Go to www.shieldmaidenofgondor.blogspot.com- my new blog!

www.homeschoolblogger.com/jamandbooks

This is my mom's blog. She has decided to move her blog over to Blogspot. I'm starting to think the same.

Homeschool Blogger is being a pain. It's been slow, won't let me login before I try at least twice, and yesterday it erased all my comments. They're back now, but honestly.

Happy September 1st!

It's been raining on and off all day. Not such a bad thing, though, rain is fine. At least I'm not walking a dog anymore.

Dad just finished reading a chapter of the Penderwicks- it's a really good book. I just reread Anne of Windy Poplars- I haven't read it for a while, and only a couple times before, unlike the rest of the series, so it was nice. I'm waiting for the fifth Artemis Fowl book to come out so I can buy it if I have any money left. I've read the first chapter online and it looks very very interesting.  

I can hear my dad playing Midtown Madness on the main computer. I love that game, it's so much fun. I'm a very bad driver, especially on the races.

I also just discovered that you can put cool smilies on here... yay! I'll probably end up using too many.. oh well, they're fun.

My links work! Yay! Turns out I had to put http://  in front of the address... okay. Whoops.

Today was fun. We were planning to go to Jasper right after church, but no one actually wanted to go and we got an invitation to come out to the country where some people in our church live. We had a late lunch, then the two oldest girls and I went riding; they have six horses, two of them are really young and are being sold, then there's three riding horses that they use for 4-H and an older one that's somewhat sore but still rideable sometimes, so I rode him since one of the other horses was pretty sore for a while. It was fun; I haven't been able to ride since camp, when we went on a long trail ride, and it felt sooo good to be back on a horse. Then we watched an episode of the Waltons- it's an old TV show that they have on DVD. I'm tired now.

We watched an old movie last night called The Shop Around the Corner. It was quite good- I loved the little quirks that they put into the characters. I don't know why, but I've always almost liked the old movies from the forties and fifties better than some of the new ones with better effects- maybe it's just the quality of the acting and how creative some of it was.

I'm happy, because Silmarillia (www.ringerpirate.blogspot.com ) and her family are most likely coming for a visit sometime soon for a day, then she and her brother will stay for a couple more days! It should be fun. Lots of it. We haven't seen them since June, and they haven't come to our house for a year and a half, so yay!

I feel worn out. My feet don't hurt as much anymore, though. I was at the sports store sorting and pricing a huge amount of hunting supplies from 9:00 this morning to 6:00 this evening, with an hour's break for lunch. It doesn't sound like it would take that long, but it did- we had to open the boxes, figure out what was in them, find them on the list of things that were there, and price them. It was fun, though.

We just finished eating supper (chicken, potatoes, salad, and beans- yum) and we're having ice cream for dessert in about twenty minutes. Mom bought an ice cream maker last year- we used to have an older one but it broke. This one makes very good ice cream and frozen yogurt, which means since our friends have a cow and give us cream, we get it much more often than we would if we just bought it. Which is a good thing.

Mom got school supplies today, and I needed something to do so I started putting together everything. I'm still trying not to think that we only have two weeks of freedom left, but it also means the beginning of art class, piano, and violin; I have a new teacher this year for violin and she's very very nice and good at violin- she says she loves teaching, which is better than the last one. So I'm kind of looking forward to September.

  I won first place for my artwork and picture at the bench show yesterday... :) If I can get pictures of them I'll share. My mom did well too, she got almost $50 in cash for prizes! It's a nice way to earn money once a year- it's only 50 cents for  adults to enter each category, 25 cents for Junior, which includes me, and there's money for first, second, and third prizes, so it works out well. For us. I'm not so sure about the people paying for it.  There isn't much happening today, so I have nothing else of interest to post about. Sorry.

The Wildwood Bench Show is over; apparently I won second  for beans. :) We didn't stay all day, as we wanted to get home and the viewing for the entries wasn't until 1:00. A friend brought home our things last night. The one where I live is today and my mom brought everything over this morning when I was still asleep. I sleep a lot.

My brother and I are taking care of a neighbor's pets next week while they're away. It should be interesting- they have two cats, a dog, and a bird, and I've only seen one of the cats and the dog; I don't actually know the animals. I'm walking the dog and probably taking care of at least one cat, and my brother will do the bird and let the dog out in the morning.

That's pretty much it, we haven't done much this week. We did walk over and visit my grandma for a while last night, which is good. I haven't seen her much this summer.

   Should I post? Do I need to post?

   Yeah, I should probably post.

   My mom and I went into the city on Monday with my best friend and her mom. It was fun- we did a lot of shopping and went to an Italian restaurant for lunch. I'm not very experimental in Italian restaurants; I had pizza. It was very good. Took a long time, though.

   The Sidewalk Jamboree where I live is starting tomorrow. I'm still debating whether I should actually spend money on a ride or just walk around and take in the huge store sales- the Christian bookstore here has a nice Bible case I'd like to get. Maybe. My current one is falling apart- I've had it for at least four years, although I haven't counted.

   There are two bench shows, one in the community about half an hour away from us and one here. I'm entering a painting I did last year for art, a few photos, and some of my carrots; they're nice and big this year. We haven't done this for three years, but it's fun. Last time I won first place in almost everything, I think. Which is good. I took a couple pictures of my little sister on the trampoline and I think a few of them turned out well. Thankfully we have a digital camera, so I put it on continous mode and got a few rather interesting shots of her in the air.

   That's all for now- maybe I'll think of something to write about later.

The Bartimaus Trilogy Book Three- Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud.

   I've read this book once before. It could be classified as strange, obscure, and just weird. I suppose magicians and djinni (no, they do not give three wishes; they are not imprisoned in lamps for a thousand years) in London are strange. Ptolemy's Gate is the third book in the Bartimaus trilogy, I consider it the second-best. Bartimaus is a third-level multiple-thousand year-old djinni. He is currently in service to a young powerful magician named John Mandrake. I'm not giving away the plot, if I do some people will turn it away without actually reading the book, which is better than it sounds. John's real name is Nathaniel (magicians receive new names at the age of twelve, their birth names must be kept secret, as a djinni or a fellow magician will have considerable power over them if they find it), and Bartimaus knows this. Almost their whole relationship has to be based on trust, because the djinni does know the name and could completely destroy Nathaniel if he wanted to.

   There is another character: Kitty Jones. Kitty is not a magician, she is a normal person (called a commoner, commoners are looked down on by magicians) who is very smart. Nathaniel has had encounters with her since the first book when he was twelve- he currently thinks she is dead, and is somewhat haunted by her memory (it's not a ghost story). Anyways, there's a ton of action in this book, you've got to read at least the first book in the trilogy (The Amulet of Samarkand) before you'll understand any of it, but it's a good read and I highly recommend it.

Okay, my links are not working... apparently they don't bring you to the linked site. Sooo, for anyone wondering how to get to the sites, you basically need to, if you're using Windows, which I am and I don't know if it'd work on a Mac or anything else, mouse over the link, and at the bar at the bottom of the Internet Explorer page, you know the one that always shows how far a page is loaded or whatever, it has a web address after where it says shieldmaiden/, and that should be the address for the site.

If anyone knows how to fix this, please comment!

We're leaving for church in like ten minutes, but small announcement first- my friend Silmarillia (I just know I spelt it wrong- no, it's right, yay!) has started a blog as well! Unfortunately it's on Blogspot, not HB, so she can't be a "friend", but the Elvish Pirate is in my links!

Hello. This is the first time I've ever written on a blog, mine or not, and it should be fun! Please comment, I love feedback.