Good Morning, Human!

Getting up every morning seems so pointless.

My bed is warm and inviting…and then my alarm clock goes off. As I roll over to turn it off and then fall back asleep, my fist pounds down on an empty space on my bedside table. I roll back into my warm sheets and glare hatefully at the spot on my windowsill where I remember putting the dreadful contraption last night, now masterfully hidden by my thick curtains, and consider waiting it out. The blasting birdcall finally gets the better of me and I determinedly fall out of bed and stumble over to the hateful thing, imaginary sledgehammer in hand. Finally having rid myself of the component of morning torture, I realize how dangerously close this has brought me to my clothes I’d put out the adjourning night. Faced with the decision between maturity and a warm bed, my brain begins to bend. Half of it warns me that if I fall back into the temptingly-preheated bed, then it’s one set closer to lazing around on my computer all day and getting nothing done. The other half is much more reasonable in reminding me of the luxury of lying in bed and having lucid dreams that make a total of 0% sense and promptly forgetting them when I wake up. However, as soon as I take my first hypnotized step, my mature side of my brain plays its last card by reminding me that I have theater today. What’s theater? Those sheets look awfully warm…gosh it’s cold out here…THEATER!

The word echoes through my sleep-ridden brain, kick-starting it into action. Now frantic, I grab my clothes and shoes and trip over my robe cord in my haste to get to the door. I slam head-on into it, the fact that I’d locked it the previous night completely forgotten. I fumble stupidly with the doorknob until I hear a rewarding clock and shuffle down the stairs. One of the numerous problems with my room is that it literally couldn’t be farther from the bathroom if I’d tried (unless, of course, you count the roof as an acceptable option). I weave through the furniture in the front room and am faced with another steep, treacherous staircase. Once I heroically mastered this terrible deed, I face the washing-room. It’s usually adorned with the stray pile of clothes, further barring me from the coveted bathroom. Not only am I made to either jump over (if I’m feeling adventurous), or laboriously figure out the labyrinth, but I have to squeeze through a poorly-placed table and chair. The table is good enough at blocking the tiny hall in which the beloved bathroom is located, but Brother’s computer desk chair is constantly being left pulled out and completely blocking the hallway. I am forced to slow my long-suffering mission once again to shove it ungraciously to where the blasted thing belongs.

Finally, nothing stands between me and my bathroom, now slathered with rainbows, sun glares, and unicorn-ponies, except a door. A locked door. Hopefully, I knock on it, only to hear a chipper, ‘just a minute!’ float out. I’ve been beaten. Bathroom privileges are anything but fair, especially since my mother is right next-door to it. I slump against the wall for what seems like hours. Finally, a happy-go-lucky Mother with full make-up and scattered jewelry pops out and smiles triumphantly at me. It’s probably not near as smug as it seems to me, so I manage a groggy half-smile, which probably looks like a dead clam that’s been soaked in vinegar for a few days.

This is how most of my mornings go, only sometimes I get a lucky Friday and get to legally sleep in, or I get up early/late enough not to run into Mother at all. Being early almost never happens…late is much more promising.

Thanks for reading, guys!

In an Itchy Costume and Wearing Stage-Makeup

Being behind the scenes of a musical is complicated. It can be fun, boring, monotonous, or bothersome and there will always be some who are doing nothing, and those who are running for their lives to get on stage. In my case, it’s mostly boring. Being an extra in a musical is harder than it looks. I’m always attempting to put expression on, but it’s much more difficult when your character doesn’t have any backstory and is crammed into tiny corners and expected to dance. However, when it all comes together on stage, it seems worth all of the boring, extra hours of sitting/standing and doing nothing. It’s refreshing to see some of the scenes that I’m not in be perfected, and it seems worth it to work my way up from being a slightly useless extra to having a part, someday.

Moreover, the costumes and stage-makeup make things almost unbearable at times. The inability to even rub my nose at times drives me half-insane and the itchy feathers don’t help. After half an hour of pains-taking stage-makeup and painful bobby-pins securely keeping my hair in place, I go to CYT and carefully eat my home-made meal as everyone else puts on their makeup. After I eat, I wiggle out of my everyday clothes and carefully squeeze into my costume and put another costume on over the original one. After this, since I still have about ten minutes of spare time, I realize that I’ve forgotten my kindle (once again) and have to borrow some paper and a pencil from a friend to ease my easily-provoked boredom.

Finally, I’m out on stage. I run as quietly as I can up the stairs with everyone else, and scurry out of the wings with the rest of the crowd. After the first song, I remove myself from the glaring lights and down to the changing rooms, only to realize that I’m on for the next song; and I’m late. Giving up on it, figuring that they can live without me, I carefully lift my outer costume off and put a hat on for my next time on stage. I’m constantly moving so that others can reach their bins which have necessary articles in them, so my drawing goes slowly and I don’t accomplish much except for the fact that I’ve managed to get my mind off mind-controlling boredom, for a few minutes.

But despite the itchy costumes and unbearable makeup, being in a musical is worth it just to be on a stage and in front of other humans is worth it. And in case you’re interested, here’s the link to buy tickets the Seussical the Musical! Buy the tickets under my name (Emily Smith) and be quick! There’s not much time left!

http://www.cytsantacruz.org/shows/

what happened behind the scenes

Dickens lived in the 1800s. He was born in Landport, Portsea, England on February 7, 1812.  He had seven siblings and at age 11 was taken out of school to work at a factory.  He was paid six shillings a week. When his father and the rest of his family were thrown in jail, Charles was left in the city, alone.

After situations improved, he went back to school; then became an office boy, then a freelance reporter, and then an author. He published The Pickwick Papers in 1837 and gained immediate fame.

After publishing many other books, he married Catherine Hegarth. He had ten children when they split up. Sadly, he died of a stroke on June 8, 1870.  The books that he wrote were mostly about poor people’s situations. Dickens is very sarcastic in his books and he shows people’s situations without them coated in sugar and honey.

In Oliver Twist Dickens shows how children were treated in the poorhouse.  Careless and hard-hearted women accidently smothered children when making beds, they scalded them to death when they washed clothes, and the children were almost never washed. They were clothed in the thinnest clothing, beaten and starved. Oliver asks for another tiny bowlful of soup as he was still starving when in the poorhouse, and would’ve been hanged for it if not for a very narrow escape.

The rich people spoke of the poor as though they were whining, overfed dogs. They closed their eyes to the people dying on the sides of the streets and it didn’t even cross their minds that they should maybe help.

Certainly, people were left to starve in the streets, but at least some of them were given jobs!  Some boys could be chimney sweeps, so that they could get stuck in the chimney and have the fire lit while they were still inside. They were only smothered by the smoke or had the bottoms of their feet burned so they couldn’t walk properly for the rest of their lives, but who cares?  They’re replicable! Well, so thought their privileged abusers.

People were often put in prison for no reason. The judge casually assumed that a person who happened to be passing by the scene was guilty, and had them thrown in a cell without a proper trial.

Charles Dickens was one of the only people who wrote about the poor. He lived his books (quite literally) so he could really tell what was going on behind the scenes.

Life

Hello, Person!

Today, I will be talking about life.  A lot of people don’t appreciate life as it is.  I once (well, maybe about a week ago on a youtube video with Seananners) heard that to really enjoy life, you have to work for it.  And I(might) know what you’re thinking.  Well, maybe I don’t but anyway!  Sometimes, maybe on lazy Sundays when the weather is almost uncomfortably warm, you think about thinking of taking your rabbit, dog, or fish on a walk.  But then you begin to make a pretense of getting up, and all of your muscles and toes groan in protest and you sink back, defeated, onto the warm and fluffy couch.  Not so, fellow gerbils!

  You know how there are some times when you force yourself to do something?  They aren’t that often, but you know the feeling afterward.  You are either thinking, ‘Wow, I’m so awesome!’ or ‘Wow, I’m not doing that any time soon.’  You just have to take that risk that you’re going to regret doing it.  Also, doing things you dislike immensely grows you.  Once, I got up early (well, early for me which is about 8:30 a.m.) and I forced myself to get up…and then I went back to bed; I really need to work on my getting up schedule.  But most other times, I’m very happy that I did something like that.  So, basically, life isn’t all about watching Doctor Who or playing Civilization V.  Or maybe playing five hours of Battlefield III straight.  It’s about getting up early and NOT going back to bed!

  Thanks for reading, please post your thoughts in the comments below, and as always, have a great day! J

the little breeze

Hi, Everyone! I would love to know your thoughts, so please comment below and tell me what you'd like me to blog about.

I recently wrote a personification about the breeze. I wasn't going to publish it, but a good friend of mine persuaded me to do so.  In case you don't know, a personification is something that you write about (like a tree or anything really) and make it into a person. At least, you give it characteristics like a person.  You can make a conversation between a computer and its desk if you want!  Anything to give something human characteristics.  Here's my personification:

The breeze is a little girl.  She dances and plays with the sun. Jumping and spinning, she teases the papers that were carelessly left about. Her hair is as white as the dove as it flies and down at her feet it twirls. Her eyes are as blue as the midday sky, and they glisten and gleam like stars. Her dress is as green as the fields at the time when the sun rose for its first morning light. She leaps and flies with her races with time and she laughs at the people below.  It is heard at far above the trees and carried by the birds alone. Or else it is heard at the rocks in the sea, and then it is heard by none.

Tell me what you think of it!  It'd be nice to know how people like it.  Thanks for reading, and have a nice day.

Water!

Hello, All!  I haven't been posting for a while, so I thought that I'd write a post about water.  It's more of an essay, though.  So, here it is!

Water is one of the most unappreciated necessities on Earth.  Without it, everything (including us) would die and our planet would become utterly useless.  Rain is the most important ways we get water, while glaciers only sit there and look amazing.  The rainbows are remarkable and need to be learned and respected by all people.

I’ll start with rain.  With the amount of rain falling in even only one acre of land, if it rained a simple 1 inch, there’d be roughly 27,154 gallons of water.  On the acre only!  And if it rained one inch over California (its 840 miles long) there’d be a ridiculous amount of water.

Glaciers are nature’s way of saying, “Start small, think big.”  It starts out as a snow build-up and as more and more snow falls, the weight of it all compresses it into ice.  And, of course, it melts once a year, and every time it melts, it flows like a river, and freezes again.  More snow falls, and the process continues.  If you want to see some amazing photos of glaciers, than go to this website! http://www.travelsupermarket.com/blog/glaciers-that-look-like-art/

Rainbows are some of the most beautiful things that are created by rain.  They are only the sun shining through raindrops but all of the colors are amazing.  Sun dogs are more common than rainbows but are equally beautiful.  They’re formed by light refracting in ice crystals in cirriform clouds.  Their official name is perihelion.  Go to this website to see some amazing pictures of sundogs!  http://www.w7ftt.net/sundog1.html

Water needs to be more appreciated, and I’m hoping that this article will help with that.  Have a good day, and thanks for reading!  I'll be trying to blog more, but I've been pretty busy, so keep an eye out for more blogs!

Good Books for Pree-Teen Girls

If you know me, you know that I love to read.  I’ve got plenty of suggestions for them and I’ll write a post about all of the books I love some time later if you’d like.  And here are some of the books that I love!

Lord Dolphin (Book)

At first, I thought that this book was just for young kids about 7 years old.  But I thought, “What could possibly go wrong?” and I read the book.  I was in a trance the entire time I read the book.  If I didn’t already have a book that is one of the best books ever, I’d say that this book is the most amazing book I’ve ever read.  The author really brings you into the book.  I was not reading the book.  I was living the book.  I think that that says it all.

Ballad of the White Horse (Ballad)

This book is amazing.  Amazing isn’t quite the word though.  If you don’t like ballads then don’t read this book.  But for those who do, this book will become your favorite.  I don’t understand most of it, but it’s so beautiful.  I wrote a review about it on Amazon, and I expressed what I thought of it there.  I really think that this is one of the most beautiful books ever written.

The Little House series (book series)

I have been reading the little house books since I can remember.  I have reread all of them at least 5 times.  Some people won’t like them but as you can guess, I think that they’re wonderful.  I won’t tell you what it’s about but I will tell you this: these books are great for children of all ages and all adults.

And that’s pretty much it!  If you want more book reviews, please post in the comments below.  Thanks for reading and have a great day! J

One More Review

Hello again!  In my last post, I have received requests to write more reviews on movies that I’ve seen.  And in the last post, I forgot one TV show that I used to watch.  And here’s my review of it:

H20; Just Add Water! (TV show)

This show is great for girls from 4 to 13.  It’s about three girls called Emma, Rikki, and Cleo from Australia (I’ve always wanted to go to Australia) who are mermaids.  They obtained their… mermaidness by getting lost in a boat when they used up all of the gas.  The only land in sight was an island so they rowed to it.

Emma had a phone with her, but it didn’t get reception on the beach, so they began hiking to higher grounds.  They made it to a creek with two huge slabs of rock and between the two slabs, the creek had worn away at the rock so one had to jump to the other side.  Emma and Rikki successfully made the jump across but after Cleo jumped, she fell into a hole on the other side.  Emma slid down to try and help her, but then Rikki came down too, not knowing what else to do.

They found themselves in a cave. The way back out was too steep to climb.  They went further into the cave and found a pool of water that was connected to the ocean.  Directly above the pool was an opening in the mountain.  It was obviously a volcano that had been dormant for hundreds of years and most certainly wasn’t going to blow just then.

Emma jumped into the pool and swam to the ocean to make sure that there was a way out.  She came back with encouraging news: It was a rather short swim to freedom.  But Cleo wasn’t one to be optimistic.  She was afraid of water.  After hours of coaxing, they finally got her into the pool.  It was midnight and a full moon.  As the moon shone down onto the pool, although the girls didn’t know it, they had achieved their mermaidness.

As a result, every time they come in contact with water, even the smallest drop, after ten seconds pass they become mermaids.  They also gained powers.  Cleo can control water, Emma can freeze it, and Rikki can boil it.  They can use the powers whenever they want to.

They have to keep their mermaid tails a secret.  If anyone finds out then, of course, they will be experimented on.  The only one who knows their fateful secret is Lewis, Cleo’s to-be boyfriend.  I shall not tell you anything more about this.  If you want to know what happens, watch it on Netflix or YouTube.  I’d suggest Netflix though.

So that’s pretty much it!  I’ll write another post about books I love if you like!  Please leave your thoughts in the comments below and as always, have a great day! J

My Ratings

Hello!  Today, I’m going to write about something a little different than usual.  I’m going to review some movies/TV shows that I’ve watched.  And before you get started on the ratings, I’d like you all to know that I don’t have television.  I watch almost everything on Netflix, unless I watch it in the movie theaters.  So, I’m going to start my rating list with:

The Goonies 

-10 out of 10

There’s swearing, inappropriate and fat jokes, and stupid people in eighties hairstyles (I really don’t care for the eighties).  It’s about a family that really does love each other, but pretends not to because it’s “cool”.

The plotline is that the main character and his “buddies” find an old treasure map.  They decide to find the treasure because they’re poor and are going to sell their house.  They set off to find it and run into some thieves who are after it, too.  The main characters somehow manage to get to the treasure first, and they get it.  After some trouble, they get back home with some treasure and live happily ever after.

War Horse

3 out of 10

If you enjoy laughing at melodrama, watch War Horse.  It’s supposed to be dramatic and sad, but they messed up terribly.  They overdid the drama to the point that my big brother was trying not to have a fit of laughter when watching it in the theater. He didn’t want to be rude. (At least, I hope that was his intention lol!)  War Horse was directed by Steven Spielberg, who needs to steer well away from melodrama from now on.  But the photography was good and the horses were beautiful.  Spielberg also made my least favorite movie, The Goonies.

The Office

9 out of 10

I think that this comedy TV show is one of the funniest things that I’ve ever watched.  It’s not great for kids 10 and under though.  It can be inappropriate at times.  We have to fast-forward some parts, and we even had to skip a few episodes due to its inappropriateness.  It really could cut down on some of the jokes, too.  But the characters are loveable and adorable in their own obnoxious way, and you just wanna keep watching it all night.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

9 out of 10

This movie is wonderful.  It’s acceptable for children of 7 and up because it would be boring to the younger ones.  It’s about a guy who is appointed to fill a place for a guy that either had died or was fired… I can’t remember which.  He’s just a normal guy at the first glance, but when he goes into office, he changes positively everything.  There’s betrayal, lies, and love in Mr. Smith’s life as an office member.

Tangled

9 out of 10

It’s a movie that is great for the whole family on movie night.  It’s fun, quirky, and never gets old.  It’s not the best movie for boys, but my brothers didn’t hate it.  They gave it a rating of 5 stars out of 10.

Dr. Who

20 out of 10

Read my other blog post ‘The Most Awesome Show IN THE WORLD’.  I think that the title pretty much sums it up, though.

So, that’s pretty much it!  Thanks for reading and have a good day! J

Wondering

When we were very young kids, we wondered about almost everything. We wondered about shadows, ants, reptiles, dirt, everything!  But now, we take things for granted.  We have found out what it all means and it doesn’t interest us anymore.  Some may still be thinking about all this stuff, but it stops interesting most people after they grow up.  Example:

“Daddy?  What makes the lake blue?”

“The water has a skin.  Light comes in waves and they’re all different.  Red is the longest wavelength and Violet is the shortest.  The skin on the water lets out all of the wavelengths but blue.  That’s the one that you can see.”

“Daddy? Why does the computer screen glow?”

Sigh… “Look it up!”

“Daddy, Daddy!  Why do we experience pain?”

“To make small children ask questions.”

“Daddy?  Why does Mommy color her hair?”

“…”

You get the idea.  And after a looooooong time of waiting… we finally find (most of) our questions answered!  Why do we stop wondering?  Perhaps we think that after that, we know it all.  Or, perhaps we don’t quite stop wondering!

I like water.  I want to know everything about it.  I want to know why it refreshes us.  I want to know why some animals can only live in salt water.  I want to know why I keep wondering about water.  But that’s the only thing that I wonder about right now.

I used to wonder why sunshine was bright.  I wanted to know about shadows.  I wanted to know about hair color.  I wanted to know about mirrors. (I still haven’t found out everything about mirrors yet.)  I wanted to know about everything that I could see.

My older brothers were always patting me on the head (still do now) and telling me things that I didn’t know that they made up and were about 99.9 percent wrong.  Anyway!  Got off-subject there.

Wondering is a beautiful thing.  It’s a big… thing that is living inside of all young children.  It sends their brain going and their mouth asking, and asking, and asking…  But it’s a thing that makes children learn.  It’s a thing that makes them grow and mature.  I remember that I would always think about stuff and wonder but hardly ever question it out loud.  I don’t remember why though.

Well, that’s all!  I’m off to eat myself a breakfast! J

The Most Awesome Show IN THE WORLD!! :D:D

Hello, everyone once more!  I haven't posted lately because I have been a tad busy and not had the chance.  I also didn’t know what to talk about and not bore you TO DEATH!  So I decided that I would write about things that I’m CRAZY interested in!

• Horses (specifically white, Arabian mares named Talitha Koum (translation: Little Girl Get Up (I got it from the Bible verse Mark 5:41)). (Sorry about all the parentheses but I do things like that when I’m energetic, although it’s 9:12 p.m. as I am writing in this parentheses.) (Wow! I just finished that parenthesis when it became 9:13 p.m.!! :D).  ANYWAY!  I get a bit distracted sometimes.  
• My rabbit, Hoppers (with an ‘s’.  Some people get it mixed up as ‘Hopper’.  It’s really annoying!).  He’s fat, lazy, and the most adorable, soft bunny-boy ya can imagine! :D :D :D!  I might write a post about him sometime.
• Water!  Water fascinates me!  Especially Melatonin in water.  If you don’t know what Melatonin is then look it up.
• And, Portal is awesome and really funny!

And the final one (the one that this post is supposed to be about but I keep getting distracted) (drum roll please…)

Dr. Who.

Dr. Who is the most awesome show of all time.  I would explain it but it would take, like, 100,000,000,000 pages (okay it wouldn’t, but you get the idea).  It’s about a ‘Time Lord’.  Real name: unknown.  What people call him: The Doctor.

My favorite actor who plays the Doctor is David Tennant.  He wanted to play the Doctor since he was a little boy.  It was his dream to be the Doctor.  He was only the Doctor for a year though.  He said that he wanted to keep the being-the-Doctor thing to stay feeling new.

The Doctor can, of course, travel in time as you might have guessed by the name.  He’s got two hearts.  He’s got a time machine that is bigger on the inside than the outside.  It’s called the Tardis.  She (the Tardis) is a living creature.  The Doctor found that out on the very very very first episode of all time of Dr. Who.

He’s from a planet called Gallifrey.  But that planet was destroyed in a time war (long story) along with all the Doctor’s people.  The Tardis is stuck in the shape of a police box.  If ya don’t know what a police box is than look it up ;-).  It was meant to change shape and color and ‘blend into’ the landscape if ya know what I mean, but the Doctor messed the Tardis up and now she can’t change.  The Doctor also (in more modern episodes) disagreed with the manual of the Tardis and threw it into a supernova.

He has a sonic screwdriver that can unscrew bolts from long-range.  It makes a rather high-pitched weeeweeeweeeweeeweeeweeweew.  And one of the more important things is that every time the Doctor come close to dying, he regenerates.  Here’s a picture of him when he’s regenerating into the eleventh doctor (aka. the eleventh time we’ve seen him regenerate).

And here it is!  The rest are just random photos of David
Tennant (the tenth doctor and my favorite actor) :D and Matt Smith (the eleventh
doctor).

David Tennant and his sonic screwdriver

David Tennant and Tardis

Matt Smith and his sonic screwdriver

Did I mention that the Doctor always wanted to be ginger?

In regeneration, his whole body changes.  At first, all of the cells in his body heal themselves.  Then they change the Doctor into a whole new being.  Every time he changes, he feels like a completely different person.  He says that it’s like dying.

Here’s a Youtube video song about the doctor's regeneration.  It has to do with the time the tenth doctor regenerated.    It’s really sad if you know what it means.  If you want to know what it means then watch the Dr.Who episodes End of Time parts 1-2.  You can find it on Netflix.   Click here to watch.

So, basically Dr. Who is the best show everJ!  I hope that this has… uh… how should I put this?… shown people to a thing that they will most likely enjoy?  lol!  Hope that you all like Dr. Who!  Now I’m off to bed.  (tired face)

A Black Widow in the Wrong Place

When I was around 6 years old, my brothers and I were playing outside.  My mom was sitting on our deck reading in the sun.  Beside our house is a rain ditch.  The water runs into a pipe that brings it out in the lower driveway and it pours out onto the driveway to go about its own business.

We had decided to see that, if we got a bucket of water and poured it down the drain, the person in the lower driveway could block the drain up and keep the water from flowing.  It was working splendidly until we got to our second or third round.  It was Brother's turn and he was clogging up the drain with pine cones and such.  Big Brother was about to go up to join me when he glanced back and saw… can you guess?  There was a black widow on Brother's back.  When Big Brother saw this he immediately told Brother about it.  Brother didn't believe him so Big Brother shouted, “Mom!  There’s a black widow on Brother's back!!!”  Mother rushed down the path with lightening speed and flicked the black widow off of Brother's back with her bare hands.  Then, with her slippers on, she stomped the life out of that poor spider!

Now she regrets killing it a bit but there wasn’t much of a choice at the moment!  And after that, I had a wonderful story to tell all my friends about Mother and how she had killed a black widow with her “bare hands.”  I always put emphasis on the “hands” part.  I was proud of my terrified mother who had been absolutely shocked to learn that a spider that could kill her child in a matter of days or hours had been on his back!  But, Brother is very alive to this day!

Living in the Mountains

For me, if I lived in the city, I’d die within three days.  I really really really really love the mountains!  Even if living in the mountains means that my Mom has a wild tarantula on her finger or I have a scorpion on my bed or in the sink* I’d rather live in the mountains.  Why?  I was born in the city, I admit, but I have lived almost my whole life in the mountains.  The only time that I haven’t lived in the mountains, I was in the small city that’s next to our town.

This is my opinion of the mountains: I love the mountains because they’re beautiful and fresh.  I wake up almost every morning early and listen to the sound of millions (maybe a little less) of birds.  I see a deer with her fawn and a little later another mother with her fawns.  I hear a scrub-jay squawking loudly outside, and I read my book.  Our neighbor down the road has chickens and the roosters start crowing at around 4:45 a.m. and don’t stop until around 9:30 p.m.

I suppose that some people like cities, but I can’t see why.  Some are just... born liking cities.  The majority in the U.S. live in cities but I am not part of the majority.  Cities can be fun in their own way though.  You can go shopping and get great stuff and you can go to cool places.  Most museums are in cities.  I pretty much think that cities are a nice place to visit… but I wouldn’t like to live there.  But I love the mountains. :-)

*This actually happened.  So, if your squeamish, I wouldn’t suggest living like me:

This is the young tarantula that Mom had on her finger.

A moth decided that our house was a good place for eggs.

And they hatch! :)

A June Bug at our front door.

Deer in our backyard.  Now, we've got two families - one has a
single baby and one has a couple siblings.

Homeschooling

I think that homeschoolers have a better education and time throughout life.    The curriculum that I have is called SOS (Switched On Schoolhouse).  It’s a program that you can bring with you on a laptop.  The downside is that sometimes the lesson doesn’t explain itself very well and I have to ask help from one of my parents.

I love homeschooling because I don’t have to get up early at all!  I can sleep in until as late as 10 o’clock when I had a previous long day.  But my mom is always trying to get us up earlier.  She recently came up with several schedules, one for each child.  She isn’t very strict with the getting up times but I have to get up at around 8:30 – which is really early for me.

But the thing with homeschooling is that you can get behind in your homework.  It just keeps piling up and piling up and you can’t keep up with it!  Sometimes, when I get too far behind in homework, I get depressed.  The farthest that I’ve ever been behind is 70 lessons.  But it was under control then because I was focusing on language arts and nothing else.  Right now, I’m about 35 lessons behind.  I’ll be able to catch up but it’ll be a while.

Also, you can go on vacations when it’s still school time.  When I was about six, I went to Legoland.  It was sometime in the fall and the lines were really short (there were almost no lines in some places).  I went four times on a ride that I really liked without any waiting.  We got in small Legoish cars and you could drive around a little city-street with stop signs and stop lights galore!

This is one of the best rides at Lego Land!!! :D

I think that homeschooling is one of the best experiences.

The Birds That Hum

Hummingbirds!  Hummingbirds are amazing birds.  They are the only birds that fly backwards.  This comes in handy when they fight over the bird feeder.  They can fly up, down, backwards, forwards, left, right, and they can hover without a second thought.

They’re called humming birds for obvious reasons but if anyone who’s reading this blog hasn’t seen a hummingbird then I’ll explain.  They beat their wings about 70 times a second which leads to 4,200 times a minute.  This makes a soft whirring noise and their wings ‘hum’!  But hummingbirds vary in size so the bigger the hummer, the less they beat.

Of course, all this beating of the wings takes energy, so you can imagine how much these small birds need to eat.  They can eat up to eight times their body weight in one day.  They also must eat every 5 minutes or they’ll starve to death.  This means that bird feeders are much enjoyed.  But if you do put up a hummingbird feeder don’t dye the sugar water red!  It’s really bad for the little hummers and anyway, the feeder should have colorful flowers as the places where the ‘nectar’ comes out, so red water won’t attract them any more than clear.

And expect a lot of fighting among the hummingbirds because that’s just the way they are.  The smaller the animal, the more aggressive they get.  This works with dogs and horses as well.  Don’t worry that the hummingbirds will hurt each other, because the only weapon they have is their aggressiveness… and sometimes they get close enough together so that their wings beat together, but that’s nothing.  It only sounds bad. 

There are 356 types of hummingbirds found.  And the hummers are only found in North and South America, so I always try not to become used to their awesomeness.  I have a bird feeder outside of my house and the little hummers are almost always coming and going.  My brother says that they remind him of me – in the aggressiveness he means.