Finally, a Post!

      It's been about 3 months since I have written on my blog. I keep putting it off because, well, I just don't have time to write a post (which is code for I just don't feel like it).  So when my teacher told me to write a small journal of my family's time in Florida for homework while there, it was the perfect excuse for me to start writing on here again.

      Our vacation started off with a morning drive to the Grand Forks airport which was pretty uneventful. We just watched The Bridge to Teribithia again, which is one of my favourite movies. It always makes me cry. The Grand Forks airport makes the Winnipeg airport look enormous! The first thing that happened was that my dad locked his keys and his wallet in our van. We called a locksmith and waited for about half an hour inside while he worked on our van. After that, we boarded our plane and settled in for the next 3 hours. 

     1 book, a ball of yarn, and 15 wine gums later, we landed in the Sunshine State. We got our rental car, ate supper at Chile's, and headed to the hotel. We unpacked, looked around our awesome room, and went to bed. The next day was beautiful, so we decided to explore the grounds of our resort. We looked around the lake, saw the mini golf course, took a peek at the basketball court, Foosball, and ping pong, and swam in the pool. It was a great first day! Our really good friends from Ontario came in the evening to join us. They have 3 boys in grades 4, 2, and kindergarten. We all love being with them. The next day was to be a Disney World day, Hollywood studios to be exact.

     Our friends had been to Disney once before and they told us we had to do Tower of Terror and Rockin' Rollercoaster first! My sister Ellie and my mom are absolutely not scary ride or fast rollercoaster people, so they sat out while the rest of us headed on to those rides. I really loved Rockin' Rollercoaster. Tower of Terror was fun too, but not really my type of ride. We saw some cool shows (I loved Indiana Jones, I remembered seeing it on the Disney episode of Full House) and of course we did It's a Small World. That song is so annoying! 

The next day we all headed to Magic Kingdom. We had a little...mishap when my dad took a wrong turn and we couldn't get to the parking lot. But it ended up all right. Magic Kingdom had some great rides. Space Mountain is incredible! We convinced Ellie to go on, but not my mom. Ellie hated it with a passion. Splash Mountain was closed unfortunately, but we all (minus Ellie and Mom) had a good time on Big Thunder Mountain. We did some other rides, saw some other shows and had lots of fun at Magic Kingdom.

On our 4th day, we decided it was time for a break from Disney World. While the moms were off shopping, the rest of us were playing many rounds of Dutch Blitz in the morning and a mini golf competition between the families. Team Penner won, of course. The second half of our day was spent at Epcot. I loved Epcot because it didn't feel as Disney as the other parks. We did some awesome rides like Soarin' and Test Track. Soarin' is a simulator ride which makes you feel like you are hang gliding hundreds of feet in the air. It was probably one of my favourite rides of all time. Test Track was a super high speed racecar type ride which everyone did. All I could hear on the fastest part was Ellie's high pitched shriek in my ear. We ate supper at a Japanese resturant where they cook the food right in front of you. Our chef was funny and our food was great! That meal was one of the highlights of my trip!

At this moment, I am sitting by the pool enjoying our complete day off from Disney. Later today we will go to the Cheesecake Factory for supper. Today was filled with swimming, ice cream, Cherry Coke, and hula hooping contests which my family dominated. The pool is awesome and the weather is perfect. Got to go now - the hot tub is calling my name.

   

Mish-Mash #2

I know I haven't written in a long time, and I don't really have an excuse, except that I was busy with school, which isn't much of an excuse. I thought I would post this picture of the first day of school. Sasha looks really excited, and Ellie...not so much.

School is going well, I really like most of my teachers and so far nothing seems very difficult. Well, French is a little tough, but nothing that I can't handle.  I've became friends with a new girl, who isn't my class, who is from Australia! Why anyone would move from Australia to Winnipeg is beyond me.

Sasha has a reading log she has to fill out each month, and in September the goal for the class was 100 minutes. She read 615 minutes!

I have discovered I really like key lime yogurt. Unfortunately, Ellie and Sasha do too.

In my dance class this year, I am with 7 other girls. They are all older than me. Much older than me. The two ages I know for sure are 16 and one in grade 12. Other than that, I am really enjoying dance. It is much more relaxed than last year.

We listened to one of Stuart McLean's stories in Language Arts (or ELA or English). It was so awesome and funny.

Yeah. That's it for now.

Winkler BIble Camp

On August 6th to 10th I was at Winkler Bible Camp for the sixth or seventh summer in a row. I really love camp and I always wish it was longer. I came to camp with my friend Madi, who I went with last year. We had so much fun together. This year I was in Intermediate camp for the first time. I was in cabin Hope and my counselors were named Brenna and Brooklyn. I really loved intermediate camp and thought it was so much better then juniors. We got to have parties and special things after the juniors went to bed, longer and better chapels, and we got to pick our own activities. We got a slip of paper with different blanks in it for each activity time, and then there would be tables with the different choices we could sign up for at that time. I liked that because if you don't want to do an activity, you don't have to sign up for it. For instance, I don't like the bikes activity, so I didn't sign up for it at all. But I love the climbing wall, so I signed up for it 3 times. The climbing wall is one of my favourite activities. I successfully climbed Face Lift, the 4th hardest one on the second try and attempted Crevice, the 3rd hardest one that I climbed about halfway. Anyway, I really loved the nighttime parties we had. One was at the beach where we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and one was in the barn loft, where there was different slushie drinks, snacks, and dancing. They don't keep any animals in that barn by the way. Those were so fun. We also had a really fun night game that was kind of like capture the flag. Everyone wore black and it was really dark outside. You would have to make it to these different stations and try to complete these challenges to get a coloured rock. Then you would have to bring the rocks to the middle of the field without being caught. The whole time there are counselors trying to catch you and take you to jail, where you have to complete a challenge given to you. I only got caught once. While we were there these boys had to sing a song for the challenge and they sang boyfriend in these really creepy voices. Me and my friend stayed just to listen to it. It was so funny! After the game was over we had fireworks. The food at camp was mostly good, they are not getting water from a well now so the water doesn't taste like blood anymore. The best meal was the baked oatmeal for breakfast. The songs were so much better then last year. The theme song was especially better then last years Suit Up. I really enjoyed the songs in the intermediate chapel a lot more then the songs in the regular chapels. I had a really awesome time at camp and I can't wait to go back next year!

A Long Trip

Driving from Burnaby, BC to Winnipeg MB. Mostly driving, yes. But also some exploring of Seattle, Montana, and even Fargo. We started in Langley, BC for one night where we had some trouble with the GPS and at the front desk of the hotel. then we drove to Seattle where we had a long wait at the border, but  finally drove up to the Westin Seattle, a very nice hotel where we got THREE rooms that were all connected for a good price, thanks to our friend Lisa. We stayed in Seattle for 3 nights. I really loved Pike Place Market and the gum wall, which is a ally and the walls are completely covered in gum. It was really cool. Here are some pictures of our time in Seattle.

This is the sign outside Pike Place Market

This is our hotel's two towers. We stayed on the 36th floor.

This is the view outside one of our windows.

Here we are at the original Starbucks.

This is at Pike Place Market again, watching the fish throwers. When someone orders fish one of the guys picks up the fish and throws it back and forth to the other guy a few times. They're funny and it's cool to watch. They are like fish guys and entertainers. 

This is at the gum wall

One day we drove to a little place called Fremont. It is a really interesting and quirky place and there is a lot of public outside art that people can look at, like the Fremont troll under the bridge.

Or the giant rocket ship.

Or the statues at the bus stop!

We had lots of fun in Seattle but soon it was time to drive for 10 HOURS to Butte, Montana. The driving was okay, altogether we watched 3 movies. In between all of that I made an awesome crayon creation, covered my clipboard in pipe cleaners, and drew some awesome stick people including a ninja, a chef, and a scuba diver. We were in Butte for one night and then we drove to West Yellowstone. On the way we stopped at the Louis and Clark Caverns. You can go right inside them with a tour guide. First it was a 20 minute walk to the entrance of the caves. The caverns were some of the coolest things I have ever done.  

It probably took about two hours to get through all the cave rooms. It was worth it! After we drove to a little "working cowboy town" called  Ennis for lunch. We ate at a place called Yesterdays which is a little diner and soda fountain inside a drugstore. The food was pretty good but the milkshake was even better! 

The next night we were in West Yellowstone. It was on the Fourth of July so we went to watch the parade.  No good pictures of that.


The next day we drove through and explored Yellowstone. We drove until we saw these steam pits and geysers and other cool stuff.

It was all really beautiful and cool. I really liked seeing it. Next we went to see Old Faithful.    The area around it has lots of benches for people to sit. We found a spot and waited for it to start. We kept saying "any minute now!" and "Ohh oh ohhh!" but it didn't start for a while. It did start in the amount of time they said it would though. And when t did it was really cool. I didn't expect for it to be so high! It was really really awesome.

We drove through the park some more, stopping at different lookout points, and then we were off to Billings. 

We stayed in Billings for two nights and then we drove another 9 hours to Fargo. We watched some really good movies throughout the entire trip like Cheaper by the Dozen 1 and 2 and Bridge to Terabithia. I really liked Bridge to Terabithia because it starred Josh Hutcherson who is in The Hunger Games as Peeta Mellark, and Anna-Sophia Robb from Soul Surfer as Bethany Hamilton. The driving went okay. There were no major fights or anything. In Fargo we did a lot of swimming and shopping. The pool was nice and big with a great water slide. We spent a lot of time there. We also spent a lot of time shopping at Kohls, Target, and Scheils. After two nights we drove to Winnipeg and had to do a lot of hard unpacking. I think that unpacking is harder than packing because you are looking for places to put things instead of just putting things in boxes. But maybe that's because I didn't do hardly any packing, I don't know. So now we're here and settled in, and this post took forever to write, like 3 days, and now it's time for supper.

Stuff

First, movies.

On Thursday night I went to my friend Maddy's house for a sleepover because there wasn't any school on Friday. My friend Emilia was also there. We got a fair bit of sleep for a sleepover, about 8 hours! We watched an awesome movie that I hadn't seen before. Cheaper by the Dozen 2!!! The 2 is very important as I liked it much better than the first one. It is so funny and it really is an awesome movie. I told my mom that we have to watch it together now. My favourite character is Sara, and I also like the twin girls, I don't remember their names. One of my favourite parts is when Tom is fixing the dock at the lake and he is listening to music. He starts dancing in a really funny way. He reminded me of my mom!

Another movie which my family watched yesterday was Supersize Me. Finally! I have been wanting to watch it and I found it really interesting and also funny. My favourite part was when he was eating McDonalds in his van and he starts talking about "McGurgles", "McHeadache", "McGas, "and being "McCrazy". I found it funny and weird that his girlfriend was vegan! I thought it was a really good movie.

Next, an awesome new blog.

Today in the paper there was an article about a girl from Scotland who had a blog where she posted pictures of her school lunch every day. She rated the lunch on how good it tasted, how healthy it was, and even wrote how many hairs it had in it! The school banned her taking any more pictures of her lunch, even though most of the lunches looked pretty good and she posted mostly positive things. The president of something-school-related-but-I-can't-remember-what lifted the ban and said she could continue posting her lunches on her blog. Her blog has become quite popular and has many, many people looking at it. I am going to post the link and please check it out because it is really good. She hasn't even been doing it for that long. You should start at her first post though. Click here to check it out! 

Finally, dance!

I had my dance recital last week and it went really well! Except for the fact I accidentally wore my socks on stage and I slipped getting up from the ground. They were at least grey! And short socks! No one could tell! I hope. Anyway, in my last post I said my coustume was supposed to be red and black but they ran out so it was yellow and black instead. Well, here is a picture of the bumblebee outfit.

The best part was waiting back stage after I went on. Me and my friends had lots of fun running around in the theater, up and down stairs, even outside! It was hot in the dressing room! When were out side my friend thought we couldn't get back in to the dressing room so she climbed through the window and we just opened the door and went inside. It was so funny! We also were pretending to be spies rolling around upstairs!

That's all I have to say for now!

Mish-Mash

Hi


-My dance recital is coming up soon, and I am very excited! I am taking contemporary dance this year and I really love it. Our dance this year is called Conflict. It's very cool. Our costumes are the only disapointment as they were supposed to be red and black but they ran out and so now they are yellow and black. The Conflict of the Bumblebees!


-Have you ever wondered, if fat and slim are opposites, why do "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the same thing?




-I really love babysitting. Here are the three main families I babysit.

Alejandro and Susie

Vivi and Elise

Ethan and Evie

-I really love the book series The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It's really good. I can't wait to go to the library and get the rest of the series

- The Cookie Crumble frappachino at Starbucks is so good. Very very good.

Update on Battle of the Books

My last post explains what Battle of the Books is. I'm not going to post a link to it, because you can just scroll down and read it for yourself. If you are to lazy to scroll down a little to read it, well, to bad for you.


Anyway, my team won the final of the battle of the books in our school, so we got to go to Gilmore to compete against the rest of the schools. We all expected not to do that well, especially after we were told one team had only got 3 questions wrong during the entire competition! But amazingly, we pulled ahead in the first half of the competition, we were so far ahead, that we missed the last 2 questions yet we still Won the competition!!!!!!!! We all couldn't believe it! It was so much fun and I really wish I could do it again next year. We didn't win a prize or even got a certificate, but I don't really care too much about that. I really loved my team and it was so fun to be a part of!