About Me

AardsmaFive Homepage From My Pen Photographs Rachel's Ramblings

Hey! Thanks for visiting my section of the website. Before you check out any of my other pages, let me tell you a little bit about myself.
I’m Rachel. I’m the eighth child in my family, but I’m the third born of the five of us in question on this site. Although I’m near the end of the family, I tend to call myself ‘the middle kid’. That’s partly because, of the five of us, I am the middle kid-- there are two above me and two below me. (Some might also argue it’s because I usually do wind up ‘in the middle of things’, so to speak!)

I’m a pretty busy person most of the time. Most days, between eight and four, you can find me doing any number of things. Things like making a batch of blueberry muffins, or trying to get the concept of subtraction (complete with borrowing and carrying and all that good stuff) into the head of my youngest brother, or washing yet another sink-full of dishes. Or things like putting another big heap of laundry away, sweeping a floor, or maybe taking a quick minute to make a change on one of the family websites I help maintain. In the afternoon you’ll find me hard at work on my school: sweating through science units about slime mold, getting interested in the French revolution, laughing at Mark Twain, or filling endless sheets of paper with unintelligible equations and figures that all come down to one agonizingly simple, incredibly meaningless, x = y - z.

Of course, that’s just the eight-to-four side of me. Once all the housework and cooking and school is done for the day, there is a whole other side of me that comes to light!
That’s when I’m working for hours on a knitted scarf, writing crazy poetry, listening to endless hours of country music, or writing long, hilarious emails to a good friend. Or maybe I’m memorizing Bible verses, laughing myself sick over nothing (and I mean nothing) with my sister Beka, watching one of those good ol’ Andy Griffith shows, or playing with one of my good friends the dogs Buddy and Farley. Of course, there are always good murder mysteries to read (I’m always up for one of those), or my older brother Matthew to talk to when he gets home from college, or two little brothers who are always good for a nice, old-fashioned free-for-all every once in a while, too.

I am a creative person, and if too much time goes by without some kind of a creative project, I start going a little stir-crazy! Several years ago I purchased a video camera and fancy editing software, and taught myself video editing. Since then I have made various kinds of projects and short videos for events and family members.
My dad taught me how to make websites a few years ago and since then websites have been alternately the cause of great joy and great frustration!! This website was really the first I ever designed almost entirely on my own (my dad helped with technical things a few times, and my sister Beka helped with the creative side of it anytime I needed an opinion), and it was more of a joy then a frustration, fortunately! My video editing and website design fall collectively under the title of ‘LOL Productions’.

Another creative thing I enjoy is writing. I’ve been writing faithfully since I was about eight, when one of my older sisters got me started with a small journal. That blossomed over time into ‘The Aardsma Weekly’—a weekly ‘newspaper’ type of thing I wrote about our family for a few years. I love to write, and very much enjoy the challenge of getting words to say what I want them to. One of my favorite things to do is write poetry—although I have to admit it is never the serious and beautiful type I aspire to! Usually it is just something that reduces all who read it to helpless laughter…which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because usually that is my aim!

My other creative delight is art. Ever since I can remember I have admired people who could draw, although I considered myself artistically hopeless until about a year ago when I tried to draw something for the first time! Since then I have read some books, bought some drawing pencils, and thrown more hopelessly bad sketches into the trash than I care to remember!! However I really enjoy drawing, and love the challenge of trying to correctly represent something on paper—which is quite the challenge! I’d love to take lessons from a professional some day, and I dream about watercolors and canvas, but for now I am content to keep scribbling away with paper and pencil.

My passions in life are my cat (Jack), writing, reading, talking with my family and friends (preferably late at night—the later the better), cooking (and eating), country music, taking pictures, sleeping in, slow days, junk food, well-written books, day dreaming, family time, laughing, libraries, time off, chocolate, C.S. Lewis, my cell phone, and singing along to country stars on the car radio---just for starters.

My dreams include having a big family (how does fifteen kids sound?), writing a book, seeing Europe, drawing like a pro, memorizing one hundred Bible verses, getting married, visiting the Lincoln memorial, making a full-length movie, spending a few uninterrupted consecutive hours in a library, painting a life-sized portrait, knowing the Bible inside and out, living in Kentucky, becoming a counselor, living in a huge house (I mean like really huge), and surviving to adulthood. (Okay, so I was half-kidding about that last one!)