Suzanne Aubert founded the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion!

Learning intention: We are learning to identify key information.
Success criteria: I know I can do this when I research and find six facts about Suzanne Aubert.

Before I knew it, we were there!

One Sunday afternoon, our family and my grandparents went to a really dense forest in Rotorua in our SUV for a picnic.  

It was a regular day in New Zealand. The sun was coming up, there were people waking up before me, and the time was early. I was in a bed filled with blankets, pillows and dogs. Some of the dogs were still sleeping, curled up in a spiral like a cat. I found that very funny and hilarious! I woke them up by rolling them around.

It was the last day before I had to go back to school. My parents were still in bed, but I knew how to wake them up. For my mom, I just had to tap her on the shoulder and she would wake up. It was a bit trickier to wake up my dad as he was a deep sleeper. I tried to wake him up by moving him around, but that didn't work.   In the end, I decided to use our dogs to wake him up, as he often says that he's going to 'eat them all for food' and also that he doesn't like them because they  are smelly. So I went out the door, searched my entire house, including the kitchen, bedrooms, toilets, the living room and the garage for our dogs. Our dogs have multiple 'hiding places' which they often sleep in. I found my favourite dog, hiding behind the rocking chairs next to a window in the living room. I picked him up,  even though he was a bit heavy.

My favourite dog is one of our small dogs. Everyone assumed that they were puppies when we walked them, because in our neighbourhood, most of them had big dogs. He was furry, his head was big, and his fur was is brown, white and black.

I carried him, slowly but surely, to my dad's giant bedroom. Along the way, my dog groaned, probably because he was sleeping.

I carried him to my bed, but he looked at me with a face that almost said "Really?" because he was very unhappy . He was two years old out of 10-16 years, so he would quickly get age. Finally, I fell to the blanket on the floor, with my dog in my hand, feeling exhausted.  He looked at me like he was asking "Why?"

I dragged my dog onto my dad's head, or next to it, and he woke up, not fully, but he did. My mum was still in bed, and she was very surprised when I came in with my dog. His name is Corky. Corky is often misspelled as Korkie by my parents, but it's either I am spelling it wrong, or my parents are writing his name wrong. He is not my only dog though, and I realised it quickly when Corky barked, and soon other dogs came rushing through the door, because I didn't have a chance to  close it.

The first one that came in was Nami, a very peaceful dog. She is white coloured, has two different eyes. (my friends find this scary and creepy) When Nami gives birth to cute little puppies (real puppies, not the 'adult' puppies) sometimes she leaves them to get food, but she always goes back to them. Nami is peaceful, but she can also be aggressive. When my friends or strangers come to the house, Nami always sticks close to her puppies and will growl to scare away others. If the 'trespasser' don't back off and tries to get closer, Nami will actually leap and attack the person! This action works best for scaring people away.

However, Nami will let the people she knows come to her puppies.

Two more dogs ran in and I was not surprised. Their names were Cookie and Cream. My family gave them those names because Cookie's fur is brown with dark brown spots all over her, while Cream is just full of white fur. Cookie and Cream are Nami's, and today they are now adults dogs. Cookie and Cream used to attack each other when they met and then they started making eye contact and started growling. The fights were very real and some were really serious. Once Cookie attacked Cream and  hit Cream's eye so it 'paralysed' her eye. For this, Cookie got detention and was kept in the garage for two days.   At that time,  Cream's eye was bleeding severely, so we needed to stop it promptly. We used paper towels to put pressure on the bleeding until the bleeding stopped.  Now, Cookie just likes to intimidating Nami and so this is still a problem.

Back to reality with the bed and the dogs. Cookie and Cream jumped up on top of the beds. Soon everyone was awake and they all headed to the bathroom to get ready to go on our trip..

My sisters woke up  very slowly. My grandparents also woke up, including my mom's sister. Then my dad told me to change into my formal wear, so I did as I was commanded.

Before long, we packed food, movies to watch while we were driving, because we knew this was a long trip, water and a picnic mat. By the afternoon, we were ready to go.  We left our home, sadly without our dogs, which were making sad faces on our front lawn.

We left in a SUV vehicle, and a white small sedan to fit all of us in. Only one person didn't come and that was our oldest sister.

It took about two hours to get there, but it went fairly fast because I was watching RoboCop and when it finished, we arrived at our stop. It was a cabin with a bridge next to it leading to a dense forest. Everyone got out of their seats and we headed to to the bridge.

We were all following the path, but I went ahead of everyone else. I wandered away from the path, my parents thought I was gone, so they started calling out to me. I responded but I didn't go to them.  They quickly found me so I decided to stay with them for the rest of the walk. The trees were really big  and all of us stopped and ate some food near a giant tall oak tree, on a bench including a clear view to the river. I wasn't hungry, but my grandparents told me to have something. I wanted to go to the really dense forest, littered with tall oak trees everywhere, but no one else wanted to go. So my mom told my dad to go with me to the forest while they headed back to the car, as the track leads.

Before long, my dad and I were traversing through the forest. It was a bit spooky, even though there were a few people with us. There was some hikers. I discovered my legs started getting itchy, because I had long pants. My dad was getting itchy as well, so we decided if we were coming here again, we should wear short pants. We then started running to try to get back to the car park, but then my dad started running as well, so we ended up having a race!

When we both got to a clear path, I started to hyperventilate. I was really tired, because I was running so fast. We stopped at a spot that was only three minutes away from the car park.

Afterwards, my mum went to the front of the car, got in the passenger side and put on her seat belt. My dad hopped in the driver's seat. I sat in the back again. I watched Transformers 5 until we got home.

When we got home, I slowly walked to the bed and then I collapsed.

My favorite part of the trip was when I got to traverse the dense forest with my dad, because we got to see the tall and thick oak trees!

Learning intention: We are learning to use descriptive language in our writing.

Success criteria: I know I can do this when I can select and use appropriate details to describe my trip to Rotorua.