Christmas is here. :)

Christmas is a time of, well, chaos. During the holiday season everyone goes out to buy gifts for family, friends, and sometimes significant others. Some families feel the need to spend hundreds of dollars to get that special someone the perfect present. My family isn’t quite like that. Sure, we go out and spend money for each other, but not to the point where it’s going to clean out our bank accounts. Whenever someone buys me something that I know costs a lot, I feel really bad, almost like I don’t deserve it. My mom and I probably get in more fights during Christmas season, more than any other time of the year. For the most part, it’s a happy household to be at, but we definitely have our moments.
Getting prepared for Christmas is something my family loves to do. Putting up the Christmas tree is a great time to gather and share some quality time. We also love to put Christmas lights outside our house. People that don’t do any of these activities are, in a way, looked down upon. People think that others that don’t show their holiday spirit are scrooges and don’t care about Christmas, when in fact, they probably don’t have the money for lights and such decorations. Homeowners that put ten million lights around their house, have blow-up figures in their yard, and a moving sleigh with Santa, is a little “over-the-top”.
One night about 7 years ago right around Christmas time, my mom and I went for a drive to look at houses with Christmas lights. We stopped at this one house, paused, and took in the moment. As we were driving away, is saw a man dressed up like Santa sitting on a bench outside. I thought he was just a figure of my imagination. Being my age at the time, I still believed in Santa. In turns out that he was just the owner of the house who was handing out candy canes. The point of telling this story is to make you realize how the littlest things can affect kids. Spread the holiday spirit and do little favors for people, they really will appreciate it. : )

GRrRr! Snow Days!

Many schools have snow days because the roads are too bad and they fear accidents among the students. I do not feel that making them up is the answer to solving the problem. When we have a snow day, everything gets messed up with the end of the year because all of the dates are already set and ready for the year, with no room for any interruptions whatsoever. The thing is, dates for finals are not to be moved for any reason so when we have snow days, it leaves teachers cramming last minute information and knowledge that they are to know for the finals. Then when it comes time to make the days up, the students have nothing to study because the final test are already over and done. This results to the students being stuck doing nothing for the last part of the year instead of spending our time enjoying summer. A lot of times, the superintendent will schedule half days, for the whole days lost, so that it's easier on the students and the teachers. One way to fix this would be to convince the school board to move finals back if needed. This way everything will have time to fall in place so teachers won't be so crammed with their teaching schedules. Another thing would be to only make up snow days until a certain point. For example, we have five snow days over a two-week time period. The sixth snow days that we get, would be waived because there is no need to make it up.