14

I am now 14. And therefore, obviously, more awesome than I was before I was 14.

The party was very fun. I am really bad at bowling. But it was fun even though I am very bad at bowling. There was pizza and ice cream cake.

My friends know me so well. They all got me books and index cards & pens. Also washi tape. Awesome.

On my actual birthday, we went bike shopping in the morning. Then we went to PF Chang's for lunch where I had crispy honey chicken and an amazing dessert that had peanut butter in it. Afterwards we went back to the bike place to pick the bike up. When we got home we went for a bike ride.

After riding it a few times, I decided to name her Phyllis. Like in the Flavia de Luce books, Flavia's bike is named Gladys. I think it's so cute.


I invited my friend Lindsey over to help me rearrange my books, since the current arrangement didn't allow space for additions, and I know that she is the kind of awesome person who would actually want to do that.

We had already deshelved my other books and were trying to decide how to organize all of them (we went for alphabetical by the first letter of the author's last name). I picked up one of the new books and said, "hey, I haven't even smelled these yet!" and proceeded to sniff them. "I think this one smells the best," I said, setting the book down. 

"Let me smell," said Lindsey. After a moment she said, "I agree. Fahrenheit 451 definitely smells the best." 

We laughed. We are such dorks. I love that.

Needless to say, now I am reading Fahrenheit 451.

I quite like it so far.

Anyway.

Thanks, guys.

I had an awesome birthday.

So i joined the swim team...

I guess because I can. I mean, I know how to swim, but I don't know how to
swim, you know? Well, didn't, anyway. I've learned to much already and have only gone to two practices. I can successfully do the breast stroke, the butterfly, freestyle, and the backstroke (although probably not very well). I think the breast stroke is actually the hardest. Pull, breathe, kick, glide. Maybe because I basically taught myself how to do it from watching other people swim and then had to re-learn it, but the butterfly, which I had no clue how to do before, I find surprisingly easy. (Edit: not to say that the butterfly is easy. At all. It was just much easier that I thought it was going to be.)

And I really like coach Larry. He's hilarious.

And I really like it so far.

And I am really kinda proud of myself. I don't try new things that often.

And yeah. Yayyyyy!


(Coming up: beautiful wall collage [when {if} I finish it])

The Last Two Weeks

Seriously, the last two weeks have seriously been (some of) the best of my life, seriously. Possibly the best ever, but I'm not going to say anything conclusive because my life isn't over yet. I've only been alive, like,  13.6 years.

It all started on Thursday of last week. The night before, all cozy in my room, I had finished the book Sense and Sensibility, and the next day, we left from school at 9:30 to see it in play-from. It was so good! It was really funny and well-arranged. It was dramatic and unique, but accurate to the book, too. We got back to school at like 1:30 and so we got to eat lunch during social studies.

The next day, Friday, we had early dismissal at 1:00. That day, some friends of mine from school and I were going to go to a trivia night for 6th-8th graders, but we couldn't get enough people for a team of 8. I was really disappointed because I really had wanted to go, so I decided, hey, we have early dismissal that day, why not have our own game night? So I did. It wasn't game night, but it was so FUN! We played New! Super Mario Bros. Wii and made fun of Luigi for being so bad at game as he ground-pounded into everyone and threw shells at us, and also took ALL THE POWERUPS. We also played Blokus and took the dog for a walk, and climbed trees and ran in the park. We went to the playground and it was just so fun! We also ate pizza and ERMAHGERD it was just so awesome and fun.

That weekend was 3 days long because we had Monday off for Presidents Day, when I happily slept in and hung around the house.

Tuesday and Wednesday were just normal school days, except I was uber happy because my group got to get math lessons with Mr. S, whom I really like because he's nice and fun. Wednesday we had civics with Mr. G. (whom I also adore) and Mr. S. Art class on Wednesday was okay, but I'm still really not happy with it. Actually, I'm really mad with it. But I'm not going to talk about how much I hate art class now that Ms. Bridgett isn't our teacher anymore because I'm supposed to be talking about my best week ever, right? Okay, right.

But now, the best part.

My friend Elzabeth calls me Wednesday night, screaming, "OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD WE DON'T HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW IT'S CANCELLED OMIGOD SNOW OMIGOD SNOW DAY SNOW DAY!!!" (Mind you, she's loud on the phone when she's not screaming.)

So the next day I get to sleep in because it's a snow day. Only, the snow hasn't started yet when I wake up. But man, once it started at like 10:30, it snowed. I took a picture out the window every couple hours that day and was going to put it on here, but Apple hates me. We didn't go anywhere that day because we didn't want to die. But...

Today I got to go sledding for the first time in like 3 years because school was (mercifully) cancelled today, too. I went to Reservoir Park with the same group of friends from school, Elzabeth, K and his brother J. We invited Liam, too, but he was going to Art Hill with his family.

Man, it was AWESOME. The only bad part was when Elzabeth and I went down together on her pink sled and hit a manhole cover (that was in the middle of the hill, for some reason). My butt still hurts, and the sled... the sled. The sled was in shards, thankfully it was just a cheap one. Other than that, the best part was the WHOLE THING. It was so fun.

This is us sledding.

It was the best day ever. Besides, you know, those two weeks.

The End of The.... Year (and beginning of 2013!)

So, I see you've survived the end of the world! (A funny way to look at the end of the Mayan calendar: Yeah, my calendar ended, too! On December 31st!)

Anyway, I've had a fantastic break so far, aside from the three extra days of break I received due to my stupid tonsils that appear to be strep magnets or something ridiculous. So that was disappointing because I didn't get to take my teachers their goodies and carefully baked gluten free cookies. 'Cause you know, I was sick and busy bein' miserable and puking 21 times in one day. I think that's the standing record for this family.

The Saturday before the actual Christmas was supposed to be Christmas with my mom's family but that got moved to the 27th due to my tonsils that suck. Nobody wanted to chance it because they get strep there all the time anyway.

Christmas Eve we were going to go to church but that got blown off due to the fact that my parents really wanted to go to Aunt Jenny's because my dad's sister and her husband and the twins from New York were there. And we have this tradition of having potato soup on Christmas Eve every year that we like so everything worked out.

I don't know if I've told you guys about the potato soup story, have I? Well, almost all my family is German, so that's where the story starts. They have lots of potatoes there and for the poor people, potato soup was what's for dinner. Potatoes, and cream, butter, cheese, plentiful staples. When my grandpa (I'm not sure how many "greats" he has by this point) came over on the ship to America, he got this stomach thing and had surgery to get part of it taken out (see how lucky? I hear the prospect of having surgery way back then wasn't very good.) and guess what he ate that was soothing and not painful to eat and reminded him of home. So the story goes and we like our tradition.

So after eating our potato soup we bundled up and drove to Jenny's to see everybody and my cousins who were home from college. Man, I love those people. It was good. Aunt Kim felt bad about not going to Christmas Eve church so she wanted my dad to read the Christmas story from the bible, which he did, and we sang Silent Night, and then Uncle Mike sang part of it in German which was hilarious.

We drove back to our house and I slept upstairs so we could all go down together in the morning.

7:30 in the morning, Esther gets up and wakes everybody up. "Everybody, it's Christmas! I want everybody up in five minutes!" And she's three. How cute.

It was magical. Esther got a ginormous Barbie house. I got a Wii Fit and the John Green boxed set (of books; too bad it wasn't a John Green boxed set with containing John Green!), and Abigail got two Wii games. Just to name a few. We hung out in our pjamas all morning and went over to the neighbor's to exchange gifts. They really are lovely people and I'm so glad they're our neighbors. They just had a baby and boy, is he cute when he's not fussy! I just wanna eat him up, you know?

On the 27th or whatever day it was (I really don't remember; it's all sort of a blur now.) we drove through the snowy Illinois roads and played cows, but there really weren't that many cows. You know, cows is a game that is really great when everyone in the country has cows (like in Wisconsin, not so much Illinois). We stopped at Wendy's for lunch and continued on to Uncle Joe's for Christmas with my mom's family. Grandma Judy ate her legendary Jell-O salad. It has watermelon Jell-O, green olives, and celery, all mixed together with like the olives suspended in the Jell-O and stuff. Yeah, I'll let you decide if you want to try it, but she loves it.

We stayed the night at Uncle Joe's and hung out there and the next day had the Hooperdoodle (I have decided that I'm using Hooperdoodle as my last name on the Internet instead of my actual last name) Christmas at grandma Linny's house with my dad's family and such. It was very fun. I was appointed the new Santa's Helper by Aunt Kim, who has been the Santa's Helper forever and so now I'm the new Santa's Helper. All the little kids helped me. Jake told me I run a tight shop. (I'm sure he and all my older cousins were jealous that they weren't appointed new Santa's Helper.)

The Christmas Eve snow was a couple of days late. It snowed in St. Louis the night we drove home from Illinois. It had a sort of, um, magical effect as we drove through our adorable neighborhood and watched the (still up) Christmas lights reflected on white though the windows.

It was a good break.

I can't decide if I'm excited to go back to school tomorrow or not. I really have enjoyed sleeping so much but I think it will be nice to get back to structured routines and seeing my friends and teachers at school. Alas, it's no Hogwarts.

Skittles and a day of SLU

Yesterday SLU Decadence had a concert at Xavier Audotorium. It was amazing.

The a cappella choir, Skittles, at my school got to preform at it. It was so AWESOME! We sang "Stereo Hearts" and "Wavin' Flag" and it sounded really good. I wish I could describe it so that it sounds as good here as it did there.

Before that I spent the afternoon cooking with a few students and Miss R at the S. Center at SLU for a dinner party someone won at the school's Gala. It was fun. We made sevichi (or whaterer?), a raw-but-not-raw fish dish that is cooked only by citrus that it is marinated in (eww? I didn't get to taste it.), sweet potato tomales, rice and pork, and for dessert sweet potato rasin rum cake with cinnamon whipped cream and candied pumpkin seeds.

Actually, the pumpkin seeds were supposed to be pumpkin-seed brittle. It turned out to be more of fail-brittle then actual brittle-y brittle. We just crunched it up into pieces and it still tasted good. Shh, don't tell them!

It was a fun day of SLU. You should check out their YouTube and everything; they are so talented!

My Weekend

My weekend was really awesome. On Friday I left early from school to go to Illinois with my family.

And I'll get back to that in a second but first I want to say I think I am abandoning the fake names for my family. I think I'll keep using the ones like for Bree and Fiona but it's really weird to me to call my family by names that aren't theirs. Anyway I think (and hope) that most people who read this blog know and love me and my family and wouldn't do anything bad if only they knew the actual names of my family menbers! You know what I mean especially because you probably are that person. Or you are those people. You are one of those people. You are those people?!

Anyway, we drove to Illinois to my aunt and uncle's house they just (basically) redid over the course of like 3 years. They are busy people. They have a farm. But they added a room and a porch to their house and re-did the kitchen which is reeely nice. They got the drawers that close themselves!

So anyway the reason that we were in Illinois is because the church that my aunt and uncle and cousins and grandma and pretty much everyone in the adorable small town of like 700 people go to was having a weenie roast and 'salt shaker' they're calling it.

It was really fun. (Words I really say a lot: really, anyway, awesome, like, I. That was not a complete sentence.) First there was a ginormous fire (you know, the intentional kind) and everyone had chili and hot dogs and s'mores of course. There was lots of junk food and awesome deliciousness. The best was the dark chocolate fudge brownies with peanut butter caramel icing on top. Oohhhhhh.

They had a stage set up outside with all the music equippment and everything. The band played really well and it was really good worship music. Like, really good. Then the salt shaker part, there was a guest speaker.

The pastor's son goes to the college my dad actually went to. We visisted there over the summer actually and one of his former professors and his wife welcomed us in to their adorable home and made us muffins and gave us tours of the college campus (it's a really nice place...). Anyway the pastor of the church in this college town in Illnios where the pastor of my grandma's church's son goes came to the salt shaker to speak. I think that sentence is gramatically correct and if you think really hard it might make sense if you really want it to.

Anyway the sermon was about Christians being the salt and the light of the earth. It was really good. By this point in the evening it was about I don't know how may degrees but it was cold, and it was raining. It had been raining since a little after the music started. It was cold. It was good.

The funniest part of the sermon was when it was finished and it had stopped raining and he said, "Hey, it stopped raining, didn't it? Good. That was the introduction!" It wasn't really but it was pretty funny.

After the sermon, more music. It was loud and intense and awesome. It was fun.

It was a good weekend.

Camping

A while ago now I went camping with girl scouts. It was like two weeks ago. I know, I'm so bad. Sorry.

Anyway it was really good. We stayed in the A-Frames at Cedarledge. I always thought it would be fun to name the different sites at girl scout camp with the fake indian names and such. Kiamecia. Tanda. Ahwenasa.

We did horses and got a tour of the barn and learned how to groom a very pretty horse named Phoenix. All the wranglers are really nice. Fun. The horses are so old and used to the trails you barely have to direct them. Seriously. It was still a really nice time.

So then we went canoeing. It drizzled. Bree (who has her own blog now but I like her fake name so much I'm keeping it) and I basically just paddled out into the middle of the lake and watched the rain fall and make circles because it was really really amazingly beautiful. And not that wet either.

We were supposed to have archery Saturday too but Kiamecia missed their time at one so they stole our time. Everything worked out okay; we got to do it the next morning instead. But. That was not really very nice or fair of them to do that. I was a lot better this time, though. I popped like seven balloons! I also figured out that I shoot better left handed. Which make total sense since I'm left-eyed. Duh.

Overall it was really good. Besides the rude people at Luckystone right across from us and the archery mix-up, it was nearly perfect. The weather, the people (I like the people that were in my cabin; it turned out good), there were like no bugs.

(Bridgett and Bree both wrote about this too, about two weeks ago)

Birthday Pictures

(some of the pics were funky... sorry.)

Camping!

Finally! I know, right? This is the post you have been waiting for all of your life.

Or maybe not and you've just been thinking, "Hey, I wonder if Emma has said anything lately. Oooh, she went camping in the Smoky Mountains!"

Anyway, I just got back from camping in the Great Smoky Mountains. There were just five girls and all of their moms so it was a really nice mother daughter trip. We stayed at the Cosby campsite. The bathrooms were really really nice with flush toilets. Although no hot water and no showers. There was a bathroom lady who cleaned it everyday!!! Which was nice because the bugs were really attracted to the light at night and the millipedes crawled in through the drain and vents.

There was a nature trail right by us and also an amphitheatre where Ranger Richard led a talk about the history of the park.

But the food had to be packed back into the car every stinking night (bears).

We went rafting, not whitewater but just more of a float trip. We didn't even paddle. That was the chosen special thing that cost extra money.I think we chose well. Extremely fun.

The name of the creek right across from our campsite was Cosby Creek I think. We did a creek walk up that which was fun and refreshing. Except for the Great Laurels, with their branches all spread out and low right through the path. There was also a swimming hole which was FREEEEEZZINNG.

One day we hiked 4 miles round trip to Grotto Falls, very beautiful. That one was cool because the path actually goes behind the waterfall. It was beautiful. The hike wasn't too tough either and not even that long. Also at the top of the mountain it was much cooler than at the bottom probably by like 15 degrees.

The rest of that day was spent at the Cades Cove auto tour loop but trust me, we weren't the people there who just drove around loops and never got out of the car. When we stopped at the Sugarlands Visitor's Center (air conditioned!!!) my mom got me a GSMNP t-shirt, a GSMNP pin that I put on my Girl Scout sash and some things for my sisters.

On the loop it was cool but also sad to see the cemeteries at the old churches. There were lots of babies and young people buried there. The saddest one was twins, I can't remember the names, one lived to be old and one died the day she was born. There were lots of Olivers buried there and there were also some very new additions to the cemetery like in 2011. You could really tell who was poor because the headstones were very home-made.

Also on the road by our campsite was Gunther Cemetery. It was reeeely ooooolld. Most of the headstones you couldn't even read but the ones that you could were from like the early-mid 1800s. Old.

Also something sad was all of the dying Hemlock trees. Stupid foreign bugs that are bad for them. The only way to save a tree once it has them is to either inject it's roots with tree medicine(too expensive to do every tree so they only use it on the really old ones) or cover every single needle of the tree with dish soap to smother the bugs, only for small saplings.
One night there were barred owls. They say who-cooks-for-you and its sooo freaking annoying at 2 in the morning. They don't even sound real. Then the crows came and were almost equally annoying at 6 am.

Then it rained alllllll night one night and stormend and stormed. Our tent was collapsing and leaking and thank goodness my clothes didn't get wet because I would have been so mad. Poor Clarity and K who moved to the bathroom floor and then to the truck. My mom and I moved to the van at 3a. Uhh in the morning everything was wet. I'm glad that I didn't go on the 10-mile hike that day with Bridgett, Fiona, Zelda and Bree. I didn't sleep at all the night before so Ann, Trudi, Clarity, K and my mom and I all stayed behind and hung everything out to dry. Everyone on the hike was pooped when they got back. I can't even imagine hiking up a "three mile staircase."

Clarity read Anne of Avonlea to K almost every night. It was adorable because she was making different voices for all of the characters and it was just really really cute.

Even through the rain and no sleep, the trip was still really fun and I can't wait to go again to another national park. Thanks to my wonderful troop leaders, all the moms, and everyone who bought cookies and helped to fund the trip. It was really awesome.

Definitons of Summer

sum-mer [suhm-er]
noun

1.

the season between spring and autumn, in the Northern Hemisphere from the summer solstice to the autumnal equinox, and in the Southern Hemisphere from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox.

2.

the period comprising the months of June, July, and August in the U.S., and from the middle of May to the middle of August in Great Britain.

3.

a period of hot, usually sunny weather

Summer means that there are frequent trips to everywhere: grandma's, the pool, the store, the swingset, the freezer (for ice cream)...

Summer means the Virginia Barbecue, which it not really a barbecue, it's more of a fair. There are rides, vendors of "antiques," jewelry, you name it and they probably have it. There's typical carnival food: corn dogs (mmm), funnel cake, curly fries, and lemon shake-ups. I'm not really sure if the lemon shake-ups are specific to the VBBQ, but they are awesome ($$)!

Summer means there are also frequent sleepovers and friends come over often. And family, and cousins (which I happen to have a lot of). And there are weddings and graduations and sometimes funerals (although those aren't specific to summer).

Our family gets to go to church and worship God together.

And summer can be hot.

It's not that miserably hot here yet, thankfully. It has been nice enough to be outside in the evenings and run through sprinklers and the bugs aren't that bad either. We can still go on bike rides and not shrivel up. The walk from car to pool isn't miserable yet. And while I keep thinking how it is going to get so hot, I enjoy every moment of right now: summer.

Summer is when things happen. Best friends move away and everyone makes plans for next year: school. I'm blessed enough to not have to move, or to not have to switch schools again before high school.

Babies are born and, for the most part, everything is happy.

And that also means that I sometimes don't get a chance to post anything here. Sorry. I'm trying, and sometimes I even think of things that would be really good to put on here, but just don't have the time. It can be busy, and God is busy too;

God is good, and He is still at work in the summer.

20 Seconds of Glory

(I just remembered that i hadn't posted this yet. [Or maybe i did. I don't remember. I'll just post it again anyway.] Sorry, it's been a LONG time since this happened. It was last school year in the spring I think. Totally awesome.)

Well, maybe more like 30. 

Ya know how I told you our school was going to a Cardinals game and singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game?  It was so totally fantastical!  I can't even express in words how cool it was, really.  It is kinda funny because Mr. Teacher kinda directs like he's directing an orchestra instead of preschoolers and kindergartners, and 1-3rd graders with a few 4,5, and 6th graders sprinkled in there.  Really, he does.

                                                                            



Highlights of Summer

June: I made a new blog, I left for a while, it was sad.
July: I went to vacation bible school by my grandma's house, my blog reached it's 100th post, I turned 12!, we played bananagrams.

August: it got HOTTER, it finally rained.

Now summer has 5 days remaining until school starts. So sad.

I guess I have some filling-in to do...

So I just turned 12! On my birthday I:

Had breakfase in bed. Crepes! With marscepone, raspberries, fresh fresh peaches, and chocolate sauce.

Opened presents, in bed! From parents, 'My Neighbor Totoro,' a new watch; from Abigail, earrings; from grandma Judy, a PHONE!; from grandma Linny, notebooks and money; from aunt Julie, fingernail polish and giftcards; from the other Hodges, a Swiss Army Knife and Swiss Army Flashlight (I almost blinded myself!); from the Mumfords, bananagrams; from aunt Pam, a bag and a book; from Paige a KLUTZ book (I love those!). 

The reason I do that is because people always ask me what I got for my birthday, and I really don't like answering that question.

THEN we went to P. F. Changs for dinner.  I had Crispy Honey Chicken, mom and Abigail shared some kind of shrimp, and my dad ate whatever nobody else did.  It was awesome!

I had a kickbutt birthday and I wanna thank you all.  :)

Bananagrams

It's a game that I got for my birthday. I love it!

Perhaps the greatest hand of bananagrams ever played. At least by me!

Can't Believe It

Tomorrow is my birthday!  I'm so excited.

I guess we've kinda had both kinds of extreme weather this year, haven't we? A c-c-c-oooooollldd winter and an, "iAy, caramba, tengo calor!" summer! (That lower-case 'i' there is the up-side down exclamation point.)

IT IS HOT OUTSIDE!!!

Happy 100th Post!!!

And I can't believe my birthday is in 4 days!!!

It's gonna be totally awesome!

Hi

The fish fry was awesome.  The slide was HUGE!  IT.  WAS.  HUGE.  NOT.  KIDDING.

And we had fun even though we got sunburnt.

VBS Fish Fry

I'll give you more details later, but here's the basic, well, layout.

We do a program and sing our VBS songs.

Everyone goes out side.

There's a giant blow-up slide and stuff for kids.

There's a big tent where the grownups sit and talk.

Around noon they start frying fish from the Fish Man!

It's the best fish ever.

Here a handful of chips equals a veggie, gravy is a condiment, and Jell-O is a salad.

VBS

Perhaps my favorite thing.

It's so fun!  Even if I am only a helper this year, I still love it. 

So Excited!

My birthday is coming up!  I'm so excited!  That's all that I have to say!