Makin' Progress!

So I've been practicing...

And today I painted my first whole flower! How exciting!!

AND another one!!

I don't know what kind of flowers these are supposed to be. I didn't draw them out of the book, I just kind of made them up as I went along. So if you were planning on commenting, forget about being realistic.

So there you go, Grandma! Your first real paintings from me!

First Attempts

Merry Christmas, y'all! Hope everybody is having a great one!

I know you're all just dying to know what was under the tree for me, but the only ones slightly interesting to any of you are two: painting stuff and a book. The book I'll get to in another post, after I'm finished. For now I'll just point you over to the new addition on my booklist: Offerings by Tina Johnson.

Anybody ever used to watch the One Stoke Painting show with Donna Dewberry? I always thought it would be fun to try but I forgot about it, until yesterday when I got a whole bunch of paint, brushes, and instructions from Grandma. I started painting today and I'll be posting pictures of my progress (which is likely to be slow) on here. To start off,




This is pretty much everything I accomplished today, except for a few other beginning leaves. I managed one decent leaf and several epic fails of what are supposed to be petals. :-P There's one OK one in the lower left corner.
That's all for now! Artsy people, don't change that channel...

Normal

*sigh* I do love December. Christmas, cookies and cold weather I can count on.

Life is normal...for me. If you don't call trying to keep up with algebra and geometry at the same time and spending your Mondays gluing Cheerios onto a "tree" made out of cans and duct tape or watching YouTube videos of Rube Goldberg machines created by crazy smart Japanese college kids normal, that's OK. Few people would.

Yes, math is still my nemesis...it plots against me constantly, devising ways to slow me down. The fact that I have to share my geometry book with my brother doesn't help.

And yes, I'm doing OM again. Someday I might tell you more about it, but I can't right now...very confidential, you see.

So my non-normal life is progressing normally. Mom is pregnant again and thankfully, this time around it looks as though things will be normal...no home IVs or anything, at least. Oh yes, the last two babies caused quite a lot of trouble and stress...where such things are concerned, I'm much happier if they're normal.
(Baby is due in June, btw.)

Christmas is coming upon us again...the material side of it began to scare up money starting around Halloween, as normal. Many people are ignoring the other side of it, as normal. Oh, well. I can be all Charlie Brown about Christmas some other time.

That's all I have to say for today. Go be normal, or abnormal, depending on your standards for such. As for me, I have to go print out some papers and then no doubt wash some dishes. *sigh*

That's all, folks!

Can you believe it?

It's been ten whole years since I met the Real Katie's family! Yep, on a day in November, 1999 (a darn cold day too, as I remember) we met at Wolfe Park (the awesomest wooden playground ever built, period). We can't remember the exact date, though.

Back in June, a few days before my birthday, I wrote this, essay, I suppose you could call it, about the whole ten years thing. We met in November but I turned 16 in June, and it was the number that made me really realize just how long it had been and that triggered all the nostalgia. So I wrote this lovely piece on non-literature about it. Katie cried about it and put it on her blog so some of you wonderful people may have alreay read it.
Anyways....here 'tis.

Ten Years

This week I'll turn sixteen. Apparently that's a big milestone. In most states, you can start driving when you're sixteen; you can get a job; you start looking at colleges and planning for the future. For some reason, it's more of a big deal for girls than it is for boys. I guess it's like a modern-day coming-out....our new version of "You're a lady now".

That's all well and good. But what I'm thinking about as I begin my seventeenth year in this world and tack a different number onto myself is "ten years". Ten years since I was six. That's a great age to be. Some fairly momentous things happened to me when I was six.

I moved to another state, leaving behind my church, school, friends and beloved kindergarten teacher.

I started homeschooling.

I started a new life in a new place, and made new friends.

Friends. The first ones I met were Katie and Sarah. Our moms met online, and found out that they each had a daughter aged six, named Katie, and both homeschooled. It was then discovered that that other Katie had a little sister named Sarah. My middle name was Sara! These remarkable coincidences led to a friendship that's still going today. Ten years later. Katie and Sarah were always my best friends. They were family to me, and I'm pretty sure I was family to them. Their house was my second home. Often over the years my mom would be on the phone with their mom. Then she'd turn to me and say,"Katie, do you want to go sleep over at Katie's house?" You can imagine my answer. "OK, get your stuff together. Stacey is gonna pick you up in a few minutes."

Boy, did we have fun. We've almost never argued, that I can remember. Of course, it wasn't constantly happiness and light. Sarah and I had a funny little "enmity" (take note of the quotation marks) for a year or two. We made up eventually. Katie and I almost never fought. We insulted each other at times and did or said things the other didn't like and gotten on each other's nerves...but within my memory we've never had an out-and-out fight. Just because our names were the same didn't mean we weren't different in some ways. For example, I was never allowed to read the Harry Potter books or watch the movies, although as I got older the restrictions on the movies were somewhat relaxed. Katie and Sarah were crazy about them. I tolerated their ravings, and they in turn put up with my Nancy Drew obsession. One thing we have always had in common, however, is our love of reading. We're all book-eaters...let us out of your sight and you can expect at least one of us to have our nose in a good book. Over the years we've lent each other books, recommended books, and obsessed over books. I remember once when I lent one to Katie and she didn't return it for a year.

Ah, remembrance.....I'm quickly turning sentimental. Please bear with me while I take a leisurely stroll down memory lane...

The Katie Sarah Katie Sara Detective Agency: Timeless. We never did solve any mysteries, but the theme song with dance sure was fun!

Henchman Bob! Need I say more?

Remember when Benny was born? He's 5 and a half now!

Penny Lane Players.... Katie and I were the cutest water fairies ever!

"Katie, Sarah....I think you guys are sleeping over.

"HOLY SMOKEY THE CAT!"

Sarah's big line in Cymbeline: "Aye."

The Sarah-Jack joke....still bouncing around.

The list goes on....

On my wall is a picture of Katie dipping me when we were eight or nine. The jumper that I'm wearing in that picture now belongs to my eight year old sister. Crazy how time goes by, isn't it? More than three years ago my family moved again; all the way to Texas. It hurt to leave when I had been there for six years- the longest my family had stayed anyplace.* Now, looking back, I'm glad we moved. The Lone Star State is a great place to live, and I've made great friends here and had some crazy fun experiences that would never have happened had my family remained in CT. Of course, our friendship continued. Sometime this fall it will have been ten years since the chilly, blustery day when we met. I've always been closest to Katie since we're much closer in age (BFF, girly!) but today I'm thinking of the crazy, laughing, carefree trio that would be called to dinner with "Katie-Sarah-Katie-Sara! Get down here!" and have at least two sleepovers a week during the summer.

So here's to ten years: may the next decade be even better.

Love, KK

*No, we're not military. My dad's in the grocery business, and let me tell you, it's almost as bad.

Latest from the greatest

I've been listening to new music from two of my favorite artists; Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.
Taylor released her second album, Fearless, almost a year ago, and just recently released a platinum version of the same. I'm not gonna buy the whole thing because it's about $16.00 on iTunes and has a bunch of music videos on it, which take too long to download and that I'd probably only watch once or twice anyways. But it also has several new songs, and a piano version of a song from the original album, "Forever and Always" (yes, the song she wrote about Joe Jonas). It's beautiful; the original version is upbeat, and Taylor's singing is angry and accusing. This is slow, with entirely different instrumentals, and Taylor fills her voice with sadness and regret. Amazing what different emotions can be put into a song when sung and played differently. I bought that, and two new songs: "The Other Side of the Door" and "Come In With The Rain," both great songs.

Carrie has just recently come out with her third album, Play On. Again, I haven't bought the whole album...I tend to just buy the songs that I think I'll like. And I really, really like what I did buy. Previous to the album release, I got two singles, "Cowboy Casanova" and "Mama's Song".
"Cowboy Casanova" is great fun, fast-paced with great music and vocals. "Mama's Song" is much more simple and sweet, a reassuring song to the mother of the bride- "He is good, so good, and he treats your little girl like a real man should." I should probably consider playing this at my wedding, to counter the song "Slipping Through My Fingers" that Mom might want to play. :-P
The other day I bought four songs from the new CD. "Change", "Temporary Home" (a rare song reminding us that our real home is in heaven), "What Can I Say" (featuring Sons of Sylvia), and the title track, "Play On". Every song is great and worth listening to and buying. My favorite right now is "What Can I Say". I've never heard of Sons of Sylvia but the guy's voice is pretty good and the song is so pretty. :)

Such are my current adventures in musicland. Next up, adventures in reading!

OK, so...

I seem to have trouble dividing my computer time between FB, Blogger, TGO and other. Basically I either spend a ton of time on FB and TGO, or Blogger and TGO. :-P Plus YouTube and gazing longingly at medieval dresses and such.

So, what has happened since my last fantabulous post? Let's see...oh yes! Ellie and I took the PSAT. It was strangely non-stressful. Except for the part about getting up in the wee hours o' the morning, it was almost....fun. A much better experience than last time, which some of you may recall reading about last year in this post. Very odd. Anyways, I'm pretty confident about my scores, even for the math sections. The reading sections weren't very hard, the math was OK and I know I did far better than the last time I took this thing (and easier than the math in the practice tests), and the writing skills section at the end was so ridiculously easy! Honestly, is this test for highschoolers or 7th graders?

Mom and Dad went on a fantastic trip to Salzburg, AUSTRIA (without me. *sad face*). While they were gone my cousin Sara came to help hold things down at the ranch. We only had four kids to take care of and things went remarkably well. When the parents came back from their marvelous vacation, they seemed almost surprised and definitely quite pleased that the house was so nice and clean. Cleaner than usual, as a matter of fact. They passed out everybody's souvenirs soon after arrival and my wonderful new Austrian belongings ARE: A gorgeous shawl! A beautiful antique holy card, and a postcard with a picture of the very gazebo that was used for the "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" scene from Sound of Music. *jumps up and down like an obsessed fangirl*

Grandma came here last Wednesday and shall be leaving tomorrow. Hence, she was here for Halloween (which, in our little corner of the world, is very very very different from how it is in her neighborhood up in NJ). It was fun; I was gypsy! Daddy called me Stevie Nicks...explanation? Jack wore his Scream mask, Ian wore BDUs, a bulletproof vest and carried a huge Nerf gun (a realistic-ish looking one), Gracie was an Olympic medalist (my idea!) Emma was a ballerina, Ben was Darth Vader and Lucy was a very cute bumblebee. Tristan wore no costume, because why would he need one? He's The Cutest Baby In The Whole Wide World, 24/7. So you see, no costume needed. He takes his cuteness with him everywhere.

Last night Jacky recieved a long-awaited award at CAP, the Billy Mitchell award. It's more or less the CAP equivalent of Eagle Scout, except better because CAP totally owns Boy Scouts. :-P
There were speeches and then they pinned the thingy on his shoulders and then we all ate pizza and cake while standing around socializing. Today was tae kwon do, which Grandma also attended and found quite interesting and, hopefully, impressive.

And guess what? I'm finally starting the 11th grade!!! The reasons why I haven't started until November are a long and somewhat humiliating story, so let's not go there. But yes, I'm excited, and resolute that this year will not be like the last two. Wish me luck. Next summer we begin applying to colleges. *gulp* UD, here I really hope I come!




P.S.
I forgot to mention that Grandma bought me all the books on my "want to read list" there on the sidebar. All except the Princess Bride because we already have that and Grace just won't let me have it. Anywho, I've finished all of them except Out of the Silent Planet, which I am working on now. Inkdeath= Awesome! Mr. Darcy's Diary= AMAZING!! Till We Have Faces= Very very good, of course! You can't really go wrong with C.S. Lewis. <3

When in boredom...

Watch videos like these.

Return of the King is a long movie. To save yourself the time, why not just watch this?

Who knew that our friend Inigo Montoya had a lightsaber? (Note: The Inigo Montoya video is rated PG for violence and brief language.)

How to survive an alien attack.

If you thought that wedding entrance dance was awesome...

...watch this. Personally I prefer this one.

Don't you just love cold weather?

No, seriously. I'm not being sarcastic. I really and truly love it when it's cold out. Cozy clothes, hot chocolate, fire in the fireplace, yummy pumpkin bread and baking lots and lots of cookies, snuggling down under two blankets at night....yes, fall and winter are indeed my favorite seasons.
Technically fall starts in September. Yeah, right. Weather-wise, fall didn't start here until yesterday when it all of a lovely sudden turned chilly! Now, according to my amateur guess, it's around 58 out there. So awesome! Emma, Grace, Lucy and Ben are all playing outside right now in long-sleeved shirts and coats and I have just finished drinking a cup of tea. Yayeth! The only thing though, is up in New England where I used to live, fall trees are beautiful. Here, they are...not. The leaves don't change until late in the season, and they mostly just turn brown or yellowish, and fall right off after a couple of days. I miss the pretty reds and gold, unlike some lucky people like Serendipity over at Musings And Antics, who also wrote about fall recently. Oh yes, and no snow in the winter, although if we're lucky some things might get iced up. Eh. You can't have everything. I'll stop complaining now.

Still, though, I'm so happy that it finally feels like autumn! \^o^/

For homeschoolers who've heard "Wicked":

Because everyone knows that homeschoolers are unsocialized, here is a parody of "Popular" from Wicked about a girl who desperately wants to be.....well, popular.



Whenever I see someone more socialized than I

And let's face it -who isn't
More socialized than I?-

My tender heart tends to start to weep

And when somebody calls me a dork

Sometimes it drives me quite berserk

But I know, I know

Exactly what they mean.



And even in my case

[pause]

With dreams that some might say it's nuts to chase

Don't worry

I'm determined to succeed

School kids, take heed!

For yes, indeed

I

Will

Be

Popular
I'm gonna be popular

I'll make use of the proper ploys

When I talk to boys

Silly ways to flirt and flounce

[ew]

I'll learn 'bout what shoes to wear

How to fix my hair

Everything that they say counts to be

Popular
I want to popular!

I'll "hang" with the right cohorts

I'll be good a sports

Know the slang I'm supposed to know

Better start, think

I've got a pretty long way to go.



I'm tired of being called a nerd so verily*
Because I read Shakespeare voluntarily
Whoever heard of enjoying history
I have been enlightened
Now it is no mystery
The reasons that I'm not

Popular
But soon I'll be popular
And then I know that you will see
A brand new me
Instead of dreary who I am
(Not "are")
There's nothing that can stop me
From becoming popular
Laa laa, laa laa!
I'm gonna become popular!

Ever since the first grade
I've had no friends
I am so unloved
History books remind me that
I should think of
Celebrated heads of state
Or 'specially great communicators
Did they have brains or knowledge?

Don't make me laugh!
They were popular!
Duh.
It's all about popular
It's not about aptitude
It's the way you're viewed
So it's very shrewd to be
Very very popular
Unlike me.

And if you don't believe
I have it in me
To be more socialized

Sit down and watch me do it!
You're not gonna believe your eyes!

Laa laa, laa laa!
You may be popular,
But not as popular as
I will be!



*I know, this line makes very little sense. I needed something to rhyme with "voluntarily". Suggestions?

My latest obsession...

Wicked!! OK, so I've never seen the show nor have I read the book. But I've heard the music and watched some of the songs on youtube! That counts for something, doesn't it? I mean seriously. If I've been singing "Popular" in the shower I think that's fairly significant.
In fact, I'm listening to Popular right now!
"And though you protest your disinterest, I know clandestinely...you're gonna grin and bear it! Your newfound popularity!" And the "real thing" as seen by myself on youtube (cheap, I know but it's the best I can do at the moment :-P) is soooo much better than the soundtrack.
And "Defying Gravity"? Ah-ma-zing. Same about the soundtrack.

So if you care to find me, look to the Western sky! As someone told me lately, everyone deserves a chance to fly!

One of the reasons I love Texas

There's always something awesome going on in the sky. We get the prettiest sunsets and the most amazing cloud formations. Hence, ever since I got my camera back in June I've had this obsession with taking pictures of the sky. Enjoy!

Please ignore the ugly half-finished building with the crane on top.

Staring straight up past the trees over-hanging my driveway.

This was just last night, and looking in the other direction we have:

And then the night before that we had this one:

When I first ran outside to see it it was almost all vivid pink and purple and really and truly looked like a painting. I ran in to get my camera and this is what it looked like when I came back out. Crazy how fast these things change.


Edit: The words aren't cooperating. Just pretend that each caption is next to the picture below. Doggone blog settings *walks away mumbling*

Walker, go home!

And stay there!

This silly dog named Walker who lives approximately two miles down the road found his way to our house about a week ago and keeps coming! The first time we just though, "Oh another stray dog." There was an address on his tag so Mom found his owners' number and called. They came and got him, and guess who showed up at our door again that morning?
He just keeps coming back! "You're not our dog!!" is quickly becoming the most often said thing in our household. The problem is that his family is gone all day on the weekdays. So he comes here where there are a bunch of kids who just loooooove dogs like him. He's a sweet dog and a good boy, but HE'S NOT OURS!!!! We don't feed him anything or give him water (can't encourage him to stay) but still he comes back. Again and again and again! His owners are trying to sell their house so eventually he'll move with them and we won't see him anymore. We'll probably kind of miss him, he is such a nice dog. But seriously, Walker!

GO HOME!!!!!!

Funny Picture

Hello, I was going to post about all sorts of things but it seems that they all flew out of my head, leaving a sad blank. To make up for this epic failure of a blog post, here is a picture of my family's dog, Murphy, that my sister took.

Slideshow

My Trip To CT

http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y11/kmomto6/Smilies%20for%20Katie/?action=view&current=52c6f5b5.pbw

100TH POST!!!

Yay!
The original purpose of this post was to show of some photo-editing that I've been doing, but then I saw that it was going to be the 100th post so I just had to mention it.
So moving on....voila!




























You would have to have been there.

Pictureses!!!

Since we just got faster internet, I shall now post some pictures from my trip to CT! Ta-da!














Twirly dress!

Sarah and were trying to make it look like we were eating our cameras...or something like that....

Posing for the camera.

As the lovely lady emerges from the fitting rooms, overjoyed at finding the dress to be perfect!

The quilt of extreme wonderfulness!

Rawr.

Katie: Gosh Katie I love your sunglasses!

Sarah: I'm a creeper!

That's it for now, more coming later!