Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I went to Ocala Palms again this year to visit my great aunt. I didn't really do anything besides playing Harvest Moon DS Cute and going on the laptop for tips and tricks on Harvest Moon DS Cute. Sure, call me obssessed. I'll tell you, HM DS Cute is SOOOO addicting...

Anyway, on Wednesday, I assisted my mom in preparing the feast. There was delicious turkey (it was put in the stove upside-down before the mistake was realized), amazing cranberry sauce made from scratch (the raspberry vinegar smelled awful and I didn't like the scented tree bark. Most people call that dried cinnamon), favorsome mashed potatoes (...nothing to complain about there. It was actually pretty good) and rich pecan pie made from scratch (a little too rich though).

When we got there, I kicked back and played Cute (after the usual greetings and how-are-you-doing's, of course) until my mom yelled at me to set the table. The table was out on the back patio inside the mosquito net. It was boiling hot outside! I didn't feel like eating out in the heat, but I didn't want to get murdered for eating inside unlike everybody else. I had to go get the tablecloth, napkins, and fancy silverware. No cornucopia. It was a tiny basket filled with red, orange, and yellow leaves, pumpkins, squash, acorns, pine cones, all those fall and Thanksgiving stuff. I put two candles on either side and set the table, making sure to fold the napkins so that it looks like a green triangular crepe with a fork on top of it. Then I went inside and found my mom trying to make the gravy. She told me to pour the white powdery mix into the pot when it boils. I did as she asked, but the "gravy" didn't look edible. It was grayish lumps in a pot. After that failed attempt, I went out to the can storage counter and found a can of gravy. So the turkey was saved from dryness. Thanks to me!!!!
.......Ok, so my mom told me to find a can of gravy in the first place.
I still found it.

The actual dinner started after the many failed attempts to light the candles. The only matches that were in the house were the old fashioned ones inside the paper packet. To ignite it, one have to tear off a tiny splinter of a match and strike that against the strip of rough paper attached to the outside of the packet. Five broken matches later (those things are so fragile!!!), my great aunt got one to light up. But we couldn't do it a second time, so we just caught fire to one of the broken matches and used that to light the other candle.

Candles and matches aside, the feast went great foodwise. I was so stuffed I had to go lie down on the bed afterwards. While I was resting, I, of course, played Cute.

Time flew by, and before I knew it, night arrived. I had trouble falling asleep because there was a sensor in the guest bedroom that keeps making these clacking noises.

I overslept the next morning. Woke up at nine. That's very late for me, considering I usually wake up two hours earlier than that. I spent my morning playing Cute and researching for mining tips, and for most of the afternoon, I watched TV. When it was time to go back to Tallahassee, I played Cute on the car ride home.

...Obssessed with HM DS Cute...

Veterans Day and Swim-o-Rama

Today is Veterans Day! In school, we made something called the "Brick Wall of Bravery" that is displayed in our auditorium. It consists of paper bricks with pictures and words on them, saying how important it is to honor our veterans and respect them. We had an All-American Heroes Rally yesterday. After the rally and the guest veterans speaking and the playing of the band and orchestra, we went outside to partake in the rally events. They kicked it off by having a photo scavenger hunt. After running around looking for the clues while taking a picture at each destination, we finally got a final clue that lead us back to the auditorium, where we first started. I was talking to somebody I know, and he told me that his class got a clue that made them go all the way to the cafeteria, and the next clue said, "Oops, it turns out we made a mistake. Go back to the soccer field," or something like that. I guess I should be grateful that our clues' destinations weren't that far from each other. There were other events too, such as Boot Camp, Bean Toss, United We Stand (hula hoop game), Patriotic Puzzle (basically, a jigsaw puzzle), and many more, but most of the unnamed activities were inside events nested in Boot Camp. As you can see, they were mostly physical stuff. Except for the Apple Pie Eating Contest. That was funny. Boot Camp had stuff like push ups, sit ups, jump rope, cone zig-zag, and Army Crawl. I did the jump rope. It didn't make sense; what were you supposed to be doing? So we moved on to the other events. I also did the jigsaw puzzle. We tied with the other team. The Bean Bag Toss kinda went unnoticed for me, cuz that was when I spotted my friend and I sat down and talked to him. He was the one who told me the story about his class having to go back and forth during the scavenger hunt (remember earlier?) After lunch of a hotdog, barbeque chips, 2 McDonald's Apple Pies, and a wild cherry coke, my class did the Minuteman relay. I didn't get to see it (where was I when that happened?) Anyway, we won that. But we had to redo the Boot Camp because "our timing was inaccurate." So, our class redid the camp (I was missing again. I forgot where I was at that time. I later found out one of my classmates filled in my position at jump roping. We got the best time for the Boot Camp).

As for the Apple Pie Eating Contest, that was hilarious. It was just apple pie filling and tons of whipped cream, but it was still a sight to see. They seperated the girls from the boys. The girls went first, then the boys. The whipped cream got all over everybody's faces. Oh, did I mention that you're not allowed to use your hands? You have to have them behind your backs. We lost, both on the girl round and the boy round. I was talking to one of my friends after the rally, and she said that the reason they got the whipped cream all over their faces is so that they don't have to eat it. That will make them finish faster. I thought that was funny.

To add to the pain my legs were in yesterday after all the physical activities, we had our Swim-o-Rama today. The Swim-o-Rama is an annual fundraiser our swim team holds to raise enough money to heat the pool through winter. We collect pledges from people and then we swim for it for an hour. Say you got a relative to pledge you 10 cents per lap. You swim for an hour nonstop. Say you swam 60 laps. Then you'd get six dollars. That simple. I managed to get $2.16 worth of pledges. I swam nonstop for an hour and I got 118 laps (a lap is 25 meters), therefore getting me approximately $300. This is a different kind of fundraiser. You don't just go out and ask for money. This is saying you're going to work for it. I did, and I got three hundred dollars, which is one hundred more than the expected goal for each swimmer.

...There is school is tomorrow.

I can't move my legs...

Halloween

Halloween kinda came last minute for me, so I didn't wear a costume. But before I went trick or treating, I stuffed myself with half a dozen cookies and some pasta salad. I didn't eat a lot of candy after that.
I basically went out and got free candy (isn't that what usually happens?). Then, I donated three fourths of my candy pile to my teachers.