I can't believe that the last time I blogged was right after Thanksgiving, and it is already Christmas! Time sure does fly when you're having fun (or not having fun...). There is so much to tell. For one, currently, I am on vacation at my grandparent's house near Kansas City, Missouri. But more on that later. A few weeks ago, in preparation for Christmas, we invited some family friends over to decorate our tree, per tradition. Every year, we alternate between going to their house and them coming to our house to decorate trees, and this year was no different. Instead of putting a bunch of Hallmark ornaments on our tree, as we usually do, we decided to only put up unique ornaments (read: non-Hallmark), so our tree looks a little different. We may have gone a little overboard with the ornaments, but it still looks very picturesque. I'll have to put up a picture later. The next weekend, my mom and I decided to try some new recipes and made this delicious caramel apple cake. I made the cake basically by myself, and then my mom made the icing, and later these tasty (if a bit too gooey) squash blondies (I know, that sound disgusting, but they really weren't!) by herself because I wasn't feeling too good and went to my room to lie down for awhile.
School was pretty interesting these past few weeks, as well. In my biology class, we had two quizzes in the last three days of school before break, one of which I completely bombed. Also, a ton of my teachers decided to squeeze in tests, which bogged down my Christmas spirit a bit. The last two days were pretty easy-going, though. On Monday, we tie-dyed in AP Chemistry, which was actually the first time that I did that. I thought that it wasn't going to turn out very well, but I was pleasantly surprised when we washed it after school on Tuesday. I used the colors turquoise, royal purple, and emerald green, and it turned out much better than I expected. In my English class, we watched this Japanese version of Macbeth where they were all samurai soldiers in feudal Japan. It was pretty cool, but at times it was laugh out loud funny, when it obviously wasn't supposed to be. Reading the subtitles and watching the Lady Macbeth character not blink once and shuffle as she walked were especially amusing. (Side note - when we were reading the last act of Macbeth, I got to read Lady Macbeth's line "Out damned spot! Out I say!" and it made my day :) ) In civics, we watched 12 Angry Men, which is one of my favorite movies. All in all, a pretty relaxing and pointless few weeks of school.
The last day of school was especially pointless. To accommodate the annual Christmas assembly, we did our schedule backwards, with each class being only 30 minutes long, resulting in a 1st hour that is three hours long (including lunch and the assembly). That whole day was basically an all-you-can eat day - in English, my teacher made MacCupcakes that were red like the blood and gore in Macbeth; in French, we had bouche de Noel, a traditional French Christmas dessert, as well as cookies; at lunch I had part of a cookie my friend brought in; and after school, I ate a cupcake my friend made. Needless to say, I was stuffed by the end of the day. In the last class of the day, French, we basically did nothing for 2 hours because my teacher decided she didn't want to watch the Joan of Arc biography movie we had started on Monday. Then came the assembly, which was stupid as usual. I only liked the performance by Chickappellas, a girl's acapella group at our school, and the the finale where a bunch of students sat in chairs with white socks and gloves and did this routine under a black light to Carol of the Bells. The rest, as expected, made you wonder what they were thinking when they came up with it.
Since we had opened gifts on Sunday (I got a bunch of books and paraphernalia about France, some clothes, and some movies), all we had to do on Tuesday was to pack, which I had mostly completed the previous day. The next day, as usual, we were running late - although we got up early, we didn't get out the door and driving until 8:30. Other than torrential rain around Fort Wayne, Indiana, the drive to Kansas City was uneventful. This year, my parents decided to drive through St. Louis, instead of driving through Iowa, because it was only a few minutes longer and they knew that route better, but that was the only unique thing about the trip. We arrived at my grandparent's house at about 9:30 Central Time, at which time we decided it was a good time to eat dinner and went to Hiboy's (I mean, how could you resist??) I got a plain hamburger and Reces cup Cyclone, both of which were very yummy. The next day, Kingsley woke me up at 5:45 to get out of our bedroom, which was kind of annoying. Apparently, (I was asleep), after going out to the bathroom, Kingsley ran around with my oldest uncle and Aunt "Rose's" dogs, Gus and Max. Unfortunately, though, as soon as they started getting along well, my oldest uncle's RV broke, and he had to leave, taking the dogs with him. In the afternoon, my family went to the WWI memorial and museum in Kansas City. Though we have been there before, I don't remember the museum being so extensive, or going up to the top of the memorial. We called several family members to find out where my great-grandfather's memorial brick was, but after a very through and cold search, we found exactly where everyone said it wasn't. After eating a delicious dinner of a corned beef sandwich, my family meet up with Uncle "Frank" at the Plaza in Kansas City to look at the Christmas lights and shops. We stopped at Anthropologie, but, of course, everything that I liked wasn't on sale, so I couldn't get anything. After a nice walk around the Plaza, we spent some time at Uncle "Frank's" apartment nearby, and then went home.
Lastly, yesterday, we went to the Plaza again to do some shopping. We first went to Urban Outfitters, but didn't find anything, so then we went to Gap, we we had a field day. I got this auburn shirt that was on sale, as well as some cute undergarments. After an exhausting few hours of shopping, we ate at this restaurant on the Plaza called Ingredient, which was surprisingly good. That's all I have for now - Merry Christmas!!!
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