Summer and Fall of 2010

I haven't done a blog post in a long time, so this one will cover basically all of summer. I have been very busy with all the things I was and am doing, then once school started it almost became impossible. When it comes down to it a blog is not top priority. Today was my last day of the trimester for school and I am off for the whole month of December. This will give me more time to do posts and I can update during the holiday season.
The first thing I am going to cover is the Boy Scout Jamboree in Virginia that I went to. At first I didn't want to go to this one because it was the national one and I wanted to go to the international one, which I will get into later. They only hold this event every four or five years. In the end I am glad I went. It was a very good experience. The event is about 45,000 scouts from all over the country that come and do a whole bunch of things in one place. You can do things like scuba diving, helicopter rides, or a ton of other interesting things like that. They send you out at 7:00am and don't expect to see you again until 6:00pm. They let you do whatever you want to and you don't have a schedule. The only down side was that it was blazing hot. The only shelter was tents so there was no escaping it and when it rained it was extreme thunderstorms. An average day could go to 115 degrees by 3pm. It only rained twice, but when it did they had to get everyone under shelter because the only kind of rain they get are extreme thunderstorms. The entire ten day trip was fun and I am glad I went.
In August I did several things. I did a fundraiser for the Light the Night walk that benefits the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The fundraiser donated several hundred dollars for the society and I had fun doing it. While people were selling for this I went to an arts festival and bought another vase to put in my room. I had just bought a couple new pieces of furniture for my room and I wanted something to put on the small table. It is a small red and orange glass vase that is made by folding a sheet of glass over itself. I looks really cool and I am very glad I bought it. Also during this month my family had an album party. I didn't even know that these existed, but people bring over old records and they play them as they eat snacks and talk. It wasn't that interesting to me so I just sort of went off and did my own thing.
On the last day of August I started school. It was my first day at City High because I had chosen to transfer. I had to ride the city bus down and back everyday to downtown. I liked it much better than my old school and am very glad I switched. The schedule and grading is a little different than a traditional school. Also the way it's run is different. Every student receives a free laptop because most assignments are done on the computer. The way they teach is also different. They done use traditional textbooks with notes. It is all interactive learning and there are no lectures or textbooks. In science you do an experiment almost every other day. Their grading system doesn't use points. You get a letter grade and then it all averages out at the end of the trimester. Doing this makes every assignment equally as important whether it was large or not. The school is located in an office building as well. This gets us used to working in a office environment so when we do start working we are used to the style. The last major thing that is different about this school is that we don't have the traditional three months in a row off. We go for three trimesters a year and at the end of each trimester, which is a grading period, you get about a month off. This month is the first month of of the ninth grade cycle so I get a nice break.
After school started my sister had her baby. Her new baby is a boy and they name him Aiden Larry Smith. He was born on 9-9-10. It was kind of a good date because they got married on 8-8-09 so the dates matched up. When he was born he was 20 inches long and weighed 7lbs 5ozs. He was born at 11:32 and I was in school so I only got an update on my phone. A picture of him is below.
My aunt who has been staying with us for a while bought a house. It is nice little house that is only about 10 or 15 minutes away so we still see her often. I really like it and it has a big yard so her dog can run around and she can garden. She is very happy with it, but I was kind of sad that she was leaving.
Since we are back into Steeler season my family started holding the weekly Steeler parties. Every Sunday we invite over people and have lunch and snacks while we watch the game. It is always a fun way to unwind at the end of the week.
My whole family including the new member (Aiden) went to the pumpkin patch at Shramm's like we always do each year. We always go to the pumpkin patch to get pumpkins to carve and gourds and Indian corn to decorate with. Their farmers market always has fresh grapes and fruit that you can buy. This year we got a bag of jumbo world grapes and they were really good. I have never seen grapes that were that big before and they were so fresh. I will definitely buy that kind again next year.
After going to the pumpkin patch naturally the next big thing is Halloween. I went over to my friends house and we had some people over. We stayed the night and played poker and other random games. I had to leave early in the morning though because I had to get orders done. Whe you don't get home from school until 5:00 you don't really have time to make things on weekdays.
My cousin Leah came up from Florida for Thanksgiving to stay with my aunt for a while. She will be here until the 5th or 6th. I like having her around because she likes to do a lot of the things I like to do, that my mom doesn't. We might do something before she leaves because I am off now.
For Thanksgiving we had every one over and we had a nice meal. I had everything except for the turkey of course, but it was really good. We had mashed potatoes, stuffing, blueberry muffins, corn, and homemade apple sauce. It was nice because after dinner we got to sit and talk with everyone there. Thanksgiving is my second favorite meal of the year, after Christmas because we have twice baked potatoes.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the post I want to go to the World Jamboree. Each time they hold it, which is every four or five years, it is in a new country. Groups of kids and adults from all around the world and every country come to it and they do everything you can think of. Games and different things from every country. You can learn other people's cultures and even help each other learn some of the language you each speak. It is supposed to be very interesting. Going to the event is expensive though so I have signed up for many craft shows so I can make the money to pay for the trip. So far I have done three craft shows and covered about half of it. I am going to sign up for a few more in December so I can cover as much as I can before the Holiday rush ends. This one that I am saving for is in Sweden. It is next summer so I am excited. As new things come up I will update it on the blog.
Since it is getting to be holiday time I decorated my room. I always do a ridiculous amount of decorating in my room because the holidays are my favorite time of the year. I put before and after pictures of my room below. I am very happy with it. I put a new winter plate on my fountain and hooked up all my lights to a remote so I don't have to climb over to the outlet to plug them in. It is really cool because then even if I am going to be in my room for like 10 minutes I can still turn on the lights to enjoy them. It took me 13 hours straight of hard work to get it from where it was to where it is now.

Dentist and Dime Hockey Board

I started making the first set of Creek Connections fundraiser candles. I started with sage and citrus, because it was a good number for the amount of time I had. The color turned out really nice. I now have them finished. They only took me one night to do so they were not that hard. The color that I had to make them in is a pale hunter green.
Today I went to the dentist. It was a normal cleaning check up. Like usual I didn't have any cavities so that was good. I had to go directly there from when I got home. I basically walked in the door and turned around and walked right back out.
Also starting today I had PSSA testing. They are just the regular state tests that everyone has to take. It is really easy and really boring. They last all the way until Tuesday. I am not looking forward to taking them first thing on Monday.
The last day of the grading period has passed so I am now in a different class for my 7th period. I was in a class where you make a dime hockey board. I put a picture of it below. I got a 98% on it, but I didn't get to put a clear coat on it. I was able to put whatever laser engraving I anted to in the middle.

Creek Connections Fundraiser

The fundraiser I am doing for Creek Connections at my school is going on right now. I got the order forms on Friday. I went through them all and it raised more money than last year's did. Around 50 candles were sold with Coconut Lime Verbena being the best seller. Peaches was the second best. The supplies are supposed to arrive on Thursday. I am planning on starting them over the Easter break, which isn't very much of a break. All of the snow days I mentioned in the last post turned my break into a three day weekend, but still I'll take it.
For a camping trip I am going on in the summer I had to take a swim test. It isn't very hard so I passed it. I also had to take some tests yesterday. I got a 60/60 on a science test and a 29/28 (extra credit question) on a math test. The grading period ends on Wednesday so I am happy I did so well.
I recently went to orientation for my new high school. I learned a few things about it. I would get a laptop free because we do all of our work on the computer. I would have windows 7 and the office 2010 programs. It is not a cyber school though. I will have to ride the bus downtown each day. I think the school is really cool. You do have to follow a dress code, but it's not that bad. You have to dress in business casual. I will have to buy some new clothes but other than that I like it a lot. It is better in my opinion compared to the regular high school that I would be going to.
The other day I got another guitar. I got my first which is an electric bass for Christmas, but a friend of the family asked if I wanted this one. It is an acoustic so now I can choose between the two. It is a really nice guitar. I put pictures of it and my bass guitar below.

Spring is Here!!!

Finally freedom from the snow. It's getting warmer and the snow is melted. I am so excited. There was over two feet of snow on the ground for a while. I went two weeks without having a full day of school. The first week school was canceled for the whole week and the next week every day had a two hour delay. Once the snow became bearable, I went to a couple of cool little stores and got some unique foods to try. Some of the foods I got were fresh honey comb and pink rock salt from the Himalaya Mountains. The honey comb tasted really good in tea and the rock salt was outrageously expensive, but it didn't taste all that different. It was interesting though. On my web site I added a comments page if anyone is interested in placing feedback. I have got a lot of good comments so far.
During the period that I had two feet of snow on the ground the back of my house was covered in huge icicles. These are not the foot tall things that people talk about these are 8 to 9 feet tall. They covered the entire back of the house. One of them started at the top of two stories and ended at the ground. When they started to melt they started to slide off. If one fell you would hear a huge crash and shatter. We didn't want to let my dogs outside because you don't know when they are going to fall. When they were completely frozen they were cool to look at. I put a few pictures of their early stages below.
For school I had to do a large science experiment. You were able to choose anything that you want, but you had to conduct the entire experiment on your own. I chose to do if a fish brain can process music and if so how do they react to different types. Th first round I did failed because I got feeder goldfish from Petco which didn't survive through the full experiment. Their feeder goldfish are not meant to live that long since they are just food. I then went to another local pet store called Elmer's. I got a new set of fish which survived through the experiment and are actually still alive. I have two and my sister has the other two. The experiment turned out that yes fish can process different music and they do react differently. What I did to test it is I put each fish in a different bowl, then I got waterproof earphones and played ten minutes of music to each fish. Each fish had a different type of music. I did this once a day for seven days and recorded the results. I got a 97% on my project so it turned out good.
I heard about this old electric vehicle that interested me when I looked into it. It is called the Ev1. It was made by General Motors during the 90s. They only made it because a new law forced them to. The ones that were leased out were selling good and generating profits, but they convinced the California Air Resources Bureau that they were not so they would lift the law. They did lift the law and so General Motors took them back and crushed them. The Ev1 was the only car to ever wear just the GM name plate.
I am doing the Creek Connections fundraiser to send the group to Erie again. I got the orders on Friday of last week. I am going to go through them and place an order. When I have the final count I will post it. This year we are using all environmentally friendly supplies. I am going to use recycled jars, soy wax, and the metal wick tabs are made from recycled pop cans. I am excited to get started.

New Years 2009/2010

I had a great New Year's. My family had a few people over and we just played Wii and board games. It was a nice quiet fun evening. Everyone went to bed shortly after midnight but me. I stayed up for a while after and just did some fun things to occupy myself for a while until I eventually got bored with nothing else to do and went to bed. A few days after New Year's it was my mom's birthday so a group of us went to a nice restaurant. The food there is very good and is cooked hibachi style. There is a huge flame when they cook the food and it is really cool. In school my midterms for the year are coming up and I am starting to study because I hate these tests. They are always long and boring and extremely difficult but I guess there is nothing you can do.

Biggest Post Ever

Sorry I haven't done a post in a long time but my mind has just been somewhere else. I will start at the end of August. I went to a place called the Caddy Shack. It was amazing it had three go cart tracks, a paintball range, a driving range, an arcade, and a mini golf course that was incredible. It was a really big course with all kind of things in the golf holes. I had waterfalls and hills and dips and swerves and all kinds of things. After that though I went to the eye doctors and they told me I had to take it easy and not do cross country because my lenses were unstable right now. So when I told the coach she offered to let me be the manager for the team. So now I go to them to the meets and keep track of times and places and stuff like that. At the beginning of the next month I went to a Pirate game which they lost of course. I didn't go for the game though I went for fireworks night at the end of the game. The fireworks were great. Then my family had a Labor Day cookout which was fun. We just invited people over and grilled and swam. It was our last cookout of the season kind of thing. Then I started school which I hated to go back to but it's not that bad once I started it. All my teachers are nice and will help me if I need it. I also started Latin. I didn't want to learn any of the other normal languages that they offered. So I chose Latin. Also my history teacher is a big Irish fan so he is teaching me how to speak Gaelic because I have always wanted to learn it I just didn't know any one who spoke it. After school started I used some Kennywood tickets over one of the weekends. It probably would have been more fun if I would have been allowed to go on some of the rides. The doctor told me that I couldn't because it would shake my head around to much and it could mess up my lenses and make them detach and roll to the back of my eye. So other than that it was fun. Also the Steelers started playing. So far my family has had a party for every game except for one because it was a 8:00 game so it would have gone to late. They have all had themes so far and they have all been really fun. In boy scouts I earned three more badges and I am working towards an award the no one in my group has gotten yet. There are eight certain badges you have to have. You also have to have First class rank and you have to do four major service projects. To give you an Idea of how big I will give you an example of one I am trying to get approved by the council. It would involve me handing out two thousand bag to the neighborhoods and collects school supplies then I would have to write letters to 50 schools and ask them for their old out of date textbooks that they don't use any more. I would have to go around and collect the bags and collects the hundreds of textbooks then send them over to Burkina Faso which is in Africa. Once they were over there I would have to get people to distribute them to the schools across the country. Burkina Faso has a literacy rate of 12.8% which is the lowest in the world that is why I would choose them but that is an example of the magnitude that these projects have to be. I have to do four of them. So I am working really hard right now to get all the badges done and all these projects going. It is very difficult. I also got to be an eighth grade helper to the creek connections thing I did last year so that will be starting soon. Then on top of that the eye doctors told us that the only way to correct the lenses was to preform surgery and not laser eye surgery. This surgery will involve them cutting open my eye and sucking out the old lens then putting in a fake one through sewing it in. The procedure will take three hours and they have to wait six to eight weeks before doing the next eye because they only do one at a time. The first eye will be done on Tuesday the 13th which is in one day. As soon as I can see good enough I will write a post about it. I also got my room done. It is exactly like I wanted it and I love it. Now the three adult dogs sleep with my mom the two puppies sleep with me and my aunt's dog sleeps with her. I ahve a water bed in it and a tv a computer and a giant bean bag. The pictures are below.

Little Bit of Everything

I have been really busy lately so this post is like a combination of two or three posts. The first thing is that my family had a memorial day cook out. It did rain for a while but it stopped and then it stopped and we went swimming. The next thing is that me and my aunt went on a hike along some old rail road tracks by my house. We thought they were abandoned because they are in such bad shape but a train came while we were hiking along them. The picture is of a map of the tracks. It was also fun because there was a creek that fallowed it.



















The third thing is the frogs that lived in my back yard laid eggs and had tadpoles. I have some inside and I am raising them. The next thing I did was I went on a trip to Lake Erie with my school's Creek Connections group. This was the trip that I did the fundraiser for. It was really fun. First we went to a conservation place and looked at all the displays. Then we went to the beach and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted for a few hours. After we went on a hike and we went fishing for a little while. Last we ate dinner a went home. It was a really fun day. Also I got in the honors roll this year and the ceremony was on June 2nd. I had got all As and one B for the first two nine weeks then straight As the third nine weeks. Also I have been staying after every Wednesday to help in the outdoor garden in my school. We are doing good and we are almost done. The pictures below are of my Erie trip.

Happy Earth Day 2009

Plant a tree, hug a squirrel, or kiss a duck! It's Earth Day and this year I am planting two trees and gave one away. In school I joined the tree committee which helps pass out two year old trees to students and teachers to take home and plant. Two of them are White Spruces and one is a Silky Dogwood. Earth Day is one of my favorite holidays. I think the environment and all the animals that live in it are very cool.

Science Symposium

Today I went to the Creek Connections Science Symposium. Creek Connections is a program that takes kids to different creeks to do water testing like pH. You also go to lakes and my group is going up Lake Erie. Today I went to the symposium. I made a tri-fold board with a group about the eight chemical tests that we do at the creeks and ponds. It was pretty fun and I got to miss school for it. Also yesterday I got to miss school because I was chosen with about 30 other kids to go to a baseball game. The game part was boring but we all could go around the park and buy food and play games. My Easter was really good too. I got a new scale to weigh wax for candles with. I also got a lot of candy. Also i got straight As on my third nine weeks report card.

It's Spring!!!

On Friday I went to the court house to be in a U.S. Naturalization Ceremony. I wasn't a big part of it but I got to miss school for it. Then after my group went out for ice cream and I looked at the time and figured out what I would have been doing in school. I figured out that while I was eating ice cream I would have been taking a math test in school. It is Spring now so I am very happy it is starting to get warmer and the first flowers of Spring came up in my front garden.

(#_#)

I got my new iPod and it is really cool. Since my house has wireless internet there are so many apps that you can get for it. I think I have forty something. I have some favorites but I play them all. I also got one that is an Irish learning one so I can take my lessons with me where ever I go. Today I have to make candles because I got some orders and I have to make samples for the school to look at to help them decide about the fundraiser. Also Today I get to go to the coin store because I got a gift card for it for Valentine's Day. I am working on my Liberty Head Nickle collection. They are more expensive and I can only get one or two at a time but I am going to just keep working on it.

iPod

Sorry I haven't been writing a lot lately things have just been really busy. I am getting a new iPod Touch on Tuesday. I ordered it and I got my name and web site inscribed into the back. I already started buying apps with the gift cards I have leftover from Christmas. They have so many cool ones and a lot of them are free. Since I am learning the new language and the program is only on my computer at home I got an app that is a learning program for that language. I got a really good report card. I got all As and one B in math. Also at school I am in this science enrichment program. It is called Creek Connections. We go down to a creek and test for chemical levels and stuff like that. Throughout the rest of the year we are going to go to a creek again and test again to see if anything has changed. Then later when it gets warmer here we will go to a pond to go catch and release fishing. Then most likely we will get a charter bus and go to Lake Erie. We will be allowed to bring anything we want for the bus trip. Then when we get there we will do boat tours and all kinds of stuff. Since that is going to be expensive because there are about 30 kids in the program, they have to do a fundraiser. Since the school doesn't have to pay for anything they will most likely say yes to the trip. The really cool thing is what they want to fundraise. They want to fundraise my candles. I am really excited.

Just Every Day

For school I had a PowerPoint that I had to do on a country. I was assigned Kuwait. While I was giving my PowerPoint presentation my cross country coach came in with a bright red microphone singing jingle bells and then everyone started laughing at her. I was in the front of the class and started laughing then looked over and then she saw that I was giving a presentation and yelled sorry then ran out the door. I was still laughing. I still got a good grade though. I think I have to do my track physical soon. In sewing class I started to sew my chair back. Then I am going to make a neck warmer. I am using Steeler fabric of course. The first day back from break was really easy. This was how my day was.

P. 1 - watch PowerPoints

P. 2 - do the climbing wall in gym

P. 3 - color by letter (not kidding)

P. 4 - sit there and listen to a book while we did popcorn reading

P. 5 - lunch

P. 6 - study hall

P. 7 - complete a study guide

P. 8 - iron my fabric

P. 9 - watch a movie

Learning a New Language

I started to take an online lesson for learning anew language. In school next year you can take a language as one of your classes and I think I want to take Latin. The language that I really want to learn is Irish though. School does not offer it though so I am taking an online class. I am in my first lesson and so far it has not been that hard although I have only gotten through half a lesson of the first chapter. There are a lot of chapters and in each chapter there are three lessons. Each chapter is like a category. One is animals one is food and so on. I am in my first lesson of my first chapter which is meeting and greeting. So far I have learned how to say hello, goodbye, how are you, and good evening. The nice thing is there is no specific time that you have to do classes but you do have to take notes. They help you so much. I told my English teacher that I was starting and she told me to let her know where I am at and how good I am doing. I think it is fun and cool to talk in a different language. Also if you want to confuse people you can start talking to them in a different language. I am not done with my whole first lesson yet but I got through about a third of it.

Report Cards

Today I got my first nine weeks report card. I got As in all my classes except for english. I got a B in it though. I was very happy with my grades. In school for english right now we are doing another big project. We have to make a persuasive travel brochure. We have to choose a place we want to go to and then research it. Once we have a good bit of information then we start to write the paragraphs. We do that tomorrow. I chose to do Luxembourg. I always wanted to go to four places. They are Luxembourg, Latvia, Fiji, and New Zealand.At the top of my list is Luxembourg so I chose to do that one. The book I am reading has one of my vocab words in it so if I show my english teacher then I get a few bonus points. I plan on doing that tomorrow morning. I have been helping my teachers a lot lately, but I don't mind sometimes I ask if I can help.

Big Orders

Not a lot of exciting things happened over the weekend. On Saturday I went out to a few stores. It was kind of long. Then on Sunday my family had a football party. I got a order that was big and I have to finish it tonight so that I can have it for tomorrow. Today in school nothing really happened. It was just a normal day with the usual boring school work. Tomorrow in music class we get to start playing the key boards for our next lesson. I started to read a new series. The Golden Compass series. Most people I have talked to say it is good. Also that the movie is very different. I am on page 54 and it is already very different from the movie.

Winter is Coming

Today was my town's first snow. I was excited. In math class everyone was distracted by the snow so the teacher closed the blinds. I managed to save the big plant in a small fish tank with a light so it should be safe for winter. The end of this week is the end of my first nine weeks of school. I am not happy. I want to get straight As but I have two Bs and I wanted to bring them up. It seems the subjects I don't like I don't do as well in.

Pumpkins

I didn't get the times yet from WAADA, but I should get them soon. I went to the pumpkin patch and bought three pumpkins. I got gourds too but those are not that exciting. I bought two small one and a big one. I chose the one I did because it is a really bright orange and in some parts yellow. In school I have been doing really well. I have good grades and a lot of friends. We finished Stanford testing just a week ago and now we are taking MAP tests. These one are weird because they are on the computer. After you are done testing you can go and search the Internet for whatever though. Also I have a big reading assignment coming up that is worth a lot of points. I have a B in English and I am really trying to get straight As. There is a big 100 point assignment coming up for English so I want to get a 100% on it so I can get an A. I started to take this really hard merit badge. It is Nuclear Science merit badge. It is hard. There are all these things with atoms and molecular structures and it gets confusing.I think the most confusing part is isotopes.

Reports

In school I have been getting a lot of reports or big assignments. In one day I got a 80 point English assignment and a 90 point cooking assignment. It was insane I was up until 11:45pm. Just to do half of the cooking assignment. Today and tomorrow I get out early because I have a cross country meet in a place an hour and forty five minutes away. I get out at half way through seventh period. I got new glasses. I like them a lot better than the old ones because they are multicolored but with natural colored blues and grays. In my reading class we always get a warm up. You know like a simple question, two or three sentences and then you share. I guess this one made my brain go nuts and I just kept writing. I wrote two and pages in a big notebook. I just kept writing through the entire class.

School Is Crazy!

It is now the second week of school for me. I am starting to get the normal amount of homework. I have been having to stay up later to get it done. I have had no problems so far though. Tomorrow is the seventh anniversary of 9/11. I am going to where special charms tomorrow. They are supposed to protect me and others.

The Cross above is supposed to protect from disease and bad fortune.

The Mayan symbol below is supposed to give me strength and help me through tough times. I have it as a pendent.