Month: April 2019

Dad said that the backyard needed cleaned up a little bit before we left on vacation this summer. We all went to work pulling out all the dead palm fronds. We haven’t done this in a few years because of the owls, but the owls haven’t been around lately. So it was time… I worked my butt off! Emmerson played but did help some. Mom and Dad kept pulling more out for the piles!

The resulting pile was MASSIVE! This isn’t all of it! I hauled the branches around for 4 hours! The yard looks amazing now! Oh, it was also Easter this weekend. We didn’t do much. Just hung out on Sunday and relaxed and build Legos. I did get an Ikea bunny, I had to assemble it myself! Well played Ikea! 

We had our practice session for the tournament. I did very well.  At the state Forest Ecology contest I was really prepared. I rocked all the areas except for the ecosystems. But I know what I did and how to improve that going forward. Sadly, I did not place this year, for the firs time since I was 9 years old. Ugh! I was sad. I missed placing by 1 point. Oh well. I still had a lot of fun and learned a lot. I am already starting to work towards next year. I WANT to go to nationals as a senior next year. So I have to bust my butt to be ready!  I also lead a talk and activity at the county council meeting for 4-H this month. I taught about macro inverts as water quality indicators. We used the same pond as a few months ago and this time didn’t find much at all. We can tell he water quality has gone down quite a bit in the dry season. The pond was covered in duck weed and water spangles. 

We had the final state archery tournament. I did terrible. I hurt my shoulder in karate and was having hard time drawing my bow. I still had fun but was really frustrated to work so hard all year to end without placing. 

We are around the house a lot more lately becauseof Mom’s foot. She had surgery this week and isn’t supposed to move. They couldn’t find the pencil tip so she has to let it heal 100% then they will see if it still bothers her. We wrapped up the archery season with a mini tournament. I thought my shoulder was feeling better but 4 flights in I gave up. I don’t want to make it worse. So Iwatched and cheered on my friends. Mom took me to the Latin State in Orlando. There were over 1000 screaming kids! It was kind of crazy but I had a lot of fun. Every evening we would leave property for food. I picked Chuy’s. I love their floutas and Mexican rice. I loved seeing all the costumes for one of the contests. This is the line for “Janus”.This is 3/4 of the FLVS crew. There were SOOOO many awards. The awards ceremony took over 3 hours! Our crew with Dr. Bebergal. I got a 7th (but they only had 6th place) place ribbon for my PMAQ (Phrases, mottoes, abbreviations and quotes). I probably didn’t study as hard as I could of since I was busy with my SPC classes and forest ecology.  We had a great weekend. I want to go back next year but don’t think I will since I am not currently taking Latin anymore. I have completed my 2 required years of foreign language.

We came home to all the new equipment from the NRA grant for 4-H. I love the giant new velociraptor target!!! 
We are having fun with the injured Mom. She has a knee scooter, borrowed from Mrs. Wendy, to get around. We are protecting her, the world in dangerous! Especially pencils!