Hello. This week was christmas, and it was an exciting one. The craziness began on monday, the 22nd, when I had no money to buy Alyse and Tommy their presents. You see, our family has a tradition of having each kid being assigned another kid (and in my case, kid and spouse) in the family. I was assigned to Alyse and Tommy. For about the last 2 months, I had been broke. My mom always offered me chores to do as a way to earn money. I had never accepted before, but now I had to since Alyse and Tommy were having their first christmas with each other. I asked what they wanted and they said that they wanted to get more board games so that their game choice was increased from Monopoly and Phase 10. I cleaned the inside and windows of my mom's car so that I could get $40 for that. It may seem like a lot to buy a game and some stocking stuff, but after one trip I ran out of cash. So I had to work some more. I had to go and clean out every bathroom, vacuum the upstairs, and mop the kitchen for $30 then I finished up and only needed about 7 of those dollars. I used $3 for tithing and $20 for a little gift for dad. For christmas I received a Phoenix Suns Sweatshirt (From Bethany and Denice, who bought it and sent it to Bethany), a Phoenix Suns Hat (Santa), a book(Santa), and a few other things. It was very exciting.

A lot has happened since my last post. Basketball season has started, my grades are going up, and a lot of other things. I am not very happy with my coach right now because he is not playing me as much as I expected. I have played some good minutes in some games, but not in every game. Now he is angry because we are losing to teams that he thinks are not better than us. He asked us a question wondering if we are there to win or to have fun and play basketball. I am really there just because I love basketball. My grades are up, almost to 3 a's and 3 b's. I could bring that up, but i am kind of scared that my anchor will bring those down. Any tips?