Last Blog

I can't believe this is it, my last blog, for the most part. Well, I only have one more semester at Bland until I'm done. It's hard to think that I'm actually going to be out of here. I mean this year flew by like crazy! I can't imagine I'm this much closer to pursuing my dream in becoming an elementary school teacher. It's kind of scary. My parents have always told me, "Being afraid is okay, but if you don't work through that fear, you might miss out on some pretty great things. You can't live in fear. Life is about taking risks, not being afraid of going after what you want." I've come to the conclusion that is having things turn out the way you wanted them to is what makes a successful life, then you should go ahead and say I'm a failure. The important thing is not to be bitter over life's disappointments. Learn to let go of the past. So don't be afraid to make mistakes, or stumble and fall, cause most of the time the greatest rewards come from doing the things that scare you the most. Maybe you'll get everything you wish for, or get more than you ever could have imagined. Who know where life will take you. The road is long and in the end, the journey is the destination.

Life

You're planning for someday, then quietly, without even knowing, someday is today, then someday is yesterday. The choice is yours. The rest of your life is a long time and whether we know it or not, it's being shaped right now. You can choose to blame your circumstances on fate, bad luck, bad choices, or you can fight back. Things aren't always going to be fair in the real world, that's just the way it is. For the most part you get what you give. Ask yourself this question; What's worse, not getting everything you wished for or getting it all and finding out that it's not enough. The rest of your life is being shaped right now with the dreams you chase, choices you make, and the person you decide to be. You know in life, if you let it, you can always come up with reasons to give up, but if we just hang on, something will find a way and make it better, because all we need is a little help to remind us that it won't always be this way.

Pictures

"Ever look at a picture of yourself and see a stranger in the background? It makes you wonder, how many strangers have pictures of you? How many moments of other people's live have we been in? Were we apart of someone's life when their dream came true? Or were we there when their dreams died? Did we keep trying to get in or were we just destined to be there? Or did the shot take us by surprise? " I love this quote. I never thought about that until I read this quote. Think about it, you're walking on the beach and accidently get in their picture, did something just happen? They look back at that picture years later and say this was the day......and you're right there in the back ground. If you're at a sporting event, a baseball player just hits a grand slam and wins the game. Sports Illustrated takes a picture and you're there in the background. That magazine goes out to millions of people and they all see the picture of you. Just think, you could be a big part of someone's life, and not even know it.

Christmas Ornaments

Family traditions are one of my favorite things about the holidays. It’s so special to have meaningful things that we do as a family year after year. When I was younger, my mom would give me and my siblings an ornament each year and she would get them with our name on it. I remember the first year we got them. I was looking on the tree to find it. I saw one for Brandon, and Brittney, and Blake, and when I finally got to mine it was written in permanent marker. I was heartbroken. I felt so left out that their names were printed on theirs and mine was handwritten. My mom just told me that I was too special to have one that looked like everyone else's. Yeah I fell for that. We started making our own the older we got, which was one of my favorite things to do.  I would get so excited  to put the tree up, to dig thru our ornament box and reminisce about each one. When my sister got married and moved to her own place, she took all of “her” ornaments with her, so it made her new tree feel a little like home.

Outside Blog #2/Christmas Town

The park opens at 3 pm. A huge crowd was forming at the gate; the day was chilly but the sun was shining and we were ready to rock some rides.We had a couple of hours of daylight to ride some of the rides,we sipped hot cocoa, then starting to watch the seemingly-millions of lights begin to twinkle while my aunt and cousin headed off to Alpengiest. We got something to eat after that. We headed to one of their special Christmas shows, “Miracles.” Even though my cousins were a little antsy, the show with it’s ivory-clad dancers and amazing voices was pretty awesome and a nice treat to sit for a few moments after walking the park. We made sure to hit all the good points to impress the little ones. Carolers and bands, many clad in period-dress, serenaded us going by, and the lights were something I’ll try to share here, but you really have to experience for yourself. In fact, the kids had a ball just playing hide-and-seek in-between some of the hundreds of decorated trees.

 

Thanksgiving/Catching Fire! :)

I absolutely love Thanksgiving! I love being able too see every one my family, we have such a great time and the food is always amazing! For the past 5 years my family started having Thanksgiving lunch instead of dinner, at first I wasn't too happy about it because I don't like changing tradition, then it's not a tradition anymore. Well when we got back home from lunch there was nothing left to do but to sit at home, which is completely boring. My mom decided we should go to the movies. So every Thanksgiving we have a new tradition we go to my grandparents for Thanksgiving Lunch and then we leave and go to the movies. This year the movie was Catching Fire! I love The Hunger Games Series. I watched the first one then read all three books. I wasn't too sure if the movies were going to be exactly like the books, well they are. : / Which isn't a bad thing, but I also like happy endings!!

UVA Game

Have you ever been to an athletic event and wanted to be in one of the contests they have and win a prize? I know I have and I got the opportunity when I went to Charlottesville. Every year my older brother gets season tickets to UVA football games. Every once in a while he'll have an extra ticket and he'll ask me to go with him. We got there a little earlier than we normally do. We walked around a few stores and got some lunch before heading to our seats. When we finally got to our seats I was looking at the game program and some guy walks up to me and says, "Excuse me, would you like to be in a contest?" Of course I said yes! I had to throw as many nerf footballs into a grocery cart from 10 yards away, Easy right? Well, I thought I would go down at half time when the teams are in the locker room and the fans are getting something to eat or doing whatever, but no I played at the end of the first quarter with both teams and 50,000 fans watching me. I ended up coming in 2nd and winning a $100 to kroger, but it was one of the greatest experiences in my life!

 Brandon and I before the game.

Outside Blog #1 Holocaust Museum

I went to the Holocaust Museum in Richmond the other week with a friend because she had to write a paper on it. She didn't want to go by herself so I figured it would be a good idea to write a blog about it. The Holocaust was the murder of approximately six million Jews and other groups because of their race by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Gypsies, the disabled, Slavics, Poles, and Russians were just a few of the other groups. In 1945, Germans killed nearly 2 out of 3 European Jews as part of the Final Solution which was, a policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Between 1948-51 almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most Europena Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe entirely.
In the museum there are artifacts left from there such as glasses and shoes. Each little station tells a story about a certain situation that you would face if you were in Germany. There is even a part where you have to crawl as if you were in hiding.
                                            
                                           
a soldier stands over a victim                       a quote by President Truman