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I am assuming today to be the 44th day of summer, but if I happen to be wrong I will find out eventually. I got a cold recently and still have the infamous lingering cough and slight drowsiness, but other than that I have improved significantly. In addition, we went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom with one of our friends and her mom on Friday. We experienced a few harness debacles, from certain uncomfortably compressing harnesses–made even worse by wearing a fanny pack–to partially nonfunctional ones. Frightening, right? Well, actually, it didn’treally last that long; the first situation was when we were on a raft ride and it took a little while before the ride started for my friend and I to clasp the seat belt successfully. It was a tense and actually exciting moment that reccurred later on when I was holding on to the seat belt and we went over a large wave, causing it to become undone again. This was quickly fixed. The other situation was when we were on the Hammerhead. After we got off of the ride, which at certain points turns the passengers upside down, Rebekah said she heard a boy yelling that his harness had come undone and repeatedly uttering expletives–the boy, of course, not Bekah! I hadn’t heard anything until we got off, but I wonder what it would have been like to have one’s restraint cease its purpose in the middle of a ride like that. We were there pretty much all day and coincidentally we saw a bunch of groups from the day camp from Bridges Community Church, which was pretty neat.

Apparently Bekah and I have pre-school-year homework. Ancient Literature was due by the fifth and Ancient History is due by the thirteenth, so I’m going to have to start working on that soon. We are doing a large homeschool co-op called HEART Academy and the classes I will be taking are Ancient History, Ancient Literature, Biology (waiting list), On Writing Well (creative writing), and Speech and Debate. I’m 99% sure that’s correct. I can’t believe we’re barely past the middle of summer and already the school year is fast approaching. It’s not as strange being a freshman as I had thought it would be. I guess the only strange thing about it would be having more high schoolers in my classes, and maybe a bit larger workload, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about HEART; I’m just hoping I’ll be able to not procrastinate my homework nearly as much as I did when we were in LHA.

Tomorrow is our first rehearsal of Cinderella with Stage 1 Theatre!! Well, actually, it’s a cast meeting, but no matter. My mom, Bekah, Adriannah, and I auditioned July 19th and all of us made it into the ensemble; a few of the people in our audition group also made it in, one being Cinderella and two others in the ensemble as featured dancers. We are all very excited, but as we haven’t begun yet I will have more news about it later.

Conclusion of what may or may not be my last summer post. :/

~~Sarah

It is rather warm, but an improvement on yesterday’s incinerating weather.

I do not recommend today:
THIS IS FOR ME; Do Not Eat All Of The Cake! There. That should do.
I do recommend today:
I do recommend–here it comes–do I really want to say it?–housework. Yes, you heard me. Well, it might be just me, because we tend to do a lot of housework on nice days, but seriously. Just avoid cleaning up fresh canine fecal matter. Oh, the things you have to learn the hard way…

Today’s news:
Well, as indicated by my amazingly creative title, today is the fifth anniversary of my little brother’s birth. In other word’s, it’s Aaron’s birthday. I remember when we found out his gender, I could not stop laughing! The Gonzalezes? A boy? LOL!!

Ahem. Where was I?

I also remember that the friend at whose house we slept that night woke up at the same minute Aaron was born. Go figure.

Well, I need to go change my shirt, so happy birthday, Aaron. Love you, little bro.

Conclusion of blog post for ninth day of summer.

~~Sarah

IT IS RATHER WARM, to say the least.

I do not recommend today:
I strictly do not recommend wearing anything warm today. At all. Whatsoever.
I do recommend today:
What I do recommend is to get wet in some way, although unfortunately today I personally have been unable to do so. And I definitely recommend eating lots of fruit…yum, refreshing.

Today’s News:
Again, there isn’t much news today. I know what you have come to expect from my blog–at least, what I hope you have come to expect…

But as I am blogging every day, and as our everyday life is, well, everyday, there hasn’t been much news so far. There is, however, some upcoming news, so stay tuned.

I just did a bunch of laundry with Bekah while the younger three were supposedly cleaning the living room. There were a couple of the normal arguments, again, nothing major. This has been your glimpse of everyday life in the Gonzalez house for today.

~~Sarah

IT IS, AGAIN, VERY, VERY HOT.

Because I missed too many days of summer, and because they were reasonably uneventful, I’m not going to do the whole recommendations and such today. This is not going to look like my normal Summer Log posts. But I’ll tell you what there is to tell.

On the fifth day of summer, not much happened. Started spending more time doing housework, inside and out, but that’s sort of usual for us so that doesn’t count. I’m trying to remember; it seems like something ought to have happened on Friday but I guess not.

Yesterday, I think, was the same. Oh, wait! That’s what happened on Friday! Adriannah went to a friend’s sleepover and seemingly had a good time. The friends at whose house she slept reminds me a bit of Annah, so I trust there was quite a bit of playing and laughing going on. So I believe she came home yesterday.

And today. Well, as I’ve mentioned, it is again quite hot. Bekah and I got outside and did a little bit of yard work with Daddy. It was excruciatingly scalding, but surprisingly, it felt good to get out and do something. I took a shower after we were finished, and I must say, being hot is so much more bearable when you’re clean and don’t feel like there is dirt running in your sweat.

I suppose that’s it for today. I shall endeavor to miss no more days of posting.

Conclusion of respective blog posts for fifth, sixth, and seventh days of summer.

~~Sarah

Conclusion of blog post for third day of summer.

~~Sarah

Day 4 of summer:
It was very windy earlier. It does not appear to be so now, but it may be cool outside.
I do not recommend today:
Hmm…well, I do not recommend leaving papers outside unsupervised.
I do recommend today:
I do recommend eatin’ chili, which is what I’m about to do right now!
Today’s News:
My sisters and I went outside to paint. Nothing fancy, just a little something creative to do together. Well, unfortunately, as i mentioned, it was very windy. The bottles of acrylic paint we had were all practically empty, so we couldn’t use those as paperweights. I had quite a time with trying to use Alaynah’s shoe, a rock, and some paint bottles, but not necessarily at the the same time, although now that I think about it…
Anyway, that was kind of fun. I designed something that looked really nice in pen, but not so much in paint. Oh, well, I guess I just need more practice.

And now it’s time for another one of my lists!
Good Things About Summer Break
–Lots of free time
–No homework
–Nice weather
Not-so-good Things About Summer Break
–Not getting to see friends as often (cue Facebook…)
–More time to do–dunh dunh dunh–housework…
–Wondering about the next school year.

Well, I suppose that’s it, until tomorrow. Or at least, I think tomorrow.

Conclusion of blog post for fourth day of summer.

~~Sarah

Today’s News:
Well, today is the second day of the babysitting/sleepover and it’s pretty much going well. There was some argument, but it was handled and everything ran smoothly from there.

Speaking of babysitting, our neighbor came to our door yesterday and said Cali wanted to know if somebody could babysit her. Well, I didn’t know if he just meant she come over for Rico, or if he wanted us to watch her. Closer to the second. So, today is also day 2 of Bekah and I babysitting the neighbor’s dog and Wilbur, their cat, for a little extra dough. This morning, since Rebekah was asleep, I did everything myself. When I went to change Cali’s water, which was outside, I found that I could not open the sliding door. I tried unlocking it, re-locking it, unlocking it again. This went on for about a minute and a half. After despairing for this impossible deed, I finally decided to just slip in and out through the doggie door. No joke. After this little adventure the job ended up done. Thank God I’m small.

Conclusion of blog post for second day of summer.

~~Sarah

Today’s news:
First of all, on Saturday there was a “city-wide” yard sale at Mrs. Fairbairn’s house. The reason “city-wide” is in quotations is because only Mrs. Fairbairn, another couple, and Dad, Mom, Bekah and I were actually selling stuff. There was a whole lot of furniture. I mean as in that was all you could see from the street, not counting the free wood. There was even a freezer being sold. Bekah and I had one-hundred-some-odd articles of clothing and accessories, most of which went back to from whence they came. Most of the money we earned was from one pair of women buying clothing for a young girl. The other tiny bit was one thing we sold to a girl in college. The adults sold a whole lot of stuff, but nobody really buys clothes at a garage sale. Oh, well. As Daddy would say, it’s money we didn’t have before.

Wow, Mrs. Wheat is right. I do use a lot of passive verbs…

Anyway, moving on to Sunday. Yesterday, we went to church in the morning, and I must say, the passage that was studied for the service was great. It was Ezekiel’s description of God and and angels, and it was absolutely perfect description-wise. There isn’t a thing left out.

In the evening, we celebrated my mom’s and Auntie Katie’s birthdays and Fathers’ Day all at once. Because Grandma is out of town, we had Papa, Auntie Katie and we Gonzalezes. Yes, that’s it. But it was very nice to have a celebration with relatives, and Auntie Katie enjoyed reading Bekah’s autobiography from writing class.

And today is the first day of an extended sleepover with one of Annah and Alaynah’s friends. We walked the dogs a little while ago, and as aforementioned, I was (still am) wearing skinny jeans, so it was very difficult to pull off my knee socks when we got home. Yes, sigh, knee socks. I have a feeling there will be much playing, fighting, screaming, laughing and all that jazz over the next two days.

Conclusion of blog post for the first day of summer.

~~Sarah

I noticed last night that since I got on Facebook, I have been somewhat neglecting my blog. Because almost everyone I know is on there, it almost didn’t seem necessary to blog, but I couldn’t abandon this forever, could I?

No.

The answer is no.

Anyway, if nothing else, one advantage I have with blogging is that there is no character limit for a post. ‘Cause that would be stupid for a blog, that’s why.

So, first off, we finished our play. It was performed on May 13-15, and I must say, it was better than I thought it would be. Performances always are. We laughed, we cried, it moved us, Bob. Well, okay, I don’t remember any crying. Actually, I just remember a whole lot of laughing. Goofing off backstage: an activity in which everyone participated. Generally, we kind of had to be quiet (gasp!) so as soon as a song came up, we lip-synced whilst choreographing cheesy moves. Good times, good times. Among things that happened onstage: During a scene change in which I was supposed to play piano I began playing the Wedding March instead of the Funeral March (but fixed it), the kid who played Harry got his foot stuck under a couch behind the set on all three performances, a gravestone got left in the living room on the second performance, and on the last one the cash register was nowhere to be found. Oh, the joys of live performance! You never know what’s going to happen. It’s rather exciting.

On the final night, I felt very weird because 1) it was the only night we stayed very late, and 2) obviously, after that, it was over. It was quite saddening, actually, but we ended up seeing everybody again later and probably will over the summer. I suppose that was what gave me that weird feeling: that during the production of the play, everybody got to know everyone else and it seemed on the last performance that it was the end, even though we knew we would see each other at the cast party.

Our director, Amalia Dobbins, either left or is leaving to take a trip around the world, so on closing night we spoofed a song from the play called “Wonderful Places” for her. She will be missed but our new director is very good as well and I am looking forward to having him next year.

Speaking of performance, I also performed in the beginning of this month in a dance recital for the city entitled A Tribute To Dance. The number in which I performed was called All That Fosse; ours was the smallest group class, but that was actually kind of cool. My teacher is awesome and the fellow dancers are all very talented and fun to work with. I made a couple of mistakes here and there, but overall it was very good. Among the dances performed were salsa, Bollywood, hip-hop, and modern dance, to mention a few. As I have said many, many times already, I adore performing live. It’s exciting and you actually get to see your audience.

As far as “regular” school goes, I am glad that it’s over. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, as opposed to my worry of getting average or below in narrative writing, both Rebekah and I got A++, 160/100 in that class! And I know for a fact that everyone in the American history class got A’s. I am sorry to say that I have not yet received my grade in physical science, and I honestly don’t know what it is, save to say I hope I did not fail…

But does summer ever really start? With all of the personal negligence on the part of we children, there is much housework to be done, and I cannot say it is the most enjoyable thing in the world. I am seeing weekends of summer cleaning in my future. Well, hopefully by the end of summer we’ll have adopted better habits.

And speaking of habits, you may or may not know that for a very long time I have had the habit of biting my nails. I’ve tried to stop it, but the longest I’ve ever stopped was probably two or three days, maybe not even that. I noticed, however, that I tend to chew them the most when I seemingly have nothing else to do (e.g. cleaning my room does not count in the mind of a typical kid. Okay, so maybe I’m not an entirely typical kid, but still). Sometimes I do it absentmindedly when listening to or watching something. Paint my nails? Nope, I usually just peel it off anyway. No-Bite? I just curl my tongue back so I don’t taste it. Hot peppers? Hmm. Haven’t tried that one…

Well, I believe that is all I have to say for now, save for this:

Goodbye and happy summer!

I wish I could be outside right now. It looks comfortably cool and sort of a light gray. Not the gloomy kind of gray that comes with winter evenings, but the one like in fall afternoons. Perfect for walking in circles around the backyard.
Just saying.
Rico is asleep on the patio. I keep looking at him and thinking, “Gosh, that’s me right now.” I’m not extremely tired, but for some reason sleep seems nice at the moment.
I keep forgetting to tell you, the grass on our backyard has gotten out of hand, to say the least. The very least. So it has in the front, but Dad got that taken care of this past weekend.
But that practical shrubbery in the backyard is enough to scare the you-know-what out of anyone. And if anyone out there thinks it’s their fault, it isn’t. Period.
Anyhow, a couple of days ago Dad and Bekah got started on mowing it. They would have started earlier, but apparently we only had use of a non-electric lawn mower, which did practically nothing. But the newer one worked a lot better. At some point before that, Rebekah had begun to cut a certain patch, which took a while but since she was armed with nothing but scissors did not do as much as the lawn mower, which got through about a fifth of the grass.

p.s. Happy Birthday, Kayla, because this post was started on April 19th, even though it wasn’t posted until April 21st.