i'm alive!

so, i think it's about time to resurrect this blog! my sisters have been nagging me for, oh, 1 and a 1/2 years now (whoopsie :P), so i think it's about time...school, soccer, family, friend, camp and other things *coughfacebookcough* have seemed to have stolen my time...but i'm alive! really and truly i am! i'm also updating my photography blog, as i'm getting more involved and immersed in photography (and more interested in doing it professionally), i thought it'd be a good idea to kinda re-think my "brand" or whatever you want to call it...i'm also contemplating (ooo big word ;]) combining this blog with my photography blog...but i'm still thinking about it...SO, go check out my new photography blog! hopefully i'll be more faithful to this one as well :/ but for now...goodbye tori dutt photograph and hello ria grace photography! :D

meg and soph's photoshoot!!

hey everyone!! go check out the rest of the pictures from meghan and sophie's photoshoot, and don't forget to let me know what you think!!













[click on the picture, as usual!]

wow...it's been a while

sorry everyone...it's been quite a while since i last posted...sooo sorry 'bout that...life has been crazy! for some reason, teachers decided to pile on homework and tests for the past 2 weeks...strange, i know! so, what's been going on in my life lately (not that anyone actually cares or checks my blogs anymore, but oh well!)?? well, last weekend, i went to the authentic beauty conference with a bunch of my friends (and my lovely sister), and it was awesome!! the speaker was bethany needham, our counselor's name was melissa, and they both rocked!! it was bethany's first time speaking at a conference, and she did an awesome job! :) she talked about the lies we girls believe and how we need to attack them head on with scripture and disprove those lies that satan is feeding us! a couple of her favorite verses were--
pslam 45:11- "The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord." (talking about God to us!! He's enthralled with your beauty!)
psalm 139:17- "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" (God thinks about you all the time, and His thoughts towards you are precious!! how cool is that?!)
sooo, that's what happened last weekend....it was awesome!!
today was kinda crazy, i had a math and physics tests, and a Bible paper due! i was dictating my schedule for this week to sophie on sunday, and she was typing it into her phone (don't ask me why...), and all of it didn't fit!! that's one way to know your week is too full-- it doesn't fit in someone's phone!! :) anyways, then after i got home, i had an interview for camp (woop woop!)! mary is awesome!! hopefully i'll get to work there this summer, i'm so excited! :)
yup, so that's what's going on with me...tomorrow, my dad has surgery on his knee (please pray!) and friday we're having a group come to do skits and bekah's favorite church is coming, too, although she won't be able to see them because she's going to be flying to thailand (you can pray for her, too! i'm gonna miss her soooo much!!)

i think that's it...oh, and i put more pictures from sophie and meghan's photoshoot up on my photoblog (i finally got them all on the computer, edited, and ready to share!), so you can go check those out and let me know what you think!!
have a great rest of the week! :)

pride and prejudice

soo, last night was the last performance of the play "pride and prejudice" that my high school did!! i went with my youth group, and it was amazing!! one of the amazing seniors in our group, bekah, was elizabeth, and she did a spectacular job!! she had sooo many lines to memorized, and she did them all perfectly!! so, great job everyone who played in it, it was awesome!! and bekah, you were amazing!! :)

:P

back to school again...and back to homework...whop-dee-doo...i'm so tired right now because we had an all-nighter at youth group on friday...and i only slept for around 2 1/2 hours. :P and i just got this weird craving for chocolate pie..mmmmm...that's sooo good! :) ahhhh!! so, the overnighter was fun!! ashlee and naomi invited hannah, so it was cool to have her there, too! :) we played polish pingpong, which was a lot of fun! random people sang and danced to random songs (which was soooo funny!!), we watched the princess bride and i fell asleep for the middle of it, which is surprising, because that was the first time i've ever (that i can remember) have fallen asleep during a movie. we hung out a lot, and i'm very proud of myself, because i only had a couple cookies instead of stuffing my face! :) i fell asleep from 5:30-7:30 sat. morning with bekah, ashlee, hannah and christa, which was pretty good, because i had wanted to sleep...everyone was sooo tired, though....i ran 11 laps around the auditorium with jessuly at 4:30 saturday morning...good times...and then i went home, took a shower, listen to my ipod for an hour, then fell asleep from 1-4 (during reuben's birthday party) (i know you all totally wanted to know that!). we went to ashlee and naomi's indoor soccer game at 4:30 (i love soccer!), and they lost 5-0, but for some reason it's being counted as a win. they had 4 tired persons on the field (ashlee, naomi, hannah and katelyn), and ashlee and katelyn looked like they were going to fall asleep. yea, so now i'm back in school...and really tired...only around 10 weeks left 'til the end of school!! :)

...i still want chocolate cream pie...

pennsylvania and interim

soooo, as most of you know, i had school vacation for the past 2 weeks, and my family and i went to pennsylvania to visit a family we haven't seen for a while. we were there for all of last week, and i had an awesome time! :) we went into philly 2 days, stayed overnight at gettysburg (with our pillows!), went to lancaster, a.k.a. amish country, got to see a family from our church who moved down there and got to meet their new daughter!, and had a lot of fun with our friends! it was so much fun, and i miss my friends so much, but i have a lot of awesome memories and a whole bunch (a.k.a. 100's!) of pictures to remember the trip!!
so, after the past 2 weeks of vacation (which were awesome!), we're back to school again. at my school, we're having a week of "interim" where we have a morning and afternoon class all this week that are different from regular classes (like this week we have fencing, medical specialties, ballroom dancing, hip hop, computer programing, scrapbooking, and a lot more!), and even though this is my very first one, it's been a lot of fun so far! :) i'm taking an all-day class called digital imaging, which is just awesome! i get to take pictures and play with photoshop all day, what could be more fun?! so far this week, we've photographed at my school, 2 town's centers, a church and library in boston, and we've been to a photography museum (which had a really cool exibit with photographs from ellis island by stephen wilkes). it has been so much fun!! it was kinda funny, because we went into boston today, and when we were walking back to the t, we passed a big group of people all with the big "pro" cameras, and we were like, woah, they're doing the same thing we are!! it was pretty cool! :) so, i've taken a couple 100 pictures...maybe i'll post a couple on my photoblog...idk...
anyways, just thought i'd give y'all a brief overview of the past couple of weeks for me! :)

these are hilarious!!

tucker showed us these and they're so funny!

this one is really funny, too!!

pennsylvania

sooo, we're having an awesome time down here in PA. the family we're staying with are just so awesome and so much fun i don't want to leave, but i miss all of y'all back home!! we've been to philly, gettysburg and lancaster, and we'll be home soon. here are a couple pictures...
independance hall...








the liberty bell...








starbucks... :)








the hotel in gettysburg...








little round top...












it was really windy...








kitchen kettle shop...








horse @ kitchen kettle...








the outhouse...












so there's just a couple pictures from our week here...more to come later with stories!! :) have a great rest of the week, and happy Easter, everyone! :)

famine pictures finally up!!

hey everyone, i finally got the famine pictures up on my photoblog!! so, go check them out and let me know what you think!! :) {click on the picture! ^}

happy birthday jaina!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR JAINA!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!! :)
(it seems like everyone else already got to this, but i'll say it anyways!) i hope you had an awesome day!! love ya! :) (yeay for purple!)

meghan and my's club from camp...

soo...last summer at camp, meghan and i made up the most awesomest club in the whole world. and so last week i finally got around to making a graphic for it...so here it is, and the explanation...















so, i'll start from the beginning. it was chill time at camp, and meghan came to hang out with me on my bunk, because her bunk was right next to mine on the top, and we're just cool like that (btw, my bunk was just the most amazing bunk ever. i loved it, it was in the most perfect place. *teartear*) anyways, so it started off as the unwanted people's club, and then got many things added on to that. so, we started the unwanted people's club because we are unwanted by the other gender (yes, rather depressing, i know. but jaina and sophie were [and still are!] wanted and we weren't, so we needed a way to express our sadness...). so that's how it all started. i quickly became the fat unwanted people's club because we were just sitting on my amazing bunk eating chocolate and being sad, so we figured if we kept that up, we'd grow really fat pretty quickly. then we added the "watchless" part because neither of us had a watch and we had to keep asking other people what the time was. and we added the "who love archery" part because we just love archery! :) also, the "our dads love us but i don't think that really counts" part goes with the "unwanted people" part! :) anyways, that's just my random story for y'all right now, hope you enjoyed it! :)

:P

i'm kinda bored right now...just waiting at school to be picked up...i probably should be talking to teachers about the famine...i've raised at least $500 now, so i'm half way to my goal!! do you want to help me reach my goal of raising $1,000? please leave a comment, i need all the help i can get!! :) random famine facts: $30 can feed and care for a child for 30 days!! here in the US, $30 might get you a dinner and a movie. every day, 15,000 children, that's 1 every 6 seconds, dies from a 100% cureable disease called hunger. and you can help stop those appaling numbers from rising!! anyways...go check out sophie's blog, she wrote a really good post...

prayer and meghan's fanfic

sooo...i would just like to ask for prayer for me. i'm coming down with something, and mom thinks it might be the flu, but i really hope not. throughout school today, i had a big headache, sensitive skin (everything felt really rough), i was freezing and shaking, but my head felt like it was burning up from the inside out, my stomach felt funny, and my leg muscles ached and were sore. i had a fever, too!! in physics, i asked lauren if my face was red, and she said no, but when she felt my head, she said it was burning up. i'm feeling better now, but i think just because i'm on drugs (you all know what i mean...) so, if you could pray i get better soon, and it won't be the flu! :/ i'm so glad it's friday, so i can just sleep all tonight and tomorrow!! (and if i was acting a little weird at school today, that's why).
also, y'all need to go check out meghan's fanfic! it rocks!! meghan's a really talented writer!

photoshoot...

go check out some pictures from a "photoshoot" i did with erika, katelyn and ashlee after church today...they came out pretty cool...more to come! :)
{click on the picture to go to my photoblog}

HAPPY EASTER!!

happy first day of 2008!! :) hope you all have a wonderful and blessed year, grow closer to God, and honor and glorify Him in everything!
how did you all celebrate the new year last night/this morning?? we went over to erika's house! it was a lot of fun!! we kinda hung out and ate dinner until 11:50, when we shut off the movie we were watching (cheaper by the dozen 2) and turned on the news! :) when we first got there (which was late, because i locked the keys in the car when the car was running, because mom asked me to start the car because she had to go shopping, so she had to call at&t, and it took them a little bit to get here, so she went shopping later than she had hoped to, so we got to their house later than we had wanted to.), we ate and played dance praise (or something like that) in their basement. i have just about no talent for dancing, let me tell you that right now! so, after we were all (umm, maybe just i) was failing miserably, we decided to put "wake up, wake up" on expert and erika, ashlee, katelyn and i each got an arrow!! it was fun and we did it for "happy" too!! :) after that, we watched "high school musical 2" (one of the most pointless and stupid movies i have ever seen) on the disney channel. after that, we had yummy cookies and s'more brownies and then we watched some of "cheaper by the dozen 2" (until 11:50, like i said before, when we turned on the news!). then, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! happy new year!! :) after that we tried to take pictures of 5 of us, but it didn't work too well! (check out the pictures on my photoblog! :]). it was a really fun night, thanks erika's family! we also decided that one of our goals for 2008 was to learn the "bet on it" dance, just because it's so silly! :) who knows how that'll go! :/ it'll be fun, though! anyways, have a blessed new year! :)

Happy Birthday Naomi!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR NAOMI!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!
{yes, i know it's late...my bad...}
hope you had an awesome birthday naomi!! love ya!
...
so...last friday-saturday (december 14-15), naomi had her birthday sleepover with a couple friends! it was fun! she got alex rider (if you've been reading ashlee's blog, too, you'll know what i'm talking about!). it's a pretty stinkin' awesome movie! :) anyways, her party was a lot of fun, and i got a couple pretty good shots...here are a few...
























(so much fun to shoot in the snow!!...even though it's a little cold...)

(i like the cake ones...)

yea,...my bad...

sorry i haven't posted in such a long time...i've been kinda busy with school (i have 2 projects to work on and another one that we just learned about...good times...) and the stinkin' awesome conference that we just had this weekend (which hopefully i'll be able to post about soon...) and just life in general...hopefully i'll have some pretty cool changes to the blog soon...our laptop is acting up, so once we figure out what's wrong and get it working again, i might be able to work on it and post some more pictures (i just took some pretty cool ones from ashlee and meghan's fencing class that i visited today!). so, just a brief random note about the conference, so we had it this weekend, friday night, all day saturday and sunday morning. on friday, lamar did a concert which was fun, and our "band" played a couple songs. we only had one church (other than us) and 2 people show up, but it was a lot of fun anyways. so saturday, we had more music, food and our speaker, dwight knight (he's awesome!) did a couple sessions. we still only had us, the other church and a couple random people. but it was fun anyways! the other church was a lot of fun, and they just rock (without going into much detail!). we also had some game time at LCA where there was a basketball tournament and a big soccer game (which is always fun!! :]) and a lot of fun and interesting experiences. sunday we had regular church, but dwight talked for sunday school and for the praise and worship service. he was great!! so, that's the reader's digest version of our weekend, hopefully i'll be able to go into detail and tell you all all the funny and just regular stories that came with it (and you'll get a big long post, too! such a deal!!). so, anyways, sorry i haven't been posting as much, hopefully you haven't totally deserted me, :( and stay tuned for posts, pictures, and changes!! have a great night! :]

more pictures...

here are a couple more pictures i've taken since the last time i posted...


































































































































more to come....i have to go to bed....

a sardines game to go down in history...

so, last night, we had youth group...we were preparing for the youth conference that's next weekend. after we were mostly done, we played sardines!! it is sooooo fun!! especially in a really dark church with a bunch of crazy teens!! so, we went through a couple rounds, some easy, some not too easy, but not terribly difficult, until, *dundundunnnn* sophie and kaeleigh hid (*gasp!*). yes, you all should be very scared! lol!! everyone was searching for at least 20 minutes, and no one had found them. now, our church is not exactly huge, so everyone was really confused, we had searched all the church at least 10 times!! no one was disappearing, it was rough. then, bekah and i were searching in the secret passage way, and all of a sudden, we hear a scream. i recognized it as kaeleigh. we were confused, we had already check everywhere back there, where were they?? we decided to check the only place no one had check yet, the robe closet *dundundunnnnn*. turns out, that's where they were!! what do you know! so, we were the 1st to find them! :) go bekah and me!! lol! so, we hung out there for at least 15 minutes, if not more, until kevin found us! it's a pretty small closet, so it was awkward and hot in there. lots of fun! lol! before kevin found us, we said we were going to get out at 8:00 if no one found us (it was 7:45 when we said that), and kevin found us around 7:55. people were calling us to find out where we were, it was pretty funny! we tried to call kevin, but he wasn't picking up...anyways, everyone finally found us, it was one of the longest rounds i've ever played! ...it was a sardines game to go down in history!

I GOT TO MEET BARLOW GIRL!!

the concert was just stinkin' AWESOME!!! tfk was pretty good, they're pretty hard rock, and i couldn't really understand a thing they were saying, but it was awesome anyways!! barlow girl, man, they TOTALLY ROCKED MY SOCKS OFF!! they were awesome!! they're my favoritest band ever, and i was soooo excited to see them!! they were really awesome in concert!! during one of their songs, sophie and i went up to the front, and i took a couple pictures. when we first got up there and security guy told we could take a couple pictures, but then we had to go back to our seats. i was just like, "THANK YOU!!" it was a great concert! toby mac played after them, and he totally rocked, too!! it's so hard to describe concerts, other than they totally rocked...ashlee and i took a lot of movies, so we might be able to post some of them on our blogs...that would be awesome! the lights and music were awesome!! after toby mac was "done," everyone cheered for something like a whole minute +, and he came back out and did something like 4 more songs!! it was awesome!! the last song was "Jesus freak," and during the last chorus, he went out and rand through the audience, and he was literally 2 feet beside me, and i didn't see him until he was in the middle of the chairs in the middle. :( oh well, he was awesome!! i went up to maine with caleb, joel, their parents and caleb u, and it was pretty fun! we listened to veggie tales, toby mac and switchfoot, and it was funn!! :) anyways, after the concert, we actually got to meet the barlows!! they are awesome!! they're really nice! lauren shook everyone (except for my) hands! dad told them that we played for our youth group and becca wanted to know what instruments we played!! they were really cool and down to earth! they signed a big poster i had and the book i had, too! they thought reuben was really cute, and they really liked him!! :) oh, at the beginning of the concert, i discovered that i didn't have any batteries!! so, ashlee kindly lent my some of hers, and she and i shared them for the whole concert. i got them for barlow girl, and she got them for toby mac. so i only have pictures of tfk and barlow girl, and ashlee has pictures of toby mac. anyways, here are some of them...

thousand foot krutch

barlow girl!!!

i had so much fun, and praise God that we got there and back safely!! oh, lauren talked about how we are a "chosen generation" (-1 peter 2:9), and how we are called to shake the world up and not just wait for someone else to do it for us (i taped half of her speech, so hopefully, i can share it soon). it was a really good message!! praise God for people like the barlows and toby mac who are willing to shake things up for Him! :D