This Is Just A Classic Picture

Ice-Skating

Thursday afternoon, the Clarkes homeschool group went ice-skating in Wheeling at Oglebay park. :D Sooo... Here's some pictures from that most enjoyable afternoon. :) (I'm kind of in a smiley-face mood... As you'll see below...)

This is Tabitha Simpson, the little sister of the Simpson girls (obviously) who I know. :) You gotta love babies... I do.

Me and Rachel on skates. Surprisingly, there aren't very many good pictures of us. But that just figures when neither one of us looks that great. :P

Beautiful Olivia, :)

Jack. He's actually a really good skater. But then he's also a boy, and boys are good at almost anything. :)

All us girls!! L to R, Emma, Olivia, Me, Jordan, Allison, Rachel.

Me Olivia and Allison. I really like Olivia's hat.

Me and Olivia dear.

Aww, Jordan!

The skating rink. It was actually a pretty good size, and there weren't tons of people there, so it was nice. I love ice-skating.

Emma and me. Ya know, I don't know why there are so many pictures of me and people. Rachel uploaded them all for me while I was playing card games with Mr. Clarke and Jack. :P

Wow, that just looks dumb. :)

And Mrs. Clarke and Catherine will end this beautiful little post. :D

Big Ugly Woman Murdered

The 2008 Annual Unisversal Big Ugly Beauty Pageant!

Some of you may know about this, and some of you may not. So in case you don't, and even if you do, I'm going to explain. For the past three years, Olivia Howard's birthday party has been a Big Ugly Beauty Pageant. In other words, the Ugliest Girl wins. Only on this day is "You are perfectly hideous!" a compliment. The first year was Local; the second National; and the third Universal. Last Tuesday was the Universal and Final Big Ugly Beauty Pageant of Wheeling, West Virginia. (There actually is a town called Big Ugly in West Virginia--hence the name of our show.)



The contestants are as shown below (in age order)



Chloe ~ Francesca Margarita Tequila Josephina Cuervo from Barcelona Spain

Allison ~ Rosa Bella Roma Rigatoni from Rome Italy

Olivia ~ Host

Jordan ~ Sydney from Australia

Ruby ~ Angus O'Beef from "Dumbeden" Scotland

Rachel ~ Just Jennifer from Hollywood California

Emma ~ Arriet Daft from Bath Britain (actually her real name was Harriet, but with the accent it sounded like Arriet.)



And now, whether your prepared or not, here are pictures from the best, the ugliest, the most hilarious and hideous Big Ugly Beauty Pageant! (Okay okay, I know I don't sound professional...)

Told you it was hideous... This is me, dressed up as a Scottish shepherdess.

Hey, Olivia looks pretty!! That's not right!! Actually, she was the host... She didn't necessarily HAVE to look ugly. She can't really make herself look ugly. She's too beautiful. :D

Rachel, on the other hand... (she's right here with me posting, so she doesn't mind that I said that. :D)

Rachel, me and Olivia after the first half was over... Three more hours to go... *sigh*

Allison... She actually looks Muslim. In this picture, she wasn't from Italy. She was actually playing the part of a murderess. I'll explain in later pictures. :)

One Big Ugly and one Little Lovely

JORDAN!!! And such a Jordan picture too. Rachel says she looks like a rabbit. :P And the reason for her obesity!?!?! It has to do with Allison's murderess picture. Again, I'll explain in later pictures... When the right one comes up. :)

Our wonderfully patient and funny film crew, Mr. Howard INC..

Here is Francesca with her Smart Balance. She's a Bull Dancer, and apparently, "This helped all the dancers in the school keep their balance on the horns."

A close up of my eye. Isn't it beautiful?? You gotta love those eyebrows. :P My makeup was supposed to imitate that of a sheep. :P

Jordan eating her lunch...

It caused much hilarity...

Rachel... Lovely Jennifer. :P

I don't have an explanation for Olivia's expression... But for Jordan's obesity, here goes... Mr. Howard researched Big Ugly on google just to see what would come up. He found a newspaper headline from that town saying, "Big Ugly Woman Killed" and so we decided to do a news report to go in between BUBP segmants about her death. Jordan was stuffed with pillows, and the reporters fought about how she was killed, and finally decided that she was strangled. And so we re-enacted the strangling. Allison was the murderer, and Jordan the hugely obese victim. There, it's all explained. :)

Me and Emma both looking very bad indeed.

Andrea, Tirzah, and Willa played the parts of the news reporters. :) This is Andrea (Clarke).

I posted this picture mainly because of the way Rachel looks in the background, holding Jordan's hands. It looked like something... so... movie-ish or something... I don't know. But I thought it looked kind of cool. :)

Tirzah....

Ugh.

Allison and Chloe. Chloe's eye makeup looks like a devil, doesn't it??

Just a behind-the-scenes picture.

Adorable Seth watching all this ugly ladies act weird.

Tirzah in the dressing room. There was about two feet of clothes on the floor... Yeah.

**sticks tongue out**

Trying on dresses...

Allison...

Hahahahaha! We pick the worst dress combinations for this thing. Fashion matters not.

Willa... :D

Olivia. :)

Emma was a chimney sweeper... However I accidentally called her a swim cheeper. :p I think she looked adorable.

Typical Jordan.

Even more typical!

I didn't purposely have three pictures of Jordan in a row. But oh well!

Rachel looks OK...

And I just love this picture. We have to end the post with a pretty picture anyhow. It doesn't do to have an ALL ugly post. :)

And that's it! We might have little snippets of the pageant up, but we'll see. :)

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