First Snow

Yesterday and last night we had our first official snow of the season! YAY!!! Bella, Misty, and I went outside for a little while to play in the snow. I only was able to get a couple of pictures before Bella was too cold. :)

Bella admiring the snow.

Misty attacking/hiding from a snowball Bella threw. :D

My little cutie!!!

Christmas Tea 2013

Every year since I was little, my mom would host a Christmas tea party. It started out as a mother-daughter tea, but has now just become a tea party for everyone (except guys of course!).

Saturday was our Christmas tea. We had not set up earlier in the week like we usually do, so there was a lot to be done Saturday morning. I got up pretty early to start making my peppermint cookie bars and straighten my hair. I also had to get together all of my stuff for my table. We left a little later than we wanted to, but got to the church in plenty of time.

Once we arrived, it was time to move the tables around some more, put on table cloths and unpack all of the various things we had to unpack. Someone was cleaning the basement, so I could not set up my table until he finished because my table cloth hit the floor without the chairs under the table. We ate lunch, then set everything else up.

After hanging around for a while, it was time to get changed into my clothes for the tea. I did not want to do this because it was freezing cold in the basement and my dress has no sleeves. I got changed anyways, did my hair and put on my make-up. Then I had to make my sandwiches and arrange the desserts onto trays.

People started showing up a little while after that. My friends came and we had a lovely time! One of my friends even brought be a sweater, so I would not freeze to death. :D We talked, sang some carols, got pictures (which I will post as soon as I can.), listened to a devotional, and had tea, of course!

We cleaned up and it was time to go home. It was a very tiring day, but worth it. Looking forward to doing it again next year!!!

Western Civilization....my worst enemy

For school this year, I am going through a program called CollegePlus. They help me with CLEP testing and all of my credits will transfer to an online college supporting CollegePlus. A CLEP (College Level Examination Program) is a test that gets me out of having to take the actual college class. Some classes do not have CLEP tests though, and I will still have to take those, but I will do it online.

I have been studying for Western Civilization 1 (3000 BC-1648 AD) for the last two months. The first test I took only took about a month  to study for. This one took double. I took the CLEP today and still did not pass. :'( Thankfully, I am learning a lot about test taking and new strategies for studying and comprehending information. I will be able to take the test again over the summer (late June or early July).

In the meantime, I will start studying for Introductory Psychology, which I am rather excited about. There is a lot of new information, but it is not any more history of Greece, Rome, or medieval Europe. :D (I may go crazy if I have to look at anything related to that for a while now!)

I will try to remember to post when my tests are, but I am not terribly good at remembering that kind of thing!!! Hopefully I will be testing psych before Christmas, but that is will depend on A LOT of things. :D

Bella Pictures

For Bella's parents for Christmas, we went and got professional pictures taken of the nunkey girl. She had so much joy!!!

Bella's favorite picture

She was pointing her toes and barking like a dog. 

Jumping off of the box :D

Puppy Bella

Sassy girl

Bella signing Kiki

My favorite

Strong nunkey!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Some people have big and extravagant traditions on Thanksgiving, but my family does not. We sit around the house, play games, eat "dinner" at lunch, and the leftovers for dinner. We always crock-pot our turkey the night before, so it is ready whenever, and then make mashed potatoes, stuffing, and green bean casserole (my speciality!). That is pretty much how all of our Thanksgivings go.

In the morning, Dad and I played Davy Crockett several times, then just sat around for a while. Caleb and I played a trivia game on the Wii and then it became a family challenge. We all started taking turns playing and seeing who could out-smart who. It was very enjoyable and exciting!!! I only won once, but that is perfectly fine with me. We ate lunch, then watched movies the rest of the afternoon. Dinner consisted of pumpkin pie and Oberweis eggnog.

Around 8pm, I was picked up to go babysit overnight for Bella's family. I played lots of board games with the kids, then put them to bed. This was about 10:30. Little did I know, I still had seven hours to go. I amused myself in many different ways, working on Christmas presents, doing school, listening to my iPod, dancing on their hardwood floors, just about anything to keep me awake. Finally, the parents came home at 5:30 and I got to go home and go to bed. This made a very happy Kiki. :D

Friday consisted of me sleeping....A LOT. Caleb and Dad had gone to the church to help fix it up and take stuff down so people could come in and paint, so it was just me and mom at home. Mom had stayed up all night waiting for me to come home, so we both were exhausted and did not want to do anything.

I accomplished a lot more on Saturday than I did on Friday. I helped do laundry (since the washer was broken for several days, we had a bunch of laundry to do.), I put up Smiley, my light up snowman, and helped Dad decorate the pine tree in our front yard. Decorating the tree was hard and very cold work, but we got the colored lights in there and it looks really cool!!!

Spotlight

Two weeks ago I started Spotlight Youth Theater (SYT) classes. SYT is a Christian theater group all around Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. It used to be a part of Christian Youth Theater (CYT), which is all over the country, but left because they thought they could do more separated. They do three shows a year (fall, winter, and spring) along with a summer show, and in order to be in shows I have to be taking a class that season. This season I am taking Voice 101: Singing in Character. So far I am really enjoying it!!! This is only the second season my county has been open, so not a ton of kids are involved in this area yet. I am the oldest, the next being fourteen, but I do not mind too much. :D My teacher is amazing, and very enjoyable. We have started working on our songs for our showcase at the end of the year. One of them is an acapella medley, but I do not know all of the songs in it yet. We are also singing a couple of show tunes, of which I like very much! Unfortunately I am not doing the show this season because of the distance to performances, but hopefully that will be changed for the next show. :D

P.S. SYT is doing a winter fundraiser that helps out the areas as well as helps pay for kids who cannot afford tickets to go to school day shows. If anyone would like to donate, you can contact me directly or follow this link to donate online. It would be much appreciated!!! 

New Library

One of my favorite things in the world is the smell of books. Everytime we get a book, the first thing that happens is it gets passed around to be smelled. :)

A new library has opened near us and we made our first visit today. The whole building was fresh with the aroma of books. Of course, we had the little nunkey with us. The first thing she did when we walked in was take a deep breath and smile. I have trained my minion well! :) Since we had the nunkey I was not able to go anywhere except into the children's section, but I am looking forward to exploring the rest of the library. Bella absolutely loves books and we ended up bringing 10 books about animals and Curious George home. I hope she never loses her love for reading!!!

Kiki reading to Bella

Bella reading to Kiki. :)

The one thing that is hard to tell in the pictures is that she is surrounded by books in a circle around the rug. My precious nunkey will soon be able to quote the Curious George book about the zoo to me!

The Nunkey at the Zoo

Several times a month we take Bella to the zoo. It is her absolute favorite place in the entire world (not joking!!). Every day she asks if we can go to the zoo, and when we cannot we tell her to zoo is "night night." :D Here are pictures of her having an amazing time at her favorite place.

"Look, Kiki! It's the nunkeys!!!"

Leopard sign

Thankful for long car rides home. :)

"We're at the zoo!"

Touching the sting rays (fitsch according to Bella)

"No, I will not take another picture."

"I all done, Kiki."

Bella loves sitting on just about everything. 

Bella being cute ("No, Kiki. I'm adorebubble!!")

Ribbit

Tigers are one of Bella's
favorite animals. 

Special zoo trip with Aubree (11), Ethan (7), and Bella (3). 

Super Taeb and Kiki

I was looking through old pictures of me and Caleb and found these. :D

Sweet brother and sister

Dark knight 

"I am Khyri!"

"Tada!"

The mysterious figure. :D

Super Taeb and Kiki. 

Nunkey Girl

I haven't put anything on here is a while, so I will just catch up little by little.

Today the nunkey was in a strange mood and decided jumping off the couch making faces was quite enjoyable. :D

My favorite. :)

10,000 Reasons

"Bless the Lord

Oh, my soul. Oh, my soul.

Worship His holy name.

Sing like never before.

Oh, my soul.

I worship Your holy name."

         This song means so much to me. Many, many memories are connected with the song and the words are so uplifting and powerful. My most recent memory that goes along with the song is one of my favorites (next to Worldview, so it rates pretty high :D)

         It started out as a different Sunday than usual, but little did we know how different it was truly going to be. Kiwi had spent the night and we were also signing together in church for offertory. Any guesses on which song? We were both thankful that there was a breakfast that morning so that we would have time to practice before people started to filter into the sanctuary for church service. 

          Before we ate breakfast, we ran upstairs to practice and make sure the sound system was working correctly. That turned out to be the least of our problems. We had the wrong version of the song on that specific iPod and the iPod we needed was entirely out of battery. Our first thought was to run downstairs and see if anyone had the right charger for the iPod that we knew had the correct version of the song, but it turned out no one had it with them, so we moved on to plan two. At this point there were four of us running around together trying to get this to work. We were able to get onto the pastor's computer, but then we realized that it really was not doing any good because we could not plug the iPod in or download the song from the computer. Plan three. McDonald's was right down the street, we just had to get there so we could use the wi-fi connection and purchase the song. Time was running out, and my dad was no where to be found, so a friend drove us to McDonald's. 

           If anyone ever wondered, the wi-fi at McDonald's is really slow. This was not the time that we wanted to find this out. At this point we had about half an hour before church started, and our friend who drove us was running sound system, so he had to be there in fifteen minutes. Of course this added absolutely no stress at all. :) Eventually, we were able to buy the right version of the song and rushed back to the church to practice. Everything went smoothly and we were relaxing. 

           Right before church started one of our friends said to us, "Now the song has a lot of meaning maybe it didn't have before." And, boy, was she right. Just that morning we had at least a hundred more reasons to bless the Lord. The performance went great, and we were both meaning every word that we signed. 

           The Lord took care of everything and we are so thankful that He did. :)

P.S. For all of the lyrics to the song click here. You can also listen to the song.)

Church picnic

Last Saturday was the church picnic. :-) This is on of my favorite events of the year, next to the fall festival. We all gathered at the park and shared delicious food and goofed off together. Sharyssa, Rebekah, Katherine, Josiah and I were having shoe throwing competitions off of the swings. It was quite enjoyable, especially watching Josiah's face when he almost hit someone in the head with his shoes. :-) I love all of my friends and it was really good to get to spend some time together when we did not have to be respectful because we are at church. Sometimes we can be really crazy, but that is perfectly okay with me!!! :-)

Feed My Starving Children

Almost every year for my birthday, I go to FMSC. I love going there to help others and to take the focus off of me. God called us to love our neighbors as ourselves, which is what we are doing at FMSC. This year we had cupcakes afterwards made by a family friend. They were really good. My favorites are the key lime pie cupcakes, although the others are still delicious!!!!! It was wonderful having friends there to help me, including all of the younger kids who came to help. They all did so well and were having lots of joy. :-)  I cannot wait for next year to go again!!!!

Happy belated birthday!!!!

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY SHARYSSA!!!!!!!!

I was so mad at myself for forgetting to post on her birthday. Sharyssa is one of my dearest friends, and even though we probably cause more trouble for ourselves than we mean to, I will claim her as my sister without the slightest bit of hesitation. I love you my dear malicious Kiwi!!!!

Kiki :-)

Sweet 16 Surprise!!! (for me!!!!!) Part 2

We all got changed and got in the car to go to a friend's house for a while. Everyone shared their favorite memories about me, and other things, then I opened presents. Rachel got me a cool picture that I have in my room, Katherine made me a butterfly necklace that has purple beads, and Sharyssa gave me a blue leather purse. Rebekah gave me my birthday present last week. :) Then we all went and ate pizza and trail mix. We all got into our swimsuits and played in the pool for a while. We played marco polo and had dieing competitions. We would be 'shot' and have to fake our deaths, which includes falling off the ladder into the pool. I know this is a really morbid game, but it is fun to watch everybody be over dramatic. :) For a while, Rachel did not want to get her hair wet, so we were trying not to splash her, but while we were playing marco polo, her and Sharyssa started to get very competitive with each other, so she decided to give up on that and beat Sharyssa in the game. This was highly amusing to watch! After a while, we started to trickle out of the pool and start drying off. Once most of us were decently dry, we went inside to have some ice cream. We had coffee ice cream and strawberry ice cream with whipped cream. It was delicious!!!

We were all really tired at this point, so we all sat around talking and doing each other's hair. My mom braided everyone's hair except mine, which Katherine did. At this point we had all changed out of our swimsuits and I was very curious on what was coming next. It was about eight o'clock at night. At about eight forty-five we headed out, going to our next destination. We arrived at Rebekah and Katherine's house for one of my favorite games. Star tipping!!!!! I had to teach everyone how to do star tipping and then we commenced running around like we were drunk for the next hour. :) It was very hot and humid, so everyone's hands were really wet and gross when they were spinning you around, so we decided to go inside. I said good-bye to Rebekah and Katherine and we went back to the church to drop Rachel and the Greene's back at their cars. We had to run into the church to grab a couple of things, and when we did there was a giant water beetle. All of us screamed and jumped away, except Rachel who ran away. I said good-bye to Sharyssa and Rachel and headed home. 

This was one of those days that just makes me so thankful for all of the little things in life and for all of my amazing friends that God has blessed me with. They spent twelve hours out of their day just for me and making me feel special and loved. :) I love them all so much!!! Thank you all!!!!!

Sweet 16 Surprise!!! (for me!!!!!) Part 1

So I have now done two sweet 16th birthdays for my amazing friends and loved every second of the detailed planning and getting to execute all of this, but this time it was my turn to be on the other side of it all. :)

I knew something was up when a rolling backpack and some other "random" things went missing from my disaster also known as my bedroom. Mom's explanation was that my room ate it all and that it would return once I cleaned my room. I said it must have either teleported or vaporized because my room was clean for a while before it returned.

Yesterday morning Mom told me that we were going to clean her classroom at church, which she had been talking about doing for a while. While I was picking out my outfit for the day, I thought to myself that they would be really smart to do my surprise today, but it did not occur to me that they actually would. :) Mom treated me to chocolate coffee, which she does not do very often and then idled around in the parking lot for a while. Then we went to the church and the back door was unlocked, but this is not terribly unusual because the pastor just uses the back door. In order to keep the back door unlocked, you have to use a little key on the inside too, so I found it strange we did not need the key to get in. I just assumed that Pastor Greene was expecting a visitor or something along those lines. Unsuspectingly, we walked to my mom's classroom. The doors were closed, but there are two small windows in the doors, so I could see a little bit into the room. I saw Rachel and then Sharyssa and thought that Sharyssa had a dance lesson, as Rachel is her teacher. But I was extremely wrong, as it was my surprise birthday party!!! Rebekah, Katherine, Mrs. White, and Mrs. Greene, were all waiting there for me to come in. I was shocked!

We said our hellos and then headed to get our nails done. We all got our nails prettyified. Some got designs, but I liked my nails the way they were. They are purple and sparkly. :) Then we went to Letty Mae's for lunch. One of surrogate grandma's (I have several) came to have tea with us. Lunch was very enjoyable and we were there for quite a while. I got a free cupcake, since it was my birthday, but I shared it with everyone else because I did not really want anything sweet at the time and Sharyssa was scaring me because she said she did not want to eat too much because of what we were doing next.

Well, I guess I should not have said I was entirely wrong about Sharyssa not having a dance lesson, but it was not her having it. It was the rest of us. :) Sharyssa choreographed a song for us. Sneaky as she is, she had already taught everyone the dance, including me. There was one part, my solo, that she did not teach me, because that would have given away the party. Rachel taught me my solo, which was slightly difficult, and we practiced the song as a group. It is to the song "Kokomo Island" by the Beach Boys. Sharyssa and I have made many memories with this song, along with many other Beach Boy's songs, so I think it was the
perfect choice. The basement of the church was really hot, so my mom turned on the air conditioner in her classroom and we had spontaneous break to go and cool off. At one point, another song came on and it was very slow and ballet-ish, so we all danced to that for a while. Mom videotaped us doing the dance for "Kokomo Island" then we all got changed for the next step of the day.

Come back later for the rest of the day!!!

Eyes to the Skies

Yesterday Caleb volunteered at the Eyes to the Skies festival in Lisle. The whole family went and hung around for a bit, while Caleb helped at his flight instructors booth. I got to meet Jesse, who is one of Caleb's friends that I have heard about a lot but have never actually met.

Caleb and Jesse

After a while, Mom and I left to go eat dinner at Subway. It was quite delicious. Then we programmed Dot (out GPS) to take us to my friend's house. She was one of the girls in my small group at Worldview. Originally we were going to go play ultimate frisbee, but the game was cancelled, so we went out to ice cream and then back to Bekah's house for a while. 

Me, Bekah, and her 'special' friend Lauren. :)

We played catch with a frisbee, which ended up being really pathetic and none of us were actually catching the frisbee, and we jumped on their trampoline for a while. Then the bugs decided we were a really good dinner, so we went inside and played on the piano. :) Mom and I went and picked up Caleb and Dad from the festival and we headed home. It was a very good day for the Kiki. :)

Me and two mascots that were walking around the festival. Their names are Oink and Moo. 

Caleb and Skipper. (the new plane)

Happy Birthdays!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!

Today is America's birthday!! Technically yesterday was America's birthday, so happy belated birthday America!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEAH!!!!

Happy 16th birthday to an amazing roommate and friend from Worldview!!! Miss you! 

Pictures of the Sweet 16 Surprise

In Sparkles on the way to Morris.

Serious faces. 

Sharyssa eating her llama, Katherine and I laughing. 

"Normal" llamas

CHEESE!!!

Llamas!!

At Letty Mae's

Waiting to be seated. 

Kylee and Rebekah.

We were using the table to type. :)

Drinking our strawberry lemonade. 

Katherine, Sharyssa, and Rebekah smiling for the camera.

Scheming....

Being proper. :)

The birthday girl with her tea cup. 

Sisters

Katherine posing and Rebekah photo bombing.

Anna and Mary Ann who joined us at their grandma's house.

Rebekah opening her book.

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All the earrings we made. :)

Rebekah reading us some of her story.

Happy birthday Rebekah!!!