Christmas!!! YAY!!!

Christmas was amazing this year!
First of all I want to thank everybody who spoiled me stupid this year.  I have been addicted to all of my gifts ever since I got them, and was as happy as material possessions can make you when I got them.  I got everything that I asked for and a few things (*HACK*Mikayla) that I've been really wanting but haven't thought to ask for.
Christmas Eve was as fun as always, and thank you Mikayla for singing with me for the family talent show.
Not much else to say, except that yesterday we had our amazing Christmas dinner (thank you Momma and Daddy).
We have started our snow forts for the annual Snow War.  Only Spencer and I are participating this year, as Faith hates cold and Matt thinks it is stupid.  *Sigh*
My fort is conveniently located under the garage porch so that I don't have to worry about a roof.  It's also strategically placed so that the sun shines on it VERY little, so it won't melt.
This should be fun.

You should all tell me how your Christmasses were. 
EMAIL ME!!!! musickwriter@gmail.com

Thanksgiving

We went to Idaho this year for Thanksgiving, and quite fun it was. 

I finally learned how to play football, thanks to my cousins and Uncle Chad.  My opinion has changed on the sport as of now.  Fun to play.  Still ludicrously dull to watch.  Oh by the way, BYU ROCKS UNCLE DON!!!!!!!!!!

We spent the majority of Thanksgiving playing amazing board games and frying our brians on TV, as well as playing football and eating LOTS of delicious food.  I also learned that to play my cousin Tyler in Monopoly is to sign your own death warrant.  Uncle Chad taught me backgammon, then beat me at backgammon.

The next day we went to see the new movie Shorts.  Don't see it.  It's the single most stupid thing I've ever seen in my life that involves a staring contest, a motorcyle-riding ten year old, and a giant booger.  It really gets worse as you keep watching.  Ugh.  As my mother said, "An hour and a half of my life I will never get back."  I also had lots of fun with Sydney and Kate when we got home, playing imagination games and goofing around.  Fun, indeed!

There was nothing too eventful about the ride home except that I got a very sick stomach on way too many Mike Ikes.

Then we headed to the Harpers' house for the cousin party, watched Mr. Boogedy (HE SNEEZED ON 'IM!) and Sleepless in Seattle (a movie I'm sure my dad had quite an entertaining time watching at one part where these two people are destined to meet, but they're getting on and off different elevators going to separate places and most likely will never see each other again.  Not that he was really watching the movie.  I think he was more laughing at the four teenage girls clutching each other and screaming at the people on the TV screen not to get in the elevator that would speed them away from their destinies.  Intense.)

And to top the evening off, BYU WON THE GAME!!!!!!!

And just today I gave a talk in church that I no longer have to worry about, whew, and met a new friend named Taylor who moved in down the street.

Needless to say, this was just about the best weekend ever.

Apart from the Mike Ikes.

Formal Dance!

Yello!  As has been mentioned in other blog posts from Momma, I went to my first formal dance on Friday!  It was SOOOO much fun.  Weirdly enough, getting ready was just as fun as the dance.  There were five of us going in one little group.  Tianna, Leticia, Madaline, Audrey, and I all went over to Tianna's house after school.  Once we all got there, we walked down the block to Jessica's house, where Jessica did our hair amazingly.  We had fun talking and laughing while we were waiting for each other to get our hair done.  After we were finished, we headed back to Tianna's house for pizza and getting ready.  Here are some pictures of my friends and I before the dance.

Tianna -

Madaline -

Leticia -

Audrey -

Me -

All of us-

We had a lot of fun.  Once we got there, however, I lost my ticket and could not find it anywhere, but when Tianna and I saw it lying in the parking lot.  It turned out okay, but I was pretty freaked out for a sec there.

Anyway, when we got there, we had a lot of fun jumping up and down and weaving in and out of groups of dancers.  I danced with my friend named Andrue, who taught me how to swing (by the way, long dresses are REALLY hard to dance in), and did it very well (he's an amazing dancer).  I got dipped for the first time, which was both fun and kinda freaky because you have to trust the other person not to drop you.  I trust Andrue but there was still that moment when I realized I was falling backward that kinda made my stomach fall down to my heels. 

Fun, though.

Anyway, we had an amazing time.  THANK YOU TIANNA, LETICIA, MADELINE, and AUDREY!!!!! PLUS TIANNA'S FAMILY!!!!!!

AND MY MOM FOR LETTING ME BORROW HER CELL PHONE!!! (if you'd like details on this, please email me, but it seems too dull a story for a blog :) )

Halloween Funness!

Okay.  Here's my recap on Halloween!

First of all, our AMAZING grandparents from Idaho came over and spent the day with us!
We went to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (a show I completely reccomend), which was soooo much fun!  We also got to play Masterpiece with Grandma!

So I've had a hard time deciding on a costume for this year.  Originally I was going to be Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, but I couldn't really get everything together on time, so I've been a number of things.

1. For the Halloween Dance at our stake, I wrapped my legs in Smarties and duct tape and called myself "Smarty Pants"
2. For the Ward Trunk-or-Treat, I put on as much of my Artemis costume as was ready, but I ended up just about freezing my limbs off since I did not take the weather into account while designing the costume
3. For the pitiful "Unique Hat and Hair Day" that is the only stupid thing that the administration for school would pass for costume day, I stuck as many of those flower clippies as I could find in my hair, borrowed some of Mr. Macy's green hairspray, and called it good. (by the way, yes, Dad, several people tried to smell my head.  Another several asked if the flowers were attached to a shower cap.  I'm dead serious, that's what they said.  You want names?  Mango!  Scott!  Kevran!  Hannah!  Tori (known to Matt as Victoria)!  Allie!  Sarah!  And several others who have asked to remain anonymous in this blog post!  People are weird things.)
4. I was a totally lame snowboarding person for the Halloween recital.  I stuck on gloves, a scarf, coat, beanie, and sweats.  Cheap, right?  I was gonna be a street bum, but Mom didn't want me to cross dress and girl street bums are no fun to dress up as.
5. Finally, on Halloween (drumroll)......
I was a jailbird!  Sweet, kind, lovely, and utterly amazing Aunt Anne let me borrow her costume!  (by the way, Aunt Anne, I will be returning it just as soon as it comes out of the wash.  Otter Pop incident.)

6:00 Halloween Evening - I'm doing dishes and feeling slightly sorry for myself that I'm not going trick or treating.  My friend Brynja calls.  I get on costume and don't feel jailish enough so I stick on black beanie and smear black marker all over my face.  All better.
6:30 - I head over to Brynja's house, eat a cookie to get my stomach ready for all the junk that will soon be heading into it.  Our friend Kiera comes over and we head off. 
6:45 - We head to the houses on the outskirts of the neighborhood, where not too many people are going.  They give us way more candy because nobody's coming to their houses.  We get really sick of saying "Trick or Treat!" So instead switch to different things at everybody's houses.  A few: "HACK HACK HACK! Swine flu!" "Phantom of the Opera!" "Monster Mash (with awesome background music, of course, thanks to Kiera's beatboxing abilities) and a full version of "Jingle Bells" with slight adjustments.
About 7:30 - We switch from saying those weird things to acting out weird things.  Example: They open the door to see two motionless bodies in the background while I stand there innocently and says "Trick or Treat!"  When they fork over the candy and are staring at the motionlessness of my colleagues, I look behind me edgily and then ask for two garbage bags, after which the two bodies reanimate and collect their candy.  Yeah, we're weird, but man was it fun to see people's faces.
8:30 - Return home, watch the dumbest movie ever ("Something Wicked This Way Comes").  Stuff myself stupid on candy, dream of Otter Pops.


The End!

School Report!

     Hi, everyone! I need to apologize for not keeping up my blog entries lately, but I'm going to really try to keep it up to date over the school year.

     I love Paradigm!  It is such an amazing school, and I don't think I'll be leaving anytime soon unless extenuating circumstances are forced upon me.  The first thing I noticed on the first day is that I'm a lot less intimidated by people when they're wearing polos and khaki pants.  I could go up to anyone and introduce myself, which helped me make friends much faster than usual.  The environment was much warmer and friendlier than anything I ever experienced in public schools (cough, cough WILLOWCREEK!!!!).  I made and have so far kept so many friends who are a lot like me, and some that aren't, but we get along perfectly anyway. 
     My teachers are all amazing, and don't ask me to pick a favorite because I love them all too much to decide.  They each really care about me and listen to my questions and actually ANSWER them, as opposed to saying "Oh we'll get to that."  Eek.  Here are all my classes and their teachers (these are the official ones, because my schedule got changed around a lot).

        Student Government with Mr. Henke (I LOVE him)
         Creative Writing and Poetry :) with Ms. Paystrup (I LOVE her)
          Algebra 2 with Mr. T Rogers (I LOOVE him)
           Physics with Mr. J Rogers --the Rogers' are brothers, just so you know, and their names are Tom and Jerry.  Really, they are.  I know, it's awesome.  (I LOVe him)
             Foods and Nutririon with Ms. Hamory (I disagree with a few of her views, but I still LOVE her)
              Foundations (leadership) with Mr. Nate (aka Mr. Smiley because he never stops) (I LOOVE him)
               Bel Canto with Ms. Steinman (I REALLY LOVE her)
                World History with Ms. Higgins (I LOVE her)
And last but you'd be insane if you thought it was least...

SEMINARY WITH BROTHER MILLER AND BROTHER MCDONALD WHOM I LOOOOOVE!!!!

I also thought I'd mention that I got elected class president in my Foundations and Bel Canto classes.

Anyway, I'll keep posting as more stuff happens!

Life in Another Galaxy

Hello! I have an announcement to make. I have returned from space after discovering life in another galaxy. I have made contact with them, and they appear to be hostile. This is a very long and thrilling story, and email me if you would like a full account, but suffice it to say that, due to my new invention that makes faster-than-light travel not only possible, but convenient (not to mention fuel-efficient, since it runs on one milionth of an ounce of chocolate per thirty billion lightyears of travel). This discovery will undoubtedly be claimed as the work of much older and smarter people than I, but all who read this will know the truth.

(Mrs. Hislop, you're the only one who will get this blog post.)

Paradigm

Hi! It's been decided! I'm going to Paradigm with Matt next year. We're taking fencing together (that should be fun).
Here's the classes I enrolled in.

Physics (the other choice was biology, and I'm not dissecting anything if I can get away with it, besides, then I can take advanced physics next year and get college credit for it)
Algebra 2
Fundamentals Leadership
Fencing
Release Time Seminary
Creative Writing and Poetry (hee!)
Acting 1
Photography

So yes, I thought all of you would like to know.

Youth Conference!!!

We went to Saint George. It was the first time I'd ever really been there (I mean I think we drove through once when I was really little, but beside that). At first it was pretty freaky. I mean, the rocks are RED! I felt like I was on Mars for the first day, then the second day I realized that actually everything is really pretty. The palm trees were weird (pine cones with leaves on top), the plateaus were weirder (mountains with the top chopped off), and the heat was insane (at least twenty degrees hotter than home). But when you combined them all, it was actually quite enjoyable once you got over the overall shock of it.

We stayed in a hotel that wasn't terrible, but was FAR from five star. The second night, a kid named Landon found a cockroach in his bathroom. However, it had a pool, kitchen, and it was two kids to a room, so we had a good time (emphasis on the pool part)(and actually there were only four girls there so we ended up sleeping in only one room anyway)(and we never used the kitchen except at the end to take all the leftover candy and playdough).

The first day we unpacked then went swimming. My leader Sister Freebairn is going to email me a bunch of the pictures she took, so I'll post those when they get here. We did "mermaid hair", I pounced on Matt and wouldn't get off until faced with the choice of drowning or releasing him (which I thought was fun, but apparently Matt didn't for some reason. Sorry, Matt) and we fought over a raft that was in the pool (something I think we both enjoyed). Eventually we got out and went to see a Tuacahn play, Footloose.
Things I really liked about it: There were a couple amazing singers, the choreography was stunning, the music was fun, and it had a good plot and morals.
Things I really didn't like about it: There was some swearing, sexual content, and immodest dress (not bikini bad, but short shorts, bare midriff, and sleeveless shirt). Also, at the beginning one of the main characters was involved with a bad guy and they did bad things.
Overall, I don't regret seeing it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

When we got back, we went "straight" to bed (teheh), got "straight" to sleep (ahahahahah), and didn't talk about anything, let alone deep and important topics (wuahahahahahahahahahah!). And most importantly, the boys absolutely planned NO pranks on us, Landon did NOT stand outside our window with a gorilla suit on and he did NOT knock on our window and try to make us scream (WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!).
I have an interesting story involving sleepwalking and one of my friends, but I won't print it here because I have other things to write about. However, if you'd like to hear it, email me and I'll tell it to you. It's actually pretty funny.

The next day was AWESOME!!! We hiked the Narrows at Zion's National Park, but first we went to the Saint George Temple and did baptisms there. It was so cool. I learned some things about that temple that I didn't know, such as the fact that the founding fathers visited there. Then we hiked the Narrows. My friend Makelle and I were clinging to each other the whole time. Actually, I think mainly she was just holding me up, because I was the one who kept falling. I fell up to my neck four times, had about twenty medium falls, and I lost count of the small falls somewhere in the trillions. Also, if it weren't for several of the chivalrous young men in our ward, I know I would be halfway down the river, and probably would have accidentally knocked Makelle over in the process of my flailing limbs trying to pull me back up. Therefore, I am very thankful to them. Unfortunately, my falling wasn't helped by the fact that I had worn jeans on the trip so the insides of both my thighs were raw and painful. Ah well.

One of the talks on the next day was by a seminary teacher who made a great acronym for SPIRIT, trying to tell us how to make our spirits bigger than our bodies.

Scripture reading
Prayerfulness
Intelligent fasting (he told us he had had to get creative here)
Rest
Interesting exercise
Tithing

I really like his talk to us, especially since he involved Swedish Fish in it.

There was still some time left when we got back, so we went swimming again. We did synchronized diving off the edge, and Landon took the opportunity to shove me in early, which earned him some slaps and shoves and laughs. Also, another kid, Darryl, jumped in with all his clothes on, lost his glasses and his fluorescent yellow belt. Sigh, we all love Darryl.

All in all, it was a VERY fun first youth conference!

Easter

Hi, everyone!







A couple weeks ago, as I'm sure you know, was Easter. Our family, other than Dad and Matt, went to Idaho. While we were there, we celebrated Grandma Kristie's birthday! It was also Certificate of Merit.







For Easter, we had a fun Easter Loot hunt, in which Simon and Sydney, our cousins, and the Borens searched for our hidden baskets. Mine was in the oven.



Amongst the stringy grass was:

A lollipop that had 167 sugars per 7 oz (there were about 40 oz in the whole thing)

An adorable black purse

Earrings in the shape of musical notes

Bubble wand (that thing was so much fun)

Chocolate bunny named Mrs. Gigglesworth (note - I did not make up that name)

Then there was a fun easter egg hunt and treasure hunt.

Spiritual insight: After church I went outside in the grass to read and think. I was reading about how Mary came to the empty tomb and Jesus was talking to her. He told her that his God was the same as her God, his Father was the same as her Father. And then it hit me. If Jesus and I have the same father, that really does make Him my older brother. I'd always known that, but I'd never really thought it before. JESUS AND I ARE CLOSELY RELATED!!!!!!!!

Amongst the other activities that week, we went to Boondocks (bizarrely renamed Wahooz by the new owner [?]), where I won a slinky named Jumble, a squishy thingy names Squishy, and a yoyo named Mr. Slobb. Sigh... the only pets Daddy will ever let me keep.

A short list of our other activities involves zoo trips, park visits, and roller blading (contented sigh...), along with puzzle doings and retirement home performances (don't you just love talking to old people? They're so cute!)

Then, the dreaded and highly anticipated day came when... DUH DUH DUUUUH the Certificate of Merit was upon us! I actually didn't do as bad as I thought I would. I missed five quesitons on my theory test, and got a Good instead of Excellent on sightreading, but other than that I was okay. I had a really nice judge. After I was through performing, I helped Grandma sort things and played Sodoku on her friend Jill's cell phone.

The next day we left.

And that was our Easter Week! How was yours?

Skating!

Okay. My parents and I had a deal that if I wrote down one of my songs then they would take me ice skating. I did it. I went on Friday. Dad works in Orem on Fridays so he took me to work with him. He introduced me to a few of his coworkers, then I hung out in the kitchen and stole a couple cups of hot cocoa while Dad was in a meeting, then he took me to lunch and dropped me off on BYU CAMPUS!!!

I got to explore a little. I went to the library, the art museum, the fine arts center, and to several buildings I have no idea the names of. I think some people thought I was a college student because a couple of missionaries came up to me and asked where the MTC was. Of course, I didn't, but it still made me feel sparkly that someone thought I was college aged. Muahahah. It was also kinda fun when I was sitting on the platform under the bell tower and this student sat on another bench and started to practice his guitar. He was singing love songs while he was practicing and it was fun to imagine that my husband was singing them to me. I've decided that my husband MUST play an instrument. It'd also be good if he could sing well, but I won't mind if he can't because I can't either. We'll understand each other.

Anyway, I got a blister on both of my pinky toes because I didn't know I would be walking around so much and so I wore my high heeled boots. Therefore, my feet hurt VERY badly even before we got to the rink. When we did get there at 3:30, it was very fun because a few figure skaters were practicing there. A few were college students, as I found out by talking to them, and some were just teens like me. Anyway, I watched them for a while and tried a couple of the things they were doing. It was REALLY fun! I learned how to do a backward spiral (sticking your leg out behind you while going backwards), something I had never even dared try, do some really fun spins (I haven't nailed the spinning on one foot thing yet, but I'll keep trying), and I got to practice switching from going backward to going forward on one foot. I asked a couple of the figure skaters how to do some spins. Everyone seemed to think something different. One person tought me the sound my skates should make while I'm spinning. It was really fun.

When I got home, nine of my toes were bruised (one was saved because I have an ingrown toenail on that one, so it had a bandaid, somewhat cushioning it), my back hurt, and I was in a state of bliss. What a day.

Certificate of Merit!

Hi, everyone! I'm going to do the Certificate of Merit this year, and for those of you people who don't know what that is, it's a piano thingy where you play three songs and a bunch of scales for one of the judges and then you take a theory test. Then the judges rate you.

It's not like a competition, but you get ranked (I think it's from one to five).
I'm playing :

Watch my Fingers Rock! - by John Burson

Waltz - by Edvard Grieg (he kinda sounds like a vampire)

and

Sonatina in F - by Anton Diabelli

Anyway, I'm REALLY excited. It's in Idaho this April, so I've only got a couple of months to perfect the songs.