Daughters....















"Yes! yes! Yes I will! Yes!"