The Latest

I sure am getting a lot of blogging done today.  I'm not sure how much longer I will last since Harry Potter is on and I will more likely than not get distracted.  It took me much longer than it should to write that sentence. :) 

Well, my summer is packed.  I don't know the exact details of when everything, but I have the general idea.  Basically, I'm going to have a trek in California at the end of June, then either go to dad's for a bit and then go to the reunion or go to the reunion and then to dad's.  Well, anyway, then I have to fly back to California for Girls Camp for five days.  Then I fly back to Utah, rest a few days and then go to EFY for a week.  It's in Lehi so I just go to church for the day and then go home to sleep, but still.  That all takes place in the course of about a month.  There's a trek in Utah that I could go on with Dad, Diane and Nathan that would be right before Girls Camp, but I would get back, go to bed, get up and get on a plane.  I'm just afraid I wouldn't have enough energy to have a good time at Girls Camp so I'm just going on the one here.  I thought if I could only go on one it should be at the one in my stake.  Dad still told them in Utah that I'm going and he's going to hope that I'll change my mind so I'm just going to let him hope.  I even told him so.  I said, "Dad, go ahead and hope, but I'm still not going to go."  But anyway, I'm preparing for that this summer.  I think it'll be good.  I just got really stressed about two treks for a while because Mom thought it would be too much for me and Dad wanted me to go.  But I've made my decision and I'm excited now. :)

I need to figure out my crocheting business because I have not been doing it lately.  I want to find a way to use the yarn I have.  I want to use some pink yarn to make hand warmers for WISH.  I just need to find some instructions online.  I really want to make a Gryffindor scarf, but I can't buy the yarn to make it because there's no more room in my trunk so I need to use some of it up before I start that project.  I also need to figure out how to make the stitches look tight and small like knitting, so I'll work on it.

I'm only 14, but I am already getting to be more and more like my mom and aunts as far as food goes.  I read the labels on packages.  I want to eat less sugar.  I firmly believe (see how strong my belief is?) that butter and honey are not bad for you and that sugar is.  I have a friend at WISH, I might have already blogged about her, anyway, she really doesn't think sugar is bad for you.  Anytime I say it is she says it isn't, only in large quantities.  Once I remember I had her over to decorate cupcakes and we had a can of store bought frosting and she was looking at the ingredients.  She pointed out some high boiled oil. "That's really bad for you," she said.  "Well, sugar's bad for you too," I said pointing to the first ingredient.  "No it's not.  Only in large amounts."  It was the first ingredient!  So it was definitely a large amount!  She also really hates Ariel and likes to bear her testimony of how much she hates her, too.  But she super nice and I love her anyway.  Anyway, back to my point.  Today Mom had her visiting teacher over to teach her how to make bread and she talked to her about a bunch of stuff.  We ended up making Chef Brad's Cowboy Cookies.  It has spelt, oatmeal and amaranth in it.  Amaranth is so fun.  We popped it in a hot pan and it turned white.  It makes the cookies look really pretty too.  So, we made these today and I was totally excited that they were filled with nutrients.  They were also made with coconut sugar.  So, that's what we did today. 

My most recent excitement have been some minor injuries and I haven't even mentioned them.  So, my bedroom is a loft that I get to on a ladder.  It's probably about 7 or 8 feet from the ground.  Well... yesterday I was getting ready to run out the door to go babysit and I was running up my ladder to get a pen when I... I guess I slipped.  I remember feeling the covers of my bed slip from my fingers and then seeing the wall flash before as I fell down.  I remember not knowing what to do and telling myself to fall to the floor gently.  It was the hitting the ground that hurt so it felt like a soft fall, but my tailbone hurts the most today so I guess it wasn't that soft of a fall.  Anyway, I fell 7 or 8 feet onto a hard floor, sat a minute, then got up and went to babysit.  Mom called a bit into my babysitting job to make sure I hadn't gone into shock or anything so I guess it could have been a lot worse than the bruises I've got.  That's pretty much all I got.  When I'm walking around I touch a spot on myself and say, "Oh, found another bruise."  But that's it.  So I was really lucky.

I'm playing I am a Child of God on the piano!  I just started, but it's the original one from the Primary book so I'm super excited!  We've really been advancing in piano.  I kind of went from baby song to Primary songs overnight.  It makes me wonder where we would be if we were this dedicated from kindergarten.

I feel like all of my blogs are just something exciting that I write a little about, not daily life.  This is a long post about what's been going on.  I'm really proud of myself. :)

Grandma's Visit

So, Grandma came to visit on January 30th and left a week later on February 6th.  It was so fun.  I guess Mom and Grandpa were worried about what we would do for a whole week, but it went by so fast!  It would have felt so short any less than a week.  We went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D.  It was so cool.  I loved it.  I love Beauty and the Beast.  Of course I love all of the princesses, but Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorites.  Grandma went with us to our P.E. day.  I'll tell you, it has been getting harder and harder every week.  We have just started soccer and I'm not a huge fan of it yet.  You have to run the entire time unless you're the goalie and if you're the goalie in our games you don't do anything because we aren't good enough yet to get the ball near the goals.  The past few times we have kept going until we are all so tired that we are frustrated so we've decided not to do that anymore.  I feel so stupid saying it's tiring because for anyone else it wouldn't be, but we are just so out of shape.  At least I am.  I get tired and cramps so easily.  Anyway, back to Grandma.  It went by so fast I can't even remember what we did.  I just remember sitting in bed thinking "Grandma only has this many days left." every night.  Everyday went by faster and faster.  But we had a great time.  

We had the Valentine's Tea Party on Saturday, before my birthday.  The day before we went to the 99cents store for all of the supplies.  We got paper products, confetti, tissue paper to make flowers (which we never did), candy, craft stuff to make valentines and party favors for the next day.  The next morning we decorated and tried to get everything ready in time.  Lizzie and Amy came and we had a fun time.  Mom made tomato soup hoping it would be red or pink, but it turned out to be a brownish orange.  So much for color themed food.  We did put heart shaped croutons in it though that Lizzie made.  Those were really fun.  Then I made a bouquet of chocolate dipped strawberries.  Grandma took pictures of it.  Hopefully she'll post them.  Lizzie took pictures of all the cousins together.  Maddie is crying and Elle isn't looking at the camera, but we're all in it.  We each decorated a frame to put the picture in.  I thought that was a cute idea.  At the tea party Amy was a girl that used to be a mermaid, but she got surgery and wasn't anymore.  She said she new Ariel and that her voice is not all that it is made up to be.  I got the feeling that she didn't like Ariel all that much.  I said that I grew, picked and dipped the strawberries all in one day.  Mom was the cook and she said that she believed in honesty when she asked us how much money we had.  When we tried to ask her questions she said that she believed in honesty, but that she herself was not honest.  What an example for her children.

I was so sad when Grandma left.  It felt like she had hardly been her at all it went by so fast.  But it was fun and we all had a great time.   

My Birthday

How pathetic that I am blogging about my birthday almost a month after it happened.  Then I'm going to blog about Grandma's visit a month after she got here.  I hate catching up because then I don't blog about the things that are happening now so I have to catch up on those later and then I'm just catching up forever.  But I want to write about these things somewhere and I am not writing it all out in my journal. :) So...

For my birthday I decided to go to Disneyland! since we live so close and have passes.  We are so lucky!  When I moved to California I was shocked when people who lived an hour or less away didn't have passes.  I assumed everyone did!  Maybe it was because even we bought them when we lived in Idaho, but we're just a crazy rarity.  So, my birthday was on Sunday and we couldn't go on Sunday and we couldn't go on Monday because that's when Grandma left so we went the Friday before my birthday.  Oh my gosh, we had a blast!  Whenever we go we get there at noon or later.  We tried to get there when it opened, but everything seemed to open half an hour early so we got there a bit late, but we got there way earlier than we usually do!  So we first went to Fantasyland and went on Peter Pan,  Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Storybook Canal Boats and Alice in Wonderland all in about an hour (I think).  I'm not sure when we did what after that, but we went on like 10 rides total including the ones in Fantasyland, give or take a few. We saw World of Color, went on the sourdough bread factory tour, and went to Animation Academy.  I feel like there's more, but that's probably it.  World of Color was amazing as always.  I love World of Color.  I feel the spirit every time (of course I have Rebecca for my mom so I was raised to feel the spirit when listening to music :).  Animation Academy is a 15 minute class where a "real" Disney artist teaches you how to draw a Disney character.  It is so fun.  Even Mom and Gracie draw something great and have fun and Mom hates to draw!  We do it all the time.  We have drawn Pooh, Tiger, Jack Skelington, Dale, Mickey and this time we drew Piglet.  Grandma spoiled us all day.  She bought us a meal, treats and gave us each $30 to spend on something.  I bought an Ariel t-shirt.  It took me forever to decide what to get.  I also liked a Precious Moments thing that had Minnie and a girl with a Minnie dress on posing.  I went back and forth between the two.  Went back and forth between the two parks and finally decided that I didn't have room for another glass figure.  So I bought the t-shirt.  There have been so many cool Ariel products ever since the new Ariel ride came out, which we also went on.  I love Ariel.   I love her voice.  So, overall, without a doubt, we had a great day.  We got there early, did a bunch of things and each left with something new we bought and a tired smile on our faces.

Grandma bought a cool how to draw book with princesses in it and I already had a how to draw Mickey characters book so we had a little drawing party on Sunday after church.  Grandma and I drew Belle and Minnie.  They turned out really good.  For my birthday breakfast I wanted pumpkin chocolate chip bread, but it was fast Sunday so we had it on Monday.  For my dinner I had the pizza rolls from Our Best Bites and for dessert we had the Fudge Truffle Cheesecake.  I love that cake.  It is sooo delicious.  It's the kind of food that makes you think, "I hope they have food in heaven because this is heaven!"  When I had the last piece a few days later I felt like I had just finished the Harry Potter series again.  So sad.

Uhhhh!  I have written this post 3 times because it got deleted for some reason and then I just put the pictures on and clicked somewhere and my list of presents disapeared so here's one.  Aren't they beautiful?  I'm going to use the box to put my yarn in and tape paper that says things like "Harry Potter loves to crochet!" "S.P.E.W." "Hermione likes to knit, but crocheting's way better." on the inside of the lid.  I'll post a pic when I do it.  I'm sorry they aren't good pictures.  It was up in my loft which has really bad lighting and I couldn't bring it back down.  And sorry they're small.  Mom's not here to teach me how to make them big and I don't want to wait to do it tomorrow when she's here, but I'll do better next time and small bad pictures are better than none, right? Oh!  I just figured out how to make them big so never mind! :)

Talent Show

Uh, I'm so frustrated. I set my account on blogger (or whatever you call it) to the new look, but it still has this weird type setting and when I press the bold button or load a picture it just puts the code instead of the pictures of making the words bold. It's so annoying and it's very frustrating, but that's not what I wanted to post about. I have three main points to post about. Our talent show, my birthday and Grandma's visit. So I think I'm going to give each of these points their own post just because. So here I go.

So, at our co-op there was a talent show and Anna and I signed up to sing a song. We were searching for a song to sing and we found Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof and thought it was really pretty. Even if we have never seen the movie and in the movie parents are singing it so it doesn't fit us at all. But then we saw the song Sisters from White Christmas in the songbook we were looking at and thought it was perfect. So we wrote in the parts that Judy sings and the part Betty sings and had Anna practice the harmony that Judy sings. We did a bit of choreography and everything. We practiced with markers for microphones and on the Sunday before the show Mom had us sing it for anyone that came into the house (which was a YW leader and two home teachers) to get us over our nerves. I'm not sure how singing it more than necessary would get us over our nerves, but that's what we did.

So, at WISH (the co-op) on Tuesday we practiced at lunch with a little audience of kids (that did not make me feel better) and we practiced with the microphones. There was a little whoopteedo when you couldn't hear me over Anna even though during practice I was louder than her. It was probably because I felt weird with the microphone and sang softer than usual. Anyway, during all the classes after class I was a nervous wreck. And then in my last class, Life Skills, I was asked to introduce two acts in the Talent Show. I was supposed to, oh! Mom fixed it.  Blogger's right again.  Okay, anyway, I was supposed to improvise and talk about the people and their acts while they set up.  Ironically I got the two that took the longest to set up and I didn't know anything about them.  So, while I was worrying about finding out things about the people doing the acts that I was introducing I was running around looking for my mom while trying to keep my bra straps under my sleeves.  In the room where the talent show was people were running around and setting up and it was just chaos.  When the show started the sound system kept breaking and overall the show took over an hour.  My first introduction was for a tumbling act.  I snatched at anything to talk about.  Someone in the crowd said that they loved hamburgers and I talked about burgers for 5 minutes after that.  Mom says I did a good job, but I honestly don't remember much of it.  The second time I introduced something I started to say something and then kind of gave up and stopped talking.  So, someone else took over.  That was after we sang and I was just a wreck.  We did good with the singing and nothing bad really happened.  I'm not really sure what it was.  But by the time we left I was ready to take off my dress and high heels and go home and cry.  Mom said it was probably the disorganization because I don't deal well with that.  But if I am to get anywhere in life I can't break down anytime there's disorganization.  So, hopefully I'll get over that.

Overall, it was pretty good I suppose.  I just don't know what got into me.  Oh, well.  Better time next time. :)