I haven’t written yet because I wanted to write about the fireside I just got back from. It was with the author of Christmas Jars, Jason F. Wright. He was a fantastic speaker. I mean every one in the room felt something and at the same time it was a funny talk. He knew just how to catch our attention and make us smile.

What made me smile the most was when he looked at the audience, of which the chapel was full, then said well you must have been told that John Bytheway. It got the audience. We all started laughing, he was so nice and he was just great. He told us a few stories about how his book Christmas Jars has influenced many. He told us some of the letters and e-mails he has gotten. They were amazing. It is amazing all the trial people have gone through and then some one brings the Christmas Jar and it is a whole new world. He explained that to us to. About even if we do small things it will influence many. The stories really shocked me. The one that made my eyes get watery was about a five year old boy. He had gotten headaches and the doctors said that it was probably just growing pains. Well it then got worse, worse enough that he had to go to the emergency room. He had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. Then he was in operation with in a few hours. He had cancer for around a year, then when he went to one of his check ups the doctors had to say that there was nothing else they could do. The family took the boy home and they spent there holidays in the living room around him. On Christmas Eve the door bell rang. The family answered it and on the door step they found two jars full of change and cash. With the jars there was a note that said that the money was for the five year old boy. The boy didn’t want to keep it; he wanted to give it to Primary Children’s Hospital, so that they could replace the broken toys. A while later he died. Though ever since that the family has done a Christmas Jar in remembrance of there son.


It was a really good story, though Jason F. Wright went into more detail. The fireside was really good and I learned a lot. It makes me want to do more service and be less greedy. It made me have the desire to do more, give more. So on the ride home my mom and I were talking about the project I am going to do for National Honors Junior Society. I can’t wait to start my project for it; it is going to be so much fun. Though I can’t start for a while because I have to do school term projects and finish all my big homework assignments before I can start. Which is going to take awhile, I can just tell you that.

Piano

I really don’t know what to write about. I remembered that I hadn’t written on my blog for the week at 8:00 pm Sunday night. Isn’t that just wonderful? And right now I am trying to figure out what to write about. When I remembered that I hadn’t done my post yet I was playing the piano.



I have been playing the piano since I turned 8 years old. My first piano teacher was a family friend from Clearfield, but it took to long to get there after school, so I had to switch my piano teacher to a family friend that lived really close, a lot closer in fact. I have been taking lessons from her from when I was around 8 and a half to 9 years old. Though this year, I have had to stop taking lessons from her because she had a lot going on in her life at the moment.


So for now I am teaching my self in a way and practicing on my own, just picking random songs out of my piano books. Three of my four brothers are also playing the piano too. My youngest brother wants to start lessons soon, which he is almost eight any ways. Also my little sister, who is five years old, has been begging to start lessons also.


A funny thing about my brothers also playing the piano is that my oldest brother who is two years younger then me is trying to pass me up in piano. So we are trying to get our songs mastered so that we can go to the next levels in piano. The thing that makes me nervous is that he is only one level behind me. I need to be practicing more to stay ahead of him. To help me get better I have been trying harder songs to test myself.


Though I do not like practicing the piano at all, I dread it so bad. I like playing the piano just for fun, not to get songs passed off. I do better at my playing when I am doing it for fun. When I am doing it to get songs passed off in my books I always forget to practice or just don’t want to do it at all.


I have done some really fun songs and some really boring slow songs. I mean I like the slow songs, but not when the notes don’t go together and sound horrible together. Then I play really fun songs and I end up loving them. Loving them enough that I master the songs and I then have the songs memorized. I love playing the piano. I love to learn songs that I have heard before and play them enough to master them. I like to play songs that I can sing too. I love music, but I only like the music that is appropriate and beautiful. Not the dumb music that swears and has inappropriate words to it. I like the music that has meaning and teaches things that are good.

St. George Memories!

Many people wouldn’t consider going to St. George as a vacation, but our family does it every year. It doesn’t even matter what time of year it is. It’s crazy, that is what some people might say, but our family enjoys it. Why, well we have a lot of family that lives in St. George. I have cousins of every age (except old) that live there so it makes it fun to be around everyone, each person having their own characteristics. It is the Jenkins side of my family that lives down there. I have many stories that I could tell from going down there. One that my cousin Sierra and I will always remember is when we went to my grandparents’ house. The two of us went there for a sleep over and boy did we have every thing planned. We had gotten permission from Sierra’s brother to take his rubber spider, which looked just like a real spider. So the spider was Davis’ spider. Now just a little background about the Jenkins, it is the grandchildren’s tradition to always scare our grandma with fake bugs and snakes, all of us do it. Back to my story now, so we get there and we decide to watch a movie. At the Jenkinses’ residence there are always movies. We watched this one movie that my grandma had, it was about some singers, I don’t know exactly it was a long time ago, and with the movie we had popcorn. Then we got ready for bed. We were really good by getting ready for bed without any complaints just like our parents’ had said to be. When we got in the guest bed room and shut the door we couldn’t stop giggling. We couldn’t wait until morning. We had a plan for it and we were going to stay to schedule. If you made a plan yours wouldn’t have been this good I can tell you that. We woke up at 6:00 am just as we had planned; my grandma likes to sleep in late, and waited until we heard the front door shut as my grandpa left for work. We then scurried to my cousin’s luggage to get the fake spider out. We then crawled to into my grandparents’ bedroom, opening the door very quietly. The grandchildren’s joke was to put the spider in our grandma’s slippers. We did just that, putting it in one of the slippers and making sure that its legs and everything were showing. We then left the room crawling as fast as we could, into the living room. Then we hurried to clean up the mess we made the night before. While we were doing this all of a sudden we heard a scream. It was my grandma, we ran into her room and saw her screaming, looking down at her slippers. We laughed the whole time and as we walked into the kitchen with her. Then as we sat down at the counter my cousin and I smiled and said that we deserved breakfast in bed. We sure were our grandma’s favorite grand children. I mean if all the grandma’s in the world knew what we did we would be all of their favorite grandchildren. My cousin and I had a lot of fun that morning. Though we have done many different pranks since then to many different other people in our family. Like the lizard that my brothers and boy cousins let into my grandparents house, and the sand that my little two year old cousin put a shovel full of sand into his dad’s swimming suit at the beach. All of the grandchildren like to do silly things.

The end of the term is finally here! I have been waiting for it for ever. The only thing that makes me made though is that one of my grades is lower that it’s been through out Jr. High. Though what I am happy about is my French grade is and A, when last year it was either an A- or a B+. Now though its and A! Only three more terms to go and then the school year is over. That seems like it’s a long time away but when you really think about it, it isn’t really that far away at all.


Ok so my weekend has been so busy. So after school on Friday I get home and do a bit of homework and relax. At 7:30 I had to go babysit for some of my neighbors and I didn’t get home until past midnight! I was so tired and slept in till 8:00 in the morning, which I don’t like to sleep in because it always makes me feel lazy. So I wake up Saturday morning and my littlest brother has a basket ball game, so my dad, who it his coach, and my other brothers go to the practice. When they got home my family does yard work until around 12:30 to 1:00 o’clock, and you should see what we did. My brothers and I start raking up all the leaves in the back yard, because we have two huge cotton trees, we finish and go on to do other things in the yard. When we were finished with the yard we look around the trees and there are leaves all over. While we were doing yard work leaves were falling, though the good thing is my dad said we’d just wait until Monday and rake again when there were more leaves on the ground. The thing that bugs me about the trees though is that when the leaves fall off it seems as though the leaves just grow right back, because the leaves are all over the trees. Also even though they don’t grow back in those few seconds it sure does feel like that.

After doing yard work we got to take a break and rest. Then my family left to one of my other brother’s comp. basket ball game. It was one of the most intense games I have ever been too. The team they played to Saturday night was a team they played last year and lost by two points. Well through out the whole game they were either tied or like five ahead. The last quarter the other team starts to be either tied or ahead. We lost by ONE point. I couldn’t believe it, last year we lost by two points and this year we lost by one point. It was a good game other wise, lots of good plays, there were also a lot of fouls, some of which they didn’t call which made me mad. So after the game my family gets home around 8:12 and we do a few things getting ready for Sunday, then we watch one of our family’s favorite shows that comes on at 9:00 Saturday nights. The show is MONK, I love that show, and it is a blast to watch. I mean you laugh all the time during that show from all the funny things that Mr. Monk does, and how he acts. It is just a fun show to watch. That may not sound that busy to some people but to me it was.

It was still a good weekend though, lot’s of fun and other stuff.

Christmas!

I am writing this on the day it is due and it makes me really mad. I am mad because I was planning to do this on Friday but I totally forgot. When I remembered was Sunday morning the day it’s due. After I realized that I began to think about what I wanted to write about. This is what I came up with.

Lately I have been thinking about the holidays coming up. I mean Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the coming of a new year. This time of year is packed with different holidays and different reasons. I have been thinking about holidays a lot lately, but mostly Christmas. For one reason, I have Christmas songs stuck in my head like crazy. I can’t wait for Halloween to be over (sorry to you Halloween lovers, I’m not one of those) my grandparents from St. George are coming for the Christmas holidays. I haven’t been able to celebrate Christmas with these particular grandparents for quite a few years (it’s actually been 9 years since we’ve had Christmas dinner with them). So I am really excited to have Christmas with them because I don’t even remember having Christmas dinner with them. Though there is one thing that we try to do every December with all the girl cousins in our family. This is what we do, we have my grandpa take all the boys and adult men some where while the girls stay at my grandparent’s house. We then, with our moms, sisters, girl cousins and of course our grandma, we make ginger bread houses. It is so much fun; we make our own with our own special designs. We have the most important thing for ginger bread housed with us too. Lots and lots of candy, M&M’s (our family favorite) candy canes, peeps, marshmallows, chocolate Santa’s, Dots, frosting to cover the houses and make the candy stick. With a whole lot more candy too (I just can’t remember all the names). Though there is a sad thing we don’t always get to do it every year because my family lived here and a lot of my cousins live in St. George. Though if I am with my other side of my family we do fun things too, like I remember we went sledding when I was younger. We play out in the snow, play games and have a huge dinner. When I say huge I really mean it. We have a lot of fun during the Christmas holidays, and I love them a lot. The music like I said before are stuck in my head, I caught myself singing them in my bed room. I have been looking at my families Christmas piano books. When I am not thinking about school I’m thinking about Christmas because I can’t wait. The bad thing though is we still have Halloween and Thanksgiving before Christmas comes. Besides those two holidays still to come we also still have school, school, and more school. That is another reason I am excited for Christmas, two weeks off of school. A break I cannot wait for!

In My Father's House

So as I said in my last post I finished Rocket Boys and it was a pretty good book. As soon as I finished that book I started a new one. This time I am reading this book called In My Father's House. It is written by Ann Rinaldi and takes place in the Civil War Era. It’s about this girl named Oscie Mason and her dad dies. Her mom gets remarried and she has a really hard time with it and gives everyone else a hard time. So I am on page 108 and what has just happened is Abraham Lincoln is elected and the people are mad so the war is starting to appear, people getting a bit skittish and really angry at one another. Also her tutor is leaving because battles are starting to appear in a few places. It is a really good book so far, I mean you get to see how life was back then. You get to see how they lived and how it was before the war, politics and all. You see the contention that the war brings to families and how they try to get through. I have never really read any books on the Civil War so this is new for me. I have seen movies on the Civil War, and one of my favorites is Gettysburg. You get to see some sad, but tough battles and you get to learn about real people in the war - not made up characters. The book is 317 pages so I don’t think that it will take me that long to finish it. I am hoping that the ending isn’t sad because I don’t like sad ending books. I am looking forward to learning some more from the book though about the Civil War, and I am sure that the rest of the book will be good.

The Four Day Weekend!

Having the long weekend was really good for me. I really needed the break from school and I got to sleep in, which I also needed. The bad thing is though I got sick over the break and I still am sick, otherwise it was good. I had a good time going to the movies with my family, finishing my book Rocket Boys for Biology. The book actually wasn’t that bad, I mean I learned a few things that I didn’t really learn from the movie. The movie is also really good. I got to do some yard work with my family ( some of you might say that working in the yard wouldn’t be fun), but I had a good time doing it getting to throw away fences that my family had torn out of the yard. I got freaked out by two huge spiders and when I say huge I really mean it. It wasn’t the prettiest sight, though my brothers thought it was funny. I can’t wait for the next holiday break (the day before Halloween), though I do like school and my classes it is nice to have a break from it all every once in a while.