Friday September 18, 2015 {Happy Birthday Mom!!}

1. The day started early, when mom left for work. We took some time to shower, eat, and generally get ready, then the preparations began.

2. Today was my mom's birthday, and Isabelle and I had decided to clean the house. My mom is a wonderful person who does a lot of things. She works full-time, homeschools, and is a single parent at that. With all of that, there are some things that slip through the cracks sometimes, and I know it bothers her that our house is often not as clean as she would like it to be.

3. Isabelle and I had high hopes, and we did our best. Due to extenuating circumstances, our basement is still torn up and it's just generally a disaster. We knew there wasn't much we could do down there, so we focused on what we could do: the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathrooms. It took most of the day, but overall, I was happy with the results.

4. When mom got home from work, we headed out to dinner at D'anna's, a terrific Italian restaurant downtown. Though mom didn't know it yet, I was texting people all through dinner (yep, I was being a typical teenager). I was texting the families of our homeschool group however, giving them updates on our progress through dinner.

5. When we left D'Anna's, we walked a few block to Pure Bliss for desert, and Mom was very surprised to find all of our friends waiting there! I am honestly a terrible lair, so the fact that we pulled off this surprise party without her knowing anything is kind of amazing.

6. We hung out at Pure Bliss for a few hours, which was really great. I spent a lot of it talking with HW about all sorts of geeky stuff, including iPhone (which he has) vs. Android (which I have), various apps and podcasts, flags (the New Zealand flag redesign is really pretty exciting to watch), dance, Doctor Who, computer games, and Star Wars. The Star Wars segments were mostly him getting really exciting about things and telling me lots of things about it, only a small portion of which I understood. I don't share his excitement about all things Star Wars, but I can appreciate and enjoy his enthusiasm. :P

7. Afterwards, some of us walked to the Commerical Street Night Market, which is pretty cool. We didn't stay very long, but it was neat to check it out.

8. The Winslows dropped me off at home (mom and isabelle went home without going to the night market).

9. Read The Time Traveler's Wife, and went to bed.

Happy Birthday Mom!! <3

August 30 - September 5, 2015

Sunday, August 30th

Sunday morning, we woke up and there was power! Yay! Mom tried to clean up the tree debris a bit, then we went to pick up my friend HW. Mom dropped us both off at NV's house. For a few hours, we played some games (including The Resistence!) with N and his brother and his brother's friends. Then the three of us hung out for a while and chatted about stuff. I love hanging out with them, but there were a few moments when I distinctly noticed the fact that I was the only girl there. It doesn't bother me to hang out with boys all the time, and most of my closest friends are boys, but there are rare moments where I feel a little out of place. 

Carolyn picked H and I up and dropped me at the house where I was babysitting. For the next three hours, I played with the kids, then the dad dropped me off at my house. When I got there, Lydia was there! The Winslows still didn't have power, so she was staying at our house.

Monday, August 31st

I got up and didn't do much for most of the morning. I did some random chores around the house, read, played some games on the computer. Lydia and I went to the library to volunteer at 3. When we were done there, we walked downtown to get drinks at Cafe Adagio, then took a bus back to Haggen, where mom picked us up. Because the Winslows still were out of power, Lydia stayed another night.

Tuesday, September 1st

Again, a pretty boring day. Lydia left in the early afternoon. 

Wednesday, September 2nd

The morning was pretty slow. I went to park day, where there was a torrential rain storm, thunder, and lightening. That was exciting.

Thursday, September 3rd

The morning was again rather quiet. In the afternoon, we went to our dad's house for dinner. We had some left over cake, since it was our step-brother's birthday on Wednesday. 

Friday, September 4th

We spent the morning cleaning up all the debris from the tree. We hauled a bunch of stuff in our neighbor's trailer to a place the city had set up for people to dump storm debris. We went to Boomer's for lunch, then came home to do stuff around the house. Mom and I went to WCC to buy books before realizing they aren't open on Fridays in the summer (augh!). None of us were at all hungry for dinner, so we just ate popcorn while watching Lost.

Saturday, September 5th

The guy who was doing our carpet came back to finish. I was at YARC, where we had pizza and cake, because it's our one year anniversary! Mom couldn't come pick me up til the carpet guy left, so I had to wait for another hour and a half after the meeting ended. On the bright side, I read 135 pages of the book I got! It's super fantastic.

Sunday August 24, 2015 {A Graduation and a Birthday}

1. Sunday morning we got up and headed out pretty quickly. My mom dropped me off at Village Books (our wonderful local independent bookstore) and then she and Isabelle went to the "Dog Days of Summer" event at Lake Padden.

2. I looked around for awhile before buying socks and fudge for my friend L, whose party I was going to go to, plus a card and chocolate for Emma, who just had a birthday. I also bought a book for myself (The Book Thief).

3. I ran into a person I knew vaguely (a friend of my dad's who I have been friends with on Facebook for a long time) and had a brief conversation with him about college and books and such. It pained me greatly to have to turn down an ARC he offered to grab for me (I can only have 4 out at a time, and I didn't have any to return, so I couldn't take another one). I don't know if I can say what book it was, but it's the book I'm most excited about that's coming out this fall.

4. Mom and Isabelle picked me up and we headed to L's graduation/birthday party. All sorts of people were there, and it was great.

5. We came home and watched the two last episodes of Gravity Falls. I'd seen the whole series before, but now Mom and Isabelle are caught up too.

6. Read the Time Traveler's Wife, and went to bed.

11th Grade Highlights

Since I am now officially done with my junior year of high school, I thought I'd share some of the year's highlights, in pictures! The rest of this post is all pictures, with captions. Enjoy a little taste of my year, in mostly chronological order.

Going out to dinner with friends before school started

Steampunk Halloween!

Performing in Dracula! I'm in this picture, can you find me?

Visiting the Lights of Christmas with friends, none of whom are in this photo :P

Curling Isabelle's hair before the Nutcracker.

Backstage selfie from the Nutcracker.

On stage in the Nutcracker.

Buying 12 boxes of tea for C. for Christmas!

Awesome early morning sleepover selfie.

My friends and I have our own shelf at Village Books!

Visiting the University of Victoria.

Hailey painted my nails at the Superbowl party

Our awesome current events to find out what we value most. For me? Community.

Visiting the University of Portland over spring break.

Seaside, OR

Pacific Lutheran University

Baking cookies at a sleepover

Teaching Latin

Painting this little guy was fun :)

Visiting the Pompeii exhibit at the Pacific Science Center

Lots of Geology homework that tested my drawing skills...

Mother's day selfie

My 17th birthday!

Working with friends to get C. a birthday gift he sorely needed.

Performing at the Scottish Highland Games!

Friday, May 15, 2015 {Pizza and Ice Cream}

1. I got up at 6, and got ready for school. I took the bus to WCC, and got to class early as usual.

2. I had decided the night before to not even attempt the bonus assignment, and as it turned out, only one person actually did. We had a quiz (which I think I did okay on), and then the rest of the class period was finishing up the rock identification lab from a week or two ago. C. and I barely had time to finish the lab before class was over, and actually, we stayed a few minutes late to get the the last two or three rocks. The lab and postlab worksheets were actually due today, but since I don't think a single person finished in time, he said we could turn them in on Monday morning instead.

3. After that, C. had to work, so I went to find L. to hang out for a while. After she left for class, I had to go the the library to print some things out for my next class. I went to go meet C. in the math center, but got caught up talking to Jake about Age of Ultron, which I haven't seen yet, and he's seen twice now. I eventually just had to leave the conversation because of spoiler reasons, but by the time I made it to the math center, C. was already gone.

4. I went to English. We had just turned in proposals for our research project, which included a short annotated bibliography, and we spent much of the class in peer review groups reading and discussing other people's proposals.

5. After class, I rode the bus downtown, and walked to an appointment I had. After that, Connie gave me a ride to Current Events class at my house.

6. The meta-topic of the day was "debate", and it was an interesting one. Lots of good discussion.

7. After class, most of us went to a pizza place downtown to eat and hang out. Despite my "no gifts" edict, I did still recieve a few, most notably from C. a sonic screwdriver that is an actual working pen that writes in normal ink and invisible ink. And the screwdriver lights up with ultraviolet light, letting you read the invisible ink.

8. After a few hours, we walked a few blocks to Mallard's for ice cream. Once there, HW. and I (and sort of C.) spent a while trying to figure out how much dirt you eat a day if you, as HW. claimed an old saying said "eat a peck of dirt before you die." Using a conversion app on his phone, we did some calculations, and after a lot of error, we came to the conclusion that if you do indeed eat a peck of dirt (which is about 2 gallons) of dirt before you die, and you live for 80 years, you eat about 1/3 of a cubic centimeter of dirt each day. I love my geeky friends. :) 

9. Ted got the rest of them to sing happy birthday to me not once but twice, once at Rudy's, where I was sort of expecting it, and once at Mallard's, where I definitely wasn't. 

10. We went home, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 {My 17th Birthday}

1. I got up, and got ready, then ate a cinnamon role and some strawberries.

2. My morning was largely uneventful. I did some homework, read a little, did boring stuff.

3. I ate some lunch, did a little more school work, and really, that was basically all I did until about 3pm.

4. I also read all the Facebook messages I got from people. Thank you so much everybody, you are all so awesome! :)

5. At about 3, Julie picked us up and we went to her house where Isabelle did Julie's physics class, and I worked with some clay for a project I'm working on.

6. After that, Mom came to pick us up, and Connie surprised me by bringing cupcakes, and there was a mini impromptu celebration, which was fun.

7. We left Julie's and went to Busara (an awesome Thai restaurant in town) for dinner, skipping ballet. We came home, I opened some presents, and then we had cake from Pure Bliss, a bakery in town.

8. We watched Doctor Who, and then Mom and I spent an hour talking about what classes I should register for Fall quarter (because I need to register tomorrow morning).

9. Wrote this, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Homeschool Friday: October 21-25, 2013 {Week 8} + Life Update

I'm sorry this post is so late! I'm going to quickly go over school stuff here:

School Stuff
School didn't go super well this week. With being sick and busy, a lot didn't get done. In history, I read 20 pages out of my textbook, did a bunch of mini bios on important people from the reading, did a map, and added some dates to my timeline. That was everything I had wanted to get done for the week. For math, I was supposed to do five lessons, but only did three. Also, in science, I did two of the three I had hoped to do. In Spanish, I got almost all of it done, and in Latin, I only did about half a week's worth.

So, school didn't go too well, but I need to make some allowances. This was certainly the busiest week of the school year so far, and I was feeling pretty crappy for a lot of it. On that note, here is the promised Life Update:

Life Update
On Monday, I felt terrible, and skipped dance, though I did still volunteer at the library (mostly because I was able to choose tasks where I could sit the whole time. In dance, that's not really an option).

Tuesday, we hosted the current events discussion group, where we talked about (and voted on) many of the local ballot issues this election.

Wednesday, I went to park day, and got to see a friend I don't see too much any more, as well as her new puppy.

Thursday, I was feeling somewhat better, and I spent the afternoon at a friend's house, helping them decorate from their annual Halloween party. The family has two boys about the age of my sister and I, and we split into teams, Isabelle with the younger boy, and I was with the older. I may need to go back before the 31st though, since the project we were working on (which is a HUGE project) was not done when I left, and I think they might need help finishing. I'd say what it is, but I know some friends of mine read here, and I don't want to ruin the surprise before the party. :)

Friday, I went with some friends to the Washington State corn maze, which was amazing. It is 12 acres, and in the shape of WA. All the paths through it are major highways. We had maps, and went around looking for landmarks, which all had mini versions in the corn maze. We found the Grand Cooley Dam, the Space Needle, and the Peace Arch. Almost every town had a sign, and we found many, including Bellingham, Ferndale, Blaine, Concrete, Mt. Vernon, and many more on the East Side.

Saturday (yesterday), my Mom and I went to see the Joy Luck Club at a local theater. It was an amazing performance, and very true to the book.

Today is my sister's 12th birthday, and we are rushing around trying to prepare for all the celebrations, and to host choir at our house this afternoon as well!

So, that's why I didn't too much school done. I mostly feel better now, though there is a pesky cough that doesn't want to go away.