Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

This is going to be the best autumn and holiday season EVER!!  That is because Katie has arranged for my best friend Hodel Yanovic to come here and stay for three whole months!  She's going to be here for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah!  I have never celebrated Hanukkah before, but now I will get to since Hodel is Jewish.  I can't wait!  But first we have to plan our Halloween costumes and where we will go to trick-or-treat for the best candy!  And we can carve pumpkins!  And jump in leaf piles!  (Can you tell I'm just a little bit excited?  I can't seem to stop typing exclamation points!) :-) 

I feel very lucky, since I just got to visit Hodel in Ohio during July and August.  We went to the zoo and saw tons of animals, and I even got a little pin with penguins on it!  Here we are in front of the elephant exhibit.  They were so cool to watch!

 

Hodel is going to be here very soon - probably in just a few days, and I still have lots to do!  I have to clean up all my books and toys and put my clothes away, and most importantly, I have to write a letter to Santa Claus.

Even though Hodel is Jewish, she does celebrate Christmas with her friends at home who are not, but I do not know if Santa has ever come to her house to give her Christmas presents.  If he hasn't, he might not know her, and he might not know she is going to be at my house this year.  Of course, Santa is magic so maybe he will figure it all out on his own, but I better not take any chances.  Especially since Santa actually comes to my house for the first time BEFORE Christmas, on St. Nicholas Day on December 6th, to fill my stocking.  I leave my Christmas list in the stocking for him, and then he takes it back to the North Pole with him to get ready for Christmas morning.  So Hodel can leave him a list then and he will know to bring presents on Christmas, but what if he doesn't know he needs to bring enough to fill her stocking, too?  I have to make sure he will take care of things so Hodel will not be left out.  I think a 2 month notice for a stocking will be enough, don't you?

Early Morning Teatime

Sometimes, if I wake up a little bit early on school days, I have time to drink a cup of tea before I have to get ready to leave.  I’m not allowed to have tea with caffeine in it (Katie says I have plenty of energy all on my own), but I can have herbal tea.  There’s a really good cinnamon apple flavor that is my favorite.  I put lots of honey in it and it tastes all spicy and sweet at the same time - so yummy!  I like to wrap up in a blanket in the cozy armchair and drink it where it’s all nice and quiet.  Sometimes, if Nancy Drew is awake (and she usually is; she has to get up very early to start working on her mystery solving) she joins me.  She has her own teeny little tea cup, but she has to drink pretend tea because Katie says I might forget and kick her cup over and spill on the furniture when I get up to wash out my cup.

Morning teatime is the perfect time of day to think about problems you have to solve, or to read another chapter of a good book before you have to go to school.  I love nice quiet mornings!

I'm Back!!

Hi, everyone!  My name is Anna Lee Merced and I used to have a blog on LiveJournal, but I haven't posted in it for a long time because I didn't like the pop-up ads they put on there.  I've been wanting to make a new blog forever and now I finally did it!  I wanted to try and transfer all my old LiveJournal posts over here, but I decided it would be too long and hard, so I put a link to my old journal over on the right side of this blog if you want to read them.

For those that don't know me, I am a Gotz doll.  I am 18 inches tall, nine years old, and in the fourth grade.  I live in Michigan with my owner, Katie, and her husband, Matt.  I take violin and tap dancing lessons, and in school I love reading and science.  I also like Nancy Drew mysteries, anything to do with penguins, and playing pretend games.  Oh, and I have a pet guinea pig named Ginger Rogers.  She is awesome.  My best friend is named Hodel, and she lives far away in Ohio.

I think for my first post here I will tell a little bit about my rock collection.  Some people think rocks are boring, but I don't.  A lot of rocks are millions and billions of years old - imagine what they would say if they could tell us everything they've seen in all that time!  I have picked the top three rocks from my collection to show you - my Gold, Silver, and Bronze medal winning rocks!

Bronze Medal Rock:  My pink and tan rock from the Badlands National Park!

Here I am finding it in the park!  Most of the big rock formations in the Badlands included this pretty pink color, so I was excited to find a souvenir rock that would remind me of my trip later.

 
Silver Medal Rock:  My pink and yellow striped lucky rock!

Did you know that a rock with a stripe that goes all the way around it is lucky?   If you find one, you should hang onto it or give it to a friend to use as a lucky charm!  Katie found this rock when she was my age, and now it is my lucky charm.  I love the pretty pink and yellow colors.

Gold Medal Rock:  My geode!!!

I think geodes are the coolest rocks of all.  I found this one out in the yard one day - I was just walking along and kicked an ordinary-looking stone with my shoe, and saw a flash of sparkle in the sunshine when it flipped over.  I picked it up and saw it was far from an ordinary stone.  This is what it looks like if you look at the back side:

 
Pretty boring, huh?  But flip it over, and this is what you see:

Beautiful sparkling white and tan crystals hidden inside!  Scientists aren't exactly sure how all geodes are made, but a theory is that when a rock has a hollow space inside of it, over millions of years minerals and things from groundwater can seep into the cavity and form crystals inside it.  Isn't that neat?

I think geodes are extra special because they are a little like people, in a way.  Somebody might seem plain and ordinary on the outside, but take the time to look a little closer and inside they are surprising, beautiful, special...just like a geode.