The Year of a Rose

Wow, December 31st, New Years Eve! How fast the year has flown by yet again. Once again, here is my year in review:

January
Well, I shall be honest and say that in my humble opinion the best thing that happened to me in January was joining the Fairy Tale Novels Forum. I know my friends and relatives who consider forum's to be "frivolous" and "a waste of time" ("don't you have anything better to do?") will be rolling their eyes at this. But really, I have never once regretted joining the forum. Not once. I have met so many wonderful people, made so many wonderful and dear friends, and even learned some important lessons as a result. (Such as think before you type, I can talk much faster and better with the keyboard than with my mouth... which has had it's drawbacks.) I have really grown to love these people dearly, and I miss them horribly if I have to be away from the computer for days on end. Hopefully someday I shall get to meet most of them on earth, and all of them in heaven! Thank you soooo much Regina for writing your books and Elena for starting the forum which helped to bring all these fans closer together.

February
In Feb I did my very first dress re-modeling, with satisfying results. I took an old bridesmaids dress belonging to my mother, took off the whole bodice because the neckline was too low, made a new one and attatched it with out ruining the skirt. Yay! I then wore the finished product to our homeschooling groups annual Daddy-Daughter Ball.
Also in February, The Little Flowers Catholic Dance and Theatre Troupe began practices for our performance of Theodore Dubois' The Seven Last Words of Christ, which is music composed by Dubois featuring each of the seven last phrases the Jesus spoke on the cross. Our directress, Mrs. P, added a silent Passion play, which was acted out to the singing of the choir.


March
The Seven Last Words of Christ was performed very succesfully and movingly at two churches, with one performance on Palm Sunday. Lucky me was a guy in a beard. I actually had two roles, one as a member of 'The Mob' and the other as St. Jude the Apostle. (That's St. Jude, not Judas.) You can view a few pictures here. In the Last Supper scene, I am the apostle on the end left. (You, the veiwer's, left) For the first one or two practices, I hate hate hated being part of the angry mob, and I was furious with Mrs. P for picking someone who could play Jesus so well and convincingly even in sweat pants and a t-shirt. If you've never had to play the part of the angry mob, it is really tough being angry and wanting to kill Christ, while all the while you feel like crying, because the guy who was playing Christ did such a good job. It got easier after Mrs. P explained that the angrier and more blood-thirsty we looked, the more compassion the audience would feel for Christ and then they would be drawn closer to him. That helped a lot. But I still hated that beard I had to glue to my face. It was sooooo ITCHY!!!
Also in March, I turned Sweet 16! I actually got to celebrate it twice, since my birthday was on Holy Thursday. Due to it being a solemn day, I only opened cards on my actual birthday, and then had cake, preseants and all that on Easter Monday.
I also went to my very first opera!

April
The Holy Father visited America!!!! I was not able to make it out east, alas, but I was there in spirit and was able to view one of the Masses via television. What a wonderful blessing it was to see him, even if it was only on TV!
In April I also won a local poetry contest with a poem of mine entitled "I'm Off to War". I actually won two prizes, first place for the 10th Grade Division, and 2nd place overall. Very exciting!

May
Ooh, another big month! Well, first I joined in on my first group blog, The Fellowship of the Fairy Tale Forum. I am afraid though we aren't as good at updating it as often as we used to but well.. maybe I'll write another post either today or tomorrow.
Also in May I read Midnight Dancers, wrote the first ever review for it(!) and met Regina Doman at the ILCHC homeschooling conference!!!! It was my first time ever meeting an author, and getting to meet one of my favorites was wonderful! Also at the Conference, the Little Flowers Troupe performed with their Life and Liberty dances. Very fun as well!
Oh yes, and my family and I also went camping at a somewhat nearby State Park for a weekend with my mom's parents and her uncle. (My grandparents and great uncle!)

June
Hmm, well, let's see.... oh! My little brother Tiny Tim made his First Holy Communion and my sister Kathleen graduated from 8th Grade! Other than that and helping out with Vacation Bible school at my parish, nothing much happened.

July
For the first week in July I was at the Ave Cor Mariae Miles Jesue Summer Girls Camp (which, by the way, you can sign up now to go there this coming July. It's a lot of fun!) Camp is always such a blast, and this year I got to meet up again with Cap'n Coon and Miss Turner whom I hadn't seen in two years! Needless to say, I had loads of fun and I'm already looking forward to hopefully being able to go this year.
After my return home from camp, my family went camping again for a few days and a great time hiking and splashing in the river.

August
Hee hee, found out that Elenatintil is doing a student production film of The Shadow of the Bear!!! Was that ever exciting!!!!
Then I got to go and visit Vicki and Hannah!!! YAY!!!!!!!!! Our families all got to meet each other and we had tons of fun being piratey and listening to the Phantom of the Opera and shucking corn and playing games. My family and I also spent a few days at my dad's parent's lake house and I got to have my first try at skiing. Didn't go so well.. bruised my ankle and pulled a muscle in my arm. Ouch. And discovered I'm not afraid of speedboats anymore! Up until this past summer, the last time I was in a speedboat was when I was 5.

September
On Labor Day we hosted a campout at our house for people from our homeschooling group. Lots of fun, though very warm out. Campfire, stargazing, shooting stars, Blind Man's Bluff, balloon slingshots, running through the sprinkler... fun fun fun!
The following week was the annual county fair, an event greatly looked forward to in our home. We went two days this year and had a great time. I forget how many ribbon's I won, but it was a lot. (A certain sister of mine will sarcastically tell you that I won a million dollars and she got nothing. But both are an exageration.) We even got to see country music star Billy Currington! (300 feet away, but who cares?!)
About the same time that the remains of Hurricane Ike landed on the Midwest, Kathleen, Yaviel and I went back up to Vicki's house for a birthday sleepover! We went bowling and had a splendiferous time, in case you can't tell by the er, lovely photo on the left.


October
October - Fall! I prefer Autumn more, actually. Anyhow... we had our oh, 8th? annual Barn Party which was fun, as always. =) I got to go to my second Civil War reenactment which was fantastic and I dressed for the time period as well and went with friends, which made it even more fun!
Also got caught up in following politics, but that's too depressing so skip that. The weekend before the elections I helped my friend Miss Fishy - who organized this whole passing-out-flyers-thing - put pro-life voters guide's on cars in church parking lots. It felt good to be doing something, and even though McCain lost the election, I think those guides had to have had some impact with someone.

November
My one year anniversary of blogging!!! Yay! To think that it's been over a year, wow! Changed my blog name too - from "Lady of the Rose" to "A Rose in Bloom" - and I like this one ever so much better.
Uhhh.. trying to think, what else did I do in November? Hmm, well, can't think of anything, so I must not have done much!

December
Ugh, most of this month was running around all over the place. :P That and getting stuck on the road in snow storms. Performed in the 3rd annual Silent Nativity! (The pictures on Christmas Day were from there), I was a townsperson again, as well as the innkeeper. (There I am on the left)I named myself Hadassah this year and ah! We forgot to free the slaves!!!! NOOOO!!!! Oh dear, and Havilah won't be there Sunday! Ah! Oh dear. (Last year the townspeople freed the slaves of the Three Kings. Guess it won't happen this year!)
Ha ha, on our way home from a performance in the windy city, there was a big snowstorm, so we it took us three hours to get from the Windy City to where my grandparents live (normally it take 1 hour) and we weren't even half way home so all of us (minus my dad, who was at home) plus our friends who were in the car with us stayed at my grandparents house, because we had a performance close by the next day so why go five more hours home to just turn around again? That was a lot of fun. ;)
Here I am with my sisters,
In back: Me and Yaviel (the angel)
Front: Kathleen (with the beard) and Beccy Boo










And then here's me again with all my Sweet 16 friends!












So that is it for this year!!! I hope you all had a great 2008, and may 2009 be full of happiness, joy, peace and a trial or two to keep you sane and focused on Christ. Happy New Year!!!!