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 :)