For Memorial Day

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD

Press Forward, Saints.

On Friday after school Jessica (she changed her name again) and I went to the Floyd Lamb state park. It's this big park covered in bike paths and a buncha small lakes, it's soooo much fun. And the bathrooms aren't horrible, either. We went rollerblading for hours and I only fell one, but Jessica got her knees all messed up... and I told the the 74th Annual Hunger Games, which apparently I know by heart. I got right up to the middle of the feast before we had to go home, so now Jessica's dying to hear the rest.

I don't think I'm going to tell her, I'll think I'll make her read it for her self.

(Mwah-ha-ah-ha.)

The Stake Youth Choir which Jessica and I are part of sang for seminary graduation today. It was really boring, but the brownies after ward were good!

Yesterday Mom and I went on our annual (actually it's probably closer to bi-annual, but don't tell Dad that) super-mega shopping spree at (Dun Dun Dunh!) Savers.

The thrift store.

I know.

But we came home with 4 1/2 HUGE bags full of clothes and shoes (TONS of shoes!) and swimsuits and earrings and cute hats and flip flops and cute shirts and capri pants... total $259.72- with a 20% discount! But now we have all the clothes we need for the next year... it was a lot of fun.

:contented sigh:

And tomorrow we (Jessica and I, obviously) are riding my parent's tandem bike in the stake fun run/bike/walk/scooter/stroller/whatever, and that's gonna be lots of fun, and then the day after that is the last day of school!

What's new with you guys? :)

Ok. Finally.

So I have waaaaaaay too many pictures from Chicago to add an explanation to each one, and blogger is really bad with pictures, so I'm just gonna put these up randomly. In several installments. Enjoy.
The Sears Tower (I don't care what they call it, it's still the sears tower!)
Chicago from the 103 floor of the Sears Tower.

A lego model of the Sears Tower (Thelly would be soooo jealous if he knew!).
ALL the flags of the WHOLE WORLD!

Look! A sandwich shop disguised as a construction site! We went and ate there, and they had goooood ice cream, but the sandwiches were nothing to write home about.
A Double-Decker Bus (it's a shame I didn't get a picture of the one with fur on the sides...)
The surprisingly clean Chicago river.
A really cool building. It's funny how many buildings there look like cathedrals, with gargoyles and stone lions and whatnot.
I bet this place has mandatory valet parking.

A cool building. At a cool angle (Mom had to literally lie down on the street to get in all in the frame...).

My post count for this month is pathetic, but I've been doing a lot of math homework and been more or less grouded from the computer all month, so I'm gonna cut myself some slack.

Bye.

P.S. Monkey lost another tooth!

Nevermind. I'll just post this instead.

Even though I love facebook, this is funny.

What's been going on lately.

Quotes:

My cousin Ryan: Migillicutty you can be my second best friend, but you can't be my first best friend because Jamie (same age little girl who live next door) is my best friend and I don't want to ruin that relationship.

Scaffy: Migillicutty, do you want to be in the Mango Club? It's a club I started. It has like, 10 members!
Me: What does the Mango Club do?
Scaffy: It.... I.. ummm.... I haven't decided yet.

I think Mangos have replace Papayas. Mangos at least taste good.



So tonight is our ward's Wild West BBQ, the second ward activity that my parents have been in charge of. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. They're a Costume contest and a Baked bean contest. If you win you get the Golden Ladle, which I got to spray paint this morning. The only problem is that Scaffy get to be one of the judges.

I got to make the certificates of the winners of the two contests, too. It was fun. I'm getting better at stuff like that.


So GUESS WHAT!!!! Our (mean) neighbors who live down the street got 'robbed'.

See, they used to get all these foreclosure notices, so when this U-haul truck shows up one Saturday nobody was really surprised. We just figured they were finally getting kicked out. So this U-haul truck is there all Saturday and all Sunday, but the weird thing was that the guys moving the furniture into the U-haul weren't the people who live in that house. When Mom pointed that out to me I just said they must've hired somebody to move the stuff for them. But none of the people who live in the house are even watching. They're not hanging around to make sure stuff doesn't get broken or anything, in fact the people who live in that house aren't there at all. Weird, right?


And on Monday the U-haul is gone. Mom goes running in the early morning and sees this big pile of old furniture and stuff that out by the garbage can, just stuff that's not worth taking with you when you move, right? But there's a lot of stuff, so much that Mom figures there's no way the garbage men are gonna take it all. But they do, because when Mom goes to take my little brothers to school at 8:30, there's nothing next to the empty trash can.

And then that afternoon, the people who lived in the (now empty) house are seen for the first time all weekend. They go knock on a neighbors door and say, "Do you know where all our stuff is? We just got back from vacation and our hose is completely empty and we don't know why."

Yeah!

Dad says they paid the 'movers' to put all their stuff in storage so they could get insurance compensation for it.

I dunno, but it was really weired.

And also, we've had two empty houses in our neighborhood be moved into this week! One house has an empty nester couple in it now, and the other is a family from our ward who have kids almost my same age. AWESOMENESS!!!


The Chicago post is (hopefully) going up this after noon! I dreamed we went back there ( to Chicago) last night. I have been dreaming the weirdest things lately! I dreamed a black guy was chasing me around a hotel after I flipped him off (I have never flipped anybody of in my life, BTW, I have no idea where this came from), I dreamed I was about to die in the hospital because my legs were broken( and the sheets were made of this heavy red velvet stuff), I dreamed I got to read the next Eragon book before anybody else (and I got to know all the secrets)... etc. It's really very strange.

SO..... that's what's been going on lately.

I'm Back for the third time....

Chicago was soo awesome, but I want to do it justice, so this is not the Chicago post. I'll put it up when all the videos and pictures are uploaded on facebook. Not that facebook is more important, but I can't use other peoples videos until they're on facebook, you know?

(It really was awesome, though)

This is actually the post where I wish you a Happy Star Wars Day (!!!!) and tell you some adorable Monkey quotes.

Monkey: Mom, I know how to grow beans in a wet paper towel. It's very simplicated.
~~~~~
Monkey: Mom, I know what you call people who litter on the street.
Mom: What?
Monkey: Litter-fish!!
Mom: What? Do you mean litter- bug?
Monkey: Oh, yeah.... that's what I meant.
~~~~~
Scaffy has become recently fixated with papayas. I dunno what it is, but he's always talking about papaya seeds, papaya trees, papaya trees growing in your stomach if you eat their seeds, etc. So when Mom went shopping today she bought a papaya and let Scaffy try some.

Papaya smells like a newborn baby with a diaper full of diarrhea. And I imagine it tastes similar, but I've never eaten the contents of a diaper used by a newborn baby with diarrhea, so I can't tell.


Either way, I think the papaya fixation is over.

(Happy Star Wars Day!!!!)