I'm back! {sort of}

Sorry I haven't been on so long... I have no excuse for it ;)

Anyway—great books have come out recently! First there's the Vespers Rising book that follows the 10th 39 Clues book. I finished it a while ago and could not put it down. It was really action-packed and awesome!

Also, the second Kane Chronicle Book came out, the Throne of Fire. I haven't gotten to it yet, but I heard it was another book you couldn't put down.

For school, we are doing a sort of "book club" thing where you have a group of friends, people, whatever and you pick a book to read and you have to make a homework assignment, 2 quizzes, 2 vocab lists, and a final exam to go with the book. My group picked "The Upstairs Room" by Johanna Reiss. It's about the Holocaust and how some sisters had to hide with another family for 1 1/2 years. I didn't like it very much, but it was almost like the Diary of Anne Frank.

Another thing that happened recently was that I had 3 concerts in the past month. 2 were for school and 1 was for a competition. The competition is called "Great East Festival" and schools go down and play their concert pieces and get a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum plaque-type thing. All of my school's orchestras and bands got gold, which is second best, but that's OK. After the competition, all the participating schools get to go to Canobie Lake Park, an amusement park. This was my first time on a roller-coaster or anything, so I was pretty scared. I went on a roller-coaster type thing called the Boston Tea Party. What happens is you get into a boat(really like a  roller-coaster seat) and then you go up like a normal roller coaster. Then, you turn right. THEN, you go down really fast and there's water there, and when you go down, all you can see is this big wall of water! You get SOAKED. And of course, the last time I went on was before we had to leave the park, and so I was very uncomfortable on the way home.

And, yeah. That's all :)

Happy Memorial Day! 

Basketball!

Jimmer!

Today in about an 1/2 hour I will be going to a basketball tournament! Hopefully we'll win! Our stake has two teams, so we ALL have to be at the place where it is at 8:30.. which meant waking up EARLY. Ugh. I'm really tired. But I'll sleep in the car or something.
Later!
~Abby

Cambridgefest {Part 3}

Lyrics! It was really fun :)
Pioneer
by Kylie Romano
To the Tune of "Firework" by Katy Perry

Do you ever feel like a limp oxen
Moving so-o slow
Compared to all your friends

Do you ever feel like a 'tater sack
Falling off a cart
Rolling on your back

Do you ever feel so tired and hungry
You just wanna sleep
Because of your great fatigue

Do you know that there's  
Still a chance for you
'Cause there is faith in you

You just gotta believe
And see
How great we can be
Have faith in Christ
And we'll trek through the night

(Chorus):
'Cause baby you're a pioneer
travelin' all the way to here
comin' from near and far
we're all pushing our hand ca-arts

baby you're a pioneer
with faith ye shall not fear
Make it to Zi-i-on
We're gonna build up God's king-dom

You don't have to feel
Like a waste of space
You are so special
Just like the golden plates

If you only knew
What the future holds
After all of this
Comes Salt Lake, oh

Maybe your reason why
All this tragedy
So you could prove that faith
Is belief in what you cannot see

From the Holy Ghost
Your heart will know
And when it's time
You'll go

You just gotta believe
And see
How great we can be
Have faith in Christ
And we'll trek through the night

[Chorus]

Carry on, on, on
'Cause we just gotta hold
on, on, on
The spirit is inside of you, you, you
And now it's gonna help you through

[Chorus]

Carry on, on, on
Because together we're
stro-o-ong

Carry on, on, on
Because together we're
stro-o-ong

Yup! Later
~Abby

Cambridgefest {Part 2}

Cambridgefest was last night and it was SOO fun!! All the wards in our stake performed a song that lyrics were twisted so it would fit the Trek theme for this year! It was really fun! Our ward did 'Firework' by Katy Perry. We re-did it so it's 'Pioneer'. 4 people dressed up as pioneers and the rest of us were in the front as angels because we were supposed to be 'encouraging' the pioneers to move on! The Trailboss did one to the tune of 'Billionaire' it was great!!! I'll post the lyrics soon with permission of my friend who wrote it! It was really great!

Abby

Cambridgefest!

SO, our stake does this thing called 'Cambridgefest' which is where all the youth in our stake get together to do skits. BUT, since people 14 and up are going on the Trek this year, we're doing pioneer parodies of popular songs. Ours is to the tune of 'Firework' by Katy Perry! It's pretty awesome! It was written to my friend Kylie! I'll post the lyrics after! This Tuesday the YW/YM are going to practice it!! So excited! It's my first Cambridgefest that I get to actually be in! Most of the normal skits are hilarious!!! The theme was Olympics last year and my ward did 'Figure Dating'. It showed three different dates(they were ice skating of course) and one was really good and cheesy, one was normal, and one was just.. bad. A bunch of other funny ones were years before. Another ward in my stake did Twilight the Musical, which was Twilight+High School Musical. It was HILARIOUS! It's on YouTube so I would go and watch it!!! Got to go! See ya!

~Abby

LA Project

Tomorrow in class in front of the whole entire class, I get to show a video I made. We had to make a trailer for 'Max the Mighty', a book we read. We also had to make a poster. I was Worm, one of the main characters. We HAD to have at least 2 boys in our group(UGH!) and when we were trying to film the trailer scenes they were REALLY annoying(shooting baskets, just being annoying,etc). Finally we got all the filming done and I was left with the job to edit the whole video and make it look like a real movie trailer. Yay. It actually turned out pretty good! There's epic music, the rating at the beginning, and the date(last day of school)at the end. I'll post the video and a picture of the poster sooner or later don't worry!

About the book we read, it was a sequel to 'Freak the Mighty' which we read. You'd get the title if you read it! The first book was A LOT better than the second one. The second one seemed a lot quicker than the first one and had less details or plot. The first one was about Max, this HUGE(meaning tall)guy who doesn't really have any friends because his dad is in jail and he lives with his grandparents, Grim and Gram. Then one day there's this kid named Kevin that moves in next to him and they come to be really good friends. Kevin can't really walk and has braces on his legs, and so Max carries Kevin(aka Freak)on his shoulders. They like to call themselves 'Freak the Mighty'. Then one day Kevin dies and Max is sad and alone and yeah. End of book numero uno. The second book is about Max finding Worm, like Freak, but a girl. They go to Montana to find Worm's dad because her step-dad, aka the Undertaker, is hurting her mom a lot. In the video we made a guy had to slap a friend of mine and it was fake of course. Max is wanted by the cops though and so they had to run away from a bus called the 'Prairie Schooner' and Dippy Hippie, the driver of the bus. Finally, the undertaker goes to jail and Worm and her mom come to live with Max, Grim, and Gram, the end.

For the poster we had to pick celebrities to play the roles of the characters. Then, we had to act like the actors/characters in the video. My friend Abby was the Dippy Hippie and it was hilarious! My other friend Elena was Sheriff Goodman and they both had to do really funny accents! We're all going to be SO embarrassed though. I'm nervous because no one in my group except me has seen the completed video! I hope they like it!! Got to go read now see ya!
~Abby

Book Releases!

 

So, remember the 39 Clues? That series finished. I thought there was going to be 39 Clues and 1 clue in each book. Wrong. There are 10 books--more than 1 clue in each book. Whatever, it was good. So I heard that the new series would be coming out soon, I think in April. I'm SO excited! There are some other books that go along with the 39 Clues books that I got. They're called: The Black Books of Secrets and the Agent Handbook. I haven't started either because I'd like to finish some of my OTHER books. 

There's another book that's coming out fairly soon called The Throne of Fire which is the second book in the Kane Chronicles series. The first book was called The Red Pyramid which is about Egyptian mythology. The second book in the Heroes of Olympus series is coming out sometime this year--I think in October. It's called the Son of Neptune. I can't wait for both! They're written by the author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Rick Riordan. Hopefully I'll finish all the books I need to finish by the time one of them come out!

Doctor Who

The TARDIS

Rory, the Doctor, and Amy

Amy Pond and the Doctor inside the TARDIS

OK, so recently I have discovered the amazing{and pleasantly nerdy} British TV show of Doctor Who. My friends know that I love British people{they're just awesome} and I've heard about it from people. SO, I decided to give it a try! It's AWESOME! Go watch it. I watched the whole 5th season because that was when the first season that the 11th Doctor came in. There's a new season this spring and I can't wait! I suggest before watching the new season to watch the 5th season to catch up. Let me explain:
Doctor Who is about the Doctor{the dude in the picture}and he travels in time in the TARDIS--or the Blue Police Box. I guess people used to use Police Boxes to call police. The TARDIS is a LOT bigger on the inside than on the outside. The Doctor and Amy are inside the TARDIS in that picture--see what I mean? A LOT bigger! Anyway, they travel in time to fix these "cracks in the universe" that involve aliens and machine-monsters and Roman soldiers.

My favorite "monster" so far is the Dalek. I don't know why but they're cool... except when they try to kill the Doctor and Amy. But the creepiest "monster" so far, to me, is the Weeping Angel. They're statues. If you look at them they don't move. If you don't look at them, they move. So, for example, I'm looking at one and I close my eyes for a second. When I open my eyes, the angels have moved into a different position. Scary, I know. For one of the Dalek episodes the Doctor and Amy back to WWII and see Winston Churchill and this scientist that has created the Daleks to help the UK win the war and it explodes the enemies' planes which is good. But then, they turn to the dark side. They start to attack the good side I guess and the Doctor. But the Doctor defeats them in the end. Yeah.

The last two episodes in the season are AWESOME. So there's this prison called the Pandorica and it holds all the monsters that the Doctor has defeated.I'll skip to the end. The Doctor gets in the Pandorica then gets out, and then puts Amy in the Pandorica to keep her safe for 2,000 years{this was during like, Roman time} and then Amy, Rory, younger Amy, and Doctor meet at the museum and the Doctor dies, sort of. Then Amy brings him back and she and Rory hop back in the TARDIS again. It might be better if you just watch the episodes yourselves. I'm not very good at explaining things as you can tell. But this song basically explains the last "Pandorica" episode:Doctor Who: Big Bang 2
This explains the whole of Doctor Who too: Doctor Who: Explanation

It's cool. See you latah!

Oh yeah and: Bowties and Fezes ARE cool. 

Basketball

OK, so yesterday{1/30/11} I started basketball. With my stake. There were like, mostly people from my ward. I was pretty bad first off, but I got better! I can shoot a ball and pass and everything so that's good. But now, I'm kind of sore. It wasn't as bad as when I was sore playing Just Dance 2.. but yeah. Every Saturday!!! I'll take a pic of my shirt when I get it! We are the Evergreen Pterodactyls{?!?!}. I suspect they'll tell us the back-story! G2G! Later!

QUIZ {sort of}

I found this thing on my mom's blog. Hmmm:
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
3) Tally your total at the bottom.

(*) 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
(x) 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
() 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
(x) 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling NO DUH
(*) 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
(x) 6 The Bible
(*) 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
() 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
() 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
() 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
(*) 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
() 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
() 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
() 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
() 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
(*) 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
() 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
() 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
() 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
() 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
() 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Tried it. Hated it. Scarlett O'Hara drove me NUTS.)
() 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
() 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
() 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
() 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
() 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
() 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
() 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
(x) 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
(*) 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
() 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
() 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
(x) 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
(*) 34 Emma - Jane Austen
(*) 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
(x) 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
() 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
() 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
() 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
(idk) 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
() 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
() 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
() 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
( ) 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
( ) 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
(x) 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
() 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
() 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
() 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
() 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
() 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
() 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
( ) 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
(x) 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
( ) 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
( ) 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
() 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
( ) 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
() 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
() 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Tried it. Hated it.)
() 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
( ) 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
( ) 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
( ) 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
() 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
( ) 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
() 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
( ) 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
( ) 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
() 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
(seen the movie :P) 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
( ) 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
(x) 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
( ) 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
() 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
( ) 76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
( ) 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
( ) 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
( ) 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
( ) 80 Possession - AS Byatt
(seen the movie :P) 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
( ) 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
() 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
() 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
() 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
( ) 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
(x) 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
( ) 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
(*) 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
( ) 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
( ) 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
() 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
( ) 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
() 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
() 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
( ) 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
(*) 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
(*) 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
(x) 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
() 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total: 11... YIKES. Total of *:11

WELL, I guess I can find a book to read now!

It WAS a SNOW DAY!

Today is the 15th of January and GUESS WHAT? I had a snow day a couple of days ago on Wednesday the 12th! We had one on the 13th also because some of the snow wasn't cleaned up yet. WE had a N'oreaster(a blizzard that lasts all day) and it was pretty awesome. We got about a foot and a HALF of snow, which makes it even better. IT was cold though and the power in our house went out for about 10 minutes, then it came back on. My dad has shoveling OCD though. He was out there for about um, I don't know, three hours give or take a few minutes SHOVELING the driveway(even though we have a snow-blower......). OH well. AND we played Just Dance 2  which was really fun. I beat EVERYBODY in my family officially. By like, 1,000 points. It was pretty awesome. And over Christmas break I kind of dominated everybody at a game called Blink. It's really fast and you have to have really good eyes! My Uncle Adam beat me ONCE. But not really because he was cheating somehow. I do not cheat. Even though pretty much my whole family thinks I cheat on games I win. Such as Just Dance 2 also. IT IS THE FUNNEST GAME IN THE UNIVERSE. ME and my friend Haley played it when I went over her house on Friday to sleepover(the 14th). I like the Medley mode and we played just the game for 2 HOURS and 3 minutes!! Then when I came home on Saturday, I played it for probably an hour and a half. AND MAN am I sore!!! My shoulders are killing me!!!

As for books, I started back on reading Fablehaven Book 2: Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull which is really good. I finished Chasing Vermeer by Blue Baliett which was SO good! It's almost like a book I read called The Mysterious Benidict Society which is really good too. I recently went to Barnes and Nobles to get some 39 Clue books. They are called the Black Book of Buried Secrets and the Agent Handbook. They're basically guides to the book. I also got Percy Jackson and the Olympians:The ULTIMATE Guide. That is pretty filled with information just like the 39 clues books. Yeah thats my reading for awhile.

School: I have about 10 million projects. One in Social Studies, one in Science and two in Language Arts. OH well. See ya later!