A bunch of random thoughts all jumbled together

Christmas is almost here! I am so excited; especially because Ashley is coming out to visit. :) It's my oldest sister’s birthday next week. They turn nineteen! It makes them want to sing that song from the prince frog, "I'm nineteen, I'm nineteen my birthday is today...." etc. (I don't know if I got that right, oh well). I seriously can't believe that they are turning nineteen! My older sisters! Gah... It is crazy. I will never get over this. Every year, and next year they turn twenty! Dang it, I'm doing it again aren’t I? Well their birthday just happens to be one week before Christmas, exactly. Their birthday is on the eighteenth.

A little random thought in here, and a little late too. That wind storm like last week was crazy! I'm lucky that my house didn't have any damage and that my family is all OK, but others weren't so lucky. That morning school wasn't canceled. So at 7:45 I got on the bus and headed to school. The whole trip there I saw all kinds of disaster, shingles flying off of roofs, fences falling over, and trash flying through the air. It was crazy, and then as soon as we got to school (there was no power of course) we were told to go to our lockers, and drop everything off except for a book, and then go to the gym. A little while later we went to our first period classes. We ended up staying there for a few hours without power until they officially told us that we could go home. The wind was so strong that doors were breaking; they had to lock them so they wouldn't break anymore. There was this one dude who was trying so hard to get inside, got the door open, and then it shut on him. Ouch huh. The principal had to come get him unstuck. I have no idea who this dude was. When we were sitting in first period in the dark everyone had their cell phones out. I got bored playing with mine, and didn't want to kill the batteries, so I went over to the window. Right outside the window you can see the seminary building. In front of our seminary building is this big tree. When I looked out that window the tree was completely snapped at the trunk. No roots torn up or anything just snapped. Also, when I looked out that window I could see the houses across the street, they weren't just loosing shingles. They were losing huge chunks of their roofs! It's so sad all the damage that was caused that day. All of the pine trees that fell down, among other trees. The property damage, everything. I hope that we never have anything like that happen again! Well back to the happier subject...

The thing I love the most about Christmas, well, mostly Christmas eve, is that me and my sisters all get together and sleep in the rooms in the basement, like a sleep over. I am so glad that I have my family, and I am so glad that my sisters and I are so close. :)

To Kill a Mockingbird theme essay

Courage is doing what you think is right even when the odds of succeeding are against you. This is extremely true and I think that this theme is very well developed so far. Atticus is a lawyer and was appointed to work a case for a black man, Tom Robinson. He repeatedly tells many people that "Do you think that I could face my children otherwise?” When Atticus says this he is talking about the case he was assigned. He is saying that if he didn't take this case then he couldn't tell Scout and Jim what to do any more.

            Atticus tries his best to raise his children correctly. He tries to make it so that whatever happens in this case it won't affect them too badly. He tells them to not listen to what people say when he is repeatedly called offensive names. He takes this case even when the whole town is racist and against him, that is courage. He raises his children his way even when they are stubborn, that is courage. He does what he knows is right not what others say is right. The whole court is going to be against him, and most of these people, in Maycomb, are probably racist. Scout asks Atticus, "If you shouldn't be defendin' him, then why are you doin' it?” Atticus then answers with this, "For a number of reasons, the main one is, if I didn't I couldn't hold up my head in town, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again." He knows that he is not going to win and he tells scout this. Scout says, "Atticus, are we going to win it?" and Atticus of course says, "No, honey." He knows he won't win. But he will defend this man because it's the right thing to do. He thinks that he is innocent, and so does Calpurnia.

            Well, I think that Atticus tries to teach them to follow this theme/idea, and to do the right thing even when the whole world is against you. Is it hard? Yes, but I think that is one of the reasons he doesn’t give up. The theme that says courage is doing what you think is right even when the odds of succeeding are against you. I think that is what he is trying to do after Jim destroys the yard of Mrs. Dubose. When Jem destroys Mrs. Dubose’s yard he chops off the top of some plants, screams and hurts scout, and breaks Scouts baton. Later Atticus tells Jim that "Son, I have no doubt that you've been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose, come straight home afterward.” He doesn't tell Jem to do this, but he strongly advises. He is trying to teach Jem to do the right thing, and Jem does. He goes to Mrs. Dubose house, and he makes a deal. Atticus did not make him do that. He suggested it, and Jem took his advice.

            Courage is a hard thing to have, and an even harder thing to get, but once you have it you had better make the best of it. Atticus does this. He tries to treat everyone with respect, even if he doesn't agree with the things they say. Atticus has courage, he has respect, and he has a conscience. When the town is against his doing, and thinks that he is trash because of it he keeps on going. He doesn't give up when people have been putting him down. He doesn't stop if people say differently than he. Courage is doing what you think is right even when the odds of succeeding are against you, and Atticus does that. He also teaches this to his children. I think he also tries to teach this to the town. Stand up for what is right, before it is too late, and use that courage to change the world.Top of Form

Thanksgiving

My family decided to spend Thanksgiving at my grandma's house, and that we would have our thanksgiving on Friday. We made some fruity juice, put some celery and carrots in a bag, grabbed our juice dispenser, and went to my grandmas. The thing that I love most when we go over to my grandmas? The puzzles. Usually she always has a puzzle set up on her kitchen table, and when we go over there I sit down at the table and work on the puzzle with who ever else is working on it. Thanksgiving is always a fun day. It is the one day a year where you can pig out and every one is ok with it! :P The reason I love thanksgiving though? Because I get to hang out with my family. We talk for hours, and it is just so much fun. When I am not part of the conversation I am usually playing some sort of game with the Littles (my little cousins. See it makes sense!). The Littles are so cute! Especially when they say really smart things that you didn't even know they knew about! My cousin Tyler Jean does this a lot. She is 5 years old now, and is the SMARTEST, CUTEST, FUNNIEST five year old girl I know. So when we were at my grandmas on Thanksgiving, we were all sitting at the table eating and talking. Ty decides to randomly sing her ABC's, or so we thought. This is what she actually sang. "A B C D E F G barney is my enemy. Put a rifle up his nose, pull the trigger watch him blow. Twinkle Twinkle little star, barney is now rated R." The things this little girl says! She is seriously so smart. One time she asked us a really strange question. She said, "Guys, would you be sad if I got kidnapped?" We were all shocked! How does she know all of this?! She also knows the gummy bear ABCs. "A B C D E F G gummy bears are chasing me. One is red. One is blue. One is peeing on my shoe. Now I'm running for my life cause the red one has a knife." These were all things that she has said to us. Both the ABC songs on thanksgiving. Later that evening we had pie, and that made every one REALLY happy. Then we played this fortune game. Where you drew a fortune paper out of a bowl and it had a question on it that you had to answer. I did a few rounds of that and then I got bored. So I decided to go downstairs with Linzie and Ashley, and then we played cards. We were playing Egyptian Rat Slap/Screw, or was it Nertz? Oh well. I think it was Nertz. We had a bunch of fun and found out that the decks we were using weren't complete, or had duplicate cards in them. It was so funny. Thanksgiving is holiday for laughter and to recognize how lucky we are to have what we have. So to end this post, I am thankful for MY FAMILY.

Family

It's finally the time of year when all of my family gets together. When we all have parties and celebrate. I love this time of the year. Later tonight my stepsister will be here, and we will get to see her. She is flying out all the way across the country to see us. I am so excited. Even though she will only be here for a week I can't wait. She is the goofiest person that I have ever met. She will randomly sing her ABC's or just burst out into random Sponge Bob songs. I haven't seen her since the summer! We only get to see her a few times a year, and every time she comes out is too short. 

I love my family so much, and I appreciate that they are always there for me. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about each of them.

First off there is my mom.  She is so amazing. She inspires me to do better and to be kinder everyday. She is so strong. I wish I could be at least one tenth as amazing as she is! She is so creative, and amazing. One word to sum her up: 

AMAZING!

Then there is my step-dad (Bill). He is such a goofy person. He loves to tease us. He is very hard working. He loves to start a project and in the middle of it start another project. :) Sometimes we compare him to Phil on modern family (in a good way). He is very loving. He loves his video games just like me. One of our favorites is Ratchet and Clank (check out my post on that). One word to sum him up: 

AWESOME!

Madi is one of my oldest sisters. She is 19 and is in her first year of college. She has a job and was recently promoted at it. She loves her music and TV shows. :) One word to sum her up: 

FUNNY!

Carley is also the oldest. Madi and Carley are fraternal twins. Carley is extremely artistic. She loves her family very much. She recently started her own photography business (Check it out!). She has a job in a bakery and loves it, despite the early hours. She stands up for any one she cares about. She makes me want to be like her everyday. One word to sum her up: 

ARTISTIC!

Emily is the middle child. She is 17. She is such a performer! She loves to be in plays/musicals. She loves singing and is very talented. She is into all the latest fashion and is very stylish. One word to sum her up: TALENTED!

Ashley is 16. She is my step-sister. Extremely silly. Check out what else I said about her in the first paragraph. One word to sum her up: 

SILLY!

Then there is my identical twin, Linzie. She is 15. She is also very artistic like Carley. She is amazing at singing, and loves to play around with her own harmonies. We are best friends. She loves to take photos and is very good at it. She plays the violin. One phrase to sum her up: 

MY BEST FRIEND!

That is my intermediate family. Maybe next week I will tell you about all of my amazing cousins. :) See ya!

Puzzles...

Have you ever just been so bored that staring at the wall is more interesting than doing nothing? I have, and I find that the perfect remedy for this issue is to build a puzzle. I don't know why but I have always loved puzzles. It doesn't even matter what kind of puzzle: Sudoku, a word search, or just a regular puzzle. I have been building a few puzzles lately. I didn't realize how much I missed building them until I started building them again. My twin and I started building one just because we wanted to, it was a light house. One thousand pieces…. that is a big puzzle. About a few hours later, we gave up. We couldn't even manage to put the border together! So then we put the lighthouse one away, and started on a puzzle full of jars. Jars filled with carrots, chopped carrots, purple onions, and asparagus. On top of the jars were things like tomatoes, yellow peppers, and orange peppers. These jars sat on shelves, and on the shelves there was even more vegetables! There was lettuce, and artichokes, and even more that I can't remember! It was such a fun puzzle. There was one night that we had stayed up late working on it then my parents came down stairs and sat at the table and talked. Eventually they started working on it with us. We didn't end up going to bed until we had finished the puzzle. It was so much fun.

About a day later I decided to build another puzzle. This one was completely different than the other two. This one was in a candy shop. There was a boy sitting at a stool, it looked like he was running away. But I think he failed, because there was a police man sitting next to him. In the shop there was also a lady getting some sort of smoothie. I did that one all by myself. I spent a few days on it and when I had finally gotten all the pieces in I discovered that six were missing. It was impossible that I lost them myself because I kept the pieces in the box and when I was looking for a piece, or putting one in, I grabbed it out of the box. So when I discovered these missing pieces (since I knew I didn't lose them) I thought my mom had taken them. It made sense because earlier when I was working on it she asked me when I thought that I would complete the puzzle. I said that I had no clue, but probably soon. It only made sense that she took them! I would later find out otherwise. It was a school night and I had to go to bed, but when I woke up in the morning I was in for a surprise. All the pieces were in the puzzle; including the missing ones! So before I left for school I went upstairs to say good bye to my mom like I do every school morning. She then told me that it was Bill (my step dad) that took them. This also made sense. He loves hiding things from us without our knowledge. It was another fun filled night of puzzles; and it is something I will never forget. :)

October Sky.

For English, and science, I read this book – October Sky. I thought that it was very interesting, and very cool to read this story, and find out that it is a true story; it actually happened. Although when I read books I imagine them in my head and well… This one I would not have known that it is true unless I looked in the book and saw that. I loved this story and it was a very good read. So to see what else I thought of it; here is my review that I wrote about October Sky.

This is a story that will ignite your imagination; it will leave you yearning for more. When I read this I didn't want to read it at first, I was doing it for a school project and tried to get through it as fast as I could. But I discovered that it was actually a really good, well written story that I liked.

Sonny lives in Coal wood, West Virginia. His dad runs the mine there in Coal wood, and hopes that Sonny will someday run the mine too. But Sonny has a different dream. He has always been different than all the other kids. He never really found his place, until he discovered rockets. Sonny has always been fascinated with space; he is excited and inspired when science engineers try to launch a satellite into space after Russia successfully launched their satellite, Sputnik. Sonny decides he wants to start building rockets, but he doesn't know enough to build one. So with the help of his friends, they start building rockets, and making their dreams come true. Every time they launch a rocker they learn something new, something to improve their rockets. Eventually Sonny and his fiends enter their rocket in the science fair, hoping to win and become rocket engineers.

This was a great book. I loved how it gave you enough information about the rockets to kind of know what they were talking about, but not so much that it was so confusing and you had no clue what it meant. I loved that this was a true story, and nothing was hidden, the whole truth was there. Here is a quote I loved because it showed description and in a fun way too. "Auk XVI suddenly jumped off the pad and flew straight up into the sky, a white plume of rocket candy fire and smoke sizzling behind." I have always loved when authors describe things so well it is like you could have been there yourself. Another quote. "There are Americans I'm a lot more afraid of than the Russians." Now I love this quote! Because seriously, I am totally more scared of people I know and care about, then people who I have no clue who they are! This is a very inspiring story and I think that every one could learn or take some thing from this and make the world a better place.

This term in class we are reading:

 Walk Two Moons

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Yearling

This is my book review of the yearling, which I read for honors English and surprisingly liked :)

When I first started reading this I thought that I was going to hate it, I thought that it was going to be a boring book about a boy and his deer. As I got further into the story each day, I discovered it was more than that. It was the story of a boy and his family, a family that had hardships. Jody wants to live life to the fullest extent, he wants to enjoy it. Being the only child in times like those though? Made living life just for fun, pretty hard.

Jody lives on Baxter Island. A small area of land that his father owns on which they live and raise their stock and care for their crops. He has always loved hunting with his father; he felt that it wasn't really about the hunt, so much as the journey. Even though Penny is Jody's comfort and friend, he still felt lonely. Even when he was with his best friend Fodderwing, he felt lonely. He wanted to get rid of that loneliness, and he did. Jody was out hunting with his father just like any other day, when they shot a buck. Moments later did they discover that the buck had a fawn. Jody saw that fawn and knew what he wanted to do, he wanted that fawn as his pet. Jody takes care of this fawn and later names it Flag. Flag is Jody's best friend, his greatest confidant, other than Penny of course. He takes care of Flag, but he soon realizes that this will be harder than he thought. Flag starts causing trouble for the Baxter's, destroying their crops, and one time to many. Some thing has to be done with this fawn, for he is now a yearling, and a restless one at that.

When I finished this story I found that I actually liked it. Although it was not what I would have traditionally read by myself I enjoyed it none the less. One thing that made it a little difficult to read though? The grammar, vocabulary, and spelling. The spelling is the thing that made it the hardest to understand. Because although it might make sense to the author, I had a hard time understanding some of the vocabulary because I am not quite sure how to pronounce it; and since I do not know how to pronounce it I can't figure out what word(s) I am reading.

Some things I really loved about this though? The descriptions of everything. such as this quote. "The marsh was golden. The whooping cranes were washed with gold. The far hammocks were black." I love the descriptions of the objects. They paint a great visual picture that I could not have seen any other way. The same goes with this simple quote. "The sunrise reached long fingers into the clearing." They just they create such an amazing way of describing it so well that you can clearly see it in your head.

This book was a great story. Though I will admit I had a hard time getting through it, I loved it in the end, and I hope that any one who reads the book will love it too.