Author: Kelly Page 6 of 8

Cousin Kylee will be playing in a girl’s rugby game this afternoon at the government middle school close to our house.  The kids are looking forward to it very much.  Both of the aunts will be there as well as Cousin Julia who is home from Dartmouth.  I will try to remember to take some pictures.

I know that no one really wants to know the exclusive details of my illustrious birthday party, but so what? This is a blog. You can read whatever you want. It’s a free country. I can’t tell you what to do. Okay. Here goes. My Illustrious Birthday Party (Or IBP for short) is going to be one of those totally cool mystery role-playing parties where everyone comes dressed up as their character and acts like their character throughout the party. My wonderful Aunts are mostly in charge of the whole thing, and they will be the hosts at my IBP. The setting: Modern day Beverley Hills Girl’s Private High School. The weapon: No one was murdered. 🙁 A diamond necklace was stolen. The victim: Jewell Diamond (aka: your’s truly) So every girl has a ‘talent’. Mine is fashion (duh, the important one), and the others are music, journalism, art, equestrianism, and athletics. Aunt Julia, Aunt Jean, or my Cousin Kylee will play the matronly head of the school. Another one of them will play the tough guy (girl) policewoman. After the party is done in a couple of hours, we’ll play games and eat angel-food cake with strawberries and whipped cream, and make a craft or two, and do hair, and eat chocolate covered pretzels (Don’t tell Mom), and run around, and scream, and talk, and blow bubbles, and spike Christian’s hair up (if he’s there), and stuff like that. So now, if you’ve taken the time to read this, you know the exclusive details of my IBP. I know you’re glad you read this.

Here is a poem that I wrote about what I learned in history today. “The Scramble” refers to a period in the late 1800s when most of the European countries were dashing to claim land in the mostly undiscovered continent of Africa. They took the land from the natives there without giving it a thought, though it caused much suffering for many years. They did bring modern devices and ways of life to Africa though. The European countries met together in a peaceful conference to divide up the land in Africa. I don’t think the countries in Africa had their current names at the time period of this poem, but I used the names anyway to make it more ‘rhymeable’. 🙂

“Give me Nigeria!”
“I will take Chad!”
“I’d like Somalia!”
“Wait! Give me a pad!”

“Now gentlemen really,
enough is enough!
If we all want Africa
we musn’t be tough!”

“Raise your hands nicely
Like good girls and boys
and I’ll write down your request
no fistfights or ploys.”

“You first Queen Victoria.
now what do you want?
Nigeria’s quite nice but unbearably hot
Benin is too, but the elephants gaunt.”

“I prefer Mali.”
sniffed the arrogant lady
it’s small, not too hot,
very modest and shady.”

The judge he wrote down
the request in a book
and put on his glasses
to take a good look –

At the court room around him
where monarchs were seated
and all had their hands raised
wishing to be heeded.

The judge called on King Watzizname
from Portugal
and the great man’s huge voice
sounded out through the hall.

“South Africa’d please me,
but ’tis owned by the Dutch
I would like Kenya
if it’d please you, and such.”

So on went the judge
a-writing and asking:
“And what would you like.”
In his power was he basking.

In a couple of hours
(Maybe it was more than that)
the judge had the countries
in his ledger, down pat.

And all went away
most satisfied
but in the great land of Africa
people suffered and cried.

The End!!!

A couple days ago at the library, when I thought I had read all the good books there were to be read, and all that was left was a couple of picture books and some magazines, I came upon a series that I had been searching for.  Luck was with me, and I found two more series that I had heard about or been searching for.  Plus, Christian found two totally new Asterix and Obelix comix boox!  And we got the usual Tintin.  And an extra book to even things out too.  Oh, and another series that I had been searching for.  And next time I’m going to look for a couple of books that I have read about.  So our reading for this week (and maybe next week too) is enough for us to be satisfied.  And there’s also our home school books which are very good.  And all the books laying around the house.  And the Hank the Cowdog book that we forgot to turn in last time.  Why would anyone hate the public library?

Yesterday (as Dad said) we went to our first tennis lesson. The tennis club is very cool, it has an outdoor pool, several indoor courts, several outdoor courts, and a big upstairs room for viewing the indoor courts. That is where Mom stays to study her calculus. We were a little bit shy at first, but our instructor was very nice. He introduced us to the rest of our class: Ronnie, who turned thirteen in December and is home schooled. She was very nice and always giving us tips or compliments! Sterling was in sixth grade I think and the teacher labeled him as kind of crazy. He was always bouncing a tennis ball on his racket. 🙂 David used to go to my school and he knows some of my friends, he is in the eighth grade, the teacher labeled him as always late and even more crazy. I think there are going to be some more kids coming on Tuesday.

After introductions we started practicing a little bit. The teacher let us borrow some tennis rackets and all he had us do at first was hit the ball when he threw it at us. We did that for a while, then practiced bouncing the ball on the racket with our palm up, then our knuckles up. After that we practiced serving the balls and the instructor showed us how to hold the racket, how to stand, and how to swing. Then we played a few games. I liked playing Jail. You lined up and the teacher threw you a ball. Then, if you hit it over the other side, you were safe. If you didn’t, you were in ‘jail’ on the other side. The only way you could get out of jail was catching the ball before it bounced. It was all very fun and I can’t wait until Tuesday! Mom was up above watching us the whole time, talking to Ronnie’s mom, who was very nice. Ronnie comes all the way from Salem because of the instructor. Pretty cool!

I am completely amazed.  As we are wont to do on Saturday mornings, we went to Wendy’s for an early lunch, then on to the Albany public library to turn in last weeks books and pick up a whole new bunch of books.  Kelly found The Great Brain and it looks awesome.  I like it already and I have only read three paragraphs.  I think we are going to try to read it aloud as a “go-to-bed” book.  I can hardly wait.  Well, that is not the thing about which I am amazed.  The thing about which I am amazed is the immediate connection to the library’s wireless LAN that I was able to acheive with almost no effort at all on my Kubuntu Linux laptop.  I am writing this web post sitting at a table at the library.  I love it.  Why would anyone buy a Windows computer?

Kelly and Christian’s friend and our neighbor, Hannah, spent the night with us last night.  Kelly and Hannah stayed up talking until nearly one in the morning.  I think they had a great time.  I sure this will happen more often now that they have done it once.  Hannah wants Kelly to go to her house tonight, but I think we will have her wait at least until next weekend.

Kaktus Kids 2.2 is at long last out! Look at our main page: www.chapmankids.net to see this illustrious magazine!!!! We hope that you like it and make sure to check out page 15, which is by our friends Daniel Larson and David Larson in Dallas Texas!

1849
by Kelly Chapman (copyright 2007) 🙂

It was in 1849
that the miners went to mine
they lived in camps
on the river banks
And there they mined for gold. For shining, shimmering gold.

Then blow ye winds hi-ho, they sang
For Californ-i-o, they sang
There’s plenty of gold so I’ve been told on the banks of the Sacramento.
And then they mined for gold. For shining, shimmering gold

And there in the old boom town
they grew old, stooping, brown
with large straw hats
and red bare backs
But still they mined for gold. For shining, shimmering gold.

Some did not find their prize
In it’s gold-yellow guise
But “I’ll always” said they
above the donkey’s bray
“I’ll always mine for gold. For shining, shimmering gold.”

It was kind of a corny poem you know? But I liked it. So in my poetry yesterday I was learning about titles and how they work with the poem and I read a poem called Dream? It was really cool. And then I had to write a poem. They gave me several choices on what to write it on but the one I chose was: A. Write a poem that is hard to understand without the title. Maybe my poem is pretty easy to understand. It’s not really deep or anything and you can rhyme just about anything with ‘ing’. So here’s the title: Neighborhood

Here are the last two lines. I made another one up this morning. Be warned. Its rather cheesy. I couldn’t find anything good that rhymed with neighborhood:

These are the sounds of a Neighborhood. Some are bad and some are good.
Hear them well or hear them not. But I will hear them, it’s all I got(have). 😀

Maybe the last line was…different but… I liked my poem. No one should contradict me in this. You eventually hear anyone of those sounds or see those actions in a neighborhood. But right now it is quite outside and I need to get to work. Does anyone have any inspirations for a new poem?

Colliding, twirling, sliding, whirling
running, speeding, hunting, eating
winning, losing, bumping, bruising
sitting, walking, watching, talking
yelling, crying, laughing, sighing
working, bending, never ending
painting, nailing, fishing, sailing
gossip, chatter, bad and badder
reading, loving, playing, shoving
driving, writing, barking, biting
screeching, crashing, straining, mashing
tooting, rooting, owls hooting
hiding, creaking, ever seeking,
tweeting, twirping, blowing, burping

This is an experiment that is half for school and half for the satisfaction of myself. I will see if you can guess the title of this poem. I’ll give you the title and the last line tomorrow. Adios!

Assuming that anyone that reads this blog reads Kaktus Kids, our bimonthly totally cool magazine, I wanted to give a little teaser on what is coming up in the next issue, Kaktus Kids Feb/March issue. If you scroll down the main blog page a little bit you might come upon a Komix Strip. That masterpiece will be presented in Kaktus Kids next month and we will also have a teaser on an upcoming story that I am writing. Spike the Kaktus will travel to San Antonio Texas and we will have some Valentine’s Day brain teasers in the ‘Fun ‘n’ Games’ section. This is very exciting for us because Kaktus Kids ‘2.2’ will be the second issue that we will have finished on time. It is also the first consecutive issue. We hope that you will enjoy reading Kaktus Kids as much as we enjoyed making it and remember, you can send us stories, pictures, ideas, drawings, jokes, question, comments, poems or chocolate anytime you want! We even have our own e-mail for that! kaktuskids@chapmankids.net!

Dayanita in August of 2005

Dayanita is quite a wonderful cousin. She is the same age as Christian and she is very sweet and kind. Dayanita is an extremely talented artist as is her father, Uncle Laurin. She is very good with the littler children and she is always patient with her little brother, Laurincito. Sadly, her 27 year old parrot died a few days ago. That was very sad for her because I think that she has had him all of her life. But she did get a new cat recently and I’m sure that she is having fun with him. I hope to see my cousin soon, I haven’s seen Dayanita in more than a year and I’m sure that she has grown a lot! Her eleventh birthday was about a month or two ago and I wish I could have been there to see her. They sent us pictures though. She had a cake, presents, and a piñata. Now that’s one thing that we usually don’t have here. A piñata. Isn’t that sad? I’m afraid I’ll have to go down to Mexico to visit my cousins if I am to play with one (a piñata). Yes, Dayanita is a wonderful cousin and friend. I hope that I will be able to see her soon!

You know, it’s hard to write about stuff when DAD covers everything there is to know about everything so I think I’m just going to talk about school. I’m studying World History, just out of the French and American Revolutions. It is quite interesting. In fact I’m reading a book about a boy in French Canada who decides to be a “voyageur” on a canoing trip. I’m reading another book about a boy in London who discovers Methodists. Math is good. Science is interesting. Writing and Poetry are awesome. Grammar and vocabulary are good too. I got a couple of nice e-mails from my friend Alyssa who I met at convention. I haven’t seen her in a long time! I hope that they will come up to convention next year! (Oh Alyssa, my birthday is March 27 if you are reading this!) Well that’s about it.
Kelly

When our worker Kent Williston was staying at our house a couple of months ago he showed us a really cool newsletter made by these kids in Arizona. It was called the R Desert Times. We showed him our Kaktus Kids and he gave us the suggestion of writing to the “R Desert Times Kids” We did and have been corresponding ever since. (in fact the “R Desert Times Kids might be reading this right now) .  :-)  That was neat to make friends with some home schooled kids who also make a publication just like us!

Yesterday I went swimming and they timed me for a nonstop 200 lengths freestyle swim. (Oh the pain) But the good news is we only do that once a month and try to beat our time each month. The bad news is you have to dive into the pool and I haven’t really mastered that technique yet. 🙂 Tonight we have Bible study at the Myers’s house. I had better get back to work! Adios to Everyone for now!

Christian and I cannot wait for Thanksgiving (even though this is probably the third time we have cleaned up the bonus room). 🙂 We are making special little books for our cousins. These books are traditions now. This is Julia’s third book and Kylee and Charlie’s first book. They contain “versions” of the subject. So in Kylee’s book there could be rock ‘n’ roll Kylee, Santa Kylee, turkey Kylee, Martha Stewart Kylee, anything! They are really fun to make. We are also looking forward to seeing Julia. I don’t think I have seen her in two years! I wish she was staying a little bit longer. And Tim, David, and Valerie Meecum are coming! They are cool. Miss Turbone and a friend are coming. Tony, Martha, and Josh are coming. Lot’s of people! Christian and I will be making the ambrosia salad I think, and we will be setting the table, putting together some of the cold vegetables, and other odd jobs that Mom and Dad don’t feel like doing. 🙂

Yesterday night we went to the pool for another day of swim team practice. I was doing all right (though a little bit slow) nearly the whole time but then we came to the diving practice. You all know that I’m an exceptional diver and that I am very talented and all that. I guess this time my talents failed me. My stomach and head hurt so hard after I was done I nearly fainted 🙂 It was fun though! My coach was nice, she was teaching me how to do a perfect dive (which you all know I can do. It just wasn’t my day 😉 ) And the children were all kind. I’m actually having lots of fun!

I forgot to post the other day when I went baby sitting about an incident that I had had with a little girl there. Boy is she a handful. The whole time her arm hurt and we had to take her upstairs to her mother at least 80 times. Finally, the girl who was helping me, Rachelle, said no to her going upstairs. Sidney, the little girl, went into a tantrum. Rachelle got her calmed down after a while but pretty soon Sidney went into tantrums again. Rachelle was busy with the other kids so I went down to talk to Sidney. “Where does it hurt?” I said, and she jabbed her finger at her arm.

“Right HERE and my tummy hurts tooooooo!!!”

“Do you want to color?”, I asked “NO!!”, Sidney shouted.

After a little bit of coaxing I got her to color with me and then I went off to help Rachelle while Sidney colored. After maybe three or four minutes Sidney started bawling again. It seems another little girl had accidentally hit her lightly in the stomach.

“WAAAAH!!! I WANNA GO WITH MOOOOOMMMY!!!!”

I asked Sidney if she wanted to color again, “NO!” she replied angrily.

I got out the Winnie the Pooh coloring book and started to color Kanga’s scarf while humming a little tune. The other children soon joined me and we all had a terrific time coloring Kanga and Roo ice skating.

“Oh I’m having LOTS of fun, are you guys having lots of fun?” I asked the other kids.

“YES!!” they all said.

Sidney stopped snuffling. “Can I color too?” she asked.

“No, I thought you didn’t want to color!” I replied.

“But I really, really want to!” Sidney pouted.

“Sidney, I thought you said you didn’t want to color!”

“But I really, really, REALLY want to!”

I let her color and for the rest of the night, Sidney didn’t give us any trouble.

The last week or so, I’ve been writing a half an hour (more or less) on my book. I have been developing the characters, writing profiles, summarizing each chapter, reviewing the plot, and,of course, drawing my characters all over the margins of my math homework! Yes, I’m having a lot of fun with my book! In other news, Christian and I joined the swim team in Corvallis. We will start this week! They work you pretty hard but it will be very fun! All of the kids there are in 6th or 7th grade, just about our age! Christian and I are also preparing a way cool menu for Thanksgiving! We are having lots of fun preparing that. I have also started babysitting for the neighbors across the street. They don’t have kids but they have a church community group thing every week and the people keep their kids downstairs. Another high school girl helps me. She is very nice. I think that that is about it. Remind me to write on the blog more!
The Illustrious Kelly

Dad ordered a cool hair book for me a couple of weeks ago and it arrived on Saturday. Since then I have been experimenting with several different braids and buns! I’m so happy! This book isn’t just for me, Mom is going to use it too. I could never get the hang of the complicated styles that my friends at convention always do. I’m not great at doing all the styles, especially the braids, but I am getting the hang of it. I am also very excited because Dad finished correcting my Patriot’s Pen essay. Patriot’s Pen is a VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) essay contest. All I need to do is send in my essay. This will be very fun for me. Mom is telling me to get back to my math so I had better quit typing. (-:

I don’t like to be the first one to point out mistakes but I guess since no one else is willing to it’ll have to be me. First of all, someone in this household forgot to take the camera to the coast and remembered about it halfway up the next street. It was such a beautiful day that they decided to keep going so…(-: That pencil sharpener that Dad was talking about has been defective for years. First it goes well and then it decides to stop working. This new one is quite wonderful so y’all should bring some pencils and stop by our house sometime. Alsoooo…The aquarium was awesome! We saw the new exhibit, Crabs, and we saw one of those little nature movies on whales that they show in the little theater there, and we saw the jellyfish, and we touched the sea urchins and sea cucumbers and starfish, and we saw an octopus tentacle, we saw sea lions and sea otters, and finally we saw the sharks and rays in the shark tunnel. Cool! Also, my friend the Beautiful Ethne called up and we talked a long time about… wellll… nothing really. She told me that she and another girl there, the Lovely Brooke, were going to England and France to see the sights using a program caled people to people. She also told me that one of the professing ladies there is not feeling well, and she told me that she was going to go to Mt. Peak conventions. (unfortunately we will not be able to go this year) and I think that’s it! Can you believe that it’s just about a year since Dad went to Texas? Soon it’ll be a year for Mom and us kids too!