Atoka Museum & Confederate Cemetery

Hey guys, Callie here again! School is in full swing and it's got Penny and I thinking about how much fun we had last summer. We still have a few adventures left to cover and we wanted to share one with you today... along with some news!

Last year, my aunt and uncle went on a vacation and our cousins came to spend a whole week with us. We packed in all these trips, including the one I'm about to tell you about and my poor mom and dad were really good sports about everything. But! This year! It's my mom and dad's turn to go on a trip and WE ARE GOING TO GO STAY WITH WRENNIE AND CHLOE! Our brothers are coming too... not that they want to be on our blog just yet. But we're working on it, I promise!

Last year, one of the places we went was to the Civil War Museum and Confederate Cemetery in Atoka, Oklahoma. We didn't get to go in the museum because it was closed, but we took a couple of pictures of the cemetery.

This is explaining about the battle site. We were walking around at dusk and it kind of got creepy. There were a lot of woods nearby and something rustling around. We were kind of worried about ghosts.

Most of the graves looked like this. They weren't really very big, either.

This was almost the whole cemetery.  We didn't get a lot of pictures because of that creepy noise.

We tried to take a few. We found this little cabin that we didn't feel uncomfortable around. (Taking pictures on someone's grave seemed kind of disrespectful so we didn't.)

With a little stone fence.

And a small wood one! This was one of the fences on that big long sort of trail behind the first marker up there. It went off into the woods into nowhere so we didn't follow it.

We got this picture of me in front of the small cabin...

One of Penny on the fence...

Wrennie over by some rocks...

And Chloe with the cabin in the background.

There was kind of an off-putting guy in a truck watching us this whole time which made us nervous so we decided between that, the ghost and the fact that it was dark, we wouldn't stick around to learn much more about the property.

Have you ever had an adventure go awry like that?

-Callie

PS - We did figure out what it was. Turns out it wasn't a ghost after all. 

  That's one mystery solved!!

Marisol got a new haircut, and meet our new friend Ruby!

Hi everybody, it's Callie again! Are you tired of me yet? I hope not.... ;)

The Olympics have started and Penny and I have been living in our leotards--well, not really; that would smell kind of funny I think!--but we have been loving everything! We spent some time practicing in the back yard today.

Penny is getting really good! I'm pretty proud of her!

While we were practicing though, our friend Marisol came over and guess what! SHE CHANGED HER HAIR!!

I was so excited I gave her a hug!! And then yelled for Merlin because I think her hair looks great and I wanted pictures.

Doesn't it look fantastic? I really think it suits her, and she'll be able to do lots of great hairstyles for dance, too. (I'm not sure though, is she allowed to have bangs or will she have to tie those back?)

I love this side braid that she had her hair styled in! Note to self: borrow this hairstyle ;)

I love this picture. I have to say that my baby brother is getting to be decent!!

While we were taking pics, our brand new friend Ruby heard the commotion and came over to say hey! I haven't introduced her yet, but guys, she made it home safely!

She wanted to know what was going on so I told her that Merlin was taking pictures, and since she hasn't even made an appearance on the blog yet (I know right?) that we needed photos of her too! She was happy to comply.

Ruby comes all the way from the New Orleans area. Her mom is Cajun, and her dad is Latino/Black from the US Virgin Islands. Ruby's family goes on vacation to St. Croix every year! She's adopted, which we think is really neat. She wants to be a doctor when she grows up. She's been hanging out with our friend Anne and her company over at Dreaming of Dolls, and she's really excited to join us here. She got to ride a train all alone!

Her hair!! I i just love it.

And her bright colors! Oh, she and I are going to get along really well.

I wanted a picture of my sister's awesome leotard.

She's so photogenic, I love it.

I hope that everyone's having a great wrap-up to the end of their summer! We still have lots of posts left to talk about, PLUS something very exciting coming up in just a couple of months! In the meantime, is everyone enjoying the Olympics? Our favorite sport is obviously gymnastics, but what's yours?

Love, 

Callie

PS: Penny says I have to put one more picture of myself to make this entry fair.

Gotta Catch What?

Hi everybody, Penny here!

It's time for the summer postcard exchange again and today we wanted to go out and take some pictures for our postcard! Last year, only Callie participated because I was still visiting Aunt Aggie in Texas with my cousin Chloe, but this year we're sending one together! I'm super excited.

Here's Callie's with one from last year!

We've been really busy this summer, so we felt really excited for the chance to get to connect with some of our online friends! Just as a sample, here's some of what we've been up to.

We planted a garden! This was from when we first put it in, but we got a really good yield from our small number of plants and it turns out that everything grew something really well. We have an eggplant, two zucchini plants, three roma tomato plants, an okra, and two bell peppers. We have never grown eggplant or okra so we weren't sure how it would turn out but it ended up being fine!

Besides the tomatoes, the bell pepper actually ended up being our favorite plant. It just smelled so good.

We saw live eagles! (still need to blog about this, callie....)

Trinity took a road trip to Dallas. She had lunch with some friends and then came back and told us all about it. She brought us a couple of souvenir cups and saucers too! She's a big food person and she runs a food blog, so she was pretty eager to judge the food at the restaurant. She said it was cute and that they went out of their way to make it look special!

AND we got caught in a really scary storm that knocked out our power for a couple of days. It got realy hot after the storm and it was pretty miserable for us.

AND we have a new friend coming to join us! This is Ruby. We've been pen-palling for a while so we're super excited to get to show her around. Right now, she's hanging out with our friends Anne, Zia, Nani, their big person Beth, and the whole crew of their friends over at Dreaming of Dolls. She says she's having a blast and that she gets to see the circus town. We're SUPER jealous, but we're glad she's having a nice time!

So today we got up so we could go take some pictures at the river nearby, but we ran into a problem. There weren't any parking spots!!

these are pictures from the same river! We thought we'd go there again.

There aren't very many to begin with because here, there are small areas a few miles apart all along the riverbank, and people bike or run on the trails that travel along beside the river. It's very pretty, but usually we see one guy with a bike and maybe a couple of joggers. Today, there weren't any spots anywhere, and the riverwalk was packed with people all staring at their phones, getting excited over things that they could only see in their cell phone cameras, and muttering that they had to catch everything.

Catch what?? We had no idea! So we went to another park nearby with some pretty landscapes that's usually pretty empty:

Wouldn't that make a nice postcard? But it was packed too! With people doing the same thing!!

I know we sound kind of mad about it. We're not. There's been a lot of nasty going on in the world lately that makes us and our friends very sad. We stood and watched these people walking around, looking for their invisible little creatures, using all of these public places the way they were supposed to be used--and most importantly, they were so nice to each other, talking to each other even though it was pretty obvious they'd never even met. Laughing, getting along. It was really nice to see when we've had so much hate shoved down our throats lately.

So we asked our uncle what was going on and he explained Pokémon to us and now we're kind of totally into it.

We're making it a family game since we're all a little young to go roaming around by ourselves, and we're really enjoying seeing what the game leads us to see!

And by the way, we did finally find a place to take a picture for a postcard! Here's one we didn't use :)

We can't wait to see everyone's! 

Love,
Penny

McAlester, Oklahoma

Hi everybody! Penny here, filling in another post from our vacation over the summer! This one is kind of weird, but since we spent like a whole day on this we thought we'd go ahead and do the post anyway.

From a long, long time ago, my cousin Wrennie did a post about road side attractions. You might remember that we saw the biggest lump of coal, a fallout shelter, and a story about Prisoners of War and a castle they built. Well, that town was McAlester, and we were really there because... well, right here! The Oklahoma State Penetentiary is there! Now, that's not something we would really get to go into, but they were supposed to have a museum about the prison nearby with the actual electric chair (which isn't used anymore) and we really like museums so we wanted to check this one out.

We didn't get to see it, though, because I guess they were moving it but the website wasn't updated yet. We went to where it showed on google maps and it was the right building and everything but it was totally empty. It was also right on the prison grounds, so we got some pictures of it. We didn't get any pictures of my favorite road sign, which said "hitchhikers may be escaped convicts!"
That was a bit of a bummer. -Wrennie
Yeah, but the prison was huge and seeing it was cool! -Chloe

The Great Doll Blog Award!

Hey, everybody! Traci here, big person to Callie & Penny. Mandi and I are writing an entry today because one of our favorite bloggers, Gwen over at A Peek Into The Pantry, nominated us for the Great Doll Blog Award! I am 100% sure that Gwen's blog is already on your to-read list, but if it isn't, you will love it! She takes historical recipes that your favorite AG doll would have eaten, blogs about the history and then makes the food. She takes great pics, too! Thank you for the nomination, Gwen :)

Award Rules:
Thank the person that nominated you.
Answer the questions given to you.
Nominate at least 5 others who you think has a great doll blog.
Notify them that they have an award.
Leave them at least 5 questions to answer.

We nominate Dreaming of Dolls, Jinjia Mixed Goods, The Dolls of 221B, Keiko and Company, and Doll Days Are Over. 

Our questions:
1. What's your favorite non AG doll in your collection?
Mandi says: A Girl For All Time Matilda (Link)
Traci says:  Jun Planning's "Hello Little Girl" Dal (Link)
2. What do you want the next GotY's theme to be?
Mandi says: science!
Traci says: I'd say science too! Most (if not all) of my army have an interest in science. But archery is a close second (though that would probably be a stretch for AG to do).
3. What would your Meet outfit look like if you were the next AG character?
Mandi says: a Flash t-shirt, jeans, and red converse.
Traci says: I'd be in a bright pink or blue tunic, a multicolored crocheted shawl, jeggings, and my favorite shoes.
4. Which AG outfit would you wear with pride if it came in your size?
Mandi says: This is super hard but Addy's Beforever meet 
Traci says: Julie's summer skirt set! (To be fair I'd wear most of Julie's collection completely un-ironically)
5. If you were in charge of AG, what would be the first change you implemented?
Mandi says: I would expand the historical collection and rotate the retired characters.
Traci says: I'd bring back those molds they've only used once (#4 and Marie-Grace). 

Your questions: 
1. What is your least favorite outfit that AG has ever released?
2. Which AG doll is your grail doll?  
3. Do any of your dolls have a common, shared personality trait? 
4. What's your favorite pet/companion?
5. What is your favorite piece of AG furniture? 

Thanks again Gwen!! This was fun!
-Mandi & Traci  

Photoshoot at the river!

Hey everybody, Callie here!

We have had a few adventures lately that I haven't blogged about at all (sad huh?)

First off, Merlin was getting a few photography lessons about light and using the flash in the middle of the day from our uncle (who is super into photography and also one of Merlin's favorite people) so Penny, Finch, Merlin, and I went with my uncle and two of my friends to the river for some photos.

Isn't it pretty? It was after sunrise but still in the morning.

We took Rory, who's a really fun and smart girl that's in school with me. She's friends with my little brother Finch too, but his school is all boys so he only sees her when she comes over afterward, usually with Trinity. She couldn't come to the river but you will see pictures of her soon. Anyway, we super like Rory! She's been to quite a few places around the world, and traveling is a love that all of us have around here! 

And we took Mari, who needed a day off after all the dancing she's been doing lately! Isn't this blue dress pretty on her? It looked just perfect with her hair, I think. 

Penny went... 

And me! 

Merlin took some pictures of the landscape too because he thought they were pretty cool looking.

It was really green! 

He also took this picture of this purple tree. We're not sure what it is! Do you have any ideas? 

This picture of Penny turned out to be one of my favorites. She's looking at the water but it looks like she's staring off the edge of a cliff or something. (No, she didn't go swimming this time, though we worried!)

Mari went tree climbing! 

Merlin got some pictures of her just sitting too though, since climbing trees and being the only girl in a dress was kind of funny!

I really like this picture of Rory as she works her way through the underbrush.

Penny is beautiful! Merlin really did a good job with this one. I like how she's off-center and you can see the tree roots and stuff behind her.

Merlin picked his favorite of me. He says he likes how blue my eyes look here :) 

We read a little bit (Nancy Drew!!)

We didn't get to stay too long since we were just there for photography purposes and we sort of lost the light after a couple of hours or so, but I did want to share the pictures because it's something fun that we did and I haven't made a post in for-ev-er! Worst blogger in the history of the world, am I right?

School will be out soon and then maybe I will have more time to share our adventures!

Love,

Callie

Clothes
Callie:
    Shirt: OG Boho Love
    Shorts: AG Julie's Patchwork Outfit
    Shoes: AG Cool Coral Outfit
Penny: 
    Shirt: OG Jumping for Joy
    Sweater: OG Jumping for Joy
    Shorts: AG Easy Breezy Outfit
    Hat: AG Julie's Birthday Set
Mari:
     Dress: AG Saige's Meet Outfit
Rory:
    Shirt: AG Shimmer Doodle Outfit
    Shorts: AG Grace's City Outfit
    Shoes: OG (can't find them on the website :/)