Christmas and Writing

There's just a little over half an hour left of this Christmas!  I filmed a video earlier that will be up tomorrow that talked a bit about how this Christmas went.  Basically, we woke up extremely early with just a few hours sleep to open some awesome presents, and then over half of the house, including me, went straight back to bed.  It was a great Christmas, but even after waking up for the second time I was extremely tired.  I spent half the day half asleep.

I got some great presents!  I've only been able to use a few so far.  My new Ravenclaw iPhone case got put on my phone immediately, and I've already written in my new Harry Potter planner that's extremely similar to the one I've been using this year.  We also watched Up in the Air, which I got on DVD.  I also got The Princess and the Frog and the Beauty and the Beast DVDs.  If you know of my obsession with Beauty and the Beast, then you'll know I'm extremely happy with that gift.  I also got several other DVDs and some books among various other things.

By far the most exciting part of my Christmas was finishing the first draft of my currently untitled story that I've been working on for months.  I've posted teasers of it over on my writing blog.  It'll be a while before that's posted anywhere though.  I'm going to forget about it for a while and work on some Hunger Games fanfiction.  Then, when that's done, I'll get the story out again and edit the first draft.  I'm so excited to have it finished!  Plus, I've had so many ideas for these Hunger Games one-shots that I'm going to be writing.  I can't wait to get started!

We Have Less Than an Hour!

I wanted to write a post about my Christmas Eve, but this is going to have to be quick.  I've had a very busy day, and it's not quite finished yet.

This afternoon we headed over to my Uncle Chris and Aunt Vicky's house.  It wasn't a large get together.  My mom's the youngest of ten kids, so her side of the family is quite large.  There's only one time of year that the whole (or most at least) family gets together: 4th of July up at my uncle's lake.  I think this is because we can't all fit in a house, so we can only get together when it's warm and we can stay outdoors.  Only a small portion of my mom's family was there today.  More might have come later, but we had to leave early.  Still, it was nice getting to see the family members that were there.  My cousin Cassie's baby Valory is now four months old and absolutely adorable.  I wish you guys could see her.  I spent most of my time either holding her or smiling at her while someone else held her.  She is so cute.  My cousin Heather's daughter Rebekah was also there.  She's probably about four right now, and she's also adorable.  She's really shy, and yet she's also quite loud at times.  That's not that surprising when it comes to our family...

After that we came back home for an hour or so before leaving again.  We decided to open the presents that my sister Regina had gotten us.  I already knew what she had gotten me, but it's nice to finally have it.  She got me a new purse.  It's purple, my favorite color, and large enough for me to carry several books in.  My sister knows me well.  My family also opened my present for them.  I got the whole family a print of a brussel griffon that looks like one of our dogs, and it says, "Surprisingly, I don't enjoy being compared to science fiction characters."  It's so fitting because we're always saying Poppy looks like either an ewok or a gremlin.

Before long we were off to my Aunt Linda and Uncle Ken's for Christmas with my dad's side of the family.  Unlike the gathering of part of my mom's side, all of my dad's side was there except for one aunt, one uncle, and three cousins, who all live in Georgia.  (Of course, my dad's side is also much smaller.  He only has three siblings.)  We ate, talked, and played around for a while.  Then, we did a Christmas prayer for my papaw who passed away on Christmas Eve three years ago.  After that it was time to open presents.  My grandma, aunts, and uncles all played Dirty Santa first.  My mom got a Charlie Brown Christmas tree that I put together as soon as we got home.  It looks pretty cool.  After that my cousins and I got to open our presents from Secret Santa.  My cousin Ben (or, in actuality, my Aunt Linda) got me a book about college and some money.  Then, we all opened presents from our grandma.  She got me Condoleezza Rice's memoir.  My family knows me so well.  None of these were things I asked for, but I will definitely enjoy them.  Both of the books look so interesting.  I'm excited to read them.

After presents we sat around and talked a little longer before heading home.  I took a really quick shower before getting on the computer really quickly to write this.  It's just after eleven, and we have to be at church in half an hour.  My sister is playing the drums in our church's youth band tonight before mass, so we have to get there early.  I've actually never been to midnight mass before.  We usually go to Christmas Vigil mass at four.  I hope I'll be able to stay awake.  The shower helped me wake up a bit, but I'm absolutely worn out.  I'm probably only going to be getting a few hours of sleep in the morning before I'm woken up to go open presents.  This may be the only time of the year that that won't bother me.

Right before we left for Uncle Ken and Aunt Linda's it finally completely hit me that Christmas is tomorrow.  I'm so excited!  Even though I'm incredibly tired, I've been hyper since then.  I can't wait!  I'm also excited for mass in an hour!  It's my fourth favorite mass of the year!  (After Easter, Good Friday, and Holy Thursday.  Is it okay to have a ranking of favorite masses?)

I hope you all are having a great Christmas Eve or a great Christmas.  I can't believe it's already Christmas for most of the world as I write this!  Let's see, it's just after five in the morning in Britain, so they're probably all up or getting up soon.  Exciting!  I could ramble about Christmas forever, but I really need to go finish getting ready for mass.  Again, merry Christmas everyone!  If you don't celebrate Christmas, then happy Hannukah, any other holiday you celebrate, or just have an awesome day!  (I really need to calm done before mass.  I'm going crazy right now...)

Two Days Before Christmas!

Tomorrow's Christmas Eve!  I'm so excited!  I think it might finally be sinking in for me that Christmas is in two days.  I think it's all because of Christmas break from school.  Being off of school in winter can only mean two things: Christmas or snow days.  There's no snow, so it must be Christmas.  (I wish it would snow for Christmas, but it's not looking like it will...)

I've done basically nothing today except reading, but I think we'll make up for that tomorrrow.  We have to go to two different aunt and uncle's houses tomorrow, and then we're going to midnight mass.  And of course we'll be waking up early (or as early as we can get our parents up) on Christmas morning!  I can't wait!

Less Homework, More Writing Time

It's so strange being on Christmas break and not having homework I need to work on.  I have one essay that I have to write for AP U.S. history.  However, it's practice for the AP exam, so we're supposed to write it in forty minutes.  I'm going to wait until after Christmas to do that.  I also have some college stuff to do, but this isn't anywhere near the amount of things I had to do before break.  I am so happy to get a break from all of that and relax for a little bit.

I got so much writing done last night and today.  It was great.  It had been months since I'd been able to sit down and get that much written without having to stop and do homework or something.  I'm getting so excited about everything because I'm close to finishing the first draft too.  I'm hoping I'll get it done by the end of the year since I have more time to write now, but if I get caught up in holiday and family stuff it probably won't happen.  Still, I can hope.

Only three more days until Christmas!

I Hate Blood More Than Ever

After tomorrow I'll be on Christmas break!  And there are only five days until Christmas!  Yay!

I had something interesting happen today...  This is a somewhat weird story though.  At the very end of AP U.S. History I scratched my nose, and it started bleeding.  At first I thought it was just a little blood, and it wouldn't be that big of a deal.  Almost right after this the bell rang, which meant I had three minutes to get to AP English.  Around this time I realized my nose was bleeding pretty badly, and I had quite a lot of blood on my hands.  (I'm terrified of blood, so this was particularly worrying for me.)  I rushed down the hall as quickly as possible (one of the many times I've hated how slow people seem to walk in school hallways and randomly stop in the middle of them).

As soon as I got to English I sat my books on my desk and hurriedly told the teacher that I needed to go to the bathroom.  I'm sure everyone noticed, but no one said anything.  I'm so embarassed by it though.  I passed Ji in the hallway on my way to the bathroom, and she noticed and tried to ask what happened, but I rushed by her.  I spent almost half of English class in the bathroom trying to stop the blood.  It sucked.  When I finally got back to class I felt like everyone was staring (not helped by the fact the door was locked and the teacher had to come open it for me), and my teacher asked if I was all right.  My face was probably bright red.  That's an experience I never want to go through again.

As for the rest of my day it was pretty average.  I had two finals today in computer applications and economics.  (I guess it's a good thing I didn't have one in AP English.)  Tomorrow I have one in AP U.S. history.  I'm lucky that I don't have one in AP English or yearbook.  I technically don't in peer tutoring either, but I have to be evaluated, and I'm a bit worried since that's most of my grade.

Hopefully tomorrow will go by quickly, and it will be Christmas break!

Thanksgiving is Over and Advent Begins

I didn't even realize that it had been a few days since I posted.  I was either doing absolutely nothing, or I wasn't home all day.  Yesterday, we left to go to my grandma's in the morning and didn't get home until about eight or so in the evening.  We were there to celebrate Thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family, and it was a whole lot of fun.

Aside from just talking and things, we also played board games.  My sister Regina, Aunt Kate, and I played this Hunger Games training game.  I got to play as the District 12 tribute (which isn't specified as being Katniss, but her skill is archery so...).  It was extremely confusing at first, but after we figured the game out it turned out to be a lot of fun.  Regina, our cousin Danielle, and I also played several games of Clue.  And all of us grandchildren (except my brother Matthew) played Quelf.  It was Regina's first time playing.  We had so much fun!  It's impossible to not have fun while playing Quelf.

I completely forgot that today was the first Sunday of Advent until this morning.  As far as I'm concerned that means it's officially Christmas season!  Speaking of church related things, today was also the first time we used the new translation of the mass.  That turned out interesting...  Even though we knew the responses had changed, it's hard to say something different when you've gone your whole life saying it the old way.  It'll be interesting to see how long it takes before everyone gets used to the new translation.

Tomorrow is school again.  It's always a little weird to go back to school after breaks, even if they're only five days.  The month until Christmas break seems like such a long time.