Ratface aka Holly

So in my previous post I mentioned that our dog had died, we are all very sad and shocked about it. Our dear Holly dog had bone cancer that progressed very rapidly, it was 6 weeks from her first symptoms to the day we brought her to the vet to put her down. She was a precious lab who behaved like a puppy till the last week of her life. Everyone in the family has said that she was their dog which shows how much she was truly a family dog. The last 6 months of her life she had become closer and closer to me, spending a ton of time in my room with me sleeping either in my bed or on the floor next to me. She was a good friend and a companion for me. It has been a month since we brought her to be put down and I am not missing her any less.
It was a hard way to begin preparing for Christmas, we had a gap in our family that we needed to fill. So despite dad's protestations that we would never have four dogs again we began to search. The Tuesday after our dearest Holly left we came home with another one: Levi. He is a sweet lab mix (we suspect that he is part great dane) that we all fell in love with, though I do admit that I was skeptical at first.  He is secretly a wookie at heart, he loves tho yodel when he is bored!
Please do forgive my prolonged absence and continue to send me reminders to post!
Glory to God for All Things

Cecilia

7 Things I am grateful for this advent

Hello, it's been awhile! I am truly sorry, but you know life happens!
During advent I always make a point to think of things that I am grateful for so here.
I am grateful for my family! They are the best, even when we are all grumpy from being cooped up in the house all day!
I am grateful for my time that I had with our precious dog before she died, she was constantly by my side, sitting by me feet at dinner, lying in my room while I did school work, and sleeping in my bed this last summer and fall.
I am grateful for the rest of our animal family, they make us all so happy!
I am grateful for my teachers!
I am grateful for all of the amazing women who have become my honorary aunties. I look up to and love them so much.
I am grateful for my sister the engineer who is truly my best friend, who knows what I am thinking before I do. She is amazing and I can't imagine life without her!
And finally I am grateful for my friends! You guys are always here for me! You drive me crazy but I love you anyway!
Glory to God for all things!
Blessed Advent,
Cecilia

catching up!

Hey,

So this has been a crazy two weeks! Halloween was great, and who knew being murdered was so much fun! Then on the friday was the Monster Mash! they had a photo booth set up which was so much fun!

             The mime was really skilled at getting into pictures! I am not sure how he got there.

 There was a costume contest and Engineer Sis and I won the best group costume from a book or movie with our ultimate fangirl outfits!

Then it was our 16th birthday and it was a very sad but beautiful day. Our dear friends lost their dad that week, love and prayers to all the H. Memory Eternal! 

Then on the 7th Engineer sis and I got our DLs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The next morning my dads car went kaput!!!!!!! so yeah now he is driving our car. 

Then we had a sweet 16 party and dance which was super fun! Thank-you for being the best friends ever!!!!!! It was great!!!!! 

 I love you all even when you insist on singing happy birthday at the top or your lungs!

             And my dear and extremely talented SMF Auntie made us a TARDIS cake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love you Mrs. S

Then last week I had a quiz bowl and my team placed second! It was so much fun! 

Thats pretty much it! 

Glory to God for all things!

Cecilia!

This week: Halloween

Sorry for not posting last week, I was sick all week and it would have been super incoherent, so its better that I waited! Quiz bowl was super fun! We had two teams and we placed 5th and 6th after the 4 teams from the top school that participates in quiz bowls. My team had a lot of answers that we new right away and some that we used our amazing teamwork skills to figure out the answer!
So this is yet another crazy week! Middle school quiz bowl that I am timing for on monday, then Wednesday I have a HOSA meeting all day, and then Thursday...... well that is super exciting! Halloween and I am going to murder mystery party! I am super excited because last year I went and it was super fun, but I got killed first so I didn't get how it could be scary, and then we played again and I got scared but it was short. I am really hoping I survive at least a few more rounds this year! And then Friday is going to be a short co-op birthday party and then the monster mash! I promise there will be pics of all this! And then Saturday I am 16!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is so crazy I can't believe it!
Please poke me to post more it really helps me remember! Thanks Nicole, love you!
Glory to God for all things!

Cecilia

It is really fall!

Fall is here and I am enjoying it! The colors, the weather, everything! Yesterday I decided to decorate the windows with paper leaves and a few pumpkins, this short easy project turned in to a long but none the less fun one! I cut the leaves and Badness drew the "veins" on them and then I redid them on the other side with sparkly gel pen! We also determined that we could not stick them to the window without washing them so we did that!

                                          Shoot they're sideways another thing I have to learn how to do!

                   

I am not completely ready to be done with summer so I decided that I will post some of this summer pics.

 

 broomtree pics!

 Shakespeare camp

This day we went to a state park in Minn with a lake!

                                         Lots of fun!

 Only two days till quiz bowl! I am super excited! We have good teams and I think we will do really well!
I got amazingly awful dress today and a couple of weeks ago we went on a shopping spree and bought a ton of stuff including a Dalek dress, pics this week!
Engineer sister and I also babysat on friday and we taught ourselves and our babysit-ies how to make fudge it is super delicious and easy!
Thats all for now!

Glory to God for all things!

Cecilia!

A birthday and fall

 So Brother the Bean had a birthday this week, he turned eleven! It is very hard to believe! He is my first sibling I remember life without, but really I am not sure what life was like! Very different that's for sure! Bean is very excited to have received a nice flash light, I am not sure what he intends to use it for but he has it! We drove to Omaha to visit grandma, it was a lot of fun although I didn't do much other than catch up on sleep!
In Omaha we attended a western right orthodox church, which is based off the Anglican mass and has the same saints and feast days as the rest of the western church. They also use gregorian chant and hymns like the western church and it is very beautiful and very familiar because we converted to orthodoxy from an episocopalian/Anglican parish . On Sunday it was the feast of Saint Micheal the Archangel, so happy name day to all the Micheals, I know at least one, and as we say in orthodoxy many years! We actually say that a lot we say it for birthdays, name days, anniversaries and some other things that I am drawing a blank on.
We are back doing school this week in someways it is better because we have a schedule that we have to loosely follow. We also had our first HOSA meeting and I think that it is going to be a great year! I am going to try really hard to get to nationals and it is not just because it is in Orlando Fl... Okay it has a little to do with it ;)
Fall has arrived! I love the colors and the cooler weather! I am not getting used to the dark by 8 o'clock and it only gets worse from now on :( but in the fall all of the TV shows movies I have been waiting for come out! Dr Who and Sherlock are nearly killing me! There just aren't enough trailers!
Speaking of dr who, engineer sister and I turned into complete fan girls and bought TARDIS and Dalek dresses! we have new favorite outfits and a haloween costumes! I am still going to be Clara but in her Oswin Oswald form, as a Dalek and I am still going to wear my amazing hat because it is tardis blue and really how could I not?!?!
I have been felt very random in the car on the way home from Omaha and put my new sunglasses on Totes Bro and he can totes rock aviator sunglasses!

Glory to God for All Things.

Cecilia!

Laughing!

I love laughing it is the best! I have laughed a lot this week! Brother the Shark is full of jokes many of them aren't very funny but some of them have us all on the floor laughing and it's great! Often those ones weren't meant to be funny! But I have also laughed with my girlfriends (I like to call them my girlies) so much, it is great to have friends that you can just laugh for hours with! 
This week was ballroom dancing and we learned to do some cool tango steps. One of them I have known for a while and the other I still haven't gotten (it is hard okay :P).  My feet are still sore from dancing! 
We undertook a big project this week, well it's been going slowly since last Sunday, we are trimming our hedge which really means we are cutting down the trees that have grown up in the hedge. It is kind of sad the trees have strangled the inner hedge so right now it looks like a dead bush:( but really that's okay cause it was going to look like that in a couple of weeks anyway when fall truly sets in. We have a giant pile of sticks but mostly leaves in our drive way that everybody is really enjoying jumping on, it is like a trampoline. I claim that brilliant idea but I stepped in a gofer hole shortly after I discovered that it worked and twisted my ankle pretty badly so now I am sad and I can't jump on it . On Wednesday my gramp is going to come and help trim our gorgeous maple tree and haul away the sticks hopefully my ankle is all the way better then because I really enjoy yard work! Call me crazy if you want but I think it's fun!
At church last Sunday we had our first day of Sunday school and we planted grass seed because most of it got killed last summer when it didn't rain at all. My godmother is teaching our class this year she is also our Presvytera (the priests wife) and she taught for many years so it is very fun but we also learn a lot.
I read a really good book this week, I really enjoyed it! It was ketchup week so I had time to read, I haven't read a fun book since school started now I need to find one to read for mustard week.
At this point you might be very confused about what I mean by ketchup and mustard week, so I will explain! In stead of doing quarters at our house we have school split up into 6 sections with each section having 7 weeks. The first 5 weeks we have school normally, the 6th week we have a catch up week, and the 7th is a vacation week. One of my silly friends thought that we were talking about ketchup like you eat with burgers so she asked if the next week was mustard week and I loved it and started calling it that and it stuck hence ketchup and mustard week!

Glory to God for all things!
Cecilia!