School House Rock

I just want to make it a quick post before the end of February is over. You know that right now, I just want to feel well educated. So if you want to be well educated from my blog. Here are some fun School House Rock songs that are really fun to learn and sing about. So enjoy the songs for the end of February.

High School Musical Dance Recital Plan

I'm sorry that it has been a long time for me to write a post, but I've been so busy with homework that I'm trying to get them all over with. I hope all of you forgive me for not posting a post for a while. Anyway, I still haven't been able to have some time to write the rest of my trip to Nauvoo, but I want to post about what I want to plan a fun activity for me and my younger siblings. Have you ever seen the three movies of High School Musical? Well, I am a fan of those movies and you want to know what else is amazing about them? They all have been filmed in Utah. All my life, I never thought that movies were filmed in Utah. I mostly thought that they were all filmed in either of the two popular states, New York or California.

Well, with High School Musical, I actually like the movies, and with all the songs from each one, it gives me a fun activity to do with my younger siblings. I want to plan a High School Musical dance recital. From my Mom's blog, she blogged about my sister Princess's gold award project of a dance recital, and I asked to be in it for my dance that I really love to do, because of playing Just Dance games. I thought it would be fun to do a Dance Recital with almost all the high school musical songs. Something that could bring back the memory of Princess's gold award. I just hope that this goal will happen, because it sounds like a fun thing to do, just like Princess's. And I also hope that I can find some of my siblings who would love to volunteer to be in the recital. Hopefully that'll happen.

Going to Grandma's

Last Christmas, we were trying to get a lot of stuff prepared for Christmas before we did something fun for that. Right when we got everything cleaned up, we then went on our way to Mt. Pleasant to go see our Dad's mother's house. The people that went were our Dad, Mom, Me, Princess, Prima Donna, Crafty, Sport, Scout, Curly, and Baby Doll. We had to drop off our Mom in Nephi City, at Drama Queen's apartment for a Tupperware party.

Now it was the rest of us that we went on our way to Grandma's in Mt. Pleasant. We sang our favorite Christmas carols in our van and we were planning to do some caroling in front of her house before she opened her front door. We were so excited that we got to visit Grandma. She's so wonderful, just like our Mom told you about her before. We were so excited to give our presents to Grandma. I let her open the gift from me. I gave her a pair of magenta fluffy gloves from a special store near our home called Asian City. She then opened the other gifts we gave her, like Tupperware dishes that added Party Mix Chex, Muddy Buddies, and Carmel/Nut Popcorn. We totally enjoyed the treat she made too. Lemon Buddies, kind of like Muddy Buddies, but lemon flavored. It was fun going to see Grandma. But at 9:00, we had to be on our way home, because some of us had to go to bed, because it was a school night. Going to see Grandma was a lot of fun. Do you ever get to see a kind relative for Christmas? If you have, then that's wonderful.

Candy Canes

There is one Christmas tradition I haven't talked about yet. We have a garland that goes around our kitchen with twinkling lights on it. There's something special we like to do with it. We hang candy canes all on it. We buy like a dozen packages of candy canes with different flavors and hung them all around it. We don't put the candy canes on our Christmas trees, just the garland, because it's a way so that little kids won't sneak into them without asking.

On special occasions, like a Christmas Party, before a group of people leave, we let them have a candy cane off the garland to eat or to take home with them. Candy canes are like the sweetest treat around this time of the year. We use the garland for candy canes to make it special. And putting candy canes on it is a better way so that they won't fall and break.

Lots of the kids love a lot of different flavors. They mostly like Gobstoppers, Starbursts, Sweettart, Cherry, and Blueberry. They sometimes, like Peppermint and Hershey Mint. I kind of like lots of flavors, but I'd better be careful with sugar for the holiday. I wish there were candy canes that were healthy for everyone, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen. 

Hobby of Gift-Making

I'm not getting back onto talking about the rest of the biggest trip yet, because there is one thing that you would love to see and hear about. I have a hobby that might sound amazing to all of you. I like to make present boxes out of shoe boxes to give to some people on special occasions, like Christmas and birthdays.

I worked on this hobby so much, if I have gifts that would fit in them. It's like one of the hobbies I love to do, besides Just Dance, putting up Christmas lights, working on the merit badges (which that's been accomplished already), etc. It gives me lots of good ideas on how I can create such art on each one.

Owl City pattern

This is how I start making on them. Every while, when my parents come home from Kohl's, with a bunch of stuff they bought, they give each of some of us a pair of clothes, and different pairs of shoes. After taking the shoes out of a shoe box, I ask my Mom, if I can start borrowing shoe boxes instead of throwing them away, and she said I can. Shoe boxes are just too wonderful to be thrown away that they can be used for something else. 

Taylor Swift pattern

I've been collecting a lot of shoe boxes so I can decorate them into boxes that look a lot like giving gifts. It's just too wonderful to just tear off wrapping paper from a surprised item you receive and just throw the wrapping paper away. So I just find lots of different colors of paper and buy rolls of wrapping paper, and then create some patterns to use as home-made wrapping paper (which my parents got mad at me for using a lot of ink on the printer).

One Direction pattern

With patterns that I printed out, I made four patterns of logos from my favorite famous bands and music artists, as you can see in the pictures, as you can see in the pictures of what kind of patterns they are.

Justin Bieber pattern

Star paper

Then I find lots of different colors of paper to create a lot of ways that I can imagine on my mind. I usually try to make sure that they aren't crinkled or bubbled up to make it look back. All I do to make them look exactly like gift boxes is folding it up like wrapping a gift. Then if I could, I cut little strips of different color paper and make it look like it's ribbon.

Red and Green creation

Purple and Orange creation

Rainbow creation

And then with wrapping paper, I just do it the same way as I did on the rest, but I don't make strips of paper to make ribbon on wrapping paper, because the patterns on them look to wonderful to be covered with ribbon. So I leave them just like that.




Then, after I'm done making the boxes, I open them to make sure they work just fine and, then the best part, is to add tissue paper inside each box, just like adding it to gift bags. Then right when the boxes are ready, I may do two choices, buy gifts or make gifts. I mostly bought gifts this year.

Winnie the Pooh wrapping paper

Cars wrapping paper

Noel wrapping paper

Disney Princess wrapping paper

Snowman wrapping paper

Snowflake wrapping paper

For the rest of this post, you may enjoy looking at all the different gift boxes that I made. I hope you enjoyed looking at them.

Peppermint wrapping paper

Stripe wrapping paper

Red

Yellow

Blue

Christmas Traditions

I'm sorry it took me a while to write a post, I've been busy with school to make sure that my finals have been turned in. I have a whole month off from school. I'm laying off the trip in the East for a while, because it took so long. It took us two weeks to go back east and come back home. Okay, here are the Christmas traditions.

Every year, we have lots of things we love to do. We are in charge of lots of things to put up for the season. I was in charge of putting up Christmas Displays outside our house.

We even got to have our own little Christmas trees in our bedrooms.

We also love to wrap gifts and give them to others.

We love to hang up stockings on our balcony, and cut them off and lay them on the pew on Christmas Eve,

Then we love to deck the halls like putting up garlands, especially one with lots of candy canes hanging on it.

Then we love singing Christmas tunes that are our favorites,

We love seeing lots of things outside our homes, like Festival of Lights, Temple Square, seeing our relatives, seeing Forgotten Carols, etc.

Then we love to hang a homemade garland with stocking and tree craft plastic with everybody's names on them.

And then we love to have Christmas Cousin parties, when the cousins come over to our house to celebrate it with us.

We love Christmas a lot, because it brings special memories and that we learn the greatest story about Christmas. Do you have lots of good traditions to have every year? If you do, then that's totally great.  

The Biggest Trip EVER: Palmyra, New York

Sorry it's been a while for me to write a post. I was so busy trying to get so many deadlines done for school. At least I'm almost done. Remember that I still have a lot to talk about our biggest out-of-state trip? Well, it was after Kirtland. This place we went to was Palmyra, New York. Even though we didn't get to take a tour around Manhattan, or Central Park, we still got to go to three special parts of New York. We went to see a big view of Niagara Falls. It was amazing of how it looked, but we made sure that none of the little kids could try to climb through the fence.

Then we went to another part of it. It's another church history story. We went to the Sacred Grove and the village where Joseph Smith lived in his childhood. I'm going to tell you about the story. When Joseph Smith was twelve years old, he went two different churches that he wasn't so sure of which one was right or wrong. He was at his home one night and read a verse in the Bible in James 1: 5 "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." After he read the heading, he went out in the Sacred Grove to pray to the Father in Heaven. He made sure he was alone. As he was, he knelt down to his knees and started praying. Then he felt an evil power attacking him. It was Satan trying to keep him from praying. But Joseph Smith still prayed really hard away from that evil power. Then he saw a pillar of light that was brighter than the sun. From the light, he saw two personages. One of them spoke unto him calling him by name and pointing by the other. "This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" Right when Joseph asked them of which churches he should join. He was then answered that he should join none of them, for they were all wrong. Right when the personages left, Joesph Smith went back to his home to tell his family. Unfortunately, he told some professors about his Vision, lots of them thought he was a liar. They kept on saying that there are no such things as visions. But Joseph Smith really did see a vision. When some people don't believe him, he asked himself "Why persecute me for telling the truth? I have actually seen a vision and who am I that I can withstand God or why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen? For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it."

That is one of my favorite Church history stories. Lots of them make me happy, and some of them make me sad. We went inside the Sacred Grove, it looked exactly like the story. When we were in it, we had to be so reverent through it. Since it was called the Sacred Grove, we had to have half an hour of silence and to think about how we could pray to Heavenly Father anywhere else, just like Joseph Smith did. Before we went through the Sacred Grove, we also went through the museum about Joseph Smith's village. There were lots of good building about what Joseph and his family did. I liked the story about Joseph's older brother, Alvin. He built a nice looking house for the family so that they could live there, before his death at 26. Right when Alvin Smith died, the untrue churches thought that if he never got baptized before his death, he would be lost. But with more advice from Heavenly Father, Joseph Smith found out that Alvin is not lost. That's when he learned about Eternal Families. It means that families can be together forever, if it is followed through Heavenly Father's Plan of Redemption. For a big family like us, I'm sure that we'll be a family for eternity.

I like to share so much experience with everyone online, there is one more thing we did in Palmyra, we got to go see another show that was unlike the Nauvoo Pageant, we got to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant. It was mostly about the Book of Mormon stories that lots of people know and love. It was really a cool Pageant, because the hill was the stage. Lots of the stories looked kind of like it was all real. Right when we were done, we then went back to the hotel to get to bed before the next day of our trip. I hope you really loved the story I told you about. Next time, I'll talk about the next place we went to.

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