The sweetest baby kitty

She's finally here!! This is my sweet baby kitty, Allegro. She was given to me for Christmas from my parents as a beanie baby. Don said I could trade the beanie in for a real kitty, and I began to cry because I thought it was a mean joke.

Soon my mom and I were going through animal shelters and found three that we wanted to look at to get a little baby kitten. The first one we went to, the first kitty I saw, Allegro, I fell in love with. Her paper of details said that she loves big dogs, which is great since we have Jackson too. The minute I put her back into her cage to look at another cat, there was a guy that immediately went to her and called his wife to tell her about it. I turned to my mom and said I had to have her. I couldn't let her go home with anyone else!! We went to the front desk and claimed her. I felt bad for the guy for a minute, but no longer. =]

That was Friday. I've been telling everyone about my kitty for the past three days. I love her so much! We picked her up at the vet today since she had to be spayed before she could come home. I decided I wanted to cuddle her on the way home from Olympia and took her out of her box and she just let me do what ever I wanted with her, she was so groggy from the medicine.

Well. You know how cats are supposed to hide under the bed for a long time before they get comfortable with their surroundings? Not Allegro. She's already living up to her name, which means fast and energetic in musical terms. She's already made friends with Jackson and has found she loves to "help" when I'm on the computer. Even now, she's sitting on my lap cuddling.

I love her so much!! She's 13 weeks old and loves to talk. We are a perfect match!!

Deal of the week!

Today my father and I went to Silverdale to go furniture shopping (it's only been a year and a half since we've lived in the condo, but it's about time to think about furnishing it, he decided. Hopefully he didn't jump the gun too much. Good lord.) and return a Christmas gift.

Well, surprise, we got a little mad at each other during it, only this time, I was REALLY set off, so I asked to go to the giant FYE by Party City and waste as much of his time as humanly possible by roaming up and down the racks of CDs and gaze at the overpriced albums I would love to purchase but never do. A well-priced album from FYE is about $11. I don't know about you, but I don't have that much money just lying around to buy that CD when I could take a jump drive to someone's house who illegally downloaded it and take it from them.

But anyway, I decided that to take the most time possible, I would go through every band that popped into my head, see if they had a used album for sale, and if they did and it was $8 or less, I would carry it around for a while, then stare at them for a half hour, trying to decide which one to buy, if any. I killed an hour and a half or so with this method.

At the end, I had decided on Tales Don't Tell Themselves by Funeral for a Friend. When I got to the cashier, she said that anything used was buy two get one free!! That's like, deal of the century at FYE! Good lord, after I heard that, I certainly had to take another ten minutes to find the other two I'd put back in random spots.

So, amazingly, I walked out with:
Tales Don't Tell Themselves- Funeral for a Friend
Young for Eternity- the Subways (who Amber and I sat next to backstage Endfest 15!!)
aaand
Never Mind the Bullocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
For $13.01


Had to blog about that =]

I'm not allowed to post my address =]

It took me two days and God knows how much snow.

That's right. My fort/igloo is complete.

This morning I woke up at 9:30 like I always do. Then I thought to myself, "Is it really worth it?" like I always do. Then I went back to sleep and got up at about 11:30. I ate my breakfast (oatmeal. Not the microwave kind, no way. I am past that. The good stuff you make with a SAUCEPAN. It's totally worth the extra dish.) and prepared myself for a 30 minute free run on the Wii Fit.

About ten minutes into my run, my mom told me that our neighbor Amy wanted to talk to me. She gave me a cupcake and asked if I would be outside today to finish my fort.

After that, I was on a mission. I think I was out for about three hours trying to build my walls to a comfortable height (that was easy since I'm only five feet and one and three quarters inches.)and put the finishing touch, a roof, on. Afterwards I went to Subway, like I had planned on for the last three... four? days.

My fort is awesome. I am sooo proud of myself. This is a cool thing that I did that I'm usually jealous of other people for doing.

"I'm sooo blogging about this!"

Yeah okay so I'm a really bad blogger. I get told off for not updating my blog every 5 minutes. So I'm going to blog about my entire day today... in 5 minutes.
11:55

• got up, threw snow balls on deck for Jackson to eat, just to watch him jump in the snow and laugh at him.
• recieved text message from Caitlin, asking if she could come over in 3 minutes to exchange Christmas gifts.
• took a shower, used awesome Twisted Peppermint body lotion that Caitlin gave me. (ILY)
• went outside, started building fort.
• went to Fred Meyer with my mom. Fell twice. Did not squish the bread. (lawl)
• continued building fort with my mom.
• fort became igloo.
• Don came out and threw snowballs at my mom and me. We got really mad.
• lounged around the house, bored out of my mind.
• read Water for Elephants
• took another shower, noticed green bruise, compliments of Don and his ice balls.

12:00
My day in 5 minutes!!

Christmas with the Bennetts

Above are pictures of my best friend, Lily Ava Bennett. She's the cutest little girl.

Well! Last night, the Sparks-Carlson family (including Jackson) went to the Bennett household to celebrate Christmas! We ate a delicious dinner of crackers, cheeses, dips, little smokies, vegetable pizza, chips, and stuffed mushrooms, exchanged gifts, and watched the Folar Express.

Lily got cute plastic baby animals and a photo album ornament of her and her best friend, made by her best friend, and a toy elephant with a bee bo. =]

I got FIVE pairs of awesome knee socks (I'm wearing them right now!), peppermint flavored lip gloss, and an interesting book titled "What's your poo telling you?"

Thanks guys.

After that, Lily and I played with her plastic animals and watched Folar Express. Then I sat with the grown ups and we traded blogging and stalker stories. It was great =].

Blog updated!! I'm off to play in the snow now.

Letters from China

So I have this cousin Jennifer. I have a lot of cousins, but Jennifer and I have always clicked. She always was really nice to me and always included me in the "big kid" stuff when the family would get together, since I'm the youngest. When I was little, she was also my babysitter. All these years later, we're still pretty tight.

A while ago Jennifer joined the Navy. It turns out she hates it, but likes to travel. She sends me postcards from all her stops and randomly sends little "thinking of you" cards.

The other day, a package came from her. I ignored the gingerbread cookies I was making to rush over and open it. Inside was a bunch of cool things from her latest stop, China. She sent me a wallet, compact mirror, a happy little wooden doll, and of course a post card from Hong Kong. My mom also got a little happy yellow kitty bank that's going to bring us good luck and money!!

I'm so glad to keep hearing from Jennifer. She's the funniest and is like a big sister to me. I wish she could come home for Christmas...

Best Weekend Ever

You don't even know.

FRIDAY
First off, there was no school on Friday, which makes it a great day in itself. I was able to sleep in as long as I wanted. I got up at nine anyway to start cleaning for my Best Friend Nicole From North Thurston to come over. I have a great story with her.
At 4, I went to Maple Glen with the Key Club and sang Christmas songs to old people. A few sang along and it was so cute. =] What was intimidating was that I arrived late and stood next two girls in my grade that have been doing Choir since forever and sounded really pretty. I followed off of them for the whole time. I got to sing so many songs that I'd never heard the words to before! I knew how they all went melodically because I'm in band and all, but now I know the words! Like O Holy Night, Have Your Self a Merry Little Christmas, Silver Bells... there's a few more. I forgot all the words to the other ones, too, but I could sure hum them flawlessly.
After Key Club, I went to Shenelle's house for the December Flute Party! I've decided we're going to have them monthly. We took crazy pictures with our camera phones in the kitchen.

It goes Alyssa, Crystal, Me, Shenelle, and Hannah.
Alyssa, Shenelle, Hannah, and I stayed up until four in the morning! Then we took a three hour nap that was cut short when Shenelle's dad had to go to work and Kaira and Katie (Not pictured) left to go to a THIRTEEN hour Winterguard practice. The rest of us watched Disney movies, but not the regular ones. We watched Cinderella where they time traveled (like that would ever happen!!!) and the Little Mermaid that was set before the first movie. Then we got half way through Forrest Gump and my mom picked me up.

SATURDAY
After I was picked up, Becky and Lily met up with us to go see SANTA!

And took cute regular pictures.

We came back and my Best Friend Nicole From North Thurston came over.
We met at this year's first marching competition in Silverdale. We were lining up for retreat, which is where you're supposed to sit still forever and it is soo boring. North Thurston was right next to us and there was this really short girl (the first thing we have in common) who was being told to back up to make room for the idiots up front, backing up, then coming back the distance she had just moved because no one had moved. I'd been angry about the same thing all day! So I told her that. We talked about band for a minute and I told her my phone number so she would text me. She decided to memorize it on the spot instead of listen to how her band did that day, and we've been best friends ever since!
She came over and we played in the snow

and she kicked my butt at foosball and watched Tropic Thunder with my parents (but I fell asleep) and on

SUNDAY
we woke up early and made a snowman in the park.

First snow of the season!!
I did all of my homework and then some, and made a blog!
My mom got me Christmas presents, too!
All of that makes for the BEST WEEKEND EVER!

FIRST BLOG!!

So!

This is the Carlson-Sparks blog, because apparently all the cool kids have started blogging and we're the only ones left behind. I (Jaime) am going to be blogging because my mom (Michelle) was talking to Becky (Bennett) about how everyone has a blog and she doesn't have enough time to do any blogging herself. So Becky said I should go start myself a blog. Soon we'll have ourselves a community of bloggers. Blogging about our children (but not me), jobs (but... not me), and vacations (CAMPING!)

I named it Jaime and Jackson because I figured sometimes Jackson might want a say in things, and also to tell the world that Jack has a more sophisticated name than you think. I think I'll probably mostly blog about my own teenager life, but I'll surely include Jackson's toddler life and my mom and Don's middle-aged life too.

I really hope everyone enjoys this! I'm off to blog about my AWESOME weekend now!