Yesterday, after I had written my post I started to think about the title of my blog “Laila’s Letters”. Shouldn’t my posts be more in the form of letters if my blog is Laila’s Letters? I think it should, and it would be more fun to write that way, so I am going to start writing it that way, in the form of letters.

Monday, December 28, 2009

One more week of freedom, I think that it is a great way to put it, freedom, and school sometimes just seems like torture. Well New Years Eve is coming and I know that I have plans with family friends. These are friends that we have gotten together many other times for New Years Eve, staying up late to watch movies, play games, eat and talk, that’s what you do when you’re with friend’s right? Or even go places, but in a way it is too cold for that right now. With these particular friends we have done many things, we used to live by each other 7 ½ years ago, we have gone to rodeos, gone out to dinner, gone to cabins/lodges in St. George, have gone to Disney on Ice, Salt Lake on many occasions and many more places.

I have never realized how many different places we have been with them until I started writing this. We, my family, have so much fun with them, they have kids that are close to our age and it makes it fun, that way we aren’t bored to death. Friends mean so much to me and have a great influence on my life. This family is the perfect example of good friends, they are a fantastic family and I know that whenever my family is with them we have a great time and don’t like having to leave. I don’t even know if this is making any sense, but I want to write about friends.

Everyone in my family is my friend, they just are without question. Then there are my friends in my neighbor hood and my friends at school, my friends at school are like life savers for me. They always make me feel like I fit in with them and they are always kind to me. I always have a lot of fun with them, in the parties that we hold, during school, or even just hanging out. We always have something to laugh about and we always have a caring touch. My school friends are a perfect example also of great friends. You know how every one is always saying when you go to Jr. High to pick good friends, well that is exactly what I have done and I am happy with my friends at school. I hope that next year in High School I will be able to pick good friends also. I know that I am going to have to learn to have that much fun with my friends in my neighbor hood as I do with my friends at school. It will be a challenge for me to do that but I know that I will over come the problems that I have with my neighbor hood friends, but I am really thankful for my friends at school for the way they are. Friends are a really big influence, so pick the right friends.

One more week of no school before going back and I think that I am going to enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Laila

Christmas Vacation/ Winter Break

Christmas has come and gone and now the New Year is coming. I have had a great week, the week of Christmas, I have enjoyed every minuet of the week. Only one more week of no school and then we have to go back to school. I don’t want to but oh well, I guess I better finish my homework this week too. This past week my family and grandparents have been playing games, watching movies and eating, as my dad puts it. It was a lot of fun, my family goes to a movie every Christmas Eve morning, the movie my family chose was The Princess and the Frog, it was a fun movie, interesting with the voodoo, it was weird every time the voodoo guy appeared on screen. It was a really cute movie, a day or two before that my mom, little sister, grandma and I went to a movie for fun, a girl’s night in a way. The movie we went to was Julie & Julia; I loved that movie that was a great movie. I was mad though in the end that Julia was so rude, I mean it was rude of her to act that way, though I won’t say any more for those of you who haven’t seen it and want to see it. Still though I like it and Amy Adams did a really good job.


Another movie my family and grandparents watched was the John Adams movie, it is a long six of seven segment movie, but it is fantastic. I absolutely loved it, it was about John Adams and his life and one reason I loved it so much is because I love American history, especially that period of time, John Adams was a pretty amazing man. Actually, my grandparents and I stayed up late last night to finish the last two segments because they are leaving today to go home and my grandpa and grandma wanted to finish it before we left. So I went to be late, but enjoyed the movie a lot. My family also watched Night at the Museum 2, Bed Time Stories, Love finds a Home, Prince Caspian, Elf, Polar Express, While you were sleeping, and the fifth season of Monk, maybe a few others also, I just don’t remember the rest if we watched more. The movies that we watched were either movies we got for Christmas or movies that my grandparents had never seen before. Yes I know that it is a lot of movies, but when it is cold out side what else is there to do, though we also ate and played many games. We stayed up late many nights after the movies to play games, like Phase 10, Geo/derby, Jenga and then Wii games. It was a lot of fun, my grandparents and my parents stayed up later then all of us kids to play Phase 10 over and over, because that is a fun, competition at full blast game.

Oh, it is the Christmas break! Or what ever they call it, the Winter break, but it is the break and it makes me happy. I only have a little homework, well now that I’m thinking about it I do have homework in Geometry, Geography and Biology. Oh boy, that will be fun, but I have two weeks to do my big projects so I will be fine. My grandparents got in town Friday afternoon and we have been having a lot of fun lately, getting ready for Christmas and everything. We have been watching the fifth season of Monk too, we have been laughing so hard even if we have seen some of them already. I love that show and I am sad that the season is over now. The TV. show is great and always has me laughing, like the one where the guy who is Mr. Monk’s doctor of something is going to retire. That one is hilarious. The last show of the eighth season to end the whole show was great, I am still mad though that it is ending. I really enjoyed that show. Another funny show was 1 vs. 100, which was a good show, just a funny show. Really, I don’t even know where this post is going I just needed something to write about and I guess it is a whole bunch of random subjects. Plus my subjects go from one to another. Well, I guess I will try to make more sense for the last half of my blog.


Like I could write about how bad I am at writing! I am a horrible writer; it is just not something that I am good at. I mean I like coming up with stories but I am not talented at writing them down on paper. My grammar, punctuation, everything about it is wrong, the way I word things, the voice, I just can’t get it right. My dad’s job is a writer, he is good I can just tell you that, he can edit my papers so well; I mean he finds all the little details. I like making up stories, using my mind to catch others, but when you put it on paper it never comes out the right way. It always goes wrong, never the way I though it would turn out and even sometimes worse. If you asked one of my friends to edit my work they would find many mistakes, writing just isn’t one of my talents. I wish it was, but it just isn’t even if I work hard at it.

I’m good at lots of things, I guess, at least that is what my parents say, they are always trying to encourage me to keep at it and give it my best effort. Some of those things would be piano, drawing and photography. I love taking pictures of the outdoors, I would love to have my own studio one day, and take pictures out in the open. I love drawing landscapes too, they are so detailed that it challenges me, which is a good thing, and I also love drawing animals. Piano is just another thing I love to do, the music and how pretty it sounds, it just all makes my day, unless I have trouble with a piece.

What??

How about going somewhere new? I wish I could right now, it would give me a break from school. I wish I could see the world, go places no one has ever been or seen. I remember when one of my friends and I were little we always wished that we could search the world for new birds. We would be bird watchers, take care of injured, and feed those in need and keep an eye on the endangered ones. We always thought that would be fun, to watch them fly and every thing. Those were just our little girl wishes, but now I don’t know what I want to be at all. I always thought I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. I always thought that was what I was going to do. Now I don’t know what I am going to do in the future at all. I thought about being a photographer, or artist, then even a landscape designer. I have no idea. I just can’t decide what to pick, but then who said I had to know what I want to be in the future. Really no one said that but the counselors at school are always pressuring us to decide for the future, that way we aren’t dumb and we have something to work for. Though what if we don’t know what we want to be. I don’t know and technically don’t think that I should know what I want to be when I grow up right now. In ways I think that it is ok too. There are so many things I could be I just have to find that. I have a lady in my neighbor hood that said that she went to college to be a teacher and when she was about done with school she decided she didn’t want to be a teacher and wanted to be a photographer and there is nothing wrong with that. I think it would be fun to be a photographer, to take family pictures, individual pictures, pictures taken inside and outside in different scenes, if that made any sense. Though, then I also think that it would be fun to design landscapes or even draw landscapes around the world. To get different ideas around the world and then bring them here for others to enjoy, I love drawing trees flowers and mountains, so it would be a job that I would enjoy. Then getting back to when I was little, I also thought it would be fun to own a restaurant. To cook yummy, delicious foods, I love cooking and I think that cooking would be fun, though I never want to work at a fast food restaurant, it would have to be a sit down, nice restaurant. I don’t know any more, what I want to be, but it would be fun to do all of those choices I said. One important thing though would be that I would have to enjoy what ever job I had and at least be a bit good at it.

Education

Two more weeks of school and then it is Christmas vacation!!! Wow I cannot wait, I have so many plans with family and friends, and I am just looking so forward to it. Plus I already have my list of Christmas presents that I am buying for my family and friends. Though we still have two more weeks of school left and those two weeks could last forever or they could pass by quickly. Which I hope that they pass by quickly, that way I can do all that I have planned with some of my friends and with my family.



School sure has been different this year. It’s been harder this year, which I thought it would be, though I have to do my homework right when I get home or I never get it done. Though I don’t like doing my homework, it just isn’t fun for me, I mean some homework that teachers give is fun and others are what we students seem to think is pointless. Though I guess we have to do our homework if we want and education, if we want to graduate. In Young Women’s our lesson was about education and I guess that it made me think more about my education more seriously. One of my problems about homework is that when I get home I will go straight to a book and then I don’t stop until I have to go eat dinner. Then it’s already late and I still have to do my homework. My homework is like an addiction, I have to set a time limit or I will never stop reading at times. In some ways that is good and in other ways it isn’t.


I have been told by my grandparents on both sides of my family that education is very important. They ask at the end of the term what my grades were and always tell me to keep it up. To remember how important an education is and that it will help me in my life when I’m older. My parents always get after me too when I say I don’t like school or I had a hard time on a test, though when I say that they always come up with a way to help me so that I will do better on the next one. They always ask me every night if I have done my homework and they always help me if I need help on an assignment. If my parents can’t help me with an assignment they always have someone else who can. I mean my parents don’t do my homework for me, they help me, but they make me put all the effort in my assignments, they guide me and make sure that I know how to do it the next time it comes up.


So with all my help I guess I can’t complain that much about school. Even though it is not my favorite thing in the world I still have to do it and I am sure that I will benefit from it later in life.

Wow, my break sure wasn’t what I expected it to be like. That is another story though. I was just watching The Man from Snowy River. It has to be one of my favorite movies. I love the music in the movie also; I know how to play Jessica’s Theme from the movie. It is a fun and beautiful song to play on the piano. The story is really good, and a little note, I love horses. They are so beautiful, the way they look. Horses are just wonderful animals, unless you get hurt. A funny thing is that there is this little girl in my neighbor hood and she looks exactly like Jessica in the movie, hair and everything. I don’t like the second movie though; it was just a waste of time. They should have gotten married in the end of the first movie or at the beginning of the second, so the second one wasn’t my favorite.



I was also reading Pride and Prejudice this weekend. I really like that book, and I also like the movies, they are both really good. The book is a little confusing but I know the story line so it isn’t that bad. The way it is a little bit of confusing is because the writing is different. It’s not like the writing I usually read in books, though I think that Jane Austen is a good writer. I have seen a few of the movies based off her books and they are really good.


Some thing that made my holiday break better was that BYU won!!! I was babysitting and watching the game at the same time. Though the kids that I was babysitting wanted to watch the game because they are big BYU fans, there whole family was wearing BYU shirts. It was an exciting game with it going over time and then BYU ending up winning by three. It was an exciting and fun game. The thing that made me mad was that we were winning by 11 and then Utah caught up and made it go overtime. Though winning in the over time didn’t bug me at all. I was just glad that BYU won the game. I think that it is funny how everyone gets wild and everything when it is BYU vs. Utah. In my neighbor hood it gets really entertaining. This time of year gets our neighborhood laughing. It is all good though.


As I was saying that this break was different. I really meant it, it wasn’t at all how I thought it was going to turn our. I am really looking forward to the Christmas holiday; I can just tell you that. Plus I have written that in a few previous posts. This time of year is a time for joy, laughter and so much more. Now I am looking really forward to the Christmas break, even though the Thanksgiving one just ended. My Thanksgiving wasn’t that bad, it was just different. I had a really good time with being with most of my family, and I can’t wait for the next holiday!

Only two more days of school and then its Thanksgiving break, or fall break as they call is now I think. I cannot wait for these two days of school to just zip right by. I am ready for a break from school. I guess I am really tired of all the projects, tests, assignments and other things that are due. I am ready for a holiday to just enjoy. I mean this weekend has just zipped right by, I woke up this morning thinking, it’s already Sunday! This weekend was too short. I guess it was because I always had something to do and I was never bored. I’ve worked on homework this weekend, I’ve gone to two basket ball games, I went to the movies last night with Drue, and I watched to movies with my family on Friday night. The two movies I watched with my family were Batman and Evelyn. I don’t remember what number of Batman we watched, but I like that movie so it was good. Then we watched Evelyn. That was a good movie. It was also sad at the same time. It was about this little girl who sees her mother get into a car with another man and drive away. So she runs to tell her father and the two of them try to go after her but can’t. Then the Ireland government, they live in Ireland, takes away this mans little girl Evelyn and his two boys. He has to fight really hard to get them back and in the end he falls in love with one of his lawyer’s sisters. It was a really good movie, and sad at the same time for some of the things that happened. This was an extremely short weekend and I just hope that it doesn’t go by too fast. Then after the Thanksgiving break, three weeks later, it is Christmas break which I can’t wait for. I am so excited for the up coming holidays. I’m already listening to Christmas music on the radio, though I have to get through school first. I also can’t wait for the New Year, and this is why, Fablehaven 5 is coming out around May and I love those books. Those books are so good. Full of adventure, fun danger, heart aches (which I was really mad about) and more, they are great books. On the heart aching part this is what I mean, when Gavin turned out to be the bad guy. I was so mad. That is disappointing, but it did make the book good, but still I was mad about that part. But then Kendra did meet Raxtus, who is the dragon but can change into a fairy also. So in a way he is fairy kind too, just like Kendra. Other wise the book was excellent. Though my brother didn’t think they were that great of a book. I am still trying to get him to finish the fourth book. I mean with each new book they get better and better. I mean my cousin who is in High School; I think either 10th or 11th loves the books. Oh well, but ya those books are great.