Heard Back from High School

You may or may not know that I had my interview for admission to the private school I applied to last week.  It was pretty nerve-wracking, because I got asked a lot of questions, but overall, it seemed as though it went pretty well.

And I guess it did, because on Saturday I received a letter that said I have been

The number of exclamation points that escaped my mouth are too many to list here.  But if I could, they would probably fill several long blog posts.

This was literally pretty much my reaction.

High school, here I come!!!!

Thought I'd share this exciting news with you :)  Much love and as always--but sadly, not for much longer...

Happy Homeschooling!

Untitled

My new, under-construction blog has yet to be Titled (with, of course, a capital T).  However I have received one suggestion and come up with two of my own that I like well enough, so here they are:

1. Turn the Page (much thanks to my Granna for this one)

2. Freshman's Desk (may be changed to Sophmore's, Junior's, Senior's as needed)

3. Castles in the Sand

Let me explain the last one.  There is a song that I came upon while searching the magical land of Google called "Four Years" by a guy whose name I don't remember.  The song itself didn't do much for me, actually.  It wasn't overall a great song...at all...but there was a line in there which didn't even make sense in context, but I liked, and that was castles in the sand.

I guess it does kind of make sense, because the point of the song seemed to be "be whoever you want to be because it's only four years, live life to the fullest etc etc".  And your popularity or whatever is as fragile as sand-castles.  It's not my favorite of all of them, admittedly, but I do like the phrase.

Right now I'm leaning toward's Freshman's Desk because that's where a lot of stuff gets done, whether it's reading, writing, homework, phone calls, blogging...it's my second-favorite thing in my room (first being my bed).

I'm gonna try to add a poll to my blog, allowing you to vote on the three names.  It may or may not have much of a difference in my decision, but unless a big stroke of inspiration comes around, these are my final three choices.

Happy Homeschooling!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Hello there!  Happy St. Patrick's Day :)  Hope everyone has been having a good month, mine has been very up-and-down so far.  Or I guess you could say, down-and-up, as the beginning of this month was kind of rough and now things are settling down.

For today, I was thinking that I could share some of my writing with you.  Currently, I'm taking a writing class and learning a ton!  A month or two ago I shared one of my poems called "Behind the Scenes", which is probably my favorite thing that I've written from class.

Here's a few paragraphs from the fiction I'm working on right now :)

As we load the boxes into the moving van, I spot Erica running down the street. 
“I’m gonna go somewhere really quick,” I mutter to my sister, Courtney, and take off towards my best friend.  “Erica!” I holler.  “Erica, wait!”

She turns and beckons to me, then keeps running.  “Come on, Aurora!” she yells back.  I know where she’s headed--the abandoned playground where we used to hang out after school last year.  It’s the only place where we’re sure to have any privacy.  Reaching into my pocket, I rub the five string bracelets I’ve made for her.

“I thought you’d never get here,” she giggles as I duck under the slide and scoot towards her.  But then her ever-present smile collapses and it’s suddenly obvious how hard she’s taking this.  How hard the move is going to be on her, too.  “Why do you have to go?” she whispers.  “What am I gonna do without you?  The school paper, Aurora.  All our plans, gone!”

It’s too much, and then we’re holding each other and crying, and without any words we know how much we’ll miss each other.  “I’ll email you every day,” I promise.  “And you have to sign up for the school paper!  One of us should.  Here, these are for you.”  I hold out the friendship bracelets, each of them woven with a blue string among the others, a blue string to match the one in each of my bracelets.  “Because we’re different, and we’re going to change, but we’ll always be friends,” I explain.

We slowly walk back to my house, grabbing mint-chocolate ice cream cones even though it’s cold out.  It usually is here in San Francisco, but ice cream on the first day of July is an Erica-Aurora tradition that goes back to elementary school.  When the moving van comes into sight, she grabs my hand and holds it tightly.  “Aurora!”  I hear my mom yell.  “Come on, we’re making lunch and then we have to leave!”

Then, somehow, I’ve said goodbye to Erica and May, my 20-year-old cousin who has been helping us pack, and we’re on the road to Hollis, California, our new home.

Please keep in mind that this is my first draft that still needs editing, and is not by far the end of the story!  It's a work in progress :)

Hope you enjoy it, constructive criticism is appreciated!  And I'm still trying to think of a name and permanent URL for my new blog, so leave any suggestions in the comments or just email me!

Happy Homeschooling!

Random Ramblings: Springtime, Sleeping Habits & High School

I haven't done a Random Ramblings post in a year, and there are some things to update you on.  So here we go...

Be prepared for a long, crazy post

1.

The weather has been really nice here, and I've been spending a lot more time outside.  This means I get to wear shorts and short sleeves!  Woo-hoo!  My poor arms and legs have not seen the sun in months!

2. 

This is called a lapbook.  It's essentially a collage folder and my brother made one for his science unit on deserts.  Mine is on fashion, just for fun, but I'm going to make one for my next book report instead of writing an essay.

3. 

I may not have the, ah, best sleeping habits.  As in, I stay up much too late listening to music and/or reading amazing books such as:

and

It's becoming a real problem.

4.

Somehow I doubt it will be like this.

High school.

I only have three more months of school (including this month).  That means I'm only going to be a middle schooler (and homeschooler) for three more months!!

That's scary.

So because there are only a few more months left before I officially break free of the confinement of middle school to be free for three months before I enter the confinement of high school, we have to send in many papers and transcripts in order to find out which high school I will be admitted to for the next four years.

That's being done and almost everything is in order, so hopefully that will be done soon so I don't have to think about it too much over the summer (which I undoubtedly will anyways).

5. 

STAR tests!

Notice I have the star and it says you tried because who ever does that well on these, really?  Well, alright, I got a good grade on both my tests last year but this year I have FOUR.

FOUR TESTS.  Not just two, no.  In addition to Math and English, I also get to worry about Science and History!  So instead of focusing on studying for only two tests, I have to work twice as hard and fast on all of my subjects and hope I know everything that will be on the tests.

Not to mention that the history STAR test is on everything I'm supposed to have learned from sixth through eighth grade, meaning somehow I was expected to remember ancient history,  renaissance, reformation, and US history from all of middle school.  Honestly I only remember the highlights, because I wasn't thinking about memorizing it all for a giant test at the end of Jr. High.

Just kill me now, it would be less painful.

The only things keeping me going at this point are the promise of summer, awesome remixes, and my writing class (I'll post some of my work here soon, right now we're working on fiction)!  But of course, everything will turn out fine and I'll have a great summer :)

If you read all the way to here, congratulations!  I'm pretty sure my ranting was pretty tedious haha.  But thanks for reading and as always,

Happy Homeschooling!

Tahoe

Hello!  So the story behind this post, in a nutshell, is that I went to Tahoe with my youth group on President's Day weekend, and took all these awesome pictures with my brand-new camera, and then blogger wouldn't let me upload said pictures.  And finally, TWO WEEKS LATER, here is my post about Tahoe.  *Sigh*

We stayed in Zephyr Cove, and the church conference center was super pretty!  All these pictures are from where we stayed.

Here's the dock.  There was a protected little swimming cove (right) encircled (ensquared?  haha) by the two docks and then the open lake was out to the left.

This lovely boat came around the lake with some tourists aboard.  They waved to us, seems like they were having a good time :)

Looking out from a rock near the docks onto the lake

Here is the swimming/beach area...it's probably used more in the summertime haha but the water was super clear, some kids jumped in!

Our winter retreat was four days, Friday through Monday (the first and fourth days were spent driving).  We got to play in the snow, hang out in our cabins, and go sledding!  It was super fun!  Some other things we got to do:

-Polar Bear Plunge (I didn't do this, but it's pretty much where you jump off the dock into the ice-cold lake.  Fun?)

-Marshmallow Olympics (A series of competitions involving marshmallows.  Included trying to eat a full bowl of ONLY the marshmallows from Lucky Charms; Chubby Bunny; Marshmallow Creme Santa Beard; and Marshmallow Field Hockey.  Our team lost haha!)

-Epic High School vs Middle School snowball fight...which I missed most of...

We had an amazing time and I'm definitely planning on going again next year!

More posts coming soon, now that Blogger has its picture-uploading problems fixed :)

Happy Homeschooling!