Christmas Eve 1941
This year, my mom and I took a look at the Christmas-themed books on our selves, and both agreed that it was time we bought some more. They barely filled a shelf with their words, which is nothing considering we have sixteen of those shelves on that same wall. One of Mom’s favorite authors is historian David McCullough (whose books never yet have failed to please her), and when we saw a Christmas book he wrote called “In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story,” of course, we had to buy it.
I read it this morning, and what I loved most about it were not what David McCullough himself wrote, but the words of the two people now dead that the book generally centered on. 1941 Christmas was a Christmas in the middle of World War Two, and it was that same year that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the US for Christmas and delivered a speech with Franklin Roosevelt. At the back of the book, it including a copy of their speeches, and it made me wonder why I had never read or heard them before.
I would include them in this post, but I’m not quite sure if it’s considered copyrighted or not. So instead, I will highly, highly suggest finding a copy of those speeches somewhere (or even buying the book) and reading it. It really helped me set aside the whole aspect of presents and what Christmas has become to the world, and realize how much hope and inspiration and happiness Christmas sparks, a feeling and event that has stood the test of time like none other.
A merry and happy Christmas to everyone!
(And if anyone’s looking for another very cute book to add their Christmas shelf, I recommend “Christmas On Mill Street” by Joseph Walker. :D)
12/25/2011 | jen | Comment [1]
Why You Can't Trust Me Family...
I don’t know why anyone trusts my family in the park with a cooler full of ice cold water. You think they would have learned by now, after so many “incidents.” After our previous ice cream drama, we thought we evaded all disasters for at least until Monday. Wrong. Our ward had a “Fun” (which is a completely misuse of the word) 5K Run, and had a breakfast and water balloon toss afterwards. We did our run, but the food didn’t come when scheduled. For some reason, the grills at the park wouldn’t work, so the food was cooked in houses nearby the homes and brought down to the park. I think my family’s presence played apart in that.
When the food finally arrived, I stood in line to get food with my dad. Somehow he ended up with an open water bottle and just had to spill it down my back. I followed suit, but then ignored and focused on the food. Everything went normally as it does for us while we ate. Then came the balloon toss. I paired up with my awesome friend Miranda. The toss hadn’t officially started, so I started tapping the balloon to see how it jiggled around. I guess however gently you tap a water balloon, it will explode. All over you. By the end of the toss, I was soaked at the top from to balloons. Fun.
And my dad took advantage of my current state. He still had that water bottle, and with some kind of “accident” caused him to pour it all over me. Which, with no food distractions, caused a full out water war between me, my dad, later, Kennerley and Quinan, and eventually pulling in Annalee, Mitchell and Sadie. This war lasted an hour, which I spent darting away from people for fear that Dad and Kennerley would sneak up on me and drench me with cold water, which they had plenty of in coolers filled with ice. Fate also had it that the “Fun” Run had made my legs sore and tired and making it even more difficult to run away.
We all left into our car soaking wet, except of Mom, somehow. I can’t wait til the next park activity, where they probably will have some of the water reserved for us Ropers and our constant water wars.
06/11/2011 | jen | Anything You Can't Trust Your Family With?
Ice Cream Chaos
I think there’s a reason why people typically don’t invite my family to social events. We tend to cause disasters out of anything and everything. For example, this weekend. If any of you happened to be around our neighborhood yesterday, you would’ve found that it was very extremely hot. So naturally, we decided to make our own ice cream. Bad idea.
We used one of those recipes that call for you to pour the ingredients into plastic bags and shake it up. I remember making ice cream at Grandma’s when I was younger, and instead of shaking plastic bags, we rolled around tin cans. Her brilliance and wisdom is astonishing. Anyway, my sister and I were going to make a bag’s worth of ice cream each. Well, we, or should I say I, discovered how difficult it is for uncoordinated hands to pour milk into small bags. I ended up spilling it all over the floor. While we tried to mop it up with no mop or paper towels handy, Quinan accidentally tipped over one of the fans we had going, and something got caught in it and caused it to crackle. After all of that got cleared up, we tried duct taping the bags shut, like we were instructed, but the bags kept leaking everywhere before we did. They, we headed outside all set to toss those bags around. We found out that long nails easily rip plastic, and if you drop the bag too hard, it also will split open. We finally got those bags taped up, with very cheap and ineffective tape, I might add, and our ice cream did turn out pretty delicious. I just didn’t remember anyone saying how disastrous homemade ice cream was. Which, ironically, brings up some further Grandma Ice Cream memories, which include us being told how easy it was, yet it turning out to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
A Few Words from APWBD
I love it when people mention Dumbledore during their church talks.
“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”
F
Me: Poor F. It’s probably emotionally scarred from being the failure grade.
Mom: F doesn’t have a brain.
Me: How do you know that?
Mom: It’s skinny, where would the brain go?
Amazing...
This has to be the most amazing thing my eyes have ever beheld. It is beautiful.
A vampire panda. That is beautiful art. Especially since the artist is terrible at sculpting. This is why I like art class. She let’s me draw pandas all day long. Who doesn’t like that?
Here is something I made back in sixth grade. We had to draw the bottom of shoes and draw up.
I made a panda with Bamboo Designer shoes.
This, well, doesn’t have a panda, but I thought it looked pretty cool. This is made up of the letters from my name.
Finally, is not so awesome. It was hard. But scratched a sketch onto a piece of copper with the non-bristle side of a paintbrush. Then, my teacher soaked it into some kind of chemical.
If you can’t tell, the big long thing is a dragon. On the dragon is a panda. The dragon was also holding a panda, and there was a panda on the ground, but those didn’t really turn out. So I had to scratch them out.
01/29/2011 | jen | Comment [1]
Funner or Funnier
Ken is a grammar cop. More than once day she’s correcting us. So we were talking about it. And Mom replies that she is always mocked for saying “dinner.” Dad asked her how to spell it, siding with Ken for the word “runner.” Mom had her answer ready. “F-U-N-N-I-E-R.” we thought that was funny. Get it?
Phone Scam
The phone rang. Phone Scam is calling. It’s for you.
The phone really did ring during dinner. Kenn looked at the caller ID, and sure enough, it actually said “Phone Scam.” My dad answered it too. They were saying something about a credit card. Too bad my parents don’t have a credit card. These people were either stupid enough to put Phone Scam, or smart enough to.
Word Count Nov. 2 2010
2254, total. Good, but not as good as yesterday. Only 796 today. Did the math (on a calculator of course) and now I have to write approximately 633.78571428571429 words to meet my goal of 20,000.
11/02/2010 | jen | Comment [2]
Word Count Of Nov. 1 2010
is 1,458! Yay! I wrote 1,458 words in one day! Yeah, Kenn and her friends wrote like, thousands more, but nobody in my school has done that! (or at least know that they wrote that many words.) If I didn’t just hear talks about pride on Sunday, I would go brag to all my friends right now!
I should go write now and beat that record!