Snow!

Today it snowed-- actually, a lot! But the rain kept coming back and forth so it was like, snow, rain, snow, rain, so it's not here now.

We played with Reba a lot today because we let her inside for almost the whole day! She cuddled up inside her bed for a while and slept by the heater for most of the day.

Last night was so fun!!!
We went on a night run!
There had been some organized before, but we never went to any. (REGRET!) We all had headlamps and got into some warm clothes-- gloves, hats, tights, NEW warm running shirt!, jacket-- and I was very cozy. But running with a headlamp is hard! I felt kinda like stopping myself all the time because it was hard to tell what was in front of you a little bit, plus we ran up Chuckanut, and all the little stumps and roots were a little scary-- and especially the trail posts felt like they were jumping out at us! Hannah and I actually went the farthest we had going the way that we did, but it was really fun because we were at an awesome pace, I was warm, we actually went kind of fast!, and we were all in a group- we didn't break off into small ones. We ran for an hour. It was awesome.

Okay, it was at 6:00, but it was dark!

Today we made our Stoichiometry [STOY-KEY-OM-EH-TREE] video for Chemistry. I'd explain it here, but I don't want to go into all that detail. ;)

We also practiced our violins. We have a duet for Solo and Ensemble and it's sounding....eh....well, we're practicing.

Well there you have it!  A little update on our lives.
-hANDs

So long, we're so sorry!

We're really sorry it's been so long since we have updated the blog! but boy, does it feel nice to have time. Winter break just started and a break from a ton of school work is nice, though we do have homework. Speaking of, it's been about a year since we've started this blog!

Happy birthday to our blog! ♪♫

This weekend we went to our aunt and uncle's to see most of our family from Canada. It was fun, and the food was good. :) We spent the night at a nearby hotel and just got back.

Well, a lot has been going on lately.... INCLUDING THE HOBBIT!

Bilbo! "I'm going on an adventure!" Seems like the Took-ish part of him has prompted an unexpected journey.

It was a bit different than the book, but you have to expect that from a 3-movie series that is from  A TINY BOOK. That part made me kinda mad, and I didn't love some of the stuff that they added, but it was good anyway! And Riddles in the Dark was AMAZING. Probably the best part in the movie (and the book, in my opinion!) Oh, Gollum. And the music was good-- they had some parts of Lord of the Rings music but added some more themes. They did a great job. There was a lot of fighting scenes, though. Kind of different than the book-- we were talking that if Tolkien directed the movies there would be way more story-telling and journey-walking. Boring for a movie, but kind of his style. 

Another one of my favorite parts was the beginning. They had Frodo!! They started out on the day, "A long-expected Party" AWW ITS SO CUTE. I COULDN'T STOP SMILING. First it's the old LOTR Bilbo and then Frodo steps into the room, smiling at him. I WAS SO HAPPY. (It's like, "Wait, Frodo's happy? That's awesome!" :D Yay!)

The only weird part was that they had a lot of attention on Balin (which I was fine with) and Kili (which got annoying because he wasn't that important in the book. And I like Fili better anyway. And he doesn't really even look like a dwarf.)

With some of the moments-that-had-to-be-added-to-make-it-into-a-two-hour-fourty-five-minute-movie, I got a little frustrated--- were those moments mostly made up? or should I have read the Silmarillion or something to learn what was really going on "behind-the-scenes" of the focus on Bilbo, (and/or Thorin & Co.) like with Gandalf or whathaveyou.

Anyway, it was a superb movie and I am so excited for the other two movies!!!!!
YAY I LOVE LORD OF THE RINGS.
(meaning anything Tolkien related, including the Hobbit. :) )

Well, hopefully we'll get back on here before too long!
We're listening to Christmas music now. Yay Christmas. :)
-hANDs
(written by Sarah) ;)

Funny Dream and our happy October.

I had a HILARIOUS dream last night. Well, right now we are playing these American songs for orchestra, and we are also in Quartets. In my dream, Hannah's quartet played, even though it was really only a duet: Hannah as a 2nd violin, and this random girl as the 1st and a random boy as a cellist. The boy never played. Anyway, they started playing "America the Beautiful" and I was like, "Wow! My quartet sounds nothing like THAT! That's amazing!" Hannah had this awesome harmony, and then she and the 1st violin girl started singing the song!!! It was really choral sounding, and Hannah sang a lower part and the girl sang the higher part. I remember looking up at Mrs. Doud, our conductor, who started crying because it was so beautiful sounding. It was all rather comical once I woke up.

Fun times.

Well, last night was the Homecoming football game! Not only that, but it was the assembly too, and we were in the dance! It was really fun. The first song we were in was called Bangarang, and we all wore black hoodies and waved our hands in circles as we ran around the middle basketball line thing, and then we went on the ground and one boy did crazy handstand-ness. Then we all ran off and the next song, Love Shack, started playing. We weren't in that one, so we quickly changed into our outfits (white shirt + black shorts) for Gangnam style. That actually went better than I thought, because usually we had trouble remembering the moves, but everything went pretty well! Our final song was "Twist and Shout" and we re-did the scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off at the parade. We had one guy who looks sort of like him be Ferris Bueller (His outfit was perfect!!) and we all danced around him with American flags, and some people had instruments (like Lydia with her accordian!) and we were all jammin. It was cool.

The football game went well! We didn't win, but it was pretty close until the 4th quarter when Squalicum got a touchdown. (Wow, that's the most I've ever talked about football like that. Weird.) It was fun, but it started to get windy and rainy-misty.

...Which leads us to today. We had an easy workout of 4x800s tempo, which is slow for that distance--a tempo is a pace you could hold for 50 minutes continuously. Still, it didn't help that the rain and wind came. Finally, too-- we haven't had ONE SINGLE PRACTICE IN THE RAIN. Until today, that is. And our season's almost over!

We're pressing apples right now. Well, not RIGHT now, Hannah's making mac and cheese and here I am on the computer, but we did before and we're just taking a break.

Later, world.

It's.... been a while...

Wow! I certainly haven't written anything much on the blog lately!

I went to orthodontist today and skipped XC and found out ON NOVEMBER 28 I GET MY BRACES OFF!  Yayayay!! :D

We have an orchestra concert tonight, at BHS with all the other high schools in The Ham, so I better go back to my homework so I can finish that up. :|

Also, the weather is starting to really feel fall-ish. :) I like it.

Portland!

Our meet at Portland went well!

I didn't have as much fun on the course as last year because this place was different and it was hotter and just a sort of weird course. But we both PR'd for the season for a 5K and had a great time with our teammates!

Race.... complete!

I (Sarah) came in 60th and Hannah came in 66th.... out of 269 runners in our race alone! Total there were about 3600 racers that day, including citizens and middle schoolers.

We had to jump over hay bales 8/ !!!! because it was "too flat" to be a cross country course so they had to add to it. CRAZY!! They also built these "woop-de-doos", just small fast hills, one after another. It was on the middle part of a horse track! It was REALLY hot the first day when we previewed the course, and it was quite a bit cooler the day of the race.... but still hot!!

It was a great time!
-hANDs

Past week or so...

Hi! It's been a while....

We've had a lot of homework lately.... :P But a lot of the time we do things before they are due, so things get out of the way quickly and it's not as hard to fall behind. :)

We had a fun fun cross country meet on Saturday! It was in South Whidbey and it was our first 5K of the year! My time was 23:48:10 and 42nd place out of 145 and Sarah's was 23:41:64 and 36th place! We both felt that it was a good race and we were really happy! It was suuuuuper hot out, though, but we were happy that our race was first, at 10:35.

The course was really good, it was nice and spread out. We did a lap around a field and then went out into the woods and there was this BIG hill. Sarah was awesome going up there! She was so fast! It was great. :)
You did a little lap in the woods, too, and then you went across a baseball field... this was probably the worst part in my opinion. It was really mushy and you lost a lot of your momentum in the dew-y grass. Then you were back on the field and had about 1000 meters to go. Then you got on the track and you finished it off. :) Our coach, Kevin, said that me and another girl, Shauna, did really well, "AWE-some race!! Keep it up!" :D and then at the end, he was yelling at me to pass some girl in front of me, and I did and it was really fun. :)

Well, then on Sunday, it was our dad's birthday! We had celebrated it a few days early because our mom left for Malibu and wouldn't be here on the actual day. But anyway, we gave him a cider-press and so that Sunday we made.... APPLE CIDER! or apple juice. It's really good! A little tart, but it's good all the same! It was really fun to put it together and wind the wheel and chop up the apples and EVERYTHINGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!! It was really fun. :)

We made about 1 and a half gallons!!! :D

Anyway, better get ready-ish for bed now. :)
G'night! :)
-hANDs

CROSS COUNTRY INVITE+ sLeEpoVEr!

Yay! Lydia came over for a sleepover after Sarah and I had a XC meet on Saturday!

The course for the meet was really hard... this year and last year. :P We went around Civic twice and the entire length was only 2 miles, but still, it was pretty hard. And there were around 1000 total runners there from 30-ish schools!

Sarah and I were running together for about the first mile, but then a hundred meters in or so, I wasn't able to take in full breaths! I got really tired, and a ton of people passed me, and I made these terrible noises while I ran that I just couldn't stop making. It was not fun.

But then, right at the end, I was on the home stretch, still pluggin' along, when all of a sudden, I realize there's a girl right behind me! I told myself to make sure that she didn't pass me, but she was soon right next to me!!!! I then put on my really mean running face and whooooooosh.... I pulled ahead. :)

"It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit."

Even though the run was hard and I didn't do as well as I wanted, it was still fun to be there, and Sehome Girl's got 2nd place! Boys got 1st, and combined, Sehome won the whole invite! :D Yay!

At dinner-ish time, Lydia came over and we made these awesome tie-dye shirts! We all weren't sure how they were going to turn out, since we were going to try doing them in a spiral, but it worked out really well and they all look SO COOL!

Top: Lydia, Hannah Bottom, Sarah

 Lydia came to church with us and then we went to Harris Avenue Cafe and ate lunch. :) It was good!
The first weekend of the school year was a good one. :)
-hANDs

School, school!

And so, 10th grade has begun!

It's a significant amount of homework (for the first week!) but I'm sure we'll adjust and find time to do all of it. AP World History will by far provide the majority of our homework... but I think that as long as time is managed, we can be on top of it.
Our Classes:
-Algebra 2 (which we have together!)
-Honors Chemistry
-French 2
-Advanced Orchestra
-AP World History
-English

 For me, all my classes are good! We got some new orchestra songs today. Hard. :-/ But I know that all songs end up easy eventually... just takes practice. English is a little hard to stay focused... my teacher talks for a while, so my mind will wander.... Oh well. :)

We made a REALLY great video called "A hobbit, a princess, a tribute"-- obviously about Lord of the Rings, Beauty and the Beast, and Hunger Games. IT'S AWESOME. It was so much fun to dress up as Gaston for B&theB! and my Katniss outfit for Hunger Games is so REAL. Hannah did a great Peeta and Gale, too. heehee.

Well, g'night.
-hANDs

Fare thee well, Summer.

Well, only one more day of summer left.
Was it quick? Was it slow? That's a little hard to tell right now... I mean, the summer felt long, and I know that's weird, but it feels like the stuff we did three days ago was three weeks ago. And the things that we did felt fast while we were doing them.
It has been a great summer. We've done so many things!
-Kalaloch
-Malibu
-Camano Island
-Vashon Island
-XC practice and XC summer runs
-Driver's Ed
-And all the little everyday things, too.

Kalaloch

Camano Island

Malibu

Vashon Island

Happy Bubbles

See you in the Fall!

Lydia's and SCHOOL SOON! O_O

Hi! Long time no post!

Anyway, yesterday me, Sarah, and Raney went to Lydia's house because our mom and dad went to Seattle and Celeste left for Canada... 

We made caramel popcorn that night! It was really good. A little sticky, but yummy. :)

*Aaahhhhh!!!!!!!!!*

We watched the show Physic... it was about a guy who pretends he's psychic to these other detectives but he really just observes a lot of things and puts things together. It was funny. :) And who doesn't love things on instant Netfilx? ;)

The next morning, we went to Cross Country practice... we went out 15 minutes and then back because tomorrow is the TIME TRIAL AT LAKE PADDEN!! The time trial happens at the beginning of the year and we time how fast you can get around the lake, then at the end of the year, you see how much you can improve! Last year I improved by several minutes, which is huge when you’re running. :)

Later that day, we went back home and took a shower and got ready for PICTURE DAY/ SCHEDULE DAY at Sehome! :D

At Lake Padden last year

I wore a turquoise-blue shirt with my new Old Navy scarf! I liked it a lot. Here’s a picture I took of Sarah this afternoon:

Heehee! Just kidding! She wore an indigo-colored tee with her hair half-back. It was cute. :)

We both found at least one friend in most of our classes that have the same class as us. We both have Algebra 2 together! Yay!

Anyway, I think it’ll be a good year!

-hANDs

Camp Friendship!

Well, you probably know this, but most every year since 2005 we've done Camp Friendship with our best friend Anna every summer.

Each year we make a CD, too, and this was a cover from 2006.

It used to be a real sort of CAMP thing, where we had multiple themed days in the summer. It was like, every other week and we'd switch houses. Some of our favorite themes were Beach Day, Drama Day, Independence Day, Berry Day.....

Beach Day at Larrabee

Well, ever since Anna moved in 2009 to Tacoma, it was a bit harder to have Camp Friendship, whether or not it was just a couple days together or themed, like the good ol' days.

This year Anna's family rented a cabin on Vashon Island, outside of Tacoma. We stayed there for three nights and one night at Anna's house before we left for Vashon before.

HUNGER GAMES!!!!!!! We watched it 2 times!!! guys its the mutt scene *THE TENSION!!!!!*

A delish cake

GIANT. SPIDER.

Oh the donuts. Oh the donuts.

Rowin!

Kayakin!

Emi!!

Did... someone touch the lens?

we made body spray!!!

from Vashon Tea Shop

At the Hardware Store for lunch.... BY OURSELVES!

menuuuuu

face masks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a TON of fun. We took the Bham-Tacoma train together all by ourselves there because Anna was staying with her grandparents here in Bellingham and we would just go to her house in Tacoma afterwards. It went well and we had fun. We kept each other busy because before we each made each other a fun page with puzzles and activities to do.

Once we got to Tacoma, we got to her house and just relaxed. Anna's mom Susan got the Hunger Games DVD!!!!!!! We watched part of it at their house that night, and the rest at Vashon, and again the last night at Vashon. Fun fun. Anna likes Peeta, (and we like Gale) so we all take advantage to tease each other.
Peeta's great.... it's just that Gale is better!

Susan told Emilia that we were going to Vashon Island with them. "Yay!" she said, "I like Hannah and Sarah!" Aww, she's so cute. :)

Once we got there, it was SOOO cute. It was just a perfect little beach house and so cute! Awwww it was lovely.  On the deck there were these stairs that would lead right into the water when it was high tide. AWESOME!

We went kayaking and Anna went rowing and we all went to this little beach not far from our cabin. It was rocky and barnacly but fun to be on.

That night we finished the Hunger Games. AWESOME ASDGHASDJKGHASDJKGHASDJHGDJSHAJGHA;GSHDG;

The next day, we made these painted gold rocks with mod-podge over a picture. They turned out really cool!

We watched Julie & Julia. They had a lot of movies there. Anna really likes this one. :) And we ate delicious little tiny raviolli!!!We also played a game called Scribblish, which is like Telepictionary, by Cranium.


We went swimming that evening... really cold at first, but realllllllllly fun!!!!! We went far out to a crab pot they had set and came back.

The third day we spent in town. Jay, Anna's step dad, dropped us off in town around lunch time. We first went to Vashon Tea Shop, where Anna got iced tea and Hannah got passion fruit Italian soda. I got pomegranate Italian soda. :) We then marched over to The Little House, a really cute little yellow house that sold candy, and gifts. Anna got us all sea salt caramels. (YUM) and I got us all fun dip. :) heh. fun dip.

After that, we went to The Hardware Store. It's this building that used to be a hardware store but is now a restaurant! We went there on the way to the cabin before, and since that was like the only place in town where we knew to eat, we ate there again! BY OURSELVES! We all ordered a Cesar salad to share and everyone got chicken fingers! They were good, but boy, were we stuffed.

We headed back to the grocery store to buy some MORE candy.... in the bulk section!! Heehee. We got gummy butterflies, candy rocks and rock candy (heh) just to name a few!!!

When we got back, we made Lavender body sprays. We wanted to use this grapefruit essential oil, and it smelled really good, but it was too mild to make it smell in the body spray.

After that, we ate dinner and then went swimming! It was SUPER SUPER DUPER cold this time and so we basically didn't really swim but we used pool floats we found in the shed to float around the water. But there were only two, so someone had to swim. :/

This morning, Susan and Anna dropped us off at the Vashon Island ferry where we walked on all by ourselves!! Heeehee. We got to West Seattle where our mom picked us up and we drove home after going to Nordstrom for clothes and food, and a little antique shop in Mt. Vernon. Heehee.

It was a great trip. Anna's such a good friend and it was awesome to see her again!

Tomorrow we have a run because XC has officially started! (woo! + *sigh*...)

It's been a good summer, and I'm ready (I think) for school, but I'm kind of sad to let it go.
-hANDs

The fair! (Sarah's post)

We went to the fair on Tuesday!
We didn't go on any rides... if I HAD wanted to go, then I'd probably go on Windglider! I love that one!

Us and Anna, 2009 :)

 So, we ate lunch and saw lots of quilts and animals like the cows and pigs and KITTENS! Just week old ones!!! :D And of course, we went to our favorite section, the flowers. Always some great photo ops!