Christmas Break

Sadly, Christmas is over. :( I'm pretty sad about that because I love so much about the holiday. But I'm still having fun even if the holiday is over. For one thing, Band Hero is my new favorite Wii game. I'm okay at the guitar, but singing is my favorite. And I like it better than Rock Band because I know more songs on it. It's tons of fun. My favorite songs are "Ocean Avenue", "She Will Be Loved," and "Lips of an Angel."

I also got the "Gallagher Girls" series by Ally Carter. They were really good, so... I kind of read all three that day. They are about a girl named Cameron (Cammie) Morgan. She goes to Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, which seems like a normal boarding school for snobby rich girls. But what it really is, is a school for spies. Instead of PE, they have P&E. (Protection and Enforcement) All of the girls are black belts in karate, know 14 different languages, and are pretty much geniuses. The one problem is that, going to an all-girl school, none of them know how to act around boys. This becomes a problem with Cammie throughout the books. (Yes, there is definitely romance) The one thing that disappointed me was that the third book ended without any resolutions. You have to wait for the fourth book (Only The Good Spy Young) to find out anything. But it is still a favorite series.

I also received a brand new iHome for Christmas and some new headphones! Both are exactly the same shade of purple as my wonderful iPod. Now, instead of waking up to a super-annoying beep, I can wake up to whatever songs I want! I'm excited! I also got a lot of clothes for Christmas. They made up most of my presents. Other people might be disappointed by that, but I love them. I actually already knew which clothes I was getting, since I picked them out myself, but opening them was exciting all the same.

I also have a new favorite movie! Yesterday I saw, "The Princess And The Frog." It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Basically, there are two girls, Charlotte and Tiana. Charlotte gets whatever she wants in life because of her super-rich father, and she is a firm believer in fairy tales. Tiana is poor, but spends all her time working so she can fulfill her and her father's dream of building their own restaurant. When Prince Naveen comes along to marry Charlotte, he messes with a Voodoo man and is turned into a frog. Long story short, he gets Tiana to kiss him, she also becomes a frog, and they have to travel the Bayou to find the Voodoo witch who lives there so they can be human again. Throughout the show there is plenty of music, because, of course, this is Disney. Unlike other princess movies, this one takes place in New Orleans in the 1900's. I loved it!

Anyways, my Christmas was fantastic, and I'm so glad I get another week to sleep in!

Canada

So I'm in Canada right now, and it's not as different as I thought it would be. It's not very much colder than Utah, I've only met one person with an accent (a-boat/about), and I've only heard one "eh". I am so disappointed! I went to my grandpa's church today, but it was a little awkward because I didn't know anyone in my classes. My friends wouldn't believe me, but I'm really not a naturally loud person. So I felt pretty weird the whole time, though these two girls Sarah and Keely were both really nice. Apparently in Canada French is a class that everyone has to take. And, if they want to, they can go on to French immersion. That means that all their classes are in French so they can learn it more fluently. I felt bad for them because they all had these big exams they had to take before Christmas break, except for they get 3 weeks off.

One thing that I really look forward to when we go to Canada is the candy. I promised all my friends to bring back some Smarties for them. Smarties are amazing. Instead of wimpy little powdery things, they are these really good chocolates. You could compare them to M&Ms, but Smarties are bigger and better. I also like the Mackintosh toffee, which is also really good. My dad and brother like "Big Turks", but I'm not a big fan. Basically they're chocolate bars with a purple jelly filling. I don't like them very much. I can't wait for tomorrow when I can stock up on all my favorite sweets.

Usually our family car trips are pretty hectic and involve a lot of kicking and shouting. This time however, we couldn't see each other because there were boxes and/or suit cases in between each of us. I think my parents planned it. It worked though. There was no, "She's touching me!" or "He's breathing my air!", so it probably made the 12-hour ride better for everyone. We left at 4:30 AM and got here at around 4:30 PM. We watched Harry Potter 6, listened to a lot of music, and I even did my math homework to get it out of the way so I can enjoy the rest of my break.

There hasn't been a lot to do today after church ended. My mom and brother went with my grandma to her Baptist church, which I guess was pretty interesting. They had 4 or 5 baptisms today. My brother thought it was kind of cool that there was someone playing a bass guitar at the church. He also said that a lot of the women there got really into the hymns. Some of them were standing up, raising their arms, and swaying. They said that it was definitely a different kind of church then what they were used to, but I think it's cool that they got to see what another religion is like.

Tomorrow we're going to go out and do something, but I'm not really sure what. I'm just so glad that it's finally Christmas break, and Christmas is just 5 days away!

Christmas!

11 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

I'm soooooooooooo excited! I like a lot of things about Christmas. It is my all-time favorite holiday. I like being with family, I'm a tradition freak, baking treats, the music, and of course PRESENTS!

I love both giving and receiving presents. Wrapping them is pretty fun too. This year I think I'm mostly getting lots of new clothes. But I'm happy! Apparently Santa thinks a couple things on my list are a little too pricey and aren't going to work. So I'll have to try for a new phone and a DSI next year. (Santa doesn't want me to have unlimited internet access, so no to the DSI. Plus it's $180.) I'm hoping to get a new iHome for my iPod to charge it, play music, etc. I always get some books on Christmas too. I asked for the Gallagher Girls series and the sequel to Hunger Games.

Mmmm. I love Christmas treats. My mom used to make this really good fudge every Christmas, but she's kind of made that my job. She buys everything you need to make it, and we make it a few times during December. Today my wonderful mother made sugar cookies with yellow frosting and crushed candy canes on top. I like how the neighbors bring you lots of random treats that are really good. We always bring things like fudge and spritz cookies around to people. My mom makes spritz cookies in the shapes of like Christmas trees and other Christmassy objects. Basically, Christmas is just a delicious time of the year.

When I say that I'm a tradition freak, that's kind of an understatement. It drives my mom crazy how I always want things to be exactly the same, and I don't want them to change. Even a week later, it is driving me crazy that our Christmas tree is in our family room instead of in the living room by the window. It just doesn't feel right. It still looks great, we have a bunch of matching ornament sets, random ornaments we've picked up over the years, and ribbons all around it. And of course our twinkling yellow lights. I love Christmas lights. I strongly encourage my parents to buy lights and have my dad climb up on the roof to put them up. This year we have blue icicle lights on our house, reddish ones on our evergreen tree, and clear net lights on the bushes. They even went all out and put lights on the trees around our pond in the backyard. There is also a cute little lit up snow man by our porch. I put up my own lights in my bedroom around my walls. They are red, white, and green.

Another tradition that is important to me is the food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, my family snacks on cheese balls and crackers, deviled eggs, olives, etc. during the day, and that night my mom makes these really good chicken strips that she rolls around in crushed up Ritz. Then we dip them in homemade honey mustard sauce. On Christmas day, we eat the mini boxes of cereal from our stockings for breakfast. We kind of eat whatever, or leftovers for lunch. Then for dinner we have turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, jell-o, assorted yummy sides, and cranberry juice/Sprite mix as a drink. For dessert we get together with our second cousins for pie. Just thinking about it all makes me hungry.

If I weren't with my family, Christmas wouldn't matter. On Christmas Eve we always get together with the cousins from my mom's family. We have a talent show where we all like sing a song, or play piano, or something. Then we read the Christmas story from Luke out loud. Christmas morning, everyone is excited to show each other what you get whenever you open a present. During the day we relax while each other and enjoy our presents. It's just a great feeling to be together with so many people you love.

Christmas music is a HUGE part over why I love Christmas so much. I listen to it on the radio throughout the whole season and sing it around the house. And right now I love it even more. After my very depressed post last time about not making the musical, I was singing "Where Are You Christmas" as a solo during a choir performance. The director of our school musical and another judge were there watching. Afterward, the director came up to me and told me that if that had been my audition, I would have made it for sure. Soooo, she decided to count it as my audition and put me in the musical! I am SO excited now! Christmas music has a whole new meaning to me, and I watched "The Grinch" twice this weekend.

Christmas is the best holiday ever and I can't wait!

Disappointment

Don't you hate it when you work your absolute hardest on something, give it 100% and it's all for nothing? Just a big load of wasted effort. That's kind of how I feel right now. I practice singing all the time. I'm in Rhapsody. I take singing lessons. I work on it all the time to get better. So when it came to musical tryouts I spent hours practicing the song I was singing for my audition. I came out thinking I did pretty good. Then Friday I looked at the list and I wasn't on it. I read it about 5 times until it actually sank in that I didn't make it, and I was the one person from Rhapsody that tried out and didn't make it. Once that sank in, I couldn't control it. I just started crying. I tried hiding it and finally got myself to stop. But every time someone said something about it for the next like 30 minutes I lost control again. I just thought I had a pretty good chance of making it, and then I look through the list and realize that it's my last year of junior high and I can't be in it. Everything I did was for nothing. It's just really hard realizing that I'm not even good at what I always thought was one of my best things. My favorite thing to do, and I'm not even good at it. My best friends all made it, but I can't do it with them. I was trying to be really happy for them even though I felt terrible. I was trying not to ruin how excited any of them were, but it was really hard seeing all these people getting excited when I felt so bad. I just don't really know what to do now. My friends want me to do stage crew, but I kind of don't want to. It sounds dumb, but I don't want to be one of those people hanging around during practices who wasn't good enough to actually be in it. I did it last year, but that was okay because I didn't try out. I was in it because I just wanted to try stage crew and I was a little too busy to actually be in it. This year I made sure that I'd have time, but it was all for nothing. It doesn't matter anymore. Trying out for it seems kind of pointless. I know people would tell me that it was just a good experience, but I really can't see it that way at all right now. Hopefully I will eventually, but right now I'm just kind of mad at myself for getting myself all excited about something that I wasn't good enough for. I also kind of hope I'll forget it eventually, but right now it's kind of all I can think about. Is that kind of weird? It probably sounds a little stuck up, but I just thought maybe I had a better chance because I made it for Rhapsody and that was really hard to get in to. Now it's just pretty disappointing realizing I'm not really as good as I thought it was. Anyways, now that I've ranted about it, I'm going to go try to get over it more.