I got to sleep in today. :) Not as late as I usually do, but it was better than on a school day. Strangely enough I couldn't sleep after 9. Morning people will be rolling their eyes, but normally I can sleep past that easily on a Saturday morning, especially since we played Settlers of Catan until 10:30. Mom won with nine points by general agreement because we all wanted to get to bed.
We're going to the corn maze tomorrow with the jr. youth. It should be a lot of fun. I'm still waiting for my friend to call back... and say if she can come... and it'll be nice if she does, but it might be kinda short-notice, since we're going to the city and all. So far we have about twenty-six people coming, I think. We won't get back until 8:00, so there won't be any quizzing practice. I did get some memorizing done today.

We're playing Settlers of Catan in a little while. I love that game. Until then I'm going to post. About absolutely nothing, but it's still fun... yeah. I did get a book from the library, it's called Fairest. By Gail Carson Levine, she's the one who wrote Ella Enchanted, which was a very good book. It just came out and I really liked it. She did a good job. One thing I liked is that the girl in the book didn't end up beautiful and perfect; she was loved for who she was. :D
And... I got to the bank, so now I have cash to pay the $60 that I owe my parents and my brother... and I got another twenty for the corn maze on Sunday. The nasty bank machine doesn't let you get anything under twenty dollar bills, so I'll have to get smaller amounts of cash somehow.
Listening to See the Glory... awesome song. It gets repeated about ten times a day here. :)

Lunch break

Mom and Dad are out for lunch, my brother is hibernating in the school room, and the little girls are watching TV. I love having the kitchen to myself. We just ate lunch- leftover potatoes, eggs, meatballs, and rice. Good stuff.
Big brother just started a blog! Unfortunately it's just hockey news- sheesh, aren't there enough hockey blogs out there? But if anyone is actually interested in hockey- be warned, he's biased toward the Oilers- it's www.thefourthline.blogspot.com. He hasn't posted yet. Oh, never mind, yes he has. I have no clue who he's talking about. The Carolina Hurricanes. I don't like them, they took the Stanley Cup. No, I'm not biased. I'm patriotic. There's a difference.
I'm listening to Lord of the Dance by Steven Curtis Chapman... love this song... next up is Signs of Life, which is okay... then there's Let Us Pray after that. I like that song a lot.
I've been fooling around with the HTML on my yearbook page for the online class I'm on... it looks quite nice now. Green, green, and more green. Very nice green.

Sheesh, I need to post more.
I watched the second half of the Return of the King again last night. :D Awesome movie. I had to stop right after the battle when Aragorn dismisses the dead people... so tonight I want to finish it. The last bits are some of the best in the movie, I think.
I started a new song for violin. Whistlers' Tune by Robert Fullman. I think. It's very nice, and it's pretty easy. Except for the double-stops. At least they're just open strings.
The little girls are at Awana for another half-hour, so the house is quiet. Except for my rather loud music, but it's very good music. And the hockey game doesn't start til eight, which is wonderful; I can't even hear my songs over the radio. I wish Josh would get a radio and headphones in his room. Or connect his computer to the internet or something.
I want to make a long post... I have nothing else to do. Except piano practice. Oops.

Randomness

So much for posting every day.
We went for a walk down some trails today. I've been through those trails before, but only in summer and it's really pretty now that everything's yellow and orange. It was fun. We took a lot of pictures; scenery and us. The pictures of me turned out okay. Not the best, but okay.
I got an OWL magazine today... my aunt and uncle have been giving subscriptions for a few years as Christmas presents. I might ask them to stop next year, they're getting pretty lame. Guess what October is? Bugs, Halloween, and super-hero comics! Wow! Soooo interesting!
I actually remembered to do my paper route before 6:00. Yay!

I'm not doing much... and I really have nothing to post about... but I've been trying to do a blog post every day (haha) so I'll do it.
I managed to get Who We Are Instead (by Jars of Clay) onto my mp3 player, which I just call my Rio because it's a Rio Chiba and it's faster to say than going em-pee-three-play-er. I like this CD. Hopefully I'll still have more room left to add more stuff if I can convert music from the mp4 format, which is what you get when you buy stuff from iTunes. I really like the battery life on this one- Dad said it goes for maybe three weeks. I like that. It's better than Mom's iPod, which barely goes a couple days of listening without having to be charged.
Mom made blueberry muffins this morning... and I'm trying not to even look at them because I've already had two. They're sooo good.
We're going to the corn maze next Sunday with the junior youth. We went a couple years ago when junior youth had just started and I was in it. It should be a lot of fun... just as long as it doesn't get too cold. The trip there could be interesting; I'm expecting about twenty people, more if they bring friends. We'll have to go in a few peoples' vans or something, one family in our church has a fifteen-seater so maybe we can borrow that then use our surburban, which takes nine. It costs ten dollars plus extra for snacks and stuff; hopefully I'll actually have cash. I'm already in debt. Maybe someone will want me to babysit... I doubt it though.

Happy Birthday to Bilbo and Frodo! yayyayayay! :D

Oh my goodness.
I just got a letter from the Royal Conservatory of Music. It said I am the winner of the Medal for Excellence for Violin 3 representing the highest mark for that subject and grade for the province of Alberta. I just read it again and realized it was AB, not Canada. I'm almost glad for that- I didn't think I was that good! But still... sheesh, I got 92! It wasn't like a hundred and thirteen or something.
I'm in shock.

We went to the city today. I had a violin lesson, which went nicely. Need to work on doublestops. I finally found some church shoes at a big Wal-Mart, after looking at the Wal-Mart here lots of times and Sears and Payless Shoes Source. I like them. They're pretty basic... and nice... the one thing I don't like is that they're blue. I don't see why they couldn't actually have black or dark brown in my size. But at least it's a dark blue.

I was annoyed at the mall because we stopped at a bookstore for a few minutes and they couldn't have the one book that I'd been dying to take a look at, of course not. They didn't have anything good to read. Not even Horse Illustrated. Sheesh.
I want food. Bye.

We did some quizzing practice today. It was fun, although Josh is *cough cough*a*cough*sore*cough*loser*coughcough*.
Ahem. I will be nice.
Unfortunately I could be coughing a whole lot more soon. My nose started getting stuffy last night and my throat hurts. I seem to be getting sick more often. Ugh.
I reread I Capture the Castle the other day. Very good book. I picked up on the Silmarillion again today too, hopefully I can get it finished soon. I've been reading it off and on since June but I kinda lost track when we were away for almost all July.
So yeah... that's pretty much all. I had first Latin class (well, second, but the first one the server quit after the first ten minutes) on Tuesday. It's fun; I think I like it a lot better online than at home, but all we actually got done at home was a few bits of vocabulary. Every year we would start again and vow to get something done. Every year I did a total of maybe three assignments.

It is no longer snowing.

Which is very good. The snow’s all melted. It’s still chilly for September though. I really need to get winter clothing- long skirts, boots – I don’t think I have boots-, sweaters, and church shoes. There’s still none at Wal-Mart that I would actually wear. The only thing I have right now is blue flowered flip-flops. I had to wear them today and it was cold.
We had quiz practice this morning, which went well. Mom went to a coaches’ thing in Red Deer and got workbooks and chair pads, which haven’t worked yet. We’re supposed to be getting booklets with the text in them too, but so far I only have one, and it’s the sample one that we got. We get to spend a weekend at a Bible camp for the last quiz meet in May, which will be fun; I’ve never been there but it’s supposed to be really nice. Mom’s decided that we’ll have practice on Sunday evenings instead; that way we get more time and we can go to Sunday school. I’m still with the same group I have been for the last two years, and it’s a lot of fun, but I’d almost rather be with the high school because a lot of the nine-year-olds moved up this year so we’ll have a lot more people. Probably at least six every week, compared to the nice little group of three or four last year. But Mr. and Mrs. T (no full names for their privacy) will probably make it fun anyways.

It's snowing. Has been since last night. Almost non-stop. We don't have a nice snowfall, oh no, but thin, icky, sleety snow. I've barely gone outside since Wednesday, it's been so cold for nice September. This wouldn't be so bad if it was November, but we had over 20 (I think that's in the 70s Farenheit) last week!
Last winter it was cold and there was hardly any snow. This year we'll probably get four feet. Honestly, weather, what's wrong with a happy medium?
Tonight we're playing floor hockey at the Christian School for youth. I don't like floor hockey. Maybe they'll leave a bit of the gym for those who want to play basketball. As in me, myself, and I.
Mom ordered two more violin books and the Pirates of the Caribbean piano book! Yay! And the new Artemis Fowl book is out, and I'm going to order it from Amazon because it's cheaper and I want to get the last A Series of Unfortunate Events book when it comes out, and if you buy them together it's a lot cheaper than going to Chapters or something. I really can't wait to read either of them.

Mom wants me to take a sewing class on Saturdays.
I don't like sewing. I also have things to do for four hours on Saturdays. Like sleep, something I don't get to do very often in the week. And go to the library. And shower. And read something other than history, math, and science books. And take nice, long bike rides. Okay, five minutes on the way to the library. But I spend a long time at the library. I love my library.
Anyways, I don't want to sew.
On a pleasant note, I'm almost done schoolwork for the day. And I memorized three more verses for quizzing. So I have almost half the first chapter of Acts done and it's only Tuesday. Yay! My violin was also very cooperative for me- it didn't squeak, moan, go out of tune or just sound bad. And I managed to pay attention during the Foundations of Western Civilisation DVD lecture. Kind of.

Wow, five days without posting! That's a record. Sorry about that.
The concert was a lot of fun- the Diversified band from the church where it was led worship first. They were quite good. Then the speaker, Chap Clark, spoke about passion and having a childlike faith; he was pretty good. There was an intermission and it got to the concert part of it; Everyday Sunday played first and they were pretty rocky- I couldn't understand many words with all the guitar sound. It really seemed like they sounded like Relient K for most of it! Fusebox was a bit less rocky; they sang mostly worship songs. One of my friend's friends got us down by the stage for the last bit, and it's the most fun down there. At least it was just people standing and clapping, not like you'd find at a bigger concert with people being lifted up and being trampled.
I had my first violin lesson on Friday too, which went well. I'm learning shifting and doublestops, where you play more than one note at a time and it's hard. I like shifting and playing in different positions, though, it's pretty easy; I just have to remember that it's backwards in third position: first finger where the third would go in first position, second where fourth would be.
I also got the Music Inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia piano book! Yay! I was going to buy the Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl one too, but there was only the Dead Man's Chest book at the music store. Humph. I'll have to order it... which means paying for shipping... darn.
Grandma's coming for supper tonight... and I have to get my paper route and piano practice done... so bye!

Not much has happened today. I did buy a package of blank CDs at Wal-Mart so I can burn all the music that's on the main computer.
There's a new Jars of Clay CD that I'd like to get- I think I'll give in and download it from iTunes. I really like iTunes, how everything is cheaper (a whole CD is normally about half the price from buying it in a store) and you can just buy a single song instead of the whole album if it's the only one you like. My parents let me get $20 worth as a birthday present this year, which was really nice. The only problem I have is that they don't have many soundtracks. Humph.
The new CD looks quite good, it's more rock/pop than their other CDs, but I like it. I've listened to one of Jars of Clay's other CDs over and over again, and they're a Christian band but none of the lyrics make sense! Seriously! It's either a love song or some random topic that I really don't get. There's two songs on that CD (Jesus's Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the slowest song ever written, and Amazing Grace) that I can somewhat safely interpret. But the music is good. :D

School was good. I got up early, went for a walk to wake myself up -it was cold, though, so I didn't stay out long!-, had a shower, and ate breakfast by 8:00. Quite nice. All I had to do for math was fifteen minutes' worth of beginning of year review, and writingwas just reading through introductions and answering a couple questions, then after lunch I picked out the songs I'm learning for piano (My mom teaches me, it's nice) and fooled around on the piano. We watched a video of the first lecture in a loooong series on classical stuff that Mom got. Then I got somewhat organised for my first online Latin class, which is next week. Should be interesting. Ish. I did my paper route too.
Good news: My friend in the city's youth group is going to a concert/speaker thing on Friday evening, and she invited Josh and I, and Mom talked to her youth pastor and it's okay that we come and my best friend and some other people from our church might be coming too, and it'll be lots of fun! It's a concert by a band called Diversified, with special music by Everyday Sunday and Fusebox (never heard of them) and a speaker. Fun fun fun!

Well, school starts tomorrow.
Sigh. I'm going to miss summer. Not that school is a bad thing, but... yeah. I like my summer, thank you very much.
We've been working today- Mom has a thing about starting school clean. My friend came over for a couple hours, which is especially good because I haven't seen her for a while.
I need to go downstairs soon; Mom also has a thing about getting to bed early.

Random Bookishness
1. Grab the nearest book. (Guiness Book of World Records 2002, no it's not mine)
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences (or paragraph) on your blog along with these instructions:
5. The candy was broken up and sold for charity. JIGSAW PUZZLE WITH MOST PIECES A puzzle consisting of 209,250 pieces, each measuring 0.59 x 0.59 in was completed at the Mulan Jigsaw Puzzle Contest at the Grand Fermosa Regent Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan. The overall measurement was 22 ft 1 in x 22 ft 10 in.
6. Tag five people. My dad, my mom, Soul2heaven, Equosamo, and... do I know anyone else? Okay, no one else. Unless my friend's cousin actually reads my blog, which I doubt.

Hi.
This is my new blog, taken up from my old one- www.homeschoolblogger.com/shieldmaiden, which I started last month and I switched because I didn't like the host. I have two younger sisters and an older brother. I'm homeschooled and I like it much more than going to school, although I suppose I haven't really tried, being at home my entire life and only having tests at the local Christian school. I love Lord of the Rings (it's NOT a trilogy!) and Pirates of the Caribbean, although I like Lord of the Rings a bit more. I read a lot and I play violin and piano.
That's pretty much all I have to say- might post later!