Work

I have a job! Sorry I neglected to let everyone know, but I know work as an arcade attendant at Great Wolf Lodge. I actually work in retail which entails a lot of different things. I stuff animals like at Build-A-Bear workshop, I fold clothes (ugh), and other things. It's really rather boring. I stand and wait for nobody to come in and look like I'm doing something. It's totally different from landscaping where I really earned my money. I feel like I'm not working at the arcade, but I guess if they're not paying me for nothing, they'll be paying someone else. I've worked 11 1/2 hours so far, almost a full day. Haha. Not much going on besides. Alaina came home from Disneyworld!!! and I'm on break. Life is good.

Updates

I can't believe I haven't posted since November, I apologize. I haven't really had much to post about. School's been normal, life's been normal. Not much going on. I didn't get the part I wanted in musical. Stuff like that.

This week's been crazy. Alaina left with her family for Disney World, so I miss her a lot, Joey had his birthday, and Micah and Joey had their party together. I think I may have been enjoying Joey's presents more than he has. He got a Nerf gun. It's awesome. I'm pretty sure by now everybody is done with me shooting them, but it's still kinda funny. One more week of school, and then break. I can't wait! Also, we have a good chance of having a snow day tomorrow, everybody keep your fingers crossed!

Break!

We left for West Virginia Tuesday right after school. It was a quite enjoyable drive picking up Hannah Samantha, and Marriana in Marrietta on the way there. That evening was fun catching up with the Higginbothams and getting to know Sam.

On Wednesday Hannah, Timmy and I decided to go kayaking down the river in front of the house, the catch, it was around 40 degrees. We kayaked about a mile down the river when there was a small turn-off into a lake-like body of water. On the far side there was a rockslide of concrete that somebody had thrown over the bank. We pulled the kayaks onto a dead tree and climbed the rocks. We found ourselves in a campsite which was a bit of a surprise. We decided that we had to climb to the top of the mountain in the campground. This took quite a bit longer than we expected. Once we got to the top, we looked down the mountain and realized we had climbed almost the whole mile back and the house was right across the river at the bottom of the mountain. We ran most of the way down the mountain and hurried back on the river in the kayaks because Marriana had texted me saying that dinner was ready. While we were on the mountain it started raining, and when we got to the bottom of the mountain the rain turned to snow. That was not exactly fun. Later that night there was a fun game of tag/hide-and-seek, and family worship.

Thursday morning we had adventures on their farm climbing to the top of their hill/mountain (because it's not big enough to be a mountain, but too big and too steep to be a hill). Hannah, Timmy, and I decided to sprint down the hill. This turned out to be quite a scary, exhilerating experience because it was so steep.

Later Hannah, Timmy, Micah, Joey and I decided to play Indians. We were on the warpath and ran down the hill/mountain to the river. We decided that we had to scalp the red-headed one (Marriana). So we scouted out her position and set up an ambush. When the predetermined signal had been given we all attacked, scalped her, and saved her from her horribly boring paper that she was trying to write. Hurray for aiding in the enjoyment of break!

Thanksgiving was very nice, especially since the weather was nice enough to eat outside. I had to do a story on Black Friday shopping for the school newspaper so everyone Timmy's age and up stayed up most of the night. We played fun (fun when it's later than midnight and you're slap-happy) games most of the night. It was rather enjoyable. Then we set out on the most stressful and what I hope will turn into the funniest part of the trip. I will later post my newspaper story on here and let you all in on the fun. Overall, break was very good and the relaxation was much needed.

All-Star Game

So I got to play in the area All-Star Game tonight at Perkins (ugh). It was a lot of fun. The game started at 5 and we played on the football field under the lights. They split up the teams into mostly defenders and mostly offensive players. Since I played midfield this year, I was on the offensive side. I did not start, which was weird because I have started every game I've been in this year and my junior year. The game was a lot of fun. One of my high school team mates was on my team, and my other team mate in the game was on the opposing team. During the game, the team mate on my team took the ball from about half all the way down the field and missed a shot. His mother yelled at him, "Good run! Nice try, Sweetheart!" Of course every single guy on the field got a kick out of that, even the opposing team, so the rest of the night everybody called him Sweetheart, and nobody but his other team mate and I actually knew his name. My team ended up winning 8-2. We had two of the highest scoring players in Ohio this year on our team with 34 goals each. In perspective, our team's highest scorer had I think 12 goals. It was weird to play with so many different players from so many different teams, but it was a lot of fun!

Hurry Up!

Tuesday...Tuesday is the last day of school for us before Thanksgiving break! It doesn't seem to want to come at all. This past week was probably the slowest week at school so far this year. It just dragged on and on. We were supposed to have an A.P. Bio test on Friday during 1st period. There was just one big problem with that. Everybody in the class was invited to the academic breakfast during homeroom and 1st period on Friday for receiving above average grades. The breakfast is for all the students in the school that have a GPA of 3.2 (Not positive) or higher. Thankfully our teacher took this into consideration and on Thursday decided to move the test to Monday. When I got to Calculus on Thursday we had a lock-down. During this, Mr. Higgins informed us that we were to have a quiz on Monday. You can't imagine the dismay on a little less than 1/4 of the class when we heard this. After quite a bit of persuasion, Mr. Higgins subtly told us that if we happened to bring in food on Monday the quiz might be moved back to Tuesday. Well, we're going to have the quiz on Tuesday.

After school Tuesday we are going to leave for West Virginia to visit our good friends the Higginbothams for Thanksgiving. We are all looking forward to this as it is a lot of fun every year. They have a farm in the middle of a town with a population of maybe 500. The farm is basically one hill, and on the other side of it is the town that takes 5 minutes to walk through.

Last year we Hannah, Timmy and I decided to take an evening walk. For whatever reason we decided to leave their property and walk around the town. In order to leave without being visible on the driveway, we had to jump across a small creek. Of course, Timmy had to land in it and walk the rest of the night with a frozen foot. When we walked by one of the only stores in the town, we found a shopping cart flipped on its side with a sign hanging on it that said "No Parking." of course we all thought this was hilarious so Hannah and Timmy had me take a picture of them sitting beside it. The pictures were really dark because I only had my cell phone

We ventured out toward the residential part of the town that we had never been in. We walked through a lot of yards, and ran through even more when dogs started barking or we heard weird noises. After about 10 minutes or so in this neighborhood, we realized that the Higginbothams farm was just over the really big hill in front of us, so we decided to cut down the time it would take to get back, and take a shortcut as well as a more adventurous route. When we got about halfway up the hill it was so steep that we had to hold on the trees to get any farther up because we would just keep sliding back down. We got to the top of the hill after a long struggle and climbed over the barbed wire fence. We knew exactly where we were because we had climbed the same hill on the other side of the fece earlier that day with the rest of the family. We started our descent toward the house which we could see the lights of quite a ways off. We decided to try to get out of the fenced in area (for cows that they told us were rather vicious) by using the nearest gate. When we were less than 10 feet away, we realized that a cow was standing in front of the gate staring at us. You can imagine our surprise as we could almost reach out and touch it, but didn't realize it was there because it was so dark. We hurried away towards the house inside the fence, and about halfway there we all stepped in a huge mud pit at exactly the same time and fell. It was quite hilarious because we were all walking side by side, and all tried to catch ourselves on the others which of course only succeeded in making us all fall. When we extracted ourselves Hannah and Timmy were both missing a shoe each. We proceeded to grope for them in the dark in freezing mud. While searching for them, Timmy lost his other shoe. We found both of them after about 5 minutes and continued "looking" for Hannah's. Timmy decided after a few minutes that it was too cold and he was going inside, leaving Hannah and I to fend for ourselves. After Timmy left Hannah lost her other shoe. We found it after a couple minutes, then decided to use my cell phone's light to look for her original shoe. That didn't help at all because the mud was at least 2 feet deep over a 5 x 8 ft area. So we kept reaching for the shoe up to our shoulders in the mud. Just as Hannah was saying she was ready to give it up and go to the house without her shoe, she felt it with the tip of my fingers, reached farther and pulled it out to the very loud sound of sucking mud. Hannah opted not to wear the shoe because it was filled with mud so I carried her on my back.

That is probably the best story we have from their farm, but that can hopefully change this year.

Updates

Well, this week has been a little less than interesting. Just routine. School has been draining, and I've had less sleep than necessary.

One thing that does make me happy is musical tryouts. Timmy and I are signed up to tryout on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The parts we're trying out for have the same dialogue so we can practice it together which is very convenient.

I came home for lunch today because seniors have open lunch and can leave the school during the lunch period. It was quite enjoyable to be able to see my family during the day. I had forgotten my gym bag this morning so I picked it up when I left home after lunch. That was nice.

I will be participating in the All-Star game on Sunday. That should be quite fun and interesting. Hopefully I will be able to post some pictures from that.

I'm sorry that I can't really think of anything to write about right now.

The Best First Date Ever

I will now reveal the great secret. I picked up Alaina to leave for dinner at 5:30. Apparently that's really early, but I was not gonna wait til 7 to eat dinner, I was hungry. So I started driving around, kind of towards Sandusky. I asked Alaina where she wanted to go to dinner (she's not the best with making decisions, but there's nothing wrong with that). She seemed really surprised that I didn't have anything planned and started to try to choose a restaurant. This continued for about 10 minutes or so until she was getting close to making a decision. I didn't want her to choose a restaurant only to be disappointed if it wasn't the one I had chosen. So I asked her if she wanted me to reveal the destination then, or wait and find out. She was really confused for a moment, and then figured out that I had just been teasing her. She elected to wait and find out.

As we pulled into the parking lot of Applebee's, she was very excited because she "just knew" that's where we were going. Yeah, I would have said that too ;) Haha. Dinner was very good. She had Alfredo with Provolone stuffed meatballs while I had a cheesy jalapeno burger or something like that. They were both very good, both because she did not finish her meal so I gladly obliged.

After Applebee's we went over to the mall, where we strolled around for a while before we decided to go to Border's. In that amazing store of bookly goodness, we found some very interesting reads. 2011 Guiness Book of World Records. I finally found someone who likes that as much as I do! We also looked at 2,458 of the Best Things Ever Said or something along those lines. I found the best book ever titled, "Why Do Dogs Eat Their Poop? And other disgusting facts about animals." That was my favorite. Haha.

We came back to my house to watch a movie or two and knock a couple off of our list. So we watched Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. It was quite enjoyable to make fun of the "State of the Art Animation" and the cheesiness of the movie, but they were alright. She definitely likes them more than I do. It was a great night, and my best first date ever!

If I must

I have finally given in after many comments about how my blog is hard to read...I changed the font. Impact, I will miss you. Hello, Trebuchet.

With all that aside, guess what tomorrow is. If you are my mother, or someone very close to me, I'm sure you guessed correctly. To everyone else, tommorrow is my monthiversary with Alaina. I don't want to be one of those crazy couples that does something crazy every month, but the first month is special. So I'm going to surprise her tomorrow night. She knows we're doing something at 5:30, but she doesn't know what. I'm sorry I can't tell you, but she reads my blog too so I can't.

I finished all but one of my essays for my West Point application. The first two I had my mother and Uncle Michael proofread and edit. They were good for the most part, but there were a few things that they fixed that made them much better. I hope to post at least one of them on here in the future, but it may not be a good idea as of now. I hope everyone enjoys reading this and that no one has a problem with my new font =P

The Interview & The Banquet

Just wondering, did you all like my John Grisham-like title?

So...last night I had my congressional interview for the nomination to West Point from Congressman Robert E. Latta. I was not nervous at all until about 2 hours beforehand. I started to worry a lot. When my father came home around 5 o'clock I was all dressed and ready to go. He decided that he was going to take me. My interview was at 6:15 and I didn't have to be there until 6 o'clock, so I had about an hour to wait, brood, worry, and just get more nervous in general. We left around 5:45 so we arrived about half an hour early. My dad started quizzing me in the car and helped me prep for the interview for about 10 minutes or so, and then we prayed together. He could not have done anything more helpful for me. The interview went very well and actually ended early.

After the interview, we took off to go to my soccer banquet which started 15 minutes before. We arrived while everyone was still eating and parents were still going through the line for the first time, so I jumped in and ate with the team. After dinner coach thanked the parents, the athletic department, the school, the school board, etc. Then he proceeded to introduce the team and letter winners. Everyone that he called before me had won 1 or 2 letters. This was my 3rd varsity year so when he called my name I got a plaque as well as my letter.

After passing out letters he started to hand out special awards. The first award he had was Rookie of the Year, follwed by Midfielder of the Year, which I had thought would be one of our outside midfielders. He proceeded to describe the winner and what he'd done all year and so on and so forth. It turned out to be me which was a very nice surprise. I really had not expected to win any awards so it was an extra-nice surprise. Coach went on to hand out the other awards, Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive Player of the Year, Most Improved, Coach's Award, and MVP. He was describing the MVP which I didn't think I had a chance at because I had already won the Midfielder Award. I assumed that one of the other seniors that hadn't won anything would receive MVP. As coach kept on with his description I started to think that it might be me. The moment I knew that I had won the award was when coach said, "And this player stands tall on the field, high above any other player." So I ended up winning 2 special awards.

As I was walking back to my seat from going up to receive the award, coach told me to stay up in front of everybody. He started talking about the next award that I won which was Academic All-Ohio for mainting a GPA above 3.7 all 4 years. (That means I'll get my picture up on the Athletic wall in the High School.) After I got back to my seat coach called me up again with our sweeper and goalie. He handed all of us medallions and told us that we had been voted by the coaches in our district for All-District awards. Our goalie received 1st team All-District and our sweeper and I received Honorable Mention.

The last award/honor that I received coach forget to mention. I was named along with 2 other seniors from the team to play in the All-Star game next week. I realized this when I read it in our packet that we received that listed all the letter-winners, and special award winners etc. I called coach when I got home to ask about it and as of right now, I do not know the date, time, or location of this game, but I am extremely excited to get to play in it.

That pretty much sums up everything that happened last night. Well I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed the banquet last night.

What A Great Weekend!

On Friday, November 5th, I watched V for Vendetta with Dylan, Alaina, Mother, and Timmy. It is a very good movie, and it's always fun to watch it on the 5th because of the premise of the movie. I stayed up very late talking to Dylan and Alaina, and when they went home I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up to my cell phone alarm after more than 3 hours, decided I was still tired, and went upstairs and went to bed. I woke up at 12 o'clock feeling well-rested and ready for the already half-gone day.

When I woke up, I went downstairs and had breakfast, I watched a movie with my siblings, and at 2 o'clock I went back to bed where I slept until 6 o'clock. I woke up quite happily surprised in time for supper. We had Pizza Brother's pizza which was quite scrumptious.

I had a dream about Daniel during one of the 2 times I was sleeping. This was very strange because I have not had a dream about him since he died more than 2 years ago. In my dream I talked to him a lot. It was one of those dreams that is very vivid while you're dreaming it, but it's hard to remember anything about it once you wake up.

I then proceeded to leave for the Key Club Staff vs. Students basketball game to get 15 bonus points in A.P. English (Which I was very happy to get because English is not my strong subject.) We had to be there by halftime and see our English teacher to get the points. I walked into the gym with 1 minute left in halftime. I rushed over to the teachers' bench and found her just in time to get the points.

When I got home fromt the game, I watched a movie with my mother and Timmy. It was about the Red Baron. He was a fighter pilot in WWI amassing the most number of victories of any pilot in WWI. It was very interesting to watch this because he was a German pilot and most movies about WWI are not from the German perspective.

I then proceeded to go to bed at 12:30 in order to get 7 hours of sleep which turned out to be 8 hours because of the time change. I think I'm all caught up on sleep for a while now. I just hope all the extra sleep I got this weekend isn't drained at school this week...

Updates

I realize that I have missed a couple days of posting and apologize. I'm not sure why I'm apologizing since nobody really reads this anyway...Anywho. This week has been kinda crazy. Especially with Tuesday being election day. Since my father is the Chairman for the county Republican party, and he's on the board of elections, I'm sure you can gather that politics are important in our house. Tuesday, and Tuesday night were very full. I helped out with the elections passing out slate cards at a polling precint, and making calls.

That night, a very large party was held at the Freedom Center. It turned into a very good party with the success the Republicans had on Tuesday. We swept all statewide elections, and all county elections except for auditor. Needless to say, everybody was fairly happy with the success.

Backtracking even further, I went to ballet on Monday night. Most people react a little strangely when I say anything about being in ballet, but I don't wear leotards, or do much dancing. The guys at the local studio do a lot more lifting than dancing. It is very fun, and one of my favorite activities. The instructor likes to call it lifting live weights. It is very satisfying to work with the girls and try different lifts, especially when you succeed. It just gives you the feeling of being able to do anything. Like, "I just lifted that girl over my head, bring it on!"

Coming back to the present, and moving on to the future, I am going to youth group tonight, and the Powder Puff football game for the Senior and Junior girls tomorrow night. This is shaping to be quite an eventful, and amazing week. I'll try to keep you all posted. Farewell for now.

No More Weekend...

Well, today was tough. I was up til 1:30 last night/this morning working on school work that I had spent a little bit of time on Fri-Sat. As most of my good friends know, I like and need my sleep. It is essential to my well-being and happiness. Thankfully, I finished all of my homework.

We had a take-home test in A.P. Calculus to work on this weekend, so I collaborated with Alaina on that. When we got to Calc today we turned in the take-home portion of the test and went over the in-class portion we had take on Friday. I missed 13 points on the test and we had a 13 point curve, so once again, the class was quite unhappy with me because everybody else missed more than 13 points. Our teacher informed us that on the A.P. test a 60% is a 5 (which is the highest score possible on an A.P. test). I received a 78% on this test, so it was a much nicer way to look at it.

We also watched a Senatorial debate in Psychology today which I thoroughly enjoyed, although I don't think anyone else in the class did.

A major highlight of my day was coming home for lunch with Alaina. My mother dear made meatball subs, so it was a very delicious meal. Much better than the school cafeteria lunches I always get.

I have realized that all of the parades I have been in for Terry Boose, all of the other election help I have done, going to Nicaragua in 7th grade to help build a water tower for a school, and several other things I have done are acts of community service that I've done which I did not realize when I filled out my applications.

All in all, today turned out to be quite fun even though I got very little sleep. I just hope I don't have to stay up that late again this week.

Thank God for the Weekend

This past week has been grueling. With several tests at school, and an above average homework load this past week, I have been drained. This weekend was a much needed respite from the weekly grind. I actually got to sleep in yesterday, that was the first time in a long while. I spent most of the day with my siblings, we had a large family beakfast and then took a nap. Afterwards I went with Hannah and we picked up firewood from a friend's house.

The bonfire was awesome. It was a little chilly so the hot fire was pretty awesome. We roasted hotdogs and marshmallows and just sat around telling and listening to stories and having a good time in general. Around 9 o'clock we decided to prank calling payphone numbers that Timmy had found while he was in D.C. That was definitely the highlight of the night. We sang the national anthem and happy birthday when people answered. We had some quite hilarious responses. I didn't go to bed until 1 or so and had to get up before 8 for family pictures so I'm kind of tired.

Well, I'm off to do homework and start the grind of the next week. Wish me luck

My Third...Just Kidding!

Today was quite an adventure. I woke up a little bit late today, but I still got to school on time. When I arrived at school, I realized that today was the high school's halloween dress up day. My family has never participated in halloween, so it wasn't a big deal for me, but it really woke me up.

I was up very late last night with homework. I worked on it for several hours, but alas, not all of it was done this morning, so I franctically worked on some homework with several of my classmates during homeroom. I actually finished 98% of it, so the rest of the day was less frantic.

We had an A.P. Calculus test today in second period. I said I woke up when I got to school, that was only partways. I really woke up when I walked in the door and saw the test. It was...time-consuming at the least. I feel like I did very well on it, but the more I think about it, the more petty mistakes I think I made.

The big event of the day by far, was going to Hannah's soccer game at Ohio Northern University. I had invited my girlfriend Alaina to go with us today. She had permission, and we were planning to leave right after school and meet up with my mother and family there because there would not be enough room in the truck for all of us. During 6th period I received a note from the office saying I needed to go down and call my mother. So I did. She had decided to leave my little sister at my aunt's house down the street, making room for Alaina and I to go with the rest of the family in the truck. Well...we were leaving at 2, and to leave school early you have to have permission from your parents. That was a fantastic endevour in and of itself, but in the end we got it all worked out, and actually got to the university on time. Then we had to find the soccer field. We had to ask two guys for directions. Neither of them actually seemed to know how to get to the soccer field, they knew where it was, but getting there was another story. Long story short (I know, that wasn't really short) we found the field, watched the game, and got to bring Hannah home! Can't wait for the bonfire tomorrow night.

My Second Post!

Well...I think this title is a little less cliche. Funny I know. Or not. So, in my quest to make my daily life less boring, I found something to post today. I walked into my homeroom and some of my classmates were complaining about how this year is going. I heard things like "I hate how our senior year is going" and "It's so crappy." Well, I being the ultimate contradictionist stated that I love our senior year. I also told them that they need to make what they can of it. I'm sure they talking about how they aren't doing well in their classes because they're hard this year, or how the football team has only won 2 games our senior year, but their complaining really got to me today. Sure it's a drag getting up for school everyday, and yeah classes are tough, and so what? There's always the soccer team.

I personally have thoroughly enjoyed my senior year. Yes, my classes are tough this year too. Taking 4 A.P. classes is really quite a big bite to chew, and I'm still not positive if my mouth is big enough. (Like that metaphor?) Yeah, our football team has only won 2 games, but that's twice as much as last year, and we won our homecoming game for the first time since my freshman year. Plus, I'm obviously very pro soccer, and we really improved from last year. I'm proud of the way my team played most of this year and how we really came together the last 1/2 of the season.

So, to end this post, Make the most of every situation, no matter how bleak it is, especially those of you who are in your senior year. It's your senior year! The year we've looked forward to all throughout high school, have some fun!

My First Post!

Yes, I know this title is cliche. I apologize, I just don't know what else to call it. I have decided after some very long internal debate to start a blog. I really don't know how well this will work out, or how often I'll post, but I will try to do so regularly. I don't really consider myself the greatest writer in the world (actually, I think I'm far from it) so please bear with me.

I have been a little bit bored lately, especially since the soccer season ended, so this is also an attempt at finding interesting things in my everday life. Hopefully I can do that. Well, here goes!