Eagle

Yesterday I received my Eagle rank badge. A lot of people think they have until your 18 years old. You can not decide a month before your 18th birthday because by then its two late. Plus you miss out on opportunities for other awards. So it is best to get your Eagle at a younger age. For me I can not decide what to do next. Well it is important to get your Eagle, but it is also better if you earn more awards. It’s better if you get at least three Eagle palms. For those who do not know, a palm is an additional award you can only get after you have received your Eagle.

I also received a lot of gifts last night. I was given a statue of an Eagle, a ring, and a key chain that was from the world Jamboree. There is a lot of stuff from the scout office that they give to you for receiving your Eagle.
As I mentioned earlier I can not decide what to do next. I have plenty of options to choose from. There is the Leave No Trace award, I could get my religious emblem, I could get my Eagle palms. The first one is the Leave no trace award which has to do with leaving a campsite cleaner then it was before. To get this award you have to recite and explain the principles of leave no trace, practice it on three camp outs, earn camping and environmental science merit badges, participate in a related service project, and a presentation. For a religious emblem you have to talk to a leader in your church and they tell you the requirements. Palms you just have to earn five merit badges, do a little service project, and you have to wait three months after receiving your eagle or last palm. Of course there are other awards I could get that would be hard. The life saving one is really hard because obviously you have to save a life. The other hard one to get is the William T. Hornaday awards because you have to do a service project to influence the environment.

You can also join the Order Of The Arrow, or OA for short. To join the OA you have to be on 20 camp outs spanning a two year period and be nominated by your troop to do it. I have a long time before I turn 18 so I could probably earn a lot of the awards I mentioned. I will show you pictures of what some of the awards look like. The first picture are the eagle palms which are earned in that order, bronze gold silver. Do not ask me why they are in that order because that is just the order you earn them in. The next picture is the bronze statue of the eagle I received. The gold plate says my name and December 22, 2007. The statue is not solid bronze it is just made to look like bronze. I hope I have inspired some of you boys who have not received their eagles to hurry up and get a move on!

Books

Everybody likes to read a good book every once and a while. Some more frequent than others and some not at all. No everybody likes to read the same books. People like different genre's some people like at least two kinds. You can mostly separate them into adventure, romance, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, historical fiction, and action. I would have to say that adventure is my favorite genre to read. The next ones I like to read are mystery, science fiction, and action. The one I hate the most is probably romance. Than the rest are like l would only read if some said I read this book and it was great and you should read it. Their are also combinations of genre's like Harry Potter is like adventure, romance, and a mystery. Usually when a book contains more than one genre more people like it.

Then of course their is everybody books to read list. When I am thinking of adding a book on I base it off of three things the first one, can I read it. Second, do I have time to read it. Third, would it keep me interested. My list right now contains a lot of series like, the star wars trilogy, The bourne series ,and the three musketeers. I also have books like the Hunt for the Red October. But, In a school system were we are required to read a book for a grade we barely have time to read books we want to read. That is why when we get a choice to read a book or something else I pick the something else. I also do this to avoid a long list of books I have to read. Of course you have to have a reason you want to read a book to put it on your list. The main reason I want to read the Bourne series is because I want to see how close the it is with the movie and it explains more. I also want to read the Star Wars Trilogy because I want to read the original star wars not all of the off shoot series that are about Jedi's and versions by different authors.

Now I have a lot of favorite books. If somebody were to ask me what is your favorite book I would say for what genre. If you said adventure the one book that would scream out to me would be Eragon. If you said fantasy I would have to go with Harry Potter. For Mystery I would have to say the count of Monte Cristo. That book was good because it left me wonder what would happen next and you had to guess what would he do next in his scheme. Everybody likes to read now some may not to do it as much as others but deep down everybody reads

Christmas Shows

One thing I like about this time of year is all the Christmas show that are on. ABC Family does their 25 days of Christmas and show a movie every night. Then their are the Christmas shows you watch that came out in theaters. People like the movies because they help them feel the Christmas spirit. People have their favorite Christmas movie. Now their are a lot of different types of Christmas movies. Theirs comedy, which is a movie like Elf. The cartoon movies like frosty the snowman. The list of all the Christmas movies could go on and on.

One of my favorite cartoon movie is Santa Clause is coming to town. It is such a good movie because of how it shows possible solutions to questions most little kids ask and just because it is so funny. In this movie it shows how Santa became Santa and how the reindeer fly. I think it is so funny. In one part after burger meister meister burger slips on a toy he has his foot wrapped up and the doctor says,"just as I suspected you've broken your funny bone.". Also when burger meister is playing with a yo-yo and his guard says he is breaking is own law and then burger meister yells " I've been bamboozled.". It's a fun movie to watch.

One of my favorite movies that is not a cartoon is Elf. Now any movie with Will Ferrell in it is usually funny. just how the story is about an elf coming into the real world and not really fitting in. like when he is at the department store and the lady says "fruit spray" and he sprays it in his mouth like its the actual fruit. Also when he throws the snow balls at above normal human speed. Oh, and when they are in the doctors office and he had his finger pricked and he starts to eat the cotton balls. Then who could forget the classic syrup on spaghetti. One year for a white elephant gift we gave a copy of elf with candy, a box of candy cane, a bag of candy corn, and a bottle of syrup. this is just a good movie if you want to have a laugh.

One of the best Christmas movies ever would have to be The Christmas Story. One of the funniest parts has to be when the lamp shows up and has the word fragile in big black letters. Then he pronounces it Fra-gee-lay and says it must be Italian. Who could forget the "I triple dog dare ya." and the kid sticks his tongue to the pole and the fire department to help remove it. Then when Ralph's mom puts his little brother in his snow suit and he can not put his arms down and she says you can put your arms down when yo get to school. Then their was that time that Ralph is helping his dad with the car and he says Fudge well that's what he thought he said but he said the grand mother of all swear words and he gets his mouth washed out with soap. Ah, it is such a good movie I an;t tell you every thing.

Christmas Tradition

Most families have traditions they do for the holidays. I like my families traditions. Every year we decorate a tree. My dad lives to decorate trees because we never make the tree look like the trees from other years. We always buy new ornaments every year. Most of the time we have a real tree and some times a flocked tree (which is a tree that looks like the branches have snow on them). This year though we have a fake tree, even though my dad hates fake trees, because we are remodeling the kitchen. Now I am going to tell you about the trees we have decorated over the past couple of years and I will show you a picture if I have one of it.

This a picture of this years tree.

It is a small tree but we had to make do. We did not put that much effort into this tree because we can't spend to much on the tree. the theme of this tree was "blue". You can see that their is a ribbon of different shades of blue going around the tree. It also has poinsettias with light blue pedals. It also has blue and white glass balls. You can barley tell but their is plastic icicles. You can't see the lights because they are not on at the moment.

Last year we did have a tree, but I do not have a picture of it and I can not remember what it looks like. Last year though we did build an igloo,with the neighbors, and have pleanty of pictures of it. We would build the igloo with blocks, like most are, and then pack the gaps with snow. The first couple of pictures will show how we made the blocks of snow. The picture after that shows me and my brother filling gaps int the first couple of layers of the igloo. In the next picture it shows the igloo when it is about half way done. Finally the last picture shows the igloo when we are around the top part. that was about as far as we got because gravity started to take over and the blocks we put on would fall off. In order to get it to work we would have to brace it up and spray it with water in order to stay, but that would be too much work and the igloo started melting the next day.

Now I have a picture of our 2005 tree.
As you can see this tree is flocked and when ever your tree is flocked changes what king of color scheme you do with the ornaments. Like you would not want to do blue on this tree. You would not want to do gold on the other tree. This tree is a lot bigger than this years tree and it is also a real tree that is flocked. The theme for this tree is red and gold. Like the other tree this tree has a ribbon going down it that is red and gold. you can also see that their is an angel on top. You can not realy see them from this picture but their is pine cones in the tree. Then the rest of the ornaments are just different ornaments that are red and gold.