Memory 2

                The wind is blowing and the snow is falling. Deer are nibbling at the corn my uncle put in the yard. My grandmother is singing away to Christmas carols and my sisters and I jump right along with her. The house is warm and filled with the aroma of cookies and pies. My pap walks in and tries to sneak a pizzelle. Sadie sees him and kicks him out but does not get a chance to save the cookie.

                Pizzelles, chocolate covered Oreos, and angel food cake cover the counter tops and table. Chocolate chip cookies are in the oven and buffalo chicken dip is on the stove. Bayley is covered in flour and drinking hot chocolate. The window starts to fog up from of all the warmth from the oven. Laughter floats through the air and drowns out the music.

                We all know Christmas is here and we are anticipating the reveal of our presents the next morning. As we work through the day we ignore everything from the outside world. We only focused on baking and each other. The smell of cinnamon and apple pie take over and we snap back to reality.

                At this point we had been baking for five hours and we were exhausted. We started to wrap everything, wash dishes, and wipe of the counter tops. Waiting and wishing for next Christmas Eve to come fast.

the changing views of Christmas.

                Christmas is the holiday that everyone looks forward to the whole year. This holiday brings a bunch of different emotions  to different people. Some people feel happy and joyous during this holiday where others may say Humbug to the whole holiday season.

                When I was younger I was always so excited for it to be Christmas, I would always count down the days starting right after Halloween. On Christmas Eve my sisters and I opened our presents for each other, which made us even more excited for the next day. We used to go to four different places for Christmas: my house, my grandmothers’ house, my Uncle Jims’ house and my Pap Bugays’ house. We opened so many presents and went so many places both on Christmas and on Christmas Eve that we would be in bed by eight on Christmas only to sleep in until twelve so we could play with our toys. My sisters and I would get up around five and watch TV and talk about what we really wanted and what we thought we were going to get.

                I was in fifth grade when I found out Santa wasn’t real. It wasn’t a sad thing, I had heard it so much in school and my mother had slipped up a few years saying how tired she was for staying up so late. The Christmas after I found out he was not real I wanted to help my mom put the presents under the tree for my younger sister Sadie. That totally ruined my Christmas spirit because when I would move the boxes around some of them would make noise and some of them would make certain sounds that I could tell what they were. Well I guess it’s obvious that that never happened again.

                The past couple of Christmases have been filled with joyous things for me. I still am excited to get the presents under the tree in the morning, but I started to understand the meaning I was brought up to know, the birth of Jesus. Now I am not going into a whole schpiel about that meaning, but I pretty much just enjoyed being around my family and spending time with family members I barely see.

                This Christmas I feel is going to be very different for me. I plan on moving to Florida in August so that means it will be the last Christmas that I will be with my family. My mom is planning all kinds of visits and parties for us to go to, but all I want to do is sit at home with her and my sisters and watch “A Christmas Carol”. It is a sad thing,  but I expect to see so many people and talk about all the memories we have of past holidays. Also it will give me a chance to see the holiday in a different way, a way that I will be seeing it for for the rest of my life. I know Christmas is always going to give me changing emotions and I just have to be prepared for the next one.

other memior

          Many memories stay with you forever, whether they are happy or sad. Memories are made with your friends and family on a day-to-day basis. A memory I have is with my sister Bayley and my cousins Courtney, and Chase. When we were younger we used to hang out at our pap’s house. We would hand out on this wall across the street that was probably up to my stomach now. We would sit up there and act like we were so cool because out of all the other kids we were the only ones that could hoist ourselves up there.

          The last day they were here in Pittsburgh, before they moved to Washington the state with their mom, I remember sitting on that wall and eating ice cream cones. All four of us were in a row on the wall swinging our feet and laughing as the sun went down. We weren’t upset that they were leaving we just thought and talked about the stupid and fun things we did during that summer. My cousins are five years older than me so some of the things we did could have seemed dumb to them, but I thought I was like the bomb because I was hanging out with older kids. After we finished our ice cream we all said our goodbyes to Courtney and Chase.

          It is now it’s a little over nine years later and my cousin Chase is married and living with his girl friend, and my cousin Courtney has a baby boy. Every time we get a chance to catch up, which is normally only Courtney, we always talk about the things we did when we were younger. Thanks to those couple of summers we will always have a connection no matter where we are life.

Memories

A happy memory I have would be the time that my whole extended family on my dad’s side went to the outer banks. Okay it was that many people just some of my aunts, uncles, and my pap, but that is beside the point. Now the vacation was one of the best times I had and helped me grown closer to my family. The best memory I had was of me, my dad, my pap, and my uncle Jim getting up early every morning to see the sunrise on the beach. On the last day we got up extra early and wet to a special beach that had these amazing conch shells and went for a walk. We walked so long that all the people still at the house got worried about us. We talked about anything and everything considering I was only ten. My grandfather and I had a conversation that sits in my mind all the time. My pap told me a story about my grandmother and how she loved to make sea shell necklaces and go swimming in the ocean. After hearing the story I knew that I wanted to make two necklaces and wear one and lay the other by my grandmother’s grave. So they help me find some nice shells and that is what took us so long. When we got back to the house I did not say hi to anyone I went straight to the room I was staying in and started to make them. My sisters saw what I was doing and I told them the story and by the end of the day everyone had one on. This memory taught me that having something from a memory can make it easier to remember, and you have something to share with others. Also a memory does not have to be with only two or three people it can be with so many people and you will always have that bond.

Sister quotes :)

If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child. 
~Linda Sunshine

When I read this quote I laughed and thought about how true this was because I have two sisters and trust me I love them so much, but when they take my favorite hoodie without telling me I want to ring their neck.

What's the good of news if you haven't a sister to share it? 

~Jenny DeVries

I like this quote as well because it realtes to me. Everytime I got an acceptance letter to a college my sister Bayley was the first person I told.

The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble.  ~Clara Ortega

I love this quote too because no matter hold old your sisters are, mine are 12 and16 (I think), they will always stand up for you. Not only do they help you fight the other people against you but they also help you fight the stress ans fears you have.

Gotta love sisters :)

Federal Funded Programs

      So I googled, federal funded programs and foudn a huge list of them. I kind of skimmed the list to see if anything really caught my eye. There are two programs that are pretty much the same exact thing. They are called the Chesapeake Bay Program and the Chesapeake Bay Studies. Then I looked to see how much money each program recieves and found out that all together $22,000,000 is spent on these two programs. The Chesapeake Bay Program recieves $15,000,000 of that money whereas the Chesapeake Bay Studies recieves $7,000,000 of that total. Then I clicked on each and read the descriptions of both. They are pretty much exactly the same except one of them is shorter because it was already described in the previous description. So that got me thinking why do we need to spend and extra 7 million dollars on a program that does not benift a mass majority of people when there are other programs that need that money.
     Not only was I surprised that the government had that many programs and some of them were doubled. Also scrolling down the page I honestly dropped my jaw a little bit at the amount of money some organizations and people are getting. The U.S. is in such debt and yet most of the programs the government funds costs more than $50,000. On the website I looked at there were 1607 programs that the government funds. The webiste also says that they spend about $1,974,042,215,000 on these programs. That amount of money just blew my mind. They should get rid of a few federal funded programs like the Cheaseapke Bay Studies and maybe our debt crisis could be lessend.

Future plans.

            It just hit me that in less than a year I will  be starting a whole new chapter of my life. I will be moving sixteen hours away and moving in with an uncle and aunt who I see once a year if at all. I will also be leaving everything I have, my mom, my sisters, my dog, my room, some friends, and basically my childhood. Every day it becomes harder and harder to decide to leave, but I want to so bad. It would be so nice to live down there and I will have a better chance of getting into the career field I have chosen if I move. Sometimes I fell like nothing is right, like I'm being pulled in two opposite direction, not only by the states but also my family members. My mom keeps saying do what you want, do what is going to make you happy? Right now I am not sure what makes me happy besides my friends and family so then I start to think is would be a bad idea. Once I start to think that my mom asks do you know how far away that is, how do you know you will get into a school down there? Also even though my sisters and I fight so much it is going to be so hard to leave them. I will be missing so much of their accomplishments and their lives just for mine and I would feel so selfish doing that. My sister Bayley always tells me she does not care what I do as long as I'm happy and I wont forget her; when your sister says that to you you second guess everything, trust me I have done it plenty of times. We have been together our whole lives and to be separate trough stressful parts of both of our lives is going to take a toll on both of us. I have been planning my future my whole life and now that a huge step is coming I am not sure if I'm ready. People are always saying you'll know what to do when the time comes, but I feel like that time has come and I have no clue what to do or how to go about deciding what to do. Yes I want to be happy, but most of my happiness is here in Pennsylvania. On the other hand sometimes you have to try new things, move on from things in your life, so why couldn't I try to find new happiness down there?

Time

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.                                                    Ambrose Bierce

How do spend your time? With your family, with your friends, playing sports, or maybe even doing art? This quote is about just that. Some people may believe that doing art or even work is a waste of time. I feel the best way to spend it is with your friends and family. Also I like to spend time doing what I love. Like singing and playing basketball and even reading. Yes I may complain about have no time for anything but that’s because I spend it doing random stuff. We think the time is being misspent but when you are doing something you love or doing it with someone you love then the time is definitely spent well.

Money

Money is probably the most important thing in life. People stress about it all the time no matter what age they are. This is how you can say money can’t buy happiness. Yeah you can have a lot of money and buy a lot of material things, but if you get all this money and don’t enjoy it like spend time with your family then it’s not happiness. Personally I find joy and happiness in spending time with my family and friends. You may think that you need money to do things, but there are plenty of things you can do that do not cost money. For instance I would rather go to my friend’s house for a bonfire rather than go to the mall and shop. In high school I feel that you can have a job if you need it. To have a job to pay off a car you have just because you have a job is a stupid reason to have a job. To have a job to start saving money for college or to pay for sports and things is a much more logic reason. Right now I want enough money for my family’s college tuitions and my travel fees to come back home be paid off. With this money my mom can focus more on getting through school than getting me and my three sisters through school. I would be happy for a very long time because most student loans take twenty years to pay off and that is a huge chunk of money I will not need to worry about.

Love for a pet

Emotions come from many different things. Also they are different with different genders, ages, and people. My youngest cousin has gone through more distress and discomfort in his eight years of life than I have gone through in my seventeen years.  When he was two years old he was taken from his parents and moved in with his dad’s sister. When you’re two you don’t know what’s going on so he thought nothing of it. When he was four he went back and lived with his dad. They relationship was going well until they started to lose money and they became homeless. Not even six months later he was taken away and started to live with us. Because of these issues he started to lash out, at first we thought it was just him being a young boy but it started to get worse. Then he started to live with his mom’s sister, my aunt. They moved into a new house and started a new life. Now they are perfect for each other. My aunt is not able to have kids and now she has one, and my cousin needed a mother and a home and now he has one. Everything was spinning around him but he seemed so fearless. He didn’t even flinch when his mom had two other children and his father saying he didn’t want anything to do with him. He is only eight years old and has more strength than I do, and I have learned so much from him. Yesterday my mom got a phone call from my aunt. She had some bad news. My cousin had a cat named Shadow and they were never apart from each other. You see Shadow would sometimes like to follow my cousin to the park so he would cross the road. Yesterday he did just that my cousin was at the park and Shadow wanted to go and see him. When my cousin came back he saw his best friend lying on the road helpless and lifeless. He then started to ball his eyes out. Like I said he had always been so happy and never let anything get to him but when he realized his best friend was gone forever he lost it. Because of this happening I Iooked up some poems about losing a pet and found this website http://www.franscandles.com/petmemorialversespoems.htm. Hopefully it helps if you have lost someone special to you.

Concept of Self

What is the norm? People change it every day so why even try to be involved in it? One day it could be the way you dress and then the next day they are changing the way they talk. Every time you change something especially just because others are doing it you are not staying true to who you are. Me, I honestly could care less about what other people are doing. For example the new thing over the summer was having feathers in your hair. One day one person had it and showed it off then the next day you have four or five more people with one in and so on and so forth. Why would you want to blend in with the crowd? People do not get recognized for being the same as everyone else, they get recognized for being themselves and being different. Now don’t get me wrong others may copy you but why do you need to be something you’re not? The people in the norm are always saying how people are fake but the truth is they are the ones who are being fake because they are trying to be like everyone else. Also they are sometimes doing that just to impress somebody. Why do you have to impress someone? As long as you are okay with yourself there is no need to change.

Secretes of Color Poem

A young boy
   beaten and lonely
   hidden under a whirl
   deep purple and grey suffocating his small lungs.
An older man
   confident and caring
   gleaming with brillance
   oranges and florecent pinks hide his bruises.
Alone they have many problems
   but together
   they can help the young boy
   and become a beautiful calm blue ocean of protection.

Out of a Crowd Poem

He slithers in the door
   mind racing
   sweat streaming down his face
   dressed in all black.
"Give me the money!" he demands.
   his voice cracking with fear.
   gun in hand
   jumping at every little sound.
Moving fast
   trying not to skip a beat.
   pushing and scaring the banker
   hands shaking like a leaf.
He snatches the bag and starts to run
   only to get shot in the arm.
  

Dialogue Poem

"Why are you here?" asked the mother.
   "What do you mean?" questioned the unborn child.
"Don't you know who I am?"
   "You're my beautiful mother!"
"How did you get in?"
   "You and daddy loved each other."
"I want you to leave."
   "But I love you!"
"You're destroying my hopes and dreams."
   "I'm helping you."
"How? All i want is to be a star."
   "Now you will have a family."

   "I'm growing weak," cries the child.
"All you have to do is fall asleep," coaxed the star.
   "Okay, but only for a little."
"Right, hopefully she won't wake up."
   "See you soo----------."
Another angel in heaven.

Questions poem

Am I ready
   to take the leap
   not knowing if I'll make it?
Am I ready
   to be independent
   when all my life
   my mom and sisters were only a second away?
How can I be sure
   that tomorrow will be better?
   my plans will work out?
   I won't break down?
How can I be sure
   the life I'm about to leave behind
   will still be there when I return?
Am I ready, how can I be sure?