For today's post, I actually did a collab with my bestie, Olivia Nickerson from 9 Kids plus 2. A couple of weeks ago, we all were given the opportunity to play at a Christmas recital and it was AMAZING. There were some ups and downs in getting everything ready, but as you can see in the video below, we were able to pull if off p.r.e.t.t.y well if I do say so myself!
To hear the background story on rehearsals and practices and such (as well as a possible amount of ranting ;)) you can go to Livs' blog HERE and read our collab post.
Hello all! I feel like I keep saying this. . . but I am so sorry for the lack of blogging on my part! :( Confession: I am not a very good time manager, it's a skill I need to work on. I thought I had gotten the hang of it, but well, yeah. Bunch of things got thrown my way and hehe, I found out time managing hadn't actually been quite mastered yet *blushes* Just want to say, thank you to all of you who are still hanging with me even though I haven't really been posting. Means so much :)
Ok, so now that I've got that out of the way ;) I'm gonna attempt to wrap up January and some of December as well since I didn't do a December Highlights posts *grins guiltily*
Life
Before I forget, I finally updated the Our Family page. So if you'd like to check that out, you can go HERE.
// Took an updated family photo, this time with Sweet Pea (yesss....finally found a name for her! Thanks, Faith ;)) The hilarious thing about our family pictures is that each time we take a new one, the tree just gets smaller and the number of people just get bigger. And the focus! My poor camera gets so confused on what to focus on, there being so many faces and all xD
// Sister time! Dad found our little tent from yeeeaarrrss ago and so we had a girls' campout in the living room. By the lighted Christmas tree, sipping hot drinks and munching on toaster-oven s'mores, playing on Picmonkey...couldn't have been better!
// Three words. My. Little. Pony.
Ok so first off, you all should know, Snow White has discovered a love of drawing...and her art has been incredible! MLP was a popular subject for her for awhile, so Tiger Lily and I joined in to help her. We came out with uh...quite a few pictures! :D
// Umm....just a random picture... of pictures
Yeah...we're wackos ...
// Christmas Day - Toblerone was simply exuberant that day. His enthusiasm in every single gift he
opened was precious :D
// Sledding. Dad may or may not have turned our toboggan hill into one of those black diamonds ... even I'm too scared to go down it ;P
This isn't even the part I'm scared about. What you can's see is beyond the bend. At the start of the hill is a monstrous pile of snow that Dad built up with his Kubota. Simply monstrous. When you're at the top, you can't even see the bottom. And it goes straight down. At like a 90 degree angle. And the 'loading dock' is super narrow too, so if your sled is too long and you don't balance properly, you either go straight down the hill or backwards, which hurts just as much. No sane person would go down it.
Ahhh....we celebrated Tiger Lily's 15th birthday!! So blessed to have her as a sister, best friend,
and partner in crime. Love her a ton!!
// Hosted several parties, some Christmas, some New Year, and one for the birthday girl too. It was an amazing time with friends and a nice opportunity to get to know people from the new church too :)
// *squeals* I am absolutely in love with this picture. She is an utter doll! We have a baby girl to play dress up with againnnnnn *cackles evilly* xD
// Snow White got a chocolate mould for Christmas and for a time, our family was surprised with many sweet little chocolates :)
// Another random picture of Sweet Pea. (my iPod is gonna explode with all the pictures I have of her ;))
// Spent lotssss of time with friends...
Seriously, these guys are the best. When we get together, do you know what we do? We have jam sessions. It. Is. Amazing. Last time, we had vocals (harmony and melody complete!), guitar, fiddle, piano, whistle, and cajon (anyone know how to pronounce that? ;) Tiger Lily and I have settled on sounding like honking geese when we say it xD) Really, it is sooooo much fun! I LOVE hanging out with all of them!!!!! :D
My very awesome group of friends ^_^ We're actually missing a couple people (LEA!!!!!) in this pic...
// Cinderella photo shoot! This was soooo much fun! And a great opportunity for sisters time too :D We're hoping to make a video, but we'll have to see... ;)
// Celebrated Ironman's 11th birthday in January! Tiger Lily and I made him a Lego Star Wars cake. (wish I could show you the whole cake but it's got his whole (and real :P) name all across the top xD) Anyway, Tiger Lily and I wanted to try this new decorating technique where you dab coloured icing on the cake, then run a spatula across it to smear it. It actually turned out better than we expected!
// First skiing trip of the year! And this time, Livs came with us! Soooo much fun! (guys, Liv is fast. Like really, really fast. It was her first time skiing...and she caught on so fast. By the end of the day, she was shooting down those hills faster than the rest of us :P
Oooo yes...talking about first-time skiers, Toblerone started skiing too!!!! He is SO adorable, with those miniature boots and skis. And he's super good too. At the end of the day, he was exhausted, but he managed to ski on even the blue hills! Which was uber amazing! It's so weird and funny and cute when you see little people skiing on rather big hills. Or maybe that's just me. . .
// Baking classes. Did I tell you about the courses I was taking? If not...well, now you know ;) Here are some of the things I've made so far:
// Teaching. Our online school closed down on some unfortunate circumstances, and it was very sad :( We're still praying for the head of the school. He had done such a good job running everything, it was a major blow to everyone to hear that he had to close down. But as my friend (Allison, where are you, gal? ;)) reminded me with a quote from Sound of Music: "When the Lord closes a door - somewhere He opens a window". And he certainly did. An amazing woman, (can't give names just for privacy reasons :)) had this idea to start a school for people to teach independently. They could teach anything they wanted, and age limits ranged from kids to full grown adults. We've got a good mix of pretty much everything and everyone. Kids from age 10 to adults are teaching things from growing pumpkins, to Home Ec, to Drawing, to American History ... it's amazing I tell you! I volunteered as an English teacher and the experience has been sooo amazing. My students are all awesome (two of 'em are my brothers ... which makes class uh...interesting ;P). But thank the Lord for the opportunity to experience this!
Also, the teachers from Landry have been absolutely amazing. They continued to teach their classes at a very-much-so discounted price for all the families' sakes. Seriously, they are amazing. They are sacrificing their time just to continue to educate. They are dedicated. Love them so much!
//Racing for Time. My friend is hosting her blog tour for her brand new book...starting in TWO DAYS!!! Can't wait! :D
// Random "conversation":
Toblerone crying hard
Dad: What's wrong?
Dare Devil: I didn't mean to...
Dad: Where does it hurt?
Toblerone *wails*: NOWHERREEEEE
Mom, Tiger Lily, and I all die laughing
// Oh look. Another picture of Sweet Pea. I wonder how that got there?
Music
I've been listening to a lot of songs...but these are the two newer ones.
Come Alive - Lauren Daigle
Priceless - For King and Country
Books
*cringes*
So..umm...yeahhh. Time hasn't really allowed for much reading. I did finish reading Beyond the Horizon by Jesseca Dawn...it's an absolutely AH-mazing book! OH, and in December I finally finally FINALLY got to finish the Blades of Acktar series. Tiger Lily and I were talking and squealing about it for DAYS. And now we're positively dying for Book 4 ;)
In the whole month of January up 'til now...I haven't even read 1 full book. In the process of reading Water Princess, Fire Prince and I'm re-reading Ruins of Gorlanbut I haven't finished them yet *sighs* Anyone got extra time they could give me?
Goals
PRIORITIZE. School, teaching, work, blogging, family, friends, and even most importantly, my relationship with God. Everything's been all jumbled up and my main goal is to prioritize. Pray for me, please ;)
That about wraps it up for now! I will see you all, Lord willing, in a couple days for Liv's blog tourrrrr! :D
Wow, how does time go by so quickly? We're already on the 5th day? *checks calendar* 7 more days till Christmas!! ^_^
Today, I was gonna share a music video that I did...but I didn't have enough time to upload it :P So for now, I'm going to give you a list of 10 of (some) of my favourite Christmas songs. These don't include the traditional carols like O Holy Night, or Silent Night, Or Joy to the World, or Go Tell it On the Mountain, or O Come All Ye Faithful, or God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, or ....well, you get the point. It's just a given that I love those songs already ;)
Anyway, let's get onto the list, shall we? Decided to start of with one that I thought very appropriate to the blog party ;)
Hello all! It's the start of the 12 Days of Christmas! Yippee!! You can go to Faith's blog HERE for more amazing posts in this Christmas blog-linkup party! ^_^
Credits to Jesseca Dawn for such a gorgeous graphic!! :D
For today, I'm gonna share with you that video I mentioned in my previous post. The song played in the video is Light of the World, by Lauren Daigle. Tiger Lily is on fiddle and vocal harmony, Snow White on penny whistle, and I'm on piano and vocal melody.
I really love this song because it tells the Christmas story so well! It starts out with the world calling out for Emmanuel, then giving glory to the light of the world. Isn't that such a beautiful name for Christ? And it's true, He really is the Light of the World! He is our Messiah, our Prince of Peace has come!
So without further ado, I give you: Light of the World! ^_^
Here are the lyrics in case you couldn't hear some of them :)
It's December, it's December, it's December!! Yippee!!! At the moment, it is snowing hard. Before today, all we had was brown dead grass and rather warm weather. But then all of a sudden it just all started coming down. We might have a white Christmas after all! We just finished setting up our Christmas tree, with the Christmas music going on full blast :)
Anyway....here's my wrap up post for November. (I know... I'm 4 days late (possibly 5 depending on when I post this. It's currently December 4th, 10:59 pm...wonder how long it'll take to publish this? ;))
Life
Well, as you all probably know from my previous post, we had a rather big even happen in November. We met our new baby sister! :D She is soooo adorable! 💗 💗 💗 After a couple weeks or so, Mom and Dad finally came up with a name for her. I can't share it on here :( although I really wish I could; it's such a beautiful name! Gonna have to find a pseudonym for her....any of you have some ideas? ;)
Tiger Lily, Snow White, and I made a little threesome band together with piano, fiddle, and whistle. We were really surprised at how well it sounded on our first try. It was actually so good, we were later able to convince our piano teacher to let us play it at our annual Christmas recital.
Our piano teacher was impressed with the song we came up and personally, I think she really really loved Snow White's whistle playing ;) She asked us to play at two concerts instead of just the one. The day of the performance, we all had the normal stage jitters, but when it came time to play. . . this little star completely rocked it!
It was her first time playing a solo on stage, and in front of over 60 people too. And she did it twice! If I'm able, I'll see if I can share a video later on ;)
Mom also celebrated her birthday this month as well! Dad surprised her with a little cake .... Go Dad! :D
Maple also had her 7th birthday...and got a huge bone for her present. She loves it ;)
Ooohh yes....and we also had our annual PCC (Pregnancy Care Centre) banquet. A great time with friends volunteering for a great cause!
Oh hehe, and work. It has been so much fun working at Tim Hortons, and I'm really enjoying it. It was craziest when I first started, just because I had no idea what to do. But now I've caught on and it's been quite the experience. Oh yeah and I - uh - caught bread on fire. But just once :P I was on Sandwiches and Soups (basically making food orders) and put some buns into the toaster. The wrong way. I was wondering why they wouldn't come out, looked inside and found them burning merrily at the back. Strangely enough, no one freaked out. The girl who was helping me saw them, grabbed a stick, pushed them out, and said "There ya go." End of story xD
The Random Parts of Life
Just random pictures from random times ;)
Books
Sooo....my goal from last month was to read 8 books...I think I did. I'm not totally sure because I was so busy I didn't really keep count on what I read. I will say though, most of the books I read were short stories. So does that count? ;)
I found out earlier this month that the new church we're going to has a library...with a lot of books that I've been wanting to read for awhile. So yeah...that made me very happy :D
Music
Has anyone seen Moana? I haven't...but I really really want to! The trailers look awesome and the songs! Argh - amazing! How Far I'll Go is probably my favourite; it's stuck in my head at the moment.
Light of the World by Lauren Daigle has also been a very commonly listened to song lately. Partly because it's the song that we played at the Christmas recital ;)
Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift. Tiger Lily and I are currently trying to record this song. It's so much fun :)
December Song by Peter Hollens. Any of you here of the contest Peter Hollens is hosting? Soooo many covers of December Song popping up on Youtube ;) I actually did a cover of this with my friend....it was so much fun to record and film! :D
Goals
Last month's goals:
Read 8 books. I think so...
Post at least once or twice a week. Yes! I think it only ended up being once a week though.
Complete a tag or two. Sadly, no. Gotta try getting those done!
Experiment with my new camera. Check!
Comment on y'all's posts from the past month. Saw some pretty awesome posts...and a few vlogs too! :D Check and double check! But now I think I've fallen behind on posts again.
Record a couple songs. Yes....ish. Kind of in the middle of recording a couple of songs. But I think I finished at least one recording.
MEET THE BABY!!! YES!! :D
December's Goals
Participate in the 12 Days of Christmas blog link up!
Finish editing several books I'm beta-reading
Read 5 books
And that about wraps up this post! Thanks for reading!
How was your November?
Anyone excited to celebrate Christ's birth?
What is one of your favourite Christmas traditions?
Good morning, everyone! (and now let's see if I can actually post this in the morning :P) Jesseca from Whimsical Writings tagged me for... *drumroll*
Thank you, Jesseca! :D
Now, first for the rules (of course, 'cause I'm a good girl :3)
1. Find some lyrics you think are really meaningful and type them into a nice background
(Be sure to name the song and the writer!)
2. Then post it on your blog and tag as many people as you want.
Here are some of my meaningful lyrics:
There are days when I lose my focus and those are usually the times when I feel myself falling. But then God shows His great love and compassion to me and I understand that no matter what I do, no matter what happens, God should be my primary vision.
One of my favourite Creation songs! I've sung it since I was little, and now that I'm older, I can more fully appreciate the lyrics. We're living in our Father's world, and it's amazing! Sitting quietly in nature, soaking in the beauty of the wonders He has made - what can be better? :)
God answers our prayers. They're not always the answers we're looking for. But even if it doesn't look like God is listening to us, we should continue to TRUST in HIM!!
There we go! Almost the end of the tag :D I hope you all enjoyed reading some of my favourite lyrics. Are any of them your favourites?
It's that time of the month again! How did April go by so fast? Time really does seem to fly!
Life
Where oh where to start? April's been busy - but then when isn't life busy? ;)
As you might have guessed by the cover photo, I got my G1 license!!! I was super nervous, but there really wasn't anything to worry about. The questions were super easy; studying well works well ;) But just the same, I was very happy when I found out that I'd passed! :D
That day, I had to take my picture a couple of times too. Once for the licence, another for my health card. Dad gave me warning before we left to "go get ready; you'll have these pictures for a long time!" I had to tell him there wasn't really much that I could do to "get ready". He was like "Oh, right" -_- I don't wear make-up, so the only thing I could really do was brush my hair. Which was what I had already done :P
First time driving down the country roads was fun, but nerve-racking too. We were approaching a stop sign and Dad said "Okay, now ease slowly on the brakes. That's it. . . Now ST- . . . op"
Yep, I eased. Yep, I went slowly. Yep, I all of a sudden slammed on the brake. Oops ;)
But it's gotten a little tiny bit better. I'm able to drive around the block without jerking so much anymore. I'm so glad we're in the country though. The roads are so nice and empty, I don't have to worry about cars - for now ;) Dad just taught me how to do a 3 point turn today. On a narrow road with ditches on both sides. Not THE best place to learn, just to let you know. But we didn't fall in :P
Oh, another exciting thing that happened! Snow White got her new doll, Saila!
She's been very happy with her new doll. Been doing a lot of things together! Including flower dissections, which you'll see later :-)
We watched Woodlawn yesterday night and today I was looking at the cast. I like to do that for some random reason. Don't you find it fun if you recognize characters from another movie? Anyway, there was this one particular man who had played a coach in Woodlawn, and I was wondering which other movie I had seen him in before. I was at the point where the name was on the tip of my tongue, yet it just. wasn't. coming. Then Tiger Lily came in. Conversation went something like this:
Me: Doesn't this man look familiar?
Tiger Lily: YES!!
Me: Which movie did he come from?!?
Tiger Lily: Woodlawn!
Baking
Not too much baking done this month. Just two chocolate layer cakes :) One for Dad's birthday and one for my English assignment. Which cake do you like the best?
Couple posts ago, I mentioned that I was baking something, and I left you all with a hint. Rebekah guessed a cupcake, which was pretty close! That picture was actually the imprint of these red flowers on the top of this cake!
My English project was to create something that had to do with one of the books that we had read that year. I chose The Scarlet Pimpernel.
I might do a separate post on this cake with more specific details :D We'll have to see!
OH, and then with the scraps left over from the scarlet pimpernel cake, Tiger Lily and I constructed a mini "garden" cake. I was practicing with my piping tips and made a tiny little rose and leaves.
Tiger Lily made a beautiful piece of wood with brown frosting. Doesn't it look amazing?
Tiger Lily and I have also taken over a major part of the cooking. One of the meals we concocted: Shepherd's Pie!
School
TIGER LILY AND I GOT GOLD MEDALS FOR OUR NATIONAL LATIN EXAM!!!! And I got an absolute 100% perfect paper on the NLE!! It was sooooo exciting to hear Mrs. Barr (my Latin teacher) announce the results *does the happy dance*
I also did a frog dissection last night. It smelled - BAD. *shudders*
I'm taking a live virtual biology course, so my teacher is on my computer. But she used her camera so that everyone could see what she was doing. It was kind of gross watching her do it. She didn't use gloves. She moved her thumb and fingers over and under and into the frog's guts. Down its mouth. Under the liver. Through the intestines. It was gross.
Whilst cutting it, I apologized multiple times to the poor frog. Went something like this:
Teacher: Cut through the skin and muscle tissue Snip
"Sorry frog!"
Teacher: Now use your scissors, insert above the sternum and close until you hear a crack. That's the bone Crack
"SO sorry, frog!"
It was a girl.
Snow White and DareDevil are also doing a botany course with me. We're using Apologia and it's been super fun!
Drawing plants.
And we also did a dissection! (But a MUCH nicer one than the frog :D)
Ripping off Peeling off the petals
Removing the corona
Snow White: Queen Saila!
Gluing on the stamen!
Snow White also had her first test! She was really interested and excited about taking tests, so I came up with some questions and made up a test for her. (playing school and pretending to be teacher when I was younger all of a sudden came in handy ;))
100% on her first one! YAHOO!!!
The Disappearing Stranger
The Hidden Message
The Creeping Shadows
The Vanishing Footprints
Trouble at Wild River
The Mysterious Hideaway
Grandpa's Stolen Treasure
The Runaway Clown
Mystery of the Missing Map
Disaster on Windy Hill
Town Thrift Store ($8 total)
Return of the Indian
Secret of the Indian
Mockingjay
The Upstairs Room
The Golden Road
Music
I have listened to sooo many songs this month, but I think my absolute favourite would be All This Time by the Willis Clan!
Ever since the song came out, I've listened to it every. single. day.
Here's a question for all of you: Can you listen to music and still concentrate on school/work? If yes, what kind of music? Classical, contemporary?
Movies
These would have to be my two favourite movies from this month!
The Scarlet Pimpernel
You're all probably tired of hearing me saying this, but IT'S AMAZING! It's so much FUN! I get shivers of delight just thinking about it! The costumes, though some of the women's are rather low, are so beautiful! The disguises, the acting, the balls, the accents, the poems, that drawl, the escapades, and THE DUEL!! It was hilarious! I love the whole movie to bits!! :D Seriously, if you haven't watched it before, you really should!!!
Woodlawn
Just watched this movie last night. Thanks to Dad for finding it! I'm not really into football movies - all that head crashing and body crashing and everything crashing :P, but I actually didn't mind this one too much. The story went so much deeper than just playing football. It's an amazing and really inspiring movie. And it's a Christian one, which is a big bonus! :D
Oh, and you remember last month I said that there was some big news? A wonderful surprise? Something SUPER EXCITING?
