Happy New Year's Eve!!

Well, what a year this has been! I am sure there are a million things I am going to forget in this blog, so I apologize to anyone who remembers something I don't from the past year. You can comment if your heart so desires. :)

In 2012...

• I went to my second annual Lord-of-the-Rings-athon
• Had my first tap recital in (at least) 8 years
• Participated in Operation MOMS
• Got strep for the first time
• Went to APACHE (my first homeschool convention)
• Lost a good friend (Gamma)
• Got a new fishy (Delta)
• Found Rock Island with my best friends
• Saw 'Music Man' live for the first time
• Started going to a new small group
• Went to 'Fake Prom' for the first time
• Went to Worldview Academy (and loved every second of it)
• Turned 15 years old
• Celebrated my best friend's 16th birthday :)
• Started my sophomore year of high school
• Talked to the police :)
• Started watching Isabella (my nonkey minin)
• Started a new co-op (and my last co-op)
• Started working with the one years olds at MOPS
• Celebrated Caleb's 17th birthday
• Went to Seattle (for the second time)
• My Aunt got married
• Met my new uncle (Panda)
• Found out I was lactose intolerant
• Went to Fall Festival (Oh, the memories!)
• Celebrated Thanksgiving
• Did Miracle League with Nathan
• Had piano lessons
• Went horseback riding
• Saw 'Fiddler on the Roof'
• Signed many songs with four amazing friends (yes Josiah, that includes you) :)
• Celebrated Christmas
• Caleb got glasses
• Took my top bunk down
• Had the best Christmas piano recital ever!
• Saw 'The Hobbit'
• Saw 'Les Mis'
• Grew a ton closer to my Heavenly Father
• Grew a lot closer with all of my friends
• Found contentment in God (it doesn't stay that way, but I felt what this really feels like for the first time)
• Got new Sunday School teachers
• Discovered the 'Moon Man' :)

These are just a few of the things that happened to me over the past year. I have learned so many lessons from all of my family and friends, whether they know it or not. :)  I know there is so much that is going to happen in this coming year of 2013 and I cannot wait to spend it with all the wonderful people in my life. I am going to try to blog about everything that happens, but who knows how well that is going to work. I am going to start posting a Bible verse everyday this new year. Hopefully it will be an encouragement to everyone reading this and to myself.

P.S. If I left something out that happened this year and you want to share that memory, go right ahead and post it in the comments below. Also, these are not in any particular order.

Les Miserables

Wednesday morning I finally got to see the movie I have been waiting for most of the year. Les Miserables! It was completely wonderful and amazing. Definitely not recommended for young children (under 13) just because of the theme and there are also some suggestive scenes. PG-13 is a very appropriate rating for this movie. It is about a man who is put on parole and breaks it because he wants to change his life and cannot while being on parole. His name is Jean Val jean. He meets a woman who is dying and has a daughter that she cannot take care of. He takes young Cosette into his keeping and raises her. Cosette grows up and falls in love with a man named Marius. A love triangle comes into play when Marius' friend Eponine (my favorite character) is in love with him, but being a typical man, Marius does not realize it. Jean Val jean wants to take Cosette over to England from France because it is not safe for them anymore. Cosette and Marius are devastated, but Marius has to stay and fight in the French Revolution. I will not tell you anymore about the story that way you can still enjoy it. The music is phenomenal and the acting is fantastic. If you are interested it is a musical based on the book "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo. The book is really really good too.  I will warn you the book is very long, but worth the read. (Also the movie is very sad, but since the name of it translated into English is 'the miserable' that is kind of expected)

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone!! I had a wonderful Christmas today. We got up at 6:15 and I played "Carol of the Bells" to wake everyone up. (I did warn them I was going to do this) Then Caleb played "God rest ye merry gentlemen" on his guitar. Then I read the Christmas story from the Bible and we prayed. Everyone opened their presents and was very happy. We had sausage balls for breakfast, which are my absolute favorite. My grandparents sent me and my mom a Cricut mini, so we were trying to figure that out. Then we played a card game called 'Pit' which is really fun. We had turkey, green bean casserole, and mashed potatoes for lunch. After that, we all pretty much just laid around. Over all it was a really good Christmas.

My crazy weekend

Now that I have caught everyone up, I can tell you about last weekend. Saturday my mom, Caleb, and I all went to see the Hobbit movie. Dad was sick so he could not go. The movie was pretty good, but it did not follow the book real well. The book was much better. We did a little bit of Christmas shopping, grabbed some dinner, and then came home. Sunday Sharyssa, Rebekah, Josiah, Katherine, and I were signing in church. It was also my piano recital, in which we signed again. I played 'Carol of the Bells' as a duet with Mrs. Greene. It was really fun! Everyone else did really really well. The last person to play the piano was phenomenal! He played 'Sleigh Ride'. After the recital, we all went down into the fellowship hall for snacks and apple cider. After that, we came home and sat around the rest of the day. Today is my calm down day. Bella has been pretty agreeable, besides the fact she is in time out right now, and there is not rush to get anything done. Christmas break is delightful!

A little catching up to do

I really don't know what was going on when I last posted, other than I did not finish the Seattle posts. I got to the end of my journal that I kept, so I do not remember the rest of the days that well anymore. I will start with Thanksgiving and go on from there. Actually I will mention that I got contacts the week before Thanksgiving. Izzy did not recognize me and would hide for a while. Then I asked if she was my 'nonkey ninin' (monkey minion) and she got all excited and said "yes Kiki"

Thanksgiving was just me and my family. We made lunch and had way to much Turkey. :) Then I took a nap and the rest of the family just sat around all day. That pretty much sums up my Thanksgiving.

The day after Thanksgiving we put up our Christmas tree. It was Caleb's year to put the angel on the top of the tree. We got out all the boxes and ornaments and made the long endeavor of putting the tree up, We have an artificial tree, so it requires being assembled and  'fluffed'. Fluffing the tree is my least favorite part because your arms get all scraped up. Not much happened the rest of the weekend...or the week for that matter.

That next weekend though was mine and Sharyssa's annual Christmas sleepover. We take turns for whose house it is at, so this year it was my turn. My mom and I picked up Sharyssa and we got our nails done at the mall, then went to lunch at Panda Express (in the mall). We came back to my house and took a walk then worked on 'Held'. Since our brains were dead, we watched a little bit of 'Castle' and then made no-bake cookies. While the no-bake cookies were cooling we looked at wedding type stuff. Then we had a tea party in which we came up with nicknames for each other that we had a long time ago. Sharyssa was Ms. Magnolia Dolittle and I was Ms. Amber Honeysuckle. We exchanged gifts and then went to bed. She got me a music box that plays 'Masquerade' from Phantom of the Opera. I love it a lot!! It was a Saturday so the next day we had to get up and take a shower quickly and get to church.

Thursday that week, was gingerbread cookie day. Isabella was quite happy about this experience. We made two batches and that is about 10 dozen cookies. :) They were for the Christmas tea at church that Saturday though so we could not eat many of them.

As I just mentioned the Christmas tea was Saturday. My family had to be at the church at 11:00 so that everyone else could set up. I drew a Christmas tree on the dry erase board in the fellowship hall and goofed around until everyone else started showing up. Most people did not get there until about and hour before. The tea itself was quite fun. The teenage girls had a table to ourselves, so we were a little goofier than if we had to sit with the adults. We did not get home until almost 7:00 that night.