People I Met at Camp

Four days ago I left for a three-night camp in the Edge of Appalachia Preserve. There were 11 kids, 3 girls and 8 boys. Carson went to camp with me too. The girl’s names were Kate, Paige and I forgot the last person’s name. The boys who were in my room were Carson, Ben and Justin.  Ben was kind of odd because he said some weird stuff. Justin just calls people fat.  I don’t know why he does that.   Carson was funny in his own way. The funniest thing that happened was when Paige fell off the pier while we were fishing. The people were really nice.   I’ll talk more about what we did in my next few blogs … stay tuned for more.

Camp Day 1

The first night at camp was just getting there and going to bed. The next morning we went to a pond and caught fish, crawdads, tadpoles and dragonfly’s. A 9-year-old kid named Tommy caught 8 animals.  While Paige was using a net to catch a dragon fly, she took too many steps forward and splashed into the pond. After that we went back to the house and had lunch.  I forgot what we did next, but after it we had dinner. When dinner was done we played a game called tank.  In tank, you and a partner try to destroy the other tanks. Then back to the house for bed.

Harry Potter 7 Review

Today I saw the movie Harry Potter 7 - Part 2 for the second time. I really liked the movie. I was confused like how Snape was in a boat shack instead of the shrieking shack. I liked how they made the battles so epic. I was amazed by how the filmmakers made it so realistic. My favorite part was the ending; my dad’s was when Harry, Hermione and Ron broke out of Gringot’s Bank. They added some parts and took away some to make it a great movie. It beat my old favorite movie by a long shot. The actors have grown a lot. In the first movie they were my age. That is a lot of change to go through.

Mincraft Server

About a month ago I got banned (kicked off and no coming back) from a server on Mine Craft because I was stuck and I whined.  I kept trying to find another good server to play.  Just a few days ago I found a good server called heaven and hell. I am in the faction of Order.  A faction is like a kingdom.  I am the recruiter of the faction, but my brother, Andrew, is the leader of the faction. We both went to the PVP (player vs player) arena to fight. I was too weak and was killed in the retreat.  Andrew was very mad at me for dying with iron armor on, because it takes a lot of to get the iron and smelt the iron for iron armor. When I died the person who killed me got it.  Andrew is over it now. J

The Final Day in Telluride

The day we left Telluride was a sad day indeed. We packed the bags and took a last picture of the house. Then we drove to Montrose. The ride seemed to take forever. We stopped to eat at a great Mexican restaurant, then back on the road we went. When we got to the airport we had gate number 1 out of 2(no sign … which one could it be?). We got on the plane to Dallas. The plane was too heavy to take off because of the heat and elevation they thought. We went speeding down the runway, but suddenly we slowed down. The captain said the takeoff was aborted because of some thing I did not understand. We had dinner in Dallas it was Pizza Hut.  Then we got on an MDS80 plane and flew in to Dayton.   It took an hour to  drive home. It was a tiring day of travel.

Hike & Bite, Bike & Wipe

On the Saturday before we returned home my dad and I went on a hike, while my mom and brother went trail biking. We went on the same trail my mom and brother hiked a few days previously. We had to take the gondola from Mountain Village to Station St. Sophia to get to the bottom of the trail. St. Sophia is perched at 10,540 feet above sea level. The trail is actually a ski slope called “See Forever”. The first hill of the trail was very steep, and we had to stop ten times for Dad to rest (and sometimes me, too). At that elevation, the oxygen level is 30% less than what we are used to down at 500 feet above sea level. After the first hill, there was a flat part where we took pictures of the beautiful scenery and meet some people from Tennessee who took our picture. Then, gasping, we struggled up an even steeper hill, only to be disappointed because we were not at the top of the mountain yet. After a while we finally got to the top of the mountain, which was at 11,925 feet. There, we saw a ski lift with a broken control panel and a destroyed control shack. We also saw a restaurant that was closed – it probably is only open during the ski season. My dad took quite a lot of pictures (probably too many). On the way back, I fell down and skinned my knee, because the pathway was really steep and had lots of loose rocks. It took half the time to go down that it took to go up. The hike took three hours. Once back at St. Sophia, we rode the gondola down to the town of Telluride, and had lunch at Smuggler’s restaurant. I got ice cream at the Sweet Life ice cream parlor. Back in Mountain Village, we met up with mom, Grammy and my brother. We learned that my mom fell off her bike and cut herself on her leg, ankle and arm. She had the accident while walking her bike down a hill. She is still sore from it. After all this excitement, we went back to the house and rested.

Hiking at Bear Creek

On the 15^th of June, my mom, my brother and I went on a hike. My mom made Andrew and I go on a hike on Bear Creek trail. So we took the gondola over to Telluride. After we got to Telluride we walked a couple blocks to the trail. The trail was kind of wet and muddy. It was not very steep, but it was long. We got to the waterfall in about one to two hours. The waterfall was cool because it was big and beautiful. On the way back we went a third the way up a different trail that would have taken three hours to complete. We turned around after a while because we got tired and went back to the gondola.

Jeep Riding

On the 14^th of June, my grandma, my mom and I dropped Andrew and my dad at a place to rent jeeps. Then my grandma, my mom and I went to the town to look at the stores. My mom looked in all of the clothing stores.  After my mom looked at all the clothes she wanted to look at, we went on the gondola. Then afterwards we went back to the house. Later that day my mom asked me if I want to take a jeep ride, and I said yes. We rode on a dirt road that requires a car with 4-wheel drive that is behind the Telluride airport. We rode for about two hours before coming to a fork in the road.  One goes back, and the other goes to the town of Ouray. My mom took the road to Ouray, but I was the navigator and convinced her to go the other way back to Telluride. There were tons of flowers on the side of the path. Also there were some big cliffs. We also saw a mine on the way down that we took a picture of. We finally got to the highway, and we drove home .

The House in Telluride

Coming into Telluride I was amazed by how there was snow on the mountains.  I got kind of scared because there was a drop off on the side of the road.  When I saw where we were staying my jaw dropped (See picture below to see what I saw).   The house had six levels (some were smaller than the others). The house had 6 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and a room with a bunk bed that had no TV. Two rooms had twin beds, one of the rooms was mine, and two rooms were for the grown ups (obviously my parents got the master bedroom). Andrew got the coolest bedroom; it had the biggest TV and a bigger bed than mine  (still mad about that). Best of all we had a hot tub on the roof with a great view of the surrounding mountains.

Hiking In Telluride

            Today my family went on a hike to the top of a waterfall called Bridal Vail. We parked on a gravel parking lot.  We started up on a very rocky path to the top. The path was very wet, I was thinking, “ Why is the path so wet?”  Then I saw why there was a river that was flowing a bit on the path. We had to go across a very unstable bridge. Farther up we saw an abandon mine.  When got to the top and my dad and I went back but Andrew and my mom went on farther. When we got back to the house we were all tired.

Troubled Sleep

Last night I had trouble falling asleep. I think I had trouble sleeping, because I am about to go on a trip to Colorado. I have trouble sleeping a lot. I have strategies to help me sleep. One of my strategies is to listen to Harry Potter. I also think about skiing.  I imagine I am skiing down a steep slope, weaving through trees and feeling the adrenaline pumping through my veins!  I fell asleep between 11:30 and 12:30. Some nights I have fallen asleep as late as 1:00 a.m. My dad and I do not need as much sleep as Andrew and my mom.  My brother sleeps till noon sometimes.

Keagan's Birthday

Yesterday was my friend, Keagan’s, birthday. Keagan is funny but a bit annoying like me. He has black hair and is a little bit taller than I.  For his birthday, we went to King’s Island. It was a super hot day and the lines were about an hour long for all the rides. Keagan asked me if I wanted to do the arcade. I said “it’s fine with me. Its your birthday.” I used 15 dollars on the arcade, well, actually 10 dollars. Keagan borrowed some of my money and gave it back.  Then we went and saw the movie Transformers 3, because King’s Island was too crowded. Keagan’s mom took us to Skyline. She asked me if I really was going to eat the entire large three way, and I did. I had a good day with Keagan.

Harry Potter Has Cast a Spell Over My Family

My family loves to read and watch the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.  The books are about a boy whose parents are dead.  When he was a baby, the darkest wizard of all time tried to kill him with a killing curse, but Harry became the “boy who lived”.  The series is about how Harry grows to become a great wizard at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It is the only book my whole family likes.  We read the books, listen to them on CDs and watch the movies.  We listen to the Harry Potter series when we are in the car.  I listen to Harry Potter every night – in fact, I cannot sleep without hearing Jim Dale’s dramatic reading.

Today I read an article about Harry Potter called, “The Fans Own the Magic” in the Sunday New York Times.  The article talks about how the fans sometimes battle with Warner Brothers studio, which owns the rights to the Harry Potter movies.  The studio wants to control everything so they get all of the money.  The fans think they should be able to make websites of their own.  There was even a fanwar known as the “Potter Wars” in 2001, a month before the first movie came out.  The Potter Wars were when Warner Brothers banned Harry Potter fan sites.  In the aftermath of the ban, fans boycotted Harry Potter merchandise.  The article concludes that parents can enjoy the series from their view, while their kids can enjoy it from their view.

Do you like the Harry Potter books?

I Love History and Books about History

I love history, mostly U.S. history.  I love it because the people in the past were interesting.  They were brave back then because they had to fight for their beliefs and causes.  History is kind of like a story.  I especially like to learn about World War II, the Cold War and early American history.

I have read several books about history and historical fiction novels.  I just finished reading “Blood on the River”, about Jamestown in the early seventeenth century.  My sixth grade social studies teacher read “The Diary of William Thomas Edison” to us, which took place prior to the Revolutionary War in Boston.  I also listened to “Unbroken”, a true story about two airmen captured (and tortured) by the Japanese during World War II.  I would like to read another book about World War II, but World War I does not seem very interesting to me.

I learned some new things reading history, like how the word “wow” comes the Algonquian word “waugh”.  I also learned that Europeans made up lies that Carib Indians (who lived in the Caribbean islands) were cannibals as an excuse to treat them brutally and take their land.  No one  knows the whole story of history because no one has lived forever.

Do you like history? If so, why?