ACT Scores

A few weeks ago, I got to take the ACT as a seventh grader. I was able to do this because of Duke University. Every year, Duke allows seventh graders who have made certain grades, to take the ACT. They then look at all of the scores, and depending on what score you make, you can be recognized at different levels. I'm not quite sure how it all works exactly, but it is a neat opportunity. We take the same test as the high schoolers, we take it at the same place (but in a different room than them,) and it gets scored the same way. I got my score on Friday, and I had a lot of fun comparing it to my parent's scores. I scored a 25. I am proud to say that I outscored my mom, and am only two points below my dad. The results also show the percent of kids who scored either the same score as you or below you (including high school kids.) 82% of Texas was the same as or below me, and 80% of the U.S. was the same as or below me. I did the worse in math, but my mom says that's because I haven't learned most of the stuff (which is true, I guessed some on that section.) I scored a 31 on reading though! I was pretty proud of my scores, but I do hope that I do better in high school!

Snowball Fight!

Yesterday, Tyson, Justin, Miller, Landon, and I had a giant snowball fight. The fight itself was pretty fun, but personally, I liked building the fort more than anything else. In our front yard, the snow was perfect for packing! Justin discovered that if you make a lot of snow balls, roll each of them around on the ground (like making balls for a snowman,) connect them, and then pack a lot of snow into the gaps, you can make a pretty amazing snow fort! The teams were Justin, Miller, and Tyson against Landon and I. Each team used the same method of building the snow forts, but they actually turned out pretty different. After the forts were made, we had a lot of fun pelting each other with snow balls. I'm not really sure how most people do snow ball fights, but here is how we did ours. Each team had a territory, and then some parts of the yard were free-for-all. If you got hit on the other teams territory, then you had to drop any snow balls that you were carrying, and go and touch your snow fort. None of us really knew what to do once we were on the other teams territory, so we settled for trying to steal snow balls and knock down the other teams fort (we weren't successful in doing either of these things.) We had fun while it lasted, but after a while, Miller got hurt and went inside, and then Tyson went inside because his feet were cold. 

 

 Mine and Landon's snow fort. We found out that ours was the strongest when Landon ran full force into it, tried to body slam it, and fell to the ground moaning. After the fight, Ryan and Abigail also enjoyed playing in it .

  

 Justin, Tyson, and Miller's snow fort (Tyson and Miller had both gone inside by the time we took the picture.) Part of it is missing in this picture. Tyson had been leaning on a fairly tall part, and it fell over taking Tyson with it.

Christmas!

    I hope that you had an amazing Christmas, I know that I sure did! The first thing that we did was open our presents from Santa. I got a Flip camcorder. Justin got a metal detector, Ryan got a firehouse, Abigail got a doll nursery, and Tyson got a ................DOG! We were all very excited about that one except for my dad, he is the reason that we haven't had a dog for so long, but we hope that he'll learn to love Gracie (that's our dogs name) as much as we do. By the way, Gracie is a blue heeler-border collie mix. She is very smart, very cute, and very nice. Everyone got basically the same thing in their stockings: socks, underwear, a mini box of cereal, and candy! After that we ate our boxes of cereal for breakfast. Next we opened all of the rest of our presents. Some of my presents were: tennis balls, clothes, lots of books, a thing that you can knit stuff with, yarn to knit stuff with, and some jewelry. Soon after that my grandpa and step-grandma Annabelle came over. We spent some time with them and then had a Christmas dinner of ham, potatoes, rolls,etc. They left to go pick up my aunt Darlene from the airport, and we went and played wally-ball with our friends the Hardy's. We beat them by the way. We then went home and waited for my aunt and grandparents to get back from the airport. They got here, and we ate dessert. After spending a little more time with them, they went home and we went to bed. I had a lot of fun!

I'm Not Dreaming of a White Christmas, I'm Having One!

 Here in Lubbock, Texas, snow is a rare occasion, but today, we woke up to more snow than I have ever seen! In some places it was above my knees! We went out and played in it with our friends the Hardy's. It was pretty fun, but the wind and ice blowing was awful! The snow wasn't very good packing snow as it is. It was still pretty fun though. We made snow angels, threw some snowballs, and started to make a snow fort. After about twenty minutes though, we went inside. I must say though, I think that I would have had more fun if I had a coat on! Ryan didn't last very long before he started crying, but when my mom asked him if he liked snow, he managed a "Yes" through his tears. I'm not sure how well Abigail liked playing in the snow, but she sure did like eating it! It is supposed to not melt today, and snow more tomorrow. We are all really excited!

 

Emily

 

Tyson

Justin

Ryan when we first came out.

Ryan after 15 minutes.

 

Abigail. Yummy!

The Cluff's and Hardy's in the snow!

I'm Not Magic! :(

Yesterday, Ryan was trying to turn off all of the lights in the house so that he could see the Christmas tree lights better. My mom and I needed a light to see by though, so we turned on a light whose light switch is kind of hidden. Ryan was a little upset and asked my mom how to turn it off. She replied, "You have to say, 'abracadabra, zippide-zoo, light turn off, choo choo!'" He did so and we discreetly flipped the switch. He was amazed. "Mom, I'm magic!" he delightedly said. He did this for at least five minutes. We got tired of flipping the switch, so we told him that he should probably stop before his magic ran out. He continued to believed us and stopped. Today, after church, he came down the hall saying, "Mom, I have sad news. I'm not magic." He was on the verge of tears. Apparently, he had said the magic words, but when Tyson tried to flip the switch, he saw. "There's a switch," he sadly informed us. He then went and showed us that the magic words didn't work, someone had to flip the switch. By this point, mom and I were feeling pretty guilty for tricking him, but then he really made us feel bad. "I'm not magic," he said crying, "I'm not even special." it took us quite a while to convince him that no one was magic, and that he was still incredibly special. I feel bad that we tricked him, but he had so much fun "magically" turning on the lights! 

Locks of Love

Yesterday I cut off literally a foot of my hair! My  hair used to be really long, all the way down my back. For the second time in my life, I cut off a huge amount and donated it to a foundation called Locks of Love. They take hair that someone has donated (there must be at least ten inches) and makes it into wigs for people whose hair has fallen out due to treatment for cancer. The last time that I donated, I cried after the haircut. I just didn't look like me without my long hair. The fact that the haircut itself looked bad on me didn't help. This time, I didn't cut off quite so much, and the hairstylist did a wonderful job! I'm still adjusting to having such short hair, but at least this time I like the way it looks. I am glad that I was able to donate my hair.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

On December 1, it snowed in Lubbock! I have Tennis first period in school. We are in off-season, so we were in the cafeteria working out. My coach looked outside and saw that the ground was covered in snow, and that it was still coming down hard. She went out to quickly take pictures, and we followed her and started to play in it. When she was done, she looked at us and told us that if we wanted we could stay out here and play in the snow for the rest of the period. We were ecstatic! For the next 45 minutes, we made mini snowmen, had snowball fights, and just enjoyed having enough snow to play in. We had so much fun! I was really glad that we got to do this, because about ten minutes after tennis ended, it stopped snowing. By the time we got home, there was no trace of the inch of snow that we played in earlier. I am very lucky to have such a nice coach!