Migillicutty Reads

I don't know where this came from, but it's deserves re-posting

2011-09-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

Hi, Mommy.

I'm your baby. You don't know me yet, I'm only a few weeks old. You're going to find out about me soon, though, I promise. Let me tell you some things about me. My name is John, and I've got beautiful brown eyes and black hair. Well, I don't have it yet, but I will when I'm born. I'm going to be your only child, and you'll call me your one and only. I'm going to grow up without a daddy mostly, but we have each other. We'll help each other, and love each other. I want to be a doctor when I grow up.

You found out about me today, Mommy! You were so excited, you couldn't wait to tell everyone. All you could do all day was smile, and life was perfect. You have a beautiful smile, Mommy. It will be the first face I will see in my life, and it will be the best thing I see in my life. I know it already. Today was the day you told Daddy. You were so excited to tell him about me! ...He wasn't happy, Mommy. He kind of got angry. I don't think that you noticed, but he did. He started to talk about something called wedlock, and money, and bills, and stuff I don't think I understand yet. You were still happy, though, so it was okay. Then he did something scary, Mommy. He hit you. I could feel you fall backward, and your hands flying up to protect me. I was okay... but I was very sad for you. You were crying then, Mommy. That's a sound I don't like. It doesn't make me feel good. It made me cry, too. He said sorry after, and he hugged you again. You forgave him, Mommy, but I'm not sure if I do. It wasn't right. You say he loves you... why would he hurt you? I don't like it, Mommy.

Finally, you can see me! Your stomach is a little bit bigger, and you're so proud of me! You went out with your mommy to buy new clothes, and you were so so so happy. You sing to me, too. You have the most beautiful voice in the whole wide world. When you sing is when I'm happiest. And you talk to me, and I feel safe. So safe. You just wait and see, Mommy. When I am born I will be perfect just for you. I will make you proud, and I will love you with all of my heart.

I can move my hands and feet now, Mommy. I do it because you put your hands on your belly to feel me, and I giggle. You giggle, too. I love you, Mommy.

Daddy came to see you today, Mommy. I got really scared. He was acting funny and he wasn't talking right. He said he didn't want you. I don't know why, but that's what he said. And he hit you again. I got angry, Mommy. When I grow up I promise I won't let you get hurt! I promise to protect you. Daddy is bad. I don't care if you think that he is a good person, I think he's bad. But he hit you, and he said he didn't want us. He doesn't like me. Why doesn't he like me, Mommy?

You didn't talk to me tonight, Mommy. Is everything okay?

It's been three days since you saw Daddy. You haven't talked to me or touched me or anything since that. Don't you still love me, Mommy? I still love you. I think you feel sad. The only time I feel you is when you sleep. You sleep funny, kind of curled up on your side. And you hug me with your arms, and I feel safe and warm again. Why don't you do that when you're awake, any more?

I'm 21 weeks old today, Mommy. Aren't you proud of me? We're going somewhere today, and it's somewhere new. I'm excited. It looks like a hospital, too. I want to be a doctor when I grow up, Mommy. Did I tell you that? I hope you're as excited as I am. I can't wait.

Mommy, I'm getting scared. Your heart is still beating, but I don't know what you are thinking. The doctor is talking to you. I think somethings going to happen soon. I'm really, really, really scared, Mommy. Please tell me you love me. Then I will feel safe again. I love you!

Mommy, what are they doing to me!? It hurts! Please make them stop! It feels bad! Please, Mommy, please please help me! Make them stop!

Don't worry Mommy, I'm safe. I'm in heaven with the angels now. They told me what you did, and they said it's called an abortion.

Why, Mommy? Why did you do it? Don't you love me any more? Why did you get rid of me? I'm really, really, really sorry if I did something wrong, Mommy. I love you, Mommy! I love you with all of my heart. Why don't you love me? What did I do to deserve what they did to me? I wanted to live, Mommy! Please! It really, really hurts to see you not care about me, and not talk to me. Didn't I love you enough? Why didn't you keep me, Mommy? I wanted to live, smile and watch the clouds and see your face and grow up and be a doctor. I don't want to be here, I want you to love me again! I'm really really really sorry if I did something wrong.... I love you!

I love you, Mommy.

AHHHH! Things keep happening and I can't keep up!

2011-07-15T21:24:00.001-07:00

Suddenly I'm feeling super rushed to dump everything on my blog that I haven't put on my blog already.

On the first of June, we got rear-ended.
That was funcastic. I'd never been in a car wreck before, so I was kinda freaked out. Fortunately, nobody as hurt and the lady who hit us had insurance so we were fine. The car was totaled, so we got a new one!!!! It's beautiful. It has a DVD player. I love it.

Then I took all my finals. The lasst final is on the same day as the last day f school, so they mail you the results of all your exams and your final grades. I got A's in EVERY SINGLE CLASS ON EVERY SINGLE TEST AND EVERY SINGLE QUARTER!!!! And I honestly didn't think I was going to make it in math so I'm pretty proud of that.

Then it was summer!!! I went to EFY the very first week, but that's another story. Then I had a week off, then I went to Girl's Camp, and that's another story too.

There's a new girl in out ward! Since the last straw with Kira (long long loooooooooooong and dramatic story short, I got sick of putting up with her crap. We are still friends, but no longer friends who are so close that I have to put up with her crap) I've been trying to make a new best friend. This girl is AMAZING. She's a writer, like me, so I have a new writing buddy. And she loves Harry Potter. And I'm converting her to the Hunger Games, like I've done with all my friends. And she's so freaking nice! Her name is Sammy.

This is her. :)

The week after Girls Camp we spent a lot of time hanging out. We went swimming at my house and I got SO FREAKING SUNBURNED It hurts just to talk about it. I'm still burned! This might be the time that makes me remember to wear sunscreen, seriously.

And then It was the fourth of July. And everybody was out of town and I was bored to death. But Watching the fireworks with my little cousin was fun.
Isn't she adorable?!

We had even more family come down from Utah later in the week and we had an awesome family gathering. I got to make the desserts, at it was fun. homemade ice cream is the BEST!!

I also became dangerously obsessed with a new website called The Potter Games for a few days. "May the Wands be Ever in your Favor'. That's right. It's a mix of Harry Potter And The Hunger Games!!! I liked the Facebook page long before the website launched and checked it every few hours for news. They staggered the reaping over several days and randomcasticly selected tributes from Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beaubatons. Funny thing, is, the creators never told the fans exactly what the Potter Games was going to be. A fan movie? RPG? Fan made book? The mystery kept me glued to my computer and when the website launched at 8:00 last Monday, I was there.

Thing is, so were 7000 other people.

The site was designed to be pretty small and they weren't prepared for that many people. The Potter Games website totally overloaded and crashed with all the grace of a sack of potatoes.

I was NOT happy.

But they fixed it up quickly and The Potter Games turned out to be an online Choose Your Own Adventure game, where you can play as each of the tributes. Unfortunately, there's only one way to win as each tribute, but it's still fun. Not half as fun as I hoped, but fun.

After 4th of July I had to start working on ward choir music. I'm conducting a really beautiful arrangement of 'Come, Come, Ye Saints' that the ward choir is singing for Pioneer Day. That's right, I'M CONDUCTING IT!! It's nerve-wracking but very exciting and fun.

The following week my fiends and I started a Harry Potter movie Marathon in preparation for the release of Deathly Hallows Part 2. We watch 2 movies a day at a different friends house every day, it was tons of fun. It takes a LOT of time to watch two Harry Potter movies every day! About halfway through we usually got super bored and started tickling each other or something. Some of my fiends are suuuuuuuper ticklish and it's just too funny to watch them spazz out.

And last night I went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 wiht a HUGE group of friends!!! I really have the most amazing parents and friends ever. None of them are really good at (or indeed, capable of) coordinating an event like that, so that was my job. I talked Dad into driving me, Kira (like I said before we're still friends just not super close friends), Jessica, Loren, Sammy, and two other friends, Katy and Sierra. That's seven girls my dad took to a midnight movie. Is he the greatest or is her the GREATEST!!! I really no longer feel socially handicapped. I have AWESOME friends and goshdarnit, THEY LIKE ME!!! And you know what? It was SO MUCH FUN! Kira and I both dressed up. She wore this Gryffindor jacket she recently bought, I wore my homemade Ravenclaw Quidditch Robes I've had for years and tucked my wand behind my ear. We answered trivia questions while waiting in line and talked in British Accents and were the first ones into our theater. The movie was amazing. I cried unashamedly through pretty much the whole thing. It was SO true to the book!!! I'm sad the film series is over, but there's still Pottermore to look forward to!

So that's what's been going on lately. I still have to finish posting about EFY and Girl's Camp, and I will, but it's late and I was up till 3:30 last night and so I'm going to bed.

EFY: Day Three

2011-07-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

(This is not turning out nearly as effective as I'd hoped but I'm really only recording it for myself for years from now so it's okay.)

I'd just like to take this opportunity to mention how absolutely AMAZING the Canon Center food is. It's just this huge all-you-can-eat buffet, and there's an ENORMOUS variety of choices, and ALL of them are delicious. I pigged out pretty much every time I was in there.

So that's where we had breakfast after Devo and Gospel Study. I found some really neat scriptures and learned a really cool lesson (thanks counselors!)

The Morningside for the day was "We believe all things, we hope all things". The Session Director talked a lot about gaining a testimony of your own. 'You cannot live on borrowed light'. He also said that everyone has moments of great spiritual revelation and influence in their lives, but in between those moments we might start to doubt. Use those powerful experiences like a rock climber scaling a cliff- they're your pitons. When your faith starts to waver you can take comfort from those past experiences, knowing that if it was true then, it MUST be true now. This really helped me a lot.

The Classes for that day were fantastic. By this time the teachers started to feel like friends. People even stopped falling out of their chairs ( well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit) when Brother Hadfield suddenly shouted instead of whispered.

Lunch, Choir, Free time, and Dinner flew by (I stuffed myself at both meals- the food's just SO GOOD!) and then we all headed out to the field for GAMES NIGHT!!! That was fun, even if it wasn't quite as gospel-centered as the games we played on Monday night. Each company also made up a skit and a banner for the skit competition (my company won, I think :D ) Some of then were pretty funny: "Look at you banner. Now look at our banner. Look at your company! Now look at our company. Look at you. Back to me." and so on in the a hilarious Old Spice parody.

When we were all tired and sweaty and finished playing running games we went back to our dorms (didn't make it first for the showers this time but that was ok) and ordered pizza. PIZZA NIGHT!! Wahoo! Somebody brought their iPod and speakers and we sang along to Taylor Swift and took a million pictures and did each others hair
And basically had a great time :) We had a Devotional after wards and went everyone went straight to bed.

Unfortunately, three amazingly huge meals plus pizza didn't sit to well in my stomach, and I threw up in the night. I made it into the trash can, thank goodness, and found a place to throw it away (boy that was not fun at all), but I learned my lesson and never ate that much again the rest of the week.

EFY: Day Two!

2011-07-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

Day Two is when you really get into the pattern of EFY. Morning Devo at 7, Scripture study, Breakfast (breakfast at the Cannon Center is freaking amazing!!!), Morningside, Classes, Lunch, Classes, dance, Nighttime Devo, and Bed.

The Morningside was great, we had an Excellent Session Director. Day Two's Morningside theme was 'We believe in being honest and true'. That means integrity- "having the courage to make my actions consistent with my knowledge of right and wrong." Love that quote. Our Director also talked about burying a lie or sin or trial that you're carrying around.

After that we walked over to the Wilkinson Center for CLASSES!!! Did I tell you about walking around? We walked all over campus, it took a while, but it was fun because we had 'escorts'. Each guy took a girls arm and we walked around like this:(I don't know who these people are but it's a cute picture isn't it?)
So that was pretty hilarious and a lot of fun.

But I digress. I was talking about classes wasn't I? I know it sounds super boring, Classes, but that was probably my favorite part of EFY. We had two AMAZING teachers, John Lawson, and John Hadfield. I especially liked brother Hadfield. He was the most energetic teacher I've ever had. Like at parts of his talk he would get up and run around the room and yell at the top of his voice. It was very entertaining, but also helped get the point across better. The other speaker, Brother Lawson, was super funny. He told stories about his mission and when he was a kid that not only made us laugh but helped us understand the point of his talk better.

At lunch that day was the start of the preparations for the Variety Show and Music Program. The Variety show is like a talent show, basically, except they look for a variety of acts just as much as they do quality of acts. Auditions were held on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the show on Thursday.
The Music Show is a youth choir that rehearsed at lunch and Free Time on Tuesday and Wednesday, and preformed on Thursday. I was in the Music Show. The Director was a Counselor called Jared, who was a music major at BYU and an AMAZING violinist. He did a really good job, even though I didn't especially like his conducting style.

After Lunch we had more classes, which were better than the first set. :) Then came Free Time (another choir rehearsal) and dinner, and that night we had a Dance! Dances at EFY are waaaay fun. They are put on under the bleachers of the football stadium at BYU, which is really cool, except that it's still super light our which is kinda annoying, but tolerable. TEh best part about that dance, though, is that you're only at EFY for a week, so you can dance around as crazily as you want without feeling self-conscious. I danced and danced and had a great time.
The only problem was, everyone got super sweaty. We knew there would be a mad dash for the showers when we got back to our dorms, so our company (the girls half anyways) made sure we were the very first ones out of the dance and speedwalked quickly back to the dorms, stopping only to take a picture at the cougar outside the stadium.

We made it to the showers first, hooray! When everyone was finished we had a Devotional to wrap up the night, then everyone went to bed.

EFY! Day One

2011-07-06T14:26:00.001-07:00

I didn't actually keep a day-to-day journal this week, so I'll mostly be putting up pictures.
Just to clarify, EFY stands for Especially For Youth- a week long sleep away camp for kids 14-18 run by the LDS Church. There are all kinds of fun things to do there, but the reason every Mormon kid wants to go is because of the powerful Spirit there. It's truly amazing, I'm so glad to have gone. There are lots of different locations for EFY- I went to the one on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah, with my cousin (love her guts!!!). Provo is sooo beautiful!! (well, compared with teh desert anyway) These are a few pictures of the scenery I took my first day there:

Okaaaay!

DAY ONE
Meet your Company!
Your Company is the group of kids and Counselors that are like your family for the week, you eat together, play games together, have Devotionals together, etc. My company was pretty small. 8 girls and their counselor, and 8 guys and their counselor. We met at 1:30 or so on Monday, and right of the bat we had a devotional. Then we picked our 'Company Spot' and played some get to know you games.

My Counselors!
These two people have my undying respect and love. I learned SO MUCH from each of them! They're funny, upbeat, spiritual, and friendly. Best Counselors ever!

And these are all the kids in my company! That's me on the ground, in the blue. I've decided blue is my color.

After we were all properly acquainted, we picked out our Company Name. Your Company's Name is picked from the scripture assigned to you, Ours was Leviticus 19:18- Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.

So our Company was named Thy Neighbors :)

Afterward we met up with all the kids at EFY and had a Family Home Evening lesson together, all about the 13th Article of Faith: We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
Actually, the Youth Theme for this whole year is the 13th Article of Faith, which I love :)

After that we played some field games- and applied them to the scriptures- that was incredible! I've never been in a place like that before or since- everything has meaning at EFY. I mean, who would have thought that a game of 'Poison' could apply to gospel principles?

Then we went back to our dorms (I stayed in Chipman Hall), had another devotional, and went to bed.
My dorm:

I will not go a month without blogging. WILL NOT.

2011-06-30T14:36:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone.

June was a crazy month. Finals, Summer starting, EFY, and then Girls Camp. I know I should tell all about EFY and Girls Camp in an orderly fashion but i think it might not eve happen if I do. So maybe I'll just ramble. But I don't want to do that..... I have pictures and everything so I guess I should put them up.

How was your June?

I got into Bella Voz today.

2011-05-27T17:02:00.000-07:00

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Friday the 13th

2011-05-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday sucked.

Our whole family was planning to travel up to Salt Lake, Utah this weekend to see Mom's family. When Mom told me last week she said we would be leaving Thursday night and coming home Sunday afternoon. And I said "Mom, I CAN'T miss any more school." I've been missing kind of a lot lately, because of the Handbells trip and Choir and Orchestra Festivals. But it was just one day... and besides, it's not like I really had a choice.
Then I found out my schedule for that day I would be missing.
Choir-Internal Auditions (not mine but still)
English- Big Test
Orchestra- Going over concert music I've only seen once before that we're performing in less than a month.
Bio- Big Quiz
Plus ANOTHER quiz- Geometry- I'm going to have to make up on Monday. So yeah. Really crappy day to miss school.
And then Dad had a lot of work he had to finish before we left, so we couldn't go Thursday night. So we left on Friday morning instead, but Dad still didn't get his work done so he stayed home. We got up early early on Friday morning and left without him. If I was smart I would have stayed home with Dad.
So we were driving up this hill, three hours later, listening to an audio book and whatever, and the car started making this grinding noise and slowing down. Mom tried taking off the cruise control and all kinds of stuff, but the car just kept slowing down. Within a few moments we weren't going forward at all. So we ended up pulling over, calling a tow truck (actually getting a passing highway patrolman to call a tow truck), and sitting on the side of the road for an hour waiting for it to come. I got VERY irritated during this wait, because there we were, obviously NOT going to Salt Lake, but I was still missing a ton of important schoolwork that's going to be a real pain to make up. And then the tow truck came and totally did NOT have enough room for five people in the passenger seat, so they had to call this van to come pick us up. In all fairness, the tow truck and van people were pretty polite and nice and good (except for the fairly large oversight of not bringing transportation for the five people the highway patrolman informed them would be waiting in the minivan that mysteriously refused to go forward) Anywhoo... we got towed/driven back to an auto shop in St. George (they told us the transmission kicked the bucket) and were picked up by my dad's brother and his family, who were incredibly gracious about us barging into their home for the weekend. If they are reading this: THANK YOU!!! And we stayed the night there and drove back to Vegas in a rent-a-car today.
So that was my Friday the 13th Misadventure. Moral of the story: Don't skip school, don't attempt to make a 6 hour drive with a failing transmission. But if you do, try to at least get plenty of reading/writing done.

I did good!

2011-05-11T17:48:00.000-07:00

Not perfect, but good. Each audition was only four minutes long, so it's kind of impossible to be astonishing. But I think I impressed them. They said I made the rhythmic sight reading look easy, eve though it had triplets in it. And that's because I did it perfectly!!!!!
I messed up the melodic sight reading a little bit but other than that I think I did well. And I'm SOOOO relieved to have that over with. :)

Panicky

2011-05-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

There are four choirs at LVA: Les Chantreuses- starting women's, Cantare- starting mixed, Bella Voz- advanced women's, and Academy Singers- advanced mixed.

By the way I sure hope you guys like LVA politics because I've been posting a lot about them huh?
Anyways here's the general idea:
Les Chantreuses is the group you go in if it's your first year at LVA and you're a girl. No exceptions, as far as I know. This is the group I'm in. At the end of the year you perform an audition in front of both choir directors and they decide which group to put you in the next year.
Cantare is the group you go into if its your first year at LVA and you're a guy. Or if you're a girl and you get placed into Cantare when you've finished your year in Les Chantreuses.
Bella Voz is the group you get put into if your a junior and a girl and you don't suck or a sophomore if you're really good. Bella Voz is AMAZING.
Academy Singers is the top group, the professional level, the chorus of angels. It's a very small group, only the best juniors ans seniors get in, no underclassmen.

So basically the typical girl goes like this:
Freshman year- Les Chantreuses -> Sophomore year- Cantare -> Junior year- Bella Voz -> Senior year- Academy Singers. Theoretically. If you're not good they will keep you back in Bella Voz or Cantare, but not Les Chantreuses.

BUT if you're really good they'll also let you skip Cantare and go straight to Bella Voz. This is my dream in life. If I make it into Bella Voz I will die happy. It's not that Cantare is bad or anything, but I don't want to go in there. It's Bella Voce or bust, because Bella Voz sounds like... like... perfection. Like an ethereal choir of wood nymphs or something equally lovely. I think I can do it. It's hard for sophomores to get in, but a few girls make it every year, it's totally possible. I've been practicing for days. I'm going to just blow my director's socks off. I'd better.

Did I mention my audition is tomorrow?

Quality over quantity?

2011-05-06T17:09:00.001-07:00

I disagree. I enjoy reading my own blog more when I actually POST more than once a month :)

It's the Father's And Son's Scouting overnighter tonight!!! Why do I care? Mom and I always do something awesome when we don't have to worry about the boys getting in the way :)

I think I want to read a great big fat huge 1000 page book this summer. What do you think it should be?

-Migillicutty :)

Star Wars Day.

2011-05-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

May the fourth be with you all. :)

At school it's also Flaunt Your Insecurities Day. You pick one of your biggest insecurities and write it on a plain white T-Shirt. It was really weird. How does letting people know what to tease you about make you feel less insecure? Not that I ever heard any teasing, because my school is just awesome like that, but still. Kids wrote things like "Dumb blond" "Awkward" "Never be good enough". "I have two gay dads who adopted me when I was one." I just don't think it helps. After all, if I was confident enough to write my insecurities on my shirt, they wouldn't be insecurities would they? My friend wrote "Body" on hers. She's really pretty and open minded and funny and about as close to stick-figure like as a 14 year old can get without looking anorexic and she's insecure about her body because she thinks she's fat. But now everybody not only knows she feels insecure about her body, they're also looking at her body to try to figure out why she thinks she's fat, which is exactly what she DOESN'T want because she's insecure, right? Its just weird, isn't it?

I'd much rather celebrate Star Wars Day :)My favorite Old Republic Jedi. Cuz Aayla Secura is freaking awesome :)
And a couple of cartoons made by a really hilarious DeviantArt-ist:I think they get bigger if you click on them. :) As soon as the pictures go on facebook I'll post about the Handbells Trip you didn't even know I took, but it was fun so I'll post about it anyways :)

Handbells trip.

2011-04-30T17:17:00.001-07:00

It's Sibling Day

2011-04-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

I have three siblings, Thelly (11) Scaffy (9) and Monkey (6). They are amazing and I love them. My favorite thing to do with them is play the Capture Game. Dad used to play it with me when I was little, but he's too old and boring now :) I grab one of my brothers (it doesn't matter which one) and wrap him up in a huge bear hug so he can't escape at all (and it's not for lack of trying, let me tell you) and then the other two come and try to rescue him. And as soon as they get close to succeeding I cut my losses and grab another one. The game ends when somebody gets hurt enough that they don't want to play any more, or Mom makes us stop. It's the ultimate roughhousing game and its SO much fun, as long as you wear a heavily padded bra that is. So that's my siblings celebration. :)

It's also Encourage a Young Writer Day. So encourage me!

Just watch me get that post count up...

2011-03-31T21:11:00.000-07:00

I will never again doubt the power of a big word. Here's another one: concatenation. A series or chain of events. It was in the middle of a section of the Doctrine and Covenants that we studied in Seminary yesterday. Concatenation.... I like that one.

Wow. I've never seen my blog as something special before. I know some of my bloggy friends do. They use their blogs as means to reach other writers and readers. As a way to make themselves well-known. I've never done that. I keep a blog like I would keep a journal (if I had the motivation to keep a journal. I don't. That's why I blog. Because other people read my blog, and that gives me motivation, see? Because I know somebody is waiting for me to post again, whereas nobody is waiting to read my next journal entry.) : to get my thoughts and life written down so I can remember them. I started my blog chiefly because of my mom. Because I read the blogs that she read and I thought they were amazing, and because Mom wanted me to do book reviews. I love to read, but at the time I HATED book reviews and I barely wrote anything. Mom made me do the book reviews anyways, and when the summer was over and she stopped making me write them, I (eventually) discovered I didn't want to stop. Now my book reviews are less structured, sometimes they're little more than blurbs, but I like to keep track of what I've read. Just like she always said I would, I look back and thank her.

So that's always been the pattern of my blog: book reviews, slices of life, funny and/or sarcastic imitations of others blogs, and once in a great while, a truly sincere from the heart post. I don't really think that's a bad thing. I like having a blog just for the sake of recording my life in a funny way. But I think if I need to step up my game. I think I should start using my blog as a writer's blog, now that writing is my ambition. Still keeping the record of my life, but also focusing more on expressing myself with words instead of smiley faces.

Any advice?

Obligatory End Of The Month post.

2011-03-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

*We got an Excellent at Festival. This is the equivalent of a B, and is probably due to the fact that our director was gone for several days the week before. :(

*I just finished Unwind by Neal Shusterman. HOLY CRAP!!! When you look up 'writers of great plot twists' in the dictionary, there's a picture of Neal Shusterman. I was FLOORED. I threw the book! And I'm not a thrower. I'm a yeller. I yelled too, of course, but I threw the book down on the ground. It was that good!

*I also just finished Rot & Ruin by Johnathan Mayberry. It was my fist serious zombie book, and really quite good. Less thought-provoking than the back cover claimed, but totally engrossing nonetheless. It's a bildungsroman (hows THAT for a big word!?!), but not all boring and predictable like most of them :) It was also 450 pages, which is major brownie points. I know perfectly well that size is no indication of goodness. I've read plenty of small books that were amazing, and some big books that were not nearly as good. But big books are always more satisfying, somehow. It's like how hamburgers taste better when you take a great big monster bite, instead of a normal one.

*What is it about dystopian Science Fiction that's so dang GOOD?!

*Scaffy's birthday was on the 16th. NINE things I love about Scaffy:

1. He's very intelligent. He loves to read and ask questions. Lots of them.
2. He tries to conceal the fact that he's intelligent, but I see through him every time :)
3. He's really, really sweet. Being 9, he's going to be hugely offended, but I don't care. He's a big sweetheart.
4. Scaffy is a big tease. I tease him, he teases me back, then I sit on him and give him a noogie until he begs for mercy.
5. Sometimes I'm a little overly mean to him. We are a lot alike, but we are different, too. Until recently, I never really understood this.
6. Even understanding that we are not the same.... I'm still going to keep telling him what books to read.
7. Most of the time he completely ignores my advice on what books to read. But when he does, he LOVES the books I recommend. Take Animorphs, for example. As soon as he finishes devouring one book he starts wolfing down the next. And when he finishes the last book, he immediately picks up the first book and starts reading them all over again. And refuses to read anything else. This is a bit infuriating, but it also makes me very pleased with myself for suggesting a book he loves so much.
8. He loves his family very much. He loves us in a way that most boys have forgotten how to do by the time they're 9. I hope he doesn't forget anytime soon.
9. I don't express it as well or as often as I should, but I love Scaffy very, very much. And I know I won't forget that anytime soon.

Eragon Book Four!!!

2011-03-26T11:11:00.001-07:00

WooHoo!!!! It's been what, 2 1/2 years? And we FINALLY have a title!!!

Testing, Testing One, Two, Three

2011-03-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

I want to get a head count here. Who likes the different fonts? Why? Who finds it distracting? Who dislikes it for other reasons? Who has no opinion?

I should never blog when I'm feeling drained.

2011-03-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

Or upset. Or tired. Or anything but sunshine and rainbows. It makes my posts all.... lackluster. But oh well. When I get a chance to blog I take it.

Mom started her own blog. :)http://somedaysineedtowriteitdown.blogspot.com/

I went to my first Youth Conference. All the teens from my church who live around here get together for the weekend. Play games, sing songs, eat good food, and of course, learn some awesome spiritual lessons. I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it.

There was dance on Saturday. It actually had a theme: Decades!! Loren and I found some poodle skirts and dressed as 50's twins with cardigans and everything- even cute little scarves mad up of a pulled apart bath sponge. They looked awesome! And Kira and one of her friends dressed in complementing 80's clothes, so they were a twins act as well. At the dance they had lots of decades music as well, so it was really a lot of fun, and probably my favorite dance so far.

Today was Festival at school. I really hope you all know what Festival is because I don't really know how to explain it. I guess it's when all the high school and middles school groups (orchestra, choir, band, etc) prepare their three best pieces and preform them in front of a panel of judges at Ham Hall at UNLV. Believe me when I say that Festival is a BIG deal. As in, the most important thing we do all year, concerts included. Every school gets a rating, sorta of like the rating system at Solo&Ensemble (remember that? :) except that at Festival it's a lot more clear who are the good schools and who are the bad schools. It's all a big competition, really. Never mind the fact that nobody else is supposed to know how your choir did. We all know how your choir did. And we all know that LVA did better :)

March

2011-03-06T12:48:00.000-08:00

I like this month. In Vegas, spring starts in early March. so I like it.

I remembered what the Saturday activity was in my last post. it was a Youth Dance, and it was a lot of fun, but that was a long time ago, I don't want to talk about ancient history.

So last Friday Thelly ran away. Well, we thought he ran away. He was missing for around two hours, so we got really scared, we were going around to all the neighbors and checking at his school and stuff. Eventually Mom found him hiding under the sink in the Casita. We still don't know why. It was really weird.

Yesterday was the Lamb Of God performance I was talking about. I was actually wrong about that. It's by Rob Gardner, and it doesn't go up to a High B in the song I thought. But in another song it goes up to a High C. And I hit it! It was an amazing night, I really felt the Spirit as we sang. If you ever get the chance to hear it, you'll see what I mean.

I have had the most amazing week!

2011-02-25T16:12:00.000-08:00

Seriously!

Last Friday was Kira's birthday!! We went to see I am Number Four on its opening night, and it was incredible. The score was good, the actor was to die for and the plot was science fiction in all its epic glory :)

Saturday, the next day, was really fun too, but I can't remember why for some reason... I'll come edit this when I remember whatever it was that I did that day.

Sunday I had Mormon Youth Chorus. We are Singing an Easter cantata called The Lamb of God, it's so beautiful, but energetic at the same time. My favorite song is called Hosanna, it's some very happy and exciting-sounding, really challenging music! It changes Time Signatures every single measure, for crying out loud! And it has a high B at the end. Do you know how high that is? REALLY FREAKING HIGH!! Almost two octaves above middle C on a piano.

Monday I spent hanging out with Kira, Jessica and Taylor. We were going to work on the clubhouse (this old garden shed in Jessica's backyard. We're cleaning it out, painting it, fixing it up, hopefully adding some linoleum flooring and furniture and making it into the ultimate Girls-only summer hangout!) but since we've been working on it every weekend for the past month or so, everything is pretty much done! all we have to do is repair the shelving and figure out where the heck we're gonna get some linoleum from.

This week was also very awesome. I'm getting ready (well I should be getting ready, I'm not really) for my Regionals performance tomorrow. Regionals is basically the same as Solo & Ensemble, but it's the next level up. Only people who got a Superior at S&E go onto Regionals. And if You get a superior there, then you can go on to State, which is really really cool.

And today, the BYU Young Ambassadors came to LVA!! The YA's are basically a college show choir, singing and dancing stuff, but they're so good! The preformed for us and then I stayed after school and they taught us some of their dances and preformed some more for them. It was really impressive, how confidently they danced, how huge their smiles were. They seemed really, honestly excited to be here, every minute! The acting they in their oeices was especially impressive. And their director arranged all of their music! It was really cool. When I go to BYU I'm definitely trying out.

Want to know another this great about this week? I have discovered the greatest Facebook status in the history of the universe. It's one of those 'Comment Saying How you Met Me' posts, but instead of saying how you really met me, you lie. You make up the funniest, most ridiculous thing you can think of! Here's what Jessica wrote:
"So I was walking through a valley, a very long, and tiresome valley of Death. Seeing how dreary and sad this seemed to be, I had decided to smile and skip while singing my favorite song. All of a sudden, the valley's guardian swooped down and picked me up. I was still smiling, singing, and skipping in the air, and it asked me what the freaking crap I was doing. Well, I didn't get to answer that, because a flaming arrow hit the guardian, blowing it up. Falling, but still skipping, I glanced down, and saw a fair maiden with a bow for the arrow smile and wave at me. We talked ever since, and that's how I met you ;D"

So I'm giving you, my faithful readers, the same challenge. Be creative! If you could meet me in person, how would we meet?

You hear that? I'm cool!

2011-02-16T14:56:00.000-08:00

Melanie J gave me a shout out on her blog yesterday!!!! How cool is that?! :D I'm so proud of myself.

And I never finished my blabbering on and on yesterday, so....

*I don't think I ever mentioned it, but Kira and I got over our fight. I'm soooo glad. Actually it turns out we weren't really fighting when I thought we were, we didn't actually start fighting until I called her, and then we had this big, screaming fight! But at the end of it we did come to an agreement, and now we are better friends than ever. So all's well that ends well right?

*Last Sunday was Loren's birthday. I love that girl, she's so funny. But for some reason she totally refused to throw a birthday party. She wanted to pretend like it was just a normal day, for some crazy reason.

Psssssh. No!

So Jessica and Kira and I showed up at her house at 8:30 on Saturday morning and 'kidnapped' her. It' was lots of fun! We took her shopping and all put in 5 bucks to get her something. I love doing gifts that way! Way cheaper, and you can get something nicer. She really didn't want anything, but we told her we were getting her something whether she liked it or not. Loren picked out this really cute black purse. Not huge, but big enough to hold all her school stuff. AND it was on sale! So everybody wins :)

*The night before that we went out to U-swirl. Let me just say that I LOOOOOVE being old enough to go out for ice cream with my friends! And if you've never heard of U-swirl, Google it. Seriously, it's so yummy.

*Mom got fed up with my lack of piano practicing a few weeks ago. Now I have to practice every weekday for a month or pay her double my cell phone bill. Grrrrrr.

*School is great, as always. I can't believe Freshman year is already halfway over! I got all A's on my report card (barely). Now we are starting this ginormous research paper in English. I normally love doing research papers, but you have to have SO many correctly formatted citations for this puppy, it's leeching some of the fun out. Oh well, it's still really interesting. Our library lady is CRAZY! She used to be an interrogator in the military, so.... yeah. She's crazy.

*Seminary is the best thing ever. People are always talking about all the sacrifices you have to make to go to seminary and I get kind of confused. What are they talking about? I LOVE going to seminary. I consider it a sacrifice to NOT go to seminary. In fact, last quarter I took a bad grade on a math test just so that I could go to seminary. The only sacrificial thing is not being in Harry Potter Club.... But honestly, I prefer missing out on that club to missing out on Seminary.

*The only thing is, the seminary building is across the street from LVA. Off-campus. So you have to have a pass to go to seminary. And there's this evil administrator who sits out there every day to make sure you have your pass. We call her The Cart Lady, because she rides around every day on this little motor cart the color of vomit. She always wears this huge, puffy purple coat, even when its 70 degrees outside, and a scarf that she glares over the top of, scrutinizing every person brave enough to walk by her. If you didn't know better, you would think she had no legs or something. All year I've only seen her standing three times. Lots of kids go out of their way to avoid her, but sometimes she takes an unexpected route and nabs everyone who doesn't carry their pass with them. And at even the people who go to seminary every day, she yells "Hey! Get back here, young lady! Where's your pass?!" And if you don't have it, she sits you down on the back of her puke-mobile and carts you off to the Dean's office. I've seen her take those poor kids away. You know way back when the Protestant movement started, and they got out their Inquisition and broke into people's homes and carted away the 'witches' to be burned at the stake? That's what it looks like when The Cart Lady takes somebody to the Dean's office.

*I make sure I never, EVER forget my seminary pass.

Happy Single Awareness day!

2011-02-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

Umm I think I posted a rant on the holiday last year. You can go read that one if you want.

You guys know I never give my updates in chronological order so here it goes:

*I attended my first Solo And Ensemble Festival on Saturday! In Nevada they have this big 'competition' every year for soloists, duets, trios, etc. It's really cool and kinda a big deal if you are into music. Everybody who's serious about preforming (which is everyone at LVA) competes. Except its not really a competition. In the Vocal division, the scores rank from IV to I. IV stands for 'Needs Improvement' and it means 'you didn't even show up'. III is called 'Good'. It really means 'you were not good but you did at least make an effort to be here.' II is 'excellent'. Translation: 'you weren't bad at all', and I is 'Superior', meaning: 'You did really really well.'

I got a I!!!!! :) :) :) That's the only actual competition part, because it means you can take it to the next level and go to the Regional division. I'm soooo excited!

*Scaffy lost ANOTHER tooth! his teeth are falling out like popcorn. anyways when his last one fell out he left a note for the tooth fairy, asking questions like 'Are you a boy or a girl?' 'What do you do with the teeth?' stuff like that.

And the amazing Tooth Fairy (coughMoicough) answered him thusly:

"Dear Scaffy,
Thank you so much for your letter! I love hearing from children. I hope you understand that since the work of a fairy must remain a mystery, so I cannot answer all your questions. But some of them I would be delighted to answer! I am not from your planet Earth. I live in the realm of the teeth, that no human could ever hope to see. In my realm, I plant your teeth like seeds in my garden, and from the seeds grow trees with money on them! Also, I have never lost a tooth myself. That is one of the reasons why I find teeth so interesting. How big am I? I've never actually measured myself, so I don't know for sure. Lets just say that I am big enough to lift your head from your pillow, but small enough to fly out your bedroom, window (and yes of course I can fly!) Thank You again for your letter, Scaffy. Enjoy spending your money!
Love,
The Tooth Fairy

How's that for epic? :D

Saints Bound for Heaven - Mormon Tabernacle Choir - Nauvoo Temple

2011-01-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

I just love how much I'm posting lately!!!

2011-01-27T20:51:00.000-08:00

It's still not much, but I'm keeping up with my wish (NOT my resolution because those are dumb). So that is good.

*I went to Wal-Mart with Mom the other day. I love going to Wal-mart with my mom, because I frequently end up getting some little goody out of it that I just love. This time it was a purple pen. A wonderful, smooth-grip, PURPLE pen! Do you have any idea how much more I write when I have a purple pen to write with? I tell you, it's incredible. I'm working on a fanfiction right now. Hunger Games, of course, and I'm really enjoying it. Once I finish I will be putting it up on hungergamesfanfiction.com, because YES, that is a real website dedicated solely to Hunger Games Fan Fics, and that is amazing and so I must post it there, under my same pen name, Migillicutty. But first I have to finish the thing. And before I do that I have to stop note-taking and write more then the first chapter. Hmmm.....

I have a kinda problem with note-taking. Well, not a problem, because it's very helpful, but I can't write more than a few snippets of a book without around 30 pages of plotline, calendars, research, brainstorms, and a rather large summary. Does anyone else share this quirk?

*Finals went great. I got an A in Geometry :) :)

*Kira and I are fighting. I hate it. I'm not the kind of girl who does well with drama, which really only makes it worse because I kinda don't do anything, it makes it seem like I don't care that we're not speaking, but I do and I hate it. I'm trying to just ignore the whole thing and hope it will go away, because that's worked in the past, but what if it doesn't this time? What if she thinks I don't want to be friends anymore? Cuz I really want to be friends again, but I just have a bad way of showing it.

Stupid teenage girl drama. I thought I left that behind in 7th grade.

*I have more John Williams than Taylor Swift on my iPod. What does that say about me?

*I'M OUT OF STUPID FREAKING FRESHMAN STUDIES!!!!! WOOHOO!!!! The problem is, now I have Health taking it's place. Any class that takes me far away from that she-man that used to be my teacher is a good class, but Health is so.... redundant. Now instead of pretending to teach me useless stuff, they are actually trying to teach me useless stuff. Well, it's not really useless, but it is to me, because I have Church for my 'Health' needs, you know? I have church leaders to tell be not do do drugs, sex, alcohol, or tobacco, to make good friends, respect your parents, be responsible, etc. etc. etc. I've been hearing this stuff since I was old enough to walk. So nothing that they teach me in Health is new, and it's frustrating to have them tell me only HALF the truth, as well. If your going to tell teenagers to practice abstinence, you should tell them not to have sex until they are married, not just 'until they are emotionally ready'. Teenagers obviously have no idea what 'emotionally ready' is!
It's so stupid, pointless, agonizing to hear teachers (who never lived my standards and might not have lived or believed the ones the are teaching) try to tell me only half the truth. I know the truth, and the truth is that you should be married first. But all the other kids in my class are not getting that.

And on the other side of the coin, I'm sick and tired of ALL these lectures. I wish I could just hit a button or check a box that says 'Yes. Ok. I get it. No problem, Good job, your lectures got through to me and I'm never going to smoke cigarettes or anything else. You achieved your goal, ok? So STOP GIVING ME THE SAME LECTURE OVER AND OVER AGAIN!!! I passed that test and I don't need to hear it anymore!!! Can we move on to something that I am struggling with?'

*Well, enough of my ranting. This weekend at one of the convention centers, a HUUUUGE group of Mens Choirs are getting together and doing one of the biggest mass choir concerts EVER. There are choirs coming from all over the world. And since they are in town for this thing, a New Zealand College/High School Men's Choir came to sing at LVA today.

Men's Choirs.

They are God's gift to women, ok? And this isn't any old Men's Choir, this is a NEW ZEALAND Men's Choir!!! Do you have any idea how cute New Zealand tenors are???

Pretty freaking cute.

Unfortunately, I was in another class at the time they were preforming. Fortunately my class was right next door. Even more fortunately, if you walk down the hall towards the bathroom you can look through the window in their door, and just drool all over the place. All the girls spend the whole class taking it in turns to 'go to the bathroom' and stare at all the cute (waaaay cute!) New Zealand guys. (And they had UNIFORMS!! Oh my gosh, those uniforms were to die for) It was pretty funny, because as soon as one girl came back from 'the bathroom', three other girls would jump up and race each other to the hall pass :) And no, the teacher wasn't completely oblivious, but he just figured we'd all ate something funny for lunch.

Heh heh heh. :D

*I had a pretty good day today :)

I stand corrected.

2011-01-17T18:14:00.000-08:00

Ok, fine. The handbells thing actually was kinda fun. It was pretty much just like the Arizona choir trip I went on back in March, (which I hated at the time but which I loved as soon as it was over) except for handbells instead of choir. The director was good- he talked a lot about they different attitude you need to have for each piece and the way you have to move your whole body to get a good sound. Stuff that applies to singing just as much as handbells and is really, reeeely important.
and I sound like a complete nerd right now, but that's ok.

I had SOOO much fun today! Jessica's mom drove me, Jess, Kira and Katey (another friend, well she's not really my friend but she's Jessica's) up to Mount Charleston and we played in the snow. It was lots of fun, except that there were about a million people there and then Kira got kinda sick (not really sick it turns out, just dehydrated) so we left pretty quickly. But it was fun anyways! And then afterward we went to Kira's house and watched Flipped. Oh my Gosh that was SUCH a cute movie! I loved it :)

I have Midterms starting tomorrow. I'm not excited about that, I'm not that worried about them but I am a little worried about my Geometry test. Well, wish me luck!

-Migillicutty :)

Friday Afternoon/Night

2011-01-14T20:58:00.000-08:00

One of the few times in the week when I actually have time to blog.

The Super-Awesome Choir is starting up again. We were asked to sing for a pharmaceutical convention (whatever the hack a pharmaceutical convention is) this past Tuesday. We sang "I Hope You Dance" with different words. I think we did good, but it was most definitely NOT our best performance ever. I don't know if you guys know this or not, but its a lot harder to sing a song in an ensemble when it was written to be sung by a soloist. But we still sounded good, I think.
My favorite part however was that it took us out of school! I still had to get up and go in the morning, but I got picked up after seminary, which was awesome. And it meant I got to miss Freshman studies, which is the stupidest class in the world, and Geometry, which is the second stupidest. So that was good.

It's almost the end of the semester. Do you know what that means? It means I'm HALFWAY through my freshman year!

And that I have midterms next week. Ugh. I'm not that worried about the tests themselves, but I hate all the stress.

Speaking of Midterms and Stress, I did my Choir Jury today. For anybody who doesn't know, a Jury is like a musical performance exam. You pick out a fancy-schmancy piece that showcases your abilities and you memorize it and perform it in front of a panel of judges.

I'm not sure if I blogged about my Orchestra Jury. It was suuuuper suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper stressful, and basically ruled my life for the first half of December. Which is why I didn't blog during that time. But I did end up doing pretty good on mine- I got a 90, which I'm quite happy with.

Choir Jurys are less stressful, but still a big enough part of my grade to be worrisome. I did a duet with a friend from Super-Awesome Choir. Not to diss her or anything, but I'm SOOOO never doing a duet again, Not only do you have to worry about your performance, you have to worry about somebody else's performance. Not fun, Not necessary, Not doing it again.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Handbells 12th Night Festival. 8 to 5:45 Saturday, 12:30 to 5:30 Sunday. SERIOUSLY!!!
I will not be there on Sunday because I don't think it counts as keeping the Sabbath day. I will only be there for the ALL-FREAKING-DAY rehearsal tomorrow. Apperently some people have no lives at all, so they spend all their freaking time playing handbells! I mean, I've spent more time then that in a weekends worth or Choir rehearsals, but this is different! Especially since I'm not even going to be at the freaking performance.
I know there are people out there who care enough to go on a choir trip where they have 8 t0 5 rehearsal days. But choir is the kind of thing that you could really REALLY enjoy doing, and maybe make a career out of it. But who ever heard of somebody making a career out of handbells?

That's pretty much all I have to say, but I don't want to end on a negative note so I'll share my after school snack today:

Take a Graham Cracker. Cover with Chocolate Frosting. Stick Pretzels in the frosting. Stick M&Ms in all the spaces not occupied by pretzels. Eat. Bask in the deliciousness of it all as you try not to remember how many of these you've already eaten this week.

-Migillicutty :)

2011-01-07T18:08:00.000-08:00

This is Migillicutty's Mom. I've hijacked her post to answer a question someone asked about her education. At first I was just going to answer her directly, but I thought if I did it here we would have a more permanent record, and the person who asked could ignore it if it was more information than she really wanted and she could get a glimpse in to who Migillicutty is. So with all of those good reasons, here is.....

The Story of Migillicutty's Education 3-9th grade.

I really do believe that every child is different and so is every parent and every family, so there's not a formula for how to educate children. I'm going to share what we've done with Migillicutty and why. I think there are some good lessons to be learned. But I'm not saying that this is the way anyone else should do it.

Migillicutty first home schooled in 3rd grade. She had spent the entire summer between 2nd & 3rd grade reading every book the Clark County library system had on Greek Mythology and at one point she told me that she couldn't wait until she was old enough to learn Greek so she could read the Odyssey in it's original. I noticed that when she went back to school it kind of seemed to be getting in the way of her learning. At home she was constantly asking questions and reading everything she could get her hands on, but when she had to be at school all day and then do homework at night there was a lot less time for all of that.

We were moving at the end of October and she wasn't really excited about being "the new kid" so we decided it would be a good opportunity to try home schooling. I bought a Calvert 3rd grade curriculum and we followed it, some, but not super faithfully....

....pause for funny story that sums up Migillicutty very well. The first day we opened the science book to the first page which talked about Robert Ballard and some of the work he had done on Mars exploration. Migillicutty said "oh wow, Robert Ballard! He discovered the Titanic!"

"Oh, I didn't know that, " I responded.

"And you know what's cool?" she went on, "the ship he was on when he found it was called The Argo."

"Huh?.....Why is that cool?"

"You know? Jason and the Argonauts?"

No, I didn't know. She's been the one to answer the younger boys questions about science, weather etc. since she was 7 or 8. And so it was hard to feel super motivated about teaching a child who clearly was doing a fine job of educating herself.

We joined some home school groups that did field trips and park days and there was a girls book club that studied the American Girls books and of course there was church and activity days. And in Nevada you can participate in up to three hours of classes at your local public school even when you're home schooled, so she went to the gifted education class twice a week at school. She was definitely not socially isolated. (Home school parents are always defensive about the socialization criticism since the home school opponents beat that drum so loud.)

The next year we enrolled her in a charter school where she did all her work at home (mostly on the computer) and she had a teacher come once a week to our house to make assignments. This was nice because it gave a little more accountability and relieved some of the guilt I felt when we didn't do everything we were "supposed" to do the year before. And she was able to work at her own pace so she finished up 4rth grade at the end of March. I was hoping that the teacher would let her study what she wanted for the rest of the year. I thought they could come up with ideas for assignments together and then the teacher could just check on them the next week and help her come up with a new one. But she said if she stayed enrolled she would have to move on to the next grade and keep to the traditional curriculum. So we just pulled her out of school all together and let her do her own thing for the rest of the year.

My sister in law who has had kids home school and private school and charter school etc told me once in July that she had no idea what her kids were going to do for school the next year. She said "I haven't asked yet." She said she wasn't ready for the answer yet and so she hadn't prayed yet. In August she prayed and it turned out she found a great charter school that she wouldn't have been able to get any info about in July. I've sort of used that as a model for how I've decided about my kids education. Each year in the summer I pray about what they are going to do for the next year.

And the summer before fifth grade I prayed about it and felt like it was time for Migillicutty to go back to public school for a year. Fifth grade is the last year of elementary in Las Vegas and I am not a fan of public middle school. So I felt like it was the kind of the last chance for her to have good elementary school experiences for a while. It was OK. She didn't learn much academically, but it was good to be reminded what it's like to be in a classroom setting and fulfill assignments on time and have homework, etc.

At the end of the year I asked her teacher if she thought there was any point in Migillicutty going to 6th grade, academically speaking. "Oh no, she's not going to learn anything she doesn't already know." But for some reason, I can't honestly remember why, we didn't want to home school and I certainly didn't want to drop her right into the middle of middle school by skipping her to 7th grade public school, so instead we sent her to a small LDS private school.

There were some really good teachers there that she enjoyed and others that were not so good. She made a couple of really good friends, was mostly ignored by the cool kids and cried when the kids all picked on one boy who was mildly retarded. It wasn't a completely typical middle school experience, but at least she got the hang of changing classes and opening a locker and got some exposure to what kids that age are like-without over exposure. And one year was enough.

The next year she took a sabbatical. She was academically ready for High School but we definitely didn't want her to be any further ahead so she spent the year studying the Irish Potato Famine, how to remove cyanide from peach seeds to make almond extract, learning Greek online, etc.... and studied on her own. I was determined at the beginning to make her do certain things, but without any accountability at all I didn't stick to it very well. We bought a Saxon Math Algebra curriculum and she worked on that. She also took piano and cello lessons, she went to school for choir and orchestra and she was in another choir outside of school. And she studied and made power points and wrote a blog and a very short historical fiction novel just for fun.

And socially she really blossomed. One of the nice things about home schooling for Migiligutty was that she could be as nerdy and intellectual as she wanted at home and then when she was at church or choir or sports she could fit in the the other kids. They know she's smart, but they don't really see it the way they do when she's in class with them, so they can accept her as a normal kid instead of an egg-head.

This year she is in a magnet school for the performing arts and it's the first time she's really loved school. She's in all honors classes and every kid at the school had to audition to get in, so finally she's with other kids that are more like her. She's not sitting in class listening to behavior lectures she's actually learning. And as I said she's at the top of all her classes.

So I'm really happy with the way things have worked out. And I think the key was making that personal evaluation every year of what her greatest needs were. If she had never been to "real" school at all I know I couldn't have provided the structure she needed to be able to transition back into public school this year. Some people could, but I couldn't. However if she had gone to school entirely and never had any "at home" years, she might possibly have lost all of her love for learning. Or maybe not, but she certainly wouldn't have had as much time to pursue it.

And of course, once again, on the social issue, not all socialization is good socialization. In fact a very large part of it-especially in middle school-is negative. Kids learn to adjust and cope, but not always in positive ways. Some kids do just fine, but a lot could probably benefit from a year or two out of school so they can realize that social scene is not really what life is all about.

I want to say Happy new Year on New Years, so... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

2011-01-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

I would make a resolution to blog more, but I don't like New Years resolutions because they set you up for failure and I don't like setting myself up for failure and I don't see anyway that making that particular resolution would NOT set me up for failure.

So Yeah.

I really would like to get back into the habit of blogging, though. Just for the record.

I went and saw the Tourist today. I was good... sorta. I'm really glad they didn't make it all naughty because they totally could have- but they didn't. And in the world today, that says something. But the last scene... what???? No. Fail.
And that's pretty much all I can say on that note.

I'm glad I went to see it, though, because I went with one of my best friend that I hardly ever get to see anymore. She got me a late Birthday present and guess what it was? A Justin Beiber magazine and Sharpies to deface it with (by the way... how in the heck do they manage to sell a 100-odd page magazine of 100-odd pictures of the same really bad singer???) and LIGHTSABER LIP-GLOSS!!! It's pretty epic. :) :) :)

So that was my 1/1/11.

Yesterday was my first dance. My church hosts dances once a month or so, but you have to be fourteen to attend, so my first one was the New Years Eve dance, which is kind of a big deal. It was a lot of fun, but there were a whole LOT of kids hopping up and down and waving their arms around and whatnot, so it got really really hot in that room! I actually knew a couple of the songs (whoopee!) so that was good...I discovered its a lot easier to dance when you know the song you're dancing to. Most of the dances were solo or square-dance style, but they had a couple slow dances, too. Like literally a couple. Two. I only danced one of them, but he was like a head shorter than me so it was kinda awkward.

So that was my New Years Eve.

My Christmas was spent at my Grandma's house in Utah. We have this family tradition where all the girls come over to Grandma's and we make Gingerbread Houses. They get really fancy sometimes and it's a lot of fun!

Christmas was, of course, excellent. I'm not going to list all the things I got because I think that would be inconsiderate to my readers who probably don't care and plus it's a pain in the neck to me, but suffice it to say Christmas was excellent and I love my family very much.

We went home the day after Christmas, and guess what happened when we arrived? It was really extremely cool. Dad always locks the garage door when we leave town so you can't go in through the garage. So they sent Thelly through the front door to open up the garage. But apparently he needed help or something so they sent me in- and Santa left us all brand-new bikes in the hallway!! It was so much fun, running back to the car and grabbing Scaffy and Monkey and seeing the looks on their faces. Surprise Christmas gifts are by far the best, I think.

So that was my Christmas.

Three days after Christmas was my Birthday. It was kind of laid back: I'm not the type of person who gets all excited over Birthdays. My main interest in them is gaining privileges like going to Dances. But my family kind of wanted to make a special day out of it, so my brothers all did my Chores for me before I woke up. That was really sweet of them, I think. They also all bought me gum (and they have perfect timing- I was running out :) and Mom knitted me an AWESOME pair of fingerless gloves (they're probably going to join my Awesome Twilight-Dissing Jacket as one of my favorite articles of clothing) and I got the boots I've had my eye on for a while.

So that was my Birthday.

Happy New Year everybody! :)

Merry Christmas, everybody. Sorry I'm late.

2010-12-26T21:52:00.000-08:00

Because I said I would

2010-12-13T21:03:00.000-08:00

Thelly, Scaffy and Me when I wore glasses.

Who had a good Thanksgiving??

2010-11-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

I did!!

I've gone on Blogger like every day for the past week, but I never post anything. That's kinda sad. So I'm posting.

Thanksgiving was So. Much. Fun! The day before, in seminary, instead of having a real lesson we all named some things we are thankful for (regular things like curling irons and pizza, not gospel things- those are a given) until we filled the whole whiteboard. Then we had to take turn erasing one thing we thought we could live without from the board. It was meant to show how blessed we are and how much we could live without if we had to.

The problem is, person 1 erased something person 2 really liked, so to get even person 2 erased whatever person 1 wrote down. It was pretty funny but kinda stupid at the same time. At one point we had erased 'rain', but gum and hair accessories were still on the board.

Apparently when you live in the desert for long enough without rain, you get to thinking its not really necessary.

And then on Thanksgiving, I slept waaay in, played with my cousins and watched the parade, and then ALL the family came over and we feasted.

I forgot to save room for the pie. I always do. It's not a big deal though, because we have PIE NIGHT every year anyways. what is PIE NIGHT, you ask? Welllll..... you know how every year, I forget to save room for the pie? You get so full from all the food, you can only have that one little slice of pumpkin? Well, my friends, that is a waste of perfectly good pie. So in my family, we eat the night the night before, on Wednesday and have the leftovers on Thursday.

This year we couldn't have it on Wednesday, unfortunately, but its ok because we had it on Friday night instead. YAY FOR PIE NIGHT!!!!

Oh, and by the way, Elf is one of the bestest movies ever. Just so you know.

I carved a Mockingjay Pumpkin for Halloween

2010-11-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

It was epic.

Then we had my aunt's (you remember- the one who throws amazing parties?) annual Halloween party on the 1st- I went as a Jedi again. Yeah, it turns out I've gotten a lot wider since last year... I barely fit into the costume. I'm gonna need a new belt soon... I HATE getting bigger! I know I have an excuse because I'm still getting taller but it makes me feel so gross when I weigh more than all my friends.

sigh. It felt good to get that out. Thanks.

So all my cousins wrapped me up in toilet paper like a mummy at the Halloween party, it was SOO much fun! I should try to find the picture... Here it is! Cute, huh?

So what else do I have to say....?

GUESS WHAT!!!! I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO CHRISTMAS MUSIC ON PANDORA AND IT JUST TOLD ME THAT COLD STONE HAS- WAIT FOR IT- ICE CREAM PIES!!!!
Only in America I guess... but MAN, that sounds good!

Ok, so who want to hear about my Geometry 'adventure'?
So on Monday we took this big start of quarter test- the first grade that goes in for this quarter. So its kind of a big deal. And when I went into class the next time the grades were posted on the door: I got a 62%

Now let me just say for the record that I am a straight- A student and I've never failed a test in my life. So after class I went to talk to the teacher to see how I could've gotten such a bad grade. So we went over the test- and yeah, I missed some questions, but not SIXTY-TWO percent of them! So we went over it in more detail and found a couple questions that got marked of that shouldn't have been. So my teacher recalculated my original score to she could add the points that shouldn't have been marked off- and guess what my original score was! 82%!!!! and when she added the other points it was 83%! I don't know how she confused 82 with 62, but I'm SOOOOOO glad I talked to my teacher instead of letting such a bad- and inaccurate- score stand in for such an important test.

And that's all.

I'm not dead.... I just have no life.

2010-10-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

I think that's a very clever title, by the way :)

So..... basically I go to a college-style High school where I get to spend three hours a day making music. I love it.

Additionally, it's the end of the quarter, so that means performances, peer reviews, and final grades stress. UGH!! I really REALLY like my school, though. I'm so not going back to normal school.

It's almost Halloween already. I find that bizarre. Kira and Jessica and Loren and I are doing matching costumes this year: Plain black T-shirts, long jeans, and MASKS!! They're super pretty- masquerade ball- style masks, I love them to death.

I had my first concert at LVA on Wednesday. It was really cool. Since I'm a freshman, I'm in the beginning choir, but its still really good. The other choirs, of course, are simply amazing!!! Even if I wasn't preforming, I would want to come to hear them sing.
I have my second concert at LVA this Wednesday. This one is for Orchestra. Since I'm a freshman, I'm in the beginning orchestra. We suck. Well, no we don't really SUCK, but I think the advanced Orchestra at my old middle school was better. The other Orchestras are also not that amazing- except for the most advanced one. They are AHHHHMAZING!!

I'm tired. I frequently am. Good night.

Elder Jeffery R. Holland- Safety for the Soul.

2010-10-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

Amen.

It's the last day of the month

2010-09-30T15:26:00.001-07:00

And I like to post on the last day, to bring my count for that month up. So here we go:

*My ward Young men/Young Women went on our Annual Lake Mead Trip last Saturday. It was SO. MUCH. FUN!!! We spent the whole day out on the lake, and went wake boarding and water-skiing and tubing (I only went tubing but it was still fun!) and stuff like that. And when we finished doing all that, we sat around and made mud pies for hours. I think its funny that a whole bunch of teenagers spent more time playing with mud then wake boarding.

*We buried one of the boys in mud. Oh my gosh, SO FUNNY!! We gave him a pillow made out of mud and then picked up a million handfuls of the stuff and covered him in mud. We made him a mermaid, complete with a seashell bra.

He was really good about it :)

*We also, on this fabulous Lake Trip, got reeeeeeeeeely sunburned. The next day at church you could immediately tell who had been on the trip and who hadn't by the redness (or lack of redness) on their skin.
Now, I have a... bad habit, if you will, of forgetting to put sunblock on and getting reeeeeely sunburned. So my parents kinda get mad at me when I come home all burned. this time, however, I DID, in fact, remember to put sunblock on, not just once but TWICE!! And then one OTHER time, when I put it on in the car because my face hurt so bad from my sunburn and I thought it would help. So CLEARLY, it's not my fault that I came home the color of a bright red bouncy ball. WHY, THEN, did I get so sunburned??!!? I'll tell you why...

*The boat ran out of gas. So we sat out on the lake for a loooong time. I didn't actually mid, though, because I got to spent the whole time listen to my Young Women's leader deciding who the were going to eat first. It was pretty funny.

*I've changed my mind. My Music App teacher who is now my handbell teacher) is nothing less than the greatest teacher on the face of this earth. The end.

*GENERAL CONFERENCE IS COMING!!!! YAY!!!

*And now, I need to go make dinner. I've been doing this all week, and I'll do it all next week too. My mom thinks I'm an angel.

Bye, guys. :)

What's Been Happening At School Lately

2010-09-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

To....much....school..... I love LVA, I love my classes and the school and some of my teachers, but I HATE being gone from 6 to 5 every. single. day. It sucks.

Sooo anyways......

I got my schedule changed at school this week. I'm in completely different classes then I was in the first two weeks of school. So that kinda sucks. But it was a good change. Apparently, I didn't have to have my P.E. credits finished in order to change classes, so there was actually no point in my original schedule, but whatever. I dropped P.E. and Music Appreciation- UGH! Music App!! The teacher is about 82 years old (he looks like he's about to fall over dead in the middle of class (like my Grandma almost did!) ) and he has this super-quiet old person voice. And he stands up at the front of the room and tells up that when we start this class he assumes that we know absolutely nothing about music.
Let me remind you that this school is dedicated to the MUSICAL ARTS- ok, and theater and visual arts. But WHY would you take a music appreciation class in you were a tech theater major? YOU WOULDN'T! THERE'S NO REASON WHATSOEVER!!!
So we spent the whole class bored to death while this ancient teacher stand at the front of the room and tell us the difference between a whole step and a half step. Ugh.

So I dropped that class and took handbells instead, which I love. I also took on orchestra instead of P.E. (Yay!) and I got different Biology and Geometry teachers who are waay better (or at least nicer) than my old ones.

So that's What's Been Happening At School Lately. :) :) :)

Wait..... A blog? I have a blog? What's that?

2010-09-04T22:47:00.001-07:00

WOW..... real school makes me really busy. I have some very important new to share with you all:

I HAVE A FREAKING CELL PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No lie!!!!! I have one!!! I'm SOOOOOOO HAPPIE!!!!

(I do have to pay for the service, which kinda sucks but its SO worth it to me right now) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Also:

*I read and finished Mockingjay the same day it came out and it was incredible. Of course. But I'm not gonna say anything that could be a spoiler cuz Mom's still reading it (she's so slow!)

*I went to High School. Yah. It was actually not super terrifying, I only got lost a few times, and I LOVE that they let you chew gum in school!!! SRSLY!!! Its a good school.

*I missed both Thelly's and Monkeys B-day posts while I was on vacation and preparing for school to start. :( I'm gonna havta go back a put their posts up, but I still want to tell them both HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY!!!!

*They combined their parties and had a huge Birthday/End of Summer family party and our whole neighborhood came and it was lost of fun. we srsly bought this big badminton set with a net and everything and set it up (actually I set it up all by myself, and it was hard, too) and it was too windy to use that day but its been a lot of fun since then.

*I left the party early because the Super Awesome Choir had a performance for a benefit concert, but I couldn't find my shirt so I had to wear Thelly's shirt that's pretty close and so I kinda looked like a dork at that thing. it was sorta kinda fun, but most of the other groups they got to sing were awful!

*Ummm.... oh yeah! Last Wednesday for mutual we had a modesty fashion show, but it was waaaay more fun that a typical modesty fashion show because we actually went to target and picked out the cutest outfits we could find and modeled them! I need to go back and buy mine... or at least those boots.

So that's whats been going on lately. I'm a lot more busy than I've pretty much ever been in my life before, but I'll try to keep posting on weekends at least. Bye!

What variation of 'I have returned to the place of my dwelling' have I not written yet?

2010-08-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

So I have returned to the place of my dwelling. Vacation was fun. Really fun. Hangng out with my family, and also my extended family, was fun. But I don't wanna write about it for some reason.... I have better thins to write about.

Like this: I GOT MY HAIR CUT!!!!! I like it, but it's waaay shorter then I meant to go... like, 2 or 3 inches shorter. Behold:
So yeah, I like it, even though it's short. But BTW, my hair isn't really that dark! It's still (a little) bond(ish)....
And also, pay no attention to the little brothers in the background, please.

Ok, guess what I'm doing tonight? I'M GETTING MOCKINGJAY!!!!!! I ended up never pre-ordering it, so I'm going to get it with Jessica tonight!! TONIGHT!!!!! I'm so excited!!!!!!

Well, I'm leaving today

2010-08-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

Goin on vacation (for real this time. :) It's gonna be sooooooo much fun! But I kinda wanna write a good post before I leave, so.....

*Swim team is over. I liked it, but only half as much as I did last year. Out of the three competitions, I only went to one. I just think that's silly, somehow...

*All (well, ok, 3/4) my dad's family came down a while ago for my cousins baptism. I have exactly one cousin on either side of the family who is my age and gender, so when she comes over I'm really HAPPY! about it. So we went to Savers (hey, don't judge! savers has good stuff sometimes!) and tried on all the ridiculously fancy dresses and then the grandma earrings and then we just wandered around and looked at all the cool books and figurine-thingies and Dad got this really cool ice cream maker THAT ACTUALLY MAKES ICE CREAM INSTEAD OF MILKSHAKES!!!!

It's AWESOMELY AWESOME!!! And the ice cream ins gooood, too. :) :) :) Me and Kira (who has a blog now!!! Lookit!) tried to make some last night, but we didn't really know what we were doing so we just came up with a big pile of melted ice cream..... yeah. It still tasted good, though.

* I dunno if I said this already, but I'm learning how to draw. I found some tutorials online and some drawing books and some artists work to look at and BANG! I'm drawing!! I'm not really good or anything, but it's lotsa fun and I can look at my stuff without wanting to rip it up so I'm happy :)

*MATH IS DOOOOOOONE!!!! I have completed my algebra home school course and now I can go on the computer WHENEVER I WANT!!!!!

WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!

"Thelly, is this your spoon or my spoon?"

2010-08-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

"Dad, that's a fork."

The last day of Girl's Camp

2010-08-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Journal entry 5- 7/24/10

Wow, I can't believe camp is actually over... it was a wonderful week. I never got the chance to write yesterday, so I'll do it today instead.We got ready to leave the cabin as soon as we got up on Friday morning. I left early with the Bishop, Katy, Jessica and Taylar to set up for REPELLING! I actually like that now! :) The first repel was really small, like 20 feet. I was one of the first people down, and after Jessica and Kira came down we talked about Hunger Games stuff for, like, an hour (yes, I am totally obsessed with those books).

We didn't have enough harnesses and other gear for everyone, s we had to keep switching off stuff, which was kinda annoying. And it took FOREVER, like, at least a whole hour to get everybody down the 20-ft repel... Then we walked a little ways down to the second repel, which was MUCH bigger, 80-something feet, and thus, pretty scary. It was actually really easy and kinda fun. it took another hour to get down that one, cuz we still had to pass our gear back up, and then one of the girls (I'm not even going to give her a fake name) had this massive panic attack. She got on the rope and had this huuuuge melt down, sobbing and crying and refusing to go down. The leaders tried for a hour to coax her down, but eventually gave up and someone took her back out to the cars.

After that there weren't any more big repels, just little boulder hops that I LOVED. There were a couple of tense moments, though, like when it started raining and we worried about a flash flood (hey, we were at the bottom of this big canyon!) and when we passed some other hikers who were really creepy and- oh yeah! when I nearly broke my skull open!

It was after the first repel, when me and Jessica and Kira were sitting around waiting and we were about to go down to the second repel, and so i stood up to get of the big rock I had been sitting on, and went to step back onto this smaller rock, but i missed the rock and fell backwards and flew back and banged my head- hard- on the canyon wall. If I hadn't been wearing my helmet (which I had just put back on a minute before) I would've blacked out, and maybe worse... Yeah, it was scary, and I was freaked out, but after that I was kinda the center of attention, and everybody kept telling me how lucky I was and that was kinda fun :)

Anyways, the rest of the repelling trip was easy, although it took, like four hours, and climbing back out of the canyon was hard. And then when we made it back to where we parked the cars and got ready to leave, one of the leaders cars got stuck on this BIIIIIIG rock, and it took them another hour to unstick it, so what should've been a four hour repelling trip took us 8 hours! So we didn't get to go to the Pizza Factory like we planned, cuz it was too late, but we did stop at Wendy's and that was fun.

We didn't end up getting home till midnight, and when i finally rolled into bed, I couldn't sleep, because my bed felt funny cuz I'd been sleeping on the floor all week. So I rolled of onto the floor and was asleep, like, instantly.

And so ended my second year of Girl's Camp.

Day Four of Girl's Camp

2010-08-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

Journal entry 4- 7/22/10

Sooooo..... Today we had lots of free time after breakfast, so I made lotsa more ribbon flowers (I never got around to that pic, did I?) :) and then we had our 'service project'. To thank the people who let us use their cabin all week we took all this split wood and brought it up to the upper floor, where the fire place is. We did it in this bucket brigade like system :And we passed about a million pieces of wood up those stairs. We talked and laughed and sang hymns and campfire songs and 'The Sound of Music' and generally had a good time.

After that were our skits. See, they split us all into groups and assigned us a song, and we had to make up a skit to preform to that song. My group had 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' and if you've every listened to that song all the way through, you know that's it really REALLY long and doesn't say a whole lot. So consequentially, our skit was really long and boring, and we didn't do a whole lot. Whatever, other groups were lotsa fun to watch...

And then we had Solo Time and I read Doctrine and Covenants Section 129 (if you're not Mormon and have no idea what I'm talking about, go here) where I learned that apparently you can shake hands with an angel. Cool, right?

We had MORE free time after that, :) and SO Jessica and Kira and a first year named Taylar who's really nice went out into the woods and we saw this really cool herd or deer and when they ran away we just sat around a talked. And then after dinner the Stake Presidency came and we had testimony meeting and I cried my eyes out (and so did every one else-EXCEPT KIRA! She didn't cry last year either- I guess she has no soul or something...). And the testimonies were beautiful, and I could feel the Holy Ghost so strongly, and for the second time this week, I was safe from Satan's influence while we sat there...

And then the stake president (we have the BEST stake president!) got out his guitar and we sang more hymns and campfire songs and 'The Sound of Music songs... it was a really good night.

Girls Camp Day Three!

2010-08-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

Journal Entry 3- 7/21/10

Today was SO happy-making! I can't believe camp's already half way over, but at the same time I feel like I've been here for weeks. We backed up bag lunches after breakfast today and went FISHING! Nobody caught anything (wellll.... one of the leaders 'caught' a dead fish lying in the shallows), but it was a lot of fun anyways, and I got really good at casting. We had devotional after that- on Esther- and I could really feel the Spirit there, in this peaceful little clearing a few steps from the lakefront...

After we got back to the cabin we did rotations. they split us into 3 groups and we took turns going around to several craft stations. One was pedicures (complete with foot massage!), one was Mormon Scones (YUM!) and the best on was making ribbon- flowers. See, you take a bit of ribbon and cut it into 4 circles of descending size. Then you light a tea candle on fire and hold the ribbon over the flame. It kinda melts the edges of the ribbon and makes it look really pretty. Then you hot-glue all the ribbons together and add a fake jewel if you want and then you have your self a REALLY pretty hair tie decoration, or earring, or necklace decoration or whatever. I'll get a picture.

Then we had dinner, and after dinner was our 'Virtue Walk'.

That walk might just be my single most favorite part of Girl's Camp. Some ladies from our ward and some relatives of theirs dressed up as the women from our theme for the week (How Can I BEE Like... Eve, Mary, Esther, an Ammonite Mother, and a Pioneer Woman.) They told us the stories of the woman they represented... and they were SO compelling! Especially Esther.

See, normally, when someone is giving a spiritual kind of talk, my mind -gets bored, I guess- and shoots off in a million directions at once, which almost always prevents me from feeling the Spirit. But I don't think i had one random thought during Esther's talk. I was wholly and completely focused on her message, and I could really feel the Holy Ghost in that room, confirming the story. While she spoke, I was safe from and distractions or temptations Satan could try to throw at me. I was safe.

Eventually, of course, the spell broke. the meeting ended, and I got all hyper again having a spoon/lightsaber fight with Jessica. It was hilarious!

Then we had Solo Time and after that we Played GC games like 'Don't Smile!' 'Big Booty' 'What if...' ect. It was awesome!

Girl's Camp- Day 2- Extra Pictures

2010-08-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

Minute to Win It on Tuesday night. It was SO funny!

Pull all the Tissues Out of the Box...
Paper Dragon...
Elephant Panty-hose nose...

And Candy Elevator!

Girl's Camp- Day 2

2010-08-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

Journal Entry 2- 7/20/10

O-M-GEEE!!! Today was SO much fun! I fell like I've been at Girl's Camp for a whole week already :)

So after breakfast this morning we all geared up for this BIIIIIIIG hike- 5 miles (it felt like a lot more, though) of grueling heat up and down switchbacks through Red Canyon. The scenery, though, was absolutely beautiful.

See? I really enjoyed it. And when we got back to the cabin we had 'solo time' for, like , TWO hours! And it was awesome, even though most of it wasn't really solo. Me and my friends went out in the woods and talked and laughed and generally had a really good time :)

And then after we (FINALLY!) had dinner we all played Minute to Win It- Girl's Camp Edition :) It was SOOOOOO much fun! (Note: I'm gonna put in those pictures as a different post because I HATE trying to drag pictures down the whole long line of 'em)

AND THEN......

We took the 1st years SNIPE HINTING!!!!!! YESSS!!

We walked up this hill behind the cabin until we reached this big ol' stump -that was the meeting point. That was where Aubrey (she's a first year,actually, but she guessed about the snipes already so we let her in on it -more real that way, see?) was 'pulled' down the hill by this HUUUUGE angry snipe (7 feet tall, according to Aubrey) and then it 'grabbed' Katy too and so Aubrey managed to 'escape' and ran back up to us shouting stuff like 'Run! Before it gets you too!' and then Kira (the mastermind of this whole thing) said calmly and perfectly reasonably "Don't worry, we'll be fine as long as it's eyes don't start flashing green." So then Katy, who was hidden down in the bushes pushed the button on one of Jessica's big star-shaped flashing earrings. And guess what color they flashed?

Yup :)

The 1st years fell for it hook, line, and sinker! They screamed (actually everybody screamed, except for the few girls who doubled over laughing) and wee all ran down the hill so fast we left Jessica's earring behind (we went back for it later, though)! It was PERFECT! and then we had devotional and we to bed.

Tuesday was AWESOME!

Fist day of Girl's Camp

2010-08-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

Journal Entry 1- 7/19/10

So today was the first day of my second year of Girl's Camp. It's been....ok, so far. The drive up was fun. Jessica and Kira and I sang Taylor Swift and Wicked and laughed and talked about... stuff that would be really embarrassing to write down. After we got to the cabin where we'll stay all week, we pretty much sat around and waited for the leaders to finish unpacking. Then we ate dinner, and then they dragged us up for the 'Busy Bee Ball'. They go on and on about any and all things 'bee', but it's not as annoying as I thought it would be. I mean, 'BEE' :)
Anyways, the had this dance party. And they didn't play any songs that I knew-not one. And everybody was dancing and laughing and I wasn't -just wasn't in the mood, ok?- and so everybody kept trying to make me dance and whoop etc. and so after a while I figured out if I smiled and moved around a little they would leave me alone- thank gosh. I escaped as soon as I could, and then-when it was over- we had s'mores and devotional and then stayed up till 1 in the morning making fools of ourselves, as per tradition. :)

Ok, it was a good day.

Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jog

2010-07-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-15T13:31:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

Hey.

2010-07-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

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!

Come, Come Ye Saints.

2010-06-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Holy Freaking CRAP!!!

2010-06-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in soooooooooooooooo long... it's not even funny.

Now.... what to say?

This summer isn't nearly as good as last one, on account of all the homework I've been doing. There's all the algebra, of course, plus Aerobics three times a week and swimming. I'm supposed to be swimming 1/2 an hour FIVE freaking days a week- like that's gonna happen.

Despite this, I've actually had a social life (well, ok, not really, but I have friends, and I talk with them (frequently, even!) so that's a social life, right?) so I've had, like, no time. And the time I do have I've spent devouring these books:

They're pretty good, actually. The typical fantasy stuff that I just can't get enough of, you know, but good (actually I've only read the 1st one, but I've got the other two and I'll start the 2nd tomorrow. :) :)

I'm also hoping to get into audiobooks this summer. Keeps you free to use your hands, ya know? Except.... what do you do with your hands? I could clean my room or something lame like that, but I'm 13, you might as well ask me to fly to Mars instead of clean my room.

Maybe I'll go back to Knifty Knitting. That's fun. But I don't really have enough yarn.... hmm.

HEY GUESS WHAT!!!! I got a new bedspread. Up until Saturday night, I had the pink and white Princess thing I got when I was 4. Except, I'm THIRTEEN, so I couldn't use that, so I grabbed this hospital green quilt out of the linen closet and slept under that all winter. Now it's summer, so I don't really need a bedspread of comforter or quilt of any kind, but the fact remains that I still had the pink and white Princess thing I got when I was, like, FOUR!!! So I nagged and nagged and nagged Mom about it, and eventually she took me to get this:
Shut up, it's cute and I like it. :)

BTW, who's read the Maze Runner by James Dashner?

God Be With You Till We Meet Again

2010-06-13T19:50:00.001-07:00

Summer stuff.

2010-06-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

So it's been exactly a year since I started this blog. I think that's kinda cool. I should probably do a giveaway or something, but I have better things to spend my money on, ya know? Besides, I don't have anything to give away.

It's summer again (HUZZAH!) but I still have to do my math homework, so that really SUCKS!!! but it's still good not to go to school. Jessica had this big bonfire/swim party and she invited, like, EVERYBODY, and we burned all our home work. I couldn't think of a good excuse to 'accidentally' bring my math book and 'accidentally' drop it in the fire, so I still have it. The food was good (I've decided I like turkey hot dogs) and the music was good (She was this big speaker and karaoke system) and I swam for about 3 1/2 hours, so it was a lot of fun!

Counting the swim party, I've swam about 5 times in the past week. I'm gonna have the worst swimmers ear by the end of the summer... but it's so worth it. I love swimming. Las Vegas is excellent for swimming in the summer, but it's SOOOO hot! And of course, Jessica and Kira and Loren (have I told you about Loren? She's awesome) are already all tan and everything... I swear, I'm not gonna be the whitest one at this year's young women's swim parties, even if it kills me. Of course, I have no chance of beating Kira or Loren, but Jessica I can beat (no offence to her).

The problem is, I can't tan. I can burn, no problem, but then I just go white again. Sheesh.

So Alison Wonderland and her daughter Goldilocks are here this week! That's really fun. We've been doing lots of reading and TV watching and perler-beading and all that fun stuff.... :)

And so now I'm totally out of thing to write, but Mom is standing there just waiting for me to finish so she can drag me off to do more math (Sheesh! Can't a girl catch a break?) so what else can I say?

We had a marathon clean of the counter-tops in the butler's pantry today. UGH! But it's really nice to be able to see the counters not pile 6 inches deep in papers and pens and scriptures and crap. And it was satisfying to get it all done. And now mom's gone, and I'm gonna go swim.
BYE BYE!!

More Chicago Pics :)

2010-06-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

Goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo... :)

Lions!

Tigers!

Bears! (Oh my...)

This random metal couch the had over by the Navy Pier.... It was hard!

One last Sears Tower picture... My feet and Mom's feet and two random people's feet standing in this glass box that hangs about 1000 feet over a busy Chicago street. YIKES!

See? I really am a human being! (And I love those happy face earrings!)

One of the alpaca had a mohawk. SRSLY, it looked so funny!

A wildabeast scratching his butt. He looke like he's getting ready to charge an innocent bystander or something, but really he was just scratching his butt.

Me and my bestest Chicago buddy :)

That's all for now! See ya.....

Just a cool picture I edited.

2010-06-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, for the record, I DID NOT MAKE THIS!!!!! I only found it on adonihs.deviantart.com. I changed the color of the background and her eyes. I just thought it was a cool picture. THen I edited it and made this:
Cool, huh? :)

For Memorial Day

2010-05-31T17:19:00.000-07:00

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD

Press Forward, Saints.

2010-05-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

On Friday after school Jessica (she changed her name again) and I went to the Floyd Lamb state park. It's this big park covered in bike paths and a buncha small lakes, it's soooo much fun. And the bathrooms aren't horrible, either. We went rollerblading for hours and I only fell one, but Jessica got her knees all messed up... and I told the the 74th Annual Hunger Games, which apparently I know by heart. I got right up to the middle of the feast before we had to go home, so now Jessica's dying to hear the rest.

I don't think I'm going to tell her, I'll think I'll make her read it for her self.

(Mwah-ha-ah-ha.)

The Stake Youth Choir which Jessica and I are part of sang for seminary graduation today. It was really boring, but the brownies after ward were good!

Yesterday Mom and I went on our annual (actually it's probably closer to bi-annual, but don't tell Dad that) super-mega shopping spree at (Dun Dun Dunh!) Savers.

The thrift store.

I know.

But we came home with 4 1/2 HUGE bags full of clothes and shoes (TONS of shoes!) and swimsuits and earrings and cute hats and flip flops and cute shirts and capri pants... total $259.72- with a 20% discount! But now we have all the clothes we need for the next year... it was a lot of fun.

:contented sigh:

And tomorrow we (Jessica and I, obviously) are riding my parent's tandem bike in the stake fun run/bike/walk/scooter/stroller/whatever, and that's gonna be lots of fun, and then the day after that is the last day of school!

What's new with you guys? :)

Ok. Finally.

2010-05-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

So I have waaaaaaay too many pictures from Chicago to add an explanation to each one, and blogger is really bad with pictures, so I'm just gonna put these up randomly. In several installments. Enjoy.
The Sears Tower (I don't care what they call it, it's still the sears tower!)
Chicago from the 103 floor of the Sears Tower.

A lego model of the Sears Tower (Thelly would be soooo jealous if he knew!).
ALL the flags of the WHOLE WORLD!

Look! A sandwich shop disguised as a construction site! We went and ate there, and they had goooood ice cream, but the sandwiches were nothing to write home about.
A Double-Decker Bus (it's a shame I didn't get a picture of the one with fur on the sides...)
The surprisingly clean Chicago river.
A really cool building. It's funny how many buildings there look like cathedrals, with gargoyles and stone lions and whatnot.
I bet this place has mandatory valet parking.

A cool building. At a cool angle (Mom had to literally lie down on the street to get in all in the frame...).

My post count for this month is pathetic, but I've been doing a lot of math homework and been more or less grouded from the computer all month, so I'm gonna cut myself some slack.

Bye.

P.S. Monkey lost another tooth!

Nevermind. I'll just post this instead.

2010-05-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

Even though I love facebook, this is funny.

What's been going on lately.

2010-05-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

Quotes:

My cousin Ryan: Migillicutty you can be my second best friend, but you can't be my first best friend because Jamie (same age little girl who live next door) is my best friend and I don't want to ruin that relationship.

Scaffy: Migillicutty, do you want to be in the Mango Club? It's a club I started. It has like, 10 members!
Me: What does the Mango Club do?
Scaffy: It.... I.. ummm.... I haven't decided yet.

I think Mangos have replace Papayas. Mangos at least taste good.

So tonight is our ward's Wild West BBQ, the second ward activity that my parents have been in charge of. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. They're a Costume contest and a Baked bean contest. If you win you get the Golden Ladle, which I got to spray paint this morning. The only problem is that Scaffy get to be one of the judges.

I got to make the certificates of the winners of the two contests, too. It was fun. I'm getting better at stuff like that.

So GUESS WHAT!!!! Our (mean) neighbors who live down the street got 'robbed'.

See, they used to get all these foreclosure notices, so when this U-haul truck shows up one Saturday nobody was really surprised. We just figured they were finally getting kicked out. So this U-haul truck is there all Saturday and all Sunday, but the weird thing was that the guys moving the furniture into the U-haul weren't the people who live in that house. When Mom pointed that out to me I just said they must've hired somebody to move the stuff for them. But none of the people who live in the house are even watching. They're not hanging around to make sure stuff doesn't get broken or anything, in fact the people who live in that house aren't there at all. Weird, right?

And on Monday the U-haul is gone. Mom goes running in the early morning and sees this big pile of old furniture and stuff that out by the garbage can, just stuff that's not worth taking with you when you move, right? But there's a lot of stuff, so much that Mom figures there's no way the garbage men are gonna take it all. But they do, because when Mom goes to take my little brothers to school at 8:30, there's nothing next to the empty trash can.

And then that afternoon, the people who lived in the (now empty) house are seen for the first time all weekend. They go knock on a neighbors door and say, "Do you know where all our stuff is? We just got back from vacation and our hose is completely empty and we don't know why."

Yeah!

Dad says they paid the 'movers' to put all their stuff in storage so they could get insurance compensation for it.

I dunno, but it was really weired.

And also, we've had two empty houses in our neighborhood be moved into this week! One house has an empty nester couple in it now, and the other is a family from our ward who have kids almost my same age. AWESOMENESS!!!

The Chicago post is (hopefully) going up this after noon! I dreamed we went back there ( to Chicago) last night. I have been dreaming the weirdest things lately! I dreamed a black guy was chasing me around a hotel after I flipped him off (I have never flipped anybody of in my life, BTW, I have no idea where this came from), I dreamed I was about to die in the hospital because my legs were broken( and the sheets were made of this heavy red velvet stuff), I dreamed I got to read the next Eragon book before anybody else (and I got to know all the secrets)... etc. It's really very strange.

SO..... that's what's been going on lately.

I'm Back for the third time....

2010-05-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

Chicago was soo awesome, but I want to do it justice, so this is not the Chicago post. I'll put it up when all the videos and pictures are uploaded on facebook. Not that facebook is more important, but I can't use other peoples videos until they're on facebook, you know?

(It really was awesome, though)

This is actually the post where I wish you a Happy Star Wars Day (!!!!) and tell you some adorable Monkey quotes.

Monkey: Mom, I know how to grow beans in a wet paper towel. It's very simplicated.
~~~~~
Monkey: Mom, I know what you call people who litter on the street.
Mom: What?
Monkey: Litter-fish!!
Mom: What? Do you mean litter- bug?
Monkey: Oh, yeah.... that's what I meant.
~~~~~
Scaffy has become recently fixated with papayas. I dunno what it is, but he's always talking about papaya seeds, papaya trees, papaya trees growing in your stomach if you eat their seeds, etc. So when Mom went shopping today she bought a papaya and let Scaffy try some.

Papaya smells like a newborn baby with a diaper full of diarrhea. And I imagine it tastes similar, but I've never eaten the contents of a diaper used by a newborn baby with diarrhea, so I can't tell.

Either way, I think the papaya fixation is over.

(Happy Star Wars Day!!!!)

Our Totally Craptastic Internet Connection

2010-04-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

We have Keyon Internet, I think. I don't know. I don't care. Because it sucks!! We have the worst Internet connection EVER!!! Whenever it's even a little bit windy outside the Internet doesn't work, and it's ALWAYS windy in Las Vegas in the spring. And even when it's not windy, the Internet randomly shuts itself off. Sometimes it's foe 10 minutes, sometimes it for several hours. It's soooooooooo annoying!!! SRSLY, last Wednesday it was so unacceptable that we gave up and took a Clear free trial. We are seriously considering getting a new Service Provider. So we went and got this Clear 2-day trial, and it worked perfectly 24/7.

And then we went back to our craptastic Keyon connection.

Dad has to 'make up his mind' if he really wants to get that kind or not. It takes my dad about 6 months- MINIMUM- too make decisions like that. So that's why I haven't been blogging much lately.

UGH!

Also, I'm writing a book which I can't put up here because it's a secret. It's probably gonna me really small, and not all that good. Well, it's getting better, but it's only 14 pages right now and7 chapters, soo.... yeah. You get it.

Also: I'M GOIN TO CHICAGO ON THURSDAY!!!!

Monkey lost a tooth!

2010-04-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

Behold!
(Isn't he cute??!?!?!) Ok, here's how it happened, as told by my mother (cuz I was at school or babysitting something):

Monkey lost his first tooth yesterday. Or more accurately Monkey ripped out his first tooth yesterday along with the fully intact root and a whole lot of blood. He was in the back seat of the car and he apparently tried to open the plastic clasp on a clipboard I had just bought. I was driving an not paying attention until he yelled "MOM! I JUST LOST A TOOTH!!!" We were actually still in the parking lot so I pulled over to look and sure enough the tooth was out. But it was twice as long as a normal baby tooth because the root which is supposed to dissolve and allow the tooth to fall out without major trauma was all still there. He was really excited for about 10-15 seconds but then the blood which had been pooling in his mouth started to escape and dribble down his chin and on to his shirt. He was slightly dismayed at first as I tried to act like that was normal while I used some left over McDonald's napkins from the glove compartment to mop up the blood. But then I think it really started hurt and he really started to cry.

It didn't last too long though. We had another stop to make at Khol's, so we used their bathroom to rinse his mouth and clean up. It stopped bleeding and he told every one he saw for the rest of the day "I lost a tooth WITH THE ROOT!!!" I don't think any of the people in Khol's or at the nursery or the car wash had a clue what he was talking about, but he's cute and so they smiled and acted excited. Then he took it to school today. The teacher was appropriately enthusiastic and the other children were grossed out. So on the whole it was a very memorable and positive experience.

I love Monkey :)

Pretty Roses....

2010-04-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, me and my friend (who shall henceforth be know as Kira) were playing around in my front yard, where my mom has all these rose bushed planted. So we took some pictures:

Who shouldn't consider a career in photography?

And a couple day before, Monkey and Mom were out there (I dunno why) and Mom was taking care of her strawberry plants. She's a super-gardener/yardwork-doer like that. And look what she found growing in one of the bushes!
It's like the seeds on the strawberry sprouted!!! (I actually buried it, to see what would happen) Mom's going to take the original plant to the nursery to see it they can tell her why its so freakish.

And more Random Crap Pictures taken my my brothers (I really like putting these up :) :My super cute baby cousin (actually I might've taken this one... but you didn't hear that).

And now I give you a special edition Random Photo-series: the Blue Man Group.

I'm in a sad mood right now.... :(

2010-04-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to High School next year.

Suddenly my parents are stressing about credits and majors and college and stuff, gotta worry about where I'm going for High School (LVA), what I'm majoring in, what other electives I can take, getting into a higher-level match class so I can have a better chance of going to BYU, etc.
Suddenly, I can't just go to school, I have to make decisions and I have to worry about what decisions I'm going to make. I can't just let my parent's do it all anymore.

I feel like... like... this is it. You go to High School, and then college, and then-BOOM- you're all grown up. Gotta go out there and make a living. I feel like this summer is all I've got left before I've gotta start my life.

I'm only 13!!! I don't wanna have to worry about all this!!! I just want to go to Girls Camp and Aspen Grove and Family reunions, and not worry about growing up. I don't want to start having to make all theses big, life-changing choices already.

And.... I don't (or at least didn't) think I need to. I'm a bright girl. I placed highest in the whole state of Nevada in my last writing proficiency test, and I've always been in the top percentile in CRT's, SAT's, and whatever combination of letters, I skipped 6th grade, and I've gotten Straight A's since preschool. My mom always used to make these jokes about never having to pay for college, because of the 150% scholarship I'll get.

And now, suddenly, it's like they're actually worrying about that stuff. They're making sure I do really advanced classes to be sure BYU will even accept me. And I wonder.... If I'm doing something wrong. If I'm not that smart anymore, if I've let my parents down somehow. If I'm not meeting those 150% expectations.

Or, you know it could just be that time of the month.... ;)

Conference

2010-04-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

Conference was awesome. Period.

When I watch conference, I draw the people who are speaking. I never finish the 70's people (that is, people from one of the Quorums of the Seventy, not someone who was born in the 7o's, because, of course, there is no one that young in the Quorum of the Seventy. Except maybe one, but even that's a stretch) because they only have 8-minute talks. But I can do the quorum of the 12, cuz their talks are longer. SO I took pictures of y drawings. I think they look better when you can see the actual piece of paper, but there you go:

Number 1:
Number 2 (sorry, I can't figure out how to turn it right side up):
Number 3:Number 4:
I'm not gonna tell you their names, you have to (HAVE TO. Or you will SUFFER THe COUNSEQUENCES!!!!) guees them in your comment. Bonus point if you tell me I'm a good artist. ;) Double bonus points if you can name #3.

Socks

2010-04-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

SO... I was on my way to the Super-Awesome Choir yesterday, and Mom was listening to the new on the radio. I was reading Fablehaven (the 5th book is here!!! I got halfway finished before my cousins left and took it with them (it was their book)) but I heard a little bit of the report. Guess what it was on?

Yep... socks. A Sock Museum!!!!! Technically it was a shoe museum, but it had a new sock exibit. They had all kinds of 8o's socks, and 16th century socks, and sock monkeys, and Napoleon's socks!!! And Queen Victoria's socks!! In the Sock Museum!! Cuz there's really nothing better we could be doing with that money.... we must seem really disgusting to the starving kids in Africa.
I mean a Sock Museum.... Welcome to America, where we have so much money we make a museum out of our socks!!

So we went to the super awesome choir, and got on a fancy shuttle-bus and went to the Governor's Black-Tie Invitaional Dinner. Where the lady's locker rooms have huge, plush loveseats and red-and-gold carpet and hairspray and mouth wash and tooth brushes and (men's) deodorant. And where they serve you fancy cookies and sodas, and have a big huge tent that you can turn all different colors, and they have a Philanthropist Of The Year award. Can you say LOADED!!!! And teh funniest thing was, everybody was all dressed up in their tuxedos and their cocktail dresses, and, like, all the dresses were sleeveless, but none of these ladies got their tan lines erased!!! They looked like this:
BTW, I don't even know who it is in this picture, but it came up when I googled 'sleeveless dress tan lines' so there you go.

But SRSLY, if you're gonna go to something like that wearing something like that, you should go get your tan lines erased. SRSLY.

So we went and sang for that, and then we rode home, at like, 9:30 at night. And we'd had lotsa soda and cookies, so we were pretty hyper. We spent the whole 30 minute ride singing The Wheels On The Buss, Taylor Swift, Popular, from Wicked, and anything else we knew at least half the words to.

It was AWESOME!!!!

Awesome Quotes

2010-04-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

My little cousin (3 years old-ish): "GUESS WHAT!!!! I went in the deep end of the pool twice and I didn't even die ONCE!!!"

Elder Jeffery R. Holland in conference today: "El Diablo"!

Scaffy and Mom and I were having a discussion about the Civil War, and why then call it that since technically the southern states were there own country.
Scaffy at the end of the discussion: "I think the U.S. should've made them write a 9 million word essay...... in English!"

Heehee......

My cousins are here for the week. They have ummm....8 (count 'em) EIGHT kids between the ages of 18 and 1. The oldest three are super nerds like me. It's AWESOME!!!!!!!!! We spent the afternoon watching conference and the having a deep philosophical chat about how color is all in the mind and gravity is but an illusion.

And also, I think my parents bought me tickets to Star Wars In Concert!!!!!!!

I love my family.

I'm too lame to do cool April Fool's stuff.

2010-04-02T13:29:00.004-07:00

So I didn't post yesterday.

Now I feel guilty, so I'm posting today. What should I blog about?

huh.

Hey, did I write about the Hunger Games yet?

OHMYGOSH!!! I love that book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!It's set some 300 years in the future, after a big war destroyed the United states and became Panem, instead. Panem consists of one Capitol surrounded by twelve districts, each of which are forced to send one boy and one girl (from ages 12-18) to compete in the annual Hunger Games, a gladiator-style fight to the death on live TV. Only one person can survive- the winner.

Now if you know anything about me you know that I love books where lots of people die, preferably with lots of blood and gore everywhere. So this book was right up my street.

It's told through the eyes of Katniss Everdeen, who steps up to take her sister's place when she is chosen to compete in the Hunger Games. Now she has to fight for her life against twenty-three people who want to kill her.

Very, dramatically told, VERY bloody, the Hunger Games is told in the first person, present tense, which I thought would drive me crazy, but didn't. See, when it's told in past tense, you know she survived whatever life-or-death encounter she's in. Put you have no idea in present tense who will live or who will die.

My friend is lending me the sequel, Catching Fire, later today.... I can't wait!!!*

And now the latest installment of Random Crap Pictures taken by my crazy brothers:
I love my brothers. :)

*EDIT: I wrote this yesterday, and by the time I came back to publish it (a day later), Catching Fire had been lent to me, and I stayed up reading it until 3 in the morning, when I finished it. But that's an entirely different post.

An Actual Conversation and A True Testamet to My Nerdiness

2010-03-29T14:28:00.001-07:00

So, I told you guys about the Easter brunch my parents wee in charge of. It was a success!! It was a beautiful day, I got to hide the eggs, the food was good, and I had fun! And so, I think, did everybody else.

EXCEPT.

We had too much food.

(dunh dunh DUNH!!!!)

It actually wasn't that bad. All we had left over was:

1 1/2 gallons of maple syrup
1 1/2 gallons of pancake batter
50-ish sausages
5-ish platters of fruit
1 gallon of milk

So basically, I get to eat breakfast food for the rest of the week!!!!

Some of the sausages hadn't even been opened, so Mom decided to take them back. Monkey heard Mom looking for the receipt, and he knows you use a receipt to take things back, so he says:
Monkey: Mom, did you get those sausages from the library?
Mom: What the wha...? Ummm... no, I didn't get them from the library. Why would you think that?
Monkey: Because you're gonna return them, and you return thing to the library!!! (duh!)

There was another one, but I CAN'T REMEMBER IT!!! I hate it when that happens!!!

So me an Nichole and another friend (whom within this past second I decided to call Rachel) went running this morning.

Well, walking, really.
But hey, we did run a little bit, and we ended up walking somewhere around 4 miles, and we had fun, so I call that a win.

And then we ruined it by going back to my house, making pancakes, and dumping about (collectively) 1/2 a pound of syrup and whipped cream on them.

They were GOOD!!!!!

And now for the Nerdiness of Me part:

Star Wars In Concert is coming to Las Vegas and I REEEEEEEEEELY want to go!!! And it's totally affordable, like, the cheapest seats are 25 bucks!!!! And my dad is not completely opposed to the possibility!!!!!! So I'm looking for tickets to see STAR WARS IN CONCERT!!!!!!

STAR WARS, IN CONCERT!!!!! And the screen is, like, as big as this room!!! And probably as big as whatever room you're sitting in!!! Put simply:

HUGE-MUNGUS!!!

And there's a costume gallery, with real, actual costumes used in the movies!!!

And guess what??? While Dad and I were watching the ad for it on PBS, at the end there was this guy advertising for it, and he said, instead of Jedi:

Jeh-dee.

I swear, a 60-year old guy said that!!!!

I bet he lives under a rock.

::eye-roll::

Christ the Lord is Risen Today! (Well, not today. But that's the name of the song...)

2010-03-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

Quite probably the first post on this blog that does not directly relate to what is going on in my life right now (I totally just jinxed myself)

2010-03-27T14:54:00.001-07:00

I am mentally fat.

I just though everybody should know that. ;)

See, I'm not really fat, at least not really- I mean, I'm a few pounds heavier that I would like to be, but so is the rest of the world, right?- but I eat like I am (fat, that is).

I blame it on the fact that I am homeschooled. Cuz when you go to a regular school, you can't just get up in the middle of class and go eat whatever you want out of the frigde. But I can do that: and I just don't have the mental discipline to make myself do otherwise.

What do you do about that?

Whatever; I have something else I wanna get to....

And now, the earth-shaking, ground-breaking, monumental VERY GOOD news I received while writing this:
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I GOT ACCEPTED TO LVA!!!!!!!!!!!!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

I'M A GOOD ENOUGH SINGER TO GO TO LVA!!!!!!!!

Congratulate me! ;)

I really need to post... about what?

2010-03-25T16:44:00.000-07:00

Soooooo......

Mom and Dad were recently made Chair-people of the activities committee in our ward. This is kinda strange, because neither of them are really activity kinda people. And this Saturday is the Ward Easter Brunch, so Mom and Dad are in charge of that.

But Scaffy's Baptism is the same day, at the same time!!! Or at least it was.... they changed the time of the Easter Brunch so they could be at both. ::phew!::

And guess what is the day after that?

Guess!

Harry Reid is giving a "Why I Believe" fireside in our stake!!!!

I'm gonna wait until I get a few comments before I tell you the rest of the story...

BWAhahaha, I'm SOOOO evil... Heeheehee...

Birthday Parties and Actual Conversations. And Random Crap.

2010-03-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

This is the actual conversation part:
Ok, so we are driving home from Super-Awesome Choir, and Thelly and Monkey are fighting in the back seat.
Monkey: Mom, Thelly flicked me!!!
Thelly: Yeahbut, he flicked me first!!! We flicked each other!!
Mom: Stop it!! Thelly turn around, and don't bug him anymore!
Thelly (whispering): C'mon, Monkey, let's both flick each other again.... ::snicker::

And this one is years old... but whatever.
Mom: Scaffy, go upstairs and take a bath, please.
Scaffy: Ok.
** 15 minutes later**
Mom goes upstairs to check on Scaffy. He didn't lock the door, so she walks in, and sees Scaffy, stark naked, just... wandering around the tub. No water in it or nuthin'.
Mom: What are you doing?
Scaffy, very clearly exasperated: Mom, you told me to take a bath; you never told me to turn the water on, DUH!!

This is the Random Crap part:
Lately Monkey has gotten into taking pictures on our family's camera. I don't really like it, cuz it's mostly a buncha blurry pictures of the carpet and his hand and stuff. But Some of them are pretty funny:

This was a pic that got left off my Arizona post. It's X, making fun of.... umm.... Bob. Yep, that's right. Bob. ;)
That black spot is where I fuzzed out his real name.

That was the Random Crap part ;) Heeheee....

This is the Birthday Party part:
So we had Scaffy's birthday party on Saturday. It was Harry Potter themed :) :) :)

So me and Jess (you guys remember Jess? Well, she's re-named herself Nichole, and she has a blog over here! :) were in charge of making the cake. Welllll.... actually I was in charge of making the cake, but I made Je... Nichole, that is, help me, because she got a fancy-shmancy cake decorating kit for Christmas. It's really cool. She came over to make the cake while the boys and their friends swam in the pool (Oh yeah, baby, it's March and we're already swimming down here in Vegas!!! Your jealous. Admit it. ;) SO we pretty mush couldn't figure out what we wanted to put on this stupid cake. Soooo... it kinda ended up like this:I fuzzed out his real name and put Scaffy, but that's pretty much how it looked like in the first place. Just, you know, not so fake looking ;)

(this is the space where you laugh at me)

But hey!!! Mom was in charge of the pinata, and it looked like this:
It's two pieces of cardboard taped together with painter's tape and a Harry Potter Balloon stuck on it. It makes me feel better about our lackluster cake.

(this is the space where you laugh at Mom (and I laugh with you))

But it's not like the 7 year old kids care, right?? As long as it's got sugar, they'll eat it. (not that the pinata was made of sugar, but the candy inside it was...) And it doesn't even have to taste good! :)
We let Nichole hit the pinata, cuz she doesn't like Harry Potter (actually, she sorta likes it, but she says it's too scary for her)

So then we went inside and ate the ugly cake and some ice cream. And then we opened presents. Scaffy got lots of Legos and pool toys and crap, but this one was definitely his favorite:Told you he's like a mini replica of me :) :)

Sunday Songs

2010-03-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

I might've done this one before....

So here's another one:

This song makes me cry... I hope you enjoyed it.

Scaffy's Birthday! :)

2010-03-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

So it's the day before St. Patrick's day.... I mean.. umm...what?... oh, yeah... My brother's birthday!

This one:

He's 8 today! So here's his 8 things I love about you list:

1: He's almost as big a Star Wars nerd (and Harry Potter nerd, for that matter) as me. I'm not kidding, we're choreographing a lightsaber duel. He won the rock-paper-scissors match, so he gets to be the Jedi :(

2: He's reads like crazy, so I get to tell him which good books to read. :)

3: He's probably gonna grow up to me a stand-up comedian, and come on, the world totally needs more Mormon comedians ;)

4: He's that master of stupid voices (which are very frequently pretty funny).

5: He eats the seafood that I hate for me.

6: He plays chess almost every day. I ALLWAYS win ;)

7: He's not even super obsessed with video games anymore!

8: I love him a WHOLE LOT! Like, a LOT!!! Cuz he's basically a little Mini-Me....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCAFFY!!!!!
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

CRAP!!!

2010-03-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging AT ALL!!! I'm really sorry... I got back from my trip on Sunday, and I've been working on the post since then, but it has, like, a million pictures so it's taking a while. And then our internet crashed yesterday from all the wind...

So I missed the Super-Awesome Choir rehearsal last week cuz I was in tuscon, and then this week I had a school choir performance at the same time as it. I was disapointed about that, but I had to come to the school one, cuz I got a grade on it. BUT the S-A Choir had an extra rehearsal (for our trip to Chicago late this spring) at 7:30. This one was clear on the other side of town.

Now, the school choir director swore to me that the performance would ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, DEFINITELY NOT go longer than 7:00 AT THE VERY VEEERY MAXIMUM.

Ya, right.

At 6:30 only 2 out of the 8 or 9 choirs had performed. My choir was second to last.

So after we performed, I went back-stage to get my stuff so I could leave. But every single door I tried was locked, INCLUDING THE ONE I CAME THROUGH!!! I seriously thought I was trapped in there! By the time I managed to get out, I way WAAAY too late to make it to the other side of town.... I was mad. >:( Cuz, like, I really like the Super-Awesome choir, and I don't like missing 3 rehearsal in a row. >:(

And the we went to Radio Shack and it got broken into.

My Awesome week (well, half a week, really) in Arizona!

2010-03-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

(After, like, two weeks of uploading pictures, this post is FINALLY DONE!!!! Enjoy!)

THE Arizona trip was AWESOME!!! Except the schedule looked like this:

8:00- 9:00 Breakfast
9:00-12:00 Rehearsal
12:00- 2:00 Lunch
2:00- 5:00 Rehearsal
5:00- 7:00 Dinner
7:00- 9:00 Another Rehearsal
Bedtime.

It was crazy!!! But I'm gonna start form the beginning:
Whoops, that's not it.... that's just the super-awesome DINOSAUR that somebody had on their front porch...

Ok, here we go:

The car we drove: It's a bog ol' minivan with failing brakes....

The inside of the Big Ol' Minivan with Failing Brakes... and this was before it was all packed, and it doesn't show the full trunk... girls need a lot of stuff!

My face, five minutes into the drive.

But once we finally (it was, like, a 7 hour drive) got there....Oooh, fancy! We're in the lap of luxury now :)

The choir director, Cheryl Dupont, director of the New Orleans Children's chorus. She's really good!

My AWESOME new friends, Nike and X. I'm not kidding, we really call her 'X'! Cuz her real name starts with an X, so it's really hard to pronounce, but besides, she said she thinks X is cooler :)

Lookit how many kids were in that choir! An this doesn't even show the sides... there was close to 150 kids, total.X in the computer room. Everybody came in here after lunch or dinner, and almost every person was on Facebook! :)

Nike in the computer room. She wore that coat All. Week. Long. And it was, like, 80-something degrees outside!

Me in the computer room.

I was bored, ok?

Mom.

Me and Mom didn't give a crap about the 'bedtime' part of the schedule. We stayed up talking, reading, and watching TV. One night Mom got this MAJOR sweet craving, it was really funny to watch. :) She was, like, pacing, all around the room, moaning about sweets. So she found the phone number of this Italian pizza place and tried to order something, but it was, like, 11:05 at night, and they had closed at eleven. ;p So she ordered it the next night. It was this AWESOME apple pie thing, but in a pizza crust, and there was tons of cream cheese and Cinnamon mixed in with the apple pie filling, it was SOO good! We made it for FHE treat last night....
And as we were eating this stuff, I was flipping through channels,
and landed on this PBS program about a guy who was dying of ALS and chose to commit suicide rather than go through months of pain and expenses for him and his family, and inevitably, die anyways. :( His reasoning was really quite hard to argue with.
The weird thing was, Mom was reading a book about a guy dying from that same disease! And it was a true story! And she said that the guy in the story took a completely different approach, and accepted that he was going to die, but he tried to help people and teach them about living and dying and stuff in the meantime, and it really blessed their lives, and his life. And it made him a happier person, even though he was dying. I thought that was a really cool learning experience for both of us, and a testimony that God cares about us, cuz really, are you gonna try to tell me it was a coincidence that I landed on that channel while that program was on, and while Mom was reading a book about that same thing? I thought not. :)
A cool picture of X.

What I thought after about 10 hours of practicing the same 6 songs OVER and OVER and OVER...

One of the paper cranes I made during rehearsal. I made several, but I doodled a lot more.
:)

Somebodies Rosemary Chicken that she shredded up to look like a camel :)
It was some good rosemary chicken, but Mom's is WAAAAY better.

The whole Choir lined up for pictures :)

My favorite picture of the whole trip (even compared to that dinosaur :0 )

I'll probably keep adding more pictures, but I just wanted this stupid post up all ready.... so now its up... HA!

The Third-to-Last day of the Olympics

2010-02-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

I seriously don't know what I'm gonna do when these games are over, I think I like the Winter Olympics even better than the Summer ones. Shocking, I know!

There's been some truly beautiful posts about these games. Go here, and here, if you want to laugh up your spleen.

I'm watching Lindsey Vonn's last race, right now, and mourning the fact that's it's her last race. And Apollo Ohno's last two are 15 minuets from now. Maybe his last two ever. WHY??!! He's not that old, is he? Cuz he's a freaking hottie, and everybody knows there's no such thing as an old freaking hottie.
Man, what am I gonna do when I can stay up watching the Olympics? I guess I'm just gonna havta go back to Glee, the Office, Biggest Loser, So You Think You Can Dance, and all those other awesome shows. Sniff, Sniff. Poor me:_(

The medal count currently stands at: USA: 33, Germany (the next highest): 27. Only problem is, I dunno if that's the final count. I guess if it's not I'll come back and edit this.

It's strawberry season. I LOVE STRAWBERRIES! They're, like, my favorite fruit! So I made a pie out of Fresh Never Frozen strawberries, just because I could. It was SOOOO good! Dad especially thought so (but he's on a diet again, so he thinks anything with sugar in it is SOOO good!)
One of the strawberries was a super-creepy looking mutant, it looked like two, or maybe even three strawberries fused together. I'll post a pic soon.

Thelly has a new origami fixation: Ninja Stars! Apparently he bought one from a kid at school, cuz he was gonna take it apart to try to figure out how to make it, but Mom wouldn't let him. So they looked it up on the Internet and Thelly LOVES to make them!

I havta go run up a mountain with Jess (the girl who puked at the movies) tomorrow morning. She made me promise. I dont' wanna go run up a mountain at 7:00 on a Saturday morning!

What else is going on? Hmm.... Me and Scaffy are choreographing a lightsaber battle. We're fighting it over the waterfall on top of out pool, so it's gonna be really cool. Hopefully we'll be able to record and edit it, like this:

It's SOOO cool! :)

Oh, and also, I told you guys I got accepted into the 2010 ACDA Youth Treble Honor Choir, Western Division. And that is the longest (and silliest) choir name I've ever heard. So It's, like, this big, three-day trip to Arizona. It's gonna be awesome!! SO if I can, I will try to blog when I'm there, but don't expect me to blog March 3-6. Just in case you, like, miss me, or something weird like that. ;)

I'm trying to post pictures, but Blogger won't let me. Stupid Blogger. Hmph.

Bye!

I'm so mad right now....

2010-02-22T16:31:00.001-08:00

GUESS WHAT!!!!!!

My mother got kicked off the school PTA board!!!

Ok, here is the whole story....

Mom got elected to the PTA in September... and she was the treasurer, basically the most important role, and the one hardest to fill (besides the president). So like, a month or so ago, the school was about to start this fundraiser. But Mom (who is the treasurer, and so knows what she's talking about here) said, basically,"why are we doing another fundraiser, when we already have lotsa money, and haven't spent any of it yet?" They had a lot of plans for things to buy, but had never actually bought any of them... so mom starts making motions to get these things bought. Most of them got approved, so they went to the principal and told her. Apparently she thought they were saying she needed to accept this money/spending, and she freaked. Out. Seriously stood up and shouted that she didn't want the PTA's money and didn't need the PTA's money and left out of the room. Seriously??? I mean, a girl did that in my 7th grade class last year. Are we still in 7th grade, people?
So that finally got resolved (when mom basically got down on her knees and groveled). And they went ahead and did that fundraiser. And then a few of the ladies on the board took money from the fundraiser and bought themselves lunch at Cafe Rio??!!!??!! What the heck!?!! Never mind the bylaw that says they're not allowed to do stuff like that! So mom called them out on it, and this is what happened:

Quote: "Short of being physically assaulted or arrested I don't think it could have gone worse. Apparently the purpose of the meeting was for the principal to public yell (yes, she actually did yell, in a loud voice and everything) at me me for being a pot stirrer and a subversive and then summarily remove me from the board. It was a good time I tell you. And yet, once again, I am surprisingly calm. I've gone over and over my actions over the course of the last week with respect to "lunch-date." And I can find few if any that I would retract. I have seriously considered whether my insistence that things be done according to proscribed rules is evidence of a need to be "holier than thou." It might be. But no matter how hard I try to put it aside, I still feel like, as the treasurer I needed to know that the expenditure I was entering into the books was a legitimate one. I offended people in the process of making that determination. They felt their integrity was being questioned, and it was. I would like to be able to apologize for that, but I can't because I believe there was good reason for it. So there we are. Questioners NOT WELCOME!

Oh and the principal also told me that she wanted me to take my kids and got to another school. And that I am unbalanced, and should go see a counselor. But I'm not going to do that.

She said I needed to go because I cause contention and she will not have contention in the group. That actually makes sense. But she and several of the other board members also came right out and said that they see the by-laws as a guideline and that they do not think they should have to be followed to the letter. They said that they shouldn't have to feel like someone is policing them and that they will be accused of wrong doing if they don't do everything exactly as it is supposed to be done. (Did you see that? Let me translate: they don't want to be accused of wrong-doing if they do something wrong!!! That's what "not doing everything as it's supposed to be done' means, right?!!?) One of them even suggested adding a by-law that says that the by-laws are only a guide and do not need to be taken literally.

Oh yes and it was all done in front of the entire board and half of it was done in front of Monkey because he had just gotten out of Kindergarten. He asked me "Why is the principal so mad at you?" Close quote.

I think that principal....... you know what? Never mind. I'm not gonna talk about that any more.

Olympic Medal count: USA leads, we have 24 medals total, the next highest country has 21. Yikes... they're catching up!!

And a video from yesterday... http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=b937527c-da78-4ea6-a439-122686e848c3.html How about the Russian team's outfits, huh? Could they look any weirder? Dad kept making all these jokes, like "Wouldn't it be funny if those ropes on their costumes got knotted up?" And stuff like that... I love my Dad. And Mom :)

Please comment!

Changes in the Ward

2010-02-21T16:18:00.000-08:00

(I I have any non-LDS readers, you probably won't understand any of this. Just to give you a fair warning.)

Our bishopric got changed today. The whole stake presidency was there and the stake president got up and gave a really awesome talk (he give the best talks evah) about the organization of the church, how we don't have a paid clergy, and how everything is subdivided. The Stake president presides over the whole stake, which is divided up into wards, who have their own presidents called bishops, who presides over the whole ward. In every ward there is a fully organized and staffed Relief Society, Young Men's quorum, Young Women's organization, and a children's primary and nursery, Sunday school teachers, Activities committee, Ward Choir, and Home and Visiting teachers. And some others that i can't think of right now. And none of them get paid! But in order for these to work, the Stake president said, there have to sometimes be Changes. Today there are going to be some Changes on the Bishopric of this ward.

Now, our old bishopric had served for some 5 years or so. So you'd pretty much think they were done, right? Oh, no. No no no no. The old bishop, Bishop.... um.... Bishop Norman, has been replaced by his old first counselor, who is now Bishop Norman! They have the same last name! It was pretty funny.... :)

And a church hymn... I'm gonna try to do those more often.

And cuz I didn't really like that arrangement...

Your welcome :)

One Word: OUCH!

2010-02-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=54c4fde6-93c6-4774-aeed-0f67b72b11eb.html#toughest+tumbles+falls+from+week

OWW!!

And the Medal count: USA has 20 medals. The next closest country, Germany, has 13. YEAH, BABY!!!

BTW, you really should poke around on that NBCOlympics site. They have some really awesome stuff on there (even though they won't lt me embed to blogger).

I spent some 3 or 4 hours yesterday on rollerblades with the neighbors kids. I didn't even know we had neighbors kids! It was a lotsa fun, and I didn't even fall over :) And I can do it again today!! I love long weekends.

What are you doing today/this weekend??

More Olympics Updates

2010-02-18T15:55:00.001-08:00

I'm gonna do this a lot.... I LOVE THE OLYMPICS!!!!

Ok, let's get started:

Men's half-pipe final was on TV last night... of course, Shaun White took the gold medal, of course. DUDE, have you seen him? He's, like, twice as good as the next best guy! K, I wanted to show you the video; I couldn't figure out how to share this video, but here's the link: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=d924411a-bea6-4fd8-b485-f58dc5238dfe.html#shaun+white+wins+gold+again

And the womens downhill- Lindsey Vonn won that one, and she, like, flipped out afterwards, totally an emotional wreck.... but she did awesome, look:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=6492638a-603e-44b0-be9d-e97084d01386.html?chrcontext=teamusa#w+downhill+l+vonn+usa

They had SOO many bad wipe-outs on that slope, though, look!

Sorry, that website won't let me embed to blogger.

So that was the Olympics day 6... GO team USA!!! We did AWESOME!!! We're winning the medal count, 17 medals total... :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Happy long weekend everybody!

So who's watchin the Olympics?

2010-02-15T20:17:00.000-08:00

I have, that's who!!! And it's been great!

Well, mostly.

They totally screwed up the torch-lighting ceremony. See, they had these 4 pillar-like things that came up out of the ground/stage and wrapped up around the actual torch/cauldron. And only 3 of them came up!! But first they spent 5 minuets trying to figure out why the 4th one wasn't coming up. and to the 4 torch bearers (1 for each pillar-like thingy) just stood there (actually only 3 of them stood cuz one of them was a Parolympian in a wheelchair) with these big, worried smiles on their faces, trying to figure out why the pillar-like things weren't coming up and what they were supposed to do now. And then the technicians said "What the heck, pull the other 3 up anyways." And so the pulled the other 3 up and so it looked really lopsided. And there was a trench filled with lighter fluid in them that the torch-bearers lit, but since there was only 3 pillars, only 3 of the bearers got to light the cauldron :_(

(That's a crying face, BTW)

So it looked like this:

But with 4 people and only 3 pillars. :0

This is where the Valentines Day hating post should go

2010-02-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

But there will be no Valentines Day hating post.

Because I actually like Valentines Day. Ok, I could just be saying that because my grandparents get me a Hershey's Valentines Bar (or something chocolate-y in a heart shape) every year. I could.
But I do kinda like that there's a whole holiday about showing your sweetheart you love them. Lots of holidays, Wal-Mart has turned them into, like, mindless gift-giving. Why do we give gifts on Christmas again? (but I'm not complaining :) But Valentine's day is specifically designed to show people you love them. (Even though it is designed. By Wal-Mart, probably. Ugh)

But that doesn't mean I love all the cheap Valentine's you give your school class. That part is dumb. And the candy. Why do we need all this candy? I mean, I like candy... but I don't really need it every time the wind blows... er, I mean, every holiday.

Ok, I don't even know why I'm writing this stuff down. What do I know, anyway? So I'm gonna shut up about that now, and talk about my own awesomeness.

I went to the Venetian yesterday. I love that place. The indoor mall that looks like it's outside, and the St. Marks Square replica. And now they have this Chinese thing, too. So, why was I at the Venetian this morning? I was singing with my super awesome choir. (Have I told you guys about that? It's AWESOME!) So anyways me and my friend (who's in the super awesome choir, too) were talking about all the shows and things we've been to (believe it or not, not every show in Vegas have naked vampires in them). SO I've actually been to a lot, mostly on behalf of the super-awesome choir. I've seen the Blue Man group at the Amway convention, been in the Adventure Dome twice, I've been to The Secret Garden at the Mirage a lot of times, and once I saw the Moving Statues, but I don't really remember anything (I was little when I saw that one), been to the top of the Stratosphere (and back down, which is even better) and performed with Cheap Trick (yes, the real Cheap Trick) at the Hilton. Not to brag or anything.... but living in Vegas does have it's perks. ;)

I'm sorry I havent been posting much lately...

2010-02-09T15:35:00.000-08:00

... I couldn't think of much to say.

But I thought of something now.

Ok, are you ready? Are you sitting down? This is gonna be a huge shock....

My five year old brother ditched school today.

I kid you not! He really ditched school! And he's FIVE! Apparently, his friend.... umm... let's call him Joe, OK?

K, so Monkey and Joe were out at recess and when the teacher calls them all to come in, but they don't want to, cuz they know when they go in they're gonna havta take this math test. Monkey hates math almost as much as me, and apparently so does Joe, so Joe said they should run away and go to Joe's house. So they sneaked out of the school and walked to Joe's house.

So within 5 minutes or so the teacher figures out they were missing. So they searched the whole school first, and then started taking teachers aides and parent volunteers around to the neighborhoods near the school. So apparently Joe's house was unlocked, and Joe and Monkey were in there, and they must've left the door open or something, cuz when the school got there they found Joe and Monkey sitting around playing on Joe's DS!

So they got dragged back to the school and lectured by the principal (Monkey was bawling his eyes out) until I got there to pick Monkey up. It was really tense in there.

So I took him home and made him hot chocolate (cuz he was bawling his eyes out) and told him he was in BIG trouble (like he didn't know that already) and then.... we layed around and watched Star Wars.

I didn't really know what to do with him, ok? Cuz, like, he just got this BIG lecture, and had been bawling his eyes out for, like, an hour, and I'd given him a lecture, too, and he was gonna get 2 more lectures when Mom and Dad came home, and I remember when I got in big trouble last year (but I'm SOOO not telling you guys about that) and how I felt so bad and I already knew I did something bad and felt terrible about it, and, like, people didn't need to keep beating me up about it when I was already beating myself up about it.... so I figured if I felt that bad when I was 12, he's gotta feel a lot worse when he's only five... so I just sorta... dropped it.

Mostly. I actually brought it up a few more times, just to make sure he didn't get too comfortable. ;)

Oh, and I threw up AGAIN last night.

Bye.

Cuz I... I.. umm.... I forgot.

2010-02-03T18:03:00.000-08:00

http://borrowedlight.blogspot.com/
Sue's awesome. End of story.

Guess what? My mom is punishing my brothers by making them come to New Beginnings with me tomight.

Who do you think she's really punishing?

Monkey is taking gymnastics at Vitaly Scherbo Gymnastics school. It's EXPENSIVE, and then Mom keeps forgetting to take him :p

So the first time Mom took Monkey she took The other boys with her, too. And they both decided they wanted to take (very EXPENSIVE) gymnastics lessons there too. So mom said they had to prove that they really wanted to by practicing the first half of a back walkover. They had to be able to bend over backwards and land in a bridge, like this:

They quit after a week. ;)

I can't think of anything else to post right now.

Bye

This is a beautiful post

2010-02-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

Go read this.

It's so perdy... :) :)

Rejoice, the Lord is King!

2010-01-31T17:01:00.001-08:00

This is my favorite hymn EVER!

And it even has words in this video! :) :)

I'm to tired to come up with a good name for this.

2010-01-30T18:15:00.000-08:00

I always try to blog on one of the last days of the month, just to bring he totall number of posts for the month up. I'm weird like that.

My mom ran a half-marathon last weekend Lookit!

My mom's so perdy...

I saw Napoleon Dynamite for the very first time today. It was funny, but not as funny as everybody acts like it is.

That's all I wanna say about that.

I also saw 13 going on 30. I like that movie.

And that's all I wanna say about that.

I spent the whole day at Jess's (the girls who puked at the movies, remember?) It was losta fun. I hung out at a different friend's house last week, too.

I think my social handicap might be beginning to lift (I'm jinxing myself here...). =)

I have been craving chocolate chips like crazy lately. Which stinks, cuz I'm trying to start and after-Christmas diet, hel-lo! This uncontrollable chocolate craving does not help.

My favorite flair on Facebook:

Can't think of nuthin else to say.

Bye.

(De)Motivational Posters

2010-01-25T20:14:00.000-08:00

I luves these things...

Rain, Rain, go away... no, seriously, go away... GET AWAY FROM ME ALREADY!!!!!

2010-01-21T18:46:00.000-08:00

WHY IS IT SO WET????!!!!????!!!!??

IT HAS BEEN RAINING SINCE 8:00 THIS MORNING-HARD!!! AND IT'S STILL GOING!!! AND IT HAS NOT EVEN STOPPED FOR FIVE MINUTES BETWEEN 8:00 AND 6:21!!!!

SERIOUSLY!!!!

That's pretty much all I have to say, except for this:

Bye.

Hmmm...

2010-01-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

I still don't know what to blog about.

Math sucks. I hate math. End of story.

Last year my friends and I had a joke about the suckishness of math. One girl is partially insane and actually likes math. She's crazy. So me and my other friend said that as soon as somebody invented a time machine we were gonna go back in time and strangle the guy who invented math. His name was Norman. He looked like this:

And we were going to strangle him, and then there would be no math. Yep, that's how it's gonna be, as soon as somebody invents a time machine.

What else can I blog about?
I'm rereading the HP books for the 11th time. I kid you not. ELEVEN times (actually, ten, but it will become eleven soon)! See, I was watching the 4th and 5th movies, (which I wasn't allowed to see before I was 13) and so I just kept thinking how much better the books are, so I decided I need to reread them.

Facebook is VERY addicting. Like, Holy-Cow-My-Butt-Has-Been-Superglued-To-The-Chair kinda addicting.

This:

Is a good book. (BTW, I don't think you can click to Look Inside- I just took the picture off of Amazon so that was part of the picture)

Lookit all the origami Thelly did!

Why is it the 10 year old boys love origami? Mom and Thelly went to an origami workshop at the library, and, like, everyone who was there was a 10 year old boy. I actually liked origami when I was 10, but I act like a boy with some frequency (lookit here), so maybe that's not to surprising.

And now I can't think of anything to say.

Bye.

Because I need to blog, but have nothing to say.

2010-01-16T16:21:00.000-08:00

I went to an awesome party last night. The end.