I got a Barnes and Noble gift card for Christmas and used it this week to buy a book. I love having lots of books and want to keep collecting them. I got the second book of the Little House on the Prairie series, Famer Boy. I look forward to reading it after I finish the Mark Twain Award Nominee books for this year. So far I've read 8 of the 12 I have to read and they've all been really good!
We went to Jordan Valley Park over Christmas break because we always go there on Christmas! We usually go on the night we have our Wiseman Family Christmas Party and eat at O'Hana, but this year it didn't work out that way. It was raining when we had our Wiseman Family Christmas Party so we went one night after Christmas. I didn't care because it was still fun to go there. I love going to that park and climbing on the rocks! It's so cool and Mommy always gets some really cool pictures of me there! Oh there's this really big hill that Molly and I rolled down! Mommy and Daddy didn't want us to roll down it, but we did it anyway! And they said we couldn't because they didn't want us to get grass stains on our clothes. Mommy told us a story (that she tells us every year when we ask to roll down the hill) about how when she was in elementary school she rolled down a hill at recess and had a white coat on. She said she got grass stains on her white coat and that Gumma wasn't happy about it! Oh well, I did it anyway!
I had a fun New Year's Eve and I got to stay up until the real midnight to say Happy New Year! We went to our friends' house and had fun with them and got home at 11pm. Mommy and Daddy let us sleep downstairs again and after we watched the ball drop in New York Molly went to sleep. I went upstairs and hung out with Mommy and Daddy in their bed until the real midnight. I loved doing that! It was fun being up at midnight.
On New Year's Day we hung out at home and Mommy gave us a few presents - peach rings and books! We had also bought a new game, Clue, and played it on New Year's Day. It was fun to play!
So last month I wrote about the Reflections contest I did and how I won from my school. You can read about it here. Well, I guess my piece went to the Springfield Council of PTAs for a contest between them and I won first place in my division! It was graded against all the other submissions from the Springfield schools. My piece was on display at an art place in town and we went Monday night to see it and I also got to read my piece to everyone! It was pretty cool. I was kind of nervous, but I had fun reading it! You can watch me read it here. Now my piece will go on to the State PTA Reflections competition and if I win there then it will go on to the National PTA Reflections contest! I'm glad I did this!
I will be going to Reed Academy for 6th grade when I start middle school next fall! I'm really excited about it! In October I got a letter inviting me to apply for Reed Academy because of my beginning of the year test scores. I guess they were really good so I got invited to go. It's a regular middle school but they have some more harder or advanced classes for the students in the academy. So I think like my math, english, science, and history classes will be a little more advanced and I'll get to take high school classes in 8th grade so I'll start high school with a few high school credits already! And they have all the regular middle school clubs and activities and things like that. I'm really excited about it and have a couple of friends from my school now that are going. I'm so ready for middle school an think this will be a great experience!
Mommy had to put in a transfer request for me online and then we had to get 2 teacher recommendations and send in. I guess they liked my recommendations because they accepted me!
So I had two piano playing gigs before Christmas! My piano teacher lined them up for me and it was really fun! She wanted me to have some practice performing for people so called a few places and it worked out. The first one was at a nursing home facility kind of close to our house. We went there at 5pm when everyone was eating dinner and I played for about 30 minutes. A few people came over to talk to me and say they really enjoyed my playing. It was a really nice grand piano!
The second place I played was at the Hulston Cancer Center lobby. They have a baby grand piano that they have volunteers sign up to play because there's always lots of people coming and going. They gave me special permission to play because I'm only 10 and you have to be 15 to volunteer, so that was cool!
Overall I really enjoyed playing and would like to go back to the nursing home to play because that was a really nice piano! I love playing the piano!
