Merry Christmas!

Yay

Even though I haven't finished the book, I am still pretty excited.

Joshua Bell

Ferrante and Teicher

My distant cousin (maybe)!
Ferrante is the one on the left.

What I've been up to..

Here's a little recap of my week.

This Saturday was the Women's Christmas Breakfast at church. Katie, my friend Rose, and I got the opportunity to sing Christmas carols for the women there while Luke accompanied us. During the week we had fun times practicing the carols and helping set up the decorations at church. The breakfast went amazingly well. I was super blessed by it. :) 

Also, I am in the orchestra (playing the bass part) for The Pickwick Players Scrooge the Musical. This week was heck week, which included long rehearsals every night and then the performances this weekend. They went pretty well. The show has one more weekend so you can still come and see it! www.thepickwickplayers.org

Lastly, I am very excited about this Christmas season. I have a list of Christmas movie classics that I am going to watch from now til Christmas. I love this time of year!

And now here is one of my favorite Christmas songs.

Thanksgiving

This years Thanksgiving was delightful!

We spent Thursday at the lake,which included watching the Macy's Day Parade, playing Scrabble, eating a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner, and having yummy pumpkin pie for desert.

Today (Friday) we left the lake and headed for Williamsburg, arriving at noon. We ate lunch, walked down to Colonial Williamsburg (which included getting delicious almond-nut peanut brittle!),said goodbye to Amanda as she left to go to Disney World with friends,and ate a delicious ravioli/sausage/salad dinner all cooked by my grandpa! :)

Now I am sitting in our (Kristen,Sarah,Katie,and I's) hotel room, enjoying the peace and quiet, and writing this post.

Let us come into his presence with Thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
Psalm 95:2

And Now You Know

Today I caught myself saying "bless you" after someone sneezed. I decided to figure out why we always say that. There are three possible origins.

~Various alleged but conflicting superstitions relating the sneeze to evil spirits.This includes beliefs  that a sneeze could release ones soul, thus leading it to possible capture by lurking evil,or that the evil spirits could enter the body through the open mouth of a sneezing individual, or that the individual is sneezing out sins or evil spirits which had taken residence within the body and is thus in need of the blessing to prevent the exorcised from re-entering the body. Some proponents of this  theory have further suggested that it was back luck to open the mouth again to thank the person who uttered "Bless You" for fear of circumventing the original purpose of the blessing.~

~Some say it came into use during the plague pandemics of the 14th century. Blessing the individual after showing such a symptom was thought to prevent possible impending death due to the lethal disease.~

~In Renaissance times a superstition was formed claiming one's heart stopped for a very brief moment during the sneeze, saying bless you was a sign of prayer that the heart wouldn't fail possibly the devil's doing by sending demons to clasp the heart in the body's moment of shock from the sneeze. ~

  [all taken from wikipedia's article "Sneeze"]

I am very happy  to announce though, that whenever you sneeze no evil spirits are leaving you, you am not about to die from some kind of plague, and demons are not clasping your heart. Weird huh?

The Kayaker

I had some fun during science class.

October

I can't believe we're almost in November! Here's what i'm up to.

This past month I've been doing school, school, and more school. Thankfully it hasn't been hard.

Early in the month we went down to the lake to celebrate my grandma's 70th birthday where Katie, Joe, and I ended up singing all four verses of amazing grace in front of 40+ people. Katie sang most of it because Joe and I didn't know all of the lyrics. :) The party was fun, plus I got to borrow my grandpa's camera the whole time!

Now Fall has come, and with it beautiful weather! But unfortunately right this moment we are getting a taste of winter with low 40 degree days and on Saturday we had a 3 inch snowfall.

Piano is going well. Catching up on theory.

Today it's Halloween.We don't celebrate it but on Saturday the little kids dressed up and went to RBC's trunk-or-treat. It was fun for them, but now we have a lot of candy that wants to be eaten.

I have been running (but not too much now because of the weather). I want to be able to run a 10k or more by my birthday. (March 3)

Right now i'm reading Pilgrims Progress, Forgotten God, and The Hobbit. Gone with the Wind is next.

I can't wait till Christmastime! It is my favorite! Everyone is much more friendly during the Christmas season. I have started listening to Christmas music already!



"For I am sure that neither death nor life,nor angels nor rulers,nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."    Romans 8:38-39

unfortunately the other pictures I was going to put up were in raw format and I can't convert them on the computer i'm using. Here are pictures from the party.

Lily and I at the party

Grandma's birthday cake

Amanda and Grandma

Lily and Jamie

Dancing

Papa and Mom

Happy (late) Birthday Naomi!

Naomi's birthday was actually Wednesday, but I didn't remember to write about till now.
Happy birthday to my little munch! She is one of the biggest blessings in my life!  I love you Naomi Joy! :)

Happy Birthday Matthew!

Today matthew turns seven years old! He is the cutest, smartest, funniest, six seven year old I know! 

Happy Birthday Matthew! I love you! You are da best!

The classic slide-tackle with the ball right next to you

Tractor racing....one of many hobbies

It's Monday..

isn't this great....I finally got the chance to put this up because I keep forgetting to put it up on previous Mondays

Fun with Photobooth!

 We got a new Mac operating system which updated the photobooth and put new effects on it! Today Katie, Joe, and I had some fun.

The chipmunk effect.

Bug eyes!

The dizzy effect

Us beautiful chipmunks

I think this effect was called blockhead..... 

Aww

Good ole' fashion nose twists 

Joe said I looked like someone from a disney animated movie.

Wow. 

I like Katie in this one

The alien effect (and I finally got my glasses!)

Pride and Prejudice

There has been a flu passing in our house, and unfortunately I have caught it. I am thankful though I didn't catch the worst version of this flu that some people in my family caught! Well anyway, today I watched the second part of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice . I don't know how people like the old one better. Maybe as far as the book goes the old one is more accurate. But as far as the movies go, the 2005 version is so much more enjoyable than sitting through five hours of the 1995 version.

I compared these two scenes below. I definitely like the 2005 version better!

the 1995 version

the 2005 version

Earthquake!

Here's my experience of our 5.9 earthquake that happened early this afternoon.

Katie and I were about to watch a movie when our room started shaking. My first thoughts were "what in the world have the boys (referring to the twins) done now!" :) Then I realized, "WOAH it's an earthquake!"  Nothing that exciting. 

More Camp Pictures

Dinner on Sunday

Sunrise Monday morning

The clouds Monday morning

Duke!

After Kristen, Sarah R,and I ran

When Matt was explaining the swing

Olivia helping me get ready (i was REALLY excited!)

Me pulling the cord...

And now me swinging!

Mariah was a little bit nervous..

The zip line!

Me (looking a little funky) and Kristen on the rock wall.

Camp 2011

Yesterday I got back from camp at headwaters lodge. It was an amazing experience! Here are some pictures from camp!

Right before heading out!

Playing the sign game Sunday afternoon

Playing ninja was a common occurrence while we were there

"knight!' Playing "knight,rider,threshold" on Monday morning!

Blind dodgeball is the bomb.com

The bonfire on Monday night

Besties at the bonfire!

Our hike up the mountain on Tuesday morning

Me on top of the mountain!

Me on the eagles walk (which was not my favorite)

Crazy faces!

Rock Climbing on Wednesday

More Pictures to come!