Merry Christmas!

You know, being the only grand kids on both sides of my family have some advantages. You get attention, and you get spoiled (a lot). That's just the case with my sister and I. We're the only young people on both sides.

Now, I'm not on my computer, so I can't post any pictures, (I'm on my grandparents computer), but I'll tell you what I "Cleaned up". (Thanks Mom)

From Poppa: jeans, socks, a jacket, pj's, a bathrobe and a chef nutcracker.
From Nanny: a snowman nutcracker, gloves, a pin, a scarf, fingerless gloves, and a gift card to her Day Spa (haircuts!)
From Deeda (great grandma): scrapbooking supplies- stickers, boarders, and 12x12 papers.
From Mom and Dad: a waffle iron, a Magic Bullet, a wii game- Mario Cart, and an Italian Art Easel- complete with oil, acrylic, and watercolor paint, brushes, and a palette.
From Julianna: an owl ornament (it was once my great grandma Mickey's), an owl notebook, and a pen.

I'd say I did pretty good. What did you get? Have a Merry rest of the day, and enjoy your turkey.

"Tomorrow is Christmas. It's practically here!"

"It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes and bags."
(Poppa, which movie is that from?)

Wow. It seems like yesterday was the first day of summer vacation. It's amazing how time flies. Anyway, on to the subject of Christmas. Who's excited? Raise your hands. I am! It seems that the days leading up to Christmas go so quickly, and Christmas Eve drags so slowly.

Our church is putting on a Christmas production this evening, so we had a 10:30 practise this morning. (Julianna is a narrator, and I was asked if I could be an angel.) The play will be at 6:00 this evening, if you want to come (Level Ground Mennonite Church; Next to the Airport).

I was just called to help with making Pumpkin Cheesecake and to gather the ingrediants for my Dad's Baked Oatmeal. I plan to post shortly after Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

~Emily S Friesen

Egypt!

So, I was going to post a week ago about my project, but I never got to it. And so, today's your lucky day! (Drum roll please...) TA-DA!











Any guesses? If you're all out of guesses, or you don't know, I'll tell you. This thing is a (mini) statue of a pharaoh, (I think it is Ramses), that I made out of clay. Isn't it cool? Well, here's the project that goes with it.

Neat huh? It took me about a week to construct, and as soon as I find out what I got on it, I'll post that. (It's out of 80.)

Now, This picture is my absolute favorite. I just love how it turned out. Take a look...

I just love how the water actually looks shiny, and how the temple is all blurry-looking. Don't you?

Well, I should go finish my homework now. I have to keep track on a schedule everything I do and how long it takes me to do it for a week. I also have my Christmas Concert this evening, and I'm a little nervous about it, so I should practise my flute once more. Have a great evening, everybody!

~Emily Friesen :)

Dinner and a Show

Yesterday evening, mom and dad finally, (Finally!), let us watch Christmas Vacation with them. (They blipped out what seemed like 10 minutes of it, but that doesn't matter.) Now I understand why my weird family dresses up as Eddie on the diving board, or Clark with carpet sewn to his head, and Audrey with her eyes frozen. Before watching Christmas Vacation, I never really understood why we have a "knot-ball centerpiece" on our dining room table. Or why we ate jello with catfood sprinkled on it. (Almost a year ago, my mom wrote a poem about our weirdness, so if you go back a million posts on her blog, you'll find it.)
So thet was the "show" part of this post, now on to the "dinner". Julianna made her famous french fries, this time loaded with farmer sausage and cheese. They were so good. Tomorrow I'll post about my huge egypt project. Until then,

Emily Friesen

Christmas is coming!

Starting today, I'm going to be keeping track of how many days until Christmas. So, today's total is 27 days until Christmas!(So, Christmas is coming, whether you like it or not!)
So anyway, last weekend and this weekend, was (Is) my mom's 11 annual open house! We had (and are having)lots of fun. Julianna and I made fudge, dishcloth bloomers, and pencils, and our cousin Olivia,made friendship bracelets and tiger butter. Almost all her tiger butter is gone, so if you want some, you better come now. (She also broke her nose, so please hope she gets better, and that it won't have to be rebroken
:(
If you want tocome to this amazing event, we are open until 5:00pm this evening. I hope to see you there!

~Emily Friesen

Very Muchly Busy...

Right now, I am so very muchly busy with homework, that I haven't had time to blog in a while. All the grade 7s at MEI have to do a sequence of large projects on Ancient Egypt, (All due Dec. 3), and I am rapidly running out of time. All of the projects are worth a certain amount of points, and we have to have 90 before December 3. So, my projects are the Illustrated Dictionary, and the Ancient Egyptian Town Model.
Also, to add to my work load, the first 16 pages of my 44 page story have to be typed up for Friday. (Then, 6 journal entries in my bible portfolio and a title page are due December 3, as well.)
So, I should get to work. I'm also not feeling so well today, so I'm taking it easy.
Wish me luck!

~Emily S. Friesen

I know,I know...

...that I'm a bad blogger. I haven't posted in, like, two weeks, and Poppa's probably never going to read things on here anymore, and it's all my fault.

Glad to have got that out of my system. Ok, now Halloween. Let's just say I'm almost out of candy, and proably have a million cavities. (My dentist is going to make a fortune off me)

Aren't we cute? I don't mean to brag, but aren't we cute? As you can see, Julianna was a fisher-person, and I was dressed up from the 50's. Now, be honest. What were you dressed up as? Please leave a comment and let me know!

~Emily S. Friesen

Japanese Treats

At school yesterday, a group if Japanese high school girls came to do a cultural afternoon at my school. (MEI Middle) They are part of a short term international program, and have come to MEI a few years in a row. My uncle and aunt have a student from Japan, and she was at MEI yesterday.

They set up different stations, showing Japanese culture. We were split into groups, and were given about an hour to go through, and see what their culture is like. When we first got downstairs to the Multi-Purpose Room, (The grade 7's are on the third floor of the school), they sang us a beautiful song in Japanese. Then, we went off to different stations. Some of them were: trying on kimonos, (which were very pretty, and very warm), playing with paper balloons, (more like wax paper balls, with a small hole to blow in), making origami cranes, writing our names in calligraphy, (I still have mine from last year, as well as this year), a Japanese green tea ceremony... and lots more. Also, through out the afternoon, the showered us in VERY SWEET CANDY, (Just the way I like it...), and little origami things. I got an origami butterfly, and it's now hanging in my locker. Some other things that were given was: cranes, little star-boxes, pouches, and teeny-tiny cranes, like the size of this word. They were very cute.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your wet, rainy, windy, cold day.

~Emily Friesen

Thanksgiving Get-Away

We took a little vacation yesterday and today to celebrate Thanksgiving. Julianna and I had never been, so mom and dad took us down to Seattle for a little vacation.

We stayed at a Best Western, only a few blocks away from the Space Needle. On the first day, we toured the downtown; Pikes Place Market.

Wow. I'm lucky I got out alive. On a Sunday, right around 10-10:30, it is BUSY! We went in and looked around at almost every shop, and even saw some world famous fish throwing. (Pikes Place Fish Market)

Julianna and I each got a mini beanie bag stuffed animal,(mine a lizard, and hers a turtle), a pin, and I got a postcard as well. Here are some other pictures of the market:

In the gift shop-area on the ground level of the Space Needle, we wandered around. (It was something crazy like $50 to go all the way up) All 4 of us also tried on pairs of these HIDEOUS sunglasses, and well...See for yourself.

For dinner that evening, (after finding out that the streets we wanted to take were all 1 ways), we went to Overall, the meal was nice, and the spumoni ice-cream was delicious. When we got back to the van... It was covered with atomic bird-bombs. (I just now got back inside from washing the van) Nice, eh?

We also went to the first Starbucks ever!

I hope you have all enjoyed you Thanksgiving holidays, as much as I did.

~Emily Friesen

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

So, how have your weekends been so far? It's Canada's Thanksgiving on Monday, so it's a long weekend, and I get a day off school. (Yes!)

My family celebrated Thanksgiving today, so we cooked up potatoes, yams, a chicken; we had cranberry and apple sauces, and stuffing. (Guess what we'll be eating for the next month?) Julianna and I decorated the table with homemade tea-stained place cards, paper leaves, twigs, and mini pumpkin candles. It looked really festive.

I hope your weekends are very good, and I'll post more on Tuesday.

~Emily

One day of freedom...

I'm not sure if you knew, but I have braces. So regularly, (every 4 weeks), I have to go to my orthodontist (pronounced orth-o-don-tist) to get the wires changed, or to get more elastics, or, you know. On some days, he will tell me that "next appointment you'll be getting a bracket off", or "we'll be taking x-rays next time", or something of that sort. But, on September 3, I had an orthodontist appointment, and the news was quite amazing. Dr. Dueckman told me that "Emily, on your next appointment, October 7, you will be getting your braces off." So, here I am with no braces, but I still have a mouthful of metal. How does that work? Now I'm stuck with retainers, on the top and bottom!


This is before....









....And this is after.













And here is me, biting into an apple... I haven't been able to do that in 2 years. And as you can see, the apple was cold, and my front teeth were sensitive... (I was going to show the rest of my my family on Thanksgiving dDy, but our plans changed, so I'm doing it this way, instead)

~Emily Friesen

Movie and a stitchery

Julianna, and her friends Alisha, Harpreet, Avnit, and Callum have all been reading the Harry Potter series, and the idea to watch the first movie together was floating around for awhile. So at 7:00 yesterday evening, they all came over for popcorn, a movie and a few games. Alisha's older sister, Selina, was in my class in grade 5, and we have become good friends, and I asked her to come as well. So with Julianna and her friends taking up the big couch, (and they really had to squish), Selina and I got the smaller couch all to ourselves. I had been working on a stitching project, and I asked her if she would want to as well. So (during an "intermission"), we drew out her name on a piece of muslin, and we stitched. It was Selina's first time doing a stitchery, and I was teaching her.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.

~Emily Friesen

Fresh from the oven

Ok, so you all know that I am an owl nut, but there are other things I enjoy collecting and doing as well.

For example, I collect nutcrackers, and have a collection consisting of 38 wooden men. They line the top of my bookshelf, and a shelf above that, and a small (fake) tree on my windowsill. The pic that is of only one nutcracker, is one that my dad made. He copied it from a movie I got one Christmas.

Some other things I enjoy doing are drawing, painting, scrapbooking, sewing... You name it. In that group of hobbies, lives cooking.

Now I'm not much of a chef, but I do enjoy creating french toast, or muffins, or scrambled eggs once in a while. So today, (I had no school, and with that, no road run in PE!), I went over to Nanny's house and between Food Network shows, we made Mini apple turnover things. (In case you're wondering, my favorite food network shows are "Ace of Cakes", "Iron Chef America", "Food Network Challenge", and "Ricardo and friends"). The recipe is from Mennonite Girls Can Cook. Now I hope you all enjoy this post. Until next time,

~Emily S. Friesen

Another owl

Well, the time's come to post about another owl or two. So, can I have a drum roll please?....... I am here to present "Today's Owl!"

Today's Owl is not really an owl at all. It is more or less a drawing of an owl. Now, every year before school starts, Julianna and I are given $50 to spend on school clothes, or whatever is needed. So, an annual trip to Old Navy was in order.

As far as I'm concerned Old Navy makes the cutest shirts. From the words "I like doing fun stuff", to a bird saying "Don't be mean, keep the air clean", or "I want smores"... Anyway, the shirt I picked out was this:

An owl with the words: "Who loves ya?" And really, could you even imagine an owl lover like me even thinking of passing up such an adorable shirt? I know I couldn't.

So, join me next week on "Today's Owl".

~Emily S. Friesen