Check out the cool giveaway being hosted on the HSB Backyard!! There are prizes for both boys and girls -- girls can win a soap-making DVD, and boys can win a DVD on building tree houses! Head on over and be sure to enter this great giveaway before it ends on the 23rd!

Hi everyone, I'm back.

Actually, I have been "back" for about a week and a half now, but never mind...

I have been feeling very lazy about posting a big post about our trip. I'm not very fast at finding all the right pictures, uploading them, and writing cute little captions. Since my mom already did such a nice job, I'll just direct you to her post, where you can read about our camp trip, plus everything else we did in the month of May. Thanks, Mom! LOL.

I found this video on YouTube the other day -- I already have some of The Crown College Choir's music on my iPod, and they are so good! I keep listening to/watching this video over and over so much that Amy has asked me more than once if this is the only song I like anymore! LOL!!!



I wish I could find the music for this song. I looked through all our hymnbooks (we have a ton), but I couldn't find it. So I settled with playing it by ear. Which is okay, but I wish I could find it somewhere.

Also, I just want you all to know that I might not be blogging very much for a while. I enjoy reading everyone else's posts, but when it comes to posting myself, I can't think of much to say. So, I'll still be around, just might not post very often (to be perfectly honest, I did not miss blogging one bit while at camp).

Talk to you later,
Alison

What do you do when you turn your computer on and your virus protection program finds threat after threat after threat whenever you try to do anything? I can't open Firefox or Google Chrome, and just about everything I clicked on gave me more infection warnings. *screams* I backed up the "important" stuff -- my writing and the schoolwork I've done on the computer -- and shut the machine off. Sigh. Not much you can do on a computer that can't open a browser! Strange as it may seem, I'm actually kind of glad about it, though. Because now re-installing Windows XP just moved up the list of priorities a little. My computer had been getting slower and slower and slower, and I had been wanting to revamp it for a while now. This will give me a good excuse.

Thankfully we have more than one computer in this house (three, actually) so I can still check my e-mail and blog. :o)

But getting trojan horse warnings hasn't been the only exciting thing in my life lately. My family is leaving tomorrow morning at about 6 a.m. to go on a road trip to Missouri!! We're going to family camp with our old church. So yesterday we got most of our stuff packed, and today is house cleaning day. Partly because we will have people staying in our house part of the time we are gone. So we definitely couldn't leave it a disaster. It looks very nice now, and it will be wonderful to come home to a clean house.

Dad counted up the hours we will be in the car, and it's nearly 40 hours total. Doesn't that make you tired just thinking about it? I hope I have enough stuff packed to keep me busy for that long. The thing is, riding in the car is so mesmerizing, so I'll probably end up staring out the window for most of it. I have plenty of music and old radio shows on my iPod, too. Too bad the battery only lasts 12 hours (nowhere to charge while we're gone). Let's see... that's about three hours per day max. Think I'll survive? LOL.

And Amy and I have been playing lots of violin/flute duets lately, too. We're playing these duets by Telemann, and they're pretty cool. They way they work is one person starts playing, then the other person starts at the top of the same music a couple measures later. And it goes together! Some composers are amazing. Like Mozart, who wrote "Table Music," music that is to be played rightside-up by one person, while another person plays the same page of music upside-down.

I'm also pretty excited about Sunday. We're going to be at our old church in Wichita, and Amy and I are going to play the piano and organ for all three services while my dad leads the singing. I LOVE that piano, and I love playing for the congregational singing there. I've been looking forward to playing that piano for... months, maybe years (probably ever since the last time we were there, two years ago). I always play the piano the best when I am daydreaming about playing at that church.

Ummm, anything else I need to say? I don't know, so I guess I'll end there. I'll be back to blogging once we get back from our trip.

One of my assignments in school is to write sentences using all of my vocabulary words. I like to get creative, and sometimes I see how few sentences I can cram all ten words into (so far my record is three). Recently I decided to be even more creative and write a story with them. It was fun, though I don't think I want to do it all the time.

The New Girl

“Did you get to meet the new girl in church this morning?” Katherine asked her friend Melanie as the two girls worked on a jigsaw puzzle at Katherine’s house on Sunday afternoon.

“No,” Melanie replied. “I’m afraid I didn’t. Did you? What is she like?”

“Well, her family is a little strange,” Katherine replied hesitantly. “For one thing, they homeschool!”

Melanie threw a cursory look at Katherine. “They what?”

“I know, isn’t that weird?” Katherine answered. “Do homeschoolers use curriculum? Or do they just get to play all day long?”

“I have no clue,” Katherine said. “And I’m not going to ask. You never know, her mom might give me a discourse on not asking personal questions.”

“That’s a personal question?” Melanie looked skeptical.

Katherine went on, “I bet all the kids in her family have perfect cursive. And they know all about corsairs sailing through the currents of the ocean. And the precursor of the United States Postal Service: the couriers who rode their coursers across the country to deliver the mail.”

“What are corsairs?” Melanie wanted to know.

“Umm, pirates, I think,” Katherine said. She hunted for the right puzzle piece to fill in the corner.

Footsteps were heard coming down the corridor to Katherine’s room. It was Katherine’s mom. “Would you girls like a snack?”

“No thanks, Mrs. Smith,” Melanie answered. “But I would like to know the definitions to the words courier, courser, precursor, and discourse.”

Mrs. Smith looked surprised. “Where did you hear those words?”

“Katherine just used all of them.”

Now Mrs. Smith looked shocked. “Katherine, where did you learn those words?”

“I just talked to the homeschooling family,” Katherine responded sweetly.

Okay, so it probably wasn't exactly what you were expecting... LOL.

Want to join in the fun? Private message me your own story using these same ten vocab words: courier, precursor, cursory, current, courser, cursive, corridor, corsair, discourse, and curriculum. If I get enough participants we could even turn it into a contest! Wouldn't that be fun? Get your stories sent to me by May 18, and then we'll vote on whose is best (try to keep it under 500 words, please). On your mark, get set, go!

Ahh, it feels nice not to be on my feet anymore! You see, this morning my Amy and I got dropped off to help out at our local Scholastic book sale. That was at about eleven. We helped until almost four thirty. And we were on our feet almost the entire time. I guess that's about the same if you work a real job, but we're not used to that.

So Daddy dropped Amy and me in front of a building at eleven. We didn't know which building. There were no signs (they weren't opening until one). We and our adopted mom for the day went inside and found out that we were in the right place, but the officials weren't there yet! So we talked for a few minutes, and then they showed up. I should explain about our adopted mom -- the Scholastic lady Mom talked to said that since we were underage, they couldn't pay us for helping out (ten dollars in book credit per hour). But since we wanted to help anyway, we went with a homeschooling friend to volunteer for free. We were kind of her adopted daughters. Sort of.

There was absolutely nothing set up when we got there. The tables were in the closet, the shelves were folded up, and boxes of books were on top of the shelves. First we had to sort the boxes of books according to content. Then the ladies in charge opened up the shelves -- and, surprise, they were already filled with books! After they opened the shelves we had to open the boxes of books and stack books along the tops of the shelves. We also put together book stands and markers to show where the different categories went. Got out tables, put tablecloths on the tables, unpacked the boxes of books onto the tables... and on and on! I think it's cool, they way we transformed that room in about two hours! Sadly, I don't have pictures, but it was pretty neat.

Amy and I weren't there for pay, as I already said, but one of the ladies came up to me and said that we should put our names on a couple of boxes and fill them up with books, since they were going to give us the credits, after all (we ended up getting $100 in book credits, wow!!). So we kind of shopped around, since there wasn't much else for us to do for a little while. We weren't finding a ton -- a lot of the books were pretty much trash, if you know what I mean, so I called Mom on the phone and told her we were getting the credits after all and that she should come over and see what she should find.

We brought lunch but didn't eat until 2:30. I was starved! After lunch we marked books that were 25% off. That took quite a while. I don't think they were even done when we left. There was a huge list, in alphabetical order, of books that needed to be marked, and the books weren't shelved alphabetically. They were shelved by age/grade level! So it was quite the project.

Mom came and brought the other girls over, and they shopped for a long time! We didn't end up spending all our credits (maybe only $70), but they found some more stuff.

Amy and I pose with our compensation once we get home (great new stuff to save to read on a trip coming up! Yeah!):

As some of you know, I write the Animal Fact column for The HSB Backyard. Here's one I wrote a while ago, on owls! Don't forget, you can read lots more Animal Facts -- and other great articles, such as crafts, book reviews, featured blogger, recipes, history articles, caption contests, and more -- at the Backyard! Be sure to check it out!

Owls are such pretty birds! We don't see them often around here where I live, but I would love to see more of them. There are many different kinds of owls -- over 200 different species! They vary greatly. The smallest owl, the Elf Owl, is barely more than an ounce, and the Eurasian Eagle Owl and the Blakiston's Fish Owl are the largest -- they can weigh nearly ten pounds. Most species are solitary and nocturnal, but there are some exceptions, like the Burrowing Owl.

You can tell what time an owl hunts by looking at his eyes. Dark brown or black eyes mean the owl hunts at night, orange eyes mean it hunts at dawn or dust, and yellow eyes mean it hunts in the day time. Again, there are some exceptions, so don't trust this completely.

Owls have their eyes fixed in their sockets -- they have to turn their heads to look around. And they are far-sighted. They can turn their heads 135 degrees in either direction, so they can look over their shoulders. The owl's feather colors can make him almost invisible, and the edges of his wings are designed to help him fly silently.

Ancient Egyptians used the owl as their hieroglyph for the sound m. But they would often draw the owl with his legs broken to keep it from coming to life, since the owl is widely recognized as a symbol of death and destruction by superstitious folk.

Sorry, I tried to think of a creative title. I really did! For a few seconds, anyway.

Have you ever played your instrument four or five hours in one day? I did on Monday. I played and played my violin all day long. And then Monday evening I played for two hours straight with a group. Sight reading the entire time! That was a good experience! And you know what, it was not as hard as I anticipated, either.

Two things motivated me to play the violin more lately:

1. I saw that a friend had all her sheet music in page protectors in a three-ring binder and liked the idea so much that I did the same thing to my sheet music. I found out that I didn't have as much sheet music as I thought, but I've printed and copied some more since then. For some reason, it is a lot more fun to play music out of a three-ring binder than out of a book or even loose pages. Don't ask why.
2. I borrowed a book from a friend. The Year of Abi Crim, by Sharon Hambrick. I admit, it was way below my reading level (it was ages 8-12, okay?), but it had a violin on the cover, and then entire book was about... a violinist!!!!! And the main character was always playing her violin. And she was in her school orchestra. It was a wonderful book. Sigh. It was the kind of book I would love to have written. But unfortunately, my name is not Sharan Hambrick.

So on Monday I played and played. It was so fun!

Monday night, I got together with a couple other violinist ladies, for the first time. Actually, they and one other lady meet regularly to play together, but this was the first time that I have joined them. So Amy (flute) and I played with them from seven to nine in the evening. And it was all new music, so we had to sight read the whole time. That was awesome. We both did a lot better than we thought we could. When you're playing in a group, you will just naturally sight read better because you have to. It just almost comes naturally. Almost. Until about eight thirty, when my brain went into tired mode. Then it didn't go so well.

I'm excited because I'm going to be joining a group for the first time! Remember a couple years ago when I wanted so badly to be in an orchestra? Well, that's died down a little since then, but I'm still excited!

Guess what else is coming up? That's right -- our Third Annual Homeschool Recital is in two weeks. I have a bunch of things to practice for that. They sort of get dumped on me. I'm playing the Concerto for Two Violins by Bach with a friend (yes, all three movements, but we shortened the first and the third. Even so, it's going to be kind of long), a violin/flute duet of Saviour, Like a Shepherd with Amy, a violin solo, Student Concerto No. 5, third movement, by Seitz, (I'm hoping either Amy or Dad will be able to learn the piano accompanyment in two weeks. I sprung it on them at the last second. LOL), Air on a G String, by Bach (with a few other people, of course), and I'm playing the piano for the grand finale at the end where everyone plays or sings a couple hymns.

So with recital peices, "group" peices, and for-fun stuff, too, there is no way I can get through it all in my previous amount of practice time. And no, I'm not taking private lessons right now. Can you imagine? It would take me like an hour and a half to get through all of that. Of course, I don't have to play it all every day (and I don't), but it still takes a while.

So that's been my big thing lately. Leave a comment if you play violin, and tell me what you're woring on right now!

Well. I got my braces over a week ago, and I still haven't posted. I haven't been on the computer quite as much as usual, can I blame it on that? I'm so lazy when it comes to posting things. But for those of you who want to see what I look like now, with braces on, well, here you go. (Wow, I look so much like my mom in that picture!)

So yep, I got 'em put on the 25th of March, so they're not hurting anymore. Just poking me in various places. But the orthodontist also pulled out four of my baby teeth (three were molars), so I really don't have much left to chew with (yes, I'm late loosing them. Sigh).Try chewing with primarily your front teeth sometime.  Fun. Eating is a bit of a challenge, but I'm managing okay. I don't have quite as many choices as before, when I had teeth to chew with, but I'm thankful that I actually do have food to eat. And yummy food, too! I've been eating a lot of bananas. And a few batches of home-made apple sauce. I'm just glad that the list of "no-no" foods for braces is mostly stuff I don't eat much of anyway (caramel, gum, jerky, corn on the cob, nuts and seeds, etc.), so I'll be pretty much back to normal after my teeth come in. We went to Baskin Robbins the other night and I forgot about my braces and ordered Jamoca Almond Fudge... almonds are a no-no! Mom was glad to eat them for me.

I don't think you can really tell from the picture, but I chose metallic blue this time. I can get the color changed every time I get them adjusted (next Wednesday, in fact). And I keep wondering what color I should get next. Bright pink? Red? Orange? Purple? Teal?  They have a huge list of colors. I guess I'll figure it out when they ask. LOL. Amy is getting braces put on her upper teeth in a couple weeks, and she is going to get glow-in-the-dark pink. That will be cool! But I don't think I want that for myself.

I also thought I'd include this tag that Sunflower8 sent my way...

How old are you?  14

When were you born? October, 1994

What color is your hair?  Blond (see above picture)

Is your hair long or short? Hmmm, well, it's not short, so I guess that would mean it's long. A few inches past my shoulders.

What color are your eyes?  Mom says blue, but I think they're sort of blue-green-gray. ?????

How tall are you? *runs off to get measured* Okay, I'm 5' 4". I've only grown about an inch since January of last year, so I think I'm probably about done growing.

How long have you been on HSB?  Ummm, I'd better check my profile. Did I start in 2006 or 2007? LOL. It was October, 2006. So... about two and a half years.

Do you like HSB?  Yes! I like the community a lot, and it always makes me sad when people leave HSB for Blogger.

What's your favorite series? *shrugs* Maybe... The Kingdom Series? I dunno. Maybe The Terrestria Chronicles? They're both good, and similar, too! I'd say The Kingdom Series is better for action and drama, but The Terrestria Chronicles is a lot more allegorical and gives you more to think on.

Action movies, drama movies or sad movies? I've hardly watched any movies. Yes, I hear you all gasp. We don't have a TV, so... Let's see, I've watched It's a Wonderful Life (most of it), It Grows on Trees, A Little Princess... that might be it. Have you noticed we only watch old movies? All of the above are in black and white. LOL!!! Oh wait, A Little Princess wasn't. But it was the old movie, the one with Shirley Temple. I've seen bits and pieces of some others, but not enough to say whether I like action movies, drama movies, or sad movies. But I would probably like drama movies best.

What did you do yesterday? Yesterday? Well, for supper our family had a visiting preacher (and his wife and son) over, and he preached our service last night. We're not having special meetings, but they dropped in yesterday.

What's your favorite song right now?  Ya know? I don't have one right now! Amazing!

Who's your favorite artist right now? I don't listen to secular music or CCM. I don't listen to anything done by a voice artist.  And I don't have a favorite instrumental artist. And yes, I do listen to music. Nearly every day! And not always classical, either. Ha, now I know you are puzzled.

What song do you have in your mind right now?  Can you believe it? Nothing!

Who are you going to tag?  Well, the way it usually goes for me is that I tag people that have already done this tag. And I really don't feel like running around the blogosphere, notifying people that they've been tagged, either. So if you want to do it, go ahead.

I amazed by the way my brain works! How on earth do we store information in our minds? Beats me, but God sure did a good job when he designed the process, whatever it is! And I sure do find it fascinating. The other thing that has me puzzled is whether my brain is "wired" differently from other people's. I remember things visually. I process information visually (most information). I have a number line in my head. I also have the letters all strung out in a line -- although they turn a corner around K or L.

When I sit in church -- now this is going to sound very strange -- I do not just see the preacher as he is preaching. I see a scene in my  mind. Now, if it's a story, naturally, I see that. But if it's teaching on a subject, I'm at a random place -- my house, a gas station, a park, a restaurant, etc. It's like I'm there! I don't do things, but I see this place like I'm there. From different angles and positions. Sometimes when I listen to music or read something it's the same way. And the cool thing is -- it's not always the same place. So when I think over the sermon again, I see the same things in my mind again. Please, tell me -- do any of you do the same thing? Please comment if you are like me. Because my mom has absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.

I'm also very logical. I have to write things out if they're too complicated. I love lists! And the logical aspect of my mind is probably why I love Algebra. It makes so much sense! Haha, I know, I just lost half of you there. LOL!

But I also have this bad habit of letting my mind wander off when I should really be concentrating on something else. I know I'm not the only one like that. Even when people are talking to me sometimes! *blush* And often at the dinner table this happens. Dad is talking about something (not to me -- just everyone or maybe Mom) and I'll just wander off. And then he'll say something, and I wonder, "What is he talking about? What did I miss?" LOL. Of course, then I wish I hadn't zoned out.

Usually it's not disasterous, though. But once my day dreaming got me right into an embarrassing situation. And it was all my fault.

Just recently, Dad took us girls out to Wendy's. The food was good. We finished up, and I helped pile stuff onto one of our trays to go dump it in the trash. As I walked toward the trash, I saw something printed on someone's t-shirt. Immediately my mind was hundreds of miles away from where it should have been. Because I did not notice the worker right there, pulling the trash can out from under the hole. So I went right ahead and dumped my trash into an empty cabinet!! I did not even notice until the worker said something. How embarrassing! I apologized over and over, but the man just laughed, commented on how fast I was, and assured me it was okay. LOL!! But I'm still not sure I learned my lesson. Can anyone relate?

I wonder why God gave me a mind like that (not the day dreaming part -- I think that's just a fault of mine). Does he have a plan for me that includes my wacky way of thinking? And do any of you have a brain like mine? Or am I one of a kind?

The other day I get this e-mail from BookwormMN. She says, "Well, I don't know about you, but when I meet someone I like to know about how they live and see lots of things that you see normally.  hint hint... you can show as many pictures on your blog as you want!!" I had kind of been out of ideas for a post, but I thought it might be kind of fun to post some random pictures for a change. So thanks for the idea, Amber! I hope you enjoy! LOL!

Nearly all these pics are courtesy of Amy -- she's been taking pictures like crazy with her "new" (to her) camera. And I love it. She gets some nice ones! Her camera has this screen that you can pop out and even turn around, so you can take a self-portrait and see what you're doing at the same time! She uses that quite often... So goofy.