A Different Kind of Fairytale

            Do you ever get tired with how fairy tales all seem to be the same? There are always three poor brothers, the youngest is the good one, the step mother is always evil, etc, etc, etc. Well, as we were driving up to Canada, I decided to try writing a story with everything exactly the opposite of what you would naturally expect. Or maybe the opposite. However, when I mentioned this idea to my family in the car, Craig was unconvinced. "Sounds to me like it wouldn't be a very popular fairy tale then." He may have sort of backed down from this bold statement, but still I was out to prove him wrong.

 

I never finished my fine little fair tale (I've sort of forgotten some of the interesting plot I had in mind anyway), but the beginning still amuses me so I thought I would share it with you.

 

 

Once on a time that was happened upon ago, there was a kingdom. In this kingdom there lived a young couple that was insanely wealthy. In fact, they were so insane about being wealthy that they agreed to live as just a lowly shoemaker and his wife in the middle of the woods where they were so miserably happy it isn't even funny. They continued to live this way until a certain day, forever marked in the history of the world (and if you haven't heard of it, it just proves your ignorance).

          "John," the insane wife of the insanely rich yet lowly shoemaker said to her husband. "I think it's time. Aahhh!"

          John was indeed shocked by this statement, so much so that he could do nothing but sit down. Of course he realized that this was a foolish thing to do, so he leaped back up again and asked, "Polly, do you think you can wait until I come back with the midwife?" For of course if you hadn't already guessed it, she had meant that it was time for her to have her baby.

          To make a long story short, Polly was able to wait, and she ended up giving birth to triplets! Unfortunately however, she ended up being so worn out from her long labor that she died. At least, that's the reason the midwife gave for her death, but my personal opinion is that she very badly wanted a girl. In fact, I think she so badly wanted a baby girl that when she found out that she had three BOYS, she passed away from a shocked and broken heart. This is ridiculous of course, since it is not so terrible a thing to have boys, but she was rather insane I must remind you, so owing to the additional fact that she's not here to defend herself, we'll give her grace.

          As I'm sure you can imagine, the cobbler was indeed very grieved over his dear Polly's death. This was probably partly because now he had no one who could share his insanity with him. So he determined to call this day the Day of Passing, since it was the day of her passing and the passing of his carefree life, and he vowed that he would devote this day forever to her memory.

However, he also recalled that right before his wife had passed away she had also passed on to him three little boys, and as he was a very decent man despite his insanity, he wanted to be a loving father to them. So he went into the room where the midwife had her hands full with the three wailing infants, and picking up the largest and most handsome one, whom he presumed was the oldest, he said, "There there young chap; I've decided to call you Percival. After all since this is the Day of Passing you must possess a fine 'P' name." 

He must have believed that informing the little one of his name would comfort him. Not surprisingly, it didn't, and he kept on wailing as energetically as ever.

Bouncing Percival gently in his arms, he proceeded to name the middle boy Pierre, but when he turned to the third boy, who appeared to be the runt of the litter (pardoning my way of speaking), he came with a puzzle.

"I'm not sure what to call you," he said, a bit vexed. "My vocabulary on 'P' names is rather limited, and I can't think of a single other one. Except---" Here he broke off and looked very thoughtful and solemn indeed. "I shall name you Polly," he said. "It's a very satisfactory name (I have no idea why some think it must belong to a female), and as it was your dear mother's, I can think of no other name more fitting." At this he nodded. "Polly it is then."

At this point the midwife felt that it was her duty to interrupt these premature christenings. Allow me to point out that the father had presumed the birth order of his sons, which is something one should never do, for it can often lead to mishap. This was no exception.

Luckily for the midwife, the shoemaker wasn't very troubled when he found out that he had reversed the order of his sons. Percival was in fact the youngest, and Polly was actually the oldest.

"No matter," he said, shaking his head. "They all are my sons no matter what order they come in." Which is a very sensible outlook, one must admit. Maybe the man wasn't so insane after all.

 

Hmm, maybe I should call this unfinished story "A Boy Named Polly." What do you think? :)

 

(In case you couldn't tell, I was having fun!:)

Statue Day

The title is self-explanatory, no?

I wish it were real. . .

This lion (the only one not in Australia, but in Canada) didn't look ferocious enough to me, but I felt like returning his fierce, toothy grin--mine ended up looking like a cheesy grimacing smile :D

Me making friends with a platypus. The places where we saw them were too dark to really take a picture of them, although now I regret that I didn't try. Nonetheless, this is the closest picture I have of a platypus!

A rider vanquishes the dragon 'neath his bold steed in front of the Victoria State Library

Grand Finale

And now folks, is the grand finale!

I love the dumb expression on this guy's face--kind of makes you hope that our species aren't related, right?

Nose pointed skyward, telephoto lens come in handy once again!

A woman was pointing out to her little children how this fella's lips are as red as "mama's lipstick." This idea amused me and I think she's right, even though I don't know how red her lipstick is.

More Grand Finale

And here's more of my "grand finale" to Animal Week!

This here is a genuine wombat--now I know what it looks like!

This photo didn't turn out that well, but I just had to show you all what an echidna looks like--this is the same type of critter that we passed by on the side of the road (too bad we didn't stop and take a picture of it then, then I would have owned the rights to sell it:)

And here's more contributions from the Melbourne Zoo:

No roaring lions for us this time, just snoozing in the morning sunshine.
What's interesting is that these lions were a fair ways off and I took this picture through an almost screen-like cage

Cow Day *at last*

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! We have so much to be thankful for! So I am now going to celebrate this momentous occasion by designating this as Cow Day. Sorry, it isn't Turkey Day (they weren't willing to pose for me:) , but just plain Cow Day. Hurray, finally it dawned on me that my pictures weren't saved as jpegs, so no wonder they were like 2.49 MB and therefore almost impossible to upload with dial-up!hehe Anyway, here are the beloved cows at last.

I'm afraid that these cows are not Australian, but they are Canadian! Can't you tell? Craig and I actually took these as we drove down a little country road in Pugwash. As we passed by this cow pasture, we noticed how they were all gathered round with their back sides facing outward, and of course we naturally concluded that this bizarre scene would make an amusing photo. So presto, out of the car we hopped. Then, with some timidity we crouched on the edge of somebody's lawn to get our perfect shots, chuckling all the while and hoping fervently that no one would see us--if they did, they might think we were crazy!

I wouldn't blame them if they did.:)





We soon leave for Bill and Cherylin's where we shall gorge ourselves till we burst. Hope your food is as good as ours!

Hippo Day

Here are a couple more contributions from my collection at the Melbourne Zoo:

Doesn't he just make you want to yawn?

Once again, I hope you can tell which one is more hippo-like!

Winged Creature Day

Notice that I did not entitle this "Bird Day." It was almost going to be Bird Day, but I decided that I would include bats, and unless I am very much mistaken, bats are not birds!

Koala Day

Okay, sorry to disappoint you, but I think Cow Day is going to have to go on hold. Something the matter with uploading them. However, I did manage to pull together Koala Day for your benefit. I took a few more but these are probably the nicer ones. No, I'm afraid I didn't see them in the wild. . . but they weren't exactly in a zoo either. They were in a sanctuary just for Australian animals. Sadly, I can't sell these--I made the big mistake of reading a sign on my way in that said that all rights for pictures taken there are reserved.


My advice? Don't read any signs with a camera next to them, even if they ask you not to take photos; ignorance is bliss!














Now I realize that Kendra isn't exactly a koala, but she made a pretty addition to the koala statue, right?



Up-close and personal: the beauty of the telephoto lense makes me happy :)

What WAS going to be Cow Day

AAAaaarrrggggghh! Okay, this was going to be Cow Day, but for some reason our computer is refusing to upload my pictures by simply taking an interminable amount of time (and I'm not exaggerating, it has been like fifty minutes). So, now that it is getting quite past the time I wanted to be in bed, I am going to close it up and say that I hope I can combine Cow Day with another time; maybe tomorrow. But in either case I hope it will still happen soon!

Kangaroo Day!

Now, introducing the ALL-NEW Animal Week!!!!! Hurray!!! (polite chuckles. . . . . . polite? I mean this is where you scream and clap without holding back)

Okay, I'm going to try this anyway. Of course everyone does color week (which I might get around to doing someday), but I am going to be original and do animal week! Now, this isn't promising that there'll be something every single day and it will last a whole week, but I hope to put up the *all-new* (as in like three months old) animal pictures fairly regularly for maybe about a week. Savvy? (by the way, I think savvy is just about one of the coolest words on our planet)

So now everybody. . . . . drumroll. . . . today is kangaroo day!

snoozing. . .

staring in between hops
(I love watching them jump, they look so bouncy and fun)

Having breakfast at the Melbourne Zoo
(the zoo that claims to be the oldest in the world or something)

Confession: this is actually a wallaby

Going, going, gone

Craig is gone.
I have now joined the lonely ranks of being an only child once again.
No more will he spend his evenings here, or even his weekends.
He won't even be here to fight over the computer with!
Kendra and Chad are gone, and Clyde is in bibleschool.
I am the only one left.
For the first time, when Christmas comes around, we will not fulfill the
lucky number of seven.

Now we just count the days until three long months are up. . . .

. . . but I hope he has a good time. :-)

The All-New Mousetrap

We have had a bit of a mouse problem in our house lately. Luckily, it's starting to get under control since my dad set traps nearly a week ago, and in the following four days we trapped aproximately eight mice. Hmm, but we did discover a new method of mouse trapping. However, this particular method does not involve filling your kitchen sink with water, or closing the cupboard door, or using a brick, or even stomping on it, as these other real life examples have already done.

I heard about it from Craig. I was on the computer (oddly enough) last week sometime when he came to me and said, "Um, I found something in my couch," then he added, "You should go see what it is."

Need the rest of the story be told? I've already given you a fair warning, which is what I didn't have. However, I had a nagging suspicion of something to that effect and sure enough, underneath the basement couch's cushion rested a little bundle of fur, undoubtedly of the small rodent variety. The puzzling thing is how come it got under there safely, and one minute it was fine and the next it was squished to death? I suppose it could have just gotten stuck, which doesn't seem too likely, or else the nearest we can figure is that somebody sat on the couch while the mouse was under it. What's strange is that we don't sit on that couch very often so it would have been a very chance occurence for the mouse to just happen to be there when somebody just happened to sit on it. Weren't we just dying to know that? I think the mouse sure was. Literally.

I wonder if Derrick has sat on Craig's couch recently?

Oky doky, here are just a few more of the promised pics of the Harvest Party. So sorry Kim, but the girls took off their fat people costumes pretty quickly so we didn't get a picture of them (but if you really want to see it, beg it off Gretchen, because I know she at least got it)

Kaitlin and Emily!

See what I mean by the funniest costume? (you know I'm kidding, right, Wes?:)

A rather dumbfounded Pooh Bear

The reedy trio (aren't you glad there's a smiling face behind those tree branches?)

Three men in black. . .

Hopefully more coming when my time grows a little more in abundance! (if ever)

Succumbing to the masses

Okay, okay, I give up!!! Finally, I succumb to the masses! Fine, here are your pictures that you wheedled out of me. Actually I meant to post them when I wrote about the harvest party. . . oh well, you get to enjoy them now!

Also, a million apologies, I meant to take tons of pictures with my camera, but somehow in all the excitement I managed to only take a measly two (and they're not even developed yet). However, never fear, my mother was there for maybe half of the party, and she managed to run around the room a little near the beginning, armed with our digital camera, and thanks to her we have these here pics:

You should have seen Shannon wearing Clyde's size 13 sneakers!

So this is love? (mmhmmm)

"I'm mysterious" ~what Kate S. thought Katie G. once said

Ferocity written all over!

Enchanting, isn't she?

Is survival a talent?

Last Sunday for sundayschool we talked about using our talents for God. Although this is a very important concept, that isn't what I'm going to talk about. Actually, we were then discussing what we think our talent is, whether it be Peter R.'s ability to grind pig food or Kaitlin M.'s ability to organize. Near the end, I was joking about how my talent is survival in this world.

"You know some people really need that," I laughed. "Some people like--like Andrew B. are just going through life hanging by a thread!"

Oddly enough, that very person managed to smash his finger two days later.

What's also odd is that maybe my talent is survival after all. Now don't mistake me. I am not particularly what you would call a dare devil by any means, but somehow I seem to attract the strangest injuries, be it accidentally punching a wall (I actually still have a mark from doing that last April) or banging my forehead on the gym floor.

Sunday afternoon, I was in the gym. I was actually practicing my volleyball serves against the wall, since they've gotten even more despicable than usual lately. One of these times, as I gave the ball a good punch and watched it sail up, what should happen but that my fist should keep going and land on my lower lip? My lower teeth then felt quite sore, and my lip was stunned. What had I just done? Curious and amazed, I dashed outside to better lighting to see if the liquid on my finger was blood. Rats, just saliva. But you must admit that not very many people punch themselves in the mouth when they serve a volleyball. And though it could have just been my imagination, the next day it did look like I had a red cut on my gum.

That was accident number one.

Last night we were playing sports. We were actually playing indoor frisbee, and there weren't a lot of people there which meant that you got more participation. That was actually a rather confusing game because I was switched from team to team twice as we adjusted to accommodate more people or to equal height advantages or disadvantages (no, we should not have Shawn and Katie G. on the same team!). But no matter, it was still a fun game. Nonetheless I was once running up by Katie to get open and receive the frisbee (or maybe I was running by to guard her?), when all of a sudden I felt myself tripping over her foot. "Sssqueeeaal!" The sound of my knees sliding across the gym floor sounded out in the echoey building so that everyone heard it. I scrambled up, everyone asking me if I was all right. I appreciated their concern, but I was almost blithe as I told them that I was fine, even though my knees did feel rather jarred. Today I have three bruises, a cut on my elbow, and a little floor burn to show for that tumble. Not that the tumble itself was that unusual, but how often do you get to hear someone's knees screeching across the gym floor? Thus concludes my unique accidents.

Maybe survival is a talent after all. . . .

Another harvest party goes down in the annals

And then lades and gents, the time that we had all been waiting for had arrived. It started with subtlety, as secretive inquiries were made to see if so-and-so could borrow such-and-such. Yes, they would be welcome to borrow that--no questions were needed. Then it gained boldness; for example, as I went down to the bibleschool girls' dorm to borrow my own little something, they refused to let me into the bedroom where they were congregated. But I didn't feel offended. Secrets are almost as holy as hiding Christmas presents when it comes to the Harvest Party. And that is what was arriving.

I had schemed and persuaded Mom, Craig, and Clyde to join with me in a group masquerade, so as 6:30 Saturday evening rolled around, we were scrambling about, coloring, cutting, taping, trying out our costumes and laughing at eachother. Mom had to rush down from Fairview, but soon we were ready to go, although the half past six mark had already gone by. So arriving at the Maine House, we grinned with anticipation and filed down the library hall to make our grand entrance. It was even more dramatic than we had first expected. Mr. Incredible (that is, Clyde), loomed monstrously in the doorway and flexed his huge knee pad muscles as everyone in the room inside burst out laughing. Then Elasta Girl (i.e. Mom) followed, with Violet (ahem, me) and Dash (Craig) bringing up the rear. We were none other than the incredible family of Incredibles, and our incredibleness was a smashing hit.

As we entered the room, I noticed that it was full of strange people. Of course if you looked at that scary all-in-black FBI agent twice, you would realize that it was only Rachel A., and if you peered through the branches of a leafy tree, you would be relieved to find out that no one had totally morphed into it, but it was only Jayne R. But that wasn't the worst of it. Occupying four seats were two extraordinarly fat people. Poor chaps, I wonder who invited them? WHAT?! Those fat people must be so fat that they had to grown an extra head apiece! Sure enough, sitting complacently in a rather large dress were Katherine and Bria, and out of the obese gentleman beside them popped Megan and Vanlora's heads, with two little feet peeping out of each pant leg.

Soon we were introduced to all the other unique people. Our fearless leader Diane came as she visualizes herself in several years: with purply gray hair, mismatched socks, crooked teeth, and the like. Then there was a whole family of Crayola crayons (Brandon and Mary's creative way of involving all four of their children together in costume), an elegant Lady of Shelot in a well blanketed boat (that would be Andrea of course, always the literary one:), a grinning yet not at all fierce pirate Amy P., and a dude-like Shannon R. Sitting beside her was a beautiful Queen of Sheba personified by Katie G., while Rachel C. was dressed as the fair Rebecca from Ivanhoe, and Kate S. took the role of dazzling Cinderella. Andy, posing as a chainsaw, was sitting dangerously close to the treeish Jayne, but Phillip was an experienced forester to be a mediator for the two, with a little help from Andy's friend who wore the hideous mask of a wacky woodsman. Also, two Ninja (I must say that I don't know how to spell that!), garbed all in black with masked faces, were ominous to behold, but when we saw that it was just Derrick and Isaac D., our fear dissipated (a little). Wesley was original to come as himself (probably the funniest costume of all), except his blond hair was replaced with black curly locks. Then there was Ari W., all very sharp in her WAC uniform, Kaitlin M. looking very Western, and Emily M. appearing quite Rennaissance. Mr. Hansen, with big yellow boots and a football mask claimed that he was the Hunchboot of Notre Dame (or something to that effect), which brought a few chuckles, as his randomly dry humor often does. Andrew B., also masked, wearing black, and armed with a sword, was discovered to be the Dread Pirate Robinson (or is it Robins?), and, as eerie music played, a box in the corner suddenly began to shake and convolute until a brown faced Dave came bursting out with a threatening yell, before he explained that he really was nobody but he just wanted to do that.

Besides the Crayon family, the little kids were also present in their own costumes. A dashing Robin Hood was found in six year old Michael, and his little brother Gabriel was charming in his tin foil helmet as Leif the Lucky (they've been learning fun stories now that they've started homeschooling). Not to be outdone, Timothy appeared as Winnie the Pooh, Peter as Tiger, and even little David came as a 1 Dalmation even though he's barely six months old (it's amazing how these kids come up with these things at that young age:).

After introductions were made, Diane ushered us through a variety of crazily fun games that she is renowned for. And since I realize that this can be the least interesting part of the party (for those absent to hear about anyway) in comparison to hearing what people came dressed as, I will not dwell it. However, not mentioning the delightful creativity of the games we spent so long enjoying would be a shame, so you'll get to hear about it anyway (some of the games a few may even recognize from past youth weekends).

First there was the jelly bean version of Pit, in which you milled about with ten sticky jelly beans in your hand, shouting out numbers and exchanging colors with people who had even more hot sticky jelly beans to offer. Needless to say, no one felt like eating the candies when we were over (except little Jeff A. of course). Then we played hot potato with baby food jars, in which if you got stuck with the jar you had to open it up and take a bite. Grrross! Next we tried a game appropriately called Spew, in which we had to put an alkaseltzer tablet underneath our tongue and see how long we could hold it with a mouthful of Sprite before we had to spit it out. In most cases, it would start to go down people's throats or up their noses before they got rid of it (luckily we did this on the front porch facing OUT), which was what happened to me pretty quickly since I had heard that Mr. Hansen had mentioned that we would have to make a quick trip to the hospital if we swallowed it. Dave, Shane W. (sp?), Melissa, and Rachel C. were the valiant winners of this contest.

From there we split up into teams and proceeded through a variety of team related games: q-tip wars, trivia, using straws and tape to cushion an egg from a fall, building a bridge with newspapers so that a toy car could pass through it with a huge stack of hymnals on top, and the candy gathering game. If you haven't played this one, it's when each team possesses an animal sound effect and one person from each team dashes around picking up candy as his or her team members point to it and bark, moo, or meow. My team didn't manage to win anything (except one in a series of q-tip wars), but that's okay, because Craig and Bria's team didn't win anything either, and all in all I think everybody had a wonderful time. Who wouldn't, when Diane is in charge?

Finally came the next thing that Diane is famous for: the food. Need I tell you of all the delicacies that she prepared so expertly? It would only make your mouth water if I told you about the peanut butter balls, cookies, tarts, mini cheese cakes, shishkabobs, tiny pigs in a blanket, and pizza rolls that she prepared, so why bother? I couldn't do her food justice even if I tried. Just remember Diane's cooking, and let your imagination take off from there.

And with that last thought in mind, picture one of the best and most fun parties you've ever been to. That's Diane. That's the Harvest Party.

Tests and dances

I tried to post this several days ago, but my blog wasn't publishing anything correctly, so here is a little glimpse of my life now:

After much trepidation and sporadic studying, I decided to bite the bullet and go into Conval to take the PSAT. Now this is not the time where you start declaring, "Eazhy shmeazy Joe Shmoe!" Instead, this is the time where you say, "Poor Kayla old girl. But way to overcome trepidation and take your good old daddy's advice and plug it through to the end!" But now that I've said this for you, you don't need to feel obliged to say it again.:)

Anyway, as I mentioned previously, I actually did go in and take the PSAT. It was a new experience, rising half an hour earlier than usual and arriving at the school just like any other kid my age would. But of course I am not just any other kid, as most of them would see once they took a quick glance at my weird self. It was neat however to recognize a familiar face now and then out of the sea of strangeness. A friendly greeting and query from a girl my age who plays the viola, and later, as we sat in the cafeteria waiting to take the test, another girl from string group saw me. "Oh Kayla!" she said in surprise. "Are you here to take the PSAT?"

What else would I be there for?

"Um, no, I came all the way in here just to sit in your cafeteria and eat my breakfast, thank you."

(I didn't say this.)

Oh yeah, and there's good old Laura among her friends. And then, "Connor!" I heard someone call across the room, and immediately alert I turned and sure enough, there was 6'4" Connor from Clyde's basketball team striding in. Then I spotted our double bass player, who has the eccentric style of wearing large glasses and a British style hat with bushy hair falling to his shoulders. Why is it that most of the people I knew were the strangest?(no offense to Laura)

The test went all right. I say it went all right, meaning that I didn't breeze through it like some genius, but it could have certainly been worse. I shared a table with four other guys. Not that I sat with them, but they sat with me, because I was the only one at an empty table. They were sort of typical highschool guys, kind of cool, but not very much so. They had some sort of thing about admiring one another's calculators and complimenting each other on them, which seemed a little odd to me, but I guess it isn't really. I kind of got the impression that a couple of them maybe took full advantage of using the guess-and-go multiple choice method, and as a result they were exclaiming at the difficulty of the grid-in portion of the math test. Perhaps they came to that section and were suddenly stumped when they had to come up with there own answers. But I'm probably not giving them enough credit. . . .

When the test was done, they told us to stay until we were dismissed. So a man came by, collected our tests, and walked off. I waited. In the meantime the kids were all standing up and crossing the room to chat, which I naturally figured was what they were doing until they were dismissed. Um, okay, when are they going to let us go? I wondered. With a nagging suspicion I rose, and left the room free and clear, realizing that I could have left a long time ago. I made my way through the swarming halls and left with my dad, extremely happy that all was over.

****************************************************************************

Last weekend, for the ignorant's improvement of knowledge, was the bibleschool's free weekend. Also, my parents were going away, so Clyde and I took advantage of these two factors by taking the ride to New York to visit the Holschers. It was, like it so often is, a scrumptious time. Of course it would start to snow as we wound through the country roads closer to their home in the boonies, but luckily it never really accumulated, and it didn't keep up forever. So we arrived there, warmly welcomed, and that night I got to squeeze onto the floor of Klara's cosy room, which was much better than sleeping in the yellow room, where it's messy, or the guest room, where it's noisy.

On Saturday, Ruth and I accompanied Klara up into the woods to dispose of a chicken. Klara made quite a fearsome picture, all bundled up in sweaters and armed with a shovel from which a limp neck hung. After she erected the bird's monument, we trekked up into the woods where they showed me the towers of rock that they had found up there. Each one belonged to one of them, and they were given remarkable names such as Klara's Tower of Wood, or Rebecca's Tower of Fire, or Caleb's Tower of Stone, or Ruth's Tower of Water. We actually discovered another one, and we temporarily named it my Tower of Thunder, which is quite striking is it not?(my puns are so droll, aren't they?;) So we wandered about, marching along stone walls as we prepared to face the dauntingly invisible foe, or trudged along as I threatened them whips, or experimented seesawing on a thick stick in the crook of a tree (of course you would automatically know that it would break, but that didn't immediately occur to us), or clambered onto towers, or laid out a tableau of Romeo and Juliet on a moss covered rock. When you have an imagination, the sky is the limit.

The rest of the weekend involved twirling in the dusty hayloft as Klara and I made up dances, reading out loud to the kids, doing chores in the barn (which were rather fun actually), and decorating or playing games for Caleb's seventh birthday on Sunday. First the five of us (the four younger Holschers and myself) gathered in the hayloft to play musical tires. This was rather intriguing because it was easy to fall into the middle of the tire and if you sat down too quickly your legs could go flying. And then whenever Caleb or nine-year-old Ruth did the music, they would be making up these spontaneous songs, before breaking out into a mixture of sound effects and laughter. At this point I could never tell if they were done singing or not, so I kept sitting down way too early, which didn't make me look very intelligent. Then Klara and I adopted the fun task of teaching her younger siblings how to dance the Virginia Reel. We learned this during girls' week this past summer, and we were so infected with the joy of doing it that we're always wanting more people to learn how so they can do it with us. Somehow I ended up with the job of teaching Caleb, and he needed plenty of repetition in order to get the hang of it ("Oh, oh, let's start over again!"), but soon he got it, even though both his sisters were able to learn it from Klara in the space of time it took for him to learn it from me. What was rather shocking though was that as I came to a certain part of the dance sequence (and by the way, Caleb is the only boy I've ever danced this with), Klara told him that now he is supposed to put his hand on my waist, to which he giggled and responded, "Oh Kayla, I'll love you forever!!!" Klara and I exchanged looks that expressed amusement and "Oh dear," at the same time.

Next we filed inside and played hot potato with everyone, including Mr. H., Clyde, Katherine, Megan, Ben, Klara, Rebecca, Ruth, Caleb, and me. Fortunately we had real music playing this time. . . . . then it was time for a movie, dinner (Caleb asked for a surprisingly healthy dinner--rice and veggie casserole, corn on the cob, homemade bread, and brussel sprouts!:), and then we were off.

And that, my dear friends, was my weekend.