Four Days=Countless Amounts of Fun!

Due to the fact my teachers needed not one, but two 'teacher work days', that took up yesterday and today, my fellow students and I received a four day weekend! After school on Friday I went to lunch with my madre at the 'Joe Caribe Bistro and Cafe'. They specialize in 'fresh, ethnic and Caribbean flavors' according to their website and I would certainly that their food is not only fresh but amazing! My personal favorite is the Vegetarian burrito which not only has your average burrito ingredients but whipped sweet potato, which might not sound good but it definitely is! Anyway, after a late lunch and some car shopping for my sister I headed home exhausted after a long week at school.
The next morning, I joined my school's Key Club to take part in cleaning up the Bear River, my school's namesake actually. Donning elastic gloves and grabbing trash and recycle bags, we set to work combing the river banks for any trash that inconsiderate and laze people left over the summer. Although we mostly found cigarettes, glass shards, and bottle caps; we did find a surplus of butane gas, a suspicious head of a genie sculpture, a goat skull with a feather wired to it(I suspect homeless voo-doo), and a food-saver. I hope our Key Club and the other groups who were taking part in river clean-ups across Nevada County and elsewhere made a difference for the environment and our community.

Beautiful Morning cleaning at the Bear River.

After I headed home, I went to the 28th annual Draft Horse Classic hosted every year at the Nevada County Fairgrounds. We arrived mid-day, the perfect time since this is when the barns are primarily open, and set to going through each barn.

This big guy wasn't very happy to be getting a bath!

You can't tell in the picture, but these horses are nowhere near regular size!

Some random mules mid-Draft Horse

After eating a baked potato(they're the best around) and getting a 'Nevada City Cappucino' which is actually a lot like a frappucino...just better, I went home and got ready for a Comic-Con Dance, hosted by a Mormon Church in Nevada City. Of course when I heard the words 'Comic-Con' I at first held back the tears that I didn't attend San Diego Comic-Con and meet the beautiful Benedict Cumberbatch and of course the numerous other beloved actors and then I realized I could be Benedict...or Sherlock actually. So, acquiring my mother's purple shirt, my great-grandmother's coat, and my father's magnifying glass; I transformed myself into Miss Sherlock Holmes, or as my Dad put it 'She-lock Holmes'.

Yah I did spend 10 min. taking selfies of myself with this magnifying glass. No shame...

Complete Sherlock Outfit

Megan, Kaely, and I(I'm that white flash in the corner) 'sherlocking' while Anya looks really excited for some reason...

I ended up having tons of fun at the dance with Megan, Kaely, Anya, Andrea, and numerous other people all dressed up as everything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Avengers. Megan and I both went as Sherlock, while Kaely was John Watson(both Megan and I's "best 'friend'-'man') and Anya went as the Tenth Doctor, which she nailed especially since she had gotten a pixie cut earlier that day.(which looks adorable by the way).
The rest of my weekend was spent taking my first Driver's lesson(since I'm permitted and all that!),  facing the smoke from the King Fire to take a short trip to Nevada City on Monday, and doing homework(since the Teacher's had to give us tons!). If you take a closer look at my Draft Horse Classic pictures you'll see a haze in the background similar to the haze in this picture...

This isn't a Delta fog setting in this is smoke from the King Fire, that has burned thousands of acres and made a cloud of smoke big enough to see from space. I hope everyone affected by the fire is safe and I want to thank all the firefighters for trying their best to keep this basically uncontrollable fire under control! I hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend(four days or not)! Jewel.

Thank You to My Sister

"In the cookies of life, sisters are the chocolate chips." As everyone who takes the time to read this blog knows, I have an older sister named Kenna. She's 20 years old(almost 21-so fancy) and is easily one of my best friends. She recently studied abroad in Florence, Italy and then preceded to travel Europe; you can read all about her adventures at her blog: Yours, Kenna.
The funny story behind our friendship was that, well, it wasn't always a friendship... actually it was more of a I-wish-my-little-sister-would-leave-me-alone-ship paired with a Why-doesn't-my-older-sister-like-me-ship. After a solid 11 years(give or take) of endless fighting my madre put her foot down. Thus commenced the paid-to-hang-out hanging out of Kenna and Jewel. Every other week for about a year-year and half my sister and I were given money by my mother to hang out and therefore to learn to like each other. Somehow, someway, my sister and I became friends. I personally like to think it really broke the ice when I had spilled the beans that I had a crush and she offered me sisterly advice but the tuning point between acquaintances and best friends is unclear.
Sisters are basically live in friends, counselors, and fashion designers and I'm lucky enough most of my sisters extensive closet fits me. Through thick and thin, Kenna has been there for me. Even, when she was around the world in Italia, she listened to my worries and my doubts and every random story I had to tell. So I suppose this blog is just to say thank you. We had a great summer together, finishing the last season of Doctor Who, going to Oregon, learning to wake-board when we had no idea how, dealing with family problems. and drinking extensive amounts of coffee.
Kenna left for college last Wednesday, saying good-bye before I went to school is always a hassle since it's no fun riding the bus with tears still glistening in your eyes. Kenna then traveled to visit two of our Grandma's and our other sister, Ashley. In the final stretch of her journey back to San Diego she hit a large bump on the 405(a freeway) and her low-profile Volkswagen Bug lost control and spun across three lanes of  Friday traffic, miraculously not hitting anyone and instead only wrecking the tires, rims, and axles of her car. Thankfully, she was perfectly fine,okay she was in hysterics, but physically fine.
Getting in the car Friday after school and hearing my mom say, "Kenna got in an accident on the 405," was really scary for me. I instantly thought, "What would I do without my sister and best friend?" After being consoled that she was alright, I was flooded with relief and realization of how important my sister is too me. So:
Dear Kenna,
               Thank you for being an awesome sister and for putting up with my weirdness all the time. Thanks for stepping up and being awesome and responsible this summer although I know it was hard. Thank you for showing me the wonders of Doctor Who and Sherlock and persevering through an innumerable amount of scratches and bites from my demon cat, Allons-y. Thanks for supporting me and reminding me not to give up on my crazy dreams. Thank you for being a great big sister. And because I don't know if I say it enough, I love you and I'm so happy you're alright.
                                Love,
                                       Jewel
I hope everyone out there realizes how important their siblings and just family in general is to them. The world is ever-changing and although it may seem it's only changing around our personal little bubbles, any moment those bubbles could be popped and your whole life could change. "Sisters are different flowers from the same garden"-Anonymous. Jewel

The Gingerbread Incident of 2013

         Sometimes we underestimate our abilities, in this case, I overestimated them. Due to a wealth of gingerbread pictures online,my sister, Kenna, and I decided that if the internet could do it then we could obviously do it. For years we had wanted to build a gingerbread house and enter it in the Christmas Fair but she was never home soon enough so we could meet the deadline until....SURPRISE! I walked into my closet and there she was, hiding behind my jackets. She had come home early and finally we could build our fabled gingerbread house.
        We set to work brainstorming, looking up every picture and recipe we could find, and buying ingredients before finally deciding on the crown jewel of gingerbread.......buses? What could be more unique, never before seen, and wonderful as a London Tour bus complete with gummy bear passengers and oreo wheels. Sounds wonderful right? Well it started well, we sketched our picture(yes, I'm quite the artist)

           

          We got out our ingredients and...

Secret Gingerbread Recipe off the internet....

          mixed them up in not-so-record time...

We discovered molasses is terrible.

            And finally our gingerbread was out of the oven.....seemingly perfect. We were having fun, feeling good, and ready to start frosting. However, Problem #1 hit: London tour buses are red and you can't make red frosting out of pink-tinted food dye. So our gingerbread was put off until the next day, when we could acquire red frosting dye and thank goodness it worked!
           

It was then that the gingerbread montage began. from 7:00 to 11: 00 we frosted every inch of our gingerbread bus and then Problem #2 hit: The lights went out. Of all the nights for such a thing to happen! Mid-glue, we were swamped in darkness and left to fumble about as we tried to glue a bus together at 12:00 at night. Then Problem #3 hit: Our 'seemingly perfect gingerbread'? Yah, not so perfect and apparently too thick because frosting wasn't holding it together anytime soon. And that brings us to Problem #4: After two different recipes, and way too much powdered sugar,we had to give in, our frosting wouldn't stick. So long story short, at almost 2:00 in the morning we gave up on our gingerbread-coated dreams and went to sleep leaving a very sketchy gingerbread house bus left sitting on the table. 

Take note of the personalized license plate J & K

Our gingerbread bus at its best

 But by morning it had depleted to this...

     And when I got home from school, this...

     Now you would think we would be done with gingerbread but not just yet... we had gingerbread men to frost ASAP! Luckily, those went much better then the bus and we now have the 11th Doctor Who, Olly Murs, and all of One Direction because they are all ridiculously British of course! 

Little Frosting buttons almost as cute as gumdrops

From left to right: Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Lilac Niall, Liam Payne, Louis(the child) Tomlinson, Olly Murs, The Tardis, and Matt Smith: The 11th Doctor.

     Although, I have no idea about Doctor Who or the doctors, or the Tardis...we still had a wonderful and interesting time making way too much gingerbread and we've finally learned out lesson: We actually DON'T want to make a gingerbread house, we just want to keep thinking about making one with the skills we don't actually have... I hope everyone has had a wonderful December so far and I'd love to see your holiday creations! Jewel.