I am SO sorry it's been so long since I've posted! Between sickness, music lessons, school and 20 blankets to make at all times, it's been pretty hectic. :) I have tons of pictures, but I'm not gonna post them tonight...
I thought I'd give an update on my Aunt Tracey. Thank you all for your prayers! For those of you from church, I know we've still been praying for her, but not many details have been given, so I thought I would update y'all.
She's doing
really well. In fact, last weekend, she came down here for the whole day. That may not sound significant, but it is if you think about the fact that it's about an hour and 20 minutes from her house to ours, and before her surgery she couldn't sit in the truck at all. So to be able to sit for over an hour is a pretty big deal. She said the only pain she has is there's a teeny tiny knot in her back, but it's barely noticeable. I'm so grateful, since she's been in so much pain for such a long time. And her mood is much better now. She's back to herself. :)
My business is keeping me, well, busy. :) It's funny, I always seem to have so much to do, and yet my bank account always looks
very empty. :D I enjoy what I do though, which I suppose is all that matters. It is hard when you're trying to save up for a car though. :) My parents are awesome, though, and said they'd match whatever I earn. :)
Thanksgiving was really nice, although it was hectic. Now that we live way out here, only have of the family will come out, so we always have to go into town, and to both of my grandparent's houses. We normally go to my mom's parent's for food, and to my dad's parent's to hang out. I like getting to see all of our family; ever since we moved out here we don't see them very often. Danielle was funny. Most of the family that was there except for the grandparents she didn't remember, so it was amusing watching her. One time my second cousin John picked her up, and she just stared at him for like 5 minutes straight with a blank look on her face. :D
Danielle is almost 11 months old. Holy cow. I can't believe she's almost a year old. And get this, she's walking. Yeah. She's walking. It's driving me crazy. She's growing up too fast. She stands now with no problems whatsoever, and is getting better and better at walking all the time. It's really cute, if I say "Danielle, give me a kiss," she'll turn and give me her forehead to kiss. Today she even turned and kissed me on the lips. It was so sweet. I love her so much. :)
School is going well, although I haven't been able to work on it though. I believe I'm still on schedule to graduate at the end of February though. That's actually kind of freaky to think about how close that is. I mean, that's like 2 and a half months. Everyone asks me what I'm going to do after I graduate. The truth is, I have no idea. Right now I'm just focused on graduating. :D I have considered maybe branching out from Etsy and starting my own website. I don't know yet though. I don't have any intentions of continuing any education after I graduate, so pretty much I can do whatever. I think I'd like to start some nursing home ministry, and possibly do some babysitting. I don't have any grand plans though.
Although, in order to graduate, I have to fix a little problem I have. See, back when I went to go help Aunt Tracey, I figured 'Well, she'll probably sleep a lot, so I'll bring the laptop so I can get some school done.' Well, I had too much to carry, and since I was only going to be there for one night before Hannah took over, I decided to leave it. Four of my discs were in their sleeves, and since my Geometry disc doesn't have one, I always keep it in the laptop, which is where it was. Well, the next day Hannah came to help, and she took the laptop with her to watch Monk. Well, somehow, my Geometry disc got lost. Hannah thought she put it in one of the Monk cases, but it's not there, and neither Grandma or Aunt Tracey have seen it. So, with only one unit out of 10 left, my disc is lost. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. Actually, I've struggled a LOT with Geometry, and I really don't feel like I understand, so I'm actually hoping it stays lost. That way, we can go and get Geometry in the curriculum that I like way better, and feel like I understand. I'll have to start over again, but I can get it done pretty quickly. If we get it ordered quickly enough, I could still finish in February.
Violin is going well. I just keep working on my songs. Nothing new necessarily going on. I was going to play in Mrs. MacDonald's December recital last Friday, and she was going to accompany me, but she just felt like she hadn't put as much time as she needed to into the accompaniment part, and was just so busy getting ready for the recital, that we decided we'll do it at church for special music sometime next month. Fine with me. I'd much rather do it at church than at a recital. I know everyone at church, I don't know many people at the recital.
Voice is going SO well, and I'm so happy about it. I know it may sound easy (it did to me when I started), but it is seriously so much deeper than just singing (right Rachel?). I struggled with it for forever and ever. I've shed so many tears about it, and wanted to give up so many times. But things are finally looking up, and I'm so grateful.
And I feel like I need to talk about Mr. Addleman. He is the ONLY reason I didn't give up over a year ago. He is so encouraging, even when I'm totally screwing up. Even at my recital, when I messed up SO badly, he was such a big help. He didn't say anything like "You did great, don't worry about it", but he still made me feel better. After the recital, we both happened to be taking stuff out to our cars, and we were the only ones out there, so he pulled me aside and asked me what was going through my mind at the time. I told him I didn't want to think about it, or I'd start crying again (I already had 2 times that night). He told me some embarrassing stories from when he was my age during performances to illustrate, and he said "You know what? I messed up pretty badly, but the sun still was shining. I woke up the next day and put it behind me. Now you've got this experience under your belt, plus not to mention the fact that this is your first time playing and singing at the same time in front of people. You'll do the same thing. You'll wake up tomorrow, the sun will still be shining, and you can put this behind you."
Yeah, he's pretty great.
This is the first thing musically that has ever been hard for me. Music in general is easy for me. I picked up both violin and piano right away. Singing is the first thing that's been difficult for me, and that I've really had to work at. And like I said, if it weren't for Mr. Addleman, I would have given up so many lessons ago. I've shed a lot of tears in front of him, there's been a lot of hugs, and a lot of encouraging words. I think to myself all the time how I couldn't do this if anyone else were my teacher. And it certainly helps that he was my tee-ball coach when I was like 3 or 4, so we've known him and his family for years and years. It's weird though, before I started taking lessons, I barely knew him at all. I don't really remember him from tee-ball. Haha, I actually remember him from before tee-ball. Dad took me to a father-daughter conference, and he was speaking there. I remember Dad telling me "Hey Kayla, that's going to be your tee-ball coach", but I was busy with something else. See, they had punch there, and it had ice cream in it. And being like 3, punch with ice cream was the coolest thing EVER. So I don't remember anything else from that conference other than Dad telling me that, the ice cream punch, and being sad when Dad wouldn't let me have any more. :D But anyway, I'm getting off track. I just wanted to say how great Mr. Addleman is, and I absolutely love taking lessons from him. :)
I know Christmas is in like 2 weeks, but truthfully, I'm not really feeling in the Christmas spirit yet. Our house here doesn't have any outlets on the outside, so we can't put up lights. We can't have our regular tree because of Danielle. We have one to go on the table, but we haven't gotten that up yet. I did get to do some Christmas shopping for sibling today though, which was kinda' fun. :) Pretty much the only Christmas-y thing going on around here is Christmas music. Jonathan, Sarah, David and Annabeth are all playing in our church's Christmas service, so they practice a lot. Then there's Pandora, which is awesome. :D
Saturday we went to the zoo, which was fun. My aunt works at a nursing home, and they (or something to do with the nursing home) were hosting an event at the zoo. There was dinner, Christmas lights, and all kinds of cool stuff. It was fun. Neither David nor Annabeth remember the zoo, and it was Danielle's first time. They actually got pretty disappointed, because since it was so cold, NONE of the animals were out. Like none. I think the whole time we were there we saw peacocks, an otter, giraffes, and a duck. David was like "I don't like this zoo!" We had to explain to him that it was night, and it was cold, so the animals weren't out, and that we'd take him another time during the day. The dinner was actually awesome. They had beef, chicken, rice, brownies, rolls, and Pepsi. :D I love Pepsi. :)
I don't know how many of you use social media, but I thought I'd bring this up. I don't post pictures on here very often because I can't post from my iPad very easily, and it's really hard to load the pictures onto the computer (It's really had to explain). Well, in case any of you are interested, I do have Instagram. I post pictures on there
all the time, because I can load them right from my phone. My username is kaylacam97. I also have a business one, which is kaylascorneretsy. Just thought y'all might be interested if you want to see more pictures. My main one is private though, so you have to request to follow me.
Ok, that's about all I have to say right now. I've got a little more work to do before I go to bed, and then we have to leave the house at 8:00 tomorrow for music lessons. We're also going to Dad's softball tournament tomorrow night, which'll be fun.
Oh! Also, my friend
Sam tagged me for a questionnaire thing, so I'll be doing that soon!
