31 October 2006

Happy Hallowe'en!

Yes, I'm still bound and determined to spell it with an apostrophe. It's been contractionized from All Hallow's Eve to Halloween (and how skewed is THAT?) and I think it deserves an iota of recognition that it wasn't ALWAYS Halloween, and once possessed a name that made a bit more sense. But such is the English language.
Anyway, I do in fact have a costume. It's a white long-sleeved shirt with a navy-blue-and-brown vest, brown boots, a sort of dark multicolored bandana and gold hoop earrings (which I'm wearing now). Oh, and a belt with a sword stuck in it, if I can scavenge one from around here. I'm sure I can, there seems to be a plethora of toy swords lying around (did I use 'plethora' correctly? Or should it have been 'SEEM to be a plethora of toy swords'?). And today I'm going to get a large piece off that roll of paper we have lying around, rip it artistically, write "Pirates! Ye be warned" on it, and put it on the front door. I still have not decided, however, whether I'm going to Bible study or staying home. I tend to seesaw between both - last night I was completely convinced I was going to Bible study and this morning I woke up determined to stay home. I think I'll end up staying home, if only because of the fact that last year we only got about 50 trick-or-treaters total and this Dad got a box of 100 chocolate bars. So guess who gets to eat the leftovers! Me. I also don't know what to do on my pumpkin, whether to do it normally and then stick an eye patch and pirate hat on it, or attempt some fancy pirate design. Oh, I just seesawed, now I want to go to Bible study.

I'm actually on schedule for quizzing, I have the first eight verses of Acts 7:20-60 memorized, and I'm doing another eight today. Hopefully. But it's encouraging to not start the week off behind.

I think I'm going to go Google pumpkin designs.

~Sil

30 October 2006

Daylight Savings

Actually, none of us were caught by surprise this time around. Though all the kids were up early, and seemed to have entirely forgotten that you need to be DRESSED and ready to go on Sunday morning before you can play Nintendo. So I got up about an hour after they did and reminded them. I'm sure they all think I'm absolutely no fun, but you know, a girl's got to be on time for quizzing practice! And we just about were, we were all ready at least ten minutes before we needed to go, but then the van had to warm up and Dad had to scrape off the ice (it snowed! Like, really snowed! About four or five inches!) and we didn't drive as fast as we usually do because the roads were slippery, so we weren't on time. Well, we weren't one time as in 8:45-on-time, but we weren't seriously late. It's a good thing there weren't mini-pizzas this morning though, for people who come on time, or I would not have gotten one.
We did, however, decide on our new quiz t-shirt design. I actually think I like the old one better, a lot better, but you know, I don't think anyone else really wanted the old one so it doesn't make much of a difference. And we were exactly divided as far as color goes, there were sixteen quizzers there, and eight wanted a sort of teal-green color and eight wanted black. I would want black if my design had gotten chosen (CIA, Christ in Action) but as it didn't (it did respectably well in the voting though) I would prefer teal. Anyway, I'm going to wear my old shirt a lot more now, because I love that shirt. It's got the Southgate logo on the front and then on the back a picture of a Jesus fish with an eye in the middle and underneath it the words "Becoming His Pupil" which I thought was really smart. When we were choosing it, one of the coaches we had then (Stephen) did a variation with the Eye of Sauron inside rather than an normal eye. I thought it was very sweet of him, but of course nobody voted for it besides me.
At the end of practice we got cinnamon buns and doughnuts, because it was Meghan and Sarah's birthdays. They're both born on Hallowe'en. We only got in about fifteen minutes of practice, but it was pretty productive practice, and I beat Josh up a lot, which is basically my quizzing goal in life. Eh, no, it's not, but he's been to Internationals so I consider it quite an achievement.

Oh, and then yesterday afternoon we (me and mom) had a lovely quiet three hours while the others went swimming. I forgot to do piano, though, maybe I'll do it twice today.

I should really post more regularly, so I don't have to do these giant ones. Anyway, the Photo Scavenger Hunt was pretty fun, and our team would have won except another team did some weird thing where they got two of the objects we needed in one picture and got bonus points. Phooey, I like winning. But the prize was a pizza party next week (which is the all-nighter) and Bryan just gave us all a pizza party, so it doesn't really matter who won. I guess (says the extremely competitive side of me). I got a bunch of the Polaroids we took, to scrapbook them, and I'm currently working on it. Oh, that reminds me! I have to email everyone from the quiz meet who took pictures and get them to send them to me.

~Sil

27 October 2006

Strange

I keep forgetting to mention - I've discovered something pretty weird about myself. I was memorizing verses in Acts 7 on Wednesday and playing with little plastic toy soldiers at the same time and it went way better (the memorizing, that is) than usual. And then today when I was going over them I put away my laundry and played with a balloon and that worked, too; whereas if I just try and sit there with a book and repeat them to myself, I don't get very far. Weird, eh? I guess I have to be doing something else simultaneously for the verses to really stick.

Photo Scavenger Hunt at youth tonight. Basically what we do is wander around West Edmonton Mall taking pictures of things on a list. Not, like, specific things, but things like "The coolest thing in the mall" (the skating rink) or "The most light bulbs possible in one place" (a Christmas tree) or "Seven shoes". Last year we got most points for seven shoes because everyone else just took off seven shoes and took a picture, whereas we actually found a display with seven shoes in it and took a picture. Plus, our team only had three people (3 people = 6 shoes, in case you didn't catch that) anyway so we couldn't have. Oh yeah, and we're using old Polaroid cameras. This means two things - crazily expensive film, and only ten pictures per roll. And don't wave them to dry the ink!

~Sil

26 October 2006

I love Thursdays

Thursdays mean I don't have to do anything...or go out anywhere...well, I still have school, but that doesn't really count. They also mean I can wear comfy pants and different-colored socks, because I haven't done laundry in a while. Oops. Unless we go shopping for my friend's birthday present today (which we might, her party's on Saturday and there's youth tomorrow night so we couldn't go then) I don't actually have to leave the house. Wow.

Band yesterday was funny, because everyone was tired (including Bill, the director) so we attempted Air For Band, which is arguably our easiest piece, and failed horribly. I kept thinking we'd stopped because in bits nobody would play at all and I'd be sitting there playing the dinky little keyboard all by myself. But it made me feel better, because I hadn't practiced a whole lot this week. So we got a couple Christmas medley pieces (I have bells in both), which are pretty, and sorta tried one of them. It went okay except there were long bits where I didn't play and I kept getting lost as to where to come in. Usually bells follow the melody though, so it wasn't that hard, especially since they're all traditional carols. I really should see if anyone I know has an unused set of bells lying around somewhere, because it would be good if I could practice. Oh, and as an aside we now have a french horn, because the first trumpet got one. He's not very good at it but that's okay - we have too many trumpets anyway. Four, including him, and they're all guys and they all like to goof around a LOT.
Piano went well...except I can't seem to grasp transposition for orchestral instruments and I keep doing stupid things that render the whole problem wrong. Sigh. Though my teacher did FINALLY see Dead Man's Chest, so she knows what the heck I'm playing out of the music book. She agreed with me about the end. 211 days until At World's End!

I'm finished Half-Blood Prince, and it was a lot sadder than I thought it would be at the end. I cried. And I'm sad that Harry isn't going back to Hogwarts, because I love Hogwarts, and I thought it was really stupid that he couldn't go to the final Quidditch match because he had detention. Honestly. Ron stopped being an idiot, though, so that was good.
I'm actually finished it now, but I started a book called His Majesty's Dragon yesterday. I think it was published in some places as Temeraire, actually. It was pretty good, but not long enough, because I finished it this morning.

~Sil

24 October 2006

Half-Blood Prince

I think this week's going to be one of those ones where every single day somebody different gets sick. I like having a big family but whenever one of us gets sick it takes the rest of us about two weeks to recover. It's not that good for school, either, because they watch movies all day and it's really hard to concentrate - especially since I'm reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (#6) and it's really hard to put down. I'll review it when I finish it, but so far my observations are as follows: I like Harry a lot, he's more honest and he doesn't act like he's the only smart one around, two weird things have happened so far and for both of them he's told Dumbledore or Mr. Weasley immediately rather than trying to solve them himself. Also, Ron is a bit of an idiot at this point, and it's that part in the book (there always is one, in every book) where Ron and Hermione aren't speaking to each other. Never very comfortable. Um...what else...oh yeah, we've finally discovered that Snape never actually did reform and is currently spying on the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore, which disappointed me because I always wanted him to prove Harry wrong and turn out to be good. Oh well. And of course now that Voldemort's back there seem to be evil plots springing up like grass and I'm on tenterhooks that Mr or Mrs Weasley is going to suddenly die. Yes, I already know Dumbledore dies, guys. Somehow everyone I know who had read it before me didn't seem to be able to keep it quiet. Though I really would rather Dumbledore than Sirius, I wish he hadn't died in the fifth one. And last but not least, Malfoy seems to be in Death Eater-training. Lovely.

Had my science test I'd been avoiding yesterday. Or it feels like I'd been avoiding it, maybe it was just that week off school. Anyway, I left three questions blank because I really had no clue, so that wasn't good. I think I got most of the others right though. I wonder how I could enjoy science so much last year and then not like Biology so much (so far, anyway)?

Oh yes, and you guys were really transparent at supper yesterday, MOM and DAD. "Hm, I wonder how many kingdoms there are?" "So what kind of organisms are in kingdom Protista?" Though maybe you were trying to be transparent. Anyway, subtle was not the way to describe it! But don't worry, I still love you.

~Sil

23 October 2006

I...am...exhausted!

But it's a good kind of exhausted. Cause there was a quiz meet this weekend and it was AMAZING! I'm still practically glowing!

First of all, Southgate was unbelievable. We had five teams and four of them (including mine) made the two three-team finals (which means teams placing 1st, 2nd, 3rd quizzed against each other and teams placing 4th, 5th and 6th did too). I think we ended up with first, third, fourth and sixth places. It was amazing. So all but four of the Southgate people got team awards. Then there were Top Rookie awards, which means that the top ten kids who are just starting quizzing get awards. My brother got the VERY top, which was so amazing, and my friends Josh and Emily got second and fourth, which was equally amazing, because this is their first year doing ANY kind of quizzing.

But now it's time for me to brag. Because that's what a blog is for, to talk about yourself, right? So anyway - you have six quizzes in a meet, not counting the finals. And you need four correct questions to quiz out. So I got four correct and none wrong in EVERY SINGLE quiz, even the final, and I got first place over everybody. Like, everyone. And I got a medal! And I love it so much! And that's without the fact that we won our final (which was the teams placing 4th, 5th and 6th), and I had the best team ever and...sigh...I keep reliving it over again, it was such an awesome day. Next quiz meet is going to be even better because I'll be in A...and strangely, A is a lot more relaxing because I'm not worrying about getting perfect or anything, I'm just trying to get off my seat as much as possible.

I should really get going on school, it's almost lunchtime and I've only done piano. Oops.

~Sil

19 October 2006

I found it!

My friend helped me look on tuesday evening and it was behind the information desk. Whew! Now I have my nice little book back again, and I'll know not to take it for granted. So, I celebrated by memorizing five verses in Acts five last night around 11 o'clock. I couldn't sleep. I wonder if they stuck - I only have five more to memorize and then I'm done the chapter, which is good, because I need to quote chapters four and five to someone before tomorrow evening. So today will include a lot of quizzing. And a lot of studying for science. I wouldn't mind it if there weren't fifty-five MILLION (okay, exaggeration) vocabulary words each week and they didn't expect me to be able to tell off the top of my head whether a bacterium lacking a cell wall is in class Archaebacteria or Mollicutes. Or if a gram-positive, non-oxygen-producing photosynthetic bacterium is is phylum Firmicutes or phylum Gracilicutes. It's not like I'm considering biology as a lifelong career! All I want to do is write books!

Grrr. Um, so what else is happening today...ah yes, we're going shopping for Hallowe'en costumes at Value Village. I think we need to put together two pirates, one for me and one for my sister, and I still don't know what my brother's being (probably a hockey player. My, how creative...) and we already have a Spiderman costume for my littler brother and a princess dress for my sister. I have an idea for a pirate hat if we can't find one - I'll make a paper hat and spray-paint it black, and maybe find a skull-and-crossbones sticker and put it on the front, and voila, you have your pirate hat. Also, if we can't find exactly the right things, all we really need to do is get two or three belts and sling 'em around sort of haphazardly and there you go. Like this:

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You'll notice he's got at least three belts there, sort of across each shoulder and around his waist. I also thought that if we can't find pirate boots (very likely) we can just get some semi-pirate-looking ones and put big cuffs on them. Like this:

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Even rubber boots might work, with some alteration. I'm getting rather excited about this. I might also get some feathers and stick them in my pirate hat. Maybe even black eyeshadow...Jack is always wearing black eyeshadow.

But enough about that! Josh asked me for the snow ice cream recipe earlier, so here it is, for him and anyone else who wanrs it:

2 eggs, beaten
2 C. milk (I use powdered, it works fine)
1 C. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tbsp vanilla
Flavoring to tase (it's really good by itself, so I've never tried flavoring)
Bucket of fresh clean snow (that works out to about two gallons, I find. Any amount around there will work, though, and if you want more flavor, use less snow)

Beat eggs and milk a VERY VERY large bowl. You may want to use a pot, even. Blend in sugar. Add salt, vanilla and other flavoring (if using). Combine with snow and mix well. Freeze for at least an hour and a half. May omit eggs and substitute 3/4 C honey for sugar, though I find this doesn't taste as good.

~Sil

17 October 2006

More snow

I wonder why I always seem to title my posts about the weather. Strange. But yes, we got more snow. Everything that came yesterday melted, but this stuff looks like it might hang around for a bit. There's not very much, probably about a centimeter, but enough to make things look white or white-r than they were before. I hope we get a nice big dump before Hallowe'en.

Speaking of which, I still want to be a pirate, though I'm think I won't be a character specifically, just to make it slightly easier to find a costume. I want to do a skull and crossbones on my pumpkin, too, but I'm having trouble finding a pattern. Maybe I'll just make one up and hope it works.

My little orange Acts booklet is missing and I'm pretty worried about it - that was the best book EVER, I spent so long doing the map of Middle-Earth on the cover and I mack-tacked it really well and...I don't want to lose it. I'm going to look at the church tonight at bible study, and I really hope it's in the lost and found or lying around somewhere, because I don't want to lose it. I don't even know if they're selling them anymore, which would be horrible. But maybe I'm just overreacting and it's under my bed or something. Sigh.

To cheer myself up...this was posted on Arwen-Undomiel yesterday (thanks Luthien of Lorien, even though you're very likely not reading this, thanks anyway):

THE STUPIDITY OF THE WORLD AND HOW CANADIANS RESPOND.

Q: I have never seen it warm on Canadian TV, so how do the plants grow?(UK)
A. We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around and watch them die.

Q: Will I be able to see Polar Bears in the street? (USA)
A: Depends on how much you've been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Vancouver to Toronto-can I follow the Railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it's only Four thousand miles, take lots of water.

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Canada? (Sweden)
A: Sure. The grizzlies love fresh snacks.

Q: It is imperative that I find the names and addresses of places to contact for a stuffed Beaver. (Italy)
A: Let's not touch this one.

Q: Are there any ATM's (cash machines) in Canada? Can you send me a list of them in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax? (UK)
A: What is this ATM? We don't use cash. We use animal pelts and beads.

Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Canada? (USA)
A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Ca-na-da is that big country to your North...oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Calgary. Come naked.

Q: Which direction is North in Canada? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into Canada? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA)
A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is...oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Vancouver and in Calgary, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.

Q: Do you have perfume in Canada? (France)
A: No, WE don't stink.

Q: Do you celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada? (USA)
A: Only at Thanksgiving.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Toronto and is milk available all year round? (France)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of Vegan hunter/gathers. Milk is illegal.

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Canada, but I forget its name. It's a kind of big horse with horns. (USA)
A: It's called a Moose. They are tall and very violent, eating the brains of anyone walking close to them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you will have to learn it first.

That made me laugh, especially the one about the ATMs.

~Sil

16 October 2006

It's snowing!

Yeah, and about time, too. What is this, Hawaii? No snow until OCTOBER SIXTEENTH? I guess we'll at least have it for Hallowe'en. Dad bought three pumpkins and one of them is mine - it's going to have a skull and crossbones on it. He also got candy. I still don't know what on earth I'm doing that night. There's youth bible study, which I might just dress up as a pirate and go to; or I could stay home, dress up as a pirate and give out candy; or go to my friend's house. We were both going to be pirates, so it would work. 220 days until PotC: At World's End! I'll have to ask tomorrow evening if we can dress up on Hallowe'en night at bible study. I mean, I'm sure they'd still let me in if I was costumed but it would be nice if other people did the same thing.

We're back into school now, after last week's holiday, and the quiz meet is this weekend. My team is Debra and Daniel, which rocks, and we have a total of five Southgate teams, which is bigger than I can ever remember us being. So that's cool. The quiz meet is at our church, so we're meeting there on Thursday to set up and then on Friday for some quizzing in the evening. I'm in the youth band, which is doing five or six songs. It won't be as fun as last time, I don't think, when there were only four of us singing. Now there are six, and all of them are girls except one. Plus, in the one song we were totally off-key for more than half of it and I don't even LIKE that song. And we didn't get to do Shout to the North, my FAVORITE song, because the guitarists didn't have music. I have been able to sing higher lately, though, which is good. I still have to jump an octave down on the choruses of songs sometimes, but I'm getting better. I can barely hear myself at all, though. So yeah, it won't be as fun as last time.

It's still snowing. I hope it snows all day, then I can make ice cream. This is where all you picky "oh no - GERMS!" people cringe and tell me I'm killing myself slowly. This is also where people like Steven Chute start going "You see, when snow comes through the atmosphere it falls through a layer of smog..." and all such annoying stuff. I like snow ice cream. And Erin, I hope you don't mind me quoting you (sort of) but - I'll call you after I die, and if it's because I ate snow ice cream, you can sue me. There. That's my little snippet of plagiarism for today.

~Sil

12 October 2006

I'm alive!

I haven't been abducted by aliens or anything, I'm alive. I just get lazy during holidays. And I'm not really in the mood for a long post right now, so this won't be overly lengthy.

We're currently visiting Josh and Emily, which is fun, and we're going to have a quiz practice tonight. We also might go shopping, play some games, all that jazz. We're heading home around five tomorrow to make it to youth on time (or slightly late). Saturday quiz practice is this weekend, and I can't say I'm really caught up, but as long as I review chapters 2 and 3 I should be okay.

Band was fun yesterday - one of the trumpets played Pirates music! I was pretty impressed...and we played the one song to which there is an actual piano part (gasp!) which I'm still having some difficulty with. I tried to say no to that lady who wanted me to sing but she didn't seem to want to take no for an answer. It annoys me. Maybe I'll just avoid her.

~Sil

07 October 2006

Weeeekend!

Ah, this is what I went through five weeks of school to get to! The first day of a...let me count...ten-day holiday? Nine-day holiday? Something like that. Anyway, we're going to visit my grandparents tomorrow (and their grand piano. It's calling to me, I can hear it) which will be awesome, and then Josh and Emily on wednesday after band! Yay! And I'll be back in time for quizzing saturday practice and youth couch games (Animal Whacking Game! Woot!).

Speaking of which, youth last night was pretty fun - we all made pizza and salad and cookies. I ended up doing a pizza all by my onesies because Jessica and her friend were doing the salad, Matthew and Ben were doing their own pizza and Jeff and Caleb (naughty sponsors) ran off with our cookies and I never saw them again until they showed up with a goopy chocolately mess that they said was cookies. But we ate them anyway. And then nobody wanted to eat my pizza! And I thought it was really good, it has pepperoni and ham and black olives and a lot of cheese and basil sprinkled on top because there was some left over from the pizza sauce. And of course, while we were eating, all the guys agreed that Orlando Bloom was hunkier than Johnny Depp. Which he is. But it didn't make much sense.
Then after supper we feebly attempted a few games (Wink murder and The Mexican Square-Dancing game) but they didn't work out so well, so the guys and some of the girls played floor hockey and some of the other girls who didn't want to (like me) wandered into the sanctuary and fooled around on the piano. Michelle played random chords and I made up a melody on top, which was fun, and then I played He's A Pirate and drew a pretty sizable audience (EVERYONE loves Pirates music). I love that song. Oh, and I finally found out what's happening with youth band, which was good, and suggested some songs to do.

So today all that needs doing is for me to convince my mom to take me shopping for various things, including winter dress shoes, and chores. Which I would actually rather not do.

~Sil

06 October 2006

MORE rain.

It's raining. Again. Honestly, if we have to have precipitation and it has to be freezing cold, why can't it be snow? Snow is pretty and fun to play in and it makes us feel all nice and winter-y. But rain just makes you look out the window and think 'Eurgh'.

Anyway. Today's my sister's birthday, and here I was going to say that I'm a little tired of her bursting into tears every time something doesn't go her way because it's her birthday, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without sounding snobby. Oh wait, I just did. I can't exactly blame her for being disappointed that her friends couldn't come over and mom couldn't pick up the lunch she wanted because the van had a flat tire, though.

I didn't have to go anywhere yesterday! It was awesome! I laid around all day in comfy clothes and finished Beauty (by Robin McKinley) and started the first Harry Potter. I still haven't read the sixth, and for a while I didn't really want to, but now that it's at the library I figured I'd read the whole series over again, just to get the appropriate nuance before reading number six.

Youth tonight - Cater to Yourself. We're making our own supper from scratch. Pizza, salad and cookies, I believe. We're also having pizza for supper for my sister's birthday, which means I get pizza twice in one evening! Awesome!

I'm not really in the mood for a long blog post right now, I don't think. I'm gonna go watch Sky High again.

~Sil

05 October 2006

Busy!

Oh boy, can you say no free time? I even made a schedule for myself today and assigned all the things I needed to do a time. Quizzing got an hour, math got a half hour cause it was a test (it'll likely take shorter than that) and I think I'll do piano this evening because I want to watch Sky High this afternoon. The kids (don't mind me, I call my siblings 'the kids') got it from the library. And just now, I killed two birds with one stone by doing my english assignment on my history text. I was taking notes. Go me. Maybe I can read a little bit this morning - I got 'Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast' by Robin McKinley from the library, and it's a really good book so I hope I have some leftover time to read. I also had Eragon and Eldest on hold, but only Eldest is in, which is annoying because I wanted to read Eragon first. I also got a biography of Peter Jackson, an autobiography of Sean Astin, Bored of the Rings (a parody of LotR. I'll try not to be offended) and one other one that I think is called Understanding the Lord of the Rings. Normally it wouldn't take me very long to do all of those but I have a feeling it'll take me a good long time now that life has kinda started up again.

Piano and band yesterday. Wednesday is soon to be my music day - piano lessons, then band, and pretty soon I'll have youth band practice in the evenings. I think. Piano was one of those days - I felt like I had a really bad practice week, and then I go into my lesson and my teacher's going, "Wow, that's so awesome! You're doing really well, keep up the good work!" and she seemed astounded when I said I only practiced four days. I guess it could be worse! Band was kinda boring, I played warm-up stuff and listened to them tune, and then didn't really play much else until the end, when I did tambourine for one song and lamely attempted orchestra bells for another. Yes, it's the same layout as a keyboard, but it's way different in that your playing technique changes drastically. It was interesting, though. And I did Accidentally in Love with our drummer, who is autistic. It went pretty well, though I was a little annoyed that they seemed to expect me to have the accompaniment perfect in one week. I have a life. And it does not revolve around band. Sorry, Robyn, but it doesn't. Oh, and then, just as I was walking out to meet my dad (who was driving our brand-new leased 2006 Impala and wearing his suit! No, I wasn't exceedingly proud...heehee...nobody else's dad looked so nice...) a hurried-looking sort of person accosted me and asked if I'd be interested in learning a song to sing at the Christmas concert. She'd never met me before, just sorta shoved the music into my hands. Yes, me, sing. I don't think I'm going to say yes, because I have a really low voice and I've never sung alone in front of people, and I'm sure there are way better singers than me out there, they're not hard to find.

At youth on Tuesday we played a hilarious game where we tied balloons to our ankles and ran around trying to pop other people's balloons while not getting our own popped. Me and my friend almost won, but not quite. During bible study it was slightly hard to pay attention, the guys were being silly. Next time I'm going to sit over by the people who actually want to listen. I should really post every day so I don't have to catch up on a bunch of stuff every time.

I did it again, left science too late. Phooey. I should really get on that.

~Sil

P.S. EDIT: I forgot Ellie's baby shower! Silly me! It was last night. I finally got to hold her, even though she was a little fussy, and I think Natalie liked all the baby gifts. Mine was pretty unique, I made chocolate chip cookies and put them in a nice little canister Mom got from IKEA. She actually bought it for herself but I really wanted to give Natalie something and there was nothing else to put the cookies in, so she said I could use it. Mom's present was a knitted rainbowy-colored super soft little baby poncho. Ellie won't be able to wear it for a year or two, but it is so super cute. She obsessed a lot about the size and the proportions, but I think it'll fit fine. Me and Erin and Loree and Jessica and Debra all folded tissue paper. No, that makes it sound too passive. We dueled over the tissue paper. Natalie eventually just tossed it in our direction and hoped that the floor didn't get too messed up. It was fun.

02 October 2006

It's October

And everyone is in Hallowe'en mode. If anyone still spells it Hallowe'en... all the stores I've gone to have said Halloween and I want to climb up and insert one of those apostrophe stickers from Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Oh well. We went to West Ed yesterday and the littler kids wanted to go into the Disney store, so me and my brother wandered around going, "Pirates...pirates...pirates..." and somehow hoping the piratey stuff would call to us. We found it eventually, but there wasn't much there - Davy Jones and Jack Sparrow costumes for little kids; cheap action figures (the Bootstrap Bill one wasn't bad, but the rest were mediocre); lunchboxes that I suppose were somehow supposed to look piratey but didn't, they looked more ninja-y; and funniest of all, pirate pillows that you could plug music into. They had a picture of Will and Jack on them, and had a little speaker. Boy, I bet the quality was GREAT, too. Bit of sarcasm there.
Anyway, pretty much the reason I wanted to go to West Ed was that there's a Jacob Outlet there, which is like Jacob except way cheaper, and I got another pair of cords. This pair is a really nice light green. I think I have more pants now than I've had in, like, the past five years! Dress pants; black, green and tan cords, one pair of jeans, and navy comfy pants that make me look sporty when I'm actually not. Fun fun fun. We also went to Blessings, because I had $35 in gift certificates for there, and I got the Casting Crowns Lifesong CD as well as a thing called Revolve that is basically the New Testament in magazine form. So that was fun. I love shopping when I don't actually have to spend any money. I also deposited the money that's been sitting on my dresser for a week or two, which was kind of a relief. The bank branch was closed, but if you inserted your bank card in a little slot on a post by the door, it opened! It was pretty cool. Boy, I just realized how that makes me sound like I have no life at all. Don't worry, people.

Quiz practice went well, and I won a package of licorice from the draw. This week is Acts 5 - 42 verses. Hopefully it's not as bad as last week. I did get a bit of a head start yesterday. After this week we have two weeks of review before the quiz meet.

Oh, and we went out for supper at Wendy's last night too. I had a salad, like I always do, and a bite of my brother's super-spicy chicken burger, like I always do, and then ate all the ice from the drinks, like I usually do. Then I got a nice long time on the computer when we got back and talked to my friend on the phone (and I reminded her to read this. So you better be, Erin!). I'm actually not having as much of a problem with the phone as I usually do, I used to hate it so much.

One more week of school and then we get a week off. We're visiting my grandparents for Thanksgiving, and I really want to leave on Saturday so we can stay two nights (and I'd miss quiz practice, but frankly, I'd rather visit them) but the plan seems to be that we leave on Sunday after church and stay one night. Phooey. One night is never enough. Then on our week off we're visiting our friends in Edson for wednesday-thursday-friday (though I don't think we're arriving until wednesday evening, and I'd like to leave on friday early enough to get to youth at 7 because it's couch games and I love couch games). Saturday quiz practice is the weekend after that, and then a week later is the quiz meet. Fun stuff. I have to remember to call and say what days I'm not available to babysit, I keep forgetting.

~Sil