Objectives for the Holidays + Post-Christmas

I have 3 objectives for every school holiday:
1. Do not turn into a salty stressball.
2. Do not get sick.
3. In the midst of 1 and 2, enjoy the holiday.
This is fairly easy considering that we get two school-free weeks off, but also fairly hard because of the fact that those two weeks are soured by bits of homework. That's a small part of it, though.
To help myself with #1,  I didn't do much- in fact, any- homework before Christmas Day. I was also kind of sick before Christmas, so that wasn't fun and I didn't feel like doing much. I did draw a lot of nice horses, though:

Digital art creds to me.

He's a mulberry grey roan. I tried to make him more roaned, but since computers have nowhere near the blending capabilities of drawing pencils, I made it work with the tiniest size of digital brush I had. Compare his color roughly to the horse below. That's him in real life, pretty much. 

Mulberry grey is kinda like this guy's color....
www.prehorse.info

The next objective was to enjoy the holiday, which I did! I got a nice lot of stuff this year, including the Breyer models of both Secretariat and American Pharaoh! Wow, two Triple Crown winners in one Christmas. That's pretty cool. I also got a great Lego set from my dad- the Blue Power Jet from Lego's Creator line. It's actually a 3-in-one set, so you can make not only the plane but also a helicopter and speedboat/yacht. I'm pretty sure that the Creator 3-in-one sets are my favorites (other than the themed sets, like Star Wars) because they're dynamic and flexible! I like the other sets but it's nice to get three models in one set, and you can pick your favorites out of the three. 

We also got some great family presents. One is the new comic book from Simon's Cat, a popular Youtube channel of videos that are animated by hand about a funny cat that gets into all sorts of trouble (want to watch Simon's Cat? Search it on Youtube). The second present is a Bluetooth speaker from Bose that we use for watching movies and listening to music off iTunes on our family computer. It's really nice and we listened to Christmas music almost every day on it, as we were allowed to open it a bit early for our listening pleasure. The third family present is a really cool game called Forbidden Island. I'd seen it in the miscellaneous toy catalogs that we get every so often, and it looked really fun, so I was glad that we finally got it! It did turn out to be really fun and a good challenge. What happens in the game is that you're on Forbidden Island, which was a secret retreat of an ancient empire. They had the ability to control the four elements- earth, fire, water, and air- with four coveted treasures. You're working as a team with the other players to try and save the treasures- before the island sinks. The ancient empire designed the island to sink in case any intruders came to claim the treasures. So the island sinks and floods with every turn every player takes. It's a great challenge- we've only won it once- but it's quite fun. I recommend it- check out Gamewright to see Forbidden Island and the other games they offer.

Other than get awesome toys for Christmas, I tuned into the LA Times on New Year's and watched the first part of the 127th Rose Parade! For those of you who lost that tradition in your families, the Rose Parade is pretty much a New Year's Day parade like the Thanksgiving Day parade, although the Rose Parade accompanies the Rose Bowl for college football. It's in Pasadena and goes down Orange Grove and Colorado Boulevards- for 5 MILES. If you think about this from a marching band's point of view, that is SO LONG... and it's not cold in California in January. Just kind of in the mid-sixties. Which is nice, although, with band uniforms? And a five-mile parade route? And all the chaos of the biggest, most famous parade in the COUNTRY? Yeah, not so much. Despite all that, it was fun to watch! There were some great bands, impressive floats, and amazing horses. 

Yay, large band!
finotoday.com

The super-impressive Disney float, complete with the Millennium Falcon on the back! My favorite float of the bunch.
www.univision.com

Unfortunately it's too far away for us to take a family trip to go see it live, so I have to make do with seeing it on the screen. But I have hopes that someday we'll at least try to get into this parade, as Mr. Hughes, the organizer of our band department, sent out a message on New Year's Day and he said: "Happy New Year's to all the band kids! Is anyone watching the Rose Parade? Do you think we should apply to be in this parade sometime?" And I was like, YES YES YES YES YES YES YES! It would certainly be a fun thing to do. 

That same day, we went to see the new episode of Star Wars. At first (meaning before Christmas), I had been hesitant, sure that Disney had spoiled Star Wars, but I was certainly in for a surprise. It was mainly my dad that took us, who had already seen it twice who told us to see it... and at first I was skeptical. But then I saw it. AND I LOVED IT. SO MUCH! It was really great. If you haven't seen it and are a Star Wars fan, then I can now tell you truthfully: the Force is strong with that movie. I won't say anything more here about the story/plot, in case there are any of you that haven't seen it yet. However, if you have seen it, may I recommend this article from Sparknote's Sparklife. It answers some good questions the folks over at Sparknotes had and brings up some good points. Yep. I already want to see it again. It was that good! So I actually added some more Lego sets to my list from the Star Wars line. Hopefully I can earn some of my own money to buy them because I do have a Hawaii trip to pay for this year. 

That wrapped up my Christmas vacation. At this point I had been over my sickness for a while, and I wasn't at all happy to go back to school, but I hadn't seen my friends for quite a while and I was happy to see them. Also, on Monday or Tuesday, Breyer released some new models for 2016- including one on a mold that had been "locked in the vault" since 2011. "Locked in the vault" means that Breyer didn't use that mold since 2011. This creates larger demand for the models made on the mold. I'm glad it's out of the vault now because it's a great mold- a trotting Arabian mare with Egyptian type looks. The model they made was a portrait model of Rhapsody in Black- a top Arabian mare. Apparently she's the mother of several top honor winners in the world of Arabians, according to the Breyer website. 
So now, what with Christmas being over, I'm thinking about doing homework and surviving/passing my classes until summer and the start of the marching season!!!

What's up for you this year?

*P.S/update/whatever:* I'm changing my school schedule so that I can be in jazz band, yay! 8)