August 23

I was listening to a song, and the word 'tchotchkes' came up. I looked it up, and it actually is a word. Wikipedia says it's 'a small toy, gewgaw, knickknack, swag, bauble, thingamajig, doodad, lagniappe, trinket, or kitsch.'

So there you go, your word for today. Congratulations! Having learned the obligatory one new thing for today, you can go back to bed.

My brother is reading over my shoulder, so I'll stop here.

August 21

That budgeting assignment is now done and submitted, finally! Now I only have one assignment to worry about. Isn't that so much better?!

I've been  listening to Phineas and Ferb songs all morning. For those who don't know, Phineas and Ferb are these guys:

 and they have some awesome songs, and the coolest adventures. This is their theme song:

There's 104 days in summer vacation
And school comes along just to end it
So the annual problem for our generation
Is finding a good way to spend it
Like maybe!
Building a rocket
Or fighting a mummy
Or climbing up the Eiffel tower
Discovering something that doesn't exist
Or giving a monkey a shower
Surfing tidal waves
Creating nano bots
Or looking Frankenstein's brain
Finding a dodo bird
Painting a continent
Driving your sister insane
As you can see
There's a whole lot of stuff to do
Before school starts this fall
So stick with us cause Phineas and Ferb
Are gonna do it all
So stick with us cause Phineas and Ferb are
Gonna do it all!


It is a totally awesome song.

July 25

Tonight I, my older brother, and my sister are going to be having a dress rehearsal for the skit we are performing on Sunday. I'm playing a shopaholic, and it took me a while to find all of the bags I needed, and fill them up with assorted things, including, but not limited to, clothes, shoes, plastic food, and fake jewelry. Now, I have so many bags to carry that I can hardly hold them all, and that's exactly how it's meant to be.

I've been listening to songs by Train today, and most are pretty good. I particularly like '50 ways to say goodbye'. It starts off a bit like a song from Phantom of the Opera, but is much more funny than those songs.

Has anyone ever finished a game of Monopoly? Last night I was playing Monopoly on my iPad with my sister and little brother, and we didn't finish it. In fact, we were playing the game we had started the previous Tuesday! How does anyone actually finish a game of Monopoly? I think you're supposed to go bankrupt to finish, but we are all too careful for that. At least, so far.. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa! Anyway, of all the Monopoly games I have ever played, the only way they have ever finished was because someone got bored, so we just stopped playing.

June 13

Have you ever noticed in some really old documents all of the s's look like f's? For example, this afternoon I watched a story about the start of Amazing Grace, and the first verse looked like this.

Amazing grace! How fweet the found
That faved a wretch like me.
I once was loft, but now am found,
Was blind but now I fee.

Doesn't it look so weird, and so funny? I don't know if I'll ever be able to sing Amazing Grace again without adding at least one f.


I actually got a decent amount of my Maths done this morning. I still have more to do (a lot more to do), but there at least I got some done.

May 18

I finally finished the unit of my history that I was working on. It took weeks, but now it is finally over. Yay! History is interesting, but it takes so long!

Tonight I give out my party invitations, and I'm excited. Now I can't wait for my party. Truth be told, I think I'm more excited about the party than my birthday. After all, I've had plenty of birthdays, but I've had far less parties.

After several days of cold weather, so cold that I wore ugboots all day, and my little brother went around the house pretending to be frozen solid, the weather is finally warming up. I'm actually hot in my long sleeves. I'm sure I'll be glad of my long sleeves tonight though. Youth group goes late.

Song Lyrics! Some songs have fantastic lyrics. My favorite lyrics tell a story. Have you ever heard the song Walking Her Home, by Mark Shultz? It has a fantastic story, that is sad, yet sweet. If you've seen The Notebook, this song will probably remind you of that movie. They are very similar.

My mother just made some fantastic cookies. As my sister described them, they are like apple pie, in cookie form! Apple pie is one of my absolute favorite foods, so I think these are totally delicious.

The Wiggle are breaking up!

sI just heard on the news that the Wiggles are breaking up. How could they do that? The Wiggles have been around for 21 years, they can't just stop. Worse, the new yellow Wiggle is going to be a girl! There has never been a girl Wiggle, and there shouldn't be now. It's tragic! I and my siblings grew up with the Wiggles. We danced around our lounge room to their songs. How could it all just end?!

May 3

As I write, I'm listening to Our Song. It's a song by Taylor Swift, my favorite of all of her songs. I love most, probably all (I haven't heard all of them) of her songs, but this is my favorite. Here are the lyrics:

"Our Song"

I was riding shotgun
With my hair undone
In the front seat of his car
He's got a one-hand feel
On the steering wheel
The other on my heart
I look around, turn the radio down
He says, "Baby is something wrong?"
I say, "Nothing,
I was just thinking
How we don't have a song"
And he says...

[Chorus:]
Our song is the slamming screen door,
Sneakin' out late, tapping on your window
When we're on the phone and you talk real slow
'cause it's late and your mama don't know
Our song is the way you laugh
The first date "Man, I didn't kiss her, and I should have"
And when I got home ... 'fore I said amen
Asking God if he could play it again

I was walking up
The front porch steps
After everything that day
Had gone all wrong
And been trampled on
And lost and thrown away
Got to the hallway,
Well on my way
To my lovin' bed
I almost didn't notice
All the roses
And the note that said...

[Chorus:]
Our song is the slamming screen door,
Sneakin' out late, tapping on your window
When we're on the phone and you talk real slow
'cause it's late and your mama don't know
Our song is the way you laugh
The first date "Man, I didn't kiss her, and I should have"
And when I got home ... 'fore I said amen
Asking God if he could play it again

I've heard every album, listened to the radio
Waited for something to come along
That was as good as our song...

[Chorus:]
'Cause our song is the slamming screen door,
Sneakin' out late, tapping on his window
When we're on the phone and he talks real slow
'cause it's late and his mama don't know
Our song is the way he laughs
The first date "Man, I didn't kiss him, and I should have."
And when I got home ... 'fore I said amen
Asking God if he could play it again

I was riding shotgun
With my hair undone
In the front seat of his car
I grabbed a pen
And an old napkin
And I wrote down our song


It feels like Friday! I can't wait for tomorrow, because it feels like it should be Friday already, so I want Friday to come. Tomorrow is the bonfire, and hopefully I won't have a sore throat by then. My throat is better today than it was yesterday, so maybe by tomorrow I'll be fine, then I can roast my own marshmallows. My sister came up with a plan for cooking me marshmallows. I find a stick, she puts them on, my brother cooks them, she says when they're done, then (her favorite part) she EATS THEM! I'm not sure how this gets me marshmallows, but she says it will work. I have no doubts that it will work to HER satisfaction.

My little brother has been working on fractions on his whiteboard. He came over to me and asked me to help him, in such a cute voice that it was almost impossible to resist. Have you ever seen Larry the Cucumber from VeggieTales? My brother is so much like that, down to the silly songs. He even likes to hop or skip around when he's happy. 

April 27

We have to leave the house in an hour if we are going to make the bus to the city. That doesn't give me nearly enough time to do everything I wanted to. I wanted to be able to write up a new stoy on Charlie, but now I might have to do that on the train.

In fact, there is so little time that I haven't even turned on my notoriously tempermental laptop. I'm blogging from the main computer instead.

My little brother got a whiteboard today. Itt should be easier for him to do Maths now, because he can work it all out on a white board instead of on paper. Sometimes paper just isn't big enough. It's so much more fun to scribble wildly, as big as you need, without having to continue equations over the page. Sometimes I have to take up three pages of my maths book with one equation! My writings are pretty well spaced.

My sister is playing the keyboard. Fortunately, she's stopped with the Christmas Carols. I am so glad of that. She hasn't done any for a while. However, she does play 'Can you feel the love tonight', which always sounds so sad. She doesn't agree with me and my older brother. She tells us that it is a happy song, all about true love. I don't care if it has true love in it, that doesn't change that it is a sad song. The music is sad, and some of the lyris are sad too.

It is really cold today. It's really starting to feel like winter. That's not really a bad thing, because my birthday is in winter. Somehow, my birthday feels like it is just around the corner, even though it is over a month away. I couldn't possibly start counting down until May.

April 3

Our pastor and his wife came around for lunch today. Normally, my siblings and I are peculiarly quiet in company, but today we acted pretty normal. The conversation was a little lacking at times, but it was fun.

My sister is going out tonight. She looks fabulous, as always, and she is going out to take part in a leadership discussion for Kid's Club. There's also going to be pizza.

I had heaps of fun today, using my iPad to take videos of my little brother. He does the craziest stuff. This morning, he made up a song about window washing.

And so the holidays go on...

March 9

I'm in a really upset mood right now. This has not been a good day. Part of it is my fault. It's not a good idea to listen to the saddest songs I could find all morning, without any reason. I normally don't do that, but I do like those songs, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

This afternoon I found out that in one of my subjects, the work I though I needed done this semester actually has to be done this term, meaning I have twice as much work to do in half as much time! I already have a lot of work, and that's just making it harder. That's also one of my harder subjects, making things that much worse.

Added to that, I'm feeling a little bit lonely. My brother is in the city for the day, and even though he will be back later, I'd love for him to be here now, so I can talk to him. He's in the same grade as I am, he can understand the pressure to get everything done. I won't see him until we go to youth group tonight, and youth group isn't the best time to talk.

I think I have some pretty good reasons to not be in a great mood. I'll really need God's help for me to finish on schedule by the end of the term. I really don't want to have to work on the holidays, but I know that by myself I cannot get everything done.

March 7

Both my brothers are feeling sick. The rest of us are fine, however. My younger brother was still very eager to go to the library earlier today,  so he's obviously not too bad.

We did go to the library earlier today, and it was cool! I always love going to a different library. They have different books there. I found 12 books I wanted to borrow, not realising that I only had space for one book on my card! The way cards work at our library is that you are supposed to able to borrow 20 books. However, the machines will let you borrow 40 books, in case you have the strange habit of returning 20 books, then getting another 20 books before the system realises that you have returned some. So, back to today, and I had 39 books on my card, and tried to borrow another 12! Fortunately, my mother let me put some books on her card, otherwise I might have had To go home without any new books. Tragic, indeed!

My older brother and my sister are washing the guinea pigs. They are getting a bit dirty (the guinea pigs, though my brother and sister probably are too!), and need a wash. I'm (rather selfishly) hoping I won't have to help. I don't really like getting assorted yuckness off guinea pig hair. Who would?

Our English assignment should be done soon, and then this silent barrier may be lifted, and I can talk to my brother about it. I like talking to my brother about schoolwork. We are in the same grade this year, which has never happened before now, so I want to make the most of it.

One final thing: do you think the song Friends Forever is sad? I definitely do, but my mother doesn't, to such an extent that she can't see why I do!

December 20

My older brother and I just finished putting up Christmas lights inside, and it's hard! I don't usually stand on chairs, especially not ones that move! It's scary when it starts moving under you.

There is an rather large amount of presents under our Christmas tree. I believe it was 22 at last count, and more are yet to be added. Well, with a big family, lots of Christmas presents are the inevitable result. I have 2 of the biggest, and I think one of them is actually a small thing in a big box, but I have zip idea of what the other one is. It's lumpy, so it might be clothes.

Our house looks like Christmas time. Lights up inside and out, a Christmas tree with lots of presents, songs playing most of the time, if not on YouTube, on the keyboard. What about you, what do you do for Christmas? Do you even celebrate it?

My loopy little brother told us this morning that he would finish his breakfast before any of us. My sister beat him out, even though he had started his breakfast first! He takes a long time to eat. Sometimes, we've finished dessert while he's still eating mains!

Does anyone else have a reading program at their library? Our library has an online program this year, and I signed up. One of the prizes is an I-pad. That would be cool!

I think my favorite Christmas song this year is His Favorite Christmas Story. It has a beautiful story to it.

Well, Merry Christmas!!!