This past week has been great.

It was spent:

playing guitars for hours at the enormous Guitar Center,



Meeting new friends and spending time with old ones,



And of course celebrating Christmas with our dear grandparents!



One thing that I'm really excited about is a thingamajig called a drawing tablet, which will help me a lot in my further pursuits in web design! It's pretty awesome! (you can't really see it in the picture but I have a cool stylus pen in my hand which I draw on the tablet with)


Be sure to leave me a comment and let me know how YOUR Christmas was! We had an amazing one here. And so...

As promised, I have bought Les Miserables! To start at the beginning...

We flew to the States last Tuesday, and it took us 28 hours to get from doorstep to doorstep!


Right now we are happily staying at my mom's parents' new house in Eugene, Oregon! We're spending Christmas with them for the first time in 13 years, so it's quite the occasion. We've been busy buying Christmas presents as well as stocking up on clothes.


Today we drove about 2 hours up to Portland, and spent the whole day...you guessed it: shopping (and the occasional food).


Powell's bookstore in Portland is a legend (to us at least). So we decided to go check it out, and we were amazed at it's vastness. It's a really cool place. After about half an hour of wandering around I stumbled upon the very thick book by Victor Hugo. At $4 it was a steal.

So far, it's very...different. I really love Hugo's style of writing, but it's unlike anything I've ever read. I'll keep you updated on my thoughts on it once I get the chance.


Dad flies in tomorrow evening, can't wait!

Christmas is coming!

Well, the concert is over! I feel pretty good about it... and I'm totally beat. I'm ready to sleep and sleep and sleep some more... It's been a long day.


But it was really fun. Thanks to everyone who came and watched and listened to us!


While setting up earlier today I had an idea...so I went and asked our drummer, Pavel: "Do you think it's possible for me to stand on your bass drum and jump off?" He said no problem, and we tried it out a couple times...hehe! I did it twice during the concert, and it was awesome. Luckily there were no casualties!



If Hudson or Becca are reading this, i have one thing to say...: "I wore my band shoes!!!"



_______________________


And I also learned how to make an omelet this week, but that's another story...

Tensing concert on Friday! Here's the poster I made for it.

The song I'm most looking forward to playing is Pieces by Sum 41 because I can jump around during it!

Last night i watched Les Misérables (the 1998 version with Liam Neeson) and I really enjoyed it. It's for sure one of my favorite movies now. When we go to the States I'll be sure to pick up the book (it's over 1800 pages long)!!!

JV conference was really great this year. It felt really family-like for some reason, and I guess that's the way it should be! We ate lots of good food and spent a lot of time just talking and hanging out. Here's me and my cousin, Luke! He's a very serious little guy!


Caleb, Hannah and I also led worship on Friday and Saturday night for everyone. It was really fun because we got to sing some of my favorite English songs!



This was also the last conference for the Anderson family. I had a great time with Corey and we'll miss them all!

Another hobby-like activity (which also happens to be Lord of the Rings) is a game called Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I've played it ever since it was launched in May, and it's really fun! It's a Massively Multiplaying Online Role-Playing Game (or MMORPG) and that means that I'm playing with tons of other people from all over the world. Together we do different quests and save Middle-Earth from evil. I just reached level 33, and I'm very happy!

Yesterday I stumbled upon an Ent (I think)...here's a screenshot!


By the way, my guy's name is Thilios, and he's a dwarf hunter. He's very awesome. Right now he's being followed by some evil creature which I didn't want to fight! =)

This year for the Talent Show here at Thanksgiving JV conference, I did a song called More Than Fine by my favorite band, Switchfoot. Thanks to Aunt Kristi for taping and Alice for getting it all ready for me! Enjoy!

I got sick on Wednesday so I was home for a couple of days...and I got some painting done!


I also stripped the paint off a couple older figures today, they're looking nice and shiny now! I plan to go for a more unified color scheme of my dwarf army now, as you can see from the two dwarves above.

JV Thanksgiving conference starts tomorrow...

I have realized some very interesting things today!

1. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is not as evil as it at first looks. It might even be fun! Once I get past the initial stage of learning code and figuring how it all fits together at least.

2. Some pumpkin carvers are really really really really really really good.


3. Tuesdays seem considerably longer when I don't take a four hour nap.

4. It seems that with every new design project I do, I learn something new. It means that hopefully no design is the same, and I like it like that. I hate redundancy in things like this.

Anyway, I have another customer for blog design. It will be a secret for little while (just cuz!) and once it's done there will be a parade and a big unveiling.

Now I have to go do......something. (Any ideas? Hmmm...)

Oh, and did you notice the new look??

Some highlights from the past few weeks:

Nicholas and Zachary's birthday party in the beginning of October was a sure highlight. We spent most of the day playing the Lord of the Rings figures strategy game. One way to make the games extra interesting is by having a "scenario" or "scenery". About two months ago I decided I wanted to do something special for Nicholas and Zachary, and here is what I and Caleb came up with! We all had fun defeating each other in battles atop Amon Sul (or Weathertop)! And of course I really enjoyed making it! Just in case anyone was wondering, most of it is made with styrofoam and then coated with a sort of plaster substance to give it texture and firmness. Then a black base coat and many drybrushes later, voila!





























another highlight was a few weeks later when Nathan Pitcher invited us over for dinner! We enjoyed his cooking very much - some of the best chicken noodle soup ever and for sure the best chocolate chip cream cheese bars! We plan to return very soon.














On Friday and Saturday 10 people from our youth group went to a thing called PDT (in czech Pracovni Den Tymu) which is basically two days of seminars and opportunities to build and connect with your team. It was a great time. Me, Caleb and our youth group leader, Boza, led worship and it was the most fun I've had in a while. Everyone there was so open to worshipping, it was a great experience.

For those of you who happen to read my blog and haven't heard of the band Angels and Airwaves - they're amazing. Just though i'd let you all know! They just released their second album (I-Empire), and I can't seem to get enough of it. A&A would probably be classified as alternative rock, but they're very artistic with their music, unlike a lot of bands these days who focus on volume. In the words of their first single of the new album - "Everything's magic."

While dad was in the States a couple weeks ago he got to go to a Passion concert, and even pray together with Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin and Louie Giglio! But anyway, he brought me back a book from there - Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven, But Nobody Wants To Die by David Crowder, and it's probably one of my favorite books of all time. It's very deep, and yet funny and spontaneous. Really well written.

On a different subject, I have a class in HTML at school this year, and so I've been testing my skills by designing blogs! Be sure to visit Nathan's blog at nathanpitcher.blogspot.com to see what I can do (and be entertained by the one and only NP)! Hopefully I'll get around to fixing my own blog up a bit someday...

Thanks for reading! Till next time!

Well, first about vacation on Corsica! I don't want to bore you with a long description of what we did and where we went...instead I'll tell you what made it interesting for me! Beaches aren't really my ideal place to vacation at, but it's become somewhat of a tradition for our three families - Patty, Ellenwood and Hash. So i've gotten used to it and figured out how to make it special for myself. This year I decided to borrow some books from the Tills and read as much as I could. Here's what books I read!

Dune - the LOTR of science-fiction. A very strange story...but a classic.
Ender's Game - another sci-fi novel, about a boy who is trained by the military to destroy an alien threat. One of my favorite books of all time.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - simply classic! Quirky, random and very entertaining.














Another thing that made the trip special was taking pictures, as you have already seen in my last few posts! And this led to another memorable part of vacation... While taking pictures one evening, I lost the lens cap and searched all around the place where it may have fell. I was wearing flip-flops and slipped into a crack in the rocks and fell forward, scratching my leg up and giving me quite the flesh wound on my foot. Luckily the dads helped me get back to our campsite and get it cleaned up!














Then JV kids camp! Many thanks to Becca for putting together such an amazing week! Also, thank you Andrea for awesome lessons on prayer. I lead worship along with Hannah and it was a great learning experience along with being just plain fun! Camp was in Croatia, and one way that I entertained myself on the 20 hour trips was...you guessed it - reading! I finished one whole 500-page book on the way down (Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game, and another favorite), and almost finished another one on the way back (Xenocide, the sequel to Speaker for the Dead, which I finished the following day)! Rather productive week, wouldn't you say?








































School has started up once again, and there are positive things about it! We have great teachers this year (not all...but almost) and some interesting subjects, including a creative writing class with our home-room teacher, Mr. Till.

Along with the creative writing at school, I'm taking an online creative writing course this year. I most recently wrote a short story called The Alchemist and the Thief. I'm very proud of it, and after a little more cleaning-up it should be quite entertaining! If you're interested in reading it, go to jvteentyler.googlepages.com! At the bottom are some questions, so if you feel like answering them (for some it's mandatory - like for Hudson!) it'll help me a lot in making it better!

One very fun thing that I did a couple weeks ago was Live Action RolePlay (or LARP) in the style of Tolkien's Hobbit! I dressed up, made a wooden sword, padded arrows and took a fiberglass bow we had lying around the garage, and set off with Patrick, Mr. Till and some other guys to fight as Elves against the evil Orcs and Wargs! It was a lot of fun!!! (Can you find me in the second picture???)





























One amazing experience from the past few weeks was going with some of my classmates to the Student Leadership Conference in Budapest. Students from Christian schools all over (as far as Sweden, Turkey, and Russia!) to attend seminars to train them to be leaders in their schools. It was really a great experience. (The worship, however, was not so good...and me being the musical type, I was noticing every little mistake! However, I soon learned to just ignore it and focus on the act of worshiping!)
















This year I have a lot of responsibilities. On Monday is Tensing (the youth choir where Caleb plays bass and I'm the band leader), Tuesdays are free!!!, Wednesday I lead an Exit 316 group for my school with Patrick, Honza and Robert (maybe you remember me talking about them, if not, oh well!), Thursday is band practice for Tensing, and every other Friday is youth group! Saturdays are usually packed with something (like birthday parties, or mowing the lawn), and Sundays I either help with or lead worship. So it's pretty crazy! But God's been good and though it's not easy he's helping me balance and become more efficient with the free time I do have.

This weekend we had a big youth group event. We borrowed a big tent, a big stage and a big sound system. It was BIG. And at this BIG event, me and Caleb had our first BIG GIG!!! And man was it BIG. Our band was named Total Impro because of all the improvisation we would have to do! We had just formed that morning and practiced all day (it sure was tiring!) with a guy who's studying in Prague and plays guitar. He was awesome and all together - me on acoustic guitar and vocals, Caleb on bass and vocals, Peter - the guy from Prague on electric guitar and vocals, and Pavel - our drummer from Tensing. It was quite the show. The funniest part was when Caleb started to sing and all these girls started screaming from the audience! =) It's something I'll never forget.









































Yesterday (October 8th) was Claire's 13th birthday!!! We had a small little party with just a few people over and it was fun. She got some new clothes and is trying out a new style, and it suits her quite well!




















Nicholas and Zachary Pitcher are having their party next weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it! This will be the first party where I have my own Lord of the Rings figures to play with in the big strategy game they love to play! It'll be quite the battle.

Till next time, and don't forget to leave a comment and check out my story! Thanks!

Today my blog celebrates its first birthday! So let's wish Tidbits By Tyler a prosperous and entertaining next year!!! To celebrate, i now have a new banner. Hihi.

Also, last night I was in a creative mood so I wrote a little song...and like it so much that i recorded it! I sang, played acoustic, electric and bass guitar and mixed it all on my mom's Mac! It's nothing super special, but it's entertaining. Enjoy!

Get this widget | Share | Track details

Here are the lyrics:

Come right now
Heal somehow
Hear my doubts
Draw me out

Through the pain you restore me
Out of my shame hope and life bring
My debts you take away and
Release the fears of a blind man

Tell me why
Why I try
Is it worth all this?
Show me what I've missed

I know time won't defeat me
'Cause You are the Lord of everything
This time I'll trust You and not fear
This time I know You're here

Shine through me

Come right now
Show me how
Call my name
I won't be afraid

P.S. To Andrea and Nathan - I'm really sorry I haven't done your blog banner yet, I'll get right on it once I locate the CD with the pictures...I'll let you know if I can't find it!

As promised, here are my favorite pictures from our vacation. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, and i hope you enjoy them! It was pretty tough narrowing it down to 20, there are plenty more!!