English Country Line Dancing

I've been going to English Country Line dances whenever I can make it (not very often). Usually it is a ton of fun, but the Christmas Ball topped it all! In addition to wonderful dances, hilarious jokes with friends, and all around-enjoyment, I got to feast my eyes on the costumes. Many people simply wore nicer clothes (a nice skirt, or a church outfit, etc.) Since it was the Ball, several people wore prom dresses. But I saw several hoopskirt dresses, a few Colonial gowns, a Southern Belle, a few midevil peasants, a medieval princess, someone who looked just like Henry XIII, several Regency gowns, and even something that looked like either a pirate or a gypsy. I, of course, wore my Elvish dress and jewelry. :) Some dances are for the older kids, teens, and adults, but entire families came to this one.

Here are a few pictures-- not many, because I was spending my time dancing, talking, and drinking the berry tea.

^My friend Grace wore a Medevil outfit that looked Elvish!

I had a video of one of my favorite dances-- the Scottish-- but apparently it didn't download onto the computer. I hope I didn't delete that particular memory card yet...

What Child is This?

What child is this, who, laid to rest
On Mary's lap, is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?


Every child is a miracle. What else would you call such a little bundle of joy? Tiny fingers, innocent eyes, soft skin, sweet smell-- but most importantly-- a person?

But what is so important about this child? How can He be more than a miracle? What makes Him so special? He is just as weak and just as vulnerable as any other little baby. He is sleeping in His mother's arms, shivering slightly in the way that babies have a habit of, and probably drooling all over her sleeve.

This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:
Haste, haste to bring him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary! 

This is Jesus, the Son of God. He is part of the Trinity. He is God.
He made the world. All of its complexities, all of its brilliancy-- He made it. He made you. It is because of Him that you and I exist at all.

What child is this? So small? So weak? So willing to suffer, for those that He created? So delicate and breakable? So human?


This is probably the single most important question you could be asking yourself right now. What child is this? Is this really God? Do you believe it? It is beyond your imagination, if you really try. Try, right now. Put away your fears of actually seeing this. Shut your eyes, forget lists of things to do, and spend ten seconds really paying attention. This child is more than a picture on Christmas cards.

Raise, raise the song on high,
The Virgin sings her lullaby:
Joy, joy, for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary!

On Christmas Carols and Songs of the Holidays

When you think of Christmas, you (often) think of decorated trees, piles of presents, and Christmas songs. You think of carols sung by off-tune children (as in my family), instrumentals issuing from an iPod, concerts held by the next musician in the family...

Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and Frosty the Snowman are all favorites. They haunt your Christmas shopping in November and stay with you until December the Twenty-Sixth.

Songs such as these are great fun. They remind us of the simple, childish imagination. To many, these songs hold as much truth as Silent Night and Hark the Harold Angels Sing. To them, these songs are all things of imagination-- things that are fun to think of, but things that they do not believe in.

To Christians, however, these songs hold so much more meaning than Rudolf or Frosty. They are real. A child, sleeping in the feeding trough of rough animals, is the greatest human ever to walk the earth. This child is God Himself. The peace, the splendor, the humbled omniscience indicated by Silent Night are true. Tell me, does that not send a shiver down your spine? That joyful shiver is something that poor Rudolf never gives me.
This is truth, not a myth. And sometimes it seems too much to believe. Doesn't a baby born to save trillions of people sound as magical as a reindeer who leads a sleigh full of trillions of toys for joyful children? Doesn't the truth sound like a fairytale?

Perhaps that is the point. Take a short breather and look at Christmas as if it were something you had never seen. Take the risk of seeing an ordinary thing for the first time again. The truth is so magical that it is shocking. But it resounds so much clearer, so much deeper, so much sweeter than tales of a talking snowman.


To quote G.K. Chesterton, "Truth must always be stranger than fiction, because fiction is the creation of the human mind and is therefore congenial to it."

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Rackers Family Traveling Circus

Our family can be quite the circus. If most of our neighbors weren't so reclusive, then we would have an audience every day.

For example, I've become quite the oddity since I began riding the unicycle. Our imaginary land full of ninjas, orcs, knights, and princess who swordfight spans the full street, and also the bike trail. And our drop-dead amazing talents (ripstick, pogo stick, bikes, etc.) are sure to entertain any passerbys. Especially since we seem to be the only kids in the neighborhood who do such things.

Today, we were running up and down our street, decked out in full Lord of the Rings costumes. We were looking for those tiny niches that could be Middle Earth instead of Suburbia, Rolla Style. The eccentricities were complete because we were riding scooters, carrying blankets, and juggling the camera and tripod.

Seriously. Just move to our neighborhood and you will never again go to the movie theater to get your entertainment.

Outdoor Challenge

Time for a little review!

This is one of my favorite Wii games, next to Gutair Hero, Wii Fit, WiiResort, and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games. This is Outdoor Challenge *cue heroic drumroll*

This has got to be one of the most engaging video games I have played. I have not played Dance Dance Revolution, but the mat is similar. In Outdoor Challenge, you run, jump, bang, bend over, stumble, and hop all over the mat, completing dozens of activities. Some of these include: Mountain Boarder (like skateboarding), Jumprope, Mine Cart, Mole Stomper (use your feet, not a hammar!) and Sprinting. Those are some of the one-player games. There is also a pretty good selection of two player games, where you can compete against, work with, or challenge another person.

If you do it for an hour at a time, desperately trying to reach the next level or next high score, you get quite the workout. Sweatin' within da first ten minutes kinda workout. :) It also challenges your balance-- leaping back and forth as quickly as you can across the mat can make you trip and fall. But that is the fun part. :)

Today, I finally reached the last level. After stomping on 223 mole heads, sprinting in place for 2 minutes 32 seconds, back flipping on a skateboard, and sliding down a very interesting tunnel, I BEAT THE LAST LEVEL. But there is no way I am bored of it. I'll still get on all the time in order to keep my high score far from my brothers' reach. By the way, if you make it to the last level, wait for the credits to finish. It unlocks a Master Level. :)

The hardest parts of this game are learning (you have to learn how each activity runs, get a feel for the mat, etc.) and finishing (The last level was pretty difficult!).

Stars: 4.9999999999 out of 5

The only cons: the game only goes up to two players, and it hurts if you have flat feet. You can't wear shoes on the mat, so if your feet are uber-flat like mine, all the running in place can give you a cramp. But that doesn't affect 99.99999999% of the population, so forget I said anything.

Screenshots in XP

Today seems to be another Night of Randomly Long Posts. I thought I would share a little secret with your inner computer geek. Because, all of us have an inner computer geek.

But your inner computer geek probably does not read HTML like my inner computer geek does. Well, mine isn't literate, but at least mine can peice it out and then run crying to Google when stuff doesn't work. Your inner computer geek may just need a bit of help from mua.

Today, I finally figured out how to screenshot on a computer running Windows XP. If you have Vista, life is easy. (Or not... Vista seems to be a poison to computers, but at least it has cool feautres). With Vista, you can screenshot/screencapture with this handy tool called "Snipper". You can size it to whatever size you want, and it automatically saves as a JPEG image file.

XP people, it is possible to screenshot! First, locate this button:

 This is called Print Screen. If you press it, the magical little Windows Bunnies take a little picture of everything that is on your screen. The magical Bunnies are invisible, however, so you don't know it is happening.
If you want to take a picture of an active window (the window you have open, not a pane of glass going jogging), press ALT and PrintScreen.

Now, go to Paint or some other such program. Press Edit then Paste, or press CTRL and tap V at the same time. Click "save as," make sure you have JPEG selected, and PRESTO!

Now you can go and edit this image, cropping it to whatever desired size.

Yeah, yeah, Vista, go rub it in our faces. You do that all in one step. :P See the things I can figure out when Dad takes the magical, always-dying Vista laptop to work?

Interesting Personality Test

I took an interesting personality test, called "Personality Patterns" on Facebook, and it was pretty accurate and interesting. Sorry I have suddenly posted a gazillion random things on the blog today. :P

These are the top ten results it gave. It is interesting how 90% of it is pretty spot-on. :) Oh, its pretty long so I am putting the jumpbrake button on. If you want to read it, press "Read More".

Drowing in Latin. Oh the woe.

Right now I am in the middle of writing a Theology essay. I was writing the sentance, "Jeremiah upset the leaders of the Isrealites because...", and instead of writing because, I wrote "quod".

I've also used (purposefully, because the Latin words are shorter...) autem=however, itaque=therefore, ut=in order to, etc.

Yesterday, I spent nearly two hours on Latin. One of my exercises included a very detailed parsing of "Adeste fideles" aka "O Come All Ye Faithful". Not a translation, a parsing. Describing the definition of the word, its usage in that instance, what conjugational/declensional endings are on it, what the use of those are... I think I will never be able to fully appreciate that song again.

Latin is eating me up like a giant pink dinosaur. Um, that was a strange analogy. I think Latin has eaten my brain so much that I can no longer think properly. One... more... essay... then I am done until tomorrow...

NaNoWriMo is over. Now what?

NaNoWriMo, aka National Novel Writing Month, is over. I am proud to say that I wrote 50,000 words! Actually, I wrote 50,049 words. :)

I managed by the skin of my chinny chin chin. Or however that rhyme goes. I wrote three days' worth before November, so that I could take off during Thanksgiving. I had planned on getting ahead... that didn't happen.

My novel, Nevdroonia, is my no means finished. I have only written 3/4 of the storyline, and then I have to edit, edit, and edit. Nevdroonia is by no means a great book-- I feel like all I have done is mashed together LotR and Narnia. Which actually is a somewhat true assertation. But I am going to FINISH THIS STORY! It's been rolling around in my head since I was 12. Actually, it rolled around while I was 12, hibernated until I was 13, resurfased for three weeks, and almost died before I resurected it this year at 15.

Here are my new goals:
December: NO WRITING. I am going to focus on finishing up this semester, working on art, and making Christmas presents.
January: I will finish the story!
January/Febuary: Self-edit, share with friends and family, as for their help editing, and then be done.

NaNoWriMo is one of the craziest things I have ever done. I spent an hour or more every day, cranking out 2,000 words. I have not created a masterpeice, nor have I completed the wordcount for any "reward" other than the fact of knowing I can do it. The longest story I had ever written before Nevdroonia was a short detective story, stretching to a full five typed out pages. NaNoWriMo got me 90 or so, single spaced.

Why did I do it? Why did I torture myself, especially if there is no reward for "winning", and my story could never hope to be published?

Why do athletes spend hours a day exercising, if most never make it beyond high school teams and weekend runs? Why do artists spend days on a painting if they don't want to sell it? Why do musicians practice if they might not have a chance of getting into concerts? Why do "math geeks" like people in my family do math... for fun?

I did it for fun. I did it so that I could prove to myself that it can be done. I did it because I enjoy it. My reasoning is this: If I can write 50,000 words in 30 days, then if I ever have a good book idea, I know it can be done.

And before I go, I want to say thanks to my family for putting up with crazy me. :)

A Long Tag

"Kathleen Pevensie" tagged me! Here goes! *deep breath*


1- Have you been asked out? No I haven't.
2 - Where was your default picture taken? Meramac Spring State Park, by my grandma, a couple years ago
3 - What's your middle name? Tsk tsk tsk. Not online.

4 - Your current relationship status? How about this... too young to be serious, (hopefully) too smart to date for fun.

5 - What's the first thing you do when you wake up from a nap? IF I can actually lay still long enough for a nap... I try desperately to figure out what I was dreaming about. My last nap-dream was a very strange thing about a giant pink dinosaur eating my Latin book and then drowning in a swimming pool. ???

6 - What is your current mood? Procrastination, if that is a mood. Cheerful, but overwhelmed.

7 - What color shirt are you wearing? Burgandy-cream-rose stripe

!8 - Missing something? THANKFULLY I found my history book, which was missing for TWO AND A HALF WEEKS.
9 - Current Favorite Quote? Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

10 - If you could go back in time and change something what would be? Oh, plenty of things. Any one thing? Nah. Those times I've sassed Mom and Dad, or was mean, or got really behind in schoolwork, or stuffed myself... you know.

11 - If you must be an animal for one day, what would you be? A unicorn.:)

12 - Ever had a near death experience? Does "barely coming out of Mommy's tummy" count?

13 - Something you do a lot? School. Read. School. Art. School. Crafts. Writing. Play on computer. Repeat.

14 - The song stuck in your head? Let it Be, by the Beatles.

15 - Least favorite household chore? Bathrooms. Need I go to more detail?

16 - Name someone with the same birthday as you. Mary, Mother of God. And my uncle Keith.

17 - When was the last time you cried? A few days ago, when *embarrassed* my beads weren't stringing onto my wire, and I was convinced I'd just wasted ten dollars.

18. - Have you ever sung in front of a large audience? Look who you are looking at. I CAN'T sing. But truth be told, I have sung in front of a large audience. I went to drama camp when I was in second or third grade, and got the lead children's duet. But I think that was because I could act, not because I could sing. :)

19 - If you could have one super power what would it be? Flying

20 - What's the first thing you notice about the opposite gender? How tall they have suddenly gotten. Now I am no longer a giant. Yay me!

21 - What do you usually order from Starbucks? I don't really like coffee and I've never been to Starbucks.

22 - What's your biggest secret? No big secrets... but, a few nights ago, I actually got scared when my little sister left the room to go to the bathroom. Reversed roles there.

23- What's your favorite color? Cerulean blue. Count on an artist to know the specific name.

24 - Do you still watch kiddie shows or tv shows? Kidde shows. :) That is usually all that is on our TV- kiddie ones and older movies.

25 - What's on your walls? I had to clean them for showing the house. :( Lets see... a breaker box with magnets, shelves with Mom's doll collection, a photograph, and a poster of an M.C. Escher sketch. I used to have my "art gallery" up there.

26 - What are you? An Elf. And ontop of that, I am a wizard HP style, and a princess.

27 - Do you speak any other language? Speak? I speak a little bit of German. Emphasis on the little. I WRITE, READ, and DIE BECAUE OF Latin.

28 - What's your favorite smell? A spring morning rainshower over fresh-mown glass.

29 - Describe your life in one word! OneWordDoesNotSuffice

30 - Have you ever kissed in the rain? I've kissed my baby brother.

31 - What are you thinking about right now? This tag, and how much school I have left. Also how much my feet hurt.

32 - What should you be doing? NO! Please do not remind me!!! Schoolwork... and essay...

33 - Who was the last person that made you upset/angry? I get upset way too much. This last time it was three of my younger sibilings, all at once.

34 - How often do you talk to God? Try to all the time. Does that work? No. But I try.

35 - Do you like working in the yard? Not too much.

36 - If you could have any last name in the world, what would you want? Something exciting and reminisent of LotR.

37 - What is your natural hair color? Brown. With tinsy bits of red and black.

38 - Do you have many friends? I have many awesome friends. :)

39 - Who is your role-model? Our Lord. and the saints.

40 - Do you like your life? Let me think now... yes! Even though its not always fun or great, what is not to like?

I now tag:

Clarrisa
Jenna
The Triplets