Cool dancer, huh? 

The entrance to the concentration camp where Anne Frank was taken 

This was at the concentration camp that Anne Frank went too, and all the red things you see are a memorial for each Jewish person who died in that camp. It was a ton bigger than this picture even shows, and it was heartbreaking some times because some were as low as the ground, signifying little babies who died. Somewhere in the back of the picture I'm wearing a green sweater. Eowyn is the other person. 

Chels and I. I look really bad in the picture, but oh well. 

Amsterdam, one of the big cities, and big buildings! 

Absolute bliss . . .

The happiness of blogging once again. You don't know how nice it was to go on the blogger website again and fill out my username and password . . . back to blogging! I was banned for a little while *sheepish grin* and it's funny how much I missed blogging! You don't really realize how much you're addicted and love blogging until you can't do it fora whole week! But enough remembering my unhappy days of not blogging . . .

Today's my Mom's birthday! 37th birthday, to be exact. We spent most of the day cleaning, sadly. Eowyn and her family are coming for the weekend, so we thought we'd clean the house. Joy of joys. Or not. At least I got my room clean it isn't funny.

All my practicing music wise is going great, thankfully. I'm a bit nervous for my Gr.9 exam though. I have my List A basically memorized. My fugue rocks. *vain me coming through* List B is awesome, except for the development of the song, which I need to work on. It has this really difficult, running passage in the left hand, and organ like melody on the top, all the notes sluring together. It's the best part of the whole song, but of course the hardest. My lIst B is a Haydn, btw. List C, I play it really nice, and I know it and all, but I have to memorize it yet. It's a Mendelssohn Song Without Words, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I've said that before too, but I can't say it enough. It's makes me cry, seriously.
My List D (which I supplemented for a Gr.10 List E0 is going pretty well too. I just have to finish memorizing it.
And I won't talk about my technique. It's going OK, but you know. I wish I could learn to love it somehow.

Oh, I found this totally awesome website, www.sheetmusicarchive.com, and what you can do on the website is download andprint of your computer piano works. It's all Peter's edition, and other really good editions, and it prints of really nice. It doesn't even have the website on the bottom of all the sheets. It looks like normal music. It's all piano music, but you can also print of, and I'm not kidding, Beethoven's symphonies. There's every composer you could imagine, well, almost. And yeah, it's really cool! You can only download and print of two per day though. But it was an amazing find. It must be legal then. I've heard there's this rule that any nusic before 1950 can be photocopied. But you never know. That whole mess of a fight drives you crazy.

Anyways, I'd better run along.
Hope you all have an amazing weekend, with fun sleepovers *looks at Summer, Cho and Shimmer* and that you guys will miss me badly. I'm so sad and sorry and miserable that I can't be there!

CHORAL CONNECTION CONCERT IS TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so happy and hyper! Seriously, it is going to be sooooo fun! Summer, Shimmer, Kaffeine, Alena, Cho, Singhey , Aria, and Lara are all going to be there! At first we thought Summer, Shimmer, Alena, and Kaffeine can't, but now they can, and it's all happy! So we'll be singing (Cho, Aria, GilGalad, Feanor, and me) and all our friends will be there to hear it! It's going to be so awesome!
We're singing really awesome songs. Some make me so happy, while others make me happy to the point I feel like balling.
And afterwards we're all going to Kelsey's to party! It's going to be so awesome!
Thanks for listening to all my rantings. I just have to let some of my hyperness out!
I wish you all could be there!
I'll blog all about!
Have great weekend!

LEST WE FORGET

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow.

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark out place;

and in the sky the larks still bravely singing,

Fly scarce heard and amid the guns below.

We are the dead.

Short days ago we lived,

Felt dawn, so sunset glow,

Loved and were loved.

And now we lie in Flanders fields.

Take up our quareel with the foe:

To you from falling hands we throw the torch;

Be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep,

Though poppies grow in Flanders fields.

-John McCrae

THE POPPY...THE FLOWER OF REMEMBRANCE
Each November, millions of poppies blossom in Canada. They blossom on the jackets, dresses and hats of nearly half the Canadian population and they have blossomed over 80 years, since 1921. The poppy is the symbol that individuals use to show that they remember those who were killed in the wars and peace keeping operations that Canada has been involved in.
The association of the poppy to those who had been killed in war had existed for at least 110 years prior to being adopted in Canada. There are records of a correspondent who, during the Napoleonic War, wrote of how thickly poppies grew over the graves of soldiers in the area of Flanders, France.
The person, who more than any other, that was responsible for the adoption of the poppy in Canada was a Canadian Medical Officer during the First World War. This person was Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of Guelph, Ontario.
John McCrae was a tall, boyish 43-year-old member of the Canadian Medical Corps. He was an artillery veteran of the Boer War in South Africa and was described as a person with the eye of a gunner, the hand of a surgeon, and the soul of a poet when he went into the line at Ypres on the 22nd of April 1915.
April 22 was the first time that the enemy used poison gas but the first attack failed and so did the next wave and the next. In fact, for 17 days and nights the allies repulsed wave after wave of the attacking enemy. McCrae wrote - "One can see the dead lying there on the front field. And in places where the enemy threw in an attack, they lie very thick on the slopes of the German trenches."
Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae, worked from a dressing station on the bank of the Yser Canal, dressing hundreds of wounded and never removed his clothes for the entire 17 days. At times the dead and wounded actually rolled down the bank from above his dugout. At other times, while awaiting the arrival of batches of wounded, he would watch the men at work in the burial plots which were quickly filling up. In time, McCrae and his unit were relieved and he wrote home " We are weary in body and wearier in mind. The general impression in my mind is one of a nightmare".
Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae came away from Ypres with 13 lines scrawled on a scrap of paper. The lines were a poem which started: "In Flanders fields the poppies blow..."
These were the lines which are enshrined in the innermost thoughts and hearts of all soldiers who hear them. John McCrae was their voice. The poem circulated as a folk song, by word of mouth and all who hear it are deeply touched. In the United States for example, the poem inspired the American Legion to also adopt the poppy as the symbol of Remembrance.
In Canada, the poppy was officially adopted by the Great War Veterans Association in 1921 on the suggestion of a Mrs. E. Guerin, a French citizen. But there is little doubt that the impact of John McCrae's poem influenced this decision.
The poem speaks of Flanders fields, but the subject is universal - the fear of the dead that they will be forgotten, that their death will have been in vain. Remembrance, as symbolized by the poppy, is our eternal answer which belies that fear.
Sadly, Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae died of pneumonia at Wimereux near Boulogne, France on the 28th of January 1918 when he was 44 years old.

HAPPY BELATED *sheepish grin* BIRTHDAY SHIMMER!

We all love you tons, and may God bless you in the years to come!

CHOIR!!!!

Wow, it's so awesome! We are singing the most amazing songs ever. I wish you could all come, far and wide, to our concert! It's a week away, but just making me think about it makes me all hyper and excited.
There will be a lot of you there, and that will be so cool!
Some of the songs we're doing I just get so hyped up about and the others make me cry. Good times.
School, school, music, and music. Story of my life.
Other than that, have a nice day!

Elections elections . . .

Here's something we got on an email before the election started. I wanted to post it anyways, so I'll still do it.

We have early voting in Tennessee, and I voted last weekto re-elect President Bush. Perhaps the four reasonsI did so will help you as you go to the polls tomorrow.
Reason #1: Where we came from.When George W. Bush took the reigns from Bill Clinton, thecountry had suffered moral decay, escalating terrorist attacks, and an economy sliding into recession.Even though I didn't agree with all of Mr. Bush's programs,there is no question that he has been creative and bold in addressing pressing problems that were ignored during previousadministrations.
Reason #2: The war on terror.OBL is now reduced to (1) begging the U.S. to stop attacking and (2) making absurd threats that he has no ability to carry out. Al-Quaeda is like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off. It's still running around, and dangerous, but its demiseseems to be assured. This was unthinkable just four years ago. NO ONE believed, in the days following Sept. 11 that we could go three years without ANY attacks on U.S. interests inside America. How has this happened? Because more than 3,000 al-Quaeda terrorists havebeen arrested or killed, and its command and control networkhas been decimated. And though you haven't seen this on the news (two out of threestories on Bush have been negative, according to an article inEditor and Publisher last week), Walid Phares of the Foundationfor the Defense of Democracies said that the documents recentlyobtained from Iraq "establish irreversible evidence that therewere strategic relations between the Baathist regime andIslamist groups that became al-Quaeda."There's no longer an unstable tyrant in Iraq who possesses440,000 tons of weapons with the intent to do America harm.Yet when asked whether invading Iraq was the right thing to do,John Kerry's response last week was--and I am not making this up--"it depends on the outcome."This is not only deceitful, it is childish--the mushy thinkingof a person paralyzed by difficult decisions.
Reason #3: The economy.John Kerry has done his best to talk the U.S. economy down, butstatistics tell the whole story. The misery index (inflation plusunemployment) is the lowest it has ever been for a re-electioncampaign since LBJ. The unemployment rate is 5.4%, which is significantly smaller than any of the European countries whose approval John Kerry so desperately craves.Interest rates are low, the growth rate of 5.1% is astoundinggiven the Clinton recession and the devastating attacks ourcountry has experienced. Home ownership is up, taxes are down,and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board reports that financialwealth is way up for average middle-income families.Sept. 11th should have caused a depression, but Bush's boldtax cuts (which Nobel Prize Winning Economist Edward Prescottsaid were actually too small) stopped the bleeding and setAmerica on a path back to prosperity.
Reason #4: The Supreme Court.The Chicago Tribune reported that John Kerry told a post-debate rally, "I'll tell you, if you needed just three wordsof motivation, you want 'em? The--Supreme--Court." Kerryunderstands exactly what is at stake. If elected, Kerry'snominees could shore up support for legalized abortion fordecades to come and bring gay marriage within a year and a half.Bush has committed to appoint strict constructionists whowill interpret the constitution according to the founders'intent. There will probably be between one and threeSupreme Court appointments in the next four years.How will you vote Tuesday?Many people are predicting that Bush will win re-election,but Edmund Burke said, "Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security." You may have to stand in line for hours tomorrow, but you'll bemaking a decision of great historic importance.Christians, through their inaction, put Bill Clinton in theWhite House and almost let Al Gore in. When the results are reported tomorrow night, don't be among those who wished they would have acted to make a difference.Now is a time for courage and decisiveness.

I thought that was kinda interesting. At least Bush is winning at this point anyways. Really this election is between Christians and non Christians. I just keep thinking what's going to happen to Canada if Bush doesn't win. It's so weird how I'm so into the US election. I mean, I live in Canada! But this election means a lot to Canada too.
And we might not know for 10 whole days! I hope it goes quickly!
Sorry if the above thing doesn't have all the spaces and stuff. I copied and pasted it, so yeah.
I hope to blog again soon!
Thank you all for commenting so faithfully too! You're all so awesome!
Oh, and could you guys let me know for sure of you're coming to our concert on November 13th or not? Thanks! No pressure . . . lol ^_^
Have a great week!

*starts humming Happy Birthday song . . . hum hum hum*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EOWYN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My lovely cousin. She's 13 today, the big teenager now! lol
So you should all go to her blog and wish her a very merry and happy, happy Birthday!
Cheers!
*walks away humming . . . . *