Happy Boxing Day!

A late Merry Christmas to all of you! i am very sorry i haven't posted in a while, but i've been quite busy.

i got a facebook last wednesday. i was really bored on wednesday night while i was waiting for my turn in the bathroom, so i decided to create a facebook. and now i've found all these different people i know from school. it's pretty fun, but it's also easy to spend way too much time on there.

my Christmas break has been good so far. yesterday was not normal to say the least. i usually go to my grandma's house on Christmas eve, and then stay there until the day after Christmas. yesterday Grandma wasn't feeling so well, and Granddad ended up having to take her to the emergency room. so that left my immediate family, my cousins, two aunts, one uncle, and a spattering of great-aunts and great-uncles at Grandma's house all by ourselves. my two aunts and Mom all worked together to make up for all the parts that Grandma always does. my cousin and i, who are the oldest two cousins, probably would've helped too, but they had other adults that we don't normally have for sunday dinner.

having everyone there actually made it better, because that meant our minds were distracted from worrying about Grandma. all of my cousins were there until about 5:00, when they headed off to their other grandma's house. they left a number where we could reach them when we had more information about Grandma.

around supper time, my Granddad's cousin and his family showed up. at first we weren't going to get much out for supper, but then my brother asked who decided we weren't hungry. so we ended up eating supper. we always have a special punch at Christmas, and it's a special recipe from my Grandma's side of the family. except whenever we make it, Grandma's there telling us how much of everything to put in it. my mom and Aunt Tracey looked through some cookbooks but couldn't find it. finally we called someone to get the recipe.

Even though Grandma wasn't feeling so great yesterday, that meant that she had an audience of six watching her open her Christmas presents this morning.

so that's my Christmas break so far. tomorrow my cousins are coming up and we're going to Hershey Chocolate World. then they're coming to the pizza buffet while i'm working. at first they were all going to go without me, and just let me go to work. but i was really upset by that. even though i've been to Hershey Chocolate World so many times, i've never gone with my cousins. and they don't come up to see us all that often, so it'd be nice to see them at a time when i'm not working.

while my mom was on the phone with my aunt this morning, i started crying because i didn't want to miss going with them. but they worked out so we could go before i have to work. i know i'm going to have to get used to missing out on things when i go to college, but i haven't moved out yet. i'm not totally ready for complete isolation.

Wow, this is interesting

so there was an ice storm yesterday. we still had church, but some other churches canceled their services. it was pretty cool walking on the grass, because there was ice surrounding each blade of grass. same for the leaves on the trees. all through the afternoon we heard the wind blow lots of ice off the trees and onto the ground. before supper, Dad and Anna traveled back to the church to get something, and they reported that most houses south of our street didn't have power. this meant that my school and Anna's school didn't have power, theoretically.

then this morning i woke up to hear that we had a two hour delay. but then it was changed to being closed. when i went on the website for one of the local TV stations, i saw that it was only high school and one elementary school that was closed. this was because of what i had guessed before. there's no electricity at those two schools. so that means that all three of us are home all day today. i'm not sure if we'll have to make this up later on in the year. i'm guessing we won't, since more than half the district is going to school today, just on a two hour delay.

i'm actually glad that the schools affected are the ones that Joel, Anna and I go to. otherwise that would make for an interesting day. although, with the way my life has been going, the day would've been interesting even if we went to school.

well, if you'll excuse me, the writing process is calling me.

Snow!

it snowed all day yesterday. we didn't get out of school, which was actually good in the long run, because i had forgotten to bring my house key to school with me. and who knows if Joel had his with him. but all of us juniors were freaking out during the school day because the majority of us haven't had any experience driving in the snow. oh, and for those of you who live in places such as New England, or Wisconsin...or Canada, i'm so sorry i sound like such a wimp. but you should remember that we are not used to snow. and since this is the first major snow of the season, many people forgot how to drive in the snow.

anyways, i had to go to piano lessons, which is in the next town. fortunately, i had the van, so i felt more confident in a large vehicle. so i left as soon as i got myself ready after school. i still got there 15 minutes early. driving there wasn't too bad. i quickly found out that a good rule of thumb is to just drive at a speed you're comfortable with, even if it's ten mph under the speed limit. the only difficulty i had was determining where the yellow line in the middle of the road was. but then i figured that probably didn't matter too much, seen how i could tell where people had been driving on that particular road.

so i got through piano lessons, went out to scrape the van off before heading to the credit union. it's part of my wednesday routine. the credit union is in the same area as my piano teacher's house, so i go to the credit union after piano lessons because it's just efficient. going there it was a little worse. it had started to get dark, and i guess some workplaces had let out early, because it seemed that rush hour was beginning a half an hour early.

i was the only one at the credit union, but that was nice because that meant no lines. actually, there's never any lines when i go to the credit union. i didn't have any checks to cash, but i had a whole lot of tips to add to my electronics fund.

going home was very painful. it took me 45 minutes to get from the credit union to home. my leg got quite the work out with keeping it still over the break just in case i needed to use it. most of the time i was going anywhere between 5 and 10 miles per hour. thank goodness for WJTL though, because i listened to Kristi Leigh the entire way home. that helped make the long trip bearable. i didn't go the speed limit on any of the roads until i got in town, because in town the road were fine. they were just slippery, so it was just as if it rained on it.

when i got home, Dad helped me park the van, and then he cleared all of the snow and ice off of it. my parents told me that if there's another wednesday when it's snowing and i go to piano lessons, i should take one of the highways home, because they would be the clearest. so i'll remember that next time. it's just that i've never gotten on a crowded highway either. goodness, i have a lot to complete.

so we have a two hour delay this morning. so i'm off to work more on physics and trig.

the wonders of allergies

i guess you all remember when i posted about having hives? that happened in summer, somewhere around July or August. i still didn't figure out what caused that. and actually it happened again in foods class. except there was only one, and that was on my pinky. i just suffered through that one.

anyways, this evening i thought i would be helpful by helping to get dinner together. that involved washing dishes/filling up the dishwasher. so we filled up the dishwasher and got that going, and then i washed dishes. in the pile of dishes to be washed were some cookie sheets. my mom made cookies on friday afternoon/evening. it was for a cookie exchange we did with my mom's extended family at the Parlor. and since one of my seconds cousins and i are allergic to nuts, they made sure to label all the cookies to say if they had nuts or not. my mom made Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. she made a batch with nuts, and a batch without nuts. she made the batch without nuts first, so we would be sure that no nuts got in the stuff that needed to be nut free.

so when i went to wash these dishes, there were still a few nuts on the cookie sheets, since the cookies with nuts were the last to be baked. i didn't think it would be a problem if i washed them, becaues i'm not surverely allergic to nuts. this actually comes in handy, because my siblings love peanut butter and would be very upseat if they couldn't have it anymore. anyways, to make a long story short, i have a mild case of hives from washing those. i really don't like to have to deal with allergies. it's not fun. and i don't want to take Benadryl, because that makes my mouth numb, and i haven't had supper yet. but now they're going away.

so for those of us who have allergies, i know how you feel. and if there's anyone out there allergic to meat, please contact me! i would really like to meet someone allergic to meat. i'm allergic to chicken. it's strange, but true. well, off i go, to a supper...without nuts.

quote

since i haven't posted in awhile, i figured right now i'd share a quote from my sunday school teacher.

"Tea [along with coffee and hot chocolate] is just flavored water"

Happy Thanksgiving!

I would just like to say that i'm thankful that i'm surviving junior year! also, i'm thankful for the invention of radio and all it's advances. that way i actually have a career to look forward to. just a little update of...whatever: i finished up two songs i was working on. i finished them over the past week, and i have music to the one, and i'm still working on music for the other. but it's very exciting to have that sense of accomplishment. i hope you all have a restful, yet exciting long weekend.

Me? a Winner?

that's what i thought on wednesday afternoon when i got home from school. there was a package waiting for me on the dining room table. i don't normally get packages in the mail, so it was pretty odd. i looked at the return address, and it said the Weekend 22. The Weekend 22 is a weekly Christian countdown displaying the hottest songs in Christian music for the week. It's a syndicated program. The WORD FM plays the Weekend 22 on saturday afternoons. Since the WORD FM has temporarily gone away from this area, i haven't heard it in quite some time.

Anyways, so i realized that i must have won something from them. I've been entering nearly every contest they have. i do that with a lot of websites. i figure i should just enter into anything and everything i can, because i'm bound to win sometime. so i cut open the package, and find a book in there. it's called "My First Message". it's a children's devotional bible, with 50 bible stories written in the same text that's printed in the Message Bible by Eugene Peterson. This book also has really great illustrations. It seems like a great tool to get kids excited about God.

I'm not quite sure what to do with it right now. i guess the easiest thing to do is to put it away until i have kids of my own, and then read it to them. but that's a long time away. i was thinking i could give it away to someone at church, or just donate it to the church library. but i'm not really sure. so i'll just hang onto it until i figure out what to do with it.

in other news, WJTL just had their 500 countdown this past week. the fun started on Wednesday afternoon at 2:00. so for wednesday, thursday and friday i would rush out of school at 3, listen until i had to go to piano or work, and then make sure to listen in the car on the way home until i had to go to bed. on wednesday night, i washed dishes and cleaned the kitchen until 9 or 9:15 because i needed something to do while i listened to the radio.

they really had this well planned out this time around. in the past, on the third day of the countdown we would be at 10:30pm and still not be at #1. but in the past they would start the countdown at 2 in the afternoon the first day and go till 10pm, and go from 6am-10pm the next day. then on the final day they'd start at 6 and go till they finished. this time around they went to 11pm the first two nights. then they were done by 9 on the third. but i had to work from 5-9 last night. so i was a little bummed that i was probably going to miss the last ten songs. but even though it was really busy, for some reason they let me go home at 8:20.(i didn't even complain about missing the top 500 countdown. i knew they wouldn't understand) so i ran to the car and turned it on as fast as i could. it was a total God thing that i was able to get off early. when i turned on the radio in the car, they were on song 8. so i was able to go home and listen to the last 5 and a half songs with my family. that was really nice. Casting Crowns had three songs in the top ten, which was really good, and really surprising. the Number 1 song was Mercy Me with "I can Only Imagine". that was the number 1 song in 2004 too, which is the last time they did the 500 countdown.

it was great listening to the radio at every single moment that i could. i guess i do that on a normal day anyways, but it was way more exciting this week. and with listening to all the DJs, you could tell that they were excited about this too. i would be excited if i was a DJ on there. i really liked that they did the countdown this week. that way we were excited about the countdown this past week, and then next week is Thanksgiving. after that it's advent and getting ready for Christmas. well, i'm going to add some more to a song i'm writing, and work on my paper for physics. i hope everyone has a great weekend.

responding to comments...

since i've had such a great response to the whole advent discussion, i decided just to post about it. first, i guess i'll do what i should have done in the first place: explain it. basically advent is a season where we light candles on the advent wreath. the advent wreath consists of five candles. four of those candles make a square, and then the fifth candle is in the middle. at my church the four candles are purple, but last year my pastor said that in some churches the candle for the third week is pink. i forget why. but i'm sure he'll tell us again this year. the candle in the middle is lit during the Christmas Eve service. Except a few years ago, i think they lit the middle candle on Christmas Day when that happened on a sunday. at least, they did that at my church. but my family wasn't there that sunday. i've actually never seen that middle candle lit.

anyways, each of the four candles stand for something. there's the candle for hope, peace, love and joy. At my church we usually have sermons that go along with each of those sundays during the season of advent. it's nice to have that whole month focused on remembering what it took to actually get to the birth of Jesus.

When we were without a pastor over a year ago, we had one guest speaker who tied in his Christmas music listening with the season of advent. at the church where he preached, he wouldn't listen to any Christmas songs until the season of Advent started. and actually, i really like that "guideline." i guess it keeps the season all in that time frame so we don't get burnt out on it.

I wasn't able to tell my friend who asked about what i found. But the girl who helped me answer the question, "What is Advent?" got to hear a little of my findings. she, like me, see advent as something that she's been doing for her whole life.

so i really enjoyed hearing all your input on the subject. and yes, Aunt Tracey, i was surprised of what came out of a little something mentioned on the car ride home from Grandma's house. i'm not trying to put out there that advent is right or wrong. i guess i'm just looking for purpose and history. and it looks like i've found it. other than that, i totally forget where i was even going with this post. i guess that's what i get when i'm trying to talk to two people on IM, and blog something at the same time. but it's alright, i'm having a blast. i guess all i have to say is today is World Kindness Day. so be nice to someone this evening.

The Season of Advent

I know it seems a little early to talk about Advent, but Thanksgiving is only 10 days away, so Christmas will come sooner than it seems. it's roughly 42 days away. that means advent will start in a little less than three weeks.

anyways, all that's to say that i need all the bible buffs to show their face around here. it's your time to shine! i have a question about the season of Advent. is Advent talked about in the bible at all? i know i could probably look it up, but i thought maybe some of you might want to get that natural high from knowing something someone else didn't. if i do get the answer, i'll be sure to post it on here.

the reason i'm asking is because one of the guys at my lunch table wants to know. I asked him today if he knew why his denomination doesn't "do" advent. He seemed to know everything else about his church, so why shouldn't he know that? well, he had no clue what advent was. thankfully, someone was there who could name what the four candles stand for. And between the two of us we tried to explain it to him. then of course he had to go and ask if it was biblical. we couldn't answer that question. but i told him i'd get back to him on that.

so now i guess i'm wonder why some churches do advent and others don't. it's something that's been apart of my holiday season every year for the past 17 years. i honestly think i would feel strange if i didn't do advent. i've never really thought about this before. i guess i'll get to think it through while i'm at work tonight. it's off to the pizza buffet for me!

what a relief!

we actually didn't talk about Arby's today! i actually just realized that a second ago. what an amazing relief.