Quotes

Yeah, so I haven't posted for awhile, but I'm going to do a random post of my AIM profile first...haha!

if you're looking at this, you rock...have a nice day!

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Mt 6:33

IMPACT, you really rock...and anyone else who went to LT, for that matter...

"...we fools who love..." "...the choice between what is right and what is easy..." ~Dumbledore, HP5 and 4, respectively

You know the saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence?" Well, it's true, cuz it really is greener over here!

"You are the most insensitive wart I have ever had the misfortune to meet!"
"Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have!" ~Hermione, HP5, both about Ron. Ha!

"I am no man!" ~Eowyn, at the thrilling climax of LOTR3

"I can't do it Sam."
"I know.
It's all wrong.
By rights we shouldn't even be here.

But we are.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, cuz how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

victory! we have victory!

But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it'll shine the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories...had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't, they kept going, because they were holding onto something."

"What are we holding onto, Sam?"

"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo.
And it's worth fighting for."

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. -George Bernard Shaw (don't be afraid to get a little dirt under your nails!) I got that off my cousin's profile, and I liked it, so here it is.

"You're not going to spend eternity with your dirty laundry," so invest in the things that matter.

Harry Potter

Arg! So I'm on my HP web site (mugglenet!), which I have a link to, and I see they have a picture of Mad-Eye Moody as he appears in the movie. So I go look at that, and under that there's a link saying something about "Not all Christians are anti-HP," so I click on the link and it goes to Christianity Today's website. There are a bunch of articles about Harry Potter, some for, some against, and I go to one of the against ones because I love ranting at them. But then of course I needed someplace to rant and someone to rant to, so I go to my blog.

YES witchcraft is real. YES HP has witchcraft in it. NO the witchcraft in HP IS NOT real. YES, some kids think it is, which is why the books are not for all kids. My argument goes down to the bottom line that parents should decide whether or not their kids should read the books. Some kids are too imaginative and shouldn't read them, but if they know that it isn't real and it's just for fun, let them read it! Also, don't be anti-Harry Potter without reading the books. The magic is a minimal part of the story and is usually very humorous. When I think about HP I think about the friendships and conflicts and characters, not the magic. Ok, if I write much more I should just put on my 7th or 8th grade HP report (which isnt' a bad idea...) So I'll stop now.

These are a few of my fa-vor-ite things

Also could be titled "Things I thrive on and probably couldn't live without"

Seeing the color yellow
Wearing the color pink
Bright colors in general
Talking to friends
Hanging out with friends
E-mailing friends
Anything to do with friends
Good books that make you sigh when you're done with them (see my profile for a list of them)
Quiet Times
Goofing off with my sisters (especially when we're supposed to be brushing our teeth, or are brushing our teeth)
Freaky Factory and Kiko Match (http://www.neopets.com/games/freakyfactory.phtml and http://www.neopets.com/games/kikomatch2.phtml. I have a feeling that these two are fads and I could very easily live without them, but they're nice to get your brain off school, and I have fun with them).
Singing randomly (it's especially fun when I do it in my Carlotta voice. Ha. You don't want to know. *grins ominously*)

I'm sure I could add more if I could think of them.

And another post--not the last

I just finished Witch of Blackbird Pond. If you haven't read that, you should, because it's really really good. My definition of really really good is when you get done, you close it slowly and siiiiiiiiiiiiiiggh. And then siiiiiiiiiigh again. Until your family goes, "Katie just finished a book and it must've been good, cuz we're all going to be blown away by those tremendous sighs." And then you go post on your blog about it and add it to your profile. :D

So it's a pretty good day today...

Yeah. So. Ha. Aren't I articulate this morning. Go to http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=21, cuz it totally rocks. If you can, read it out loud.

I had no intention of writing any of that, but there it is so I might as well leave it.

I am so weird. Just--so weird. When I get happy, euphoric, high on life, I have SO MUCH ENERGY. Like now. Oh my. The particular reason for this euphoria is I just finished Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors. It's the fourth book in a series of what weill have five books. It's like Harry Potter, but different (aren't all books these days). It was really good. It's nice to read a book that makes you keep reading and keep reading and won't let you stop. It's even nicer to read it on a Saturday afternoon that you don't have anything going on and are able to keep reading. Yeah. Ok. Moving on.

Yesterday, when I didn't particularly want to go bowling, I played the best game of my life. 138. With bumpers. But they were mostly there for morale, because the 2 strikes and 3 spares that I got all in a row didn't use the bumpers. So that was cool. It really wasn't fair, because I wasn't trying at all and Abby was trying really hard. Funny how those things work. *shakes head*

Um. Yeah. Hi. Oh dear. That was a Doreeee-ism. *shakes head again*. Goodbye.

bladidadida

hmm, I think I've used that title before. Oh. I have to go now. Ha. Back. Well, I'm bored. Everyone's at school. *sigh*. I'm not doing school 'cause my grandparents are here, so we had finished up school before. so yah, I'm booorrrreedd. We're not doing anything till later, so I have nooottthhhiiiinnnggg to doooo. I guess I could go do something. Ha. very funny. Yah I just crack myself up. Oh dear. I need to do something productive. so I guess this means this waz a pointless post...Buenos dias, me amigos. The orange was Doreeeee pretending to be me. Which is interesting. To say the least. Ha. "lol" means that's really truly funny. "Ha" means I've never seen something less funny in my entire life, HEY!and I usually only use it when I'm morose. Which is my word for when I'm not perfectly happy, lol. Ha. >:P Yeah, this was pretty much a pointless post. But it amused me. So not totallly pointless. We're going bowling today. I wanted to go ice skating but we flipped a coin, which is the best way to decide things, so we're going bowling. Which will be fun as long as we have bumpers. I start too many sentences with Which. WHICH is really ha. Oh well. Ha. Blah. Those rhyme. Oh dear. I'd better leave now.

Katie's Marvelous Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Here it is...my semi-secret recipe! :D It used to be Mom's but I kind of absconded with it...:D

2-4 medium-sized slightly overripe bananas (5-7 for a double batch)
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 c oil
1 ½ c flour
½ c wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ generous c semi-sweet chocolate chips

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix together egg, sugar, and oil. Mash bananas until creamy and add to mix. Add flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt (don’t forget those last three or they’ll end up being bland pellets. Trust me, I know). Mix all that up. If you only used two (or 5) bananas you might need a dash of milk. Add the chocolate chips. Don't forget to eat a few yourself. Mix it well cuz this is the part that determines how well-distributed your chocolate chips are. You don't want too many in one muffin and none in another! Bake at 350 degrees until they look brown and muffin-y. Mom always does that part, so I don't know how long exactly. Another important thing I've learned form experience is to grease/oil the muffin tins. Makes 12-18 muffins depending on how many bananas you used and how big your muffin tins are. Double batch makes 24-30 muffins, depending on how many bananas you used and how big your muffin tins are. And if you used 7, expect LARGE muffins (by my standards). Enjoy!

A nest of mice and some chickens

There's a nest of about 5 little baby things in our front yard. Mice, moles, or rabbits. They have tails though, which narrows it down to mice. They're really cute. I'll have to post a picture of them.

We were playing Bocci this evening, and Abyack was saying, "oh, man, dad's so much closer than me!" But we didn't know yet, so I said, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch." She said, "Why, cuz one might be a twin chicken?" Which I thought was absolutely hilarious.

The Haircut Saga

Yesterday I got my haircut. I just wanted basically the same thing I have now (really long hair with no style) but interesting. So we showed Denise (that's the hair stylist) a picture and she cut away. She just trimmed the ends and put in a bit of layering in the front. It looked cute the way she had it, but then we got home and it kind of just disappeared. It looked nice if I got it all arranged and just sat there, but if I walked around it blew into oblivion.

Neither Mom or I was really happy with it, so Mom called today and asked if there was a spot that I could go back in. There was. We explained the dilemma and she was really good about it. She said she could put in more layers, but then she'd have to take off about 4 inches of the length and that would be a bit drastic. She also said just putting in more layers would make my thin, fine hair look...thin and fine. So the other option was to just do a bit more of what she did yesterday. We went with that one. It looks really nice--more how I imagined it would look in the first place. Like, you can actually tell I got a haircut. Wow!(That's unusual, for those of you who didn't know.) Not at first glance maybe, cuz it's still way long, but there are shorter pieces of hair in there.

The hairstylist was really good about considering my hair type and what would work with it, and what we wanted it to look like.

So the drama is over and I have a cute haircut. I'm happy now. :)

School has begun

The Madness has begun. Well, ok, so it's not all that insane...yet. No piano or dance till next week.

Today was the best day of school yet as far as length goes. Monday and Tuesday I worked ahead on my reading books so that Thursday and Friday I won't have them. So M and T took till about 4:30 or 5, but today was only till 3:30. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have super short day...or I'll just read my SAT book all day...

This year I don't have all the annoying vocabulary and analogies books, but Home Ec has replaced them. Just in the workload, it's not annoying or anything.

Next Tuesday I'm starting piano. With my new teacher, Mr. S. He's quite nice, but all the same I'm a bit nervous because I haven't played piano all summer, except for sometimes in church. So my hands get tired more easily--my back does too, it's not used to sitting up straight for 45 minutes straight. It's really amazing though, I haven't done any exercises or scales all summer and my fingers still remember how to do them. Not as fast as I did them last year, but they remember. Only if I very strictly do not think about it.

Spanish: I don't think I remember as much as last year, but it's coming back quite nicely. It's fun, too. I'm watching National Treasure with Spanish subtitles right now. Hannah's started. And we're going to order Rosetta Stone. Actually we did, but there's a big hullabaloo because we're not totally sure it's legitimate. Well, we're quite sure it's not. Sheesh, I've been using "quite" way too much this post!!!

I think I'm going to take back what I said at the beginning of the last paragraph: I think I do remember as much as last year, at least as far as vocabulary goes. Verb tenses have slipped away, but just a little bit. It's all still there if I just dig a bit.

Same goes for math. I'm mostly reviewing what I learned at the end of last year. It's weird because it's not challenging, but if I did anything farther ahead I think I would be totally lost.

humdeedoodeeday

Why is it that I always feel like doing a million things at 10:00 at night, when I have to go to sleep, but now in the afternoon I don't feel like doing them?

But let's see here...I also think one of the reasons I didn't like Dominator was that it was too much too soon. But I don't know if I'll ever work up to liking something I disliked that much. And I don't think it would've been much different if I had gone with friends. Maybe if I went with friends, worked up to it more, went on it cuz I wanted to and not cuz I thought I should, and had my eyes open, MAYBE then I would like a roller coaster.

Ooh, I'm gonna go make some muffins. Mmmmm. Banana chocolate chip. We have lots of bananas.

Geauga Lake

Wow. Ok. So much to write, so little time.

Rides I went on:

Liked:
The Merry Oldies (you drive a car around a track)
The carousel
the swinging ship thingy--that was my favorite!
the 3D dino show

Didn't like:
The Beaver Mining something or other (small roller coaster)
Dominator (roller coaster)

Didn't care:
The scrambler thingy ma do
bumper cars
ferris wheel

The first things we did were the roller coasters.
First the small one. It was my first time on a roller coaster, and I wasn't sure I liked it too much. So I went on it again, trying to get more confident. It was a little better the second time. I went on it again later in the day and it was even better then, but still not fun on some of the corners.
Then the big one. I did not like it. Hannah and Dad went on it first, and Hannah loved it, so Abby went, and she loved it, so she took me, but I didn't like it. There were a number of factors:
>I did it because I thought I should, not because I wanted to.
>I sat on the edge seat. I'm not actually sure if that made it worse, but Hannah said it was shakier on the edge seat than in the middle seats.
>I had my eyes shut the whole time. I think I closed them on the big hill up.
My heart was beating soooo fast! I think if I had opened my eyes I might've had a heart attack!

Ok, bad stuff over--after that Hannah, Dad and Abby went on X-Flight. The first thing they said when they got off: something to the effect of "that was so cool! I loved it!" Second thing, "Katie, you would not like that." I used that as ammo when they said, "Don't you want to go on it?"

Then we ate lunch, I think. That's when my day started to improve, my burger was really good and it was nice to sit down and have a drink of water! We went on the merry-go-round, bumper cars and the Merry Oldies thing next. I've already said everything remarkable about those. I think I would like the bumper cars if I were in an energetic enough mood. Whiplash just didn't seem all that appealing today. I like the car thing because it's SO HARD to steer! I drove Hannah the first time. I wasn't totally sure that you had to steer, so we're approaching the first turn and Hannah yells, "Turn!" I'm like, Oh, ok. Sounds good. Oops. So that was fun.

Then my day improved about 200%: we went on the Swinging Ship. That's not its actual name, but who can keep those all straight? It was REALLY FUN!!! Yeah, it's like a 3 thrill rating and I sat in the middle, (abby: "cuz your a wimp") but I had so much fun. I went on it three times straight in a row and screamed every single time!!! Um, then we went on the Scrambler thingy (once again, Dad and Hannah tested it and then Abby and I tried it. It was ok. I probably would've liked it more if I hadn't just gotten off my favorite ride.)

Uh, let's see, finishing up quickly...I went on the car thing again while the Coaster Three went on Dominator again. Oh, and then they did X-Flight again.

It was the perfect day to go: it didn't get too hot, there were virtually NO LINES! I stood in line for something twice, just waiting for it to go once, we were like the first people in line. So if you really liked something (like the swinging ship) you could just get off and get on again! It was pretty breezy all day too, which was really nice. We kept getting really thirsty from screaming and the heat, but the vendor people give you cups of water (thank heavens, we're not reduced to buying water).

We're all really tired, but it was really fun! And now I have to go wash off my Geauga lake sunscreen and sweat.

umm, I don't really know why I'm posting, but I'm sure I'll find something to talk about

oh, yes I definitely will. I babysat the family with the "ooh, we're winning" boy tonight. His name's Ian. I was whacking him with his Spider man gloves (he looooves spider man) to tease him, and he said, "Hey, you hit me!" I got all innocent and said, "no, it was the gloves!" And the first thing that pops into his head was, "No it wasn't, they don't have eyeballs!" Like, "it's the most obvious thing in the world! That's the only reason they couldn't hit me!" Then he did say, "And, they're not alive!"

Tomorrow we're going to Geauga Lake. And I'm going to go on a roller coaster. Just a little one to start with.

Oooh, I gotta tell yall about all this good food I've been having! Last night we went to Cici's Pizza. It's an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, and did I eat all I could eat! It's not just pizza (there are lots of kinds), there's also dessert (the apple pie pizza was reallllly good) and salad and pasta.

And today we went to Grinders, and I got breaded shrimp with fantastic seasoned vegetables and fries. Mmmmmmmmm.

Editor's Notes

I keep thinking, "oh, I should add this to that post" and "oh, that's not quite what actually happened" so I'm going to do one post to correct some of my others.

Sisterhood:
There is some inappropriate stuff in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I didn't really notice, except for noting that they made bad choices. I mean, I did notice, but I didn't. So consider yourself forewarned.

Babysitting:
Just because they're angels sometimes doesn't mean they are all the time. For instance, for part of the summer a babysitting day didn't go by that Maria didn't have a hissy fit about something or other. Oh, and I totally forgot to post about Mandy, the Crazy Dog. ADORABLE, but a puppy, and therefore crazy! :) She was a lot of fun, though, when she wasn't chewing on something she wasn't supposed to.

Umm, was there something else? I don't think so...the cacti are doing great--oh, yeah, there was something else--my white cactus is blooming too! I noticed the day after the other one. They're white flowers (which is why it took me awhile to notice), and I can't figure out how they're going to bloom through the spines, but I guess cacti have a way of managing it, so I'll just watch.

Vacation Post #1

Today we played mini golf and went bowling. I did not do too well at either, but had fun anyway. I had some redeeming shots, which was nice (like getting a spare my last turn --except then I didn't hit anything with my extra bowl) (oh, and in mini golf I hit it through a log cabin window and no one else did--but then I scored 5 on that hole). Oh, and in the middle, we had SWENSON'S for lunch. It was SO GOOD!!! There is nothing like a Swenson's burger, fries and a coffee/hot fudge shake. Mmmmm! I was the last one finished eating and had to quickly suck down the last bit of my milkshake cuz we were at the bowling place. There was so much flavor, you couldn't just snarf it down. I saaavvooorr. Sooooo yummy. ok, can you tell that was the highlight of my day! (and my two parenthetical redeeming shots.)

Tonight we're going to trumpet in the land. We should probably be leaving right now. ok, we are. Which means I can't format fancy. oh well. I'll try anyway cuz no one's moving.

Babysitting, more babysitting, and some more babysitting.

Let's start with some fun statistics: From last Tuesday to today (that's one week) I have babysat:

>16 kids

>45 hours

>2 dogs

>5 families

>6 days

>age range of 5 to 12.

>4-9 hours per family

So yeah. I'm tired. But it was fun. Crazy, but fun. I've learned a lot, like how nice it is to live somewhere not cluttered and where the counters get wiped off. I didn't know I was a neat freak--well, actually, I'm not. I have this weird personality that I"m whatever everyone around me isn't. Like, if no one's leading, I will, but if someone else will, I won't. If no one else will clean up, I will.

One family has kids who listen right away, one family is really considerate, like they're there to serve me, not vice versa. One family has a girl named Maria whose life ambition is to be a princess. She has the most vivid imagination...mostly copying off of her favorite movies and making her the damsel in distress and me the sidekick or bad guy. Oh, and she adds her own plot to it. Another family of kids (triplets) loves to play with my long hair. Loves it. The girls played with it for about an hour, while I read to them. And the last family has a boy who plays video games, asks if I can play it for him, and then says stuff like, "Ooh, we're winning!" and "you're getting lots of points for us!" which could be totally annoying or adorable. I consider it to be adorable, or I couldn't babysit him for 7 hours.

and a top view--they go all the way around. EEEEEEE! usually that means scary but this time it's excitement--you should've seen me when I realized it was blooming! My family can tell you, I was EX, CITE, ED! Ok, now go to the bottom and go up, cuz that's the order I did them in, so my comments will make more sense. 

group picture...I know they're about the same as last time, but it's like a family picture, lol. The red one's head is too big for its stem, I'm trying to figure out a way to prop it up. It tilts every time I repot it straight. 

whole view--look how tiny they are! 

I LOVE THIS PICTURE! I don't know how I got the camera to zoom in this far but I'm really glad I did!