I have a strong and perfect plea

Before the Throne of God Above - Robin Mark     I love this song!! It's been "running" through my head all evening. :)  We had a very nice Christmas... my brother came home and surprised us!! (just like you'd see on youtube! haha!) It's so nice to have him home though. We didn't think we'd see him until March.    (my enter button isn't working on this keyboard, so everything is kind of smashed together.)      I received a really neat book for Christmas called "Own It." It's a book about owning your faith. Super good read!! Mom and I watched the movie "Grace Unplugged" and that is where we saw this book. Then Mom gave it to me for Christmas! :) I recommend both the movie and book. As this song says, God sent a "strong and perfect plea" to save me from my sins. So thankful for Christ!!

Merry Christmas!!

I know life is busy when I haven't posted in a month. :) 

Oh, yeah, I have a blog!

-School. I had mostly history to finish, but I am "all set" in my other subjects. 

-Violin! I'm just doing various stuff. Ghost's of Brandenburg for orchestra, Bach double and a Handel sonata for kicks. I played the Handel sonata for my recital. It went really good which was surprising because I wasn't really prepared. :) So now I'm playing, not practicing, it for a music competition coming up in February. Just to keep it in my head! 

-Reuben! Reuben just turned one! Remember when he was born?? He is soo cute! Soon I will have a post of pictures, but first I have to edit all 400 of them. (I'm totally serious) 

-Christmas! Christmas music, Christmas cookies, Christmas shopping, Christmas cooking, Christmas projects, Christmas tree, (actually we haven't gotten our tree... yet!) Christmas packages, Christmas lights, Christmas....... You get the idea! 

-Projects. I made Christmas ornaments for my friends in orchestra. They were made out of acorn tops, marbles and haybale twine. And I made cookies. :) (see yummy cookie recipe below!) 

I "dressed up" a plain blue shirt by gluing a white lace heart on the back. It looks super cute, and I'll post pictures soon. Or sometime in November. 

Cookie recipe:

Make your favorite Peanut Butter cookie dough. Instead of putting the cookies on a cookie sheet, put them in muffin pans. With muffin papers. Cook about 7-8 minutes. While they are cooking, unwrap a whole bunch of mini Reese cups. As soon as the dough come out of the oven, press a Reese into the middle. Let the cookies cool, and remove from muffin papers. Papers can be reused a few times.

They are scrumptious!

Merry Christmas everyone!! 

Photo Shoot / remembrances of when it was warm

It is really cold now. And I still need to blog about the photo shoot we did a while back.

On the one warm day in October (it actually reached 70!!) I did pictures of two of my younger siblings. And I asked my younger brother to do some photos of me. (We do pictures of all us kids yearly. Instead of "school pictures" we do "birthday pictures.")   :)

I was so excited it got warm (it actually got to 70!! But than it snowed three days later) because I wanted to wear a certain dress....

This is my Great Grandma's dress! She is 95 years old now. But she wore this dress a long time ago. 

I was snooping through her closet, thinking "Grandma has got to have some cool clothes in here, right?" 

Sure enough, I found this dress and loved it! I wore it for a violin recital I was in last May. My Great Grandma is so sweet! I just asked if I could borrow it... but surprise! After my recital Grandma told me "Honey, that dress is yours now!" I was thrilled! I love "hand me downs" and this is a very special "hand me down." :) I haven't had another chance to wear it again, but I knew I wanted pictures in it!! 

Plus, I wanted pictures with my violin. (It's so much easier to "pose" with a violin.)

My brother did a great job taking these pictures! Thanks, Matt! 

In Christ Alone

This is one of my favorite songs!

In Christ alone my hope is found,

He is my light, my strength, my song;

This Cornerstone, this solid Ground,

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of peace,

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!

My Comforter, my All in All,

Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone! - who took on flesh,

Fullness of God in helpless babe.

This gift of love and righteousness,

Scorned by the ones He came to save:

Till on that cross as Jesus died,

The wrath of God was satisfied -

For every sin on Him was laid;

Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,

Light of the world by darkness slain:

Then bursting forth in glorious day

Up from the grave He rose again!

And as He stands in victory

Sin's curse has lost its grip on me,

For I am His and He is mine -

Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death,

This is the power of Christ in me;

From life's first cry to final breath,

Jesus commands my destiny.

No power of hell, no scheme of man,

Can ever pluck me from His hand:

Till He returns or calls me home,

Here in the power of Christ I'll stand.

-Stuart Townend and Keith Getty

Down to the last two days...

I'm almost done with all these vacation posts. I hope you're not entirely sick of this. These posts are more for me.. a place to put all my pictures from this trip, and document what we did..

Sunday night we went to an old train station that was turned into a really nice hotel. Every hour it plays a ten minute video.... on the ceiling of the lobby/dining hall. There are lots of couches and chairs around!

This is a picture of the ceiling while the video was playing. You can see the stripes (that look like lace), and that is the actual ceiling. Pretty neat! 

Monday, September 8th, we went to the St. Louis zoo in the morning, and the science museum in the afternoon.

Most of the animals were really lazy.

(Yeah, we were confused when we saw this one too.) 

A guy walked up and said "Whoa, what went wrong?"

:) Haha! 

Oh, by the way, there was another one of these creatures standing behind the first one. (They only have four legs.) 

This zoo has a tunnel underneath the seals. 

It was really cool! 

I think the weirdest/neatest/scariest thing was petting the sting rays. And sharks. :) 

 Sting rays have barbs that grow like fingernails. So the zoo will trim the barbs often, and that's how the sting rays were safe to pet. 

 One of the sharks. 

We were able to feed them raw shrimp. You stick the shrimp in between your ring and middle finger, and hold your hand flat. Then the sting rays swim over your hand and suck the fish up. 

(my Mom screamed.) 

After the zoo, we went to the Science Museum. This place was awesome! We only had about three hours, so we barely explored the place. :) 

 We were met with this sight as we walked in! A huge maze with a whole bunch of balls going everywhere!

 There were lots of puzzles to try and figure out. I think this one was of a bridge.

 We all "flew" a plane around St. Louis. I crashed. Than landed safely.
It was fun to use the joysticks though!

 This game was hilarious! It's called "Mind Ball."
The rules are below..

 Relaxing..??

 Nervous....??

However, after a while we decided the game was fixed... The ball always went to the left. Always.

Even if we changed seats, etc. :) 

Rules

After we got back to the hotel we explored where Dad and Mom were to eat dinner that night.

 This restaurant was on the top of our hotel, 22 stories high!

 (the Arch is 63 stories high)

After Dad and Mom left, we ordered pizza! 

And it didn't come. And it didn't come. Still didn't come. Hasn't come yet. 

Yeah. 

We ate about every snack in our room. Tried calling the pizza place, but they said the guy already came. 

He didn't.

Long (yes, long. 4 hours for pizza??!!) story short, we got our pizza just as our parents walked through the door. At 9:30. :) 

It tasted good though! 

About food....

I made a ginormous amount of pumpkin muffins today. Two of my younger brothers were exclaiming over how good they tasted.
I said "Thank you! I like to bake for men who like my food!"    (that is mostly from Susan Baker, a fictional character in the book 'Anne's House of Dreams'")
So... Ben replied "I like to eat food that women make."

I think that is a great philosophy.

I went on a trapeze. !!!!!!

Has it really been almost two weeks since I've posted? I guess I'd better finish up on documenting our vacation. So...

On Sunday (September 7th) we attended Brian Chappell's church. The sermon was very encouraging, and the singing was awesome! It was so different to not know anyone in church. :)  But pretty fun! 

Then we drove to St. Louis. Dad had told us that Daniel and I were going to do a special class Sunday afternoon. Dad and Mom both were dropping weird clues.... "make sure you don't fall..." We were very confused! Then we drove into an old train station that was transformed into a mall. The outside had a paddle boat place, and feed-the-goldfish place. AND, a trapeze place. 

Yep. We went on a trapeze! This class had an extra opening, so Matthew was able to join Daniel and I. It was so much fun! Here is a video of me: (oh, and this is after I had already been up a few times. :) Haha! 

This was with a company called "Circus Harmony." 

Here are some pictures Joey took: 

 So, I climbed up this extremely tall ladder to the platform. (don't worry, I am strapped in the whole time.) 

Then one of the trainers grabs the back of the belt (and you trust that they won't let go) and I let go of the pole, and grabbed the trapeze bar. This is seriously the scariest part. the bar pulls you out so far....

I fly down, put my knees on the bar, let go of my hands, hang on by my knees for a swing, grab the bar, let go of my knees. Then on one swing, I kick my legs three times real fast, let go of the bar, tuck my knees to my chest, do a flip in the air, and land in the net. 

( I was not able to do any of this my first time up. :) Haha! But it wasn't hard once I better understood how to do it. 

Once we finished doing the stuff on the bar.. we let go and do a flip into the net. 

The picture where I was reaching out with my hands, it was really preparing me to grab hands with this trainer. That "act" was the one in the video. 

WHEE!!