Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jog

So I'm home from Girl's Camp.

:'(

SRSLY, though! It was SOOOOOOOO much fun. And I nearly cracked my skull open, too!

I should tell you about that sometime. :evil cackle:





Haha, just kidding. I'm planning to put up the daily journal entries I wrote, (complete with pictures) but I'm gonna edit out the more personal parts, of course. I haven't decided yet if I'll write down the testimony I shared at testimony meeting. It was a really sacred thing for me.... I dunno, probably not. Unless you really wanna hear it. Do you?

Anyways, my camera died on Tuesday so I don't really have that many pictures but once all my
friends put theirs up on Facebook I'll start posting. G'night all!

Joseph Smith's First Prayer

I love this song.

Also, This is the 4th day in a row that I've blogged. I'm pretty proud of myself for that :)

Girl's Camp

Hey, guess what? Girl's camp is on Monday and I'm not even stressed. In fact, I'm REALLY really looking forward to it! :) Last year was so much fun, and guess what? This year, we're having (drumroll please)......

REAL TOILETS!!!!!!

:) :) :) :) :) :) :)

See, last year our whole stake went up to Camp Stimpson (it's a big camp up in the mountains, no decent bathroom facilities to be seen), but then they split our stake, and now there are more stakes in the valley that there are weeks available for Girl's Camp. So this year, our stake is splitting it up into individual ward Girl's Camps. Our ward is going up to the Deer Creek Area in Utah, because a family in our ward owns a cabin up there and they're letting us use it. :) :) :) It's gonna be SO MUCH FUN!!!!

Now all I have to do is buy the stuff I need......

Mom

My little brother Thelly (age 10) has some mental....issues. He has no official diagnosis, but many symptoms of ADD, OCD, TS, and probably several other combinations of random letters. All Autism-related stuff. He's a really sweet kid but... he has, for want of a better term, 'problems'.

He needs everything being right. The right order, the right wording, doing everything right, every one around him doing every thing right, everything written right, keeping up the right schedule in the right order everyday, etc. When something happens wrongly enough, he can't wrap his brain around it and freaks out and has a tantrum. He screams and bellows and sobs and hits/breaks things, etc.

And Mom has to be there to try to calm him down. I guess Thelly has no problem taking out his anger on her, or else he doesn't realize that's what he's doing. It's really hard on her, I can tell.

Here's an example:

Quote

Scaffy wanted to do his writing (they have to practice writing every day in the summer so they don't forget) in the car and Thelly didn't think he should. And I was not as patient and attentive as I should have been at explaining the concept of agency. So he had a total melt down because he could not understand why I let Scaffy make choices that Thelly doesn't like. I don't know where the blood was coming from. I think it was his mouth and not his arm which he had been biting......

I ended up on the phone with Dad (My Dad, her husband) crying because "no one knows and no one understands and I just go on everyday and pretend like everything is fine because I don't know what else to do and I think it's easier to ignore it than get upset."......

Close quote

Look Mom, I know you're gonna make me take this down and I'm ok with that, but I just want to let you know how much I love you and appreciate all the hard work you do with Thelly and our whole family and I'm sorry I get mad at you sometimes and I know Thelly loves you too and I'm sorry I didn't blog about your birthday and.... and I love you so much and I'm so glad you're my Mom.

I just wanted you to know that I see how much your struggle through for Thelly and for all the rest of us to and I wanted you to get some recognition for it. Thank you, thank you for everything. I love you, Mom. I'm praying for you.

Comments off.

I went repelling yesterday

It scared the freaking crap out of me.

I wouldn't be sad if I never EVER did that again.

The End.

(it was kinda fun though....)

Recent happenings

The tyranny of math homework marches on... it totally sucks. But I'm at lesson 109 out of 120, so I'm almost done :)

Swim team and aerobics class go on too... swimming counts for aerobics, though, so that makes things much easier.

I'm trying to improve my artistry skillz (I love to draw but I'm not very good) by tracing and cross-referencing stuff from online. It's not going so great... but it's going.

We got the Lego Harry Potter Wii game on the day it came out, and it's been so much fun! All the Lego video games are lotsa fun (and we have most of them- Star Wars, Batman, Indiana Jones 1 and 2...) and that it's Harry Potter just makes it that much awesomer.

I ordered both Hunger games books (well actually, I think Mom did) and srsly I cant wait for them to get here! Jessica's never read them and I told her about it awhile about her so she's been dying to read it.

I'm going to re-read them first though. ;)

Hmmm.....

I cleaned my room on Saturday. I should do that more often, you know, I really like it when my room is clean and I can walk around without hurting my foot AND find my stuff. It's not particularly hard (except when it's really messy) but I just..... don't. I dunno why.


Actually, we cleaned the whole house (scoured it within an inch of it's life!) on Saturday. The boys wanted to go see 'Despicable Me' (which I thought looked pretty stupid but the boys really liked, of course) REEEEEEELY bad, and so Mom said they could if they cleaned the house for her. They picked up and wiped off and dusted and vacuumed for FOUR HOURS!!! Well, Thelly probably only cleaned for two and spent the other two tell in everyone 5000 times: 'I just don't really feel like cleaning up right now, and the reason why is because.... I just don't, so that is the reason why I don't really feel like cleaning right now, Mom, that is the reason why I don't feel like cleaning up right now, because I just don't, so that is why I don't feel like cleaning up, Mom.'

He ran that whole spiel for an hour, and then he screamed it for another one. Good times....

You know, I love summer, but this one is not as good as last one (with the sole exception that I absolutely LOVE hanging out with Jessica and Kira and Loren).

What about your summer?

All Creatures of Our God and King

Hey.

Hey look.... It's July.

Yep.

I don't have much to report. Well, that's not true. We went to Blanding for a family reunion this weekend (otherwise I would posted on the 30th, just to bring my post count up) and it was fun. But it was so FAR!!!!! Nine-count 'em- 9 hours each way!!!! And we all did it without any portable T.V. player. AND without any throats being ripped out!

But it was a close thing.

The actual visit was fun though. We went to the family reunion (100-odd people, 5 containers of marshmallow salad, and 10 pounds of cheese and potatoes) and that was ok. That was on Friday, and on Saturday we got up and watched the parade (I love small-town parades) and went and swam in the San Juan River and came back and saw a fun (but totally stupid) melodrama, and then went to the park and lit off some little fireworks (Showers of Sparks!) and then watched the big ones in the sky. :)

And the next day we went home.

And then today was the church 5th of July Breakfast, which was AWESOME because they had this HUUUUUUGE water balloon fight after everybody ate, and me and Jessica and this one (cute) guy that always shows up for activities like that (and I keep telling myself I don't like him but then he's always at activities and he's nice and funny and.... yeah. You get it.) had our own personal war-inside-a-war and we all got totally DRENCHED and it was just a lot of fun. :)

And then tonight my Aunt and Uncle and cousins came for more Independence Day celebrating and we mostly just swam in our pool and ate and lit up sparklers, but we also watched half of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I love that movie) and that was really nice. And now they're gone and I'm going to bed.

Happy 3rd/4th/5th of July!