Friday, November 26, 2010

This morning:

Meredith: Holy cow, you look really cute today, Jenna!

Me: Well, thanks, Meredith.

Meredith: I mean, that headband is actually Rebecca's, but it looks really cute on you, too!!

Me: It's a headband. It looks good on everyone.


I have conversations like this with Meredith all the time.
She'll compliment XYZ, and then tell me very bluntly that she has a problem with ABC.
Then I say "That's nice, Meredith...but I don't have a problem with ABC."
Then she says "Oh yeah, I mean, I like ABC. ABC looks really nice."

Oh, Meredith.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

thanksgiving


For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies,
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise

For the beauty of each hour,
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and dale and tree and flower,
Sun and moon, and stars of light,
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise

botanical gardens

On the way to the symphony....

(I know. This has nothing to do with the Gardens, but sometimes I feel compelled to share with you embarrassing pictures of myself.)

After a morning at the symphony (Saint-Saen's delightful Carnival of the Animals) and a quick picnic lunch, we (caravan of homeschooling families) headed to the Missouri Botanical Gardens..Kudos to Becca for the fantastic pictures!! We may have a future photographer on our hands...


the temperate house.. my favorite.









Inside the rainforest dome.
Those orange things are not Seuss plants. Sorry to disappoint you.


temperate house


Those yellow things are not Seuss plants either. I know. I was disappointed, too.


Cuties!!












Tuesday, November 23, 2010

puppy time

Matthew and Schroeder


Sally


Meredith and Lucy


Matthew and Linus..
A note on Linus...
He 1) is fat, 2) looks like a teddy bear, and 3) is calm and loves to snuggle.
If you want/need Linus or any of his siblings, contact us and you can come over and play with them for a while.
Warning: if you're going to come visit us in the next couple weeks, bring a pet carrier. We might send a puppy home with you as a party favor.
I'm on a blogging kick right now. Can you tell?

a trip to the symphony

A few weeks ago, we (and several other homeschooling families) headed to St. Louis to hear Appalachian Spring performed by the St. Louis Symphony.




Rebecca and Anna Nisbett

We look a bit unnatural....the light was really bad, so I edited it quite a bit so you could see Rebecca and Shaylynn's beautiful faces and...well, my face, too.

mustache party




Rebecca requested a Bad Guy 'stache. Meredith addded the green nose herself.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Babes in Toyland

Yesterday, we finished the run of "Babes in Toyland." Photos courtesy of Becca.

Hunter and Eliza, toy soliders, and Delainey, Floppo the dog


Rebecca and Tina

the boys...


Rebecca and Madison



Olivia, Spencer, and Becca



Becca and Jorin


A fantastic picture of me and Brooklyn....Doing pin curls.


The infamous oreo game


Becca and Jorin


Jorin, Becca and Jantzen. It was white shirt day.


Becca and Benjamin. I think this was one of the days that Benjamin felt rotten :(


Clarissa and Jorin

1st Annual November First Pumpkin Smashing

November 1, 2010, the Light sisters started a tradition.

Pumpkin smashing.






Meredith was helpful. She held a shovel, in case we needed it.

Beastly Rebecca.

Meredith watches..




Clarissa swung too hard and at a weird angle and hit her foot. Hahaha.

party

My sisters and I are going to have a party for lunch today.

One of my many philosophies: "Make everything into a party."

It just makes life more fun. You can have toothbrushing parties, floor mopping parties, swimming parties, tieing shoe parties.....endless posibilities.

For lunch, we are going to have a Waffle and Movie party. This means that we are going to make waffles and watch a movie.

This is an exclusive Light sisters party. Sorry ;)

my sister: human or extraterrestrial?

When my darling blond sister, Meredith was learning to write letters, she would often write us "notes" composed of 10-15 random letters. I assumed this is normal 3-4 year old behavior, but then....

...things got a little weird...

Meredith started writing the same strange word, over and over...

"HOMECLARTL."

She wrote this word in coloring books, in the notes she gave us, on her Bible class papers...everywhere.

When asked where she, a four year old that was just learning letters outside her own name, learned the word "homeclartl", she would just smile and say that she didn't know.

I then assumed that Meredith was not human, but an extraterrestrial that had some strange message to pass on to us. "Homeclartl" was just the first stages of this communication.

Then it became a joke. Meredith would write the word on purpose, to get a laugh. Clarissa and Rebecca joined her, and I would find little pieces of paper with HOMECLARTL scrawled on them placed strategically in my room.

We are now certain that Meredith is actually a little human girl. I think the majority of my family has forgotten about the HOMECLARTL affair.

What brought this HOMECLARTL topic up?

I found a piece of paper with "homeclartl" scribbled on it buried in my sock drawer today.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

John Deere: American Farmer

Recently, my mother bought the computer game "John Deere: American Farmer" at a thrift store, thinking that Matthew would enjoy it.

He likes it.

He doesn't actually plow his fields at the correct time, and I don't think he's ever planted anything, but he enjoys it.

His sisters enjoy it as well.

Me, especially.

There's a little adrenaline rush I get when I click "Harvest field" and the little farm worker avatar drives the combine to my 153 acre corn field and harvests the corn for me. Then I "Transfer grain" and the combine drives over to the silo and deposits the grain. And then, then!! I can sell the grain. And make money.

Then I can use my income to pay for seed and crop dusting.

You can also have beef cattle, dairy cattle and animals of the pigish type.

I love it.

Let me tell you about the workers.

In this game, you are the head honcho. You get to pick a farmer avatar that looks like you (only mine is blond.....??) and you can change it's name to yours (only...my name is "Holly").

You never leave. You are always on the farm...because it's your farm. There are no vacations.

Then you have the farm workers. At the beginning of the game, you get a family member. I used to like to think of it as my spouse. I would pick the most handsome farm worker avatar and name him "Leonardo DiCaprio" or "James McAvoy" or "Dally"...meaning Dallas from "The Outsiders."

Real mature...I know, I know.

I then figured out...after a while, this second family member gets sick of working on your farm...and LEAVES.

Then I was so emotionally scarred from having all of my husbands leave me, I started just picking "Hank" or "Christopher" or "Ed" to be my other family member. My brother, maybe.

You can also gain family members (after your initial one LEAVES YOU) because your cousin Jeff lost his job and needs a place to stay. So, naturally, you let him come work on your farm. Then, eventually, Jeff gets tired of working and LEAVES. But, before you know it, your sister Janice lost her husband and needs a place to live....and bingo, you have another worker.

You can also hire employees.

Warning: all caps being used for emphasis.

HIRING EMPLOYEES IS MY FAVORITE THING...BECAUSE THEY CAN'T LEAVE YOU WHEN THEY GET TIRED OF WORKING!!! THEY CAN ONLY COMPLAIN!!! HA!

I'm such a loving farm boss.

I'm not very patient when it comes to this game. John just finished harvesting the vegetables? Great!! Now go plant the sunflowers! This goes on, and on, and on, and my farm workers never have a chance to rest.

THERE'S NO RESTING ON MY FARM!!

THERE IS ONLY PLOWING!!

AND PLANTING!!

AND MILKING!!

AND MONEY-MAKING!!

Then my farm workers complain.

The divas.. Who do they think they are?? I AM THE BOSS!!

So I'll click on Ed and tell him to clean the barn...and he'll say "whatever, dude..."

And then I tell Janice to sell the flowers..and she'll groan and say "work never ends, does it?

I am a terrible farm boss.

I can't keep family members. They leave.

I can only keep employees. They complain.

I have so much fun.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

giving in..

I was tagged in one of those "30 rAnDoM fAcTs!!!!" notes on facebook.

I'm posting it here, because
1) less people will see it here than they would on facebook.

I'm only going to do 15.

Because I'm a boring person.

How annoying.


1. My mother is one of my best friends.
2. I don't really like babysitting other people's kids.
3. I used to have a petsitting business and made quite a bit of money taking care of this dog named Zerina. I used the money to buy a purple CD player. I was probably 8 or 9.

4. I love to take walks. I hope that when I get married, my husband and I will go on walks together.


5. I don't like chocolate ice cream...and I'm not a picky person. I just don't like it.

6. When I was little, I wanted to be a violinist or an ice skater.

7. I'm very critical of pretty much everything. Including myself.
8. I hate talking on the phone.




9. I like the name James.


10. The first time I heard the song Love Potion No. 9, it freaked me out.
11. I really don't like video games.



12. I listen to very little popular music. I've never heard a Justin Bieber song. I know who the little fellow is, of course...I've just never heard his music.
13. I'm trying to learn to sew..I just don't like following patterns.
14. I am embarrassed when people I know come to see "Babes in Toyland."
15. I can do the splits.





The last one is a joke.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

goings-on at choir

MRS. WADE: He [Sandquist] already told us that, didn't he??

JENNA: Yeah...I have it written in already.

MRS. WADE: Some people just don't listen. We should shoot them.

-----

SANDQUIST: It's all about contrast...

MRS. WADE (aside, to JENNA): And here I was, thinking it was all about singing the right notes...

JENNA: Well, you were wrong.

Friday, November 5, 2010

two entertaining stories

Well, I think they're entertaining. You may be bored to tears...

Story number one:
The other day, I was walking out to get the mail. Meredith was walking with me, talking in a really fake Southern accent. The grass was unusually prickly and hurt my feet. It was just weird.

Fine. That's not really a story. Whatever.

Story number two:
I promise. This really is a story.

The Pioneer Woman was having a giveaway on her blog. Four winners and their guests are going to be flown out to her ranch in Oklahoma for a weekend of baking and fun. The winners were announced this morning, and, to my delight, one of the winners is "Jenna, #16182." I, of course, didn't pay attention to my entry number, so I spent about 15 minutes going through 163 (approximately) pages of entries to see if #16182 was me, or some other Jenna.

It was another Jenna.

Lucky duck,

I was a little disappointed.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

I have this strange fascination with mausoleums.

Is that morbid and peculiar?

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

a small list of unimportant and irrelevant things that I feel compelled to tell you

1. I am playing a moth in Babes in Toyland at OAT. I am also playing a toy soldier. I get to wear pants on stage for the first time ever. Wait...I wore pants in Joseph. Eh....that doesn't count....

2. The puppies are growing up so quickly!! You know you need one.....

3. I like digging around in my mom's old jewelry and confiscating stuff that she never wears. Like this ring I'm wearing. She got it at a thrift shop and a stone was missing, so she had a white sapphire put in. It's totally worthless, except for the one sapphire, and even that is so small it's not worth much. I like it.

4. My best friend's sister is getting married this weekend!!! I'm asking the Babes director, Ed, for the night off..because I really want to go, because I really love weddings!! :)

5. I need to go make dinner.