I have a blog!

Welcome to my blog! I am going to start by introducing myself to you. My birthday is January 13, 1991. I am 17 years old. I have three brothers: Zachary, Joshua, and Jackson. All three of them play baseball. I am required to go to at least one of each of their games every season and they are required to attend my piano recitals. My brothers also enjoy riding scooters and playing basketball outside. Zach is currently finishing up his 9th grade year. He is going to be in high school next year! Josh is ready to go into 3nd grade. He just qualified for the Highly Capable class and he really likes the teacher he is going to have. Jackson is preparing to go into Kindergarten. He just finished his 3rd and final year at one of his preschools and he is going to finish up his first and last year at his other preschool. My mom is very creative. She figured out how to make her own website so now she sells her vinyl creations on line at iloveletterz.com. My dad is an engineer at Boeing he is very good at math so, on occasion, he helps me with math problems that I get stuck on.

I am currently working on completing my junior year at high school. I attended full-time running start for my junior year. I am in a program called Ocean Research College Academy (ORCA). We generally study marine based sciences but we also study terrestrial animals in our zoology class and we have regular english, history and math classes. My first year at ORCA has been a blast. I made some really great friends and I learned a lot from our four different teachers. We have the same teachers for two full years so you become really close to them. At the beginning of this school year we went on a retreat to Deception Pass. This was great because we were immediately thrown into a group with people we've never met before and we were "forced" to become friends. We also went on a retreat in the Spring. This time we went to Forks, WA (home of the vampires) and we investigated two different beaches, Tongue Point and Hole in the Wall. For our last day of school this year we are going on a whale watching trip. Hopefully we will get to see some whales. I am partially excited for Summer to start but once it does start that means I won't get to see my friends for a whole summer. I am planning on attending ORCA next year as well so I will be able to see my friends then. We have bonded and created friendships that will last forever.

However, ORCA can be challenging too. The teachers at ORCA give a lot of homework, much more than normal high school. This is to be expected since it is college, it just took some getting used to. This past week we have had major projects due. On Tuesday we had a paper due for a book that we read in English. Monday night I got 30 minutes of sleep. Friday we had a final English paper due. I didn't get any sleep on Thursday night. One of the hardest things I have encountered while attending ORCA was pacing yourself. You get the syllabus at the beginning of the quarter and you think you have "so much time". Then, you realize the paper is due tomorrow and you haven't even started researching for it. I'm not that bad but I do procrastinate.

Piano is one of my hobbies. I just recently had a piano recital. I played "The Phantom of the Opera" and "My Heart Will Go On". I think it went pretty well. Generally when I perform in front of people I freeze and forget the notes. I also forget to breathe which could be a problem. However, I think I did OK. My friend Maddy came to this recital and she said I did fine. My parents, my teacher and a lot of people at the recital said I did very well too. Now I am focusing on gathering songs to play at Josh's baptism at the end of August/ beginning of September. I will be playing two different instrumental church songs.

Thank you for reading my blog. I will try to write one at least once a week. Next Friday I will be done with school so I will be better at keeping you up to date.