First Tournament

Today I am going to skip the part where I apologize for not posting anything and hope to fix what I am doing wrong but since this has done nothing in the past lets move right into the Beef in this mighty burger that is my blog shall we. Today as you could tell was my first tournament in the ATA world and I left very proud of myself. Today I left with three different trophies. One trophy each category. The different categories are Form, Weapon, and sparring. I got a second place trophy for Weapon and a 3rd place trophy for sparring. To top it all off is that the only reason why I didn't get first in forms is because I tied with the other person and I screwed up the second time around with the moves. Well either way for a first time tournament I can't argue with at least one trophy earned and not to mention 3. If you want to dad has gotten some recordings of it all so even though it might be a little shaky at times it is still something to give you all an idea. Warning I sucked at sparring so be aware of this before watching. I am also the person facing the camera in the beginning in sparring.

Form
Weapon
Sparring


You might all remember my reading program where I have to read at least 4000 pages before the end of the year. Well I am absolutely decimating the system and I have read about 3200 pages so far and that has been withing the few weeks that I have known about my chain. Of course were going to have to make the chains much longer or rewards farther between since we have seen the how fast we can all read. I haven't read very much but I have taken a liking to a couple of Kristi's books from here Nook. The first one that got me started was Look Me In The Eyes which wasn't that bad so it got me started on the other 3 from them. The one I'm currently on which I have taken a break from is Raising Cubby. This is about An autistic dad raising his autistic son which has lead to some really fun stuff that they do together or separate.

Recently I got in contact with my mom and this has been a great chance for us both. I know I don't talk about my mom very much on this blog but despite this she has been extremely important in helping me be the person that I am now. She has been having some problems lately which has been keeping here from coming around and seeing us recently but we got in contact and set up a date to see each other and we got to have a great day of just hanging around and catching up. The main reason that made it so great is that we haven't really been seeing each other at all lately so it was fantastic to be able to sit down and talk. We got together for lunch and some movies at her house and while I'm not a big movie watcher it didn't matter because it was all really cool just to be with my mom again. We ate some Bratwursts which is a tradition over at my moms because we have some very heavy German background as well as a love for Brats in the family. We all love to gather at the grill in the family and talk on the Schmutzler side of the family. Even if there is nothing to talk about we can find something in the long run.

Apologies All Around

I'm so sorry everyone I can't seem to remember anything unless it means that I am having a certain level of fun. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy typing up a blog entry but it does not get me up in the morning every day either. Even then saying that fun is what gets me remembering things can be somewhat of a lie considering that having fun with something else can help me forget something important as well. I didn't get any notification system set up or anything like that because I said I would and then forgot the next day about my plans which makes me feel like a liar which doesn't help out my apology to everyone.

Recently I have been attending more classes in Tae Kwon Do. This fills up my schedule for at least 4 days of the week which isn't that bad but it makes things a little bit harder to plan for my Summer. I have been enjoying going up there but things are a little bit tight considering that I am doing the morning classes now to help keep things smoother with the family for the Summer and I won't have to worry about the rest of my day afterward. The only problem with this is that open mat is currently only in the afternoon or else I would get that out of the way in the morning but it isn't as important as the actual classes due to the fact that open mat is just practice so I can do that at home but going to open mat helps me out a little bit to help me remember to practice at all.

Along with my usual summer schedule of slacking off and Tae Kwon Do I have begun reading like a mad man. This is mainly due to the fact that we have gotten a new system for reading in out household that lets us earn certain things from reading a certain amount of pages. Each of us has a certain goal at the end of the chain as well. For my brother Nate he will be going fishing with our Grandpa and Uncle while Zoe will be going roller skating with friends. For me I will be going paint balling with all of my friends. That doesn't mean there isn't anything to earn along the way. Some of the things include eating at Rusty Horse Tavern with Dad or even having a couple of friends spend the night. There is a lot to do before Summer is up and I hope to share those things a minimum of once a week. I do need to try harder to get in a proper blog during the week. I'll make sure to try hard for the next one.

Keeping up with changes

Sorry about keeping everyone waiting for another blog entry I know that I said I would do one every week but it has been difficult. I am going to be seeing about getting notification on Thursdays so that I can post on time. I haven't been doing too well so far because of the fact that I always seem to forget that my blog exists because I'm busy with my friends or reading or doing some kinda project on my computer. Other then those  things I do things with the parents like going to super splash USA.

A really good example on what I do with my family is something like last Sunday. What happened is that Kristi's church had bought this really large and nice church but it wasn't really what they needed at the time and it put them into debt while also being too big for them. What happened is that the pastor had found someone to buy the church from them and then pay off the rest of the debt which is fantastic for them so they went out and found a smaller area that is a small strip mall. If you remember my day I was doing demolition on March 6th which was me helping out with the renovation of the place. Well we all celebrated the progress of what we had accomplished with some fantatic food which I sadly have not taken a picture of. Either way things were great and happy and I was really surprised to see the progress of what the church had accomplished so far. I have a reason of liking this church more then the others and why I would go to this church willingly with no fuss. The reason why is because this is one of the few churches that doesn't care about just itself but instead uses most of its' money to help those who need it more then those from the church.

I had a little bit of a crisis this week which had been driving me crazy. It had felt as if I was still in school and that summer just wasn't the same as it used to be. What happened is that Kristi had decided to help by bringing me and my friends over to super splash USA which was extremely fun and we all had a good time. Afterwards we came home and settled down for some gaming and then went our separate ways. Later that night I had decided to ask for some dessert and while I had ice cream earlier dad had made some fantastic parfaits. I loved these because they had chocolate pudding, bananas, vanilla wafers, whip cream, and then shaved dark chocolate over the top complete dad's masterpiece. It was a fantastic way to end the day and a great reminder that it is summer whether I feel like it is or not.

Drip Drop

Welcome back to my first Summer entry of the year. I hope to maintain my normal goals of when I was still in the average school year of about 3 paragraphs per entry. That isn't that bad but that isn't going to stop me from going over the average amount of paragraphs if something comes up. Today there isn't too much to talk about at the current time of me writing this but I may think of something while I'm typing.

As most of you know I live In Missouri and because of this it has taken me a while before I was able to go swimming due to all of the rain that has been hanging out around the area. I say this because there is a community pool in the area that we live in so I would usually be able to go swimming as soon as Memorial day hit. Then we finally got somewhat of a break on Wednesday so that we could go swimming and the relief was immediate no matter how cold the water was. It felt fantastic being able to go swimming again and I wasn't the only one that felt that way most likely. There are so many who love to go swimming that there are people that showed up late to Tae Kwon Do yesterday because of Swim team. I love this time of the year for 2 things and that is swimming and more grilling.

While I'm on the subject of the things that I love about the season. I may have not done any grilling this year yet but I know I will at least once this year before Summer is up. Grilling is one of those things that can bring anyone together. People get together and will assign time out of a busy day to sit down and enjoy a good burger along with their family. A burger is just the stereotyped meal of the grill but there is so much more including with my mom we make some fantastic satee which is an Asian style marinade for meat ( my family prefers Chicken ) and for us is served with Peanut sauce over some white rice. That is just one of the many examples out there but who am I telling people with more experience around  the grill what they can or can't grill. Food is one of the most versatile studies of the world so nothing is set in stone.

The Final Day

To start us off I owe some special thanks to everyone that has helped me throughout the entire year. The obvious ones are my Family including mom and dad for being with me throughout the entire year. Then there is a couple of special tributes in the blog. These include people like my brother Nate which he helped by being there for me to compete with throughout the year. I have always worked to be better then him and for the most part he is an academic rival. Next up is Joe Brouhard. Him and dad have been giving me the needed shove throughout my time so far in Tae Kwon Do which is a very special part of my life because being there has helped me learn a few things and keep me from feeling too lonely during the school year. There is also my friends Alex and Kale who have been with me for a couple of years and have been supporting me through the year as well as just being awesome friends. Finally there is everyone else that has followed me throughout the year. I could never forget my small group of followers. I may only get 25 views a day but that is just 25 people who care what I have to say from day to day and that means a lot to me.

I will be going over my reading work first which has always been what I wake up to do in the morning. I have read a total of 25 books which equaled 8076 pages total being read. All of the books that I have read are listed below and it leaves me astounded. I never thought that I had read this much in total throughout the entire year. It all started with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and just kept going further and further until I had finally gotten to books like Les Miserable and Fountainhead.

1) The Overachievers: The Secret Life Of Driven Kids - 405 pages
Alexandra Robbins

2) Catcher In The Rye - 214 pages
JD Salinger

3) The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole - 185 pages
Sue Townsend

4) Anthem - 105
Ayn Rand

5) The Fountainhead - 720 pages
Ayn Rand

6) Atlas Shrugged - 1236 Pages
Ayn Rand

7) Freakanomics - 268 pages
Levitt and Dubner

8) Superfreakanomics - 239 pages
Levitt and Dubner

9) Economics For Dummies - 312 pages
Seann Flynn, PhD

10) The Good Earth - 284 pages
Pearl S. Buck

11) Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother - 215 pages
Amy Chua

12) Silver Like Dust - 197 pages
Kimi Grant

13) Nothing To Envy - 302 pages
Barbara Demick

14) I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced - 111 pages
Nujood Ali

15) Nurture Shock - 264 pages
Bronson and Merryman

16) The Trouble With Boys - 300 pages
Peg Tyre

17) An Invisible Thread - 208 pages
Laura Schoff

18) To Kill A Mockingbird - 323 pages
Harper Lee

19) The Power Of Half - 178 pages
Ken and Hannah Salwen

20) Anne Frank Diary - 238 pages
Anne Frank

21) Les Miserables - 896 pages
Victor Hugo

22) Hunger Games - 384 pages
Suzanne Collins

23) Asperger Love - 52 pages
Amy Harmon

24) Lord Of The Flies - 155 pages
William Golding

25) Mr. President! Mr, President! - 285 pages
Sarah McClendon

That is just the curriculum I woke up every morning to do early but there is still more including my English work. I remember the beginning of the year where I was crying my head off over the written response questions and complaining to my parents to let me get away with not doing them. I ended up doing them anyway and not just with English but also with Reading and Social Studies questions. It has been a while since I last did any of those so I wonder how good I am now. The last time I did a written response was during the last time I worked in my Social Studies textbook. There honestly wasn't anything wrong with the questions and it made me much better with all of the other question types like multiple choice or fill in the blank.

I have been working on Pimsleur throughout the entire year and it deserves some word in my blog as well. The ups and downs that I have had due to my French work were practically the comedy relief on the blog. The times where it has stopped me in my tracks throughout the year has been another obstacle in the form of a ladder. I can climb as high as I'm willing to go but it is also a shaky ladder which will rattle when you reach a certain step stopping you in your tracks. No matter what happened I would keep going through along with some encouragement. I still am not the best at French yet but from some info that I have heard it can take a couple of people maybe 8 years to learn their first second language.

There are a few things that I didn't like throughout the entire year but most of them were resolved. One thing I don't like to this day is Math but that is pretty much non negotiable. I am so far behind on Math due to the long time it took to find some new curriculum that removing that at all would be horrible. I never was a huge fan of my writing work but then again I feel pretty darn satisfied at the end of the paper when it looks pretty and rolls along nicely. I wouldn't mind a more consistent day in school either. What I mean is that one week I might be working on essay questions and then the next few weeks there are none. Another thing is probably going to be fixed next year when I go on to work on the college classes and that is me wanting some more people to see during my day because as I have mentioned it gets very lonely for me but the main reason is because I don't like social networks and I can't seem to hold on to any phone numbers if my life depended on it. Even worse is when people have an email that they never look at so when I try to send an email I can't get into contact with them. Since that's about all I can think that went bad this year that hasn't been fixed lets move on to the good side of things.

I love having different books to read because I have always enjoyed reading when it comes down to school. I enjoy reading so much that I have gotten in trouble in public school because I read to much. The worst part is that the teachers couldn't do anything about it because not only was I following along but I was also doing my work to boot. I bothered them to no end so eventually they took away my rites to read in school if it wasn't a curriculum book I couldn't read it. Another awesome part of home school is a lack of tests. I originally had to get all of my grades based on my tests and it messed with me to no end because I always had something against doing homework so when I was in 7th grade last year I found out that I couldn't get away with just aceing the tests and that I actually needed to do the homework so I started spiraling downward. Now I don't do tests often so my grades rely entirely on how I do on all of my other work to get a good wrap in school. Pass or fail grade system is fantastic. I don't have to worry about the fact that I might be at a D+ in school because I didn't do to hot on my test. or maybe I missed a major writing project that shot my grade through the ground. With Pass or fail I don't have to worry about that because of the lack of pressure of a scale. Lastly there is the flexibility which is just a god send for me. I have always struggled with making up my mind when it comes down to anything. A good example is Last years English class where I had to write an essay on what I wanted fixed in the school. Even worse is that this was submitted to the principal of the school for her to go over and help with next years class. It took me 2 weeks and help from multiple people before I could think of a subject for me to write about because I had wanted an actual problem that could be fixed by the teachers. Asking for more bully prevention would have been a waste of time because they claim that they are already doing their part and helping where they can and then ask for another lecture on bullying because there is still a large amount in the school. There is a ton more that I could have gone over but I couldn't think about it at the time.

I do believe that I owe an explanation for my extremely long weeks of being moody and obnoxious. To give you an idea it only happens after I get in trouble. For example April 12- April 8 was extremely depressing and that is because I had gotten myself in trouble I couldn't forgive myself. To wrap it up nicely I am my own worst enemy when it comes down to things like that. The reason why is because I beat myself up over getting in trouble while my parents are over it after a good night sleep. I can reason with myself as much as I want but until I can finally get over my own stupidity over time I will stay depressed for a while. Just thinking about it makes me feel a little sad but still this is a happy day that will keep me from being sad at all just at the thought of getting through my first year of home schooling.

Before wrapping things up I need to give a paragraph to my field trips. They were always what I could always look forward to including Madame Butterfly, The Marine Biology lecture, and the NASA lecture from very recent. I can't forget how amazing they were. Madame Butterfly was a touching story and the lectures taught me what they had intended to without droning on and having something that I found to latch onto in each one. For Madame Butterfly I fell in love with the dramatic and touching love story of the opera. At the Marine Biology while the whole thing was about the state of the marine biomes I fell in love with the really sad looking Manatees who looked like they needed a hug. At the NASA lecture I laughed along side the narrator as he poured his heart out about his work and the process of what he needed to do get the lunar rovers landing. Each one had there own story to tell and I loved each one.

This has been a fantastic year and I still plan on writing blog entries once a week to keep up the blog and make sure that people don't forget about little old me over here because while I can have a fascinating entry every once in a while there is still plenty more places you could go and read something like this so it is a competition for the most part now. I love how great things have turned out because I think I have mentioned it before but I never expected my blog to take off like this. I started out horribly with bad grammar and only word of mouth or family to spread word of my blog Now things are doing pretty good. I think of how long it will be before I go back to things like Pimsleur or my books and the memories that I have had with them and it seems like leaving an old friend. I feel like I can't leave if I wanted to at this point. My books line my little shelf downstairs, my disks sit quietly hoping to be used again, the cars wait to drive to the next grand lecture, and curtain sets on the end of my first year of tranquility.

Sped up

Welcome back everyone because I have some really good news. Tomorrow is going to be my last day for the year due to the fact that I will be finishing tomorrow if  nothing goes wrong. I am really excited for tomorrow because I will be reviewing the entire year and to help Kristi is going and finding out every book I have read throughout the entire year and that is just the beginning of the things that I have done througout the entire year.

I may not be able to wait for tomorrow to go over the year with everyone but there is something that I can wait for. Summer can end up fairly uneventful especially if you have nothing planned which is exactly how I have set up my Summer so far. I don't have many people to see during the Summer other then family either because of home school I don't have as many friends to keep in contact with as I used to. This leaves me feeling really lonely as well as selfish to the friends in the neighborhood because while they have other friends that they have to keep obligations to I want to spend time with them as well which feels horrible because it ends up just bothering them in the long run.

One more day in school after today and I don't know how well things will work out afterward either. I know that I will continue with Tae Kwon Do and that I'll probably go and visit my family over the Summer but after that it is all just a big mystery to me. I will continue to work on something as a project over the Summer but I still have to find something to work on which could be anything from my Minecraft server to maybe some modding. There are other things for me to do but I'll work on it when I get there.

Graduation

Welcome back everyone and today I am going to be celebrating the fact that my brother has graduated from high school and is going to be heading off to college here soon. This is a huge event for more then just Nate but also for the entire family because of how much we have all struggled to get him to where he is now. I am glad to say that I was there and I saw him graduate and I am extremely happy at the thought of seeing on the stage accepting his diploma and then I think about how he and everyone else must feel. it is an intense feeling of joy because of how we all have wanted this for so long.

Another complication has come up right before the end of the year and this one is once again a problem with Pimsleur which is extremely annoying considering that it is my last subject of the year. I am completely annoyed but I am going to be seeing if I can find a way to get in my lesson today. I am having a problem with the activation of my account and it is saying that my version of Pimsleur is not activated. I can't  reativate my account because it is linked to my dad's email and it will only send the code to him and in order for me to send it I still need know his security question and answer which is not going to happen anytime soon. I know it isn't from something that I installed because I restored my computer to a previous point on when Pimsleur worked which makes this all that more confusing.

I said that French is my final subject and that is because my final day is this Friday. I still want to save the reminiscing of the entire year till my last day of school but there is still in the now. I only have one more thing for the year which shouldn't be to hard because of the fact that it is just listen for about 30 minutes per lesson. and I am allowed to do 2 a day which will have me finished by Friday which is my deadline. I don't know how willing I am for Summer because I enjoy the way things are now but either way I am going to finish the year and get some relaxation in this summer before the next year.