Hello, world!

Hi!  My name is Willow Douglas, and this is my new blog!  I'm so excited to start writing all about stuff in here, because I love to write! 

I'm ten years old, and I live in Annapolis, Maryland.  I moved here about four months ago from Minnesota, and it's very different!  It's a great place to be because we get all four seasons (though I've only been here for fall and winter, and I've been told that spring is really short), and it's on the coast, so it's not far to a great beach!  I can't wait to go once it turns to summer. 

Another thing that makes Annapolis great is that we're on the Chesapeake Bay, too.  You never have to go very far to find a whole bunch of water!  I love water and all kinds of nautical stuff.  I was excited that two of my neighbors and new friends living here, Kirsten Larson and Donna Barry, both love the Navy and Navy ships, and they get to go see them in person from time to time!  Donna has even seen a ship that was in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie (the one that got killed in half by the Kraken! How cool is that!) and several old out-of-commission ships including a destroyer and two aircraft carriers.  I want to go see some of those ships too, as soon as possible!  What a huge (literally!) and amazing part of history!  I'm loving learning more about Navy ships, and I'm going to show you so much more about them in future entries to this blog, I hope.

I'm pretty used to my new school by now, and we're still on winter break right now, but we go back soon.  My favorite part of school so far is that our teacher set us all up with pen pals from a school in Pennsylvania!  It would be easy to email them, but we have to send them snail-mail letters, like people have done since like the beginning of time.  It's fun!  Writing a letter to someone on paper and sending it in a envelope with a stamp on it is just something that no one does much anymore, and it makes it so I can personalize the letters way more.  You can't put glitter stickers on an email, or write it with a purple colored pencil! 

My pen pal's name is Leslie Prince, and we've exchanged letters about three times now.  Leslie kind of seems like she isn't as into writing as I am...my letters to her have all covered the front and back of a piece of paper, with me writing all in the margins too.  I can never stop thinking of things to say to someone who doesn't know anything about me yet.  The letters I get back from Leslie are much shorter though.  One was even just half a page long, and she hasn't told me much about herself besides what pets she has, what her favorite color is, the names of her friends at her school, stuff like that.  I got her most recent letter just yesterday though, and it was another short one, but she drew me a picture on the back of the paper!  It's done in pretty markers, and it's a drawing of a big green field with tiny, far-away looking trees, and two dogs smiling at me.  "My Yard" she wrote at the bottom.  I can't draw very well, but I think I'm going to draw her a picture of my yard to send back to her.

Winter break has been lots of fun.  Christmas was a little smaller than I'm used to, since my aunts, uncles, and cousins are still back in the middle of the country and they couldn't come see us here, but I still ate lots of great food and got a great present.....this computer that I'm typing on right now!  Being an only child is fun sometimes, it means I don't have to share computer time with anybody now that I don't have to go on my dad's laptop anymore! 

I'm going over Kirsten's house later today and we're going to watch The Wizard of Oz on her family's new Blu-Ray player.  I can't wait to see all those glorious H's and D's! :)

It feels so cool to be a blogger!  I'll write more soon!

Love, Willow