christmas cookies

my brother had a hockey tournament this weekend. teams came from nebraska, iowa and minnesota. its a good thing they all came on friday before the blizzard. the exchange student we hosted 5 years ago is from france and she has been going to school in alabama. she is coming up to visit us for christmas and was supposed to fly in saturday night. she made it to chicago but sadly, it was too snowy and they closed the chicago and minneapolis airports. she made friends with a lady on her way off the plane so she is staying with a couple random people she never met before in a hotel room and chillin for 2 days. she is supposed to fly in on monday night now around 11. so one of my parents has to drive up and get her. i cant wait til she finally gets here cuz we havent seen her in forever and my mom wont let us make christmas cookies til she's here. an di want to make christmas cookies.

courage

Courage (noun): the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, pain, danger, etc., without fear; bravery

this brings to mind valiente which is spanish for brave. we're reading a book about a girl who goes to spain and has to watch a bull fight. they describe the bull fighters, or matadores, as brave and having courage. i think a person would have to have a lot of courage to get into a ring with just you and a bull and try and kill it. the bull could get really mad and ram you with its horns. but you would have to have enough courage to get past that fear and kill it anyway, just so you could take home its foot/ear(s)/tail. i think bullfighting is kind of sick, but i guess the spanish people have been doing it for the entire history of their country so they're used to it.

justin bieber

today my family went shopping in mankato after my brother's hockey game. my little sister, my dad, and i had to go to claire's to get a christmas present for my 7 year old cousin. my dad went up to pay for our stuff and i started laughing inside. imagine a little store without much walking room and a bunch of moms with their little girls looking at sparkly things and then this tall, bald guy walks up to the cash register with butterfly hair clips and glow in the dark nail polish. then, right behind me, another dad was waiting for his wife and daughter to finish looking. the dad was looking at justin bieber calendars. then he knocked them all over, along with a bunch of jewelry and it made a big crashing noise. and everyone stared at him. it made my day:)

leadership

its important for at least one person in a group to have leadership. if no one has any leadership, then nothing will ever get done. everyone would just sit around because no one jumps in and says, "hey, let's ___________!"
i think leadership is when a person has an idea and acts upon it for the good of the group they are with. then they might get more responsibility put on them and they might find out they can handle it so they get more and pretty soon they're in charge of a lot of things.
people can try to be leaders, but some of them just arent cut out for it. and thats okay becusae they'll find something else their good at. and this is starting to not make any sense at all, so i'll just stop.

thanksgiving

i spent this thanksgiving down in nebraska visiting my relatives. on friday there was a cornhuskers football game. my uncle is really into it and we went to their house to watch the game. i watched more football this weekend than i have in my whole entire life. i watched that game and then the oklahoma vs oklahoma state on saturday. i think i understand it better but i barely stayed awake the whole time. and on saturday i went to see harry potter and the deathly hallows. i thought they did a pretty good job. except the little dobby's grave issue. they definitely could have spent 5 more seconds having harry write on the stone.
on the way home from nebraska we were flipping through radio stations and the only thing there was, was commercials, talk shows and christmas songs for the most part. there were probably 3 stations devoted to christmas music 24/7 until christmas. i wonder what they'll do when christmas is over?

giving

it's black friday today. all those people who get up at 3 in the morning to get all the good deals must like giving. if they are willing to get up that early just to get the perfect present for each person on their list, giving must be pretty high on their list of priorities. a lot of people do get up for the sales, so a lot of people like to give and thats a good thing. so many people in this world need those people who like to give becuase poor people cant always get what they need.
when the holidays come around, people tend to think about giving more often. we have food drives at school and we ask people to give to the foodshelf. there are toy drives for kids who otherwise wouldnt get presents. there are coat drives for people who dont have proper winter clothing. if people who do have access to those things dont donate, then that would not be a good thing. but good news is that people do donate.

guys & dolls

why are musicals so bittersweet? thats the only word i can use to describe it becuase we have so much fun with the whole thing and then on saturday night, you have your last performance, you clean up and you're done. it seems like it went by so fast. i made so many friends that i hope i will still be friends with even though we dont spend 2 and a half hours backstage every day. we worked so hard and improved so much from our first run through where people forgot their lines, and their entrances, and their set changes.
24 hours ago i was waiting in the wings for the intro song to be played by the pit and to cross the stage as a tourist amazed at the sights of new york city with makeup caked to my face and my lungs full of hairspray from the dressing rooms. then we had the fastest costume change ever where we barely made it onstage with all our buttons buttoned and our shirts tucked in. then at the end of the night i go back across the stage as a tourist, we sing our last song, we run out, say hello to people adn proceed to the dressing rooms and change. then we have to tear down the set.
then we party!

hope

hope is a really big concept. i dont really know where to begin...
i think a person has to have hope or they wouldnt have anything to strive for. if i didnt have hope for anything, thne i wouldnt really care about what i did in life and i would just be going through the motions without being excited for something. or being sad about something. when something bad happens, people have hope and they know eventually it will get better. most of the jews in the holocaust knew that too, or there wouldnt be any survivors. they had to go through a lot of the bad stuff to get to the good stuff though. it started out with hoping to get out of the really hot cattle car, then to get more soup and bread, then to pass selection, and the whole time to be liberated. after going through all of that, some people just lost it. their family members and friends were seperated from them or were sent to the crematoriam and they didnt have anything to hope for anymore so they didnt strive to survive and then they died.

adaptation

people adapt to situations in all different ways. at the beginning of "night" elie thinks sitting on the hot sidewalk is about as bad as it gets. a few days later, he finds out it can get worse. and this just keeps repeating, and he keeps adapting to his situation. in the concentration camps, his life becomes a routine. wake up, roll call, breakfast, work, a little more food, another roll call and then go to sleep and do it all over again. after a while, he didnt really find anything wrong with it other than the occasional hanging of a poor little boy or when they got less bread than the day before. humans can adapt to a situation pretty easily. the holocaust is a horrible, horrible thing, yet the jews in the concentration camps found the good things, like the occasional bomb raid that allowed them some down time. many prisoners found the optimistic side of things.

animals

the difference between humans and animals is actually the first thing we talked about in biology this year. we spent a lot of time on it and im actually kind of sick of the topic but i guess i'll write about it anyway. the definition of an animal is a living, breathing organism. humans are, obviously, animals, so we're not all that different. yes, we have a more complex brain and more complex society and we can read and we have a written language. but so can chimps. they can talk to humans using sign language and its not all that different. we watched multiple videos on that. they were kind of cool cuz we got to see chimps actually talking and communicating and i still have a hard time wrapping my brain around that. i wonder who first came up with the idea to teach a chimp sign language....im sure i know the answer, but i cant remember it right now.

mittens

today was halloween, so i of course went trick or treating. i went with some friends and my siblings. we got a lot of "what are you seniors doing trick or treating?" but we had fun anyways. and we got a lot of candy:) im actually eating a kit kat as i write this. our group consisted of a witch, lumberjack, thomas the train, ironman/pirate, a lady bug and a lion (me) we all got our costumes about 2 minutes before we walked out the door, complete with makeup. it actually wasnt that cold this year, but i was smart enough to wear mittens. now comes the hard part--not eating all of my candy at one time. in about two days i wont want any of it, so i better eat it while my brain still wants it:)

in two days it will be my little sister's birthday. she will be 10 years old. just so you know:)

beauty

beauty. there are a lot of different definitions of it. some people think beauty only matters on the outside of people. if you're pretty, then yay!! but other people think that it only matters on the inside. if you're a good person with good intentions, it doesnt matter what you look like on the outside. i really have no idea where im going with this. you can find beauty in things too. like a painting or a work of art. or in nature, like a sunset or when your parents make you stop at a overlook on a trip somewhere so you can see what the mountains look like. or in a memory or emotion. like when i think of christmas and cookies and presents and seeing my whole family. thats all i really have to say on the subject.

mea

so during our long-awaited 4-day break, i went to something called TEC. its Teens Encounter Christ and it is truly amazing. i got 3 of my friends to come to it, but let me start from the beginning. i went through TEC in april and after you go through you have the oppurtunity to work them. i worked the one this weekend and when i went through i thought it was amazing, but working one, being behind the scenes, showed me a totally different kind of amazing. there are so many people there who dont judge you. and i loved being there, and being there for the weekenders (the kids going through) im really glad i got the chance to go. i worked in the kitchen so everyone on my team got to cook for everybody else! and while i served food, i would get to know the weekenders and i think that was a blessing in itself. right now i really need to go to sleep cuz i think i got maybe 17 hours of sleep all weekend.

the next TEC is january 27th - 30th in mankato. i really encourage anyone who thought it might be even a little interesting becasue i gauruntee you will be closer to God by the end of it.

southerntec.org

lock in

so last night at my church we had a lock in. i had a lot of fun at it. at the beginning it was really sad becuase we watched this movie, to save a life, about a kid who commits suicide and how his ex-best friend dealt with it. but then we did some happy things. we played a game called the amazing race. we were in teams and we had to do different things. the first one was have a three legged race. then it was cleaning out a pumpkin as fast as you could. then we had to bounce ping pong balls into containers and then one person from your team (my sister) had to eat a huge scoop of peanut butter, some gummy worms, a cup of jello, a couple marshmallows and a banana. while she was doing it, she had so much food in her mouth and she was laughing so the jello came out her nose. then we had to solve some riddles and then i had to drag my entire team of 5 people on 3 little scooters through a line of cones. but we did it and we got 2nd place:) and then we stayed up until 6 when we could go home.

freedom

i am thankful that american citizens have freedom. if we didnt, there would still be slavery and bad things. i, and every other american citizen has the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, the freedom of petition, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of religion. if we didnt have these freedoms, our lives would be a lot different. they could have potentially made a uniform for the entire country. imagine 310,497,000 people all wearing the exact same outfit. i think that would be really sad. and i think some people would have a really hard time with that becuase some people need to be different but if we didnt have freedom, then people who wanted to be different first of all wouldnt have experieced freedom, so they wouldnt know what they're missing out on but they still might want it. if we didnt have freedom of the press, our government would be able to do all sorts of things without anyone finding out. i dont really know where im going with this so i'll just stop.

fairness is not justice

yesterday, pablo spent the whole day picking acacia leaves and putting them in a pile to eat later. after he was almost done, his best friend in the whole wide world, enrique, said he wanted some. pablo didnt want to share so he said no. enrique went and complained to his mom about pablo not sharing his leaves. enrique's mom told them they each got half of the pile of leaves. in the end, the result was fair becuase pablo got half and enrique got half. but justice was not served because pablo spent his entire day picking those leaves and he only got half of them, while enrique was playing with the other baby giraffes because he didnt want to strain his neck, even though palbo asked him to pick leaves with him. so in the end, enrique got luckier than pablo becuase he didnt even have to work to get a snack. unless you count going and tattling to his mom. which i dont.

weather rock

weather rocks:

a dry rock means fair weather
a wet rock means it's raining
a dusty rock means a dust storm
a swaying rock means it's windy
a shadow under the rock means it's sunny
a white rock means it's snowing
if the rock is jumping up and down, an earthquake is upon us
if the bottom of the rock is under water, it's a flood
if the rock is flashing, it's lightning
if you can't see the rock, it's night
if the rock is gone, there's a tornado

i saw these at the rendezvous and i was going to post about them last week but i forgot. i thouth they were pretty cool until i thought about it and realized what the sign actually meant. then i felt kinda stupid, but i got over it. my favorite line is "if the rock is jumping up and down, and earthquake is upon us" because i just picture a little rock happily jumping around while everything around it crumbles to little bitty pieces.

rendezvous

today i went to the rendezvous. after chilling with my mom and my sister for about 3 hours i was really wishing one of my friends would show up. and they did:) chrissy and kelli rescued me and we looked around. we found these hats that were huge and had obnoxious bows on them. we watched a magic show where this contortionist lady was in a box and her husband stuck 11 metal blades in the box but she was still alive and unharmed. and stuart and i watched a spider dangle on its web from a tree and land on this guy's coat, but he didnt notice. we went to stuart's sister, emma's hut thing where she was staying to experience some real rendezvous living. then i got a necklace to replace the one my exchange student from france, azi, sent me for christmas that i broke. im sending my sister back tomorrow to get another one. once licorice, root beer, and more jewelry was purchased, we left.

noise vs silence

VS.

noise to me can mean different things. sometimes its annoying like the static of the radio or someone talking when you're trying to do your homework. or when your trying to watch tv and sister decides now is the perfect time to practice the piano, which just happens to be in the same room as the tv.

it can also be relaxing. when i have a bad day or im mad i listen to music and i calm down. silence on the other hand, i dont really like. i think too much and i dont like doing that. so, every oppurtunity i have, i try and have music playing or someone to talk to. my mom thinks im crazy when i turn the radio on when im doing my homework. but i think it helps me not freak out about how much stuff i have to do. my sister needs quiet time to do her homework so when we're both studying at the same time, we tend to have some problems. so i like certain kinds of noises better than silence.

[pictures courtesy of google]

candy corn

Today was my grandma's 70th birthday. I was there with my cousins for her birthday party. My cousin Alix and I found this wreath in a magazine and decided to go to Joanne Fabrics to get the supplies. We got them and went back to my grandma's house. We wrapped the styrofoam wreath with black duct tape and then proceded to hot glue gun the candy corn to the wreath. We couldn't figure out how there was always just enough room for each candy corn in each row. I would have thought we'd need to cut one in half or something. But we didn't. We just burnt our fingers. Many, many times. As pretty as it was when it was done, I'm still not convinced it was worth it when I think of how bad my fingers hurt. But, back to the question. How is there the perfect amount of space in each row? Each candy corn isn't exactly the same length so it's not like each row is split evenly between ____ number of candy corns. Well, that's something to think about tonight instead of counting sheep.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....................................................

intricate

Fun and forgiveness forever

Randomness rules

Intricate

Endless excitement

Noble

Dedicated and determined

Sweet, simple and sure

Humble and honest

Intimate and inseperable

Perfect

Friendship to me is when people do the above things. for instance, take the giraffes. the two little ones are friends and one of their moms is taking them to the watering hole for a bit of socializing. giraffe number 1, whose name is pablo and giraffe number 2 is enrique. pablo and enrique are such good friends that pablo isnt embarrassed to have his mom chaperoning them. they accept each other for who they are and all their flaws, even if they have a weird looking spot. when they're at the watering whole, pablo will watch enrique's back while he's drinking, and enrique will watch pablo's back while he's drinking so that he doesnt get attacked by a predator. then, they will have some fun splashing each other and then get in trouble by pablo's mom for wasting perfectly good drinking water.

"this is my deep, philosophical view on the matter"

This is my first post so I want it to be memorable. My name is Ella. Or Ella of Frell. Or Ella said in Spanish which sounds like Ayah. On Tuesday it will be 3 months until my 16th birthday. I love the color orange. And hot pink. And any color that's not a pastel. I really don't like doing the whole "this is my deep, philosophical view on the matter" so you're going to be getting very random facts about me. This is about my 7th blog. I've lost count. My first one was during my family's trip to South America or "sam". Right now I have "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" stuck in my head because we played it during pepband tonight. The mosquitoes were really annoying and I think I had one in my eye for about 20 minutes. Anyway, I have 2 sisters and a brother, who are all younger than me, so guess who gets to be in charge of them? Yup, me. And speaking of babysitting them, I need to go break up the newest fight. Adieu!