yay, Saturday

Today is Saturday. Obviously. And, unfortunatly, the day is halfway gone, but for the rest of the day, I am going to read, and read, and read. I'm uber excited.

Uber? Oh my goodness, I'm turning into an Inkweller! It's all good though, cause they're some pretty awesome people :)

I have until Monday to read Jane Austen's Persuasion, and then we're watching the movie. I also have this sudden urge to read all the Narnia books. And Anne of Green Gables, and Wuthering Heights. All of them are books that I've read so many times I've memorized them, but those are the best kind of books to read, and I have ALL day long to read and I'm not doing anything else! Facebook is over-rated, reading, on the other hand, never gets old.

Yesterday was amazing. I got to hang out with one of my best friends and one of my favorite college students at Starbucks. I was so glad to get to hang out with and talk to them. That's definitely something that I want to do again, and I really hope that I get the opportunity to hang out like that again. After we left Starbucks, we went to youth group. Not much to say about that, except my team OWNED at Disney Scene It. Did you know, Dumbo is supposed to wave a flag for a triumphant finish? I could have sworn it was a feather.

Thought of the day: it's hard to be a good friend, but it's totally worth it.

wishing it was summer

I want to be in England soooooo badly right now. I keep seeing things that remind me of England, and my house, and town, and friends, and I want to be there! This is crazy: my family moved to Holland when I was six, and we moved back five & a half years ago, which means that the longest time I've gone without living in a different country is six years; how old I was when we moved. This also means that we're gonna have to move soon, or else seven, or eight, or nine years will be the longest I've gone without living in another country. My brother is graduating in two & a half years, and we'll probably move soon after that. I'm so ready. I love it here...at least, I love the people here, but I've been in the US too long! Hopefully this summer in England will help with that; either that, or more likely, knowing me, it'll just make me want to move even more. Sigh.

living for more than the moment

PB @The Inkwell wrote about dating today. It was really profound. I kinda want to share the whole thing, but you can just click on the link and read it. It makes me think of a quote by Taylor Swift. She said:

"When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair."

Ok, so maybe Taylor Swift isn't the best person to listen to about love and dating, but what she said is true. It's sad because it is true, and because there are people who don't know that, and looks for Prince Charming in everyone they meet.

PB said that "The word 'love' is taken pretty loosely nowadays, isn't it? Love doesn't mean the same thing as when we were 5. When we watched all those princess movies and knew that true love was a wonderful, powerful thing- after all it woke up the sleeping princess. Love had to be serious! It woke up a sleeping cursed chick! But, now that we are older, love has been exchanged for lust. We chose to trade something sacred for something temporary. We chose to live in the moment instead of living for eternity."

I don't want to live for the temporary; I want to live for what is real, what is lasting.

I'm in DC!

And loving it! It's incredibly pretty, and it's pretty exciting to be in our country's capitol. Today we went to a bazillion museums. Actually, it was just three. We went through most of the National Art Gallery, at least I'm pretty sure that's what it's called. It was really cool, and I enjoyed looking at the Dutch and French paintings. I was pretty excited because I recognized a Monet from across the room. I also got to see the ONLY Leonardo da Vinci in America. We went to the Air & Space Museum next, and that was fun. That place is HUGE! We were in there for hours, and we didn't even see the whole thing. We went through the Museum of American History really quickly, and then we went home. We walked a lot, and it was the most amazing weather ever. Literally, I think it was 50 out. It was soooo nice! So, tomorrow, I'm not sure what we're gonna do, but I know it's gonna be fun! :)

hmmm

My life really isn't that interesting, unless I talk about when I was 6-10ish. Honestly, I mostly do school, go to church, hang out with friends, and... yeah, that's about it! Sooo, I hate it when I have nothing to say, because really, who wants to hear "I did Chemistry today. I still hate it. I'm reading a book right now, and I should be doing something else besides blogging."

(I would insert a question mark at the end of that sentence, because, technically, that was a question, but it was somewhat of an awkward sentence, and I don't know where to put it.)

So if you ever think that what I write is boring, pleeaassse tell me! And you know what's weird? I really don't talk like this in "real life" but my personality is real. If that makes sense.

This weekend was pretty much un-normal. (Is that a word?) Some of my best friends went to Taylor University with me last night. It was amazing. It was probably some of the most fun I've had in a long time. I loved it. It was great to be able to hang out with these youth leaders. They are amazing. It meant a lot more than just the fact that we got to go, it was partly that these leaders promised us that they would take us, and then they did. Last year, we had the same promise made, and then the leader who made in walked right out of our lives, and this sounds so cliche, but she never came back. Broken promises hurt.

We walked around campus (I sound so cool when I say that, like I always walk around campus at night) on Friday night, and it was gorgeous! It was super foggy, and the lights reflecting off the fog...and the trees halfway visible through the fog...it was beautiful. So, that picture is Taylor, but that's not really how Taylor looks, but I wanted to post it cause I'm really proud of it, and it may just be me, but I think it's pretty. :)

Yeah, well, we went back to the dorms and played some games, ate some pizza, and watched half of Prince Caspian. Everyone who had seen it slept through the whole thing, and the one girl who hadn't stayed up and watched it, but we never ended up finishing it. The next morning...I really don't remember what we did, but then we went to the best ice cream place ever and had lunch, and then we went home. Home being best friend's house until we had life group later on.

I really hate saying this, but life group was kinda a letdown. I'm sleepy, and I don't want to write tons about it, cause this is already really long, but I hate it when a friend who's super close gets a boyfriend, and then all she does is hang out with him. We do still exist, and we do still like to hang out with her. Sure, the quick hug before I left was all well and good, but it would have been nice if she had acted like she cares. Wow, after reading that, it sounds so mean! I'm really not a mean person, just a little sad because of my friend. :(

It was fun towards the end when we decided to build a gingerbread house. Ali had never built one! Can you believe it? Our house was abstract, mainly because it kept falling apart. My hands are the ones on the right that are COVERED in frosting and trying to keep it from falling down. We had a good time. Don't click on the picture, because now that I look at it again, it really looks gross.

I'm really sleepy, and I have to get up for church tomorrow, so umm yeah goodnight.

too much for one title...

I have a lot to say, and it's all really random, which stinks, because I was planning on posting some of these on their own, and I had clever, witty titles for them.

Today I discovered that I can put my iPod in my back pocket, controls facing outwards, and then control it through my jeans. Someone had to tell me this, I, unfortunately didn't figure it out on my own.

I HATE blow-drying my hair. It makes my hair all poofy and then I have to straighten it, which takes forever. The only good thing is that I can turn my music up loud enough that I can hear it, and I don't get in trouble. (Headphones do not work; I tend to yank them out with the blow-dryer.)

You can't say "Irish wristwatch." Try. It's incredibly hard, and you'll sound ridiculous standing there at your computer attempting to say "Irish wristwatch". I know this from experience.

I learned how to say smile and laugh in French. I'm happy. :)

This weekend, I may be able to go up to the Christian college near my town and spend the night in the dorms with one of my bestest youth leaders, and some of my favorite friends! After that, we have life group on Saturday night, and it's gonna be ammmaaazing!

Funny thing: last night at youth group, the all-male band started playing Party in the USA, minus the vocals. Need I tell you how hard I laughed?

There's this girl at my church named Karly. I believe that I've written about her before, but I just wanted to share some more.
My family has lived here for four years in April, and I met Karly right when we first moved. I don't remember much about her then, just that I was the new kid and she was nice to me. We were (and still are) both homeschooled, so we saw each other at homeschool things, and she was really nice and sweet. In 2007 we took a speech class that her mom taught. It was great to get to hang out with her and get to know her better. I remember most how much she would laugh. She has such an amazing laugh, and she was always happy and smiley. She was always making jokes and laughing. Her boyfriend is one of my friends, and his sister is one of my best friends, so I saw her a lot. What I didn't know for a long time about Karly, and her older sister Kelsey, was that they both have a disease known as Dock8. Basically, they have no immune system. As a result, Karly has gotten cancer, and she is really sick.
Last night at youth group, they were on Skype and I got to see her. She's changed so much. Because of the chemo treatments for the cancer, all her hair has fallen out. She's very thin, and she just looks sick. She's still as pretty as she's always been, but it was just really hard to see her looking like that. I was able to say hi to her and talk with her a little bit. It was so sad. I was really glad to see her, and I was happy to be able to see how she was doing, but... I just felt like I didn't know what to say. As hard as this is for me, who doesn't even know her that well, I can just imagine how hard it is for her and Kelsey's family. And for her and Kelsey.
My family is going to Washington, DC next week and I really hope that we'll be able to go to her hospital and see her. I just don't know if I can handle it.
Prayer for her and her family (especially her and Kelsey) would be greatly appreciated.

That's pretty much it... and I'm getting really good at writing long posts!

I try to be a rebelutionary, but I can't even finish the book

*If you haven't read the book, then click the link to read what a rebelutionary is*

So, I never did finish reading Do Hard Things again. It's so lame because I don't even have a real reason for not finishing it. It's a great book, it's really fun to read, and it's not at all boring, so maybe it's just because I'm lazy. I was in the middle of like, 6 other books at the same time (I actually was reading that many books at once.) and then we went to the library and I got more books... and, well, you know what happened then. It wasn't just that one book I didn't finish, I also stopped in the middle of Till We have Faces, by C.S. Lewis (which is an amazing book, I love it.) and A Severe Mercy, which is written by a guy with a Dutch name that I don't remember. My mom thought I was crazy for not finishing A Severe Mercy because it is one of her favorite books, and she said that she couldn't put it down. Anyways, now I have to start Do Hard Things again because I don't remember where I was (I had the brilliant idea to take the bookmark out of the book).

I started a different book a few weeks ago, never finished reading it, basically the same story as with Do Hard Things. But a couple Sundays ago I actually decided to start reading it again and it was good. It's called Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I really enjoyed it. Basically, it talks about how crazy God's love for us is (hence the title) and how a lot of times, we, as Christians, just kinda ignore it. We can't understand how wild and passionate His love is, but "when you're wildly in love with someone, it changes everything."

On the subject of books, I am so proud of myself. I got my little sister hooked on Ted Dekker. She just started reading Black, which is the first, or second (depending on if you start with Green or Black) book in The Circle Trilogy, which is no longer a trilogy, because he wrote a fourth book for the series. She's so funny because the main character, Thomas Hunter, is called Tom sometimes in Black, so that's all she calls him. In every single other book about Thomas he is called Thomas, never Tom. It would be like calling Artemis Fowl Art. My older brother and I, who are both huuuggge fans of Ted, give her a hard time about it. When she calls him Tom it makes her sound like such a newbie to Ted's books... which she is, but she doesn't need to sound like it.

-Random information about Ted: we have really close friends who know Ted (Their mom is like his sister) and they play airsoft with his family, and even call him Uncle Ted. I'm so jealous!-

Tonight: church later on, and my dad gets back from a trip. I cannot wait to see him! :) Have a great day!

i think this is an obsession

I love taking pictures of sunsets. Absolutely love it. I think that from this winter alone, I probably have fifty pictures of amaaaazzzzing sunsets. Tonight's sunset was super pretty, so here's the picture.

You wanna hear a really funny song? Look on YouTube for "Crayons can melt on us for all I care." Relient K has the goofiest songs.

Ohhhh! The new season of Psych, which is one of the BEST SHOWS EVER, starts on January 27th, and I cannot wait!

I really have nothing else to say about today. It was pretty boring.

I promise you, this will make you laugh

Oh. My. Goodness. This is so funny. Earlier today, I was going through one of my desk drawers and found an old composition notebook from when I was, oh, maybe nine. I wrote this story and was SO proud of myself. I just re-read it. I laughed so hard. Anyways, here it is:


"The Legend of the Green Worm
or, The Green Worm’s treachery
Once upon a time, in faraway France, there was an old man. He lived all alone in a forest. Every day he went to the little pool tucked away in the forest to fish. And, every day when he dug for worms in his secret worm spot (the worms were better there) he came up with a talking worm. And, every day the he caught pleaded with him to let it go. “Why should I?” the old man would ask. “If you me go I will grant you one wish. But only one!” The man would consider it for a moment of two and then grunt “Alright, but grant me the wish before I release you.” The worms always turned pale at that moment, but had to agree. So when the man always asked for a loaf of warm bread and a leg of hot mutton to apear beside him and it didn’t, well, you can imagine the fate of the poor little worms. One day when he was digging worms so he could catch his supper, he caught a very long, very pale green worm. It was the Green Worm.

The man was very surprised! He had heard of the Green Worm before but thought it was a legand, a myth. He had never dreamed he would catch it. On the rare ococions that he had vicators, they would tell him stories of the Green Worm. Some called him magic, some called him bad luck, while still others said he just plain didn’t exist. The old man had never believed in the Green Worm, but now he did. After he got over his astonishment he felt fright. What if the Green Worm really was bad luck? He certainly didn’t need more. “Wwho, who are you? He finilly stampered, knowing full well what the answer would be. “I am the Green Worm,” he said. “Please let me go. If you do, I will grant you three wishes.”

“Three wishes!” he said in surprise. Then, supiocisly, “How do I know that you will fufill your side of the bargain?” “What would you like?” the worm asked. “I would like a large, beautiful house with 500,000 slaves.” “So it shall be.” the Green Worm replied. “That is not enough!” the greedy slave-owner cried. “My slaves will not respect me as I am,” looking distainfully down at his clothes. “I must be young, handsome, and very, very rich.” “Very well.” the Green Worm sighed. “And as for my next wish-” “Wait, wait.” the worm inorupted. “You do reallize that this is your last wish?” “Of course I do.” the young man scowled down at the poor worm. He did not take kindly to being interupted. “Now, as I was saying, I wish to have an endless amount of wishes.” “No! No! You can’t do that!” “Why couldn’t I? You never made any restictoins on what to wishe for.” “No,no, I suppose I didn’t. But please take it back!” “Never! Now I can live my life the way I want.” And so saying the arogant young man picked up the worm, and dropped it into the bag he carried the fish in. “Oh, and another few wishes. I wish to be the king’s son, the prince!” The regretful worm granted his wish. “And I want the king to have die and me become king!” “You want me to murder the king?” the worm quisioned. “Well, you might call it murder, but I don’t. Oh, and I must be married, to the most beautiful young woman in the world.” The Green Worm obeyed without quistoin, but the whole time he was cooking up a plan in his little wormy brain. “Please, you majecty may I have a few minutes to say goodbye to my friends, the other worms.” “How do I know you will come back?” the snotty young soverieng asked. “Make a harness for me out of fish line. Then tie the harness on to me and I’ll go to say goodbye. And when you want me the come back just tug on the harness.” “Well, I supose it might work. But only two minutes!” the young prince quikely and deftley fashioned a harness and slipped it on to the worm. As soon as the prince finished he started to slide into the ground. Now, the Green Worm had remerbed one thing the prince hadn’t. The worms in to ground could talk. And they could wish!

The worm knew exactly what to do as soon as he got underground. He quikly located the other worms and explained his plan. The other worms lisened to him and agreed. As soon as the worms had wished the wish, he started to slither up to the surface. Once he was completely out of the dirt he fell his body chanching and before you could count to five he was standing up and scowling down at the hole. Meanwhile, the worm/Prince was wriggling about on the ground. The former Green Worm quickly took action. “I wish to have everything back to the way it was before.” And the wish was granted. The Green Worm’s last sight of the man was him lyeing on the ground yelling “Why, why??!” He was weeping for jis house, his slaves, his youth, his crown, his maraiage, his stupitity, and most of all, what he thought of as the Green Worm’s treachery. THE END!!!"

I swear that I didn't change it at all. I actually thought that quickly was spelled quikly when I was nine. I used to think it was brilliant. I had a plan to get it published that I've never told anyone. I thought that I could take my composition book to the library and stick it on one of the shelves. Then, someone (who would just happen to be a book publisher) would find it, read it, be amazed at the remarkable plot structure, the impressive word choice, (such as deftly, I was so proud of that word) and read my name and address on the front cover, publish the book, (without any editing, of course) and then tell me, and give me all the money! It was a great dream.

what?

My little sister is almost as tall as me.

What? When did this happen?

Last time we checked our height, I was a good four inches taller than her. And it's been a matter of weeks. As of now, I'm only about an inch and a half taller than her, and that's stretching it. The sad thing is, she hasn't even hit her growth spurt yet. To add to the height issue, her legs are even longer than mine. It's crazy.

At least height doesn't matter. I'm still older, and that makes me in charge.

School is going fine. I've been back all of three days, and nothing has been too hard yet. Except French.

Now, I love French. This is my second year taking it, and though I'm not able to carry on a conversation, I would be able to understand snatches of someone else's conversation. The only problem is the typing. I'm learning it using Rosetta Stone, which is a computer program, and it works great. At the end of each lesson, it has me type most of the words that I learned into sentences. The French keyboard is so confusing!

For example, the Q and the A keys switch places, and the M key is where the ; key is. The period is Shift comma, and the question mark is Shift M. It is very confusing.

Another reason of confusion: male & female endings. In English, we do not have male & female endings for words. Take "quel." Translated: what. The male version is "quel" and the female is "quelle." And the word a. It has a male & female version, male being "un" and female being "une." It gets confusing.

the lost get found... and some other music

I love having iTunes money. :) I just bought Britt Nicole's "The Lost Get Found." It's really good. There are so many good songs on the album, but I think that my favorites are "Hanging On," and the title track, "The Lost Get Found." "Have Your Way" is really slow but it's good too. It's so true. Sometimes we just need to tell God "Have your way." I love it when there's an album with so many amazing songs that it's hard to choose a favorite. The start of "Welcome to the Show" made me laugh the first time I heard it, because I couldn't figure out where she was going with that music.

I think I bought the album three days ago for $7.99, and then yesterday I saw it in MP3 download on Amazon for $5.99. Dang.

Other music news: I just bought a few of my favorite old Disney songs. These are the most amazing songs ever. I bought "I'll Make a Man Out of You" (Mulan), "A Whole New World" (Aladdin), and "Hakuna Matata" (Lion King). I love them all so much. :)

Lately, it seems like Disney is going downhill. I mean, Hannah Montana? Really? She is so overrated, and I, for lack of a better word, hate her music. She used to be cool when she first came out and she was a good role model, but now she's way beyond bad role model. My ten-year-old sister got an iTunes giftcard for Christmas, and she spent almost all of it on Miley/Hannah music. She'll turn it on downstairs and blast it so that you can hear it though the whole entire house. It drives me crazy. In the words of one of my friends: "Getting an inch of snow is like getting a Miley Cyrus CD for Christmas... terrible." I totally agree. And if any of you like her, I'm sorry. This is just my opinion.

It's not just her music. Have you seen her clothing line? In the ads she barely has any clothes on. It's ridiculous. Nobody wants to see that much skin.

And on a side note, Miley, how exactly do you move your hips like yea?

at this point, I'm just procrastinating

Today is the first day back at school. None of my chores are done. We have to take down the Christmas decorations later. I have over half my work left to do, and it's 11:30. Not a good day. Ok, so when I look at this is it seems really lame. I'm complaining because it's almost noon and I don't have my work done, but at the same time I'm sitting here writing a post because I don't want to do my work.

Laaaame.

I hate going back to school. I don't remember where I am in any of my work, I don't remember what I learned before the break, and I don't want to work. Ugh. I guess I should stop procrastinating and get back to Latin. And Chemistry. And Logic. Bye.

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday, Paper Bird!

facing reality

This is the last day of break. Our guests have just gone. Soon, we'll take down the Christmas tree, pack away all the decorations, and tomorrow, I'll start back on my real life.

This break has been amazing. It was so relaxing to be able to just sit and read a book. But honestly, as much as I love break, I'm almost ready to be back and have something to do. You know what I mean? No, I'm not looking forward to school, but I am ready to be back on a schedule.

Things have been really crazy these past few weeks. We had all that preparation for Christmas and New Year's. My family has had guests since Thursday. My brother just got his Drivers Permit on Thursday. We've had friends visiting who my parents went to see, and everything else that is normal craziness. It's just been crazy.

(Yes, I did just use the same adjective three times in the same paragraph.)

I'm ready for life to be normal, to have youth group on Sundays and Wednesdays, to do school work every day, to try and persuade my mom to let us have a day off, even to have the normal worries of school and tests.

I hope you have a great week back at school and that all goes well!

quick prayer request

This will be quick, I promise you. A friend's brother's girlfriend, who is also my friend, is really sick. Both her and her older sister have an immune deficiency disease called Dock's 8. Basically, from what I know, they have no immune system, and they get very sick really easily. Dock's 8 is very rare, so rare that these girls are two in only eleven known cases in the world. The older girl is not doing very well, and she desperately needs a stem cell transplant. The younger girl was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. It's really sad, and I just thought I'd ask you to pray for these girls. Their grandpa (mom's dad) just died the weekend after Christmas, and his funeral is today. They're having a hard time, so please pray for them. Thank you!

happy new year?

In my mind, New Year's is such a disappointing holiday. I mean, you wait up till midnight, just so you can see the new year. Big whoop-dee-do. I just don't like it. And I've never really done New Year's resolutions. Yes, I think that it is a good idea to try and make a commitment to something good, but if you are really going to commit, why wait until the new year to do so?

But I do know an amazing person who is committing to a few resolutions, and she totally rocks. :) Check out her blog to read more.

I hope you have a Happy New Year!

(And, for the record, it is TWENTY-TEN, not O-Ten, or Two-Thousand-Ten. Just sayin'.)