Queen of Croquet

(Uncle) Joe didn't know what was coming to him when he invited me to play with the big boys in croquet the other night. I demoslished them all, hahahaha. I didn't really expect to, but it just happened. They said it was the golf lessons i'm taking. Yeah, whatever. I have to rub it in their face somehow and putting on my blog is the #1 solution.
Anywho, life has been busy. I should be doing homework right now, but as always, I play on the computer instead. I figure blogging is part of homework too. It's more important to stay in touch with my friends then learn about DNA replication and the Punic Wars. Actually, now that I've mentioned the Punic Wars, its really been my week's fasination. I'm doing a book report on Hannibal and have to write an essay for the History test coming up on the Punic Wars. And every once and a while mom will shout from the living room, "The Hannibal story is on tv." Yay! I put down the book and snuggle on the couch and watch what I should be reading.
Phonathon is finally over! I only went to two of them. Today they annouced that we won 1st place! So we're not really total losers after all. Speaking of losing, we lost another football game. I actually had fun playing that time, which is a break-through for me. Especially with football. I think deep inside I miss the girls crying out SPORTS TONIGHT! in the kitchen when we were cleaning up after dinner. I would always sigh and struggle with the decision to go or not. But now that i'm with my level of sports people I feel more confident and pumped up to give it all I got for the losers. Man, I can't wait till we start volleyball!
So tonight I went tricker treating with some cousins. I was going to Deb from Nypolean Dynamite. I got a poser outfit and it just wasn't quite right. I figured if it wasn't perfect then no one would have a clue of who I was suppose to be. I ended up being grandma from little red riding hood. My cousin was little red and my uncle, the wolf. Why is it that when I dress up i'm either old, poor, or just tacky?
Ok, need to get back to work. I have 2 tests and a huge speech that's worth 20% of my grade coming up on Friday. Woo!

A beautiful day to have a hurricane

Alright, so I didn't have to use my emergency bag today as I had thought a week ago. Oh my goodness, it's such a beautiful day!! I love hurricanes. And it's cold. I opened the doors this morning and really didn't expect to feel 60 degree winds blowing in my face. I dashed around the house turning off the a/c and opening all the windows. Now the sun has just come out. Another happy moment was when classes got cancelled today, so my fall break that I've been on has been extended one more day. Ok, well it's just looking too good outside and I must get out there.

Homework?? The World is Coming to an End!

On Sunday my pastor had a really good service. It was a definite wake up call for all of us. He talked about being ready for the end times. He didn't focus on the spiritual part so much as the practical part, and it was really interesting. If an emergency were to happen and you had to evacuate, could you leave your home in one hour? Oh sure, that's easy, I thought. But actually when I got home and started looking at all the stuff I had, it was a little overwhelming. What would I grab and what would I be able to live without? How could I leave my house in just one hour? Well he asked us this question. He talked about some of the troubles going on today in the world, like the spreading of the bird flu, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Then he showed us a duffle bag he bought from the flea market and suggested that we make ourselves an emergency bag just in case we ever did need to leave our home in a hurry. Store it in your closet or car.
Later that day when my mom and I got home from our outings, dad said that there was a storm forming and could become a strong hurricane going straight into Tampa. I was like, ok... time to make my emergency bag now. I was really amazed. Did the Lord really just give us a head's up and to make sure we're prepared? Mom already had some bookbags she bought so we started making the bags up. Mine still isn't completely ready, but almost!
Well it is a hurricane now and it looks like it's going more towards the keys, but it's hard to predict at this time it's direct path. It's still going to cover the whole state it looks like. So that's whats been on my mind lately. Even if nothing really happens, it's just a good knock on the head that things are happening and not only should we be spiritually ready, but it's time to start mentally preparing ourselves for future emergencies. Everyone pack your bags!

I love the little children

Ok, so I just wanted to clarify that I really like kids. I just now realize my error in my last post and I laughed so hard. I mean the tears were rolling. So if you didn't catch it, apparently I spent my last Saturday encouraging children up a fire ladder and then pushing them off to their doom. Usually I catch my didn'ts and my dids when they are in the wrong place. And I'm calling everybody right now to tell them, because you know when something strikes you so funny and you just want to share it with the world?? That's how I feel right now, but no one is answering their phone. So I guess I'm alone with this and my laughter won't reach it's full potential. I have to take advantage of these moments because they don't happen too often. Especially after having an iced latte with extra sugar. Ok so that is that. I really didn't spend my sabbath pushing kids off of ladders.

My day, week, life...whatever

My korean friend, that speaks Russian, from Uzbekistan in our golf class.


Hallway is done! Hurrah. I just need to jazz it up with some artwork or photographs. Same with the poor bare kitchen walls. Well I had a pretty good Sabbath. As you may have read my woes of my past post about doing community service today. I really didn't stay that long so it wasn't bad at all. It was actually a little fun, not the getting up at 7am part. So it was at the fire station
and they were having open house. They do this every year and kids come and learn about fire safety. I was mostly stationed at the ladder. I just encouraged them up the ladder and made sure they did fall to their doom. Thankfully no one got hurt. And the ladder really wasn't the popular activity of the day. The popular one was the "burning" barn and the kids had to put it out with a real fire hose to save the piggy and the cow. Awesome. I was telling the arete president guy that I was going to leave and people were all like "go to the phoneathon and steal some seats". Ugh. I was kinda mad. Don't these people know that they already took my day of rest from me, and now they are trying to get me to do more work?? Well they didn't know, so I forgive them.
I was going to play some golf, but it was too hot and crowded. So I went to the park instead with a friend. Yay! I found someone who will tune my guitar. Oh, there's a fun story. I'm totally afraid to tune my guitar ever again. The last time I did it, 2 summers ago, the string snapped on me and wacked me in my glasses and slit my wrist. So yeah, now I just can't do it. It's really sad. I just need to get over my fear. Now I occasionally have my cousin or some random person tune it for me.
Alright, can't think anymore...

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hmm...that's the first time I receieve NO comments at all on a post. What does this tell me? O'well, forward march. Today I feel a lot better. Yesterday I hated school, but it's alright again. It's amazing what sleep can do for you.
When I came home for during my break my mom was painting the hallway! I'm so happy. It's really amazing. The peacock wallpaper is now covered and out of sight. It wasn't really peacock wallpaper.For some reason it looked like that to me. So if you ever decide to do any home improvement, like making a room into a real guess room, it won't stop there. Oh no. It goes on and on and you just can't stop yourself. Well it's something I've learned over the summer. The guess room clean up and redecor begat the rearranged living room (thanks again Marie), the living room begat the painting of the bathroom, the bathroom begat a paint job in the kitchen, the kitchen begat new tile in the kitchen and bathroom, and that begat the painted hallway.
Each time you make a room look nice, the rest of the house looks worse in comparison. So you just keep going until all is unified in color, tone and beauty.
Farewell.

So tired...

I'm so beat! I haven't felt this tired in so long. I think I hate Tuesdays with a passion now adays. Oh wait, "This is the day the Lord has made." I forgot. Well I rejoice but still...at the end of a long day like this it's hard to rejoice or at least until I crawl into bed.
Well the first reason I dislike Tuesday is because I have lab and so get out of school later. Then today was the girls football game. Since my society is the smallest we got just enough girls to come and play. That was good, but then there isn't any other girls to trade off with when some of us get tired. So we're stuck no matter what. Well it was a good game. I never made any touch downs, but I had a few good runs with the ball. And a bit of advice to you...if you're playing flag football, make sure you tie your shorts tight around your waist! And that is all I will say about that. So moving along... I was dead after the game. My face was glowing like a hot pepper. We lost by a few points and that's it. So 30 minutes after the game it was time for arete meeting. So I race home, change and race back to school. I went in to the wrong room, walking in on another group oops, and finally find my group. Then 1 hour later the phonathon starts. This is when societies compete against each other by calling alumni and friends and asking them to donate for student schlorships. So that went on for 2 hours and how many pledges did I get?? One. What a waste of time. And that one person was a generous friend of mine. Then the secretary got me to sign up for community service at a fire station on Saturday. Boo hooo hooooooooooo, I really want to cry right now. WHY! why did I give in?? It wouldn't be so bad but it's starts at 7:30 in the morning. So yeah, I'll be crying myself to sleep tonight.
I'm happy about one thing. Two mid-terms done, one more to go and I haven't even started to study for it yet =/

This is the day....

Little House of Horrors

This one goes out to you people of the north, when visiting Florida, are fasinated by lizards and point out every single one you see. You know who you are!
Can anyone take a guess of what happened to this poor lizard? It would be interesting to know if you were able to tell by the picture or not. Well I was going out to the garage to do some laundry and I looked by the door and saw a not so beautiful siloette of a flattened little foot sticking out. Oh no, I thought. I looked on the other side of the door and this is what I saw. It made me laugh out loud. It's just the funniest little sight ever. Somehow this lizard got stuck in between the door and when someone shut it, squish. Flat as a pancake.
This really isn't anything new. We find little sights of horror every once in a while in this house. I won't go into all of them, but my pets...my poor little pets. I had so many pets growing up. I went through a phrase where I had parakeet after parakeet. Sometimes 2 at a time.
Right before my first day of 8th grade my friend and I came back to my house and I heard a horrible squaking. I knew what that meant. It meant that the cat got into my room and was attacking my birds. My heart started racing as I ran to my room dreading what I was going to find. Well one of my birds was pinned in the corner by my cat with it's tail feathers all ripped off. I turned around and my favorite parakeet, Beethoven, was eaten. All that was left of him was his head, lying right in the middle of the hallway. Oooh the horror! I ran outside screaming at my cat. I mourned that whole day.
I don't ususally find bird heads lying around, but you get the idea. All the critters in the yard and in the neighborhood know, that blazed on top of the front door, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

The New Look

I wish I could find the pictures I took of the old kitchen. O'well. Some of you know. Here's the new look. Mom made the curtains :)

With Opened Eyes

I've been noticing a pattern recently. When reading your blogs I've noticed that alot of us, when remembering Andrew, were very distrot and heavy hearted and then minutes later the peace and joy would flood our souls. The same happened with me. It was on the 2nd and the sadness suddenly hit me. That whole day was sweeping through my mind all over again. I started writing a letter and it was all darkness and hopelessness, but then I read a poem. It opened my eyes to see the peace and assurance of God and His plan. The tears stopped and there was peace, peace, wonderful peace! I'm thankful that God has opened up our eyes recently to see the bigger picture through poems, songs, friends, prayer and even movie posters.

Midnight Madness

Ah. I can sigh a sigh of relief now that the week is over. The bible, history and english tests are over. My informative speech is done with, the kitchen and bath tile have been laid and Midnight Madness passed without anyone getting too hurt. This is one of my friends getting ready for the big event. Midnight Madness is when all the societies meet together in the gym and show off their stuff. We played games like tug a war, and the bat relay race when you spin around the bat ten times and try to run back as quick as you can to your team. That was a funny sight. We loss at both of these.The basketball team was introduced to us and we watched them play a game. Then came the big moment. The moment when the societies show their cheers. We've been practicing for weeks. Our cheer was involving Star Wars and we were pretending to be the vast and might society or empire and had a fighting screen between us and the bad guys (the other societies). At the end of the night we gathered together to sing some hymns. I start hearing my group behind me yelling to everyone to stop and call a doctor. Some of us stop and look to see what's going on and lo and behold an Arete girl was on the floor. She had fainted! Eyes glazed over and everything. I don't blame her, I wanted to faint myself because it was getting a little stuffy and hot among the vast crowd. But she woke up and all was well.

Freaky, isn't it? And as for the tile it's finally done! All week we've had our whole kitchen moved into the living room. It's been a bit crowded. Then when the tile was laid in the bathroom the toilet was moved into the shower, so I haven't had a bathroom all week. Then we couldn't walk in the kitchen for a day or two so we never knew what to do for food. Well it's all over now and it looks sooo much better. I'll kinda miss the spanish tile guys. It was fun to have some different culture in this house hold. They even brought over some of their family. Actually it was just because he needed a ride over here, so they brought him. Adios Amigos.