CHEA Convention

Hey guys! So, the annual CHEA conventioin was this weekend. (Stands for Christian Home Educators Association.) I swapped Blitz for an older dog (Marlo) because there're so many people there. This was my first year going. My parents went last year, but us kids stayed home. It was a BLAST! They have a thing for teens called "teen-track." It was very cool. Most of it was lectures on the politics of history, and how Christianity reflected off of that. After the first lecture, we broke for lunch, and then the leader split us up into two political parties. One half of the room (Of about five hundred kids, aged eleven-eighteen.) was Anti-Federalist, and the other half was Federalist. I ended up being an Anti-Federalist. Go figure. Then we broke up into seperate caucuses, (Of about twenty kids each.) and we elected on person to represent us as a presidential candidate. We then discussed different points we should make. (Three were to be serious, two to be stupid/silly.) We elected Amanda Lee as our candidate. Two of our points were...1, we are Pro-Life. 2, Barney should be our national mascot. I can't for the life of me remember the other three though! Arg. Our motto was, "I love you, you love me, let's all vote for Amanda Lee!" Our name was "The Purple Dinosaurs." (That's what you get for having a bunch of teens in charge of your country!) Amanda then went up with all the other presidential candidates and introduced herself, what caucus she stood for, and some of the changes she would make if she were elected president. Sadly, she didn't win. Some of the other presentations were quite entertaining...One person suggested we have slave monkeys to do all our work...Another suggested that HighSchool Musical (The VERY stupid Disney movie) be banned....and yet another suggested we make the white house a different color. (You would not BELIEVE the huge diversity that caused!) Someone else pointed out that he was "pro-chocolate." When he asked if anyone liked chocolate, ALL five hundred of us answered in unison-NO! It was perfect, as if we'd all rehearsed. Anyway, after the preliminary election, you could start a third party if you had ten thousand dollars (Of GenJ bucks, of course.) and also, thirty signatures. I helped start a third party, with Steven Page as our candidate. Some of our ideas were...Giving starbucks cards to all students with a 3.0 GPA or above, and making a national homeschool day, on March 14th, and call it "Pi Day," (Get it?? March fourteenth would be 3/14, and Pi is 3.14. MY idea!) Some of the things we could do for campaigning (Mostly to the parents, because parents were voting as well.) were buy Poster Board, (With GenJ bucks) COMMERCIALS, (A power point.) and index cards for handouts. We did pretty good! After all the campaigning, we had a candidates debate. First, the leader (Founder of GenJ) would ask a certain candidate a question about one of his motives. Then that person would be given thirty seconds to answer to that, and then whatever candidate wanted to could basically throw his idea back into his face. There was a huge debate over the slave-monkey idea. Most of the candidates brought up the point that we could not communicate with the monkeys...Another brought up that the reason we have chores, is to teach responsibility, and if we had slave monkeys to help out...Well, we'd just grow up to be a bunch of unresponsible adults. Another person brought up that the monkeys would of course, have disposal, and it's not very likely they'd clean it up themselves, so we'd just have more work. Anyway, that part was interesting, because it encouraged alot more people to really re-think who they were going to vote for. Then, came the ballots. There was a huge rush to get over to the tables, and with a very tired out puppy-in-training, I wasn't exactly the first one there. Steven ended up coming in third of the election, out of nine, which I thought was quite good. Anthony, (Now known as "Mr. President") was obviously going to win. There were several times that people started chanting his name, and got almost the whole place to cheer for him. And when you went out and about, there was a million of teenagers saying "VOTE FOR ANTHONY! DON'T YOU WANT MONKEYS TO DO YOUR WORK??" It was quite amusing.

In between sessions, we did campaigning work, and also there was the exhibit hall, with a ton of curriculum for sale. So, now we're home with QUITE a few goodies for fall. We're starting Torrey in the fall, so we got alot of the books required for that class. We ran into the Hoekendorfs, raisers of Marlo's sister, Maui. So, they were happy to see Marlo and ask about how she's getting along. From what I've seen, Maui's much more likely to make it as a guide than Marlo. Marlo's a HUGE sweetheart, but she's got more of a personality for a good pet than for a guide. Oh! And another thing. She's obsessed with those laser lights. Apparently, her puppy raisers let her play with one before they knew not to. They were selling those lights at CHEA, so EVERYONE had one, and obviously, when they saw a dog, they thought, "Hey! Dogs love to chase these things, so let's point it at her!" so, she was a challenge, to say the least, but after a while she was so tired out from all the screaming teenagers and shopping, that she did farely well.

All in all, it was a GREAT weekend, and I can't wait to go back next year!

Frusturating Day.

Well, yesterday didn't go so well. Blitz kept trying to get into food, (Something we REALLY need to work on.) and then my two little brothers fought ALL day, and Blitz wasn't listening to anything I said, and then I made a BIG mistake. I took my two little brothers and Blitz to all go see a movie. While Blitz was trying to eat all the popcorn and wouldn't lay down, my two brothers weren't listening to me, and they were climbing all over the seats. But then my older brother helped us walk home, so I could focus on Blitz and his AWFUL heeling, and Brooklin could focus on the boys.

Then I had Biology. That was great though! I didn't bring Blitz, so I could just focus on the microscope. Then after Biology, I went to Mindy Sharps house for Alisa's obedience class. Blitz was the worst I've ever seen him! He kept lunging at the other puppies, and wouldn't listen to me, and just all around . At the end of the night, I swapped him for Marlo, an older puppy, because I am going to CHEA on thursday, and that'd be way to stressful for a seventeen week old. It'd almost be like taking him to Disneyland!

So, I have NO idea if Blitz's behavior has improved, but I do think that it was just a bad day. Meanwhile, I have Marlo, the devil puppy. She's alot more hyper than what I'm spoiled with with Blitz. I'm thinking she's probably at the same level as Jaylie was, so I guess she's not THAT bad, but still, when you're used to the perfect puppy Blitz, any dog is hard to have!

So, guess I'm making one for me too!

(Me with two (Of five) of my sibs.)

Hey guys! I thought it'd be fun to make a blog for myself, since Blitz seems to love his so much. We're still sharing an account, but I really don't see a problem with that! Lol. So, I'll be posting in here from MY perspective of what happens in my life. I will have some posts in here about Blitz, (Of course!) but they will be from my perspective. (Of course again!) This is gonna be fun!