First of all, I started out writing for the Gwinnett Citizen (☺) If you read my very first article, you heard the story of how I started, but I will relay it again since it has been a while. Well, one May day I was coming home from school and both my parents were there to pick me up (usually that is a really good sign). When I got into the car, they told me that the Gwinnett Citizen had asked if I would be interested in writing my own column for them. I told them that I would love to! And that was the beginning of Everything Ella!
Another highlight of my year was that I became a seventh grader. When I first started school, I was nervous because I didn’t get many classes with too many of my previous friends (told you I’d mention you in my next article!), but I fortunately was able to quickly make a lot of new friends as well. It may sound like some cheesy story you would read in a book, but it’s seriously true!). Also, I got the group of teachers I really wanted! So this has really turned out to be a wonderful year!
Something else that has given me a terrific twelfth year is that I started ice skating lessons. My last column was written about this topic so I’m no going to go in to much detail, but I am truly excited that I started! I am so glad that I found my passion after all my previous attempts.
One more thing that gave me a fantastic twelfth year is travel. This year I vacationed in Florida for both Spring and Christmas break. One of our favorite places to go is Sanibel Island. Over Spring break we went fishing. Although I had been fishing before, I had never been real fishing. My past fishing experience was kind of bad because we didn’t catch anything, our car broke down, a wasp got in our car and the restaurant we got picnic food from, didn’t give us any silverware, so this was a much improved time. We got up really early on one of our last mornings there so we could meet our fishing guide. When we got out in the ocean, the most cool part was our boat ride. We were in a relatively small boat, so when we went fast it was really bumpy. It almost felt like being on a n amusement park ride. We ended up catching a lot of fish and my brother even caught a little shark! We couldn’t keep the shark, but we got to keep most of the other fish we caught. Unfortunately, we accidentally left those fish in the condo when we left, (not a good move), so we didn’t get to eat any of them.
Another fun thing we did was rent wave runners. My dad and I got to share one since we are the most daring, and my mom and brother shared one. When my dad and I were riding we thought that we were super cool. We decided to show my mom and brother how we could spin our wave runner around. This proved to be a terrible idea when we ended up unexpectedly falling off into the water. This really frightened me because I was totally scared of being that deep in the ocean.
We went back to Sanibel for Christmas break, I tried skim boarding which turned out to be really enjoyable too. Now, for those of you who have never tried it before, you have a curved wooden board, and you have to run across the shore then throw down the board and jump onto it. Sounds easy, right? WRONG! Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this concept as it is virtually impossible. (Or it was for me at least – the other people on the beach seemed to be having a fine time displaying their outstanding skills. I seriously can’t tell you how many times I fell attempting this seemingly easy task.
Additionally, I traveled to Texas and Chicago which were both fabulous firsts, but that could be another column so…
Overall, this bas been a great year, and I am very hopeful that thirteen will prove to be just as wonderful!
That’s everything with Ella!
(For now …)Ella
Questions, Comments, Suggestions?
Contact me at everythingella@outlook.com
