Christmastime Is Here

Has everyone had a good Christmas? I know I have because I haven't posted for a week! I've been having just too much fun spending time with my family. That's one of the best parts of the holiday season, I think, because everyone goes out of their way to be with you, and you go out of your way to be with them. I am writing to you from my Grandpa's computer in California where we've been for the past couple of days, along with all of my dad's brothers and sisters and their families. It's been pretty crazy, but we like to think of it as "organized chaos".

One of the best moments of our trip was on Christmas morning when my sister announced suprisedly to my mom after opening her Nintendo DS game system, "Santa's really gone electronic this year, Mommy". That just about made my day, aside from the "You're married!" ornament given to my newly-wed cousin with the names "Daniel and Jessica" inscribed on it when in fact her new hubby's name is David. Her mom was horribly embarrased, but we all laughed and decided it was something my aunt would do anyways!

Santa didn't realize we were away from home, so supposedly there are more presents for us there, but Dad could just be pulling my leg. This has been one of those years where we've had several different Christmas mornings at different houses where different relatives live. We had the actual Christmas morning at Aunt Diane's house, a pre-Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's, another pre-Christmas at our house so we could thank our grandparents for the gifts they sent us*, and then our post-Christmas at home. We haven't had a Christmas away for a while, so it was fun to be with family during this special time of year.

Of course, our Christmas festivities were not complete without the watching of Elf on Christmas Eve night under the Christmas tree in a "mosh pit of cousins". Santa didn't come until late, because all the kids were up until at least one o'clock. Ahhhh, good times! We would not be tamed.

Ten Random Things.

#1. I am madly in love with dark chocolate, but wasn't two and a half months ago. (I don't know how or when it happened, but it did).


#2. Scrapbooking is my calling.


#3. I'm learning how to sing a song in Czech for a Personal Progress (program designed for girls in Young Women's) project.


#4. I own nothing from Hollister which is strange considering my age and my neighborhood. (Wow, that's...shocking!)(Gotta love Elf)


#5. Red is a horrible color on people. In my opinion, anyway.


#6. If ever I'm in a bad mood, show up at my house with a root beer float (two scoops of vanilla!) in one of those plastic, colored, wine glasses.


#7.


*







#8. Ha! My mom just ran into the family room and told my younger bro and sis to change the TV because Spongebob started. Ha! Wow, she looks serious...


#9. The Seer and the Sword is the most wonderful story in the world. I think I like it even more than the Twilight books, only because I read it first.

#10. I play the tenor sax. Amazingly, a lot of people don't know that about me



*I've never actually been to Chick-Fil-A.
**Make sure you read the post that follows this one, too.

3, 4, 5...6?

Part 3 : Favorite Board Game.

I really like to play Life, Connect Four, Sorry, Clue...the usual. Sorry especially. It always makes me laugh when someone says "SORRY" and doesn't mean it. Most of the people I play with say "sorry" sarcastially anyways, so it's not very different from real life, but I still enjoy the fun of it. Mary tells me that I don't know how to play Clue properly since I don't know "the strategy", but I am perfectly fine playing the way every other normal person in the world does. Connect Four is a simple game of optical illusions. If you can get the lighting and shadow in precisely the right spot, you can trick anyone into putting their piece where it will give you an advantage. And it's over quickly. Short and sweet.


Part 4 : Favorite Actor and Band/Singer

Ummmmm, my favorite actor right now is Patrick Dempsey, courtesy of Enchanted. I just love him to pieces! And my favorite singer is Carrie Underwood. I've been out of the country loop since this summer, but I'm back in. Back home. I'm a die-hard country fan, I just needed a vacation. It felt weird, though, listening to popular music and learning lyrics to songs that EVERYBODY knows and not just you because you have your own type of music.


Part 5 : What Movie Are You Dying to See?

Right this red hot minute, or tonight with a couple of friends? For the right now part, ummm, Hairspray. And tonight, I would watch Enchanted with Mary. Because I owe her one. <3.

Part 6: Just kidding. No part 6.

Like the Stars

To answer part two of James' meme, the easiest song to get stuck in my head is a song called Like the Stars (you can listen to part of it here). It is on a CD of songs written by Jenny Phillips, an inspirational singer and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She realeases a new album at the beginning of every year that corresponds to the Young Women's (a program for girls aged 12-18) theme. This coming year's theme is: "Be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works" (Mosiah 5:15). Some of the other songs on this CD are very good at getting stuck in my head, but this one especially. That's probably a good thing too, being that it is a song devoted to God and our want to be close to him. Like the stars.

TV Show

I was tagged by Mary, James, and Torie for the Favorite Childhood TV Show meme. Awesome! I love kid's television. Something about it is innocent yet very thought-provoking for both kids and not-so kids. One of my favorite shows (there are many) is Bananas in Pajamas. That was one show that I did watch as a kid, but didn't as I got older. I'm not sure why I fell in love with the singing pair, but I did. Hey, what can you do?

Another classic was Blue's Clues, but when they sacked Steve and added a puppet Blue segment the show lost some of its charm. I am very sure I would still be watching it to this day were it not for the change in characters.

One that I do watch to this day is Arthur. Yes, Mary, I copied you again, but what's not to love about a little family of aardvarks living in a small town, experiencing real life problems faced by real kids. Genius!

Enchanted...again!

I just got back from seeing Enchanted...again! And I loved it (duh)...again! It is so much fun to re-watch movies, because you catch things you didn't notice before or that didn't really make sense. For example, on of the main girls in the story is Idina Menzel aka Elphaba in Wicked. I did not realize this until I saw it...again! It is such a sweet and happy movie. Everything about it is very light and optimistic. I feel very uplifted watching it. As wierd as that sounds, its the truth. So, any time you're feeling down in the dumps of having a bad day, GO WATCH THIS MOVIE!

Traditions

Sorry about that. I had a little nine day break to work on an English project, but now that it's turned in I have time to get to what really matters (just kidding, Mom. School first).
My friend Mary requested that I explain our sacred ritual entitled, as of right now, "Calling the Snow". It works, no mocking.

Let's start at the very beginning, a very fine place to start. Mary said that wearing your pajamas inside out was the #1 step. But, the pajamas must be inside out and backwards in order to ensure a snow day, snow day, a very very snow day.

Concerning the second step (Lick a metal spoon and put it under your pillow), the spoon must be completely under your pillow each time. My brother, Genius Boy *insert heroic music*, made the mistake of sliding his pillow off the spoon during the night. We woke up to a morning of no snow. But Genius Boy *insert heroic music* had a crink in his neck the size of something big from the neck of the spoon which it rested the whole night.

Moral of the story: Make sure that the spoon is completely, perfectly 100% centered under you pillow.

Now, I never have actually done step 3 every time, but I do listen to my weather radio to see what's in the forecast. I'm sure it wouldn't do any harm to check the weather every 5 minutes, but it's not very necessary.

Who, may you ask, came up with all of these mandatory laws for all human beings on this earth to abide by? Umm, Mary and I did. We lived together for a couple (5) months while her house was being remodeled. During that time, the eight of us (our families' combined children) got to know each other and start new inside jokes, family traditions, and do things that should never ever EVER happen when parents are not home (there were a few nights like that). Just to give you an idea, we kept all of the children (down to the then 4-year-old) up until about 11:30 on a Wednesday night while the Moms and Dads were at an opera or something. We had cake for dinner that night. It was horrible. They were off the walls, so we started Jane Austen's Emma with Gwenyth Paltrow to get them to sleep. It was playing for about 7 minutes before every single one of them was out cold. :D

Anyway, follow my lead and yes, indeed, you will have a snow day!


Extra Credit: How many songs did I use in this post?
(sorry Mary, I couldn't resist copying your idea!)

Time

I'm sorry fellow bloggers that I haven't been posting lately, but something has come up with my friend Natalie. Remember her from my Soap Opera last week? Well, her grandfather passed away a few days ago, and she's been having a really rough time. I've been spending a lot of time at her house and she at mine, trying to help her. Her grandpa was a very smart man, who I knew fairly well. He moved in with her about three years ago as he got older, so he's been living at her house.

Natalie, our hopes and prayers are with you. I love you.

Christmas at Alice's House

I'm skipping Soap Opera Sunday today (sorry!) because we set up our Christmas tree last night and I wanted to put pictures up of that instead. I will still read everyone else's and I'll be back in the flow of things next week (or tomorrow. It will be on Monday, Cause I Missed It).

Here's a couple of pics of our holiday preperation. There's no pictures of people on here, dad. I promise. It snowed this morning so there are some great landscape shots too. It's still snowing actually. It stopped for a minute there.

It snowed because our whole family wore our pajamas inside out and backwards. That always makes it snow. Then, if we do it again, we get a day off of school. Works every time. :-)

Beautiful fire, Dad! (He takes pride in his fires)

We have ornaments on that tree from 1992.

Wierd I know. Wait, I stand corrected. '89.

"A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight.

Walking in a winter wonderland."

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer quite the other way

I have to go to bed by day.

~Robert Louis Stevenson

What?! "...bed by day..."? Talk about burning daylight.

:-)

Dad learned that saying, "burning daylight", from my grandpa and it's now his favorite catchphrase. I can remember hearing that yelled across the lake when my brother decided he needed to EAT instead of go waterskiing. Incredible what some people try to get away with.

Happy Birthday Me!!!