Monday, August 25, 2008

What Matters to Paige


What matters to Paige Stingley:

Faith: My faith is the most important thing that matters to me. I am a Christian, and I believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead and ascended in to Heaven. I know that he will come again to take me to Heaven. I would be nothing without my Faith in Jesus Christ. With him I am brave, confident, and strong. He has given me everything I have today. He has provided me with all my needs and most of my wants. He has guided me through many fears and struggles and has kept me on the right path. Jesus is my salvation, my rescuer, my Savior, and best of all, he is my friend. To me God is the best friend I could ever ask for. He walks by my side through everything, the thick and the thin, the hard and the easy. He lifts me up when I fall down, and he carries me when I am weak. Jesus is what matters most to me.

Family: I have a lot of pictures of my family in my collage. My family supports me in all that I do. I couldn’t live without them. My family does a lot of things together. Most of the pictures are of us doing stuff together. We go on hikes or go up to the mountains a lot. Recently we climbed a 14er together. My family is really close to each other. We know each other’s emotions and feelings and we are all always there to help on another out.
I have two sisters and one brother. My sisters’ names are Cori (10) and Abbey (8). My brother’s name is Adam (8). Adam and Abbey are twins. Cori is my best friend. We have a lot in common. We both play volleyball, basketball, and run track. We both love to read, and write. We both care about school and getting good grades. We like to go places together on the weekends. She likes the same clothes as me, so that makes shopping easy! Cori and I get along great, most of the time.
Adam and Abbey are also best friends. Being twins, they do almost everything together. They are in the same class at school, so they work together on homework, they play together, they laugh together, pull pranks together, and are always beside each other. They shared a room until they were six, and that has grown them closer together.
Cori attends school at Shepherd f the Hills, along with Adam and Abbey. Cori is in the 5th grade, and Adam and Abbey are in the 3rd grade. They all maintain straight A’s almost regularly. They are all very smart and care about school a lot.
They are all also very active. Cori and Abbey do volleyball, whether they play for their school or for our district league. Adam plays baseball in the spring and summer, and football in the fall. All of them participate in basketball in the winter, and they swim on a neighborhood swim team during the summer. As you can see, my siblings are all very active all year round.
My mom and dad are always there for any of us whenever we need them. They also support me in everything I do, 100%. They love Jesus and their family. They love their jobs, and do their best all the time. They are great role models, and great examples to everyone they are around.
My mom is a floor manager at Williams-Sonoma, and my dad is a Chief Financial Officer at the company Eternal Energy. He is very good at math, which makes him very good at his job. My dad works full time, and my mom works about four times a week, which makes us even busier.
With my parents working so much, I often babysit for my siblings a lot. I started babysitting for them when I was about eleven, and then I started to love babysitting, so I would babysit for other people as well. This summer I babysat four times a week for a family across the street. That helped me make a lot of money that I got to use on myself. I enjoy babysitting most of the time, and most of the time me and my siblings have a good time, whether we are doing homework or playing games together.
Another great thing about my family is our love of Nebraska, especially Nebraska football. Both my parents attended college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, so that makes them very big fans. All of my relatives live there, so we go out a couple times a year to visit. Most people make fun of me for being a Nebraska fan but it doesn’t bother me because it is something that matters and is important to me, so I don’t need to care what they think.
Some people don’t consider pets family, but my family does. We have two dogs and two cats. Our dogs are both shelties. Shelby is the oldest dog. She is six, and she acts like it! You can always find her lying around sleeping. She doesn’t enjoy playing fetch, but she is great at sitting there and listening to me, even though most of the time she falls asleep.
Sidney is my other dog. He is only three years old, and loves to play. He is really wild and playful most of the time, but when he calms down, he makes s great thing to lean on!
I have two cats that are about four months old. I got them for my birthday from the humane society. Their names are Tommy and Bo, after two famous football coaches at University of Nebraska.


Recreation and After School Activities: I enjoy being very busy. I feel like I am forgetting something when I have nothing to do. To prevent this, I stay very active and involved. In the fall I do volleyball anywhere from five to seven days a week. Volleyball is my favorite sport, so it is the one I spend the most time on. I love the feeling I get during a game, scrimmage, or even just practice.
In the winter, I participate in drama, basketball, and sometimes a club volleyball team. After school I usually go from one activity to the next, not getting to schoolwork until late at night, but I love doing that. I participated in many school plays during middle school, and played sports every year starting in fifth grade.
In the spring, I participate in track and field, and last year, I got to participate with my sister, Cori. Running gives me a momentum that makes me want to run forever. I participate in long distance runs. I also did long jump, triple jump, and shot put.
For a couple years in middle school, I participated in Student Council, celebration choir, and Cheer. At Arapahoe, I plan on participating in Student Council.
I think that staying involved and active is the best way for a person to make new friends. Over the summer, I participated in a strength and conditioning camp, not only to get in shape for volleyball, but to meet new friends. I made quite a few friends just from doing that.
In the winter, my family goes skiing a lot. My dad used to be a ski instructor so my sister and I would go up with him every Saturday. Now that he does not teach, we don’t go up nearly as much, but we still manage to go at least twice a season. Skiing is one of my favorite things to do. Me and my sister have been skiing since we were four years old, so we enjoy harder trails and going by ourselves on lifts.
Even when it’s not winter, we still go up to the mountains all the time. In the summer, we go on lots of hikes, and spend time outside exploring all the time. This really matters to me because since my family is so busy all the time, it creates a time we can sound with just each other in nature, and not have to worry about due dates or other big stresses. It is a time where we can spend when it’s just my family, and that is really important to me.
My mom grew up in Nebraska on a farm, so as a child she rode dirt bikes and three wheelers around her house. A couple years ago, my grandpa found her dirt bikes, and sent them back with us. We had them fixed up, and made them work, so now we can go to a dirt park and ride or just around the trails by our house. My whole family can ride a dirt bike, so it is really cool when we all go out and ride together. Not many other families can do that, so I love that my family can. My dad was inspired and went out and bought a motorcycle that he could ride legally on the streets, so not only can I ride at home, but my dad and I can ride places on the street too.
My family loves being outside, and that is really important to me. I love that my family stays active and enjoys nature, because that is really great that they are interested in the environment and God’s creation, and it makes quality time more often, which makes us a closer family.

School and Education: My school work and education matters a lot to me. I want to get into a great college, and then go to a great law school so that I can be a successful lawyer, and maybe even someday, a Supreme Court justice. I have always been really interested in government, law, and politics. I have always likes paying attention to elections, and have always wanted a certain candidate to win. I have always loved debating, and arguing, and standing up for what is right. Being a Supreme Court justice would be my dream job, and I intend on making it happen.
In order to make it happen, I have to do well in high school. I have to put my best effort in to get good grades, so that when I am applying to get into colleges, and can get into the one I want because my grades were good enough. This means I have to do well on my SATs and my ACTs when the time comes, but in the meantime, I have to get great grades on tests and projects, so that I can remain at a great GPA.
Not only do I care about my schoolwork for college and my future, but I also don’t want to look back when I am thirty, and wish that I had cared in high school. I don’t want to have blown high school off and regret it fifteen years later. In general, I just want to get good grades for me. I have high expectations for myself, and my parents have high expectations for me. In my house “C’s” are unacceptable. Most of the time “B’s” are too. I have worked really hard since fourth grade to keep getting straight A’s”, and most of the time, I have been successful.
School means a lot to me, because my future and how adults think of me means a lot to me. I don’t want adults to think I am a slacker when it comes to work or that I am lazy and don’t care about school. I want them to think that I care about school and my grades, and that I am a hard worker. What they think means almost more to me than what I think.

Friends: My friends are my family away from home. In middle school, coming form such a small school, I had many really close friends. We knew everything about each other, and it was fabulous. I have kept in touch with those people throughout the summer and even though they don go to the same school as me, I hopefully will keep in touch with them for a very long time.
I have so many memories with my friends, and all the funny things we did, our inside jokes, and our “blonde moments”. I know that I will remember them for the rest of my life, and they will always matter so much to me.
My friends are more than just friends to me, they are my second family. We laugh with each other, cry with each other, and are ourselves with each other. Close friends are sometimes the only people you can do that with. Close friends know your weaknesses, and strengths, you fears, and things you have overcome. Friends know your deepest darkest secrets, but with friends, you can trust that it won’t get out. That is really important to me.
I used to have lots of troubles being assertive, and going up and waiting for friends to come to me, and it never really worked. Then I got over that fear, and that’s how I met my best friend from third to eight grades. Making friends is still harder for me than it is for others, but being confident, especially in a big school, has helped me make lots of the friends that I have today.
History: History is really important to me as well. I take a lot of interest in American history and monuments, which is why I put pictures of monuments in my collage. I think that history is really important, because it can tell a lot about our country, and about our culture. That is really interesting to me.

I have so many things that matter in my life, but these are the things that matter most to me. These are the things that I will cherish and remember forever. To Paige Stingley, this is what is important.

3 comments:

reagang2012 said...

Paige, i love your collage and how it has so many pictures i love your desriptions on your life i really learned alot about you and i love how your faith is a big deal to you and your siblings are so cute !!! it looks like you have a lot o cool fiends and it looks like you spent a lot of time on your post!

Anonymous said...

Paige, you did a great job onyour religion paragraph. It's really great to have a religion that you can put your utmost faith in. My religous experience has been a sad one because I cannot find a church that understands people that think that intelligent design and evolution do not conflict with each other. Good luck on future assignments!

AaronS2012 said...

Wow you wrote alot! Good job and good sentence structure you might want to just read it over once for a few misspellings but otherwise it was great! I liked your religion paragraph. The part that I liked about it was that you were very descriptive about what God means to you. Great job!