Johanna Speaks

I'll be fourteen years old on November 7th, so that's in two more days! 

Simeon called me about a week ago, telling me that his birthday present to me will be taking me to the Lord of the Rings orchestra in Sacermento on a Saturday night. We get to be all dressed up! Then, in the morning, he will take me to a bakery, and then after that, we will go to his church and have a potluck there. I'm super excited for it!! 

The orchestra will also be playing music from Game of Thrones, which will be pretty cool! We will be doing all this on November 9th.

I will be having a birthday party on my birthday, and the Ramirezs, Nicholas, Cameron, Noelle, and Jonathan will all be coming to it. I'm not sure who else is yet. 

I already feel like I've been fourteen for a long time, and I'm actually turning fifteen. Because last year, when I was turning thirteen, I pretended I was turning fourteen. So now it's weird. 😂

But I'm excited to be having a birthday.😊

This was my birthday list:

1. Basketball shoes

2. dresses

3 .sweaters

4. cute small necklace

5. Dude Perfect pickleball set

6. boot cut pants

7. Christian hoodies and shirts

Our other uncle, Mark, has been staying with us for about four days but will leave this Friday to go home. He lives in Florida and apparently loves to play pickleball! So far, we've played pickleball with him two times, including last night! He's super good at it and a lot of fun to play with. He will always go for the corners of the court if we aren't there. So I always have to remind myself about that part. And that's actually how he usually wins. I already can't wait to play with him again. 

It's also his first time meeting Ria. I was really hoping she would like him and not be afraid of him like Ezra. At first, Ria was skittish, but after five minutes, my uncle was giving her belly rubs! 😂 I guess she likes everyone except Ezra, which is sad unless she's just acting scared of him to get treats.

Uncle Mark also has a really nice rental car! It has a new car smell and super clean white seats. I forgot what type of car it was, but I only know that it is super nice, clean, drives smoothly, feels, and looks new. And has super cool wheels. Last night, we got to ride in it on the way to pickleball. It was amazing!

My uncle looks like my brother Gideon so much! It's crazy. Like they have the exact same face! So whenever I look at him I'm reminded of Gideon. 

I'm having a lot of fun with Uncle Mark! I'm going to be so sad when he has to leave.

I made a jumping course for Ria in the backyard and pretended she was in a competition. I also like to pretend that she is a horse in a jumping competition, 😁 or even barrel racing. It's actually a lot of fun! Ria jumps over all the jumps. Except if the jumps are too high, she will try to go under them somehow. 😂 

I've been doing this a lot with my neighbor Claire since she also has a dog, a German Shorthair Pointer named Sidney, which is about Ria's age. Ria loves playing with Sidney a lot! But almost every day, we always do the jumps, making it even harder for the dogs to jump over. Claire and I always dream of Ria, Sideny, and a couple of the neighbor dogs all pulling a sled or carriage with us driving them. If that ever happened, that would be so much fun! 

So, one day, I just made my own course for Ria in my backyard. She's kind of getting it on her own without me pulling her around the barrels ( aka buckets ), which is great! I just want her to go around the barrels fast instead of slow. She is going around them, just not as fast as you would see in a real horse competition. 

Apparently, nobody really uses huskies in jumping competitions because they get so distracted, hard to train, and are stubborn!😂 But it's easier with border collies because they are so focused and, I think, learn pretty fast. Here's a video I saw on YouTube with a husky doing a competition:

Here is another video of Ria and I doing the course:

I have been playing a lot of pickleball with Ezra, Nicholas, and some friends! We usually meet on Saturday mornings and Tuesday evenings. At first, I could barely hit the ball and get it over the net—that's how bad I am at it! And my serves were terrible! I kept hitting the ball outside of the lines. Plus, I had no idea what the rules were. But now I know how to keep the ball inside the lines when serving, and I know the rules and whose turn it is to serve. 

My serves have been getting a lot better than before because I have been doing some tight serves, where the ball doesn't simply go over the net slowly but is a fast and kind of tight ball to hit for the receiving person. But I want to practice a lot more and try doing more complex hits or different serves. 

We played last night! Nicholas usually comes, but sadly, he was too busy with his work this time. So it was Ezra, French Jonathan, me, Caleb Mintz, and Zach Mintz. The Mintzes go to our church, and they are good friends with our family in general. And French Jonathan (aka French Frie) also usually comes, and he is a pro at pickleball! He will always spin the ball when he plays, so when it lands, it goes in a completely different way, so it throws you off a lot. And he's super good at doing fastballs, too. So basically, he's known for a lot of ball spins to everybody. And Caleb Mintz is known for always spiking the ball like crazy! He always spikes it on any chance he gets, and that's how he basically takes people out. 

Nicholas, Zach Mintz, Ezra, and I aren't exactly known for anything because we do a whole bunch of different things. But I'm known for missing the balls a lot.😂 But honestly, everybody else is incredibly good at pickleball. 

It's a lot of fun to play! I am always looking forward to playing every week. And sometimes, I will be practicing on our garage door. 

So last Friday, our family went camping in Chester! Chester is up in the mountains about an hour and a half away from our house, maybe longer, depending on who's driving.

So my mom, Sophie, and I went to Chester in the white car together, and my dad and Ezra went

in the van. The white car has AC, but the van doesn't. So they just put the windows down to feel cool air even though it's super hot. At least in Chester, it only gets to the 90s. 

When we got to Chester, we stopped at a beautiful green park and had lunch with Nicholas, Caleb, Risa, Simeon, Ezra, Dad, Mom, Sophie, and me. We didn't go straight to the campground because it hadn't opened yet for people to come in. It opens at 2:00 PM, I think. So we had lunch, talked, and then went to the campground to set up our stuff. The rest of our family wasn't coming until way later that day.

There were about four people next to us on a different campsite. But I am so glad I didn't bring Ria with us because guess how many dogs the people had? Four yapping dogs! And by yapping dogs, I mean super small dogs, like a pug's size. 

Noelle and Cameron arrived around 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. By then, we had already swam a bit and were chilling in the hammocks we had set up. Then my mom made us some Italian sodas! She had bought everything for them and brought them with her. The Italian sodas tasted good! Then we had some dinner. I have forgotten what we had for dinner; sorry. 

We had almost the whole family with us except Gideon and Jonathan. Gideon was supposed to come that day all the way from the State of Alabama, but his flight was canceled. They said it would arrive early the next morning. And Jonathan, my oldest brother, said he would probably be here at 11:30 PM because I think he was busy with work. 

Julia (Jonathan's girlfriend ) also came at around 6:00 PM and had dinner with us. We all played Bang! together. Bang! is a really fun card game. I won't explain everything because that would be super hard. But you can go look up the rules on Google. If I tried to explain it, nobody would understand me. 😂

We played about two games of that. For somebody to win, each game would take about an hour or more. So we stopped playing at about 10:30 PM. The campground has a quiet time that starts at 10:00 PM. That means everybody in the campground has to be quiet because other people are probably sleeping. 

I took a video and pics of us playing Bang! at night. 

Here they are:

Nick is looking super sus! 

We all have cowboy hats, too!😁

The next morning, we heard that Gideon's flight had been canceled again, so he would probably get there tomorrow or late at night. The next day, we were going to go back home, so we really hoped we would be able to see Gideon!

Jonathan came late at night and slept in a hammock. So now we had everybody there except my brother Gideon. 

That morning, my sister Noelle made a delicious breakfast! It was cooked potatoes, eggs, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and chopped bacon! It tasted super good! After that, we got out some kayaks and kayaked a bit. Then Noelle had a huge raft, so we put it in the water and went on it. But first, we had some lunch. 

The lunch was what Nick had made. I forgot what it was called, but it tasted super good! It had chicken and cheese inside a corn tortilla. Then, after that, we went on the raft. We were on it for about three hours! And by then, it was almost 4:00 in the afternoon. 

I walked to the bathroom, and on my way back, a van was behind me, so I moved out of the way. When it passed me, I looked at the guy driving, and it was Gideon!! He was just smiling at me. I walked with him back to the campsite. 

So now we had everybody with us. This also included our friend James too who came to visit for the day all the way from our neighborhood! We all hung out on the hammocks and chairs, and Gideon told us about his flights and other interesting stories. By then, it was dinner time. And we also played even more Bang!

Then, after dinner, we sat back in our chairs and talked. Then Caleb and Risa (my sister-in-law) said they had to go home, so right before they left, we all took a family picture and had the water in the background. 

Then Nicholas, Cameron (my brother-in-law), and I started playing some music Nick had picked. And James was our music stand.🤣

After that, we all sat by the fire, roasted marshmallows, and talked some more. Then we were all tired, so we went to bed. The next day, we started cleaning up our campsite because we were going back home that day. After everything was packed up, we went to church in Chester. It was Sunday. 

After church we went to a coffee shop nearby and had some coffee and ate a bit of lunch, which was leftovers from the past few days. Then we said goodbye to Gideon and Simeon and drove back home. 

I couldn't wait to see our dog Ria again! She was super happy to see us when we were finally made it home. 

Here are some pics and vids: