Random|| Life Update.

Posted on September 18, 2020 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

This is just a random little life update, because I don’t have any book related posts that I want to write right now and it’s been a while since I’ve done a post like this. Sorry in advance if this post is all over the place and completely random.

So, for the last two or three years I haven’t been counting audiobooks toward my Goodreads challenge goal, because I wanted to challenge myself to see how many books that I could read on my own. I had that goal at the start of 2020 too, BUT…you guys already know this has been a crazy damn year! With that being said, I decided that I would start counting audiobooks toward my reading challenge for this year. The thought of not completing my Goodreads challenge would have just brought me down even more than I am already feeling. Since I decided to do that, I am only 1 or 2 books behind schedule and I’m sure I’ll be caught up soon! I’ve been listening to books while I do my diamond paintings and it’s been nice! Below is the most recent diamond painting I completed. Also, check out this new blood spatter bookmark I got from The Bookables on Etsy! It gives me so many Dexter vibes.

I got back into playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons more. Currently, I have been working on redoing the interior of my house and making it more homey. I’ve focused a lot of my main room and my basement. Next up will probably be the bathroom. And then I need to do some serious work on my island itself. I have way too many flowers and they just need to go. I’m not seeing the real potential for my island, because it’s buried under hundreds of dang flowers! It’s a long process getting rid of so many flowers though, which is why I haven’t touched them. But that needs to change A.S.A.P. lol. 😛 Do you play Animal Crossing? Let’s be friends!

The husband and I watched both seasons of Cobra Kai on Netflix and OMG….the feels! We both love The Karate Kid sooo much, especially me. Cobra Kai was AMAZING and I am dying for the third season. I can’t even count how many times I cried or got goosebumps. The episode that made me cry the most was episode five of season one though. I’m talking tears streaming down my face and me yelling that I can’t take this show anymore, LOL. We got so obsessed with Cobra Kai that for the last week we’ve been going around the house pretending to do karate moves on each other when we pass by each other.

I put up some Halloween decorations around my house! I still need like A LOT more, but I am happy with the little bit of Halloween touch I’ve been adding around the house. I also put out a jar of my favorite Halloween candy, because I love them so much and also because it makes for a good Halloween decoration as well….as long as I don’t eat them all lol. 😛

Speaking of Halloween, I’m in the process of creating my Halloweenie TBR that I do every year. I like to try to read as many spooky/Halloween vibe books throughout October. I’m not entirely sure what books I will be adding to the list yet, but we’ll see how that goes. I am excited to go through my bookshelves and my Kindle shelf to see what books I may want to read in October! As long as I can actually read, still battling a reading slump. I have been reading the same book for 18 days and only on page 120, UGH. I guess that’s where audiobooks come in. If I can’t read myself, at least I have them.

I’ve been struggling a lot with anxiety as you already know and maybe even some depression (or sadness if it’s not depression). My sleep schedule has been really bad, which I think I’ve also talked about here. Sometimes I don’t go to sleep until 5 or 6am. I function day to day on only 3-5 hours of sleep a day. This week I’ve been challenging myself to go to sleep by 1am every night and so far I’ve done that. There was one day I even went to sleep at 10pm, so that’s been a good thing. I still can’t seem to get myself out of bed in the mornings, but it’s progress.

Andy and I went on a day trip a couple weekends ago to visit my younger sister, because my mom, older sister, niece, and nephew were going to. We went to this place called the “Shell Factory”. I’ve been there many times in the past since I used to live near there, but haven’t gone in years and years. Some things were okay and other things weren’t that great. I did take some pictures, so here are a few. For the small ones, you can click the image to see a full size version.

These next pictures will just be a bunch of random pictures, furbabies, sunsets, etc. 🙂

Some banana bread and cheesecake that I made recently. 🙂

And with that, I think that’s all I have for this update. I still want to do a picture update from when I went to Illinois for a month in June, so hopefully I’ll finally get around to doing that post. I’ll catch up with your posts and comments over the weekend. 🙂

In case you missed it;
Release Day|| September Releases

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

Random|| Picture Update.

Posted on December 23, 2019 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Merry Christmas Eve Eve! 😀

Since it’s almost Christmas, I thought it would be fun to share all of my Christmassy pictures that I’ve taken over the last couple of months. Some you may have seen on Instagram (if you follow me) and some I haven’t posted yet. It’s going to be really picture heavy, just a heads up.

The first sets of pictures are from around our city (Lakeland). The Christmas tree pictures are from the big Christmas tree that they have up at Lake Mirror. I was sad I didn’t get a chance to see it at night (except from far away), but it’s still pretty in the daylight too.

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Story behind these last two pictures. The hubby and I were walking away from the big Christmas tree and as we were walking away, Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus were walking by us! It was so random, but so cool. They were having a little photo shoot by the Christmas tree, haha. The second picture is a Christmas tree made from kegs from Swan Brewing. It’s a brewery we like to go to. My family was visiting one weekend and I took them there.

These next set of pictures are ones that I took at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. They were all decked out in Christmas decor. I would have loved to see it all lit up at night, but we never got the chance to.

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This last picture is from watching the retelling of The Grinch (Grinchmas) at Islands of Adventure. It was probably about thirty minutes, but it was really fun to see it acted out live.

These next set of pictures are from when my family and I went to this little Christmas event in Celebration, Florida. There was live music, SNOW (aka soap, LOL), and lots of fun Christmas things and decor to look at.

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Celebration, Florida was a cute little town and I wish we would have walked around the neighborhoods at night, because so many houses were decorated with so many decorations and lights. It would have been so cool to see. And most of the houses were HUGE (like the one I shared). Always next year! 😛

The hubby and I are spending Christmas with his family this year, so we will be leaving tonight to drive over there. We are both really looking forward to it. I will catch up with you guys after Christmas and I have a bunch of end of the year posts lined up, so be on the look out for them!

In case you missed it;
Book Tag|| Christmas Book Blogger.
Friday Finds #84.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

ashleychristmas

Dr. Von D Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park.

Posted on January 14, 2019 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Andy and I decided to find another park in our area that we haven’t been to and check it out. We used to do this a lot, but haven’t in awhile. We want to go to as many places as we can in this area before we move, so we decided to start checking out parks again. Dr. Von D Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park (damn that name is a mouth full, LOL) is pretty much just a few minutes down the street from us and I can’t believe we haven’t known about this place, because it was so nice; especially the the beach area! Part of the park is ocean and the other part is woodsy.

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These are all the pictures that I took in the beach/ocean part of the park. It was really pretty there and I was obsessed with the view, especially the very first picture that I shared. I think this is more of the fishing area, because a lot of people had fishing poles and they were fishing off the rocks as you can see in the first set of pictures. The last four pictures is more of a sandy area where a lot of people were swimming and laying out. It’s a lot more secluded in this area of the beach than the typical touristy part, which is pretty neat. Nice to keep in mind if I want to ever go to the beach. Even the bathrooms looked nicer than the typical busy touristy beach.

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These are the few pictures that I took in the woodsy area of the park. I didn’t take too many, because I was freaking out because of all the mosquitoes LOL! We made it through though and this was the view when we came out of the woodsy area. IT’S SO PRETTY! Heart eyes for days! We ended up on a bridge and when you cross over the bridge then you’re at the beach (the more sandy part)!

Below are just some random pictures that I took over the last week. I haven’t taken very many, so I figured I would include them in this post as well.

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It wouldn’t be a proper post if I didn’t include pictures of the sky. You all probably know by now that I am obsessed with the sky, so I take a lot of pictures of it. These are my first 2019 pictures of the sky LOL with probably a million more to come. 😛

It also wouldn’t be typical Ashley post without pictures of my furbabies. So the left picture of my kitties, this is the first time I almost got the perfect picture of them all three together. BUT of course the littlest one (Leaf – white calico at the top) ruined it. She was in the middle of smacking October (black calico), so I called her name and she looked up but October was still like “WTF” at Leaf and didn’t look up when I called. You can see little Leaf’s paw being held up slightly, lol. UGHHH. I just want one good picture of them all looking at the camera at the same time, is that too much to ask for? 😛 And then my pup Dax on the right.

That’s all for this post. I can’t wait to figure out which park we want to check out next. I have a few bookmarked and there’s a couple museums that I want to go to as well. So we’ll see what happens!

In case you missed it;
4 Star Reads of 2018.
5 Star Reads of 2018.
Thoughts|| The Wicked King.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Christmas 2018.

Posted on December 27, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

pictureupdate

Hey!

For Christmas this year were were able to go visit Andy’s parents. It had been a very long time since we’ve been able to have a Christmas with them. They live about 2-2.5 hours away from us. We left on Saturday morning and stayed until the afternoon of Christmas Day. We both had to work the next day, so we had to come home on Christmas.

On Saturday we went downtown to look at some Christmas decorations. Above are a couple of pictures that I took on the way to downtown. You have to drive over a bridge and the sun was starting to set, which was nice.

There are two houses downtown that put up a ton of Christmas decorations. Top two pictures are of one of the houses. For $5 you can go inside and see them all. I didn’t take a ton of pictures inside, because there was so just so much to see and I was pretty much living for everything. I did get a few though.

There were Christmas trees in every single room, it was pretty crazy and totally awesome! These above are some of the Christmas tree pictures that I was able to take and a few of my favorites.

These above are just some other random pictures that I took inside and out side of the houses. After we looked at the Christmas decorations, we went to get some food at 3 Pepper. It’s a Mexican restaurant. It was pretty good. No pictures though. I was starving and dived into my food right away.

After seeing the Christmas decorations and eating, we went back to the house and watched TV for awhile. I think I went to sleep pretty early every night we were there. I had a list of Christmas movies that I like to watch every Christmas, so we worked our way through my list of Christmas movies all weekend/Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had dinner and then Christmas Day we opened presents, had breakfast, and then ate Christmas “dinner” for lunch since we had to leave shortly after that. It was so a lot of fun and I’m glad we were able to spend Christmas with Andy’s family. Dax had a lot of fun being able to hangout with their pup Digby too.

Below are just a bunch of miscellaneous pictures that I took throughout the time we were there.

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We (Andy, his mom, and I) took the dogs on a walk around the neighborhood and the park that’s down the street from their house. These are all the pictures that I took on that walk. It was a really nice day out.

I seen a squirrel in the tree in Andy’s parents backyard and got pretty excited about that, because it was the perfect opportunity to try out my new zoom lens that Andy got me for Christmas. The squirrel was pretty vocal and basically screaming at my dog. HAHA. I think the pictures came out pretty great.

Andy’s parents have an orange tree in their back yard, which is always cool. We were able to pick some oranges to bring home with us. I had fun taking pictures of the tree. Left the orange picking to Andy, haha.

First picture is of Andy and I after we ate dinner of Christmas Eve. Second picture is just a random selfie of myself.

These last set of pictures are from a couple of weekends ago when we went to Lakeland to visit my friend. I figured I would include them as well.

Random view from her guest bedroom window on that Sunday morning. I’m a sucker for a pretty view, haha.

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We seen a house that had SO MANY Christmas lights and decorations, so I had to snap a picture. We also drove down another street and every single house on the street went ALL OUT with their decorations. I didn’t get any pictures, but I wish I had.

And these are just a couple pictures of her cat Bruce. He’s so cute, but he’s still unsure about me. HAHA. Once we are living in Lakeland, I am determined to make him love me. 😛 Although we did make some progress after I gave him some treats. Treats = friend?

Anyway, that’s my picture update for today. I had a great Christmas and we got so many wonderful presents (including an Instant Pot and an iPad Mini) from both our families. I ate a TON of food and candy, which was good and bad (because I totally over did it) haha. How was your holiday or weekend? I have five other blog posts that I am working on that will slowly be making there way onto the blog. Wrap up and book haul coming soon. I’ll have a 2019 reading goals post and a reading challenge I am hoping to tackle in 2019 coming as well. I still need to work on my end of the year book survey too. Be on the look out for a bunch of posts soon. 😀

In case you missed it;
TBB Asks: Holiday Edition.
Random|| Picture Update.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleychristmas

Travel|| Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & Museum.

Posted on October 24, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Andy and I decided to go check out the lighthouse in Jupiter on Saturday, which was a really fun time. Continue reading to see some of the pictures that I took while we were there.

I didn’t really get any pictures of the museum/inside the museum. I wasn’t sure if you were allowed to take pictures in there or not, so I decided not to. The museum was actually a World War II naval housing building that they turned into a museum. It had different things in the museum from World War II and information about the area. It was really neat and interesting.

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This is the Tindall Pioneer house. It was built in 1892! Again, I didn’t take pictures inside the house because I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to or not. It was really neat inside though. They recreated the rooms.

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This was the outhouse next to the Tindall House. I really liked the moon carved into the door, which is why I took a picture. LOL. We also came across this bell while we continued on the path to the lighthouse. I wish I would have gotten more pictures of things along the way to the lighthouse, but I was more enjoying everything I was seeing than taking pictures. Once the lighthouse came into view though, that was an entirely different story. HAHA. I couldn’t help but take so many pictures of it.

Above is a sign in front of the lighthouse with a little information about it. I thought it was really neat.

And here’s part of the lighthouse! I’ll have a few other pictures of the lighthouse below, but this is a small glimpse of it as we are walking up.

and almost died. 😛 They weren’t lying when they said the climb was strenuous. My legs were killing me the next day and still are. I am glad that I did though, because the views were pretty amazing around the lighthouse.

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Here are some more pictures of the lighthouse! I read online that it wasn’t originally painted red. It was seriously so beautiful though and pretty tall. It was 34 stairs to the base of the lighthouse and then 105 stairs to climb inside of the lighthouse.

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These last two are hands down my favorite pictures that I took. I wanted a picture of the plants, but also with the lighthouse in the background. I think they came out pretty perfect.

Here’s a picture of Andy with the lighthouse in the background. The red brick path was neat too. I wish I took a picture of it. You can donate to them/buy a brick and get your name or any message written on one of the bricks. So the entire walk up to the lighthouse were different names and messages.

This is a random picture I took on the stairs of the lighthouse. First picture is looking up and the second picture is looking down. I really love how these pictures came out.

Next weekend we are hoping to go check out the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach. I am so stoked for that! I seen a few pictures of it and it looks amazing. I feel like it might be an all day thing, because it looked like there were a ton of things to see and do there.

In case you missed it;
Thoughts|| Dear Evan Hansen.
Photo A Day|| October 11-17.
Random|| Picture Update.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyhalloween

Travel || Road Trip to Illinois.

Posted on September 12, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Over the weekend I went on a weekend road trip to Illinois for my one of cousin’s wedding. It was my mom, my niece, my cousin Scotty, his wife, their daughter, and me. Scotty’s brother was getting married. The drive is about eighteen hours. I live in Florida and Illinois is a ways away! The drive there wasn’t too bad and seemed to go pretty quickly. I think we only had to stop a few times to get gas and some food. A lot of the family on my mom’s side lives in Illinois and it’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen most of them. Years and years!

Top left picture is Atlanta, GA at 3am. That’s when we drove through. Top right is sunrise in Kentucky. Bottom is the start of the sunrise in Tennessee. Tennessee sunrise came first and Kentucky a little while later. We drove through all three places. We started the trip at 5pm Thursday, so we drove through most of the states at night, so I couldn’t get a lot of cool pictures (especially of Tennessee) until on the way home, which I will be posting later in this post because I took so many cool mountain pictures!

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Another sunset picture below from either Tennessee or Kentucky. I don’t remember exactly where I took it, but it was one of those places on the way there. I love this picture.

On Friday when we got to Illinois, we went to another cousin’s house to change clothes and then head out to my aunt’s house to visit with them for a little while. It was nice seeing them, because it’s been years since I’ve seen them.

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This is a grain elevator right next to her house. It stores crops for farmers.

After hanging out there for a little bit, we decided to go to my cousin’s house that is getting married to help decorate for their wedding the next day (Saturday). He lives on a farm, so we got to check out some animals (cows, pigs, chickens, ducks). I didn’t take any pictures of the chickens or ducks, but I did get some pictures of the pigs and cows! First though, here is some of the wedding decorations that they had. My cousin built the arch, which was really neat.

Now onto all the animals! There were some baby pigs too, which they were all hiding so we couldn’t see them all. My cousin did get into the pig pen and get one out though. It was a little difficult since the mom pig was chasing him around, lol. There were so many cows on the farm. All different sizes and colors. There were some pigs that were sharing space with some of the cows too.

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This is probably my favorite picture that I took of the cows. I just really like the way that it looks. There were also tons and tons of corn and other crops on the farm as well, so I took pictures of those too.

After helping out there and taking a ton of pictures, my cousin/bestie Tammy, my mom, niece, and I went to get something to eat before heading to my brother’s house where we were staying. Tammy and I went to Walmart, so I could get some new shoes since my other ones got so muddy with all the rain/mud on the farm. I ended up not even bothering with wearing my new shoes, because I knew they would end up getting muddy too. But I had them for the ride home at least. Saturday, my mom, niece, and I got up early and dressed for the day then went to get breakfast.

Left picture is Tammy and I messing around with all the masks at Walmart. Right picture is what I wore to the wedding. I was originally not going to wear my black tights, but it was raining and cold so I ended up going into the Denny’s bathroom and putting them on. I’m glad I decided to at least carry them in my purse with me, lol! The wedding turned out nice even though it rained. I got super muddy (my shoes and some of my tights) when we went to the barn early to help setup and fix things up since the barn got a little bit of rain in it, so we had to come up with a new idea. But it turned out nice. I didn’t get a ton of pictures besides a few that I took of the ceremony for my cousin and his new wife. Below is just a picture of my niece, me, and Tammy. We decided to take a picture of our muddy shoes, lol.

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On Saturday night after the wedding, I went out to eat with Tammy and her boyfriend. That was a good time. I never met her boyfriend before and he seemed pretty cool and nice. After dinner I went back to my brother’s house and went straight to sleep. Had to get up early Sunday to get ready to leave. So we went to pickup my cousin Scotty and his family and then went to say bye to everyone. After that we headed for home!

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Now for all the awesome pictures I took of the mountains in Tennessee. You have to actually drive up mountains to get to where we needed to go. On the way to Illinois we went through the mountains at night, so we couldn’t really see anything. On the way home though, it was daytime, so we got to see everything. We even decided to go to Lookout Mountain and drive to the top of that. Lookout Mountain is kind of a touristy type place, because it has Ruby Falls and Rock City, but we didn’t do those tours. We just drove to the top ourselves and looked around. It’s really cool though, because it’s like it’s own little community up there. They have parks, stores, even a Starbucks (LOL), etc. I guess it’s helpful for the people that live on the mountain, so they don’t have to drive up and down it every single day. Some of the street names were neat too, like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. Even their pharmacy was called Fairyland Pharmacy.

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The next set of pictures are of some flowers that I seen around Lookout Mountain when we were walking around the mountain.

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The ride home felt like forever, but I think that was just because we were all anxious to get home after being in a car for so long. All in all, the trip ended up being pretty fun and I got to take so many awesome pictures. See some cool things that I haven’t seen in years and visit with family that I haven’t seen in years. 😀

I brought with me a ton of reading material (two physical books and my Kindle filled with 100+ books downloaded), but I couldn’t focus on reading while in the car on the way there or back. It’s usually easy for me to read in the car, but for some reason not this time. I was hoping to at least read two books, but I ended up only reading 40% of one book the entire trip. Hopefully I can catch up on some reading this week. I’ll also catch up with your posts tomorrow or Friday and reply to comments.

In case you missed it;
Wrap Up|| August.
Book Haul|| August.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Random|| Picture & Reading Update.

Posted on August 15, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

This won’t have a ton of pictures like usual, because I haven’t really been taking very many pictures these days. But I do have a few of neat ones from the weekend and some pictures that I found on my old camera. Also a desk tour, because why not? lol. I am skipping my usual WWW Wednesday post, so I can post this instead. I’ll put a little reading update at the end of this post though. First though….food, as always. 😛

The hubby finished school last week and to celebrate we went out for pizza and fried ravioli at our new favorite Italian restaurant. I usually always get the BBQ chicken pizza and he usually always gets the buffalo chicken pizza. It’s so good and it passes the cold pizza test. Their fried ravioli is so freaking good, so we have to get it every single time we go. I’m already craving them again and it’s only been six days since I had them. 😛

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The Umbrella Sky Project was happening in Miami, so the hubby and I decided to go check it out. It original started in Portugal for an art festival, but then other cities around the world started to do it. Basically during the hot summer months they’ll string a bunch of umbrellas up as shade for people. They’ll be taking them down in September, so I wanted to go see it before that happens. It was really neat and pretty. A guy that lives over there told us that when they first put the umbrellas up they were a lot more colorful and brighter, but the colors started to fade. I still think they look really neat though. Below are some more pictures of it.

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I set up my desk area our apartment. I really like how it came out. I’ve been neglecting finishing up my school stuff (sigh), but I am hoping now that I have my desk all setup, it’ll motivate me to finally finish it. I’m kind of close to being finished with all the work. I am hoping to have it finish by the end of next month.

On the left I have some notebooks and school book, one basket with post-its and page flags, one with sharpie markers, desk organizer that just has random things in it that I need to clean out. A box that has note cards in it, because I have an obsession with buying all of Target’s dollar bin note cards. A cork board (and dry erase board behind it) that I need to hang up, a stack of books that I hope to read soon. A cat mug, some candles, a Stranger Things coaster, my butterbeer mug from Harry Potter World that is being used as a pencil/pen holder. Some paper clips (I have some others that are currently MIA right now and I am annoyed that I can’t find them), armadillo lamp, my laptop, my desktop computer, some random faux succulent plants, and my TARDIS Funko Pop. Hanging on the wall I have a Sherlock print, Supernatural print, and a Doctor Who print. At the time of this picture the hubby hung them up crooked but I have since fixed them because it was bugging me LOL. Under my desk I have some baskets with a bunch of miscellaneous things in them.

A couple random pictures. I took this picture the bird on the power lines awhile ago when I first got my Nikon D3400. I actually didn’t like that picture, but then I was going through my memory card again to delete pictures and I decided to transfer it to my phone anyway and I ended up really loving it, lol. I found my “whatever forever” bracelet and perfect timing, because I need to live this like I used to. I’m letting stresses of life affect me way too much lately and I hate it because I was never like this. I started to wear it every day again as I reminder.

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The sunset from Friday night. It was storming really bad, but once the storm was over the sky looked like this. I love the shades of orange. It was really pretty and I of course had to get a picture of it. I’ve said it a million times, I am sucker for the sunset.

I found my old digital camera that I bought back in 2016 for our California trip and there were still pictures from California on it. These four a pictures that I took when we went to Monterey Bay, California. Such a pretty town! I definitely want to go back to California again.

Random selfie from Friday. The picture on the right is Leaf and I watching Pocahontas. Funny story, so I was talking to Leaf (because I always talk to my furbabies, lol) and I was listing all the shows on Netflix that we should watch. Secretly hoping she would answer back and pick one, because you know…maybe cats can truly talk? 😛 Eventually she got bored with me and ran off, so I chose Pocahontas. Then she comes back and I say to her “oh, you came to watch Pocahontas with me! You’re in for a real treat.”, haha. Crazy cat lady….for damn sure.

Here is my mini reading update. I usually do a WWW Wednesday post on most Wednesdays, but I really wanted to post this little picture update, so I am including a mini WWW Wednesday down below.

Currently Reading: Ghosted by Rosie Walsh. So far it’s pretty interesting. I’m not too far into it, but I like it so far. It’s one of my most anticipated reads of the year, so I am hoping it’s amazing.

Recently Finished: #MurderTrending and Florida. #MurderTrending was so good! You can check out my review linked below. Florida was just okay. It wasn’t anything too exciting. It wasn’t what I expected it to be.

Reading Next: I am hoping to read All Your Perfects next! I am so stoked to read the new Colleen Hoover book. Hopefully I can start that at some point this week or definitely next week if not. I am EXCITED!

In case you missed it;
Thoughts|| #MurderTrending.
Travel|| Lake Placid, FL.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Lake Placid, FL.

Posted on August 3, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Over the weekend my mom and I went to Lake Placid to help my cousin move into her new house. We went on a Friday and stayed until Sunday morning. I was able to leave early from work Friday, which was nice. My mom picked me up from work and we hit the road.

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Scary rain clouds! It rained almost the entire time on the way there. It was off and on. It was kind of amusing, because we would be driving it crazy rain and then a few minutes later it was gone. It did that the entire 1.5 hours to Moore Haven (where her old house is and where we were meeting up with her and her husband). That’s Florida for you! It’s always like that. It can be pouring rain on one side of the street and the other it can be sunny af. While waiting for my cousin to get there, I swung on the swings across the street from their house. It helped to past the time and I love swings.

When they got there we loaded up my mom’s car and their car. We only did one trip since it’s 30-40 minutes from their new house and because it was about to rain again. The next day (Saturday) was going to be the big moving day where we filled up the cars and the U-Haul. Once we got back to her house she gave us a tour of her house and we just ate and helped unpack the boxes we brought. When it stopped raining I went outside to take some pictures. There was a rainbow over the top of her house, which was awesome.

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Below: I’m not entire sure what these plants are, but they were really pretty so I got a couple different pictures of them.

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And you know me, I had to take a picture of the pretty sunset. I wish the weather wasn’t so crappy, because I would have went down to the lake to take pictures of the sunset there and same with the sunrise. I wish I would have went down to the lake for that, but I did get a few good pictures of the sunrise from their balcony on Saturday morning.

We spent the entire morning packing up the U-Haul in Moore Haven and then we spent the rest of the day unpacking the U-Haul and getting the boxes and furniture inside the house. We also took breaks to set up her son’s playroom. We were all tired, so we didn’t even attempt to unpack any of their boxes. Instead we ordered massive amounts of Chinese food, which was even better than unpacking boxes. Haha. My mom and I got up early to go back home. Before we left we stopped off at the lake to take pictures. Then we also stopped at the grocery store and walked across the street to another area of the huge lake to take more pictures. Here are all the lake pictures that I took and more of those plants that I loved, lol.

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Funny story about this mushroom. So we were walking around the grass and I spotted it and I got so excited about taking a picture of it. You can see in the first picture that there was grass in front of it. I went to move the grass to get a picture of it without the grass in front and I accidentally touched it and I start freaking out.

Me: oh my god!
Mom: what?
Me: i accidentally touched it. am i going to die?
Mom: *laughing* no, you’re not going to die.
Me: some mushrooms are poisonous.

And then the entire two hour car ride back home I kept saying “I can’t believe I touched the mushroom.” and kept asking my mom if she was sure I wasn’t going to die, LOL. Clearly I didn’t die. HEYYYY! 😛

Oh, and here is a picture of their new dog Stella. I’ve met her before, but never longer than an hour. She LOVED me though. She was always laying next to me or wanting me to pet her. I swear, all animals love me. So strange, but I am not complaining. Haha.

And that pretty much concludes my post about Lake Placid. We didn’t get to do a whole lot while actually there since we were just there to help my cousin move. Now that she lives there though, I will definitely need to go take a weekend and stay with her and actually roam around Lake Placid and do things. From what I did get to see, it seems like a really nice and pretty town. Feel free to follow me on Instagram (heyyitsashley)! A lot of these haven’t been posted on my Instagram yet, so you’re seeing them first! 🙂

In case you missed it;
Book Tag|| Meme Book Tag.
Top Ten Tuesday|| Popular Books that Lived Up to the Hype.
Wrap Up|| July.

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Black Point Marina.

Posted on July 3, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

A few ago my mom took my sister and I to visit our dad. I love going to visit him, because I don’t see him that often. I am also able to take a ton of pictures when I go to visit him, because he has a huge garden with so many plants and flowers. I’ve posted about it before over here. If you haven’t noticed, taking nature pictures is kind of my thing; especially plants and flowers. So I took a bunch of pictures at his house and then we went to walk around the flea market for a little while. After the flea market we went to walk around Black Point Marina.

PICTURES FROM MY DAD’S GARDEN.

My dad had a few of these giant rocks that have little crystals covering them. Kind of like a geode or maybe it’s a geode, lol. That’s what I thought about when I seen it. It looks so cool and they shine in the light, because of all the tiny crystals. My dad broke me off a piece to take home with me (below). It’s so pretty, especially when you look at it in the light/sunlight.

Spider, caterpillar, and snail (above). There are massive amounts of spiders in my dad’s garden. You’re always having to duck down or collide with a spider/spider web. I hate it! I don’t like spiders. I don’t really like any insects, to be honest. I like taking pictures of them though, so I have to face my fear of spiders (and other creepy crawly bugs) every time I want a picture. 😛

PICTURES FROM BLACK POINT MARINA

Mom & Dad.

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Bright green iguana! It looked really neat. There were TONS of them all over this park. I mentioned in my last post with my pictures from TY Park that iguanas are everywhere in Florida. I think the younger ones are bright green. Because I see a lot of even bigger ones and they aren’t as green as this one.

We got my dad in on the lensball photography fun! 😀 I think this shot came out really neat. He wanted to hold the lensball while I took the picture. Inside the ball is a restaurant that was on the water at Black Point.

After the park we went to go get pizza and I also got these mac & cheese balls that were amazing! I didn’t take any pictures of the food, but I wish I would have. Went back to his house where I took more pictures and that was the end of the day. It was overall a great time and hopefully we can go back to visit him again really soon. Below is a picture of my dad trying to figure out what was up with his phone, lol. It kept randomly playing some man talking, haha.

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Feel free to follow me on Instagram (heyyitsashley)! A lot of these haven’t been posted on my Instagram yet, so you’re seeing them first! Eventually they’ll make their way on there. I take so many pictures and don’t want to post a million at one time, so I hoard pictures to post later, lol.

In case you missed it;
Wrap Up|| June.
Book Haul|| June.
Travel|| Topeekeegee Yugnee (T.Y.) Park.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Topeekeegee Yugnee (T.Y.) Park.

Posted on June 25, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

I am finally posting the pictures that I took when my sister and I went to a park down the street from my house. We had nothing else to do, so we decided to take my cameras around to see what we can take pictures of. Warning, it’s a post of a lot of trees. This park is FULL of trees, lol. I love these trees though, because they have leaves and vines growing on the branches and they look really neat.

My younger sister (Stephanie) came down to visit for the weekend a few weeks ago and we took my cameras out. I let her use my Nikon COOLPIX while I had my Nikon D3400. As you scroll, you’ll see a ton of trees like mentioned above. LOL.

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My sister took the bottom right corner picture of me. I didn’t know she was taking pictures of me, lol. I like it though.

We saw quite a few iguanas at the park, which is always neat. They are everywhere here in Florida. I have more iguana pictures, but I must have moved them off my phone already. I was also able to get a shot of this dragonfly too.

This park also has a water park in it, so these are two things from where the water park is. I love the different signs, especially the ones that say “the moon” and “going crazy”. They also have this really big chair outside of the water park too; it says “Castaway Island”, which is what the water park is called. I’ve only ever been to the water park once since living here and it’s pretty neat.

We took my lensballs with us to the park and took some pictures with those too. I got a few good shots. The above picture is a behind the scenes picture I took of my sister taking a picture of the lensballs with her phone. I edited it to only show color on her phone screen.

I already shared this one, but I am posting it again since it goes with this post. It’s a picture of me that my sister took. Me in the lensball taking a picture of her, lol. And below are a bunch of different lensballs pictures that I took.

The last four pictures are just some random pictures I took while at the park. No real explanation for them, but I thought they were cool.

The next day we went to visit my dad and went to another park. I’ll have those pictures coming soon. 🙂 I’ll also have a post of the pictures I’ve taken over the last 2.5 months that I haven’t been posting. Feel free to follow me on Instagram (heyyitsashley)! A lot of these haven’t been posted on my Instagram yet though, so you’re seeing them first! Eventually they’ll make their way on there. I take so many pictures and don’t want to post a million at one time, so I hoard pictures to post later, lol.

In case you missed it;
Friday Finds #73.
Random|| Life Update.
Book Tag|| Mid-Year Freak Out.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Butterfly World.

Posted on March 27, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

butterflyworldheader

Hey!

The hubby and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary over the weekend (March 25th). We decided to finally check out Butterfly World. I’ve been wanting to go for so long now. Here are a bunch of pictures that I took while there.

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There are different sections of Butterfly World. These first four pictures below are part of the area where the butterflies are. The garden area was really pretty.

These next set of pictures are of some of the butterflies. It wasn’t easy getting pictures when they were flying around like crazy. There were some that did land though, so that was cool. There were so many big butterflies and they were all so pretty too. My favorite were the blue ones, but it was so hard to get pictures of them; they never landed and when they did it was with their wings folded. With their wings folded, they weren’t blue. I did manage to get one picture with a few of them flying though (toward the bottom of the set of pictures).

A butterfly even landed on the Andy’s hand! That was pretty neat. We were just walking around and it landed on him. I was totally jealous, haha. I wanted one to land on me, but I knew I would have probably freaked out if one did. LOL. When they were all flying at me, I was freaking out. So probably a good idea they didn’t.

Once you leave the butterfly area, there are some other little garden areas with flowers and birds. There was also this cool suspension bridge.

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Walking across the suspension bridge you run into a little area that had some Macaws. They were really cool and I loved their colors. There were also some other little birds around. I got a few pictures of them, because they mostly just flew around.

Another garden area with some random flowers and plants. There was a monarch butterfly on one of the flowers, so I was able to get a few pictures of that which ended up honestly being my favorite pictures of the day. Below are the flower pictures.

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Overall, it was really neat, but I wouldn’t say that it was worth the price. It was $30 a person and it only took us 20-30 minutes to walk through the entire thing. If I wasn’t stopping to take pictures, it would have taken even less time. It was still really pretty and the butterflies were really awesome. I still really enjoyed it and happy that we went at least once. We ended up walking through it twice, because I didn’t like that we spent $60 for a 20-30 minute walk-through. The second time around we decided to sit down in the butterfly garden area and let the butterflies fly around us.

I got some good pictures though, so that was nice. I also got to hangout with Andy, which is always great. It’s rare that we have days off together. He has to ask for the day off work or I have to ask for the day off work in order for that to happen, so we don’t always get to do a many things together. I am pretty stoked that we got to hangout for our anniversary. We even got P.F. Chang’s for dinner and it was so good. I still think about that sesame chicken and dumplings days later.

That’s all for this post! Hopefully I’ll have a review of Love and Other Carnivorous Plants posted in a few days. I don’t have much left to read. I also really want to finish it before the end of March. I want to go into April with no unfinished books, because I have a ton of review books that I need to get to. I think I have at least 4-5 books that I need to read and review. I’ll have my book haul post in the next couple days too. I have quite the haul this month.

In case you missed it;
Travel|| Biscayne National Park.
Friday Finds #72.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Biscayne National Park.

Posted on March 21, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

Over the weekend I went to go visit my dad with my younger sister and our mom. It was a really great time. While he showed my younger sister around his place, I was off taking pictures with my camera. I’ve been there before, so I seen the majority of it. My dad has the most amazing garden and plants. Here are a few pictures, but let me first tell you that this isn’t even half of his plants/garden. His entire place is surrounded and this is only a small portion. I still haven’t taken pictures of everything yet, but I did get a few of my favorite area.

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FAVORITE AREA BEING THE CACTI AND SUCCULENTS!! HOLY CRAP! I was literally in picture taking HEAVEN. Next time I go see my dad, I’m going to ask him if I can take a few plants home. He always asks us if we want any and I always say no. Next time I’m gonna say yes, lol.

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Found these guys on a couple of my dad’s plants. The caterpillar is going to turn into a monarch butterfly, which is pretty cool. The below picture is just a random picture of these little plants that are hanging from the big trees in his yard. I love the trees and I really love this picture.

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Most of these from my dad’s garden (like the hanging tree and the butterfly and lady bug) haven’t been on Instagram yet. Eventually they’ll make there way there. I hoard pictures to post later. So if you follow me on there, you may see these again! Instagram: heyyitsashley

After he showed my sister around, we were gonna go grab lunch. Before lunch though, we went to Biscayne National Park to walk around. He said he goes there a lot. It was so pretty there and I was super stoked to be able to take pictures. I’ve pretty much taken pictures of almost all the parks in my area, so it was nice going to a new one I haven’t been to. There were a ton of people out fishing and swimming there. There’s two parts to the park, but we only went to the fishing part, which was still so pretty. Here are some pictures I took while there.

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MOM & DAD.

We ate at Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch. I never been there before, but my sister swore they were amazing. I didn’t really get the hype. The food wasn’t that great. At least their chicken tenders weren’t. The beer was good though.

Well, that’s all for this post! I should hopefully be able to catch up with your blogs and comments in the next couple of days. Been a busy weekend and week so far for me with getting some school stuff done on top of work and trying to fit in some non-school related reading as well. I also got addicted to Nailed It (baking competition show) on Netflix and watched the entire season in a day. 😛

I was hoping to finish my current read (Love and Other Carnivorous Plants) by today, so I could get my review up, but I ended up going to the movies last night to see Love, Simon. So that didn’t happen. I hope to at least have it up before the end of the week. By the way, Love, Simon was AMAZING. I laughed and cried throughout the entire movie. The hubby even cried throughout the movie too, lol. SO MANY FEELS!

In case you missed it;
Friday Finds #72.
Random|| Birthday, School, & Other Things.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Lakeland…again.

Posted on January 8, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

lakeland

Hey!

So I did a trip to Lakeland once again (told you that I love this city!), but this time with my younger sister, mom, and aunt. We only went for a couple days, but it was still pretty fun. We went the weekend of New Year’s.

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View from the window in our hotel room. The hotel was pretty nice and we were right in the middle of Lakeside Village, which was nice. Lakeside Village has a lot of shops and restaurants in it. It’s like a little shopping center type place, but outdoors. My younger sister and I spent most of the time there.

The first night we went to dinner at Glory Days. We were meeting up with my mom’s and aunt’s cousin. That was pretty fun. I didn’t take any pictures of that. After we ate dinner, we went to a bar for a little bit. We didn’t stay out long though. We were all pretty tired since we went to Lakeland straight after work. The next day we went to breakfast and then back to the hotel. My mom had to work during the day, but once the shops opened in Lakeside Village, my younger sister (Stephanie) and I went down there to walk around.

Fountain in the middle of Lakeside Village. I really wanted to go to Rocket Fizz, so I could get Andy some soda and to get myself salt water taffy. He loves all the different flavored sodas they sell and we don’t have a Rocket Fizz near us. We always make sure to stop there every time we go to Lakeland. My sister ended up getting some sodas too.

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Does anyone remember Whistle Pops?! Rocket Fizz had Whistle Pops, so my sister got some. We used to get these ALL THE TIME when we were kids. I love that Rocket Fizz has a bunch of older candies from back then. It’s hard not to buy everything, haha.

My sister and I went to Books-A-Million and I managed to leave the store without buying a single book! Left is a picture of us in some masks they had there. She’s the dinosaur and I’m the cat (of course). 😛 There was also a frozen yogurt shop inside Books-A-Million, so we got some. I haven’t had froyo in so long, because the place by my house closed down.

On the way to Lakeland, we drive through this little town called Lake Wales (which I love that town too, haha) and they had this bar we seen called “Y’all Come Back Saloon”, so we decided to check it out after hanging out in Lakeside Village. My mom and aunt went with. It was such a fun bar. It was defintely a dive bar (which we love) and super country (which we love) and cheap beer (which we love), haha. It was perfect for us and it was a lot of fun. My sister and I played pool for a little while. I suck at pool and I also think it’s kind of boring, lol. Back home my mom, aunt, and older sister play. They are all on pool teams too, but I don’t like it. LOL.

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My mom and aunt drank quite a bit, so they went back to the hotel once we got back to Lakeland. My sister and I decided to go back to Lakeside Village and go to Brass Tap. We both got flights and pizza. I loved all the beer that I got. My sister liked three of the four that she picked up out. I love craft beer and of course pizza!

After we drank and ate pizza we walked around and ended up at Smallcakes. They were on Cupcake Wars on Food Network! I ended up buying cupcakes and we ate them for breakfast on Sunday. THEY WERE SO GOOD!

We were originally supposed to stay in Lakeland until Monday (January 1st), but ended up coming back a day early. These are some pictures I took on the way back home from the car.

Even though we came home a day early, it was still pretty fun. Especially getting to hangout with my younger sister. She’s a truck driver with her boyfriend, so I don’t get to see her that often. I am always down for a trip to Lakeland and Lake Wales. I think there will be another one in the next month or two.

I think I am going to do a few blog posts with the books I read last year with their ratings. Example: a blog post with all of my five star reads in 2017, four star reads, etc. I actually had quite a bit of five star reads, so it’ll be cool showing them all in one post. That may be coming at some point this week or early next week.

In case you missed it;
Phot A Day|| January 1-4
2018 Reading Goals.
New Year, New Blog.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Lakeland.

Posted on December 21, 2017 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

lakeland

The hubby and I went to Lakeland to visit my childhood best friend and her boyfriend in November. Last year we visited them and were able to go to Harry Potter world at Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure. This time we chose the cheaper route and just hung out with them and did things around their town, which was still SO MUCH FUN! We are obsessed with Lakeland! It’s about 3-3.5 hour drive from us, so it was kind of like a mini road trip, which is always fun.

We have to drive through this little town called Lake Wales before getting to Lakeland. There is this place called “Spook Hill” in Lake Wales, so we decided to check it out.

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So we attempted to try this, but we didn’t do it right so it ended up being really lame LOL! I think one of us was supposed to get out of the car to be able to see this happening, but we both stayed in the car, so we obviously didn’t notice HAHAH! We’ll do it again next time we go up there.

A couple of other pictures from Lake Wales on the way to Spook Hill. That view is so pretty.

When we first got to my friend’s house, we just sat around and talked. Pretty much just caught up and then talked about when we were kids. Poor Andy (hubby) had to listen to all of our old stories and everything, lol. She did my nails and then wanted to do my hair. So we did that until her boyfriend came home. Once he came home we went out to eat at this Mexican restaurant called Abuelo’s, which was so good! We also drank a little bit.

On Saturday during the afternoon my friend (Yanery), Andy, and I went on these little bicycle/walking trails and that was pretty fun.

The trails were kind of nerve-wracking at times, because there were some pretty steep hills to climb up and down. I don’t know how bicyclists do it, I would be scared as hell about it; especially because you are surrounded by water. In that water are alligators! In the wild…so no fences or cages to stop them from getting you if you mess with them!

SEEEE?! They are just out in the open. I was seriously scared I was going to slip and fall into the water or on top of one hahah. I also didn’t wear the right kind of shoes at all. I had my converse on. Had I known the trails were going to be like they were, I probably would have brought different shoes. We obviously survived though!

Here are a few more pictures from hiking on the trails!

After that we went home, showered, changed clothes and then went to Rocket Fizz. If you haven’t heard of it, Rocket Fizz is a store that sells a bunch of candy and different flavored sodas. We always like going there. Andy likes to get the soda and I like to get the salt water taffy. After Rocket Fizz we went to the Brass Tap for pizza and beer. Also a picture of a really BIG and awesome Christmas tree outside the shopping plaza that Rocket Fizz and Brass Tap were. I’m obsessed with Christmas trees.

After we ate and drank a few beers there, we decided to go to Beer Hub to try some more beers and then went back to the house. I’m a beer person and we like to eat, beer and food was a must for this trip. LOL.

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Sunday was our last day, so in the morning we went to this little place called the Poor Porker for breakfast and then we headed home shortly after that. The Poor Porker was such a cool/cute little place. It’s a food truck that sells beignets. They call them “fluffy pillows of heaven” and they totally were.

There were a ton of succulents and cacti EVERYWHERE and there were so many different cool seating areas surrounding the food truck. It was such a neat place! I was taking pictures every thing! Here are a ton of pictures of The Poor Porker.

socially awkward bookworm.

Category Archives: Travel.

Random|| Life Update.

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Random|| Picture Update.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve! 😀

Dr. Von D Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park.

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Christmas 2018.

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Travel|| Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & Museum.

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Travel || Road Trip to Illinois.

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Random|| Picture & Reading Update.

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Travel|| Lake Placid, FL.

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Travel|| Black Point Marina.

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PICTURES FROM MY DAD’S GARDEN.

PICTURES FROM BLACK POINT MARINA

Travel|| Topeekeegee Yugnee (T.Y.) Park.

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Travel|| Butterfly World.

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Travel|| Biscayne National Park.

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Travel|| Lakeland…again.

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Travel|| Lakeland.