WOW!!!!

Everybody learns something new everyday. What I learned today is that the longest word in the English language is 3,609,750 letters long (not including DNA molecule titles or chemical names). Wow! Now wouldn't that be fun to say! It means the current day or date between real and imaginable today, whatever that means ;)

All in 24 hours' time...

It's amazing what a person can do in twenty-four hours. The twenty-four hours I will be talking about is Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon. On Sunday my little sister was playing a video game and I was watching. She was sitting the the banana chair on the floor to my right and I was sitting on the couch. I was suddenly hungry and wanted to go into the kitchen to get something. I walked behind Chrissie's banana chair and screamed out in pain. The back flap of the banana chair was pulled back and a nail was sticking out. I had a sharp pain in my leg and ran to the bathroom to see what happened. I have a cut about four inches long on my leg (it's not a continuous cut, but small individual cuts in a line) and it was bleeding profusely. I hurriedly bandaged it up. Within the first half hour, I had to bandage it up two times. It hurt so much! (by the way, this picture is the worst out of all of them)

Monday mid-afternoon I was making cookies. I got distracted and burned my arm on the cookie sheet. At first it just stung, but then it hurt very much.

Monday afternoon I stole Reana's phone from her because she got a picture of me that I didn't like and I wanted to delete it. I was wearing my new shoes and they were still slippery and not worn down yet. I ran across the kitchen floor and tried to turn into the laundry doorway but slipped a little and my knee hit the door frame. I went flying and landed sprawled out on the hard laundry room floor. Reana ended up getting her phone, and I hadn't deleted the picture yet. My knee hurt really bad and I somehow convinced Reana to give me "pay" for her hurting me. She gave me her phone and I deleted the picture :) I looked at my bruise and it is the funniest looking one I have ever had. It's that green thing with a purplish redish dot in it.

An Amazing Break!

Christmas break this year is fantastic so far. And it will most likely be fantastic for the rest of the break. Even though I caught a cold a couple days before Christmas and it's just now going away, I am still very happy.

My family (Amanda, Sami, Mark, and Audree) came to Idaho and spent about a week of Christmas break with us. My brothers, Craig and Keith, spent Christmas day with us and parts of Christmas Eve. For Christmas Eve we, like everybody else, have traditions to keep. We always go to my Grandma Bassett's house and eat a huge dinner, then go downstairs for our lovely nativity play put on by the children. We make our way back upstairs into the front living room and have our "talent show". This year we had a variety of stories, singing, and I think my aunt played the violin. We went home and we all got to open our presents from Grandma Bassett. We all got comfortable pajamas, and were extremely excited to put them on! After a while we all went to bed, tired from the long day.

Christmas morning we had to wake up at six because my brother, Craig, had to work and nine that morning (and having eleven people to open presents (12 if you count millie who had two presents) it takes a while...). Sami and Mark were very tired from the night before (Audree had a hard time sleeping here) and I felt so bad for them to have to wake up that early. We all headed downstairs and sat where our stockings were on the couches. We opened up our presents and thanked our parents and family members and we were done about eight or so. My dad made breakfast and we were happy to eat :) We played with our new presents until noon when we left for my Grandma Spencer's house. We stayed there until night playing with our cousins and family members.

Amanda, Sami, Mark, and Audree left yesterday to go back home to Utah. The whole week they were here, I played with Audree and my mom said she was basically connected to my hip :) It was a lot of fun which made it sad to see them all go :(

My Skipping Report

I decided to report on my whole skipping scheme. None of my friends thought I would really do it so they were shocked when they didn't find me in history. I have to say that yesterday was the best day I could ever skip. I went into the classroom and all the desks were completely full. Brother Fuller cleared his desk in the back and had me sit there. About ten minutes through, a girl had to leave for the period and Brother Fuller told me to take her spot. Brother Fuller's computer wasn't working so we didn't get to do the lesson (he always bases his lessons off the computer. After last year of seminary I despise PowerPoints). I talked to the people around me the whole time and it was so much fun! It was kinda sad when we had to leave. I still haven't been called about being truant, but hopefully Mrs. Hutchinson still thinks I'm Kaitlyn (my history teacher still doesn't know my name...wow).

Tomorrow is another day of seminary for that class, but I can't skip history anymore. At least not this semester. But I really want to go because they are eating and talking the whole period (Fuller's been very kind lately).

Tomorrow is a full day when it should be a half day. I think it is so stupid that they waste my time like this. We also have an assembly tomorrow that I'm not looking forward to. Pep assemblies at new schools always suck. But anyway, I am going out to lunch tomorrow with my friend Emilea and her sister Whitney. Yay! We wanted to skip since we aren't doing anything tomorrow, but we decided it would be best if we just went to school. We were hoping for a snow day but that most likely will not happen. How sad.

My Sister Is Freakin Amazing!

Look at the background of my blog. Isn't it just so cute?! Well I have something to tell you; you won't find it anywhere on the internet. Sami made it. She. Made. It. WOW! I think it looks stinkin amazing! She is so talented!
Yesterday Sami asked me what my favorite Christmas symbol and colors are. I said candy canes (I said snowmen and mittens as well but candy canes are my favorite :) ) and red and silver. So I have a customized wallpaper that nobody else could possibly have. Sami also made one for Chrissie and one for Carter but I think mine's the best since it is exactly what I wanted :)

Skipping Class!

As you can tell by my post "My First F", I hate history. I hate it so much that I want to pull my hair out every time I have to go there. I was trying to think of things that are awful but I would rather do instead of history (because almost anything is better than history). Number one on my list was: Skip history and go to Brother Fuller's seminary class instead. I have to say this is right up there with attending history. So I have planned to skip history next Wednesday (we have a test that I can't miss on Monday) and go to the dreaded class of Brother Fuller (even though skipping is probably better when it isn't planned ahead of time...). I have 5 friends that have him that period so I guess it won't be all that bad. But I had him last year and apparently his teaching skill has gotten even worse... yuck. So today my friends were warning me that it would be torture to go to Brother Fuller's class and I told them that was the point. It took me a while to tell them my plans. They were telling me all the things that have changed in Brother Fuller's teaching style and none of it was for the better :( I am almost about to just go to history. Almost.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I was looking in my room today and noticed how full it is with things I love. I decided to post them! Some of them are random, but I still love them. I am posting them by subject and I have two favorites in each subject.

1. I LOVE PAJAMA PANTS

These are the pajama pants I am getting for Christmas! Even though I haven't worn them yet, I am soooooooo excited! I love these mostly because of the patterns :) They have Superman, batman, aquaman, etc. (and not the Hulk because he's gay)

These are the pants I got two years ago. They are so comfortable and cute! They are white with multi-colored snowflakes on them. This way I celebrate Christmas all year long :)

2. I LOVE MY SHIRTS

This is definitely my all-time favorite shirt. I have offended some people with it, but I still love it (does that sound cruel to you? Oops...). On the shirt it says 'make-up doesn't cure ugly people'. I use it as a pajama shirt and it is so comfortable. The black dots on the bottom are ink from a pen... we've been through a lot together.

This is my favorite day shirt. I think it is so pretty! It used to be Sami's but she gave it to me! I think it is such a beautiful shade of orange!

3. I LOVE PRINCESSES

My favorite princess ever is Aurora. I think she is so beautiful and she has the best looking prince ;). She has a lovely singing voice and the story is so much fun!

My next favorite princess is Belle. I have always loved brunettes (even though I'm a blonde... sigh) and I think Belle in the movie is pretty (prettier than in her fake pictures) and she loves to read like me!

4. I LOVE BLANKETS!

Superman is my favorite superhero and out of all my blankets I think this one is the best. This is a reversable blanket and on the back is a picture of the superman symbol and chains breaking all around it and I think it's amazing


This is my second favorite blanket! I absolutely love princesses and this blanket has my two favorite ones on it! This one does have a reversable side, but it's not as cool as the superman one :(


5. I LOVE BOOKS!


I love to read in my spare time. My number one favorite series is probably the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. It's meant for kids, but I love them! I am so excited for the fifth to come out next summer!

Since I couldn't limit my favorite books down to two series, I decided on three. These last two are in a tie for favorites though. I love the Work and the Glory. They are amazing books that kept me entertained the whole way through. I also love the Inheritance series! I didn't know what to expect at first, and they are so full of everything you can think of! I am anxiously waiting for the fourth and final book but it will probably be a long while before that comes out.


6. I LOVE MOVIES!



My favorite movie is, of course, a princess movie. My favorite is Sleeping Beauty. Like I said earlier, I love her voice and I love the story. This is a movie that I can watch over and over and over again!


I also really like Penelope. I think this is a fun and cute movie with a good moral. It is a family movie and this is another one that I could watch again and again.


These are just a few of my favorite things. I could go on in scents, colors, etc. but I decided this post is long enough :)

A Trip to Baker

I have a friend that used to live in Baker Oregon and hearing all her stories about it, I want to go. Since we will both have our licenses by summer, we a want to go on a little road trip.

For the past few weeks, we've been planning our trip. And this isn't an empty trip where you plan it and you never go. We WILL go on this trip. Baker is about two hours away from here when you drive, and we will take turns. We're not exactly sure how long we will be there, but Emilea has lots of friends there that would be willing to house us for a few days. We are so excited! There are certain places that Emilea said we had to visit, so those are on the list (including an ice cream parlor, her elementary school, etc.). We were talking about our trip at lunch today and I am so STOKED! THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN!!!!!

We just hope gas prices will stay down. We are already saving up, but our lives would be better if we didn't have to pay too much on gas alone. Especially since we are paying for this trip on our own :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I am so excited for this Christmas season! It is already starting off so well! This year for Christmas I wanted shoes. I LOVE shoes! So yesterday we went out as a family because Carter needed tennis shoes as well as Chrissie (both of them had holes in their shoes). I couldn't help but look around for myself ;). I found some really cute flats and I am so excited to be able to wear them! Chrissie and Carter both found tennis shoes that fit them well and they like them. Then we went to Wally World to return some pajamas that didn't fit me. Mom and I looked for some more, but i wasn't a big fan of the styles. We went into the guys section to try to find superman pajamas. They had some, but they were all mediums and larges. I looked at the other ones and they were all lame like coca-cola, snoopy, ac/dc, etc. My mom pointed out another rack of pj's that I didn't notice before. They had a style of pajamas that had a whole bunch of characters from DC comics, including superman. And they had a small!!!!! YAY! After that I had to look for presents for the friends whose birthdays were yesterday. I couldn't find what I wanted from Wal-mart so we went to Shopko. We bought our stuff and then I noticed that we were right next to famous footwear which sells rocketdogs! We went inside and I found some really cute ones that were orange and pink which made me SO happy! I wanted to stop by Bath and Body Works (just a few stores down) because I have some soap that's Brown sugar and fig and I LOVE the smell. I wanted to get the lotion so we popped in and found out it was discontinued, but we could buy it online.

So I know everything I'm getting for Christmas (well from my parents, at least): shoes, shoes, a cake turner, and pajamas! And to top it all off, Sami is going to take me shoe shopping so I get to buy more shoes!

I can't believe It's already Christmas time! Day by day this year has gone by fairly slow. When I look back at the year though, it seems to have passed in the blink of an eye. I hope everybody has a good Christmas this year

Two Birthday Parties

ATTENTION! IF YOUR NAME IS DERYK HOWELL, DO NOT READ THIS!




I have two friends that are throwing their sweet sixteen tonight. I am so excited! The first one is for my friend Courtney. Every time she threw a party she would invite me, Sabri, Tucker, Gwen, Tyler, and Landon. They were always so much fun! We always play fun games and our favorite is the newspaper game (our favorite subject is fruit). I'm always pomegranate (Courtney's dad says pomegramanamanate), Sabri is always apple, and Tyler is always tomato. I stuck with pomegranate because hardly anybody every said it! Sabri and Tyler would always get in apple tomato fights where they would just go back and forth saying each other's fruit.
My other friend, Deryk, has her party at eight so I get to be at Courtney's for two hours. Deryk's party is a surprise! I love surprises! Her mother planned it all out for her and she e-mailed all of Deryk's friends to tell them what we were going to do. She was very vague, but I got that it was a murder mystery and that I had a part in it. The problem is, I don't really understand my part. This is what she sent me:

Becca,
The part you will be playing for the mystery is a crew member on the set of the play Rapunzel. You may be a "behind the scenes" type, or an actor. Come up with your own clever name (example, the director's name is Harriet D. Rector). Be creative!

Ummm... okay. What? I don't know what I am supposed to do and the party is tonight! I can't come up with anything for my character or name. This is a lot harder than it should be :(

Could it be any worse? Yes, yes it could

Somebody I know did a HUGE favor for me the other day and I wanted to show my gratitude towards them. I felt a thank you note was a little inadequate for the task which was completed. I don't know why but I just randomly decided to make a cake. Big mistake. I had it all planned out in my head and it didn't exactly turn out the way i intended. So let's start at the beginning.

I wanted to make a wonderful cake. This is how it turned out:

Just kidding. I wish it turned out like this. That would be amazing! I wish I could do that...

Anyway, this was my first time covering the cake with fondant. I've used fondant before to decorate a cake, but never to cover it. This was probably my number one disaster. Even though I am in fitness, I hardly have any arm muscle. The first problem was trying to evenly roll the fondant out. This picture is when I had been working on it for about half an hour.

Yeah, I know it's uneven. And very time consuming. I started on my cake right when I got home and I didn't finish until 9:25ish. I gave up for a little bit on the fondant and went for the decorations. I wanted to make a snowman to go on the front, and, of course, he had to be cute. I made a little pipe for him, but it looks like he is sticking his tongue out. It looks kinda ridiculous. I went back and tackled the fondant and it started ripping. Great. I tried to put it together again, but the cracks wouldn't go away so I just threw it on the cake. I put the snowman on and just burst into tears. I looked at my finished cake and it looked awful. I felt so embarrassed at how bad it turned out! After silently crying for half an hour in the kitchen my mom came up and tried to comfort me. It didn't do much. Just look at it and you will gasp in horror.

You sharply inhaled, didn't you? I knew it. I wanted so badly to fix it so I was trying to think of anything to help it. I did something. But it didn't help. I put Merry Christmas on the face of the cake and the letters kept breaking so it's hard to tell what it says. Since my fondant was ripping on the sides, I tried to put holly leaves to cover it up. I took a look at the finished product and started crying again. How could it possibly have been made worse?!
So now I am really embarrassed to give it to the person that helped me because who would want an awful cake as a reward? Nobody!

A Family-Filled Thanksgiving

On Wednesday the 26th, we had a half day at school (excuse me, "early release") and we had Thursday and Friday off for the holiday. We left for Utah right after school on Wednesday, heading toward Donna and Aaron's house (my aunt and uncle). Mom, Dad, Chrissie, Carter, and I were in one car. Keith and Craig were in my dad's car because Craig worked Black Friday and had to leave right after Thanksgiving dinner. In the car we were very bored so we had a little fun with the camera :)

(Chrissie and Carter on the left, Me on the right before I got my hair cut)

We got to my aunt's house and I just hung out with Craig and Keith. Thanksgiving day I woke up and got ready then went upstairs at about 8. We were all sitting in the living room talking and looking at the sales for the next day. When we were all ready to go, we hopped in the car and went to my other aunt's house where we planned to eat our Thanksgiving meal. We helped my aunt work on the meal until everybody showed up. Then, of course, we ate and talked and enjoyed ourselves. My cousin set up Rock Band downstairs and I played it for a little while then decided to go back upstairs. Sami had Audree on the ground and she was so adorable I had to snap some pictures!

Isn't she so beautiful?! I held her for a long time (I kinda stole her from Sami... I hope she didn't mind too much) and all the women were in the family room talking (that seems to have filled up my whole weekend so far). When we were about to go I was holding Audree and Sami wanted to take a picture of me holding her. It just so happened that Audree spit up right when the picture was taken. Fun for me, eh?

It seems like we were both taken by surprise. I went home with Sami, Mark, Audree, and Amanda that night. I stayed at Mark and Sami's condo and it was so much fun. I always love staying with Mark and Sami! The next day Sami and I went to the beauty store to get hair dye for her, my mother, and me. In the afternoon our family came over to the condo and got haircuts from Sami. Of course when Chrissie and Carter got there, they started playing the wii :). I stayed the night at the condo and my family went back to Donna's. Saturday morning Sami started dying my hair. Then Mom, Dad, Mark, Sami, and Amanda went to the temple and I watched Audree, Chrissie, and Carter. We went out to eat at Carino's then Mom, Dad, Chrissie, and I went to Temple Square to look at the lights. We went back to Donna's house (me included) and went to bed. Donna's ward started at 9 so we all got ready and left. We planned to stay for all three hours but I really didn't want to (their ward was so lame!) and neither did Marlana (my cousin). We were in our third hour class when we saw our mothers going out to the car. We thought it was unfair that they got to skip and we didn't. We went out into the hall and we saw our moms in the church library talking to Marlana's dad. We ran by, hoping we weren't caught. Their church building was walking distance from their home so we started walking and when we were halfway there, our mothers passed us in the car and honked at us. We were caught. While we were walking we thought of an excuse and it was perfect. We were going home to help them with dinner. Since the next class would most likely be boring and they got to skip, we felt justified in skipping. It actually worked! We ate and then left. On the way home we had more fun with the camera :)

(Chrissie being silly on the left, Me and carter on the right with our new haircuts)

Keith home-sat for us and it was a little messy and wasn't exactly how we left it, but our neighbor brought us a treat as a "welcome home" gift. It made us all happy :)

My Saturday

It is still early in the afternoon and I have done quite a few things this morning! When I woke up at 6:37 (seems kind of random, I know) I finished watching the last half hour of Cinderella that I had started the night before at about two o'clock but stopped because I was falling asleep. Then I went downstairs and, of course, Carter was already up. He was already done eating breakfast, which was oatmeal with brown sugar in it. At our house, the brown sugar is in a big container and is placed in the pantry about 5 feet above the ground. When Carter got the brown sugar down, it was almost empty. While Carter was eating, my dad filled it up to the top and now it was a little heavier. Since Carter was done with it, I asked him if he could put it away. He had a little trouble with the height issue, but not the weight! I had him flex his muscles for me and I got a picture of it!

Then afterwards I made some dessert (I was craving peanut butter and chocolate) and went upstairs to do some homework (yuck). When I was finished, I went downstairs and Chrissie's friends were over and they were watching a movie. They all had silly looking glasses on and I noticed they were watching a 3-D movie. Chrissie said they had one more pair of glasses and offered them to me. I put them on and sat down. The movie was Journey to the Center of the Earth. I have never seen it before so I didn't know what to expect. It was a little cheesy, but pretty good. I get scared really easily so my mom snapped a shot of us right after what I thought was a scary part. She thought it was hilariousYes, I'm the one on the far right. The only one that was actually scared. And yes, all of those kids are at least 5 years younger than me...
So that's where my day is now. I am babysitting tonight, but other than that I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my day. Maybe I will do some good and actually finish the chores I was given this morning, though I highly doubt it :)

P.E.'s Favorite Game: Dodgeball

I have fitness first period every morning and today was somewhat relaxed. We went to the weight room for twenty minutes and then we went back downstairs to the main gym. There my teachers put a huge bag of balls in the center of the grizzly head (yes, our mascot is the grizzlies. Sigh.) for us to play dodgeball and separated us into girls and boys. In my class there are about 15 girls and 30 boys. Yet my teachers didn't even them out at all. I personally hate dodgeball. It is basically just a mini version of war. Why would we want to replay those tragic events? Anyways, back to the story. We started playing and of course the girls were losing by far within the first minute. When about half of the girls were in the "jail" one of my coaches told the rest of us that were still in the game (including me) to move up further. We took about one step and called it good. I didn't have a ball and a boy from the other team walked right up to me. I was thinking he would just touch the ball to my shoulder or just toss it at me. No, he decided something different. He thought it would be funny if he chucked the ball at my head. It hit a bobby pin on my head (which made it feel worse) and all day I have had an awful headache. To make matters worse, I had Biology today. And that means I had to sit right in front of my teacher which I can smell a mile away. His stink didn't help my headache at all. I hate school.

Teresa Ehrler

We will be getting a foreign exchange student in January and her name is Teresa Ehrler. She is my age and will be going to the same school as me, and hopefully have some of the same classes as me. She is from Germany and I am so excited to meet her! Just from her e-mails to me I can tell she is a wonderful person. Well today a friend and I were walking from our last class of the day to the stairs. An idea suddenly popped into her head and she was excited to share it with me. She said, "Becca! You should invite Teresa to participate in the Dance Festival (a church dance thing) with us!" In one of her recent e-mails, Teresa said she wanted so much to learn American culture and more about my religion. I think this is one of the most Americanish Mormonish things she could possibly do. At least in Meridian. I hope she wants to do it with me though. If not, it's totally her choice.

My First "F"

Oh, goodness. Today I had history; the worst class in the entire universe of classes. A couple weeks ago we had to write a 4 page essay about how The Enlightenment figures influenced our founding fathers and crap like that (and please tell me. How am I supposed to do that?). I spent thirteen and a half (THIRTEEN AND A HALF!) hours researching, drafting, writing, editing (and no, this is not an english class) and so on. Today we got our papers back. My teacher grades our essays out of ten points total and I was thinking I would get maybe a 6 (I guess I was being optimistic) or something like that. I looked at my paper and on it was a big, fat, red "F" on my paper. I looked to see what I got out of ten points and she gave me a 0. A ZERO!!!!!!!! Seriously, if a student actually tries you should give them at least some points! But oh no. My teacher doesn't grade that way. I spent thirteen and a half hours of nonsense just to get a zero on it? Lame! This is the first "F" I have ever gotten on any assignment in my life. I decided to post my shame to the world so I would be more encouraged to work harder on my assignments from now on. I still think I should have gotten at least one point for effort though. How. Freakin. Gay.

Warheads

My friend's absolute favorite candies are warheads. Last night we celebrated her sweet 16 and she threw a little party. One of the games she wanted to play she left open for everybody to choose if they wanted to participate or not. For the game we would have to put sixteen (her age) warheads in our mouth at one time and see if we could last and keep them in without throwing up. From that description, it sounds like a crude game. I can't believe I actually tried it. Note to self: NEVER try it again!! There were six of us that took up the challenge and we all crowded around the island in the kitchen with three puking bowls between us. We all started and I was the first to give up. I was only able to put 13 into my mouth and then it started to taste so gross! I tried to last a little longer, but I decided to just spit them out. Then three other friends shortly followed me. There were two girls left in the game, one with sixteen in her mouth, the other with eighteen. They amazingly lasted the whole time and ate every single one of them without vomiting. It was so disgusting! What a weird way to remember a birthday!

Poems. EW!!!!

In english we started our poem unit. Honestly, who writes poems? The people that actually enjoy writing poems do it because they aren't good at anything else. Well, maybe that was a little harsh. Very harsh. But it's generally true. I personally don't mind reading poems because some can be okay. But writing them is just absurd. So at the moment we are writing WWII and photograph poems. For both of them we bring in a picture (for the WWII poem a picture from WWII, for the photograph poem we just bring in any picture from home) and write a poem about them. Wheeeee. So I randomly grabbed a photo from my pile (it's a pretty big pile) and brought it to school. The picture is of me and Chrissie (I would put the picture on my blog, but my ancient scanner isn't working. Sigh) about 8 or so years ago. I was holding Chrissie's hand and we were slowly approaching a little dog (she was terrified of dogs) . Since I am not good at writing poems, I asked my friend if she could write it for me. She actually agreed! So I decided to post it just for her:

Mincing delicately across the grass,
The dark plant soft underfoot.
Urging onward the little lass,
For just another foot.

The visitor not far beyond,
Sniffing the soft grass below.
The little girl not quite so fond,
And afraid to say, "Hello".

It is still a work in progress (especially considering that she did this in 10 minutes!), but I am so glad she wrote it for me! She is such a lifesaver!

WHAT'S THE POINT?!

For the past while I have only been writing posts here and there whenever I'm bored. But now I am going to say my reason why. What is the point of it? None of my friends thought it would be fun to have a blog so I'm all alone in that aspect (yippee). None of my friends read my blog, so again, what's the point (great friends, eh?)? Yes, maybe my sister every once in a while reads my stupid and insignificant posts, but none of what I say is new to her. Since nobody reads my blog, I am basically talking to myself when I post things up. In fact, I have no idea why I am writing this one if nobody is going to read it. Hmmmm.... Anyway, I'm not sure if I should cancel my blog or if I should just continue to rant and ramble about whatever comes to mind. Oh, well. I will decide later when I have the time

68 days until Christmas!

This year I am starting my countdown a little late. I normally start at 100 days until Christmas, but this year flew by so fast I didn't even realize the joyous holiday is almost upon us. 68 days. Ahhhhh.... I love the end of the year. Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite holidays. For Thanksgiving it is tradition that we all go to Utah and gorge on our huge dinner with our extended family. For Christmas we stay in Idaho and my immediate family comes to us. This is one of my favorite holidays because everybody is so HAPPY! Even I am happy (which according to my friends, is a rare thing. Though I strongly question it). I also love winter; winter is my favorite season. I'm not a big fan of snow (I love to watch it falling, but I hate it once it's on the ground), but I love the cold. Out of the whole year, the ending is definitely the best!

First Week Of School

The school I am momentarily attending is called Rocky Mountain High. It is the largest building in all of Idaho's school districts so immediately I felt lost. The first day everybody had their maps out alongside their schedules. But that is expected. Since we are on the Hybrid schedule (worst schedule in the world. Just stick with Block or Traditional, not both) everybody had their maps out for part of the second day. Other than that the school has been unexpectedly easy to figure out. So far I haven't gotten lost and I can almost always tell which hallway I am in. It is incredibly easy for being such a big building. Since the school is brand new, it is WAY behind on EVERYTHING. Normally students get their schedules at registration but we got ours on the first day. The first day!!!!! It was lame. Very lame. So it was kinda early in the morning so I quickly read over my classes but nothing registered in my brain. I read over it again, carefully this time, and I had to stop at my first class. I had Fitness. For this to make sense you have to understand that I am not physically fit in any way, shape, or form. P.E. has always been my brand of torture. Now I have Fitness (a class with very very very athletic kids) and it is the first class (very very early in the morning when I am still tired) which is a double kick in the pants. Then I looked at the rest of my classes and saw the regular: math, english, history and so on. Then I got to the end and saw Foods and Nutrition. At the time I didn't even know what it was. Only that it had something to do with food. This is another class I had not signed up for. I looked at the top of the schedule and saw my name; there was no mistake there. The classes I had signed up for were German II and Intro to Digital Photography. I guessed I wouldn't get the photography class since those are always hard to get into. But German?! It must have been full if I didn't get in. But who takes German for the second year?! Well, besides me. At Meridian High only 7 people signed up for German II. How could there possibly be so many more from Eagle High that I didn't get in? I talked to the counselors and apparently nobody has switched out of the 2 (yes, 2!) german classes at the school. I was stuck with Fitness and Foods & Nutrition. Joy. Something that really bugs me is that the block hours are 1 hour and 32 minutes. Where did the 2 extra minutes come from? At Meridian it was 90 which made perfect sense! But 32? Maybe I am just being too critical. But another thing that was stupid was they didn't hire enough teachers. Maybe there just weren't enough that applied, i don't know. But now there are at least 40 kids in every class. And some teachers have classes every period. They outrageously underestimated how many teachers to get. Anyway, school is school. Of course the first week has gone by slowly but that happens. Hopefully we can all pull through the second week.

Ugh, School

Why did summer have to go by so quickly? It feels like it was just starting and all of a sudden, BOOM! It's over. At the end of every summer I think the very same thing: Man, I wish I did more things over the summer. Registration was today and I swear everybody is just trying to rush my summer along. It's not very fair. I want to say that school just seems like a waste of time. No, school IS a waste of time. I will be attending a brand new school next year and that makes me happy because EVERYBODY will be confused. Then we can all laugh at the Seniors :). But that just gives them a reason to laugh at us.... Anyway, school is starting soon and it is impossible to escape. Too bad :(

Snipe hunting

For girls camp this year we were not allowed to do any pranks whatsoever on anybody. Of course I was mad and I did whatever I could without it being called a prank. On the second day I was about to go insane because some of the girls were really bothering me and they needed a little bit of a scream. I called all the YCLs together to have a meeting. We all desperately wanted to go snipe hunting but even the first years knew what that was. We decided to keep the same idea but give it a different name. We flipped through our camp books and found pictures of the western rattlesnake and the poisonous sumac. We called it the western sumac. We wanted to go snake hunting but some of the girls were terrified of snakes... too bad. After we made a name we decided on what it is. We decided: it is a gray bird that can't fly because its wings are too stubby for its body weight and it runs slowly because of its body weight. It is a late night early morning bird because it is afraid of the light, which gave us the reason to have the girls keep their flashlights down so they don't poke around in the bushes where I would be hiding. There is a YCL named Caci Hunter and she is freakin' hilarious. She has such funny facial expressions that convinced us to choose her as the huntress. The next problem was sneaking out. The leaders would never condone that behavior except for one of them. We went to my mother (she's the best!) and she helped us plan our escape! We all kicked the girls outside to go on a hike with Emilea and the rest of us got really busy. The main problem was that the girls were all on the top in the loft and the leaders slept right under us. The cabin wasn't very nicely built and everywhere you stepped the floor and the stairs it would creak really loudly. We picked out places where we would all sleep and the direct paths we would all take. Then we went to the stairs and it was a lot easier to map out. We just had to stay on the far left side right against the wall and put our weight on the balls of our feet. Then we had to decide the paths we would take outside. There were two paths that ran from the cabin to the meadow and the one that was really long and slightly inclined was the one the girls would go on. Since they had flashlights they wouldn't trip or anything on the rocks. Another YCL named Emilea came with me down the very rocky and very steep hill to race to the meadow and into the bushes before anybody else arrives in the meadow. My dad let me borrow a cow elk horn to use as the sound. I know that sounds a little obnoxious, but when you pressed the horn lightly it made a squeak and we decided it was perfect. We waited in the bush for about 5-10 minutes and then we saw the first flashlights. During those 5-10 minutes in the bush I was freaking out. Earlier that day one of the Priesthood people said he saw 4 poisonous snakes right beside the pond and at first I thought he was lying. But a few minutes after he told me I saw one myself. That is a good explanation as to why I was a little spastic. We also saw a bear but I wasn't too worried about that because it wouldn't come in the middle of a bush. I started making the 'western sumac' noises and then Caci came over and Emilea shoved the stuffed animal into her pillow case. I forgot to tell Caci earlier that day that somebody put logs in front of the bush and apparently she didn't notice them. When she got it she tried to make it look like she was wrestling it and she totally tripped on the logs. That somehow made it look so much more realistic. I kept honking the horn to make it sound like the bird was now in distress. When the other YCLs called us out of the bush I saw three of the girls crying. I couldn't help but laugh, even though I knew it was incredibly rude. One of the girls that was crying took all her friends and raced to the cabin. They went upstairs and starting planning ways to get us back and to physically hurt us (which was a stupid idea because then we had proof to show the leaders that they played a prank on us) but it was all just big words. Those girls got all mad at us and it woke one of the women up. This lady wasn't a leader but she definitely acted like she was. She came up and started yelling at us (I was surprised none of the other leaders woke up) and we didn't tell her anything. Then she went to the other girls (the ones that were mad at us) and they totally spilled the beans. The lady came back to us and started threatening us. What a jerkwad. Then she went back to bed and let us get some sleep. I went downstairs to report to my mother. She said that the jerkwad was totally waiting up for us. She did that the night before as well but then she stayed in the living room. This time she went into the bedroom, which had a fan in the window and it muffled our steps. Good thing she didn't notice this. But I went back upstairs to go to bed (by the way, we left to go snipe hunting at 1 and it took about 30 minutes, then I stayed outside another 30 minutes looking at the stars. They were amazing!!) So it was about 3:30 when we all finally fell asleep. And of course the next morning we woke up to the mean lady telling all the leaders on us. She was telling them they needed to punish us for sneaking out and not behaving. Then the camp director came upstairs to me and her daughter (the girl I was sleeping next to) and she asked us the story. I tried to comfort her and said that we made sure that nobody got hurt and snipe hunting was just for fun. It is tradition. Amazingly that made her feel better! And then we accidentally said that some of the girls cried. Then we had to explain that only one of them was mad at us (the other two were actually happy we went hunting! They said it was a good experience!) and that made her feel better. That was the only fun thing about camp and it almost made it totally worthwhile!

Dogs...

It is said that it takes the average human 7 times to fully understand something long and somewhat slightly complex. If it were just a one word exclamation, we... normally get it right away. Sometimes without delay. If so, why does it take so many times for a dog to understand the simple phrase 'stay'? True, dogs use an even smaller portion of their brains than humans do. But if the dog has already learned what stay means, why in the world would it take so long for the dog to process it and understand it? Even if you say it once and wait the dog doesn't stay so you continually have to say it until the dog finally understands it. It's pretty much a BIG waste of time.

Penelope

I think Penelope is one of the best movies in the world. It is a fantastic family movie that everybody that watches it enjoys. It has an excellent moral to the story and it also has a really good looking actor for the main guy :). It is now 20 dollars at Wal-Mart and I say that it is so worth the price! We just watched it today as a family and even my brother thought it was good. WOW!

A Great Way To Start

I feel today is a great day to start my blog. I actually have something important to write about! We had a new addition to the family yesterday. My sister, Sami, had her baby. It's a beautiful girl and they named her Audree Jean Bennett. I went to the hospital last night and spent about 4 hours with Mark, Sami, and baby Audree. It was so much fun just holding her.... She was born in the afternoon of July 15 at 2:47. She weighed 7 lbs. 15 oz. and she measured 21 inches long. It's amazing to think that she is so new to this world. It is amazing to think that she was saved for Mark and Sami's new family. It's amazing to think that I'm one of her aunts.