Adventures of Kayla and Flu, #1: Snack Time

This post was inspired by the blog My Milk Toof, a blog that tells stories using pictures and words. It's really cool. I hope you click on the link because it is one of the cutest blogs EVER. In the meantime, here are Kayla and Flu. Drumroll, please! Hope you enjoy it.

Kayla: Hey Flu, are you hungry? I could eat a moose.
Flu: Yeah. Me too. Hey, I know what we can eat!
Kayla: What?
Flu: Peanut butter crackers from Trader Joe's!
Kayla: Do we have those?
Flu: Uhhh.....[scans room]yup! Right there! [walks over to crackers]

Kayla: Oh. Okay. Yum! 

Flu: I'll pour the crackers for you.

Kayla: Aw, thanks, Flu.

Flu: Peanut butter crackers are the BEST.

Merry Christmas

Hi everyone! How was your Christmas? Did you get what you wanted? What was your favorite present? Where were you when you celebrated? You can tell me all about it in the comment box. 

For Christmas, I got:

• A GIANTmicrobe (the flu) 
• A Swiss Army knife
• A pack of 24 scented gel pens
• 2 thingies of flavored lip balm (one from my aunt, one from my grandparents)
• A necklace
• 4 bracelets
• A cute t-shirt with macarons on it
• A Tapefetti set
• A Christmas-themed Rubik's Cube
• 2 bars of chocolate+1 Toblerone
• Cherry blossom body lotion and perfume
• 2 makeup kits (1 from my parents, one from my aunt)
• Brushes for makeup kits
• Hair accessories for Kayla
• Purple shoelaces with cupcakes on them (and that smell like cupcakes too =))
• Milk straws with strawberry-flavored beads inside (you suck the milk through the straws and it absorbs the strawberry flavor)
• Raspberry-vanilla cupcake gum
• A Rainbow Loom

and lots of other cool stuff. 

Happy holidays! Taryn

Finally, something about travel

For Christmas, Mommy, Daddy, Joy, and I are going to my paternal grandparents' house. They live all the way up in Minnesota. From where I live, that's a two-day drive! 

 Along with my awesome grandparents, 4/5 of my aunts and uncles live up there, too. Also one cousin. (The other aunt and uncle live in Massachusetts. With my other two cousins.) So I will be spending Christmas with most of my family! Yay!

Again, just another post

The only exciting thing that happened here is that we got snow. Yes, enough to go sledding. When Kathy and I went out, some one had built a jump on the hill, and Daddy wanted us to go over it.

I missed the jump a million and five times (okay, I'm exaggerating.) and Kathy missed a million and three (exaggerating again). But after a while we both went over! Here is a picture of me about to go down the hill: 

           

             And here's me and Kathy going up the hill.

I am sorry I have not been posting a lot about traveling. I'll try to come up with a good story, ok? 

Thanks for reading! Taryn

I'm sorry.

Ok readers, I'm sorry I haven't been posting a lot lately. Nothing worth posting about. It's rainy here, so I can't go to the skatepark. I "have to" write something instead of make spicy-peanut-and-coconut haystacks like I want to. Sigh. Also, I accidentally deleted my live from the car #2 post, so I'm mad a bout that, too. 

Just a post. Nothing special.

 I don't want to type a post right now but my mom is making me. I don't even know what to to write about! Does anyone have any suggestions? Anyone?

Live from the car!

Hi everyone! Right now I am sitting in the car at the Tennessee welcome center, doing...nothing in particular. Typing this post on my iPad, I guess. Mommy is trying to figure out where to stop for lunch, and Kathy has her headphones on, listening to music. Daddy isn't on this trip.

What are we doing in Tennessee, you ask? Well, in July, my best friend, Zelda, moved to Nashville. :( But now, we are going to visit her! Oh yeah!

Yesterday, we left directly from Girl Scouts to start on this trip. Since we left in the afternoon, it is a two-day trip! Don't worry though, Kathy and I are surviving. Somehow. :)

That's pretty much all that's happened so far. Oh wait! This morning Mommy made us stop outside the Wytheville Office Supply shop, or whatever it was called. (Typical mom behavior, right?) But the shop was very cool--it has a giant, huge, gargantuan, big pencil sticking out of it! So awesome! I would show you the pics, but this blogsy app is being silly, and I can't access them. Sorry. :(

 

Posted with Blogsy

In case of boredom:

This post is adapted from my diary. It is my In Case Of Boredom plan for when I am at home and after I have finished my schoolwork. Here is the list. Note: this isn't in any particular order, I just came up with these activities off the top of my head.

                                In Case Of Boredom: 
1. Don't panic. :) Thank you, I know this sounds like The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
2. Look up interesting math stuff on Wikipedia. 
3. Find pictures of cute animals (also on Wikipedia.)
4. Bake or cook a dessert. 
5. Sit down in comfy chair with blanket, good book, and candy.
6. Find cool words--palindromes, long ones that don't repeat letters, like ortanique (a cross between an orange and a tangerine), and words that spell different words when you spell them backwards, like live and evil, and portmanteaux, which are words that are blended together, like smog (smoke and fog).
7. Watch a funny TV show.
8. Write in diary.
9. Ask Mommy if we can go to the skatepark. 
10. Play Minecraft.
11. Give self a spa treatment.
12. Listen to music and read book.

Of course, I could always do this when I'm NOT bored, but it's good to have an emergency plan. In my house, boredom is the "b-word", and if someone says, "I'm bored," they will immediately have to do a chore. Which gives you something to do, but still, I'd rather have a fun boredom buster.

If you have an In Case Of Boredom plan, I would love to know about it! Just type part (or all) of it in the comment box.

So much more than peanut butter and jelly

My last few posts haven't really been about travel. Sorry  if you really missed hearing about my adventures. Here's one just for you.

I REALLY want to go back someday.

In New York, Mommy and I went to a restaurant called Peanut Butter and Company that specializes in--surprise!--peanut butter sandwiches. If you think this sounds boring, IT WAS NOT. It was very good. There were more types of peanut butter sandwiches than I could imagine. They have some normal stuff, like PB&J, and some weird stuff, like the Pregnant Lady, which has peanut butter and pickles. That is crazy. And strange.

When you order a sandwich, they bring it out to you with carrot sticks and potato chips, "Just like Mom used to do." Interesting. My mom almost never allows potato chips in the house.

They have all kinds of peanut butter, and by "kinds" I don't mean texture like crunchy and creamy. (Although those are offered.) I'm talking flavors. There is a white chocolate peanut butter, and a cinnamon raisin peanut butter, and some spicy peanut butter made with chili powder. And a lot more types. Of course, you can have just the regular, unflavored stuff, but it's more fun to try something new.

I chose a Fluffernutter sandwich made with dark chocolate peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. That was wonderful--how could anyone have something against peanut butter and marshmallow, unless they're allergic? 

Mommy decided on peanut butter BLT made with maple peanut butter. She said she was surprised at how good it was. I was surprised too!

Scrumptious. No other word for it.

They make the best peanut butter sandwiches I've ever had. If you ever go to New York, make sure you stop there for lunch.  

How to make a Sockmouse

Yesterday, when I was playing with Rascal, I invented (I think) a new type of stuffed animal. I call it: the Sockmouse. They make great cat toys.

Sockmice are easy to make, stuffed animals that you create on the go. It is made of materials that most adventurers probably have in their backpacks. You will need:

• A bandanna
• A (spare) sock that you don't mind drawing a face on
• A Sharpie

Bandanna

Sock

Sharpie (I used the jumbo kind)

HOW TO MAKE A SOCKMOUSE

 1. Draw a face on the toe of the sock. Include whiskers, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

  2. Stuff the bandanna into the sock, pushing it down as far as possible.

 3. Tie an overhand knot in the sock above where you stuffed the bandanna.

4. You just made your first Sockmouse! Give yourself a pat on the back. Then give your little fella a name and personality.

My Sockmouse, Mr. Sockmouse, loves sunflower seed and running in his wheel.

Smile!

I recently started arranging my dry cereal or crackers into smiley faces when I eat them.

Cheese crackers. This was the first smile I made with
food.

Made with Yummy Mummy cereal (and one marshmallow)

Count Chocula

Yummy Mummy marshmallows

Chocolate chips

I think this one was made of Count Chocula marshmallows.
Not sure.

This one was star sequins. Not food, but hey, it's nice.

New Moon Girls magazine had an article about kids with cleft palates, a condition that disfigures the nose and mouth, and how girls like me can help these kids. When you find a smile in the world around you, you take a picture of it. You pledge to donate money for each picture of a smile to a charity that provides surgeries for kids with cleft palates.


You can also host a smile-a-thon. Ask family, friends, and neighbors to find or make smiley faces and take a picture of them and pledge money to donate to a cleft palate charity.

It's very fun to make smiles. You can do that too, or host a smile-a-thon yourself! (I actually haven't done that yet. Something to talk to my mom about.)                                                                                                    

Jell-O!

 I LOVE making Jell-O. I don't know why, just something about the taste, and the texture, and how fun it is to cook.
It's very good with whipping cream mixed in it ("decadent", Mommy calls it).

 I've stopped using the brand name packets after Mommy said that some of the food dyes they put in the Jell-O packets are banned in Europe. Instead, I make it from scratch, using this recipe.  I couldn't put the whipping cream in it, though, because Mommy says the lemon juice might make the cream curdle.

Sliced lemon smiley face!

First, Mommy showed me how to slice the lemons in half. That part was fun. For some reason, I really like using the knife. Then I squeezed the lemons, added some sugar and water, and started boiling the juice. That was not my favorite part -- I'm not a big fan of hot things. Luckily, Mommy did most of the work with the boiling water.

Stirring the mixture

The lemon gelatin dessert took a long time to set. Kathy was very impatient. The whole evening, it was, "Taryn, will the Jell-O  be ready soon? Well? Will it?" She called it Jell-O even though it wasn't. When it finally was ready, she thought I gave her less than I gave myself. (I didn't.) But we both liked it very much. 

Mommy made her special whipped cream to go on top, and it was very, very good. It reminded me of a lemon meringue pie.

Ready to eat!

Someday when I grow up,  I want to figure out a way to powder fruit juice without using artificial flavors and colors for my gelatin dessert. Then I'll package the mix. It'll be even better than the brand name packets. (And healthier!)

Papercraft! Papercraft! Papercraft!

When Kathy's friend came over to play one day, she brought over a Minecraft creeper made of folded paper and tape. I am a huge fan of Minecraft, so I begged the friend tell us the name of the website where she had gotten the creeper. 

The creeper

The website is called Papercraft. It has a bunch of mobs and blocks you print out.  They're unfolded, like this:

An unfolded NPC (non-player character) villager 

Folding the mobs was pretty hard at first. I got so frustrated I cried! But later Daddy showed me a cool technique for folding and tape-adding, and now I am Papercraft obsessed.  So far I have made:

• A block of diamond ore
• A bed
• A furnace
• A crafting table
• A cake
• A TNT block
• A pig

My creations. From left to right: Diamond ore, the pig,
the furnace, the crafting table, the cake, the TNT, and
the bed.

Kathy folded:

• A bed
• A baby creeper

Kathy's bed and baby creeper. Isn't it cute?

The next thing I'm going to attempt to fold is the villager (above). Hopefully, I won't get too frustrated. =)

Fishies!

I just downloaded a fish tank for my blog. My fishies are so sweet! The red one is named Kira, the orange one is Lola, the yellow fish is Heidi (yes, like the Project Runway judge. Kathy named her), the green one is named Fern, and the blue fish is named Skye. When they're hungry, you can click on their tank to give them food and they'll swim towards the it. 

To download a fish tank for your blog, go to "design." On your left, you will see the word "layout." Click on that. Then go to "add a gadget." When you're in the gadget department, click on "more gadgets." Search for "fish," and it will bring up the results. There should be six search results. Click on a fish tank, and start customizing your fish! 

Rock-climbing Time!

A while ago, I went rock climbing with my Girl Scout troop at a place called Sportrock. 

Belayers are the people who work at a rock-climbing place. They helped us with our harnesses, held on to our ropes when we were climbing up and rappelling down, and did our helmet fittings. They were also our instructors. The belayers who helped us were very nice and encouraging.

Learning the rules

Before we could start climbing, we had to get fitted for helmets.

Then our instructors explained the rules. The first one was: don't take off your helmet. Seriously. Don't take off your helmet. If the rope breaks, you could fall on your head and probably die. Also, if you slip on the "rocks" you could hit your head. The second rule was: do not touch the dangling ropes. Those are for your safety so you don't fall off the wall. I can't remember the other rules.

The big walls were huge, forty feet tall, with little bells you could ring at the top, and "rocks" that were marked with different color pieces of duct tape. The belayers explained that the markings were there so you would know which path to the top was easy, and which path was hard. For example, green was the easiest path to take, blue was between easy and hard, and pink was the hardest. (Actually, I don't remember which color meant what. But you get what I mean.) The easy path gradually disappears as you get closer to the top, so it gets harder to climb.  

 Mommy and some other adults decided to start on the big walls. I was impressed. That was a brave place to start! Most of the troop and I decided to start on the smaller walls--they were maybe ten feet high and easier to climb.

Ready to climb up the little wall! Mommy had to take this picture
with a special lens. That's why it looks rounded.

Mommy and the other adults walked over to us just as I was about to start climbing. She had gone all the way to the top! She even rang the bell. I was totally going to do that.

When I climbed the big wall, I almost, almost, almost gave up. My legs were so tired. As I went higher, I couldn't find a good grip. I told myself that I was almost there ... I reached the top of that forty-foot wall and rang the bell! It was great. I felt energized. Happy. Like I could do anything I wanted to. 

About to reach the top!

When I rappelled down, my legs collapsed when I reached the ground. I couldn't believe I'd actually done that!

 

The Horse-drawn Carriage

When my family and I were in Bruges, we took a tour of the city on a horse-drawn carriage. I was so excited. It was a fairy tale ending to our trip to Bruges, riding around like a royal family.

We walked out to the Markt, which is the Bruges town center, in the evening. When we reached the carriages, a guide offered to take us around, and soon, we were off!

Our horse

We passed some interesting-looking trees. Their branches were bent at ninety-degree angles. That cannot be natural! Sadly, I don't know how the branches grew like that, since our tour guide didn't know, either. 

Earlier, we had walked around and found some of those trees. 

If your parents are desperate for a tour of a city, and it's your life's ambition to ride in a horse-drawn carriage, this is a great compromise. I just hope your tour guide is more helpful than mine!

Kathy and Daddy in the carriage

Kayla and me in the carriage

  

My Signable Bear

When I went to Girl Scout sleepaway camp, I got a care package. Care packages have fun stuff you can use on vacations, like stickers, notebooks, and decks of cards. In my care package, I got:

• A bandanna
• A wooden tic-tac-toe board 
• A camp journal
• A card game 
• A water bottle
• And best of all, a signable bear. (There was probably more stuff in it, but I forgot what those things were.)

Signable bears come with a Sharpie-like marker so you can write your name on them. I got the signatures of everyone in my living unit--even the counselors! Here are some pictures:

Not all of the signatures are from the people at Girl Scout camp, though. When I got home, I asked some of my friends to sign her. Then my parents signed her, and even my friends' parents signed her. When I went to Minnesota I took her, and my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and even my great-aunt signed her!

The bear was my favorite part of the care package. She's great as a cuddly stuffed animal too. I sleep with her every night.

Rascal And The Cootie Catchers

This post has nothing to do with travel, but it's something funny I wanted to blog about.

Kathy and I adopted kittens Monday night. We've had them for about six days, and they are the sweetest things in the world. My kitten's name is Rascal. He's a gray shorthair cat with slightly large ears and yellow eyes. Here's a picture of Rascal.

Say hi to the camera, Rascal!

Kathy's cat's name is Tang. He's an orange-and-whitish cat with long fur. Mommy says he might be part Maine Coon. Here's Tang.

Sleepy kitty!

And last but definitely not least, we have Cuddles, our Himalayan (mix of Persian and Siamese) cat. He's a real kitten at heart, even though he's six years old, and there's nothing he likes to do more than cuddle. (Duh.) This is Cuddles.

Isn't he handsome?

So what was the title of this post again? Oh yeah, Rascal and the cootie catchers. A cootie catcher is used to tell fortunes. It's really fun to play with and you can make it out of almost any type of paper.  First you have to fold it. You can find instructions here. Here's a picture of one I made.

One of my many cootie catchers

So anyway, Rascal saw me opening and closing a cootie catcher, and since he's a kitten, he'll go after almost anything that moves. (Including his own tail!) Rascal sniffed the cootie catcher, and then he swiped at it. I threw it for him, and it landed on his nose. He went bonkers. He started batting it around on the floor. He wrestled with it. When he finally got tired, there were little bite marks on it. That kitten loves cootie catchers. 

Clever cat...he put his cootie catcher inside his ball track. Can you see it?

Where My Taste Buds Have Traveled

My taste buds have traveled to different places than I have. For example, last night they went to Japan. We went to a restaurant called Ariake. It's a Japanese restaurant that specializes in sushi. My favorite types of sushi are kani (crab cake), tobiko (flying fish eggs, or roe, if you want to be fancy), and California rolls (I don't know what they have to do with California, but they're really good). They're filled with avocado, cucumber, and kani.

There were also appetizers. Kathy and I each had our own bowl of miso soup, which is cloudy, tan broth with scallions and tofu. The temperature of the miso soup was perfect--not so hot you'd burn your tongue, but not so cold you wouldn't want to eat it. We shared fried shumai, shrimp-and-onion balls covered in dough and deep fried. The shumai was crispy on the outside and the dough came off when I ate it. So much better than American french fries. Even better than Dutch vlaamse frites. It's a close call. 

For dinner, I ate California rolls and kani, and Kathy got tobiko and ikura, salmon fish eggs. Mommy got a different kind of sushi, the special of the day. Daddy got shrimp tempura, which is deep fried shrimp dipped in batter, arranged in a pyramid on the plate with the tails sticking up. There is a fried onion ring on top holding the shrimp tails together.

After dinner, Kathy and I ordered dessert. She chose green tea and red bean mochi (ice cream covered in rice flour paste and sprinkled with more rice flour--really good), and I decided on black sesame ice cream (not mochi, just ice cream). It looked like this:

(Half-eaten) black sesame ice cream

and tasted delicious. There was a hint of chocolate, a hint of peanuts, and an undertone of sesame. It left a good aftertaste in my mouth. Mommy liked it too!

My taste buds really liked visiting Japan. Their favorite part was the black sesame ice cream. Someday I want to visit Japan for real, and find out if you can get shumai on the street.

The Ghostly Gangplank

The Ghostly Gangplank

In Minnesota at the Mall of America, there is a ropes/obstacle course called The Ghostly Gangplank. It goes all the way up to the top of the mall, which is so big it can fit loop-the-loop roller coasters in it! When you are on the floor looking up at it, the people on the top level look like figurines.

Each level has some kind of obstacle you can walk across, like two skinny balance beams parallel to each other. Those are hard to cross because when you're thirty or forty feet in the air, you're probably thinking something like, ''Oh my gosh, if I put my foot in the wrong place I'm going to fall to my doom!'' At least that's what I was thinking. There is a bridge that looks like it's falling apart, and you have to walk on the slats. That was easy to cross because the gaps between the slats weren't very big. There is a really hard one on the sixth level--two black ropes that cross in the middle, making a narrow X. Those are hard to walk on--they are very wobbly! I couldn't even cross those.

Luckily you're strapped in so you won't fall off.

About to go up the Ghostly Gangplank!

There are six levels of obstacles that get harder as you get higher, and you can actually walk ''the plank," a small platform that gives you a view of all the rides in the Mall. At the end of the plank, you can pull on two ropes to make a clanging sound. Mommy tried that. She said it kind of scared her. "Walking on the plank, there is nothing below you until the ground," she said.

You transfer levels by walking on staircases. You could walk right up to the sixth level if you wanted to, but what fun is that? It's a lot more fun to do the obstacles. Each time you go up a level, you climb another eight feet. You're so high up on the sixth floor that when the roller coasters pass you, you can feel the breeze they make!

When you reach the top, you can go down a slide. It's a curvy tunnel slide that goes all the way to the bottom floor. You sit on a sack to go down, and when you reach the bottom, you're probably going to feel like, "Wow! I'm back on solid ground!" It's really fun.