Christmas Present Pictures!

I've been meaning to post all week and just haven't gotten to it. This week I have gotten a taste of regular teenage life, with homework and busy schedule and stuff. The first WISH class back after Christmas I had a new teacher for one of my classes and she has given a lot of homework for the week. We have to read four short stories and find definitions for the vocabulary words and write a sentence for each vocabulary word for each story, write the first draft of a persuasive essay and do a vocabulary quiz by next Tuesday. Is that a lot? It feels like a lot. I'm just not used to homework and have felt so overwhelmed, so I just planned so I wouldn't have to do any today so my day would be free. I also have a few classes during the week. I have WISH on Tuesday. Sewing on Monday, and mutual. And Friday we have P.E. and then voice lessons (which I will be quitting soon. It just didn't work out). I don't have a terribly busy schedule and I'm able to finish my homework at a reasonable time at night. I'm just going from the nothing-to-do-don't-need-a-schedule-at-all stage to have-things-to-do-need-to-plan-them.

So, anyway, the main reason I wanted to blog was to post pictures of some Christmas presents! These are my cute boots that I got! I love them! They were too small so we went and took them back and bought some bigger ones for cheaper! Plus they were on display so they had a few scuffs so that also took money off for that, too! So I got some jeans with the extra money.


This is Anna with her purse I made her! I meant to take a close up of the purse but I didn't. And I should have taken a picture before it got dirty, but oh well. I crocheted the bag and flower and put the button on to keep it closed. We wanted her to have a purse so she wouldn't loose her wallet. Sadly, now she looses her purse, but she had it half of the time. :)


And I made a matching purse for Savannah! Isn't it so cute? I love it.


I just love anything miniature.


Well, I guess that's it. Mom posted about P.E. and Anna about Sisters so love you!

What I couldn't live without....

Books. I just love them. All kinds of books, I love fantasy, realistic fiction, romance. Anything from Anne of Green Gables to Harry Potter. I love curling up with my fuzzy socks on my feet and a good book in my hands to read for as long as my eyes will last. My most recent obsession has been Matched, by Ally Condie. I first heard of it when Lizzie pulled it off her shelf and told me she thought I should read it. I'm not sure how she explained what it was about, but she said something like "It's about a girl who lives in a place where the government controls everything. They choose who you marry and this one girl falls in love with someone else." It sounded si-fi-ish so I didn't read it. Weeell, my dad got it for Christmas because Diane thought I would like it, so I had to read it. I'm so glad I got it because I don't know if I would have read it otherwise! I loved it so much! It is such a wonderful love story. I loved the characters and story and romance. I read the first fourth of it over the course of a few days then reached a certain point and read most of it in one day. Then I stopped and told myself to wait to finish it because I always regret finishing books really fast because then it's over and I can't read it anymore. Any of you ever feel that way? Anyway, I finished it and made Mom bring me to Barnes and Noble to buy the second book Crossed that day. It was really awful buying it, too because it was a Saturday night and everyone was out so there was no parking. In the end Mom dropped me off to buy it and she drove around until I was done, then came and picked me up. I loved Crossed, too. I can't wait until the last one comes out. Does anyone know when that will be?

I am now in that stage after reading a great book or series and thinking, "What do I read now?" It happened after Harry Potter both times and is now happening after the Matched books. Mom told me I should read The Homeless Bird so we went to the library and got it. It's about a girl in India. I'll tell you more about it when I finish it. While we were there I saw another book called Sister to the Wolf that looked cool so I got it, too.

Huuuuuh. Sigh. Well, I just thought I'd share that with all of you. Any of you have any ideas for books I should read? We put Graceling on hold at the library, by the way. I heard some of you liked it and some of you didn't. Anyway, that's it. Love you all!

Christmas

I feel like this is late to blog about Christmas, but I have to get it out of the way so I can blog about things that are happening now.

During December we were having a hard time feeling the Christmas spirit. Was it because there was no snow? I don't know. But we just weren't feelin' it so we decided to make the feeling. We made paper chains for the main room and mini ones for the American girl dolls rooms. Aren't they so cute? I love making things for the dolls. Anna took the picture of me. I couldn't tell it was me at first. I don't know if I have ever seen my profile. Only the front of me in the mirror. Anyway, just thought I'd share.

We spent Thanksgiving with Dad this year so we got the entire Christmas vacation with Mom in California. The night before Christmas Eve we went to Lizzie's. We planned to go and stay Christmas Eve day and evening and leave that night to have Christmas at home, then we thought we would leave the day after Christmas. We ended up leaving on Wednesday. Anyway, we had a great Christmas Eve. One of Shad's realitive's who was super nice came to spend the evening with us. We had our traditional sandwiches on homemade rolls for dinner. I know that doesn't seem fancy, but I honestly look forward to it every year! I'm not sure why, but I do. We then had Sandcake (a bread cake that Steve really likes. It's basically pound cake) for Jesus's birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to him. I've never done that before, but the little kids really liked it. Then we acted out the Christmas story. Lizzie through together these awesome costumes with scraps of fabric. Tanner and Gracie, as Mary and Joseph, wore gray pillowcases with hole for their arms. It was just really creative. Then we watched The Santa Clause and ate treats. I really like that movie. We watched the second one the next day and I really liked that one, too. Oh yeah! After sandcake we opened up cousin presents that we were giving to each other. I don't know how I could have forgotten that. Tanner asked every ten minutes when we would open them. It was very cute and funny. :)

Christmas day we woke up earlier than I would have thought ideal and opened presents as families. We didn't pay attention to Kate and Tanner's presents and they didn't pay attention to ours. I don't want to name everything that I got, but I did get an ipod nano (would it be just a nano?) which I love! I love how it is so small, I love the touch screen and I love how I can just clip it on or slip it into my pocket. I also got boots! I'll take a pic of it along with one of the present I gave Anna. They were a size too small so we took them back and bought the same ones a size bigger for a lot cheaper, so I bought some pants with the extra money.

So, that's what our Christmas was like. It was awesome. We just took down our decorations yesterday and the tree is still sitting out in the driveway. We think it adds a lot to Norma's Taco's. :)