My, My, How Time Flies!

10) Even the desert has some trees.

It seems as if the clock can't make up it's mind. It just seems as though it goes faster and faster as the days go on. It seem like only yesterday that my dad got the call saying that he had the job. It seems like only yesterday that he left for Washington. Now, my parents already have a house chosen. Can you believe it? Time flies when... well... time flies. Now we may be in a house just after we get there. That's a relief, since rentals are scarce and rentals that would allow Darby are even more scarce. Darby would have had to stay with farmgirl_dk, which isn't bad, but I would have missed my baby!
Anyway, the clock will virtually stop next week. The battle of the school year, ISATs, are coming!
*weighing in at 5 pounds, with over 300 questions and twice as many rules, the ISATs!!!!*
*weighing in at x pounds, 3/4 year's knowledge, and a hatred of tests, little ole me!!!!!*
Oh, yes, you must watch this battle! Actually, you shouldn't. It is three hours if complete silence throughout the school. No one is looking forward to these, not even the teachers, who have given us the knowledge for these tests. ISATs don't even have perks anymore, since they've decided not to give us snacks during them anymore. Some teachers do, but I don't think that the school provides them.
A's baton issues are clearing up. This is REALLY exciting! Yay! Last night in band we played with the pep band for the regionals game. We dominated!!!! Woo!!!! Anyway, it was pretty hard. It was music for the grade above us, and that made it really hard, so I only hit half of the notes right. Mr. J said that that was pretty good, so I was pretty pleased. I was actually sort of upset too because S hit about a zillion more notes than me. ( I love ya, S!) We played Poker Face, Living on a Prayer, and a few other songs, and it was pretty awesome!
I only watched about half the game. When we weren't playing, I was texting my friend A.L. who was on the other side of the gym. He was a ditcher face! But that's OK because someone stole his phone.
All in all, this week has been pretty cool. We even did artsy stuff in language arts and social studies today. As for me and my battle against the clock, I hope time can slow down a little.

An Interesting Sort Of Week

9) The beach there is cold, not warm.

The strange thing about school is that just when it gets so boring that you don't think that you can stand it for one more second, something comes up that makes it interesting again. For instance last week, the fire alarm went off because of a problem in the boiler room, and the whole school had to evacuate to the building next door. It was a huge hassle, and A didn't even have time to grab her precious baton before she was rushed out the door! Some people were getting dressed for PE and they were forced to run out the door with no shoes. It was just a big problem, but the school was shot through with adrenaline for the rest of the day.

This week has been strangely interesting. In English we had to give presentations on those immigration papers that we wrote, and that wasn't fun. But as a result, we were allowed to have INTERNATIONAL FOOD DAY! That was a blast, and we had it today. I couldn't bring anything because we didn't have time to make stuff, and because Mom is attempting to use as many of our groceries as possible, and not buy more than is necessary. I would have brought baklava, which is phyllo dough covered in honey and chopped nuts, and I though it sounded delicious. Mom was not quite as enthusiastic because she is NOT a honey person, unless it is in her tea. Even though there was no baklava, there were some delicious dishes spread on the table. There was German chocolate pie, Filipino fruit salad, tacos, Naan, Indian trail mix, sushi with cooked fish, some Polish cinnamon fruit salad, mashed potatoes, Norwegian cookies with jelly, chips and dip, pretzels, Swedish Fish, rice candy, German Spritz cookies, and a few others. Quite the International Food Day, huh?

In science, we're having a blast. Yesterday, we did a lab on soda. Well, I am not a fan of drinking soda, but there were other people in the class who were willing enough to have mine. We were seeing how much carbon gas we could get out of the soda and into our balloons. There was one cold soda and one that was sitting in hot water and we had to "agitate" them for 2 minutes, then measure the circumference of each balloon which was atop the open bottle. The cold one worked just fine, but when my partner and I got to the hot water stage, things went downhill. The first balloon that we put on worked until the bottle went into the hot water. Then a screaming noise erupted and the room grew quiet. Our little bottle was screaming for help! The second we took it out, the noise stopped, and we discovered a hole. Every single one of the other 4 balloons that we tried had a hole too! By the time we were on our last one, the gas was gone and we gave up. Mrs. B thought it was funny and we had one of the best ways that the experiment could go wrong! Tomorrow we're tie dying, and I'll tell about that after it happens.

Social studies is a study of ads. This isn't necessarily fun, but everyone gets to be creative and to learn advertising tricks. The foreboding thing is ISATS. Those are the worst tests ever. The state says that we have to take them, and it shows the school's progression. I suppose that not all of school can be fun, can it?!

Presidents Day Weekend

8) Some schools get out early every Wednesday!

This weekend was, as most of you know, Presidents Day weekend. That means 3 days off. Yay! Since my family will be moving in less than 7 weeks, all of our other family and friends are trying to hook up with us to do things. My grandparents, who live a couple hours south of me, came up this weekend. It was lots of fun! Grandma was supposed to come up Friday, but Grandpa was coming Saturday. Lo and behold, when I got home with M, Grandpa was sitting at the counter talking to my mom! Grandma didn't know that he was coming, so when she got here she was really confused. It was funny though! We sort of hung out and ate after M left, and then turned on the Olympics.

" If we were in Washington, we could've gone to see the Olympics!" I told Dad, since the Winter Olympics are in Vancouver this year. He just laughed. I think he's nervous. He's leaving this week.

On Saturday, Grandma took me, J, and G to Barnes and Noble Bookstore. Normally I'm really in to books. I still was, but I hadn't read any spectacular books for quite a while, and the ones I like I own. In the end I decided on The Book Thief (to learn more, click on the link!).I am very interested in the Holocaust and this is one of my favorite books. Next we went to Meijer to get some groceries, then headed home. More Olympics, then bedtime! Sunday was Valentines Day. Grandma had made us each a little bag. Mine contained a Marshmallow Heart, a box of candy hearts, and a small plush elephant. She was pink and very cute. G and J got some too and we actually spent all day playing with our elephants. Farmgirl_dk sent us a package too! Inside was a big bag of cherry gummy hearts and a valentine for each of us. I loved mine, and ate the Reese's Heart inside at once.

Also on Sunday, our vehicles were taken away to be shipped to Washington. My grandma had driven down a van for us to use and Dad borrowed a car from a friend, so we were all good. There was lots of crying, mostly by my grandma, and a few hours later, my grandparents left. My dad almost cried that day. He almost let himself show the sadness that he held toward the situation. But he didn't. Instead, he breathed deeply, and Mom hugged him hard. Now we are all hoping time will slow down so that my daddy can stay longer. It won't, and he'll be gone before I know it, but soon enough, I'll be out there too.

Gorgeous Glittering Snow

7) You'll miss the snow days!

Alrighty. I have been really busy with school these past few days and so I decided to hold off until I had free time. Well, when Mom woke me up at 6 this morning, I knew that I was gonna have some free time. Yes, thank the goodness of the world, it's a snow day! I slept until 10 this morning, but only in fragments. I thought back on all the busy things that were happening this week. In Language Arts, Mrs. G was has been making us write a 4-6 page research paper on immigrants from a certain country (mine is Greece) and then we had to write 30 note cards, 3 speech cards, and then prepare a Power Point presentation that has to be from 4-6 minutes long, and make speech cards for that! So my speech, when I practiced last night, was 10 minutes long! That's a problem seeing as I'm 4 minutes over the limit. So I cut it down and now it's 5 minutes and 50 seconds. Woo.
On a happier note, I had L over! We went to the A Cappella concert that my school holds every year. It was great. The Xtension Chords ( see LINK!) are my favorite, because they are hilarious and they are great singers. There was No Comment (see LINK!) who were really good too and sang quite a few popular songs. Then there was Four Feet Long (see LINK!) who were pretty good, but I still like the Xtension Chords best! Oh, and C won the new iPod nano which has a camcorder with it. She was pretty excited.
On Sunday I went to the triplets house. We watched part of the Super Bowl (really only the part where Carrie Underwood sang the National Anthem) and then we hung out in K's room playing Would You Rather and listening to music. It was really fun! All in all it was a good weekend, and today should be fun too. I'm not looking forward to school coming again, but I'll survive, I suppose.

The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

6) Fruit is popular there.

As you may have guessed, I had a bad day. The cause of it was many sided, but it all came back to one thing: Washington.

Flashback- It was a dark and stormy night... OK no it wasn't but we'll say it was. It was around 8:30 pm when my mom came flying down to my room. I was on the phone with A, discussing her issues with her baton. Things with it are going badly right now and she was upset and I was scared. As you can imagine things have been stressful around my house. I had just said to A "... and Mom doesn't usually upset me..." when, by golly, my mom flung the door open. She yelled "Hey!" and I thought that she had heard my less than friendly comment about her. Then, her voice getting ever louder- loud enough that A could hear it from the phone held in my hand- she asked " What's L's mom's name?!" I fumbled around in my overwhelmed brain for it, then she gave a name and I said that it was right. "She totally just put an offer on our house!" I stood there speechless, then told her that I had known that it would happen and she ran full speed back up the stairs. I told A that I would call her back and then cried. That wasn't the first time that I cried that night, and certainly not the last time that I did for a while. That was last night.

So, that's what happened. I was really miserable looking when I got to school. I was worried about A and awfulness was in my head. I wasn't even A's helper like I normally was. Everyone who I could have talked to about moving was so worried about A that they didn't notice that I was on the verge of tears all day. I ended up breaking down and crying a little bit in the bathroom at the end of the day. Then I couldn't even mope properly because I thought it was selfish with what A was going through. So then I felt even more upset and wasn't feeling good and wasn't hungry and wanted to go home so that I could be alone there instead of feeling alone at school where I couldn't talk to anyone.
Well. About 2 hours ago L's parents accepted our counter offer and we're supposed to leave at the beginning of April. And now I don't know if I have any tears left to cry. I can't feel bad now because I knew that this was happening when Mom picked up the phone and her face lit up and she talked in a slightly sweeter and higher voice to the person on the other line and when she shushed us. And now I am resignedly waiting for the sold sign.