What I Did

Smile

It looks good on you.:)

Well, today started with us trying to buy tickets to a One Direction concert.  :p I can tell you it is not easy to buy tickets for the biggest band in the world!  We thought that this was going to be the presale, which meant it would be easier to get cheap tickets, but that didn't happen.  The best we could find came to a total of $96 and it was so far from the stage that it wasn't worth it.  Moral of the story: don't count your chickens before they hatch!  It's terrible to get excited about something and then not do it.

On another note, I'm among the living again!  I woke up last Thursday morning with a neck that would not move.  We decided rest was the only thing that would help and after a week in bed I decided I was fed up with it.  My neck isn't back to it's normal self, but I'm done being and invalid.

Soooo, today I:

• went to seminary
• helped clean the house
• studied my scriptures
• emailed my Shakespeare teacher
• changed my sheets!
• went on a walk
• cleaned my room
• put my blankets in the washer   AND
• blogged!

Yay! And my birthday is next week and we're going to Disneyland! and I'm going to come up with my list of 16 things I'm going to do this next year!

The Things that Make it All Worth It

Family is very important.  At church the importance of family is always getting pushed into our faces and as a teenager I feel like I am frequently told things along the lines of, "Family is what's important.  Don't worry about your friends cause you're not going to know them in a few years and family is what you're going to hold on to."  That is true to an extent.  And I'm not bagging on family, but I wanted to talk about the importance of friends and what an impact they have on our lives.  Mom and I were talking about this Monday morning as we drove to or from seminary (I forget which).  And I forget exactly how it came up, but I think it was something about how supportive all our friends have been with Motordogs.  People in our ward in Pasadena we weren't even extremely close to have come to eat, inquire and praise.  I feel like I have the best friends in the world.  All of them.  From so many different circles, so many varieties.  I have friends from lots of different church circles, homeschool groups and friends of those friends that have then become really good friends of mine!  And they all love and support me so much, through school, seminary, theater groups....  My friend Francesca (whom I take my Shakespeare class with, taught by her mom) and her family are such good friends of ours.  I love her and her little brother (who is 10) to death and I can't believe I've barely known them a year!  I can't imagine my life without them!  When mom and I were talking about this she declared life would be impossible to live without friends.  It's impossible without family and it's impossible to get to the Celestial kingdom without family, but friends add a whole new level of happiness to life.  Mom then told me a story about when she was a kid.  She said she remembered an old friend of theirs that was very healthy and would have lived a long time, but died soon after his wife did.  She said when that happened she asked her dad, "So, in heaven we'll be with our family because we're sealed to each other, but what about friends?  Are we going to be with our friends in heaven?" And he answered, "Well, it wouldn't be heaven without them."  When she said that we both teared up.  It was a very inspiring conversation.

The next day we went to Disneyland and of course it was a blast.  I could take pictures and everything with my new phone!  It was so wonderful.  Anyway, that night, not too long before it closed, we were in Fantasyland.  Amy was on the carousel with Gracie and Maddie, Mom was somewhere changing Jason's diaper, and Anna and I were sitting on a bench by the carousel waiting.  I looked around and saw a girl with long blonde hair and a fancy camera to her eyes standing on top of another bench.  My gaze left her as I thought, "That would be fun to take pictures like that."  For some reason I looked back and as she lowered her camera her face registered in my brain.  That girl looked so much like my best friend, Chelsie, from our ward in Redlands.  I looked away thinking it couldn't possibly be her.  They were just about to move when we moved from Redlands and there was a girl in my stake who also looked very much like her, but was not her so my mind could just be confused again.  I turned toward her again as she hopped down from the bench and started talking to two blonde boys that looked the same age as my friend Chelsie's brothers were supposed to be.  I stood up and my mind argued with itself.  What if it's not her?  But you have to find out.  What if it is her?  My eyes still locked on my perspective friend I told Anna to wait there and walked over.  The girl's back was to me and after just standing there dumbly for a minute I said, "Chelsie?"  They girl whirled around and looked at me for a moment before screaming and dashing forward for a hug.  It was her!  One of my best friends I regretted loosing contact with was here at Disneyland, in the same place at the same time as me, almost three years after we said goodbye.  It was the craziest thing!  I had still been wearing my glasses in Redlands and she recognized me without them.  Her mom and sister returned from the carousel and I gave my former YW leader a hug.  It's funny how you can't exactly remember a face, but when you see it, you know it looks exactly the same.  Her sister, who was 1 when I left, looks absolutely nothing like she did before but I totally matched the faces of her brothers with the little boys I once knew.  I asked the youngest one (who is adorable) for a hug and he obliged. :) We had to separate again before we wanted to and I regret now not taking a picture together, but now we're following each other's instagrams and everything so we won't loose touch again.  After she left I still could not believe it happened, but it absolutely made my day.  It was the best.

Having that experience just the day after discussing friendship with mom really hit me.  I am so so blessed.

I was doing so good with blogging!  Could have been better, but definitely better than before, but now instagram and facebook has just ruined it.  Facebook clarification: my dad has always wanted me to get one so he can "keep up" with me better, but I've always rebelled because it just seemed like a waste of time to me.  I did not want to get caught up in the whole facebook movement, and guess what?  I didn't.  Facebook was big, I didn't have one, facebook died and I survived through it.  Well when I got an iphone I said, "Dad I don't need a facebook cause I'm just going to use instagram, which is better anyways."  Well, he doesn't know much about instagram, so we ended up trading.  He got an instagram and I got a facebook.  :p I guess I like it to keep in touch with people who don't use instagram, but other than that instagram is far superior.

Aaaaanyway, what should I say?  My new years resolution is to read the scriptures every day.  365 days in a row.  For more goals I'm gonna steal Danielle's birthday goal thing and do 16 things this year, starting next month.  That's so soon!  That's scary.

I'm gonna be in two musicals this spring!  Isn't that so exciting???  I have so many friends that have been in so many and they love it.  And since I love musicals and love to sing I've always wanted to do it, but have been to scared to.  Well, Anna and I took a great leap and signed up to be in the Wizard of Oz in a really good company several friends have been in and loved.  We're hoping to be the crows (who aren't in the movie, just musical performances) that sing during the scarecrow song and the chorus.  The other musical I'm gonna be in is called Schoolhouse Rock.  Which I'm also really excited about cause the director is a friend's mom and that friend is choreographing it.  I don't know this play at all, but I've decided to take another leap of faith and audition for a singing part anyway.  Why not?  I'm gonna sing 16 Going On 17 from Sound of Music and see where it gets me.  This play only has rehearsals once a month and then we take a CD home to help learn the music, so it's low maintenance compared to the other one.

Of course there's the obvious exciting thing, we opened Motordogs!!!  Ultimate of exciting.

This is short and rambly but I'm gonna go ahead and post it anyway. : )

10 Days till Christmas...

Okay, it's definitely time to post.  I was so going to post four times last month, but then I went to my dad's and that failed.  Getting an iphone didn't help.  It's so much harder to make myself blog when I instagram and facebook now.  (btw, facebook was my dad's idea.  He didn't know how instagram worked and wanted me to try facebook so he could 'keep up with me better' so I told him I'd do facebook if he did instagram.  So now we're both doing it.)  Anyway, I'm loving my new iphone!  I'm love love loving my camera and how beautiful the pictures look.  It is so easy to capture moments now.  I can keep up with friends who are far away (or not so far away :) and I'm just loving it.  I ordered a pink Mickey Mouse case for it and it's on it's way. ;)

Alright, I'll do some catch up on our Thanksgiving trip to Utah then skip to the present.  I had such a fun time this trip.  We didn't spend as much time with the boys cause we were only there one and a half weeks and they spent four or five days in Arizona with their dad for Thanksgiving like they always do, but it was fun anyway.  Me, my sisters, Dad, and Diane went to temple square to see The Savior of the World musical, as you saw on instagram.  That was just beautiful. We also saw the Christmas lights and I almost froze to death.  But honestly, I think I get more cold in California than in Utah because of what we expect.  I expect to be freezing in Utah so I really bundle up and it ends up not being that bad.  In CA I have this sunny weather expectation and have too much pride to bundle up, even though I would be more comfortable if I did.  Anyway, that was fun.  For Thanksgiving we went to Idaho and spent it with my grandparents.  My grandpa has started working in the garden section at Walmart and he had to go to work Thanksgiving afternoon so when we got there the night before almost all the food was made.  Almost everyone got up around 6 the next morning (not me, hehehe) and we ate at 11:30.  It was the smoothest Thanksgiving I have ever experienced.  And so yummy.  My grandparents brought out some of their apple juice that they personally juiced from the apples, I might have actually helped, I'm not sure.  It was basically heaven in a glass.  NOTHING like store bought apple juice.  Oh, I just remembered that for mutual while we were there the young women went to the new exhibit at BYU.  It had tons of paintings from all over the world.  Back story: BYU did an exhibit like this before, no idea when, and they ran into a lot of old churches with paintings that they had kept for years and years and were not willing to let them leave.  So BYU got what they could and the exhibit was really successful.  Because of how respectful, successful, and loved the exhibit was last time, this time churches were a lot more willing to give up their paintings for a while.  So we got to see paintings that had not been moved from those old churches in who knows how many years.  It was so amazing and moving.

Christmas is 10 days away.  That went by so fast and I'm kinda depressed about it.  Oh well, we have school off now.  I have seminary on Monday then I am done! Happy day!  I really need to get caught up, on the book I'm supposed to be reading for Shakespeare class, cleaning my room, reading my scriptures.  I just fell apart this week and it makes me sad.  Not fall apart the sense that I broke into tears but that I just let my priorities go and wanted to be lazy before it was time to be lazy.  Well now I can be lazy during vacation and I'm gonna work to get caught up!  Haha, anywho, love you all and hope you're having a good Christmas season!

Something that makes everyone in our house smile...

Except Steve.  In this house we are all pretty obsessed with High School Musical.  All three of them.  Always have been.  We just love them and today when we watched the third one (Senior Year) Mom and I found ourselves talking about the characters and their actions in such depth that you would have thought we were discussing something so much more.  I said, "Aren't we just so amazing, Mom, to find so much meaning in something so cheesy and meaningless?"  We connected how loving and forgiving Troy is.  In the second movie Gabriella and his friends totally got mad at him for taking a new job that payed more than theirs, missing dates and being so successful just cause Sharpay, who has lots of connections, made him so.  In the third one, Gabriella does not tell Troy that she is up for an honors program in college and will have to leave halfway through their senior year, therefore causing her to miss the musical she asked him to do with her and then doesn't come back for prom like she promised, but Troy never gets mad or accuses her of anything.  At one point Mom said, "Troy's my favorite.  Not just because he's the cutest, but because he's so good."  She cracks me up.  Once when we were watching the second movie a few weeks ago (our favorite, btw) and during the last song that Troy and Gabriella perform, Troy would do a particular move, a toss of the head, move of the eyes, or flick of the hand and Mom would go, "I just love it when he does that.  He's so adorable."  She also says that Gabriella doesn't deserve him.  Haha. : )  Of course I agree with her, I'm just not as expressive about it. ; )  These movies are watched very regularly in our household.  The music is also listened to very regularly while we do the dishes.  It's just a constant high school musical here.

So, did that make you smile?

All the Little Things

Definitely time to post.

So, we borrowed The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants at the library this week.  Love that movie.  Before I get to the point of why I brought it up I want to add: the part when they're making the rules for the pants they say you're not allowed to tuck in the shirt and wear a belt or do the double cuffs at the bottom because that was super tacky.  Well, I decided to wear their entire tacky outfit to a dance last night and it was actually pretty cute.  It's so funny how styles change.  Skinny jeans are hardly ever worn all the way to the ankle anymore, they are almost always double cuffed.

Anyway, in the movie there's this 12 year old girl, named Bailey who has leukemia that says that being happy isn't about having your life be perfect.  It's about stringing all the little things together and making them count for more than the bad stuff.  I thought that was really profound. Our life as a total can be looked at as one big mission, one big journey, one big anything, but really it's made up of lots of little things.  The little things are what count.  In my saddest moments, it's usually set off by something so little it shouldn't matter, like having my schedule for the day ruined or ruining a batch of cookies, or spilling water all over a beloved book.  There are so many of those little things that can make our lives miserable if we let them.  But we shouldn't let them.  Since there is opposition in all things there are the little bad things and the little good things.  The little good things such as getting asked to dance by someone who likes to talk ;), or going to bed early, or the day the plant you have been diligently caring for starts to look a little greener, and especially all those many gentle, soft, and little promptings we all receive everyday.  Though we may miss a day talking to Heavenly Father because "we're just too tired" He will never use any excuse to avoid speaking to us, or miss any opportunity to speak to us.  Once when I went to the temple with the youth in my stake someone gave a brief talk to us before we did baptisms.  He said that he thinks sometimes people, especially youth, make receiving a prompting too complicated.  He said all it takes is a thought and a feeling.  You may ask yourself, "but what if it's Satan prompting me to do this?"  We all have the gift of the Holy Ghost.  We can tell if that action would lead us closer to God or closer to Satan.  With all the little blessings, we shouldn't despair.  After all if your schedule's ruined one day, does that mean that the next day won't be as fresh and new as always?  If you burn the cookies does that mean you will never make a yummy cookie again? I don't know what to say about spilling water on a beloved book because that would really break my heart.  There are some bad things that you can't overlook.  Some of them aren't so little.  So you've just gotta string all the good little things together and make them count for more than the bad stuff, just like Bailey did.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

This happened last Tuesday and I've been trying to finish that post ever since then.  Now it seems a little fuzzy, but I felt like I needed to document it.

I got back from seminary and was informed that I needed to make bread.  I had managed to make the last batch of bread without any disasters (such as spewing butter or flour all over, forgetting an ingredient or trying to be tidy and putting the honey away only to have to lug it back down because I neglected to remember that you add honey two different times) so I really wanted to accomplish the goal of making more than one batch successfully.  Mom left and I asked Gracie if she wanted to watch a movie or listen to music.  She said she didn't want to watch a movie so I put on some music.  After about two or three songs she came in with the movie Ramona and Beezus and asked me to turn it on.  I was in the middle of a step that couldn't be interrupted so I told her it was too late and I couldn't do it right now.  When she understood she threw a fit and ran out of the kitchen.  I sighed because I hate it when I do something that upsets her like that.  So I turn back to my bowl (feeling like I wanna cry because I'm trying to make bread for the family, tried to please my sister and failed, I had a lot of homework to think about in the back of my head and it was my time of the month for everything to be blown out of proportion ;) and realized that I couldn't remember how many cups I had measured.

I don't remember what happened from that time to when I ran out of wheat, but know I was still not in a good mood.  I was at the end of the bread making process and all I had to do was add enough flour to get the right consistency.  And this is when I reached the bottom of the bin of wheat.  I called Mom to ask where more wheat was and she responded that it was somewhere in the garage, probably to far back for me to get.  "Just use white flour."  "I already used all of it.  There wasn't even two cups."  "Well then just use some quick oats.  You can dump in a couple cups of those."  So after dumping in three cups of quick oats it still wasn't ready.  It was raising while I was trying to figure out what to do and I was getting more frazzled by the second.  I called Mom again and her phone died in the middle so I had to wait for her to call on Steve's phone.  We conversed over four different phone calls in less than 20 minutes over this stupid bread that my mind had been stewing over for hours and we came to the conclusion that the only thing we could do was put some plastic wrap over it and put in the fridge until they returned and Steve could get the wheat.

The space of time between placing the dough in the fridge and them getting back has also gone from my brain, but I believe I tried to spend it doing homework and studying for my permit test.  When we opened the fridge after they got back we discovered that the dough had risen and overflowed to the point where a good portion of it had fallen over the edge of the bowl and stretched down past the edge of the shelf of the fridge (cause it was sitting at the very end, can you picture it?).  I'm pretty sure that the first words out of Mom's mouth, though it might have been Anna's or Gracie's, was, "What happened?!"  leaving me to put my hands up defensively and squeak, "It's not my fault, I did everything you told me to!"  After which Mom gathered the escaped dough and shoved it back into the bowl, apologizing that she asked me to make bread when we didn't have enough wheat.

Another large obstacle in the back of my brain that added a lot of stress was the thought of taking my driving permit test, which I was scheduled to do at 3:30.  I wanted to do it because I do want to learn to drive (even though I'm scared to death of sitting behind the wheel), I wanted to pass the test before I forgot everything I learned from Driver's Ed and at this point I wouldn't be able to get my license for several months after my birthday so I didn't want to add any more.  Before we could think anymore about the bread we all had to run around to get ready to leave.  Anna and Gracie scrambled to get dressed for dance because we were going there straight from the DMV and I had to gather my school together to try to get some done during all the waiting I would have to do.  We left late and I panicked with the earlier conversation about the DMV going through my mind.  Mom and Steve had told me all their horror stories about how many hours they spent at that awful building only to be sent back because there was some information about themselves that they didn't have.  "Oh, and I failed my first test to get my California license, so I had to read through the entire manual before I took it again.  It was awful!"  "Gee, this is sure making me feel better."  "Oh no, honey, you'll do great!  You're so much more prepared than I was."  Yeah, that one inspiring statement after that entire conversation about all the torturous hours in the dreaded DMV.

On the way there we realized that I didn't have my social security number.  We call my dad and he doesn't answer.  We pull into the parking lot 10 minutes late, waste another 5 by trying to find a shady parking space and end up finding one in the very back and run inside, praying that dad will call back while we're filling out my form.  We walk in and after having a hard time finding the form to fill out, take it to a table and begin the process while I'm nervously drumming my fingers.  After it's all filled out we call Dad again and he still doesn't answer.  So we decide (er, Mom decides) to just get in line and start on everything else and hopefully he'll call during all of that.  We get up there, Mom slides the copy of my birth certificate toward the guy working with us the same moment my dad calls.  I hear Dad asking me, "You don't have it memorized?  That sounds like a good project for you."  (well thanks, I'll hop right to it cause it's not like I have anything else to do right now!) as I see the guy shaking his head at the copy in front of him.  "You mean we need the original?"  My mom asks.  "We need the original?" I moan.  "You need the original birth certificate?"  My dad asks.  So yeah, I didn't get to take or pass the test that day.

I walked out to the car, shoved aside Anna's "Aliese, what're you doing here?" and hopped into the back seat.  We discussed what to do with our free hour and came to the conclusion that there was nothing to do but go to dance early and wait.  Great.  My bread failed, I didn't get to take my test which means we wasted a trip to the dreaded DMV building, and I wouldn't be able to go home and cry for six hours because their dance classes end at seven, which is just late enough to make driving through Monrovia to home then taking me back to Monrovia by eight thirty for my choir (called Vocalise) I joined this year a waste of time and gas.  So we went to dance and I did homework during the long and lonely three hour wait.  After my 'lunchbox' lunch from home I begged mom to get a snack because I was really craving chocolate (which I don't usually have a problem with except at that time of the month ;).  "I don't know about chocolate, but I want some kind of snack, too,"  Mom said.  I was grateful enough for that because it was something at least.  "Are you sure you don't want those granola bars from Costco?"  Mom asked.  I grimaced.  Costco sells these big boxes of crunchy peanut butter granola bars that I used to think were really good.  Until I had way too many.  "Still o.d.ed on those?"  She asked.  I nodded.

We went to Trader Joe's while waiting for Anna's class to get out and Gracie and I waited in the car while Mom went inside to "find something yummy for us all."  Guess what she came back with?  Crunchy peanut butter granola bars.  "I don't think they're the same as those other ones," she said.  I tried it and besides the peanut butter frosting on the top they are too much the same for me to stomach.  "Yes, they are, Mom.  Do you want the rest of mine?"  Sigh.  I just wanted to go home and go to bed, but we had to go back to get Anna then drop me off at my choir practice where I had another hour to wait.

Believe it or not, I still had homework to finish (this was all for my Shakespeare class) so I sat down near the spot me and a girl from choir usually study in when we wait for class.  She had a tap dance class that finished an hour before our choir practice started in the same place so she always stayed and studied.  Well, when she came out of class I realized that she had previously set her school stuff at the opposite end of the room and that's where she went to study.  I sighed but told myself that I'd get more work done that way, though it really felt like another disappointment.

Probably around 8 (half an hour before practice) a girl named Lydia from choir walked in...wearing an EFY t-shirt.  My curiosity peaked, I called out to her and said I wanted to ask her something.  She walked over with an enthusiastic, "What's up?!"  I replied, "Where'd you get that shirt?"  She started talking about EFY and after I told her about my experience with it I said, "I didn't know you were Mormon!"  And she said, "I didn't know you were either!"  She took out her phone and said that she was going to put me in as her 'Vocalise Mormon Buddy'.  We chattered on happily for the rest of my waiting time.  Our conversation went from EFY to school to dances to family and back again and it perked me right up.

It's funny cause I remember a funny feeling when I met her.  I don't think the thought that she could be Mormon crossed my mind and if it did it came and went in a second, but I had some kind of feeling that I didn't get when I was introduced to everyone else and it came back every time I turned around and looked back at the soprano section where she sat.  It's amazing how much of a difference someone that stands for Christ with the Gift of the Holy Ghost makes.  Not only to those hungry for the truth that they don't have, but to someone who needed to be reminded that she had that Gift too.