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

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

(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!

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

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.

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.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Friday the 13th

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!

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

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?

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.

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.

It's Sibling Day

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...

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.

*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!!!

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

Testing, Testing One, Two, Three

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.

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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.

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

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 :)

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!!

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! :)