First of all, thank you all for your support. I didn't realize how many other people were going through the exact same thing!

So what would happen after I post that entry than the very next day get an idea and sit down and write 2,000 words! I sort of have an idea for the plot... right now it's more like a general direction, but we'll see what happens. Yesterday I wrote another 1,700. I think the reason it is going so well all of the sudden is based on three facts:

1. I am writing about something that I find interesting.
2. I am writing in first person, just letting the writing flow (who cares if it's grammatically correct? In fact probably a good chunk of it is NOT. But I don't care for once!).
3. I didn't wait to come up with an entire plot before I began writing. I just thought of a good opening sentence or two and went from there.

And even if I never finish this new... book? it's great to be back to writing again anyway!!

However, with blogging... another story. I guess maybe that's more of a matter of being lazy and just needing to sit down and write something.

There must be something wrong with me lately. I can't come up with ideas! I want to write something (fictional). I can't think of anything!! I want to post something on my (seemingly neglected) blog. I can't think of anything that I really want to say.

And it is soooo frustrating!!

If i just post random photos stored on my computer that will probably bore you real fast. Of course, maybe I could come up with some fun stories about them... maybe.

When I found out that one of my friends could come up with book plots just from dreaming at night... I was like, That is SO NOT FAIR!!! It didn't make a lot of difference when she assured me that she couldn't just come up with a book plot whenever she wished, though. The fact that she gets any ideas from sleeping is just... not right!

Are any of you having the same problems? Any help for me?

This was originally posted on The HSB Backyard (I write the Animal Facts column every week). Be sure to stop by and see the other fun things on the Backyard!

Hello everyone! Today we will stray from looking at just one animal so that we can learn about convergent evolution. Don't let the long words confuse you -- it is really quite simple. Simple for us who believe in creation, that is. For evolutionists, convergent evolution is a big problem. In order to understand why, you must first understand the theory of evolution.

The theory of evolution, very simply put, is that all of a sudden, a bunch of non-living chemicals suddenly came to life to form a very, very simple organism. Over millions of years, and many generations of reproducing and experiencing random mutations to the genetic code, this very simple organism evolved into the complex life forms we see today -- fish, horses, birds, monkeys, humans, etc.

Now, evolutionists have what is called the "evolutionary tree," and this is a diagram of how these organisms branched out to evolve into different animals. For example, one organism started evolving into a frog, while another evolved into a horse. The evolutionists make the assumption that animals with similar traits evolved from a common ancestor. Animals that are very different are placed on opposite sides of the tree.
Most wolves give birth to their young like all other mammals do. But there is one wolf -- the Tasmanian wolf, which carries its babies in a pouch, just like a kangaroo does. Now, evolutionists place marsupials on the other side of the evolutionary tree from other mammals that give birth in the usual way. So this means that the Tasmanian wolf had to evolve separately from the common timber wolf! What nonsense.

Flight
Did you know that, according to evolutionists, flight had to evolve four different times? See, there are four different groups that can fly. We have birds, flying insects, flying mammals, and flying reptiles (which are extinct now, however). Flight is such a miracle that it is impossible that it could have randomly evolved once, let alone four different times.

Eyes
Squids and humans have eyes that are very similar. It is very easy to see that an evolutionist would not group humans and squids with the same ancestor. But yet our eyes evolved twice?! Sorry, I don't think so!

Those are just a few examples of convergent evolution; there are many more. And this is only one problem with the theory of evolution. There are many, many, many more! Did you know there are no problems with creation? That's because it's true. God made all the life on this planet in just three days! There is no such thing as lower life forms evolving into our "modern" life forms. If someone tries to tell you so, ask them about convergent evolution and see what they say!

Here I am, posting about music again. Well, it's a big part of my life, what can you expect? Recently Amy and I started playing music for the residents of our local nursing home once a month. We've only gone twice so far, and it was for different people both times, so we could get away with playing the same music. But next month when we go we are going to need to play some new music. We have a book of twelve little duos for two flutes or a flute and a violin by Mozart, which is perfect for us! Now we didn't use to be able to play many of these pieces very well, because we were not very good at sight reading.

But a little while ago we started playing music with two other ladies once a week, and we play for about two hours straight each time. And most weeks there is at least some sight reading involved. At first it was all sight reading for two hours, but now that we've been with them for a little while we are becoming familiar with some of the music. So all that to say that we have gotten a crash course in sight reading, and now we can play most of the music in our Mozart duet book! We were sitting on my bed the other day, practicing some of the music, when Mom showed up with her camera and asked if she could take a video of us. So here you go:


Now, I must admit that this was one of the songs we could play before, not one of the new ones we had to sight read, so if we had done a different one it wouldn't have been as good.

In other news, Mom, Emily, and I went to Kohl's this morning and found some nice things. I got a nice black skirt and a purple top. And the best thing was that the skirt only cost $3.60 and the top only cost $4.40!! We almost always look at the clearance racks when we go in there. I really like Kohl's for their clearance racks -- they go up to 90% off! Plus we get a $10 gift card from them in the mail like once a month, so we can get some really good deals. And it is easy enough for me to find something there every time (that doesn't mean I get it, but I can find something if I dig long enough).

Okay, I'm off to do other things now, like read blogs maybe, or write in my (on-the-computer) journal, or iron for tomorrow, or draw, or play with some modulations on the piano... so many possibilities!

Friday night the first cries of a new baby were heard at our house.

Ahem. The cries of a new baby... violin, that is.

My five-year-old sister Emily has been begging for a violin for quite a while, and this last week she got her wish! She bought a 1/4 size violin with her own money, and she was so excited to finally get it in the mail (ordered online from sharmusic.com). We made her wait to open her treasure for a few hours because of the dramatic temperature change it endured coming through our door, but she was finally allowed to open the case. Wow, that case is so light! So much lighter than my case. I mean, hers felt like it must be empty! But then, what can you expect with a 1/4 size violin. That's going to be lighter, too.

At first the obstinate thing did not want to be tuned, but after a little coaxing I managed to get it to relax and stop resisting. Seriously, joking aside, it did not want to stay in tune for more than about one second. I was a little worried for a few moments, but I suppose it had something to do with it being brand new...?

Anyway, Emily had her first lesson on holding the violin and bow that night, and she played the "Mississippi Hot Dog" rhythm on all four strings. That's as far as we got Friday night, but on Saturday I taught her the A Major scale... but let me tell you, she is not one to just sit back and wait until I teach her something. She figured out how to play Twinkle Twinkle on her own, and that's not the only thing she's learned by herself. I've been teaching her a little at a time (I figure several short lessons a week may be better than one long one once a week at this stage, since we live in the same house anyway!), but she is learning great leaps at a time. It's amazing to watch, but she is very determined about a lot of things.

So now each of us four girls have our own instrument -- I play violin (need I mention that?), Amy plays flute, Elisabeth has a violin (which she doesn't play much right now, but hopefully she will pick it up more in the future!), and Emily now has a violin. Hmmm, I think we need two girls to switch to viola and cello so we can have a string quartet. I've never heard of music written for three violins and a flute... but then Amy and I are quite used to adapting music, anyway. I look forward to the day when my two youngest sisters join Amy and me in accompanying the congregational singing at our church!

Some of you may remember the photoshopped picture I posted a little over a year ago, a picture of some blogging friends and Amy and me. Since then we have still not met, but I wanted to redo the photoshop and make it more believable. I am a perfectionist when it comes to digitally editing photos (or videos or audio, for that matter), and I wanted to do a picture of us together with matching lighting and skin tones. Because for that other picture, Amy and I were outside, but I cut Amber and Anna out of an indoor photo.

So I asked our friends if they would mind taking a picture for me to work with. However, it was in the shade, and I couldn't get our shade here in AZ to match up with their shade in MN. I don't know if it had to do with the tilt of the earth on its axis, the difference in temperatures, the amount of clouds in the sky, or maybe it was just the shape of the structure making the shade. Whatever it was, the two pictures didn't match up. At all.

I felt bad asking them to take the picture again, but I thought maybe if they took a picture in the sun and told me the time of day and the direction they were facing in the picture, I could recreate the circumstances here and get the lighting all going the right direction.

I sheepishly asked our friends if they would mind taking another picture for me. They graciously went outside and shot seven more pictures on two different days to try and get a good shot. Surely one of them should work for me, right?


Next I had to cut each of us out so we could be pasted into the picture of our friends. This is a lot harder and time-consuming that you would think (well, it is if you are trying to make it look perfect). It took a lot longer than I had anticipated! But after much time and work, I came up with these:


Pretty cool, huh? I love it how we are all floating here on my blog, LOL!

The last few steps of the project were to paste us into the other picture, scale us to the right sizes, and adjust the colors so our skin tones matched fairly well. Then I had to fix the miniscule details, such as making us look like we were standing in the grass instead of floating above it, and fixing Amber's and Anna's hair so it didn't look like it was blowing in the wind (since our hair wasn't). I told you I'm a perfectionist when it comes to this stuff!

And finally, I had our finished product (BTW, this goes to show that you can't always believe what you see on the internet)...

Our family is big on libraries. We have two different libraries we like to go to -- one is maybe half a mile from our house, but the other is about twenty minutes away. Unfortunately, the nicer library is the one that's farther away. Yesterday we went to the nicer library for an acting program they had going. We didn't have any idea really what it was going to be like, but we thought we'd go, see what they were doing, and maybe participate. The description we got said just to come and they'll give you a part to say, no rehearsing.

Well, it turned out to be mostly just the Girls' and Boys' Club, and when I saw that it was mostly littler kids I didn't really feel like participating. So while the others stayed to watch, I went off to the rest of the library, browsed the shelves, and found several things to check out. Now, this is very unusual for me. Normally I just get on the computer and leave the books alone, for the most part, since I never seem to find something I'm interested in, or something that's decent (you know the typical teen/pre-teen books, most of them are garbage!). So here's what my stack looked like by the time we walked out the door:

• A CD of Hilary Hahn (my favorite violin artist, her music is beautiful!) playing Mozart Violin Sonatas. I haven't listened to the whole thing, but from what I've heard of it, I prefer the Bach Concertos CD (also by her) I got last time. Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about Hilary Hahn, so I am not endorsing her.
  
• Pride and Prejudice -- never read it before, at least not beyond the first couple chapters. Thought it was about time I read that book.
  
• Kazunomiya: Prisoner of Heaven, Japan 1858 (Royal Diaries)
• Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 (Royal Diaries) I've read some of the Royal Diaries before, and when I saw these two I thought I'd check them out. I don't have a lot of confidence (okay, actually I don't have any -- I'm taking a chance) that there won't be objectionable content, but if there is I'll just put them aside. Who knows, maybe these ones are okay?
• Cherokee Rose, by Al & Joanna Lacy. Can you believe this was the only Al Lacy book on the shelf? Sigh.
• No Talking, by Andrew Clements. What a hoot! When I was reading this, I felt like I ought to stop talking, too! Or talk in three-word sentences. Something like that. We have really enjoyed a few of Andrew Clements books, they are just hilarious (okay, I'll admit they're WAY below my reading level, but they are so funny!).
• The Report Card, by Andrew Clements. Not as good, but still had its funny parts. I wouldn't really recommend this one, though.

I also requested the last two books in Al Lacy's Angel of Mercy Series by interlibrary loan through our closer library. Although they don't have a lot of good books to choose from, we can usually get what we want through interlibrary loaning. The downside is that it takes a while to get the books in! But it's still better than buying them, by a long shot!!

So it seems I'll be busy reading for a while now. So far I've read the Andrew Clements books (I was reading No Talking even before we left the library) and five chapters of Pride and Prejudice. I have a ways to go!

I couldn't help but feel bad when I got this comment from my Mom several days ago:

I miss you blogging. :o) Come back.

I miss me blogging, too. I used to really enjoy blogging. I blogged faithfully for a while. And then I just started dwindling off, until we come to a month gap in between posts (I justified it by telling myself that I had said I would be posting less frequently).

But you know, I miss blogging! Surely I can come up with something to post about regularly! I mean, I have a pretty big folder of pictures on the computer, 697 pictures, to be exact. Do you think I could find inspiration from some of them? LOL. So, as I was looking through my pics, I found one that I had meant to post about last summer and never got around to it!


So you really don't need to feel sorry for me. Really. I like it!

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.