My Thankgiving

Well we know that thanksgiving has come because of all the Christmas holiday decorations that line every department store across America.

It is a shame that Thanksgiving finds itself overshadowed by two fun and exciting holidays, one which you get showered in candy, and the other in presents. Thanksgiving is the one holiday that allows us to reflect upon the many blessings we have. What great a holiday that allows us to surround ourselves with company of those we love, feast together, and give thanks for what His Divine Hand of Providence has graced us with.

So allow me to express my thanks, for I have received so much, "that I have room not enough to receive it."

I am so thankful for my country that allows me to live how I want to live, and be what I want to be. No other place can compare with its various and majestic beauty. It truly is the promise land. And with it, I am so grateful and indebted to those in our armed services protecting our liberties and way of life. They are my heroes, and may God watch over and bless them and their families.

I have the best friends in the world, hands down. Casual friends, acquaintances, teachers, friends of the family, and friends for life, I'm so thankful for them all. So many are so close they are practically family. I cant tell yall how many times I'll be dealing with something, and someone will say just the right thing, or do just the right thing and make everything all right. So many of yall have touched my life in ways you dont even know, so thank you guys so much. Yall mean the world to me.

My family is the reason I am who I am today. I no that no matter what, they will always be there to help and support me. They have put up with all of my crap, and love me anyway. My Dad is my role model (in some areas, haha), my Mom is the greatest woman in the world, and my brothers and sister Hattie are the coolest people I know. I dont want to know what my life would be like without them. I love them all so much.

And most of all I am grateful for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Through Him, I know I can achieve true happiness, and just the efforts of trying to live like he did brings more joy than I can know. I have felt his arms of redeeming love around me, and felt the comfort His words and teachings provide. I love Him, and will do my best to follow in his footsteps.

My friends, this thanksgiving, amongst all the hustle and bustle, try to find yourself a quite place and think of all the things we have to be thankful for. And while we give thanks for the blessings that we have, let us all try to bless the lives of those around us and give everyone a little more to be thankful for.

Capital City Classic

This Saturday, I kicked off my wrestling season with my tournament of the year, The Capital City Classic, at the Delco Center here in Austin. Let me just say that it was a rather frustrating day. I had some pretty lousy luck.

It all started with the seeding. At lots of tournaments they only seed the top four guys, and then randomly assign everyone else. Well, since I was hurt and didn't wrestle in the post season last year, I was unseeded, and got a really bad draw.

First I wrestled a kid from Morton Ranch. He was the number 3 seed. I wrestled terribly. I found myself down 5-1 after a botched move in the first period, and everything else went down hill from there. I lost the match 11-4.

I was pissed off about my last match, so I took it out on a kid from Anderson here in Austin. I pinned him in 38 seconds.

The third kid I wrestled was from Cedar Park, which was of some importance because they are in our district. But I wrestled him fairly well, and fairly conservatively. I won 4-0.

This is where I got frustrated. Unfortunately I had to wrestle the same kid from Morton Ranch that I had wrestled the first time. The brackets were messed up and poorly made so there was a lot of stupid stuff that screwed over a lot of guys on our team. But thats life. I wreslted this kid alot better this time around, but he still beat me 6-2, thus eliminating me from the tournament (most tournaments are double elimination). He was the better wrestler that day, but we'll see what happens later on in the season.

This was the first tournament since sophmore year that I didnt place in, and hopefully it will be the last. Better to get my hard knocks in at the begining of the season instead of the end right?

Overall the team did really well. We placed 3rd overall, which was really good because some guys had some off days and we didnt feild our whole team (we are missing some key guys because of football play-offs). We had 3 guys place first, and our team preformed great. For complete results click HERE.

NEXT: 12/3-Anderson & Connally Duels-@ Anderson

Record: 2-2; 1 pin

Wrestling Season!!!

Well my friends, wrestling season has begun.

I've been avid wrestling my whole high school career, and wrestled a few years before high school. I've had a fairly successful career, except in the post season. My sophomore year I got sick and lost in districts, and my junior year I got hurt mid season and couldn't compete in the post-season.

But this is a different year! I've trained hard to prepare for this season, and am in better shape than I've ever been. I'm one of the team captains, and our team looks great this year. We will probably be top 10 in the state when those rankings come out.

I am planning on wrestling in the 135 lb weight class. There is a preliminary weigh in at the beginning of the season to see where you could wrestle, and determine how low you could cut. I managed to qualify for 130, just in case I need to go down for whatever reason, but it wasn't fun (running 7-8 miles in the morning and 2.5 hours of hard wrestling, on maybe 1500 calories a day isnt what I would call fun). But thank goodness I only had to do that for a few days. Now the weigh in is over, and I can eat whatever I want, as long as I stay less that 135 pounds, which shouldnt be a problem. Its my natural weight anyway.

It looks like I'm poised to make a run. In order to qualify for the state tournament you need to place in the top four in the regional tournament. There are 4 regions in the state, and our region spans from Austin to San Antonio and to the Corpus Christi area. There are regional rankings that come out every so often, and on the Pre-Season Region 4 Rankings I am ranked 2nd in the region (Austin Moore is going 140 this year).

But there is a tournament this weekend here in Austin that will have alot of teams from the region, so it will be a great chance to field out the rest of the competition and maybe move into that number one spot!

I'll post results from meets and tournaments, and link to rankings and pictures as the season moves on. The goal is state, nothing else will suffice.

Wish me luck!

Eagle Project

Well as I'm sure most of you have seen from my Mom's Blog, I have finally completed my eagle project. Its been a long and difficult road, but the deed is done! I've been a life scout (the rank right below eagle) and able to do my project for three years, but was also a procrastinator, and got it done with about 50 days before my 18th birthday. I actually started the process about 2 years ago, working on the cemetery next door, but someone beat me to that project. So I started work on this one and submitted it for approval. This was July of 2007. Let me just say that there would be many more submissions for approval till it finally was in October of this year. So no one can say that I didnt work for this. But now its done, and looks great! A huge thank you to everyone who helped out and got me this far. Hopefully I'll be blogging about my Court of Honor really soon!

Homecoming

This weekend Westlake had it's homecoming, which was a ton of fun. I went with my old friend Kelly Rogers, and with Russ Hubbard, and Grace Cheney. Instead of going out to dinner Russ and I decided that we would make dinner for our dates (aka Mom and Hattie set everything up for us). We decided on having breakfast for dinner, with funeral potatoes, brown sugar bacon, fruit, orange julius, sparkling cider, and make-your-own waffles. Needless to say we were stuffed! Then we went to the dance, and had a good time there. After the dance, we went out to Flipnotics for some Hot Chocolate, and there was a band playing there, so we talked and listened to them for a while. Russ and Grace are on student council, so we had to go back to the school and clean up, but that didn't take to long. After cleaning up we went to Grace's house and chilled out and played games. It was a great night!


But while we were at Flipnotics, we got to talking about us leaving for college, and how much were going to miss Austin, and what a great place it is. We then realized how much of Austin there is that we haven't taken advantage of! There is just so much to do here! So we decided that we would get together and make a list of things that we all are going to do before we head off on the rest of our lives. I'll post what we come up with, and if anyone can think of other ideas we might forget feel free to chime in!