My Birthday :)

I feel superappreciated right now.

8 people have wished me happy birthday on facebook before lunch. And 2 people have called me (one of their families- the whole family- sung me happy birthday over the phone. I love you, Babineau's!)

I have received one card, from the very kind cousin of my grandmother.

And there is a huge pink "Happy Birthday" on our chalkboard wall from my lurvely sister.

Acadia, Green Tea, and ?

This is Mary.

Like Hannah said last post, the name of this blog should be changed. To what?

And: WireTap IS amazing. Here are some quotes (though they may not be exact):

"Now, imagine that, but you're MC Hammer"

"If you had a party and invited everybody you ever knew, the biggest gift would be from me and on the tag it would say 'thank you for being a friend'"

"Why would it say that?"

"I spent so many years trying to change you, I spent so many years trying to make you smell better. Just that one issue."

"You have a master's degree in 'Everybody Love Raymond?'" (This is from the first episode of WireTap we ever heard- our introduction into this crazy world of comedic insanity.)

"You don't even know what irony is!"

"You don't even know what ironing is."

:) :) :) :)

I had my last day of high school yesterday!!
I am quite excited for summer to start.
I guess I shall change the name of this blog now...

Oh hey I have been listening to Wiretap, it is amazing.

Brownies and Applesauce

Today I made homemade applesauce. It was yummy. Then I made brownies, which were really strange because I had to replace most of the cocoa with carob powder, some type of ten-year-old cocoa substitute from our freezer. But then again, I must have eaten a fifth of that pan of brownies.

April Fools

Wow I have not written in a long time. That is because I have no time. Now I do though because it is the Easter Weekend. In the past few months I have done many things, such as go to Quebec and done a Biology IA in one day. I do not recommend this. Actually I did it twice. I have had my first IB tears, which is not bad I guess... I made it almost to the end without having a breakdown. However I just could not handle it.
I read the book Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernières which is the best book I have read all year, I would say. It made me want to fall in love, specifically with an Italian. I know only two Italians. Really they are Canadian, with immigrant parents or grandparents. One is my uncle by marriage, and the other is in my French class. Neither of them are anything like the fictional Antonio. Oh and I also watched Life is Beautiful, and that also made me want to fall in love with an Italian.
I went to a missions conference and I bought the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. This is what he says about worry and stress: "Worry implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives. Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control." I found this applied to my life very well because I am often taken over by worry and stress.
I would upload some photos but my computer is being bad.

Sigur Ros

This is by Mary-
This morning, we drove to my grandmother's house in the country. The sun was shining. The sky was bright blue but got lighter as it neared the horizon, so the bottom of the sky was white like the whispy clouds at the top of the sky. There were snow-covered rolling hills, and I'm not even sure why I found it so beautiful today. The grass was showing through in some places and the trees were grey and lifeless. But I loved it. Mostly because the song Hoppipolla by Sigur Ros was playing. It is, to me, probably the most uplifting song in the world. It makes you want to roll down green hills in the summertime, or laugh, or cry with joy, or twirl in a field or hug somebody or dance or frolic or just do anything happy! And when it ends, you're sad because it's over and you know that the next song couldn't be so terribly joyful as Hoppipolla.

January 26

It's been a long time since I have been able to sit down and reflect on what is going on. It seems as if time is speeding up more and more everyday. My life has become so routined that days go by and I barely notice. I go to school as the sun is rising, and I come home as the sun sets. So, it feels like I am missing the world as I sit in classrooms thinking about things like the Cold War and verb conjugation. Now it is exam time and time passes even faster- I spend hours in my room, trying to remember everything I ever knew about synapses, enzymes, and other things too small to fathom.
I hardly have time to capture beauty with my wonderful new camera, which is sad. I have many sunrise and sunset pictures. This camera is a painful thing to have. I can never be sure if the film has turned out. The first film was ruined, and I am afraid this one may be too. I have not yet had it developed. It is heartbreaking, though, to have all those pictures destroyed.
I also got a season of the Waltons from my local library and watch it often. I am in love with John Boy, basically. But my favourite person is Grandpa.
I am learning a lot about God, too, I think. It was not too long after Christmas, a really wet, stormy, miserable night when my brother said "Let's buy a meal for a poor person." He asked me if I wanted to come. No-one else wanted to, and I knew he couldn't go alone, so I accompanied him. So, here we are, walking around in the slush, freezing cold and wet, so wet, and there is nobody on the streets. I have never seen our town so devoid of pedestrians. We asked some people if we could take them out for a meal (well, he asked), but the three people we saw did not accept. I mean, would you, if a couple of wet teenagers asked you? So, we were walking around town for about an hour, and pretty much given up. We were hungry too, and cold, and, well, finally we saw this guy, and we asked him, and anyway, we ate at Tim Hortons. Also we had brought Tim Tams so we had a Tim Tam Slam. It turned out the guy we were taking out to eat was the same guy who we had once taken to a Franklin Graham crusade. I hope we showed him a different side of Christianity than, well, televangelists.
A sad thing is that today a friend of mine had her last exam. She has enough credits to graduate now, and she will be going to Alberta and I do not know when she will be back. I am not a big fan of goodbyes.
Books I have been reading lately: Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, The Irrestible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, and The Portable Thoreau.