This is more of an add on to the last post.

When my dad said to get on a jacket and he wouldn't tell me why, I could tell that there was something wrong. Then my mom called us into her room and I thought there was something wrong with her so I was looking for some sort of a clue, if she looked different, or sounded different, but everything was the same. Then she said these exact words," Kids, your aunt Cathy died today."

It took me 2 or 3 seconds to realise what she had just said, then I started to cry, not as heavily as I would eventually in the week. The minute we found out it was more of shock than anything. The first day, wasn't even close to the worst day of the first week.

You will never understand why it happened or how it happened, and I, after a month still really don't know that it happened, I feel like I never will.

Thanks,
SJ

As some of you may know my aunt died on June 20. It was a surprise to all of us. So this is basicly a couple paragraphs on what loss really is.

Something that surrised me was that your days and how you feel are never really consistent. Maybe a week after and you will be sobbing one day and the next day you are fine. When you are not okay make sure you tell someone and if you feel you need help from a pro then you're right go get help.

Me and my mom would stay up later than everyone else to look at the facebook comments or really just work on her funeral. We would ask each other how we did that day and if we cried or not.

For the first week the whole family would get together for dinner everynight eating all the dinners that people brought over. We called all the dinners hugs.

All of us decided we should get out of here for the holidays to make sure we weren't paying attention to the seat that wasn't filled. We have made sure to remember her as much s we can over the holidays even if it makes us cry.

Thanks,
SJ

Beach! :( :)

Okay yes it was a while ago that we went to the beach, in fact it was during Spring Break!!! Any way we went to Dillon's beach and we were expecting the worst...... wind and coldness exct. exct. That is why I'm wearing jeans, :), but it is sunny out, :(. The water wasn't warm, but wasn't cold either. My jeans were soaked and covered with sand. We had so much fun!!!

So the next day we decide to go again, so we bought beach tools like shovels and sifters. We didn't bring jackets and hot cocoa this time. It's FREEZING!!!! The wind is so hard I could barely open my door. We decide to stay since it's kind of far away. Our legs were being pelted with sand because of the wind. Lily and I decided to go down by the water and it turns out it was better there. No getting pelted with sand HURRAY!!!!!!!!

When we went home my mom told us that Chelsea's sunglasses flew off of her head and were immediately barried with sand. Wa Wa WWWAAAA, :(.

After that we didn't go again.

O.M. #2

Hello! I really honestly can't believe we didn't make it to State! Everyone thought are skit was great even our competitors thought we were going to make it for sure!!! :-( We got 4th and needed to get 3rd to advance. Heart breaker.

My team consisted of: me, Aidan, Ashley, Lou Lou, Marcos, and Abi. Ashley could not make it to competition because she was in Disneyland cheerleading the same day.

We missed the fact that the treasure had to be made before 1900 A.D. Ours was made in 1963. We didn't quite make the cut off so we were penalized.

The problem was to make a 8 min. skit that portrayed a modern man made treasure and a historic man made treasure. The Modern treasure was found in the future and is a sculpture or a structure of some sort. Ours was the Apollo 11 Flag. You're probably thinking that a flag is not a structure. It's not. So what we did is we had an alien that had a house and we put it on that. Our historic treasure was the Fallen Astronauts sculpture. That's what did not work, It was made in 1963 and had to be made before 1900A.D.

Our Spont. scores (spontaneous) were 57.6 out of 100. Spont either makes you or breaks you. It definitely broke us.

We had to make a bridge that spanned about 1 foot. It had to hold as many items as you can. We had 3 min. to make the bridge and test it and 1 min, to put the items on.

The items we had to make the bridge were: 4 Q-tips, 2 pipe cleaners, 2 straws, 1 Styrofoam cup, 10 tooth-picks, and two pieces of painters tape.
The items we could put on the bridge were: 10 marbles, 6 wooden sticks, 4 pennies, 15 nails, 4 quarters, 3 golf balls, and 4 ping-pong balls.
What we did was: we put the cup in the middle and stuck the 2 pipe cleaners on each side the pipe cleaners had straws on them to make it less bendy. We taped the pipe cleaners to each side of the table.

Our team had stuck nails on the sides of the cup and got all , but 2 nails. We got all the marbles and all the pennies and 1 quarter remained.

What would you would have done?

Only 1 out 4 groups made it to state.

I had a great time and am definitely going to do it next year!

Thanks for reading,
SJ

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. 5th grade is filled with science and some difficult math for sure! I'm enjoying chemistry in class and having fun with all the experiments my teacher does. The math is difficult but I'm starting to get the hang of it. We haven't gotten to The American Revolution.
We've gotten our first report cards and I got straight A's!
As for sports I've just started basketball with all of my friends. Miranda had to quit because of an injury to her knee. We lost our first game and won our two other games. Go trailblazers!!
I've joined OM again this year and I think we're doing well.
I did not make it to student council this year and am disapointed that I didn't make it. I don't think I had a lot of votes considering that my two best friends made it somewhere on the board.
The spelling bee is coming up and I'm planning to win this year. Although I refuse to underestimate any fourth grader considering how well I did last year.
I also figured a few silly things out like: A quarter is called a quarter because its a quarter of a dollar, that if you can do a pull up you can lift your own weight, thankyou is two words!!! Obviously I'm not used to that one!

Thanks for reading!

SJ

Gold Country

Day 1:We're loading into the bus at about 7:30 in the morning. That's when I usually wake up for school. I sat next to my best best friend Ashley, I brought Mad Libs and we did them almost the whole way there. My other best best friend Abbi brought her mp3 that could record voices. We recorded for about 1 hour and 12 minutes. The drive there was about 2 hours long. We sat in back of our guy friends. They all wore baseball hats on the bus. We poked the dot on the top of their hats about 1 million times. One didn't mind but the other wasn't to crazy about it . We got off of the bus and went into the town hall.

We sang a few songs and tested our eye for detail (A.K.A our eagle eye) with Sarsaparilla Sara. Then we met our naturalists and got into our groups. I was in Flea Valley. My naturalist was named Gunslinger Gordo. We went to the general store and bought items for cornbread. We made cornbread in a dutch oven on a fire. While it was cooking we made our gold pouches to hold our gold viles. Our gold pouches had our group name and our gold rush name written on the front. My name was Claim Snatching Sarah. A claim is where you found gold.

We finally ate our cornbread and were given a souvenir bandanna. I ate all of the leftover cornbread; it was so good. We had to come up with a cheer for our town (our groups were called "towns"...remember, mine was called Flea Valley). Our cheer was "we got fleas!" So everytime we heard someone say "Flea Valley" our whole group would yell "we got fleas!"

Next we made a shelter. Our naturalist and parent chaperone's dumped water on the shelter while we were in it. We totally got wet. The shelter was made from a tarp, some rope and wooden poles. I am so glad we slept in bunkhouses and not in our shelters...it would have been horrible to sleep in our shelter.

We went to our bunkhouses to get settled in and put on bug repellent. Then my mom went to serve dinner. We had the best tacos ever! Then we went to hoedown. Where we danced to the music of Slim Pickings. They needed a volunteer to show us how to do the dance and I rose my hand and they picked me. Next we went to the campfire. Everytime we heard the word campfire we said "campfire we love campfires". There were skits and other fun things.

Day 2: For breakfast we had:eggs, biscuits, turkey sausage, country style potatoes, and cold cereal. Then we had a 7 hour hike. At the top of the mountain there was a beautiful view. James Marshalls monument was huge. We saw the actual wood that Sutter's Mill was made out of. Next we had a spaghetti dinner. Then we went to our last campfire with a native American guest who told amazing stories.

Day 3: We're moved out by 7:30, and it's time for some waffle sticks. After breakfast we had our final town meeting. Then we have lunch and we're off. I had soooooooo much fun and I wish I could go again.

Sarah Jane

I walked up to Mr.Auseth. He told me to pick a number from the can. 23. I'm one of the people who always wants to go first. 23 is 2nd to last.

Narrate was my first word."N-A-R-R-A-T-E" I said. "Correct" said Mr.Granger. Another word I got was chrysanthemum. I chuckled a little because when my dad was in sixth grade if he got in trouble he would have to write chrysanthemum 1,000 times. "C-H-R-Y-S-A-N-T-H-E-M-U-M"I said. I was right.on one word the mike broke because I would have to lower the mike everytime because I was shorter than everyone. Once it got down to 4 people I was still in I got the word leisure."L-E-A-S-U-R-E"I said."I'm sorry that is incorrect that is incorrect" said Mr.granger.

I was in 4th place and the 4th grade champion. All my friends cheered me on and had their fingers crossed the whole time. My mom thought I was going to faint because I had a bad cough the past week so I was loaded on cough medicine and we were standing for soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long. I will never ever forget how to spell leisure.