Summer '10

At last, the best time of the year has come; Summer! I have officially left the school I've spent my life in since kindergarten, and I'm now ready to finally move on to the next chapter in my life:
High school.

In my years at Forestdale School, I've made my first friends, learned my first math problem, and how to read, write, spell my own name, draw, etc. I've had great times, and not-so-great times. I never thought I'd say this, but I'll miss the good ol` days at Forestdale. Some of my friends will be venturing off to other schools, but most will be coming with me to Sandwich High. Go class of 2014!!!
I had a Foresdale eighth grade graduation ceremony last week, and the whole eighth grade, along with family, and friends, saw pictures of all of us from back in the good-old-days, including some of me in my early years at Forestdale. It's amazing how much we've all changed!

I'll never forget my days as a "Fodalien", but as they say, the show must go on. High school is going to be a big leap for me, but the folks at Sandwich High have set up a great program to help us freshmen get prepared for it. Near the end of the summer, all three elementary schools in Sandwich will go to a nearby camp, called Camp Burgess, and we'll spend a day there, meeting each other, playing games, etc. Hopefully I'll be able to make some friends before high school, that way I won't feel too alone when the first day comes. Not that I was particularly nervous anyway, I'm actually pretty pumped to be getting to high school. It's going to be like a new start for me, a chance to start over.

So, I realize it's been a while since I wrote here, and I've got so much I could tell you about. Like the day I spent with my "long-lost" uncle, Ted, from Colorado. We decided we'd spend the day, just my brothers, dad, Ted, his girlfriend, Kelly, and me, playing a game of mini golf. When we got to the course, it was still closed, seeing as it was only around eleven A.M., so we went down the street to get some ice cream. We quickly realized that Jack likes to wear his ice cream, and eat it off his face, rather than eat it straight from the cone. He had chocolate all over his face, and much to my disappointment, Jack wouldn't let dad get a picture of him, otherwise I'd put it up here.

Another somewhat exciting thing that happened to me was that my baseball team made it to the finals this season, after struggling to get a win for most of the regular season. We managed to get a few wins near the end of the season, and by the time playoffs came, it seemed like we were unstoppable. We were winning every playoff game, and even beat the first-place team in the league! We were feeling on top of the world!

Then we fell to the bottom, quite abruptly. It came down to the final championship game, and we ended up losing 14-9. We made a great comeback, shortening the opposing team's lead to two points, but couldn't come back. But, there was an upside to this loss; we ended up being the second-best team in the whole league. We even got runner-up trophies, but I think it was just a way of the Babe Ruth league's attempt to stick to their "everyone's a winner" motto, because the winner trophies were huge compared to our dinky little ones. I'm pretty sure those winner trophies had real gold engraved in there, too, while our runner-up ones had plastic that was spray-painted gold. Either way, we truly were the underdogs this year!

One more thing I'd like to add that one of you in particular might get a kick out of; I'm sure most of you who read this (seeing as this blog hasn't yet reached "famous" status, and the majority of my visitors are relatives, and friends) know about my cousin, Derek's new book, Here Comes Your Man (now available on Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble.com). After reading a recent blog post on Derek's blog, I bought the iBooks app on my iPod Touch, and took the liberty of adding his book to my iBooks library.

That's a picture of what my iBooks library looks like now. Although it's quite a small collection so far, I'd say Derek's book fits in pretty well, right in between my digital copies of I Love You, Beth Cooper, and Winnie the Pooh. (which, I'll add, I did NOT purchase willingly. Every download of the iBooks app comes with a complimentary copy of the book, but you'd still respect me as a young man even if I had purchased the book myself, right?) I'm on chapter two of his book so far, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it. You're welcome, Derek!

Yours in awesomeness,
~Ry.