Paul’s Blogging

Wow, thanks for all the comments guys!

Yes, we are home now. Our trip was amazing - on the road for 6 weeks!

I’m glad I was able to blog as much as I did. It’ll help preserve some of our memories.

Special thanks to:

Amanda Dixon - for helping with the posts (I couldn’t send them directly to my blog so she helped a lot in posting everything - THANKS)!

Joe Mclean - Thanks for the template, Man (how do you guys like my orange template? Joe did it for me).

I also wanted to mention, I passed my college entry test by a long shot. I especially got high marks in Language Arts (94%), which really surprised me. My spelling still needs a bit of work though… I failed math…. big time (50% of it). :D It was all algebra - at least they said I past pre-algebra but I have to start with algebra-1, oh well, could have been worse…

My classes start Thursday. I have a 3 hour Monday, 8 hour Tuesday, and an 8 hour Thursday - I know, that’s a lot…

13 credits…

I’m taking Math, Language Arts, Public-Speaking, and Computer Science.

:)

Anyhow, I need to catch up on my HSB work so I need to go.

Thanks again, everyone.

laters…

These are my new shoes I bought in WA.

They’re good skate shoes.

Only complaint:
They’re obviously white so they get dirty easily…

Anyhow,

:P
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Hwy 1….
My favorite hwy.
:)

I miss living in CA.
Isn’t the ocean crazy, awesome?

The music you hear in the background is a my GRANDpa’s.
Isn’t he good? He plays guitar, bass, drums, and more!

Anyhow, pictures to come!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

SuperAngel for Paulie

Here are some pictures that Jenna took when we were at their house.

Sorry for the lack of text today, guys.  I’m just sorta posting a lot of pictures.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

SuperAngel for Paulie

We’re at the Keith’s house and Cam is “wowing” us with his “magic”.

:P

SuperAngel for Paulie

This is a cool video!

 

Nope, still didn’t find my wallet but I did get the new Curve!

The Curve is the newest, best-est, most useful BlackBerry on the market.

Definitely a step up from my last BlackBerry. I gave my old one to Dad and we bought a BlackBerry Pearl for Mom. So we’re the BlackBerry family (yay). :P

Here’s a picture of our BlackBerry’s:

 

I wanted to let you all know, we’re leaving in one week for California! We’ll be on the road for about 5 weeks or so.

We’re first heading down to GA, then we’ll shoot over to NM, then AZ (we’ll be in AZ for a week), and then CA. Of course, we’ll be hitting a lot more states in between and on the way back but we’re still playing things by ear. So, if you live anywhere out there, then let me know and we might be able to meet up! I’d like to meet as many bloggers as possible.

Ok, I’ll blog from my new BlackBerry from the road.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t blogged in a good long time.

Why? Well, as I usually say, I’ve been busy….. very busy.

So, I’m going to give you a quick update on what I have and will be doing.

I lost my wallet…..

This is a big problem.

Contents of wallet:

License/photo ID

Credit-card

Social-security-card

Important business-cards

Library-card

Money/Cash

Without my photo ID, I can’t go to college, ha, sorta makes sense.

Without my credit card I can’t really buy anything (thank goodness I at least have my checkbook).

Not having my social security card is ……not cool……

I need the phone numbers off of some of those business-cards (I know, I should have programmed their numbers in my blackberry).

Library-card…. I haven’t been there in fr’ever so who cares.

Cash…. I need that monies.

I’ve looked high and low for that thing…. but still, nothing comes up.

So, it looks like I’ll have to call the bank for another bank-card, call the local social security office for another social security card, take my passport into the DMV, and…. there’s not much more I can do for the rest of the stuff.

Moving on….

My grandpa came from AK and stayed with us a few days; it was great to see him. He is a very talented musician. While he was here, he taught us how to play different songs on our keyboard and broken guitars. It was a lot of fun because we were all making sense… that is, the music actually sounded….. good. Guitar is great but nothing beats the bass. I’ve always wanted a bass; it’s one of the two instruments I’ve *always* wanted to play (the other being the drums), ha. By the way I played the guitar, we could sorta tell that the bass was in fact the instrument for me. Sooooo…. we went out and I bought a bass……

Yep, that’s right, I bought a 5 string Ibanez GSR205, an excellent bass!

It’s a candy-apple-red with black accent wood grains. It plays so smooth… man, it’s awesome. I bought my bass on 06/26/08 – so…. Tuesday.

:D

After buying it, we all went back home. Levi jumped on the piano, Luke – the guitar, Grandpa – my guitar and I sat down with my new bass …oh, and Julie had the other little guitar. Wow, that was fun. We were all playing together and it sounded really good. Grandpa showed each of us our rolls for certain songs and we all sorta “found the beat”.

We played:

Pink Panther

Songs About Rainbows/Rainbow connection

Golden Eye theme song

And a few more

In the last 3 days, I’ve learned how to play the Mario theme song (fun), LOTR theme song, My City Was Gone, And I’m working on a few more. I’ve been practicing a lot. It is by far the coolest instrument. Any of you play bass? What songs have good bass solos? Any suggestions?

Here are some pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is a nice bass!

Look at its color!

 

See the black wood grain?

I love the perspective and lighting on this one.

 

 

 

 

 

Hello…..

 

For all you camera geeks out there criticizing my camera…… you’re right, your cell camera is probably better. :D

 

 

Good brand.

 

Look here:

http://www.ibanez.com/BASS/guitar.aspx?m=GSR205

 

 

Thanks Grandpa for helping me pick out the perfect bass.

 

It’s Grandpa!

 

 

And now for some random pictures:

 

 

Luke props her up like that…. so funny……..

 

 

Blue Ridge pkwy….

 

 

 

Smoky Mountains….

 

 

 

And that’s it!

 

Later!

 

 

I can’t blog long, but, I just wanted to thank you all.

Thanks for the comments.

Thank you so much Amanda, for hacking my blog… haha, I mean, for posting that birthday entry.

Jocelyn, the pillow case you made me is, flat up AMAZING!

You all have to see this pillow case. Jocelyn sewed Tux onto it, ha! I’ll blog a picture of it soon.

My party was unbelievable. We played some… a lot, of computer games, ha, ate a ton of great food (thanks Mom!), and tossed the football and Frisbee around quite a bit. Tim was giving me all these throwing tips. He used to be on a Frisbee team. They stunk big time, sorry Tim, more on that later. :P

Tim posted a few pictures of the party. You should check them out.

Amanda made the most spectacular cake!!! It was chocolate/caramel cake with real whipped cream frosting and white chocolate bars placed randomly all over. The coolest part though, was an image of Tux up on top! The cake was incredible.

I’ll be really busy this week so I’m not sure I’ll be blogging all the details so soon. I’ll try to squeeze some time in.

Ok, I’m out for now.

Thanks again for the great time, everyone.

Can you believe it? I’m blogging; shocked?

Yeah, well, this is really something to blog about… read on…

 

I’m writing from the Country Inn in Florida. We (as in the entire family) left home on the 5th for the NSSEA convention, which started yesterday and ends tomorrow. The NSSEA is a convention for education. It’s commonly called the “Ed Expo” and is my favorite convention to attend (for reasons I will state in a moment). It’s also one of the most exhausting! The whole convention was held in one massive room, which was the size of, hmm, if I had to give an educated guess, I’d have to say over 5 acres. Yes, the convention room was well over 5 acres. Probably closer to something like, 8 square acres. Anyhow, you get the idea; it was a very large room. And walking up and down those long, long aisles, really wore us (“us” being Dad, Luke, and I) out fast, as I’m sure you could imagine. So, we worked the first day, came back to the hotel where Mom and the younger kids were, ate pizza, and went to bed. Then, today we got up at 6:30 and spent the day hard at work. There’s certainly nothing “exciting” about that. So what did I mean by “my favorite convention”? Well, the NSSEA always throws a HUGE bash at the end of the second day, which was tonight. Let me tell you, it was one of the most spectacular nights I’ve ever experienced…

 

This year, NSSEA and SeaWorld worked out some kind of deal; basically, we all got in free. And SeaWorld set up an entire section just for us. First, we had dinner. The food was excellent! Then, we all made our way over to a MASSIVE auditorium with a very large water tank where this expert guitarist (btw, he was one of the best sweepers I’ve ever seen… errrrr… heard. He really knew what he was doing) played while we watched killer whales perform quite the show. These whales would jump clean out of the water with a diver standing on the tip of its nose! Like I said, and I’ll say it again, the music was awesome. :P

Simply said, it was exciting. After that was finished, we walked over to another location, where we all gathered around this magnificent lake. There, we watch an excellent show that was displayed on a… mist wall! Seriously, they had huge fountains and a massive (I know I keep using that word but that’s really the only way to describe it) spout that shot tons and tons of mist into the air in a condensed area. There was so much mist, they were able to display, with a projector, a beautiful production on the mist wall and accompanied it with a wonderful fireworks display. The whole thing was very exciting. More exciting than it seems; trust me.

 

Just as we were leaving some artists drew some funny pictures of the kids. I’ll post them soon. And little Susanni did very well. She enjoyed it just as much as I did, I think…

I’ll post some pictures of her later. She’s gotten a bit bigger since the last pictures and she is totally trying to talk now, so cute.

 

 

So, here it is now, the end of the day. I am extremely tired. So, I’m afraid I’ll have to end it here without giving further details on the day. I’m just really tired, ha.

 

Everything was so great but I heavily regret forgetting the camera. I left it in the car. :P

 

Anyhow, I just wanted to update you all on our trip. We’ll be back in TN soon. Just after we eat at our favorite restaurant, no where to be found in TN, Cheveys! When I get home, I’ll write about the rest of the trip, which of course, has not yet taken place. Yeah, ok, it’s late…

 

Nighters!