November Highlights

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? 

So this happened . . .

LOOK WHO'S HERE!!! 

Hehe, I know I was trying to sound all cool and composed in the title with the "Oh yeah, and this happened" nonsense, but NO. Sorry. I'm just going to be squealing and exclaiming and using tons of caps. Got to use caps. IT'S SO EXCITING. 

I HAVE A NEW SISTER!!!!!!!!!!!! And now we're finally even, 4 boys 4 girls! :D HURRAY!!!! 

*goes away and runs in circles squealing* (also, just saying, Tiger Lily and I did exactly that when we found out Mom was in labour :P Although a little quieter since it was super early in the morning and all the younger kids were still sleeping ;))  

Toblerone was a little wary of her at first, but now he's perfectly enthralled with her :) 

I had my first experience with birth photography and really enjoyed the whole time in general. It was SO amazing, to be sure! :)

Praise the Lord that everything went smoothly. Very smoothly. It was, as Dad called it, a "textbook delivery". Baby was somewhat quiet at first, but then later proved she had a healthy pair of lungs - which she now uses rather frequently ;)

Everyone else was very excited and fell in love with their new sister. Some took a little longer than others ;) but in the end, everyone was begging to hold her. No shortage of hands to hold this new little one, that's for sure! :D

We took our traditional photo, where we all line up on the bed, youngest to oldest. It started when there was only four of us kids, I believe.
Trust me when I say it was starting to get squishy. . . last time. This time around, we were positively smushed against each other. Seriously, no personal space at all :P It wasn't just the number of children that increased, the body size did too ;) 

Oh, and thank you to all who voted on the poll! There were 26 votes total, which was way more than I was expecting :)

And now I'll finish off this post with a few (haha, who am I kidding? make that more than a few :P) pictures that we took of her over the past weeks.

I LOVE this picture! Maybe I'm just biased :P She's soooo cute! And her facial expression is just killing me xD 

April Highlights // Exciting News

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!!!

Books Read

1. The Scarlet Pimpernel
2. The Return of the Indian
3. The Secret of the Indian
4. The Disappearing Stranger
5. The Hidden Message
6. The Creeping Shadows
7. The Vanishing Footprints
8. Trouble at Wild River
9. The Mysterious Hideaway
10. Grandpa's Stolen Treasure
11. The Runaway Clown
12. Mystery of the Missing Map
13. Disaster on Windy Hill
14. Not Regina
15. The Chosen
16. Mockingjay
17. Persuasion
18. Philippians 
19. Colossians
20. Hebrews (first half)

Books Bought (15 total)

Thriftbooks

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?

Well...I get to tell you all now! :D

We're having another...