The Tragic Event from the Alphabet

Home School Assignment

Using each letter of the alphabet in order to start each word.

Write a 26-word story.

MY STRY

All

Listed

Problems 

Happened  

Amidst  

Big

Exasperating

Trials.

Annabelle’s Bucket Crashed Down Entirely Fraying Graces Housecoat. Izzy Jostled Kelly’s Lemon Moose Naughtily Over Pricilla. Questions Regarding Silly Tammy’s Unique Vegetables. Winnie X-rayed Yellow Zombies.

The End!

And while I've got your attention, people, if you know some bloggers that like to write like me, please post me a comment! I'd love to see their work!

 I'm a bit like a lone ranger at the moment!!

thanx!

....CodeRed Jack....

Adventures in Odyssey Colouring Competition

Jelly Survivors

A Home School Assignment

The sky has opened up and it is raining Jelly. What does the world look like and what do you do with all the Jelly?

MY STORY

“Kkpaaattttts!!!!!” I spat the mix of toothpaste, dribble and left over breakfast into the bathroom sink. It was Monday morning and I was supposed to deliver a box to Mums friend Renee Shells.

I put on my shoes, took the box and headed out to do the delivery.

My friend Jacob was playing with his new submarine in his pool when I walked by. When he heard what I was doing he decided to join me, to my delight. We headed down the path together. Jacob had brought his new submarine with him because he wanted to try it out in Renee’s pond when we got there.

“You think it might rain t’day?” asked Jacob looking up to the clouded sky.

“Hmmm, maybe.” I answered also looking up to the sky. We crossed a road and continued our walk, talking about Jacobs new Submarine. When suddenly, a small yellow blob plopped out of the sky. It landed on the sidewalk in front of us, making us stop to identify the object. We looked at the blob, then at each other, then at the sky. There were no birds anywhere.

Curious.

Nnnnniiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Bluuuurchff! Nnjnnniiiirrrrr! Bloffffgh!

Two more blobs fell from a small hole in the clouds. We looked at the unidentified object trying to identify it.

“Jelly?” Jacob asked puzzled. It did look like jelly. And sure enough it was. I looked up to the sky, only to have another jelly land directly on my face. “I sure hope that it is jelly,” I murmured as I wiped it from my face. “And not from a bird!” a bit slid into my mouth as I did this. I found out that it was indeed jelly. Phew!

Suddenly there were noises everywhere like bombing shells as they fell from air plains in the movies. Jelly fell everywhere. This is so uncanny! I thought. Jacob was thinking the very same thing.

“We’re under attack!” I screeched. We ran down the street. But before we could get half way down the street we were knee deep in Jelly of all colours. Red, yellow, green, blue, pink, purple, orange!

“Up to higher ground!” yelled Jacob over the noises of KKKK-SPLATing of jelly, and the NIIIIIRRRRRRRing of falling jell-shells and the PPPHHHHFFFIIIIRRRPPing of our feet as we slipped on the jelly and the KK-BUUMPing of us as we fell. We ran up the closest hill we saw.

Playground hill.

It had the best playground on the top. It was hard to climb up for all the jelly that was on the ground.

 When we finally reached the top, we were surrounded by jelly and it was rising fast. “We need a way out!!!” Jacob shouted. I thought for a minute. “Or a way over!” Jacob gave me a ‘Who-cares-how-you-say-it?’ sort of look. I ran to the swings and sat on one. I motioned for Jacob to do the same. I placed Mums box on my lap and started pumping my legs to swing the swing higher and higher. Jacob copied me, even though he had no idea what I was doing. (Some boys have very slow imaginations!) When we where so high I thought we might start wrapping the ropes around the swing frame I let Jacob in on my way-over plan. “When I give the signal, we let go and fly over the jelly!” It was a start. I gave the signal and we soared over the jelly, over the hills, town, homes, hotels, churches, people, dogs and parks. But then we started to go down…

KKKKKKSSLPPAAAASHGH!!! We fell into the jelly. I sank down, down, down. I thought I’d never go back up again. I didn’t know what to do! I mean, I’ve never had lesions on how to swim in jelly, oh, and did I mention that the jelly is nearly as deep as the Ord River?!?! The jelly was thick and heavy, almost pushing me down. I felt a hand grab the back of my shirt and pull me up. Aaahhh! Air! I could breath now! Phew! Close! I coughed and spluttered out jelly, shaking jelly out from my hair. “Thanks!” I spluttered to Jacob. He and I were tredding jelly. Sounds weird huh?

Wait, the box! Mums box! Where was it?! I looked and looked but it wasn’t floating around. Jacob was pulling me towards the shore (or so to speak). When we could stand on land I asked if Jacob could see the box any where. He couldn’t, but he had an idea on how to find it (at least he has some imagination!). He pulled out the submarine he was caring and turned it on.

After ten minutes of searching, we found it and brought it to shore. Huddling under and umbrella we had found we headed off to Renée’s house, thank goodness she lives on high ground! Most of the jelly had rolled into the valley we were treading before; actually, it was more like a small ocean! We skipped jelly-puddles as we walked up to Renée’s house.

Ding-Dong!! We rang the doorbell.

Footsteps, the door opens.

“Why hello Nomi, Jacob!” She gave the umbrella a curious look. “Why the umbrella?” She looked behind us to see if there was any rain puddles. “Has it been raining or something?” As I gave Renee the package Jacob looked behind him too. He turned back around and whispered in my ear, “Where’s the jelly gone?” I whizzed around and saw that Jacob was right! There was no jelly! Not even the Ord Jelly River! Renée gave us another look. She ushered us inside. “Have some lemonade kids! I appreciate you coming! It’s been a bit too quiet today.” We folded the umbrella and sat down at her dinning room table, giving each other puzzled glances. Renée came into the room carrying two glasses of lemonade. “Here’s your lemonade! Did you have any trouble getting here?” Jacob winked at me, “Renée you have no idea!”

 I returned his wink and chuckled. Nope! She has no idea at all!!

Back home Renée called me on the phone. “Hi Nomi! Just rang to tell your Mum thanks for the box of sewing supplies! But what was the box of jelly in there for? Oh, and also tell her that I need some more material with floral print Ok? Okay, that’s all, Bye-bye!”

I put down the phone. More material? I thought. That’s fine, as long as we drive there next time!

The End!

   ….CodeRed Jack….

Ways I'm Trying Not To Waste My Life

The things I get myself into. Only a few days ago, Beth and Squid convinced me to have a crack at writing a 50,000-word story in one month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month, or something like that). Pretty big project. Therefore I need to be averaging about 1660 words a day. That is going to keep me very busy all month. I estimate that will mean 1 ½ hours of writing a day, as I can type two pages of story [a page being about 500 words] in one hour.  Of course, having an edited, polished end product isn’t the goal, the goal is to write, write, write!

The benefit of a project like this is that it’s a productive way to spend my time. Practising writing and stretching my creativity is a much better way to spend my time than playing games all afternoon.

I am also intending to pick up Lord Of The Rings again, I was reading it and jotting down some thoughts about it, and then for some reason, I gave it a rest. So I’ll be doing that this week as well.  

Another ambitious plan I have in mind to keep myself from wasting my life is doing a bit of cleaning up (gulp!). I normally have a basket of ironing at the end of my bed, but over the last couple of days I’ve narrowed it down to a few shirts, which I hope to iron in a couple of days. I’m also slowly removing the mountain known as “Joshua’s School Tray” and filing all the stuff away. The trick is to do a little bit every day, instead of spending all afternoon at it; that way I’m not discouraged by always working, working, working. After my desk and my ironing are cleaned up, I’ve set my eyes on my cupboard of hobby materials, board games etc. It’s pretty full, and pretty messy. If I can give that a bit of attention every day, I can make the mess manageable.

Good grief, I’ll be sounding like my organized sister in a minute!

I’ve also become re-interested in Chess. Some time ago, I brought a book about 50 great chess games played by masters of the game. In between the actual moves the author has written down his analysis of the decisions, and explores the consequences of other moves. The idea is that you can study these chess masters, analysis their good moves and their mistakes, in the aim of improving your own game. I’m intending to do that, as well as play more chess against my handheld chess computer. This handheld chess computer has 73 levels (the difference between levels is how long it thinks for before selecting a move). On the 73^rd level it has no time limit on how long it can think for. I am currently on level… 6. I’m flogged every time. Obviously I need some improvement. J

With all these projects, I have to eliminate a few time-wasters of mine. Primarily this means my computer time and my wargames [historical battle games played off the  computer]. Mum gives me ½ hour a day for computer games, and 1 hour on week-ends. With all these more constructive projects, computer time is going to become a lot less common for me. My wargames (think playing with toy soldiers, but with rules based on real history) are another thing I spend a lot of my time on, to the detriment of other activities. 

 When you are trying to establish new habits, I don’t think it’s a good idea to eradicate all of the bad habits, especially if they’re only bad when in excess. If I’m not desperately trying to catch up with my writing on Saturdays, I’ll play my wargames then. My computer games will probably become a “crash-time” activity, something I do when I just want to crash and relax.

I'll Be Dead In 70 Years- Can I Afford To Waste Time?

Imagine if you, one Saturday, woke up at 6:00 AM. Your mother says that you will be having a family dinner at 6:000 PM, so if you want to finish any projects today, you have twelve hours. Instead of starting your day with a bang, you watch TV until 9:00. How would the rest of your day go? How much would you get done?

Not only would you have wasted three hours of your day, but you would have very little motivation to get stuck into all the worthwhile projects you wanted to do over the rest of the day.

If you do the maths, you’ll see that is exactly what the stereotypical teenager is doing! After some research on the internet, I estimated that I could probably expect to live to be about 85. In other words, in 70 years, I have a good chance of being dead. That doesn’t leave much time for dilly-dallying.  

Society expects teenagers to party through the teen years, not really accomplishing anything worthwhile, just having fun. I’m often tempted to waste my life like that myself. But I don’t think we realize how much of our lives we waste this way.

If we waste away our childhood and our teen years, doing nothing of much importance, we’re whittling away the first 25% of our lives, just as you whittled away the first 25% of your day watching TV. There’s no reason to imagine you will be able to pull yourself out of the habit of wasting your life once you hit adulthood, than you would be able to reconstruct your day after watching TV until 9:00. We can’t afford to waste our lives.

My family had a discussion about this (in which we built that 9:00 AM analogy together) after reading Psalm 39.

“LORD, make me to know my end; and what is the measure of my days; That I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths; and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapour.”

Psalm 39:4-5 [NKJV]

He Has A Plan For Me!!

A Home School Assignment

Soccer great Edison Pele celebrated his birthday on this date.

Describe your life a soccer ball.

MY STRY

Have you ever thought of what it would be like to be a soccer ball? I have, I think about it a lot. That’s because I am a soccer ball. One usually has time to think about what its like to be its self a lot. 

Yes, a soccer ball. How do I describe me to you?

Well, first, I’m always two colours, black and white. And that can get bring, very boring. Especially for a girl. Girls are very interesting, their full of energy, talented, bright, great to be around and great at doing nearly everything, they don’t deserve just two plain colours, black and white. White and blue, yes.  Black and red, yes.  But black and white, no.  (sigh.)

Also, I get pushed around a lot. Pushed, kicked and shoved.  Its .K. sometimes, I get a cool view when I get pushed up high. But that doesn’t last long, and then I get kicked around some more. They should put something soft on those shoes of theirs; quite often I think that the black spots on me are actually bruises.  But I never know.

 At least they have a net. But I would’ve thought that they would make it a little bit more like an air bag for me. Well, I guess the net is better than nothing.

And the way I go around and around in circles is not very pleasant at all!  I really don’t like it, they don’t even give me a wash after the game, or lift me up on their shoulders like what they do with those un-thoughtful humans.

And when ever I’m a kids soccer ball, they treat me as if I’m un-important, un-necessary and I feel like I’ve made the parents waste their money when they bought me for Christmas last year.

(Sigh) I wish I were a cricket ball…

Waaaaahhhhpitttinginininggggg!!!!!!!!!!!! Wham-doolingoooooo-fffffipp!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I made an appointment with the Elf that Ends the Endless Exercise of Entirely not Entertaining Enterprises. The elf that changes your bad life, (Like being a soccer ball) and gives you a different life, what ever you choose. I wanted to be a cricket ball. And he made me one. My ugly life as a soccer ball has ended!  My new carrier of cricket lies before me like a straight road. Luxury,  divine pleasure, I love cricket. Life is worth living, but as a cricket ball!!!

The view is amazing! Whenever they throw me up into the air, besides having an extremely numb behind,  I can feel the air tussling over my beautiful, sleek, shiny, round sides. I fly over everything, I am not scared. I soon forget about my pins and needles in my backside, as I remember the life as a cricket ball.

But it has it’s downside too, sometimes I get hit in the face, that hurts worse than my rear. I can get stepped on, battered, I can roll of the shelf they put me on, even though its not my fault, and once I got hit over the crowd, over the car park, and landed in the park. I don’t like how I’m being treated now, it’s no better than a soccer ball. But at least I get polished.

And when I’m a kids cricket ball, they let me get tattered, dirty, cobwebby and musty!    I feel just like I did when I was a soccer ball, and I don’t like it.

The straight road I thought I saw now shows me that it fooled me, it’s not luxurious, divinely pleasant, it was a mirage!  The road looks like a snake curled up, all twisted and turny.

 I wish I were a tennis ball….

Waaaaahhhhpitttinginininggggg!!!!!!!!!!!! Wham-doolingoooooo-fffffipp!!!!!!!!!]

I went to the Elf that Ends the Endless Exercise of Entirely not Entertaining Enterprises again today, and he made me into a tennis ball.

It’s not too bad. The rackets aren’t to hard on me, neither are the people, they put me in a basket, with lots of other friendly tennis balls.  Smiles. Not to bad.

But when I’m not being used by TV tennis stars or professionals I feel unwanted, I don’t want to be used by little kids, or teenagers either. I want to be someone big and important and useful.

I was on my way to the Elf that Ends the Endless Exercise of Entirely not Entertaining Enterprises when I stopped at a cafe. One of the guys there told me something. He said; "Jeremiah 29:11, mate. you know what that says? it says 'I know the plans I have for you…I want you to enjoy success. I do not plan to harm you. I will give you hope for the years to come.'”

But if I want to be useful….I was useful before! That’s it! I was a blessing to others wasn’t I? I didn’t like it, but I bet the Ball maker had a purpose for me when he made me. He knew that I would make people smile. The little kids last Christmas, they were happy weren’t they? They used me a lot; they enjoyed me, that actually feels good!    I am useful! I am important!  I was made by a maker! That maker was proud with me! I remember he said that I was a mighty good-looking ball, the other workers agreed, didn’t they? He knew my future before I was finished! HE HAS A PLAN FR ME!! I have a future!! I am lved!!!!!!

I want to go back to being a soccer ball…

         THE END!

The Moral.

God has given us a purpose even if we don’t know what it is. We just need to walk along the road He has put us on. The road will give you hard and good times, happy and sad, tough and easy. All this, even if we don’t see it, is strengthening us for what lies ahead. We should be happy with the road God has given us and not try to change it, like what the soccer ball did when he tried to be a cricket ball or when the cricket ball wanted to be a tennis ball.

Every cloud has a silver lining. Just remember Jeremiah 29:11 and the story and what happened in He has a plan for me!

....CodeRed Jack....

The Giant Dramatically Slaughtered

A Home School Assignment

Write a story using these words

Leaves,

Saturday,

Giant,

Gameboy

Scissors

MY STORY

“Two more! Just two more!!” I was sitting under a tree, one Saturday afternoon playing my gameboy.

Something behind my back moved, I thought it was me, but it wasn’t!

 I looked up, and saw the last thing I had thought I’d see… a GIANT!!!!!!!! He reached down, down, down. A big hairy ugly hand reached for me.

I was...um...Stunned…dazed…speechless! Like a fool I just sat there. I must be dreaming!! I shook my head and thought for a moment. If that’s a giant, and its legs are right behind me and it’s reaching down for me than… I gotta run!!

I jumped up and ran for shelter. Leaves were every were, in piles and not in piles and falling none stop from the trees. I slipped, and fell down with a thud. The giant gave loud roar. (I’m knot sure if it was a roar of laughter or a roar of victory or a roar of war.)

I put my gameboy in my pocket so I could at least try to fight back. But wait, what was this in my pocket? I pulled out the object, scissors!! I could chop the giant down like in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’! I knew it wasn’t much, yet I just had to try.

Some say you see everything moments before a car crash, this was my crash! I charged for the giant, the giant charged for me. It was all as slow as slow could be. I pulled the scissors out from my pocket; they made a scraping noise like a sword coming out of its sheath. The giant pulled out a huge club that seemed to come out of nowhere! Every time my foot hit the ground, it made a thump, like a hammer thumping on a dirt road. Every time the giant’s booted foot hit the ground. The sound effect was more like pushing over a mountain!!

50 feet was between us now. With both hands clutching the scissor handles, I let out a roar and lifted up my deadly weapon. The giant lifted up his 8-foot long, spiky club. My ‘deadly’ weapon wasn’t so deadly any more. The giant let out a roar of war 15 times louder than mine!! Terror stricken, I tried to turn around and run for my life. But like I said earlier, it was all in slow motion, so I had trouble doing so. I found myself running strait for the 28-foot tall giant.

40 feet. “ROOOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” came the fearless cry of the giant. “AAAARRRRH!!!!” came the terrified cry of me, still running strait for what was my worst nightmare ever, instead of running away from it.

30 feet.  POUND, POUND, POUND!!! Sounded our feet.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!!! Sounded my heart, (racing as fast as it could in slow motion.)

20 feet! And closing in!! “RROOOOOOAAAARRRRH!!!!!”

10 feet!! 9!! 8!! 7!! 6!! 5!! I opened the scissors wide for the hardest blow I could give. 3!! 2!! 1!!…

Clenching my teeth I enclosed the scissor blades around the hairy, bug infested legs and… the Giant gave a deafening roar of pain as I heard the sound of his shinbones cracking just where the scissors had closed. He fell, slowly, slowly, down, down, down, and landed with a THUD, that shook all the earth.

His big, hairy, almost black hand fell down and hit the earth with enough force so that it cracked the ground beneath it. His cheese-over-flowing-nailed fingers went limp. I watched as the big heavy club rolled out of his hand and stopped on the grass beside his dead masters sweaty hand.

I sat down to finish my gameboy.

“Yes! Yes! 1 more! Come on, 1 more!! That’s all I need!” a shadow passed over me making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I looked up to the sky and saw the last thing that I ever, ever wanted to see again in my life…

THE END!

….CodeRed Jack….

~ Her Hair ~

Jane's hair, that’s a new technique that I learned.  I’ve been asked to tell you how I did it.

It was fun! It was simple! And it was affective!!!

All I did was strip wadding into long strips and 1 inch wide. Then I threaded strong string through the middle using quick stitch and knotted one end so it couldn’t unravel.  I then dumped it into a sink of tea-dyed, hot water and pulled it out when it was the colour I wanted it. 

It was easy to stitch on; I’d pull the un-knotted end to scrunch it all up. Knot that end and stitch it on!!

It reminds me of popcorn!!!!! I love it!!!!

…. CodeRed Jack….

My life- school and politics

I suppose it’s time for a personal update.

What’s up? Not a lot.

School started last week, so I’m back to my rigorous school schedule of 6 hours of school work a day. My plan is that if I can wake up at 5 o’clock, I can eat, have devotions, give the dog a walk and do my jobs by 6:30, and start school. That means that if I go to bed early, if I don’t read over breakfast and if I stay focussed during school, I can finish everything by 1:00, giving 30 minutes for family devotions and family meeting.

That’s the theory. In reality, I’m not there yet. In particular, I keep falling to the temptation to read over breakfast, which means I get carried away with my book and spend 90 minutes instead of 10 over food! As you can imagine, that just wrecks my schedule. However, I will get there! What’s the normal schedule for you guys?

The other exciting news is that Parliament has started sitting again this week after having a couple of weeks off. Ever since I came back from Canberra, I’ve been paying more notice to politics, and so, this afternoon, I’m going to watch Question Time on TV. Provided I’m not lagging in my schoolwork, I’m intending to watch it as often as the family schedule permits.

In Canberra I also discovered that parliament is broadcast on FM radio. Hopefully we get reception for it. So I’m intending to keep up to speed with politics via the TV and the radio- as well as the news of course. That’s about all that’s happening over here. What are you guys up to? 

How Should I Spend My Money and My Time?

I have two hobbies. Both are constructive, productive, quality hobbies. If I took my hobbies as far as I wanted to (without being obsessive), I could spend $10,000 on my hobbies over my entire lifetime. Should I be doing that? That much money could provide enough drinking water for thousands of people in Sudan, thanks to programs like Dollar for a Drink. Is it right for me to spend it on myself?

This leads to the question, how much time should we spend on playing, and on working? By “working” I mean, being productive so that the results of our labour have long-lasting affects on ourselves and on the people around us. My hobbies don’t really fill that definition. “Work” might not be the right word; I’m only using it in relation to how I often have the choice to spend my time either on my hobbies or on my life passions and probable career (history/politics/philosophy).  Just because they are my passions doesn’t mean that it’s not easier to spend my time on my hobbies- my passions are still “work” in a sense, work I enjoy, but still work.

So should my play simply be a means to an end, so that I’m rested enough to go back to work and study efficiently? Or is it all right to give some of my life to play?

The relaxation side of the argument in my head says that humans need relaxation. If we worked 24/7, we’d crash and never get anything done. Spending time with other people, just relaxing, is very important- we can’t spend life in the fast lane. Hobbies are my relaxation. We shouldn’t always be working, after all, God created the 7^th day for resting.

I know there is validity in all those arguments. But the “work” side of the argument says that only the 7^th day was for resting! Considering that the average lifespan is about 80 years, I have approximately 64 years left to live out my life’s passions, and its terrible stewardship to waste them. The question is, are my hobbies good stewardship of my 64 years?

The ancient Spartans dedicated their whole life to the military, and refused themselves any creature comforts that could reduce their ability to withstand the rigours of war. We can admire their discipline, toughness and dedication, but when it comes to actually wanting to replicate that…