More of Emily's writing

I told you about Emily and her constitution that she did for NOVA and how she was chosen to read it at their graduation.  I found it in her file and thought I would share it.  I guess they liked it because it was so much different then the normal ones of "I learned this and I won't do that and we learned not to..." kind of thing.  I was (as I am sure any parent would be) very proud of her.   Below is her work.  You can read about her metaphor paper here.

A road map shows you how to get somewhere.  The place can be good or bad.  There are usually places where you might turn the wrong way, either by accident, or by not paying attention.  Life is a road map. You are constantly driving. There are two different roadmaps you can choose from.  You can choose the roadmap to bad habits, or you can choose the roadmap to excellence.  If you choose the roadmap to excellence, your goal will then be to get to excellence city.

            Some of the roads that I wish to go down on the roadmap to excellence are college lane, Job Avenue, and last but not least, highway smartness.  There are many different roads to go down, and they will all take you to different places. For example, if you go down college lane, there are hundreds and hundreds of roads branching off of it like doctor drive, Teacher Boulevard, and lawyer lane. Each of these will take you to good places, unless you don’t use the knowledge that you gain down these roads.

            I personally would like to go to college.  To get to college lane, you first start out at Birth Boulevard.  Now continue on to preschool road, elementary lane, middle school Avenue, high school drive, and the rest is self explanatory.  But I am going to let you in on a little secret, I have a shortcut.  My shortcuts is start out on Birth Boulevard as usual, but drive your very best through elementary lane, middle school avenue, and high school drive, and if you do your very best, you might just get a ticket. Not tickets were you have to pay a fine or anything, but a ticket called a scholarship.  These are like trucks. If college lane gets bumpy or hard with payment, a truck makes it smoother and easier to pull through and do a good job on what will change your life. 

            Job Avenue is easy to get to.   All you do is once you get off of high school drive, is you take a sharp right turn onto Job Avenue and your there.  There are tons of turnoff roads to choose from.  You might want to chose McDonalds way, or maybe you would prefer something where you are more free, or where the road is wider. Like artist avenue.  More than half the roads will be locked though unless you took the detour on college lane.  Yes this will take you longer, but if you go this way, all the doors will be open.  This way, you will have a higher chance of getting to excellence city.

            Highway smartness is a highway that is long, wide and strait in one direction.  Across the valley of excellence, there is another highway called the highway of decreasing smartness.   Joining the two highways is a road called sameness path.  The highway smartness takes you towards the city of excellence.  Highway of decreasing smartness takes you toward Birth Boulevard.  I would like to stay in school so that I can continue on highway of smartness till I get to the city of excellence.  

            When you are driving a car, you need to avoid things.  Pretend you are halfway down 28 avenue and you see that the road splits in two.  One way says “smoke”, and the other way says “drug free”.  Which one will you choose? Now say that you are driving in your car, and then you see a speed bump. You then decide to slow down. Now let’s pretend that you went super fast over it so that you could fly in the air, even though it would only be for a couple seconds. If you were driving in a convertible with your seatbelt off, you would most likely fly out of the car and die or hurt yourself.  Always remember to Study the Situation, or STS.

            If your car doesn’t have an engine, how can you drive? If you don’t know how to drive, how can you drive?  If your car doesn’t have a steering wheel, how can you control the car?   There are obviously things you need and should value for cars.  There are also things you should value in life. If you didn’t have a roadmap, how would know where to go or what to do.  If you didn’t have a car, how could you get past Birth Boulevard? A couple of things I value are knowing whats right and whats wrong, my car/brain, and my roadmap/life.

            Back to the roadmap stuff.  If you are heading towards excellence city, you are on the path of excellence. NOVA has helped lead me to my path of excellence by letting me know how dangerous drug usage is, how to be a better person, and to be able to REALLY know whats around me besisdes flowers and unicorns.

            During NOVA, they had about eight different topics, which were gangs, internet safety, music awareness, media, self-esteem, true colors, windows of opportunity, and heroes. Gangs was about why a gang is harmful.  Internet safety was about making sure that while your on the internet you are safe.  Music awareness basically said that there is bad music, and good music.  Media was on making sure the media that you were around was appropriate.  Self esteem was on paradigm and put downs.  The lesson on true colors taught us that what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong.  Windows of opurtunity was all about cause and effect, STS, accountability, and how to get good opportunitys.  The lesson on heroes helped us to realize, what a hero was and how to be one.  All of these lessons were important and I will remember them for ever.

Road trip from July

As we made our way up to my parents house, we stopped at a few little places along the way.  One place that was so needed was of couse a place to sleep.  It is hard having 5 kids and 2 adults all squished into one room. Some places have bigger rooms that are more of a suite with a sofa/sleeper or sometimes ever a little bedroom with an extra bed  Those are the places that work best, but they are also more expensive too.  Due to our destination and the coastal route we took, we didn't find any places like that.  There as lots of bed sharing and of course with that fighting of who got to sleep where, and with whom they got to share that space with.  All in all, it went okay and everyone was pretty tired.  Here is Amber and Emily zonked out one morning. 

 
 One morning as we left our motel, we went to a little beach.  When we first got there is was totally overcast, you couldn't even see the ocean.  As we were there, it cleared up a bit and turned out beautiful!  Wish we had time to hang out a bit longer.  We had so many more miles to travel until we got to our next destination.

This is what it looked like when we left the beach area.  What a difference huh.

The little girls enjoyed playing in the sand and didn't need much more than that.  I think they could have stayed there all day with the sand and water. 

The older girls were more into exploring things. The tide was out and they found seveal rocks that had some fun creatures on them.  The starfish were everywhere!  I had never witnessed starfish in real life that wasn't at an aquarium type place.  So fun!

The girls (and their mom) had to be pulled away when it was time to go.  It was too amazing to just look at them and the difference in textures, colors, and size of all the starfish and other marine things on the rocks.

 Off and down the road we went.  We found a dinosaur museum that my family had told me about.  We stopped and checked it out.  There was tons of fun things to do as we traveled along Hwy 101. 

 The musuem was fun but when it was over, I thought, that was it?  We just spent that much money and it is over?  OUCH!  It sure makes a difference when you have 5 kids and they are $8-10 a child and then you have 2 at the adult price.  It was still fun, and the girls really enjoyed it.

 By all the little dinos they had more information about them and also what their size ratio was compared to the real life size.   Emily was loving the mossy trees and all the plants.  She just had to get a picture of this one below.

 See how cool they were.  They did make great pictures and the kids definetly enjoyed it.

 Then down the road we went.  We also had to stop at the sea lion caves.  It is hard to see, but those are all sea lions and their babies down there by the water. 

 We then traveled down to the cave.  It was kind of fun, Robert and I visited here on our honeymoon back in 1999.  Not much has changed that I can remember.  Although when I first came, I was kind of focused on Robert and not the things in or around the cave.  I do remember how loud it was and kind of smelly too.  The sea lions were mostly outside  There wasn't too many in the cave.

 It was SOOO windy!  Check out the girls' hair.  Isn't that funny!  The girls thought it was pretty neat.  They also got to pick out a little souvinoir from the gift shop.  Samantha picked a little ceramic piggy bank, which has since broken.

Then off we went to other adventures that I hope to tell you more about soon.  Maybe by next July I will have had time to tell you all about last July!  Stay tuned, there is still more to come.... much more!!

Emily's Human Metaphor

One morning I came to the computer and saw this homework assignment of Emily's.  It turns out that she had an assignment to write a metaphor paper on what they are like I guess.  Emily chose yarn.  I read it and thought, yeah that really sounds like her...  alot like her!  (And of course this morning, I snipped and snipped at her yarn, even though I knew already how it would make her feel.  I was so angry at her and I just blew it!  Bad Mama!)
Emily's A.L.L. teacher was really impressed with it, she even asked if she could copy it and keep it for next years class, and also checked to see if she could share it with the class. 

Emily is a super writer, she was also chosen to be one of the special speakers based on her paper she wrote on a N.O.V.A. constitution with the theme, "Roadmap to Excellence."  She did a great job on it, I will have to try to find a copy and add it too.  Our computer got a nasty virus and much of items were lost.  I know she has the hard copy of it though. 

Here is her Metaphore paper, although somehow the format changed from its original form.

I am a ball of yarn. As a ball of yarn, I unravel. I can easily separate. I can be made into something that is different from me.

As a bunch of yarn, I unravel.  When someone yells or makes me feel bad, they tug on my string. Once the end is out, if anything else happens, it just keeps tugging.  It might be hard to make me feel bad at first, but then I can’t stop unraveling.

With just a snip of the scissors, I can have totally different opinions. If, and when, someone says something that might seem small and unimportant, I might be cut in two. I can always be tied back together, but it always leaves a scar.  Sometimes, a knot might come undone. Then the problem resurfaces. I am always tying and retying knots.

With something like a crochet hook or knitting needle, I can be turned into something new and different. I can usually do what I’m told, as long as I know how and have what I need. I can also be different colors or sizes to help me with what I need.  I can be a writer if I need to write. I can be an artist if I need to draw.  I can be a mathematician if I need to do math.

I am a ball of yarn.

Em's teacher told the class about an essay contest on Water Conservation, she is really wanting to enter that contest.  It pays $100 to the winner.  Emily's cousin Serena is a good writer, and come to find out her Grandma Thomas was quite a writer too, she won an eighth grade compitetion when she was in school.