Pinetop days 2-4

Not much happened day 2,3 or 4. Elyse, mom and I saw a movie and played Monopoly. Ultimately Mom won Monopoly. It was lots of fun.

Swim Team

As you can see I don't do my posts in order, but oh well.
One of my favorite things to do is swim. I have never been one to just lounge It was my first meet so I was very nervous. But I got fourth in the freestyle and back stroke. And second place in the 200 free relay.


Over time I won every ribbon except 5th place. Yes that means that in one of my races I got last place. But I had been doing volleyball all week so my body was tired.

One practice really stands out to me now. It was July 3rd. It was nice and cloudy which was fun. It also rained during warmups. Cloudy days always make me happy. So after a difficult 20 minutes. Coach Kelly said that we were going to do 4 100 IMs. An IM is a 25 butterfly, 25 backstroke, 25 breaststroke then a 25 freestyle in that order. They are very diifiucult. She said that we had to to them fast normally I would have been upset because that is a long way to swim. But it was a cloudy day and I was happy. On the  4th one I gave it my all and worked as hard as I could to keep going. When I got back I was out of breath. But I was proud of myself. Then you know what she said?! She said "Changed my mind your going to do another one" But we did it. At the end I felt great. Even though I just swam a 400 at about 85% effort!!

My last meet we were swimming a 50 backstroke, 100IM and a 50 butterfly. AT that point I didn't have any 1st place ribbons. I thought I had no chance of getting a  blue ribbon.. But I was placed in the 3rd heat and that gave me hope. I got second in the 100IM, second in the 50 backstroke. My parents said that one was super close. Then I got 1ST PLACE  in the 50 butterfly. I was super excied.

Pictures from all season.

This is me before my first meet.

Me after my first race.

Freestyle start. I am the one almost to the water in the middle with the gray swim cap.
(first meet)

Waiting to begin 50 backstroke. Lane 2. Gray cap.
(first meet)

Me after my last race. 50 Butterfly
(YAY first place!!!)

Me with coach Kelly after my last meet.

Me hoping I didn't get DQ after 50 butterfly.

Quick Updates

I'm sure you can tell I don't tend to my blog like a pot of plants. As I was reading all my past posts I noticed I said I that I would give more info but I never did. So here are some updates that i don't need to go into terrible details about.

1. Patriotic Speech Contest- Unfortunately I didn't place in the top 5. But I was proud of my performance.

This is me before the speech contest.



Here I am with my coach Mrs.Schneider

Here I am receiving my certificate.

2. PCC- Every year PCC has an award Banquet every year. Everyone gets certificates. They are quite nice. Select students get special awards like Perfect Attendance (Self Explanatory),Most Improved (Also Self Explanatory), Director's Award (The Directer Chooses a Chorister who is overall a great student) and the Outstanding Theory award (All the choristers are in a theory class and each teacher chooses 1 student who is an out standing theory students) I was in Ms.Hann's class, and I won the outstanding theory award!!



Here I am with my outstanding theory award.

3. Roger Waters- There are about 300 choristers in PCC. Of those 300 kids 16 kids were selected to perform with Pink Floyd's songwriter Roger Waters. And I was one of them. We sang Another Brick in the Wall. The experience was absolutely amazing!!! To think that thousands of people came see 1 guy perform. And it wasn't even the whole band.

This is all of the kids with Roger. I am on the far left on the bottom row.

This is during the performance. I was on the end so I was very close to Roger.

This is the big teacher puppet. If you know the song it makes sense. The big red eyes freaked everybody out.

This is also everyone with Roger. I am in the same place.

Everyone who sang got a signed photo and we got to keep the t-shirts!! (They say "Fear Builds Walls")

Journey to Pinetop (Day 1)

Most of our vacations involve at least a 2 hour drive. I don't mind longish drives. I like to read and talk. The drive to Pinetop was about 4 hours long. On the way we stopped to have lunch at McDonald's. As much as a dislike McDonald's it was pretty good.

Once we got there Mom went to open the door. We were told that there would be a key pad to unlock the door. But it took at least 40 minutes to get the door open. To make matters worse I had to go to the bathroom and it was raining AND there was thunder and lightning. When we did get inside the house it was pretty nice. That night I slept on the couch. Quite honestly it was pretty comfy.

Pinetop: my first reaction

My family goes on vacation about twice every summer. Normally for about 1 week. That is enough time for me. But my Mom and Dad always want to stay longer. So this week they decided that we were going to stay in Pinetop for two weeks. I can honestly say I wasn't thrilled with the idea. The worst part was that once we got back we would only have about a week and a half left of vacation. I also wouldn't get to go to go to swim finals or championships. (more on swim later)

Patriotic Speech

Our school district does a patriotic speech contest every year in two divisions. Fifth and sixth grade and seventh and eighth grade. First you have to beat everyone in you class.Which I happened to do. Then you have to beat all the people in you division to go on to the district competition. Which I did. So yes....I won the fifth and sixth grade patriotic speech contest at our school. The district competition is on May 3d, so I will post after that.

Sedona Day 5

Today was our get out of the villa day. We went on an awesome hike at Doe Mountain. It was really nice. Elyse and I stopped along the way to climb some rocks. I also found some snow and threw a snowball at a couple of trees. Then when we got on top of the Mesa we walked around. Then we began our descent down the mountain. After that we went on a "hike". (It was more like a walk)

Sedona day 4

Today we didn't do that much. We just hung around at our resort. The reason we stuck so close to the resort is because there was a class on how to make dream catchers. It was really fun! I didn't know how long it was going to take but I wasn't expecting it to take 2 hours!!! I was really happy when we were done. Like I said it was fun and all but 2 hours is a long time to sit and do something.

Sedona Day 3

Sledding was fun until we changed slopes. When we were on slope 1 we had our sled. I also went on my stomach. When we changed slopes someone let us use 1 of their sleds. I went first on it. I went right into a snow drift. It was really cold and wet. My gloves got wet and it sucked. But I kept going. Then I got snow in my shoes and from there it went downhill.(No pun intended) Then we left and we went to Starbucks.

Sorry about the highlighter.

Sedona Day 2

Today when we woke up it was snowing. Elyse and I went out and played in the snow every so often. All day it snowed off and on. Later that day Elyse and I went to the clubhouse and got our face painted. Elyse got a big butterfly on her face and I got a mouse on my hand and I panda on the other. Then we all went to Starbucks at the Hyat.(Which is where we stayed a few years ago) Then we went to Schnebly and explored.

Sedona day 1

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile.

When we woke up it was snowing and had been snowing. It was so pretty. Elyse and I got in our snow stuff and went outside. Then mom came out and we built a snowman. It snowed off and on all day. Elyse and I went out to play in the snow every so often. Then we went for a walk. Later that day we went to the hot tub. But other that that we didn't do much. Later that night Elyse and I went to a native American flute concert. It was very interesting.

Vegas day 4

Yesterday we didn't do much. After breakfast we decided that for luch we were going to go to the hotel's buffet. All of the food was really good. Then we decided to stay by the pool and have a stay at the resort day.

That night after dinner we went down to the strip to see the lights and anything else. My dad kept saying, "the strip looks so much better at night!" When we got there we went to Treasure Islanand saw the pirate show. We decided to describe it as "Las Vegasy". Then we went to the Mirage and saw the "volcano" erupt. we didn't think it was that impressive. Then we went to the Belliagio to see the Water Show. It was definetly the coolest thing. We heard "God Bless the USA" The end of Billie Jean, the Love Theme from Titanic and Rodeo. whick was a ballet.

More to come.

Vegas day 3

The third day that we were here was one of my favorite days. We decided to go down to the strip and see all the shops. Dad had already planned to take me to Bobby Flay's restaurant "Mesa Grill". When we got to the strip it was only about 9:45. So we walked around Ceasars Palace. We didn't actually go into many of the shops. While we were at Mesa Grill Elyse and mom went to Chipotle for lunch. After lunch we met up at Ben and Jerry's and had ice cream.

After that we went to lots of other places we went to the MGM and saw the lion habitat, we also went to the Venetian. I'm sure we went to more but I can't remember them. After the casinos we went to the M&M store and bought a deck of cards.

More to come tomorrow.

Vegas- day 1 and 2

For New Years eve and day we came to Vegas and visited mom's sister Beth. And we met my cousin's fiance. It was really fun. On New Years Eve we stayed up till 11 p.m. I was a little disappointed that I didn't stay up until midnight. But then I realized that it was midnight in Arizona.

On New Years Day we checked into our resort. We left at about 5:00. When we got into our room we unpacked. Our room was almost 2 rooms. So Elyse and i had our our own side and Mom and Dad got their own side. and the best part is that their exactly the same! More to come through out the week!