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.