trips

Here is an update of where I've been this month.
Colorado:
I went to RUF's ski trip! It was GREAT! I even had fun driving there and back, which is hard to do on long trips. The first day me and Dad woke the rest of our apartment up with really loud music. They didn't like it. I went to ski lessons most of the day. My teacher was really nice, and her name was Miss Nicole. I enjoyed all of large group- the speaker, the songs, and the stories. Wednesday I went with everyone else, and raced down hills. at about 3:00 it started blizzarding, and I ran into a tree. Thursday was clear all day long. I even went down some blues.
Duncanville:
Every year Dazzlers goes to a workshop in Duncanville, Texas. We drove down Friday night, and slept in a church. We did T-shirts and talked for a long time, so I went to sleep at about midnight. The next morning we all got up at six, and had to be out by 7:30. I was really tired. We drove to Duncanville Highschool, and started to dance at 8:30, stopped for lunch at noon, and danced some more until 5:00. I really enjoyed our afternoon routine, which was almost like a play, to a song about the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz.

Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

Rose Daughter: Beauty has had a dream about walking down a hallway all her life, going towards a monster waiting for her. Then her father comes back with the terrible news that he has met a Beast, and that she has to go to him! She finds out the wonders of the Beast's palace, liking some and is annoyed by others. And every night, he asks if she will marry him. After what seems like seven days, she is allowed to go back, but if all the petals fall from a rose, he is dead. Beauty goes back and forgets all. Just as the last one is falling, she remembers and rushes back. She faces the magic that keeps him there, and defeats it. She and her three sisters are married together, and everyone lives happily ever after.

In the Author's note, Robin McKinley explains that she has written another Beauty and the Beast story, about twenty years earlier. Then she gets married and moves from Maine to England, and begins to garden. Rose Daughter is written to tell her favorite fairy tale with roses.

...with roses. I like that this whole amazing thing was written to put in things that she had missed earlier. I also like that there is magic, but it is there, part of everything, but yet something that wasn't there at first. Interesting. McKinley has written lots of other books too, and the ones I've read are great.

The Rainbow Fairy Books by Andrew Lang

I am a fan of fairy tales. Andrew Lang put magical stories from all over the world in about ten books, with names containing all the diffrent shades of red and puple you can get. Most stories are good like Beauty and the Beast (in the Red Book), and others are bad, like the Headless Dwarves (Violet). A major theme in the stories is that youngest daughters are always more beautiful and that youngest sons are smartest, and that if you help some one it will help a lot. I highly reccommend them.

I like fantasy, if anyone hasn't noticed. Some stories I think are pathetic (really-frogs? how did that get in there?), but I really like the dragons. They're are evil dragons, not Dragon Tales creatures.
Thank you, Kelly MacIntire for introducing us to the Books!

Four Wings and a Prayer by Sue Halpern

The Monarch butterfly is the one butterfly to migrate like a bird, but still no one knows how. Four Wings and a Prayer tells of the expedition to trace the journey of the Monarch as it flies more than three thousand miles through the United States to a tiny mountainside in Mexico, than back again.
The stories of people who spend their lives to studying this butterfly are told along with their efforts to understand this bug.

I was glad I read this. There was a lot of stuff I didn't know- like how a butterfly rides on air currents, leaving and entering as needed. Cool. I did find it hard to concentrate about half-way through on, though. It just kept on going. Read it. Maybe while you're reading another too. Monarchs are amazing creatures.