My Top 5 Moments of 2024-Jimena Martinez by Jimena Martinez

Cars - October

jmart276_1 — 2025-01-16 07:55:56 UTC

My aunt invited us to see a car championship for my sister's birthday. The championships were hosted at Irwindale Speedway. We arrived there around 5 p.m., and it felt windy. More people arrived as time went on. It was exciting watching the cars race, even though it was loud whenever they got closer. During small breaks, there would be workers giving things away for free. There were many times when they had to make a pause and start all over because of small accidents. One of the smaller accidents was when a driver had managed to get a cone stuck under its wheel and kept driving with it. In the middle of a round, there was a car that had been stopped from continuing since it kept scrapping the ground making sparks shoot out. In the end, as we were heading back to the car, they let many fireworks out.

Beach-September

jmart276_1 — 2025-01-16 08:06:54 UTC

In September, one of our family members invited us to the beach. It was about an hour's drive away and we had arrived there around 1 pm. Many rocks were around the edges to get down to the sand and climb back up. We walked around the area while we waited for the food to be prepared. I spent most of that time, writing in the sand with my sister. During the evening, we could see the orcas from a distance. After we went back up to where the trailer was and played Jenga with our cousins. When one of us needed to go to the restroom, we decided to walk for, around 10-15 until we found the closest one. Towards the end, before we left, we were invited to some macaroons. We arrived back home around 8 pm.

Reese's - November

jmart276_1 — 2025-01-16 08:20:42 UTC

We kept seeing the same cat roaming around our neighborhood throughout the month, we fed it once. Afterward, she would follow us around and stay on the porch throughout the day. She would be outside whenever I returned from school and would try to follow me inside my house. At times she would manage to climb the wall slightly where our windows were to meow. Since we kept seeing her around, we decided to call her Reese's. There was one time when we heard a noise coming from the backyard and saw that she had jumped over the fence and gotten in. Once, when my mom left through the garage, she had somehow managed to slip inside. I hadn't noticed that she was in the garage until I heard something meowing. I decided to call my cousin over so that he could take her out through the door so she wouldn't have to wait until my mom, came back. We were never able to keep her since my mom didn't like cats and we already had a dog.

Christmas Eve- December

jmart276_1 — 2025-01-16 08:51:25 UTC

For the holidays, my family was invited to celebrate Christmas Eve at my grandma's house along with our Aunt, and her kids. We arrived around 9 p.m. since we didn't live that far from each other. We first ate and waited for the others to come. We played board games that were there with each other like Uno and Monopoly. The last thing we drank was hot chocolate with bread. Throughout midnight, they did karaoke using the television that was there. Around that time some of them would dance. Since I saw that we weren't leaving yet, I decided to sleep for a while, on the couch nearby. Finally, around 4 a.m., we left to go back home to get some sleep, before we had to go back to eat leftovers. The next morning, we opened the presents when my mom and my younger sister got back.

Pool -August

jmart276_1 — 2025-01-16 09:17:35 UTC

Around the week before school started, my family and I went to my uncle's house. He had invited us over to the pool that was near his house. Before we left, we asked one of our cousins if he wanted to go along, with us since we had extra room. The place wasn't that, far away, so we only took 20 minutes to get there. I didn't feel like getting into the pool, so I laid down on the mattress, they had. I talked with one of my cousins in the remaining time. When we had to eat, we went to this small table where the rest of them were and started talking with each other. We did a bit of karaoke with our phones. Before leaving, we helped pick up whatever mess was left. When we were fixing the area around where we were sitting, we noticed there was a spider nearby, so we left quickly.