A Pleasant Surprise

It was one week before Christmas and my house was filled with festive cheer. The only thing I hoped to get from my Christmas wish list was a puppy (小狗). I had always dreamed of having a puppy, as I was the only child, and it could be quite lonely at times. However, I did not want to get my hopes up, as I knew neither of my parents liked the thought of having a puppy around the house and all that came with it.

Every time I begged for a puppy, my parents would say, “It is a lot of responsibilities, and you will have to clean up after it, give it baths, feed it regularly and walk it.”

I knew the responsibilities and was ready to take them on. Unfortunately, even with my enthusiasm (热情) and determination, my parents still disagreed to get me a puppy. There were very few chances of getting it, but I still tried asking them again that week.

“Oh honey, pick something else instead. There are so many toys that you can pick,” my parents responded as usual. As expected, I thought, giving a resigned sigh (无奈的叹息). For the rest of the evening, I decorated the Christmas tree as my parents hung some stockings. That night, I went to sleep with the hope that my dream would ever come true.

My alarm clock woke me up. “Oh my goodness, it is finally Christmas day!” I shouted excitedly and rushed down the stairs to the living room.

“Good morning, Bella!” both my parents chatted with huge smiles on their faces that were brighter than usual. My curiosity was inspired and many questions rushed into my mind. They played Christmas carols, and they sang along to the merry tunes. Just then, I caught my father smiling at my mother as if they had a secret plan and walking out of the door. When I asked my mother where my father had gone, she simply said that he had gone to pick something up. I grew confused.

I wondered what they could be hiding from me.

I fell in love with the puppy at first sight and named her Daisy.

2. 词数：100左右；

3. 参考词汇：经济负担：economic pressure   精神压力：mental stress

When my father reported that he had just purchased a new house in new housing development, we were all overjoyed. For a long time, he had wished to purchase his own home. My parents had been living in several rental houses since they married. Finally, his dream had come true.

We began moving our belongings into our new home on a bright and sunny Sunday morning. My father hired a lorry to transfer our goods, and I was amazed at how much we had. The lorry had to make three journeys before most of our belongings arrived at our new home. I enjoyed sitting in the back of the lorry while it made the journeys. My parents, grandmother, elder sister, and I are the only members of our family. Nonetheless, the number of goods, both necessary and useless, was shocking.

We had a busy day loading the items onto the lorry and then unloading them at our new home, but that was not the end of the story. We had to move the things into the house and arrange them properly before we could call the house a home.

Our new house was a single—story house, the fourth in a row of identical houses. It contained three bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a small front porch, and an even smaller garden. Modern houses are extremely narrow for room, but it was better than nothing. In any case, it was a significant improvement over our prior home, which was much smaller than the new one.

The kitchen was the first area we started organizing things. We needed to take care of our stomach before we could do any more work, so my mother set about creating her first meal in her brand-new kitchen, preparing the greatest tasting instant lunch I’d ever tasted.

We moved on to the rest of our belongings after lunch. My parents got the largest bedroom, my grandmother and sister got the second largest, and I got the tiniest, right close to the kitchen. I was totally overjoyed. For the first time in my life, I got my own room, and it even had a ceiling fan to keep me cool.

After moving into each other’s room, we began to tidy up our belongings. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

That evening, we enjoyed our first formal meal in the house. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________