*Sigh* I'm home.

Eric, Lydia, and I went out to Colorado last week to visit Jacque. For the first couple of days, I had a blast. It was so relaxing, and we got to hang out with a bunch of new people. On Friday we went sledding.




Saturday, we didn't do much. Jacque had to work in the morning. After she got back, we played a few card games, then went on a drive. In the end we walked up to a waterfall and took pictures of the mountains. Then we went bowling Saturday evening.




Sunday, we went to church. In the afternoon we went sledding again. The first part of that was fun, and here are some pictures.



The next part wasn't so great. Jacque broke her leg and was flown to Denver Sunday night. Eric, Lydia and I went back to Jacque's house in Alamosa. There we stayed for the next couple of days while Jacque recovered from surgery. Dad eventually brought her home Wednesday, and we left shortly afterward to beat a storm that was coming. We stopped for the night in Lamar and got home about 4:30 yesterday. Now we're all recovering. It's been a long week and hasn't turned out the way we thought it would. However, we're all thankful that God kept us all safe and that the only bad thing that happened was a broken leg.

It’s a long slow beautiful dance...

The beloved br--I mean cat has returned. Hugo has been living at some neighbor's and eating well. He was here at Thanksgiving and was fine when Jessica came, but when Rex came, enough was enough. He was not going to live with two dogs. We haven't seen him since then until yesterday. Already he's made several trips inside. :)

My grandma came out of surgery well. For those of you who haven't heard, my grandma S. broke her leg Saturday. It was a pretty major break in her lower right leg--both bones broken, with a total of four breaks. However, she was able to stand up today, and that's a good thing. She should be coming to the hospital in Sabetha Friday.

It's December, and I'm planning my summer already. I would like to go to TFY (Theological Foundations for Youth) in Pittsburgh, but that's three weeks out of my summer. I should get a job and all that fun stuff, but if I go to TFY, I probably wouldn't be able to do so.

Last week after the final Kreyole class, we were hanging around the church visiting. The Swifts sadly (to us) have moved to South Dakota, and they were in town last week to pack up the rest of their stuff. Well, they have a set of identical twins. I was talking to them, and they took off crawling across the floor. However, one of them had trouble making it to his destination. He ran straight into Lydia. Then he tried to pull himself up and discovered it was a face he didn't know!

Here are a few of the cool things I've learned recently:

Erasmus said, "I would to God that the ploughman would sing a text of the Scriptures at his plough, and that the weaver would hum them to the tune of his shuttle...I wish that the traveller would beguile the tediousness of his journey with this pastime. All communication of the Christian should be of the Scriptures."
I agree that we should spend much more time studying the Scriptures. However, does that mean we should spend all our time studying it? Should we neglect our schoolwork or our jobs to study the Scriptures all the time? David did say in the psalms that he loved to meditate on God's Word both day and night. It's an interesting point to consider.

Second thing I learned is this: "You create parallel structure in a sentence by using the same grammatical form to express equal, or parallel structure."

...Well, so maybe I didn't just learn that, but it was still cool. :)

My next assignment in history is to write a 5-7 page essay on the Christian influence of the Constitution, the Amendments, and the Federalist Papers No. 10 & 51 over time. Therefore, you should not expect to see me tomorrow, and if you do, please ask me why I'm not working on my essay.

Countdowns:

• 3 days before they busiest day of the month (TubaFest, girls' Christmas tea party, church Christmas party
• 8 days before Eric, Lydia, and I take the train to Colorado.
  

Wow, this was a really long post. I hope the next ones won't be quite this long.

Wow, it has been a very full week. School has been especially stressful with the end of the semester coming up with the desire to finish out the first half of the year well. I may not have everything that I wanted earlier, but I want to have good grades as well as understand the material. I have two weeks.

In addition to that, we had a band concert this evening. There was some dead space in there when the band and choir were getting to perform. I knew that I was going to play one Christmas carol to help pass the time, but when I got there, I found out that a string on Arizona's harp had broken. So I was asked to just play some more songs. It was awful! I blundered through some music, but it was not good. Oh well, I survived that mortification. Everything else was okay.

I also got my PSAT scores back this week. I was disappointed in my critical reading scores, but I guess my math was okay. Not great, but acceptable.

Despite the glum news I've given you so far, life is still good. I have my family, my friends, and a very warm stove to sit in front of whenever I get cold (which happens often :P). I'm very blessed.

~Luke 2:8-18

Are You Serious???

So I just found out further instructions for MAACS playoffs, which are January 13th. I knew I would have to have my piece memorized and an original copy found by then, but I didn't know the date for sure. That's not the twist. The twist is that I have to have five copies mailed in by Jan. 9th. I know, count 'em: one, two, three, four, five. Normally, we only have to have three. And to find the music in less than a month...I really need help. Would anyone happen to have "Nocturne" in F Minor by Chopin, op. 55, no. 1?

Good news: I sent in my letter to Jane Austen yesterday. I decided to do this contest, which is called Letters about Literature. To compete, you have to choose a book that you really enjoyed or made you think about something and write a letter to the author. I selected Pride and Prejudice. It was a lot of fun!