High School and the Idiots Who Go There

I haven't posted in two months because I never have time and no one in my family really does it anymore and that was the whole reason I started my blog over two years ago. But I thought I'd throw in another post for the heck of it since I woke up at 8:30 this morning because I couldn't sleep. I never do that. And I don't have work for another two hours and I have nothing better to do.

So I started high school two weeks ago. And boy is it just magical. It's nice to be the youngest again, I was sick of being the oldest with a bunch of what seemed like little kids running through the halls and screaming and having enchiladas stuck in their braces and gasping and giving people dirty looks if they dare to say the "d-word," heaven forbid. So it is nice to finally have older people. But, they are still just as annoying.

All of them say that sophomores are annoying and stupid, yet have they taken a look at themselves? In a way, most of them are still just as stupid and annoying as the junior high kids, except they've learned how to dress, they can drive, they do drugs, they swear, and they make out in the middle of the hall. I think they boys are show-offs who do the stupidest stuff just to get a couple of laughs or a look from the cute girl. Girls always try to play around with the boys, squealing and stealing their backpack and then run away, laughing hysterically, hoping that all of the boys think that they are so cute and will ask them to homecoming. Really, it's kind of ridiculous. And then in the parking lot, they all drive like maniacs trying to impress their friends as they speed right past you as you're trying to back out and cut people off and drive 50 miles over the speed bumps because they're too cool for them or not ruining their tire's allignment. I am so impressed, I bow down to you oh so amazing daring drivers. I know my place now.

In my first period class, I have auto tech. There are 8 girls and 30 guys, and most of them think that they are so cool because they already know how to change a tire or change their oil. How can I possibly compete with them? And then the stupid boys in the back feel they need to have attention so they constantly throw out witty remarks in the hopes that we will all fall down laughing, while we all just roll our eyes as the teacher says something to totally diss them which makes us laugh. And then they asked the teacher if he ever did any drugs. He said yes, when he was young and stupid he did marijuana. Then all of the boys in the back said, "you're so lame! you only did marijuana!" No wonder they're so stupid, they're losing all of their brain cells trying to be cool by doing stupid, pointless drugs that will mess them up just so that they can be cool. Apparently marijuana isn't enough to be cool, but perhaps if you did a bit of meth and heroin, then you can possibly meet their "cool" standard. I'll be sure to take notes for if I ever want to go so low in the hopes of having stoners for friends (I do have a couple stoner friends, and they are indeed nice people. Some of them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're bad people.).

The dress code at Viewmont isn't very strict, even though they tell you it is, so a lot of the girls have to dress like what I call "Lagoon girls" - girls who dress like sluts pretty much in the hopes of catching a couple of guy's eyes. Because that's all a guy wants isn't it, a girl who will dress slutty for them and then they've got the prize girl.

People also feel that others won't like them unless they use three different swear words in each sentence. It's probably because they've lost all of their brain cells from so many drugs that they can't think of any other possible words. I'll admit I sometimes swear, usually just under my breath though or when I'm super duper ultra angry. Everyone does it. But I don't feel the need to throw it into conversation for the heck of it or so that I'll impress the people I'm talking to because I actually said the word. I can just see my coolness meter going way up from that.

Another thing, is that people feel they need to display their love to the world, to prove that they are cool because they've got a hot person playing tonsel-hockey with them in the middle of the hall when you're trying to get to class. Seriously, get a room. No one wants to see that. Or when people just stand there and hug for a century. Let's move on people, I swear you'll see eachother after next class, can you handle a whole hour and twenty minutes apart? It's almost impossible to live that long without seeing each other, how do they sleep?? They have tough lives. I could care less when people give each other a quick hug or peck, that's cool I don't care. At least they make it brief yet they can still let each other know how much they love each other without overdoing it.

I think a lot of girls are ridiculous and liars when it comes to popularity. If you ask a girl to write or tell about herself, she'll say that she loves her best friends and would do anything for them. They love to have fun and goof around and hang all the time. They like to be super crazy and not care what other people think of them because they're just having fun, and that she's just your ordinarly girl trying to have fun in life because, hey it's short. She likes to just do her thing and not care about other people because she's herself no matter what. If all of those girls were stranded in a desert and were offered a bottle of water or instant popularity, at least half would turn down the water. They just say they don't care what other people think in the hopes that other people won't care, or will respect her, or will think she's cool. I can only name a couple people who actually don't care about other people. And those are some of the coolest people I know. And I'm not saying I'm some perfect girl who doesn't think that way. I do care what other people think, and sometimes I am a little inclined to show off. But I don't do it for popularity, I do it for friends. I don't care if I'm in the popular crowd at school or not. A lot of the people in that group are so sure of their own popularity and coolness that they are so annoying and exhausting to be around. I just want a lot of friends that I can have fun with and do crazy stuff with, I don't want to be part of that crowd. So when I'm offered the bottled water or popularity, I would probably take the water. But no promises, I'll have to see when I'm faced with that situation. If it was bottled water or a big, fun group of friends, I would happily turn down the water. Because I don't necessarily care about how popular I am and how many people know me, it's about how many fun friends I can have and that we like to be around each other, which I guess, is it's own kind of popularity.

Last thing I have an issue with, and I'll be brief, are girls shoes. I'd just like to say that the "Jesus shoes" and the shoes that are boots on the top but flip-flops on the bottom, are so ugly and hideous that I wonder why any girl in her right mind would wear them. The "Jesus shoes" aren't as bad as the "boot-flops" though. And the funny thing is, all of the popular girls wear them. Yuck.

Anyway, that's high school for you.

Moroni's Quest

This post is a little late, I went to youth conference last week and our youth conference this year was called "Moroni's Quest". It was a realy great experience and I'm glad my stake did it.

On Wednesday, July 23, at 8 in the morning, my sister Ashley, my cousin Skyler, and I went to the Stake center. We had to go in our costumes, which were like togas. Some of them were pretty cute and I actually thought it was pretty cool wearing them, other than they made us more hot (not in the good way). We checked in, got our bags, and then watched the first reenactments. All I knew about Moroni's Quest was that they did tons of reenactments from the Book of Mormon. So we started at the beginning with Nephi's family and Lehi (played by my friend, Ethan Drake). I was on stage for about twenty seconds wandering around because I was a Jerusalem woman. It was exciting.

After all that was over and they decided to go to the Promised Land, we all left and drove to our "Promised Land." It was about an hour drive, and when we got there we were put into tribes. There were 10 people in each tribe, and the only people I knew in mine were Parker Taggart and Ethan Drake. Ethan and I were laughing about the odds of us being put together in the same tribe. We then got a flag and had to come up with a name and decorate it. We had a red and black flag. We wanted to be called the Celestial-ites at first, and I, naturally, thought that that was a great idea. But since our flag was black and red, we thought that it wouldn't look too good. We decided to call ourselves the "Ites", and then they had me write "ni hao" which is Chinese for hello, and then this other word "yi" than means righteous. After that, we all had to hike to our campsite place which was really long and hot. I had forgotten to fill my waterbottle so I didn't have much fun. The place we stayed at was a huge field. There were two big sections cut off for the boys' and girls' tents which were already set up for us.

Througout the day, we had reenactments and then got together in our tribes to discuss them. The reenactments were pretty cool. The voices were pre recorded so we didn't have any problems with not being able to see people, not going along with the music, or people forgetting their lines. They had really cool background music and noise to go along with it. We also learned to fight and built a tower. We got styrofoam swords and card board shields and we had our first war. It was so much fun, we got to run at eachother and attack eachother and we were dead after a certain number of hits. I didn't help with the tower, I just gave morale support. At night we got to hang with our wards. After hanging with our wards for a while the first night, we got back together with our tribes and had to hold hands and walk, single file, up the mountain to get to the "Tree of Life". I held hands with Parker Taggart and Ethan. It was kinda weird holding hands with Parker since we've barely even talked before. We happen to have the same birthday though, we were born on the exact same day. We had fun though, Parker, Ethan, and this guy named Dillon, and I all talked the whole time and had a fabulous time. The "Tree of Life" was a big pine tree with big white Christmas lights all over it. It looked pretty cool from a distance.

The next day was the same with more reenactments and discussions and we did some fun activites. We also had a flour war. We were separated into two teams, and we stood at either side of the field. When the drums started beating, we all ran forward to grab the flour bombs (flour wrapped in nylon), and we started throwing them at each other. It was so much fun, other than it kinda hurt when they threw them too hard. Everyone got so dirty and it was gross breathing it in, but it was so much fun. Everyone looked wonderful after we were done. That night, we played games as a ward. While I was sleeping that night, I couldn't breathe so I spent about a half hour in the middle of the night searching for allergy medicine. I couldn't find any and I got really frustrated and was seriously going to refuse to go back to sleep because I wouldn't be able to breathe if I did. Thankfully, my friend Joye Fulks woke up and gave me some allergy medicine.

On Friday, we had more reenactments and tons more wars since we were in the war chapters part in our reenactments. For one of the wars, it was when the people had promised to not take up arms anymore and not fight in battle. They had all the leaders and the oldest person from each tribe go and be on that side. So, when we ran to them to kill them, they just laid on the ground and died. Apparently they were hoping we would feel bad and have compassion once we realized what they were doing, but we didn't. We ran up to all the people laying "dead" on the ground and kept on hitting the ones that would move. One guy in my ward ran up to them and started hitting them really hard and yelled "How do you like your covenants now?!" It was realy funny. During one of the reenactments, someone was on a tower preaching, and so my tribe and a couple others got to be part of it. A little bit before the reenactment started, we got to go backstage (I felt so cool being back there with all of the actors and costumes and shade. I felt very priviledged). We were each given some styrofoam painted rocks. So, when the guy got on top of the tower we made and started preaching, we got to stand up and start yelling at him and we started throwing rocks at him. It was fun. Also during another one of the reenactments, we were divided into poor and rich tribes. The rich tribes got to sit in the shade and got tons of oreos while us poor tribes had to sit in the sun and beg for an oreo. I was poor, so I stole an oreo from my rich friend, Kailey Madsen, and then I offered one of the people giving out oreos a tick tack, so he gave me one. It was really hot the whole time at Moroni's Quest, everyone the first day we drank 150 gallons of water altogether before lunch. We hated the sun, yet it was freezing at night. It was annoying. That night, we went on a faith walk with our tribes. After that, we did some other stuff that I'm not gonna talk about on here, but it was very cool. That night, me and Kailey Madsen were planning on sneaking out of our tents at 3:30 am to see the eclipse. So, I stole my sisters ipod from her while she was sleeping which was very scary and set the alarm. However, when it went off. I told Kailey it went off and she said "okay let's go" and then I said "okay" and then we both fell back asleep. I heard the eclipse wasn't that cool anyway.

On the last day, we had our last reenactment and battle. It was the one where all the Nephites died. I was a Lamanite, and we were give 50 (basically unlimited) hits while all the Nephites were given 2. My sister was a Nephite, and everyone in her tribe were standing back to back to protect themselves, so I ran up to her tribe and killed them all. It was great. After the last reenactment, we all got into cars and went home. I was kind of sad to go, but at the same time happy. I hadn't showered in 4 days as there were no showers there. I had my hair in a ponytail the whole time, I was burned, I had barely any make up on, I hadn't brushed my hair at all the whole time since it's just curly, and I was sick of using porta-potties. They were gross. It felt so good to get home and shower and do my hair. It was great. Also, the air conditioning was wonderful. I was so tired though, and didn't really get to make up for it.

I'm so glad I went on Moroni's Quest, I'd give more details but I didn't want to make it too long. It was really fun though, even if my post doesn't make it seem like it. There was so much hard work that went into it. They had people come the day before us to set up tents and the stage. People were planning this for over a year. They had to find a spot and set everything up. They spent $14000 on the whole thing, and $10000 of it was for food. They had people come to cook for us and feed 250 teenagers. They had a medical tents and people to go and constanty fill up water tanks which took an hour to fill up each one so that we would have water. A lady in my ward was in charge of making all of the costumes for the reenactments. They had to build the stage, props, set up rehearsals for people with parts, record voices, add music, have sound effects and make everything go smoothly. They had to plan out all the activities, buy snacks, set up generators so we would have electricity for the reenactments, arrange transportation, choose what stories to reenact, choose people to be tribal leaders and assign the youth to their tribes, keep the youth happy and entertained, take tons of pictures and record it, and just plan and prepare for so many things. It was amazing. They do this every 4 years and I'm sad I can't go next time, but I'm happy my little sister, Hannah, will be able to go. It was a great experience and it made the people in the Book of Mormon seem more like people. I've actually enjoyed reading it more, especially since I read 100 pages in two days to finish it by the end of the school year for seminary. I read it for a couple hours straight to finish, and it was really cool and I felt like I was actually reading a story instead of just zoning off as usual. It was a great experience, and I hope more stakes do it.

My Summer So Far

Okay I was trying to think of something interesting to blog about since I haven't blogged this month and I really don't want to, when my cousin, Skyler, mentioned the fact that I have 12 people living in my house. That is kind of interesting I guess. The week before the last day of school, my Aunt Wendy, Uncle William, and four of their kids, Skyler, Reagan and Rebecca, and Mckenna, all moved in. They moved in to the family room and Ashley's room and bathroom, Ashley moved upstairs into Hannah's room, and Hannah moved in with Emma in her room. I got to keep my room, but I reorganized it to make myself feel better. It took them a while to get settled in, and I certainly didn't envy their task of organizing the family room where their kids were sleeping when I saw that you couldn't even see the floor because there were so many boxes and furniture all over the place. They finally got settled, and I kind of like having them live with us. We have dinner every night now because we take turns making dinner and choice night is a bit hard with 12 different people trying to find food. The house certainly isn't cleaner, but I love having the extra help with cleaning every day. Who knew that the twins and Kenna could be so helpful? They also brought their shih-tzu, Ginger. I absolutely love Ginger.

My Grandma and Grandpa Stevens came home from their mission in Mongolia last Wednesday. They weren't supposed to come home until October, but Grandpa had a heart attack and the hospitals there weren't good and he was having a lot of chest pain. They came back to Utah and are staying with my aunt and uncle for a month while they do stuff to him at the hospital and he rests. I don't know what they're doing, something to do with a balloon I think. Anyway, the doctors know what they're doing. It was so nice to see them again after over a year, and a couple of nights ago, Ashley, four of my cousins, and I listened to Grandpa tell stories about Mongolia for an hour and it was really interesting.

It's been fun having more cousins at my house and I've been hanging out with some of my other cousins more. And I've been playing video games a lot more than usual, I played Guitar Hero 1, 2, and 3 with Skyler, and then I've been playing Medal of Honor a lot. That game is so fun. And a couple nights ago, I watched "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" with some of my cousins at the John and Marjorie's house. I used to love that movie when I was younger, and I still do. I forgot how weird it is though.

School ended a week and a half ago. Two days before the last day of school, we had field day which was tons of fun and I got dunked in the dunking booth. The day before the last day of school was 9th grade Lagoon day, so I went and hung out with Sammy and Ben. On the last day of school, I went to school, got my yearbook signed, opened up this trap door and got to go in the crawlspace under the seminary building, got my yearbook signed in Chinese by the Chinese teacher, and then hung out with Sammy. We went to Empire to eat Chinese food with some of our friends (I said "xie xie" to the Chinese waitress who replied "bu ke qi"!! It means "thank you" and "you're welcome". I felt proud.) Sammy and I then went back to her house for a while, then we went to my house, and then Ben came over, and then Ethan came over, and then Ethan went home, and then we went to a couple stores, and then we went back to my house, and then Sammy had to go home for something, and then Ben and I went over to Mike Evan's house, and then I went home. It was fun.

A week ago, Sammy left for Europe on the 9th grade trip. I was pretty sad. I hung out with Ben at Lagoon after work that day. Every day I send Sammy a 10 page long text message because she can't text me back. She was able to send me one text (which was actually 12 pages) at 2 in the morning, and a message on facebook. I've been pretty bored without her and I feel very unsocial at the moment because I don't usually hang out with anyone unless it's with Sammy and all of the people I hang out with with her are guys. So, I've just been working a lot.

I'm trying to work as much as possible since work is a little more bearable since I don't do games anymore and rides is better. I work 5 days this week. Ashley works a lot too. Last Friday and Saturday were really rainy at work though. I was working a water ride on Friday called Rattlesnake Rapids where you get really wet, and not too many people wanted to get even more wet when it was raining so I spent the whole day just talking with the 5 other people working the ride including a guy from Bulgaria. We were teaching him new words and asking him what songs or artists he knows ("oh yes, I know Lady Gaga"), and teaching him "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes". We had tons of fun, and now he's my friend on facebook. I had fun that day of work, and whenever someone did go on, we would just quickly put them in a boat and then keep on talking and the supervisor didn't even care. Saturday was miserable though, it was super windy and rainy, and when I was walking outside, I kept on almost falling over sometimes. It was really cold, and the park was a mess from leaves and branches and trash flying everywhere, and I spent two hours in the morning just sweeping over and over even though everything just kept on coming right back. I was sure they would close the park, but they didn't because there was a stupid dance competition. Like we care, let them do their dancing, they don't need rides to do it. I was mad that I had to stay there for seven hours on a kiddie land ride and I was freezing and upset. It was one of the worst days of work.

Anyway, that's been my summer so far. And sorry I don't post as much, it's just not as fun as it used to be I guess and I never feel like posting anymore. I need more exciting stuff to happen for me to post about then I would probably post more. Sorry if there are any mess ups, I hate editing my posts. Have a happy day everyone.

School and Hanging Out

I am so ready for school to be out. I only have this week and next week and then I'm done. Next week will be field day, 9th grade Lagoon day, and then everyone ditches on the last day of school anyway so next week won't really count. The thing that bugs me though is that some teachers are still piling us with homework which is quite irksome. I just want to be done with junior high for good, I'm sick of it. I feel so bad for Hannah because she has to go into junior high next year. I'll just say that junior high has been the worst three years of my life. I'm not saying that it was absolutely horrible, but I would never want to repeat it and I've done my time. I hated seventh grade, eighth grade was pretty cool, and ninth grade has been the best. I've made so many new friends this year, it's pretty crazy, especially since I had a really hard time making friends in seventh grade and eighth grade wasn't much better.

I've hung out with so many new people this year (mainly guys), and even last Saturday I hung out with people I've never hung with before, or even thought I would ever hang out with for that matter. In seventh and eighth grade, I might hang out with Sariah every other weekend or something. Now I hang out every weekend no matter what. I started hanging out with Sammy a bit at the beginning of the year. I started hanging with her every weekend starting in January when she started going out with this guy and wanted me to come with. I've hung out with tons of new people - Ben, Mikey, Broc, Riley, Davis, Taylor Davis, Jesse Lou, Jake Porter, J.C., and of course Sammy! Last Friday, I hung out Marissa, Sariah, Ethan, Taylor, Sammy, Ben, Mikey, Chloe, and a bunch of other people at Marissa's house and we had tons of fun messing around. On Saturday, Sammy wanted to hang with this guy named Jake Porter (he has a HUGE house, we got lost haha), and Broc Dover and Jesse Lou hung out with us too and it was super fun. I was surprised Jesse hung out with us since I've never really talked to him but I've always thought he was cool. Jake Porter constantly has people over at his house and a bunch of guys just came and went whenever they wanted. Me and Sammy decided we wanted to hang out at his house more often since there seems to constantly be boys there. Anyway, the point of this long paragraph is that I've had fun hanging with a bunch of new people this year, even though they're mostly boys. I can't wait to make even more friends next year.

I'm excited for the summer and to hang out with a lot of people even though I'll have to work a lot (I had to work last Saturday) and Sammy will be gone for 31 days in June and July. High school will be a blast, and I'm kind of hoping no one asks me to any dances because I don't really want to go. Even though I absolutely love boys and am boy crazy, I don't want to date or go to dances. I just like hanging out. I'm not allowing anyone to hang at my house anymore though since Uncle William, Aunt Wendy, the Twins 'n' Kenna, and Skyler moved in with us. That's twelve people in my house. If they do come over, they have to stay on my roof or something. Anyway, that's my super fun post which I typed because I was so bored. Goodbye.

Bye Bye Birdie

This past week was the school musical. In case you haven't figured it out yet, we did "Bye Bye Birdie". It is my 7th period class. Tryouts to actually be in the class are in April every year, and then the class starts second semester. Three months ago in February, we had tryouts. I tried out for a girl named Ursula. She's a super hyper, crazy, hilarious girl who is the best friend of Kim MacAfee. Ursula is absolutely in love with Conrad Birdie. I don't have time to tell the story of Bye Bye Birdie, so I'll let you guys look it up on youtube or google it or something. Anyway, I tried out for Ursula. Even though I didn't get the part (I didn't expect to), I was absolutely thrilled to make call backs. To know that Ms. Swallow might even consider me for a main part was just amazing.

The main characters had to stay after school almost every day to get their blocking and start rehearsing every scene. It's a good thing I didn't get a main part because that would've totally messed with lacrosse (it's funny how I don't get to be in things I really wanted to, but it ends up being for the better. Like if I had made musical theater the year before or madrigals, I wouldn't be able to do a lot of the stuff I want to do). We've had choreography rehearsals every Monday during 7th period and going until about 4 pm to learn all of the dances. About three weeks ago, we went to the place where we would be performing for the first time. We usually perform at Rodgers Memorial Theater every year, but we couldn't this year because they're rebuilding it somewhere else. Our school stage was out of the question, it's so terrible. However, Bountiful Jr. High let us use their stage. They saved Swallow's life I think. So we got there and started rehearsing until about 5 or 6 each day. It used to take us three hours just to get through one of the acts. The set was a pain to get on and off and took up a lot of the time too.

Wednesday before last, we started staying after school until 9 pm. A bus would take us straight from 7th period to Bountiful every day and we were served dinner at 6. We soon got to the point where we could go through the whole musical two times a day and we started wearing our costumes and using mic's. It was tiring and my spiritual nourishment from seminary suffered from it because I fell asleep in seminary more than a couple of times. I would get home around 9:30 pm and I would still have to do my homework and chores. Last Monday was our final dress rehearsal before the show started. I straightened my hair for the musical, and we all got to wear tons of make up (the boys weren't happy).

On Tuesday we had our first show. It was the parent preview and our first time performing for more than ten people. It was really fun to go out there for the first song, Telephone Hour, and see all the people in the audience. I had to force myself not to stare at them and try to find people I knew. It was so weird hearing them actually clap and laugh. I didn't even know some parts were funny, and other parts I just heard so many times that it didn't even seem funny anymore so it was really cool hearing people react other than Ms. Swallow's hyena laugh.

Wednesday was really fun. We had such a good audience and they laughed at everything. Before each of our performances, the whole cast would go outside and someone would say a prayer and then we'd all do a cheer to get us pumped. The show went well, except for the fact that some of the mic's suck and keep on breaking off or making popping noises. They really irked us. On Thursday, the girl who played Kim MacAfee (Ashley Peterson) lost her voice. I thought her voice would just be a little raspy or something. No, raspy would've been great. When she sang her first solo, How Lovely to be a Woman, she could barely sing it. Her voice just sounded so bad, she couldn't hit most of the notes, her voice kept on breaking, and she sounded like she was trying not to cry. We didn't know what to do. All of us in the cast were in the hall outside of the stage, and most of us were just pacing with our hands over our mouths because we felt so bad for her but we didn't know what to do. Ashley kept on going, and she got a very loud applause at the end of her song. It totally downed our energy, and even though we did well with our singing and acting, we weren't very energetic because we were upset that Ashley was having trouble with her voice. During intermission, we all went outside and talked for a while and then we said another prayer. Us girls then went into our changing room and started singing our favorite song Be a Man from Mulan while this girl improvised it on the piano. We then performed our best second act, we had tons of energy and decided we weren't going to let anything get to us. During the show, a girl who plays Ursula had to sing her solo for her, and another girl sang her part in a song backstage. Her voice was a bit better Friday, and she sounded good on her solos. She just changed the notes and sang them down an octave or just talked them or changed the notes altogether to make it sound good with the music. We were so proud of her. A bunch of my friends and my family, my sister's boyfriend, Grandma Carol, and John, Marjorie, and Amanda all came. I was mad because the stupid mic's were being dumb again and the main guy's mic completely turned off during the second act so you could barely hear him during one of the best songs. Oh well. Saturday we had our two last shows, one at 3 pm and another at 7. Those two were our best performances. They switched the mic's around so the main guy's wasn't so glitchy. After the 3 pm show, they fed us food and I just stayed and hung out with the cast. Then we had our last performance which went really well. We had so much energy and we did such a great job. I had tons of fun. I was pretty sad when it was over. We then stayed until 10:30 taking down the set and cleaning up everything. We then went to one of the main character's (who happens to be the daughter of a former Miss America) house to hang out since our cast party wasn't until Monday. We had a fire outside and had s'mores and hot dogs without buns, played basketball, football, and later did truth or dare where I totally lost it and got hyper and did some really crazy stuff....

I'm sad the musical is over, but at the same time I'm excited to have my life back. It was fun, I just wish it could've lasted a little longer. It was super fun and I got an awesome jacket, a DVD, and a bunch of new friends from the show. I could've lived without having to go through the boys' changing room to get on stage and seeing my guy friends with no shirts or boxers though. I don't think they minded :) Now I'm working on getting the songs out of my head. Anyway, that's my story of Bye Bye Birdie. I congratulate anyone who actually read this whole thing. I just really enjoy typing and giving details, it takes me about 2-3 hours to write in my journal. Anyway, zai jian wo de peng you!

Pictures of Musical Friends at Lagoon

This week, I've been at musical theater a lot for rehearsals because our show is next week. Last week on Wednesday, we went to the stage where we'd be performing the musical for the first time. When 7th period starts, instead of going to the choir room for musical theater, we just get our stuff and get on a bus that takes us straight to Bountiful Jr. High. We had to stay until about 5 pm each day. It was weird at first getting used to dancing and acting on the stage after only doing it in the choir room. We had to do a lot of adjusting to make everything to look okay. The boys weren't happy at first because the only way to get to stage right is through the band room which is the boys' changing room. It's kind of weird going through there. It sounds weird, but I could seriously care less if they're changing or not. As long as they're covered I don't mind. I only get off stage there at one time when they all have to all change, so I just keep my eyes straight forward and don't look around even though there are guys with their shirts off around me. I like just hanging in the girls changing room, and I'm going to bring my ipod so we can listen to music in there. We change in the choir room. Last Wednesday, we started tech. That's when we get to stay there until about 9 pm each night. On Wednesday, I left for about an hour and a half from 4:30 to 6 to go to an employee party at Lagoon with Sammy because I felt like it. So I stayed at Bountiful Jr. until 9 to 9:30 pm on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. They feed us dinner around 6:30 each day, and that food tastes amazing because we are super hungry by the time dinner comes around. The only part I don't like is when we have to all sit down and takes notes on what Ms. Swallow tells us we need to work on because that takes about an hour and it's so boring and it's right before dinner so we're starving. I thought it would be not very fun and and it would tiring staying there for 7 hours, but I actually had tons of fun. The people there are so much fun to hang out with, and we're getting much better at the musical. It used to take us about 4 hours to get through the whole musical, and now it only takes us a little over 2 which is perfect. Our choreography finally looks better and people aren't forgetting their lines or cues anymore and it's looking really good. I'm excited for the musical to start in three days! It's kind of weird that the musical will be over in a week. I don't want it to end, but at the same time I'm tired of it. We will have our final dress rehearsal until 9 tomorrow (I wouldn't be surprised if it went until later), and then the parent preview on Tuesday and then five shows after that. I'm going to straighten my hair for it which is going to be a pain, but my curly hair just doesn't work.

I was pretty tired when I got home around 9:45 pm on Friday night and thought about how I had to be to work in 12 hours. I attempted to watch TV with my mom, but fell asleep. I was so not in the mood to go to work. I got there a bit late, and my ride opened less than five minutes after I got there. There were two attendants, one operator, and a supervisor there. I was attending at the white roller coaster. For half of the time, I would wait for the ride to pull in and the people to get out. Then I walk down and make sure all the seats are up and no one dropped anything on the ride. Then when the gates open, everyone gets in and I get to run down one side of the train thing and bend over and push down on everyone's restraints as I pass them. I felt kind of weird doing it at first, but I got used to it and stopped feeling weird pushing down on people's upper legs. For the other half of the time, I just stood at the entrance and checked for loose articles and hand stamps. That was so exciting. It was a bit awkward just standing there and looking at people and and pointing at my hand to indicate hand stamps and trying to smile. Towards the end of the day, a girl lost her phone so we decided to go on a hat run. A bunch of supervisors and some operators stopped the ride, told everyone it would be a 10 to 15 minute wait, and quickly ran on the tracks and on the ground around the roller coaster to look for lost items and the phone. The guests weren't happy, and it was this other 15 year old and my job to talk to the guests and keep them happy and apologize for the delay. That was fun. I decided to go walk over to a couple of different groups of people and chat with them. I was tempted to go over to the microphone and start a sing-a-long to keep everyone happy. I was relieved when the ride started again. Tons of people lost their phone on that ride, but we found most of them in between the seats or at the front of the train. I also had this guy who wanted to go on the ride with a ginormous stuffed animal that he won at a game. I told him he couldn't take it on, and he was so mad. He started cussing at me and told me how stupid that was. When he turned away I just rolled my eyes. His friend saw me and saw how annoyed I was, so he just told his friend that they should just leave and that I'm right. Thank you. I also had a lot of people who noticed the sign that said "Shoes and Shirts must be worn" so then they would laugh and say "so does that mean I can take off my pants?" That was getting so old. People don't generally go around with no pants, but they do like to go around with no shoes or shirts so that's why we have the sign. This one guy asked me if he could take off his pants since the sign said nothing about wearing no pants, so I told him to go ahead. His friends and him then started laughing hysterically. Whatever.

When I got home that night, I had some friends come over later to hang out. We mostly hung outside and climbed on my roof. Ashley was at prom with her boyfriend. Later, we watched "Sixth Sense". I've seen the whole movie, but I've never seen it all at once before. It was spiffy. After the movie was over, it was just me and two guys left so we were just talking half asleep on my sofa when I heard people at the door. I just assumed it was Ashley and didn't want to answer the door, but they kept on knocking. I was so confused when I answered the door, because there were people in dresses and a guy in a suit, but it wasn't Ashley or her boyfriend and it was dark. Then a boy said "Hi Celeste!" I stared at them for a while until I realized that it was my cousin Amanda and her friends. The guy was a boy named Kyle Mollinet who I've known since 5th grade but I've never talked to him in person before. We used to email each other all the time and talk on msn and on facebook a couple of times and I saw him in their school musical because he was a main character. It was weird to see him. Anyway, Amanda and all of her friends came just to get her younger sister from my house and then left. My two friends then left and I went to bed. The End. That's my exciting week. Btw, here are some pictures of me playing lacrosse.

stick checks

I have the ball!! and I'm running with it!!

I have the ball again :]

And again. These make me feel cool.

In the background, I'm number 13

Sitting by the heater because it was freezing

The team picture that's on our website

Lacrosse Article

Viewmont Girls Lacrosse Team Article - Salt Lake Tribune.

Someone did a story about us, I think it's pretty spiffy. Read it.

Brian Accord is the hockey coach at our school and started the lacrosse team because his daughter, Addie, played one season and thought Viewmont should have a team (they call him Acorn, it's Accord). Sam Pierson and Alli are my coaches. We were undefeated until our very last game.

Musical Friends at Lacrosse School

I'm quickly trying to post so that I won't have only 2 posts for April. That would be lame. So what to talk about..... Let's just go over how my week has been, shall we?

So on Monday....... I think I had a lacrosse game. Oh yes, I stayed after school on Monday for musical theater where we worked on choreographing some dances. Afterwards, I went to my lacrosse game which I was ten minutes late to because of musical theater and my mom and Ashley decided to take forever in the grocery store. Really, I care more about lacrosse than if my family eats tonight. Anyway, we won the game and it was very grand. After that, I went to the Viewmont High School dance concert with Sammy. It was so cool.

On Tuesday, I slept in late and missed my bus. I won't deny I was being a little slower than usual in the hopes that maybe I could miss the bus since I didn't have my math homework done (and math happened to be 1st period...) and I also didn't finish making my costume for musical theater which I had to bring to school that day. Therefore, I suggested to my mom that I miss first period to work on my costume. Perfect. I finished sewing it, then I tried it on and marveled at how 60's I looked. Towards the end of 2nd period, I did what I had forever been afraid of. I rode the UTA bus (the city bus). I checked online for the time and went through my own and my parents change until I could find two dollars, and then waited at the bus stop. It was a very enjoyable ride. I sat across from a guy that stared at me the whole time. He seemed nice. I was very relieved to finally get off the bus, and I was also proud of myself for conquering my fear. The rest of the school day was spiffingly amazing and I stayed until 5 pm after school for our "costume parade" for musical theater. Yay.

Wednesday was Saddam Hussein and my little sister's birthday. She turned seven. For musical theater, we went on a bus right at the beginning of class to a different junior high where we will be performing our play at since the stage at my junior high sucks rocks. Ms. Swallow had talked about how big and nice the stage is. It's not. Oh well, it's better than our school and I'm grateful that we have a pretty good place to perform. We stayed until 5:17 pm (for some reason I remember looking at my phone when I left and that was the time) working on some of the dances and scenes. When I got home, my little sister, Emma, informed the whole family that since I'm home, we can now party. We ate chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (Emma's choice for dinner) and then opened presents. She got a jump rope and weird dolls that are like barbies but bigger with big faces and uglier clothes. She also got a bucket of chalk. Therefore, my family decided to go outside and play with chalk. We spent a long time out there drawing with the chalk and tracing eachother's bodies. It was super duper fun and our family really needs to do that more often. It totally beats Disneyland. I made my outline on the side walk and made myself dead. We also made a dead Miley Cyrus and I wrote Chinese along the side walk and we totally covered our drive way. I enjoyed it. After that, we had cake and ice cream and then watched a movie. While watching the movie, I attempted to do my math homework. I stared at the problems for ever then decided to just not do the assignment altogether. We had to graph a bunch of stuff that will definitely help me when I'm older. Wow! The graph of the cosine of that angle is this, we're all saved! To me, it just looked like a bunch of squiggly lines. So I just drew that on one of the problems, then decided not to do the three assignments I had due the next day. The end of the school year is the worst, because I'm so close to being out of school so I stop caring about school and just give up. I haven't even looked at my grades yet, and I don't really want to. Okay, well I just did. And they're pretty spiffy. I guess my math teacher hasn't updated my three missing assignments yet.

Thursday I had musical theater after school at Bountiful Jr. High (where we're doing the musical), and then I hung with Mike and Sariah and they filmed me and made clones of me. I don't remember what happened later that night. I was sitting on my bed and was definitely planning on doing my homework. Well at least I was thinking about it, and then next thing I knew it was morning. I was very confused, I couldn't really remember the night before.

Today, Friday, we had elections at school. Everyone running had to make a video. I've never seen them before since the day that they did it the past two years, I had to go to my mom's graduation. Some of them were good, others painfully stupid, and some hilarious. We watched all of them and then voted. I went to Bountiful Jr. again for musical theater during 7th period. I had to wear a dress to school that day because it was our last lacrosse game of the season. I detest wearing dresses to school. It's so wrong, too airy and free and you have to keep your legs together. Ugh. Anyway, I had to leave musical theater early for my lacrosse game. Ms. Swallow was talking to us about what we needed to work on, then she had people get on stage to practice a dance. Right when she told us to get on stage, I booked it out the door and ran outside to the get away car with my mom and sisters inside.

I went to my lacrosse game against Park City. It seemed to be going well, I got to place about half of the game and two of my guy friend, Ben Fisher and Mike Evans, were there. At the end of the game though, we were tied 6 to 6. We were going to end it there, but then we decided to do overtime. In that 6 minutes of overtime, Park City scored, and our record of being undefeated was lost in that last game. We were so devestated to be defeated at our last game of the season, and to not be undefeated. I was so upset. We tried our best though, and we're all so proud of our team. I still have three games tomorrow, but they are for a tournament. So, our season is pretty much over. And after tomorrow (Saturday), lacrosse will be done for another year.

Sammy and I went back to my house, and then we had three of our friends, Ben Fisher, Mike Evans, and Zach Cederlof, came over and we hung out and watched a freaky movie that now has me scared to go to sleep. It was cool, and we kept on scaring each other after watching it. Me and Sammy have been friends with some not-so-good guys, and we're sick of them. So hanging with those three boys was new for us but it was so much fun and we enjoyed just having fun and knowing that they are good boys who just want to have fun and hang out. I loved it.

Ok, there we go. I feel bad I've barely posted this year. Sorry.

BTW, tickets go on sale on Monday for "Bye Bye Birdie", my school's musical. The show runs Thursday through Saturday, May 13th to 15th. It's 7 pm each night, and 3 pm on Saturday as well as a 7 pm. Tickets are $6 and you guys should come since you all love me. The tickets sell during lunch or at the door. So, if you want tickets, just send me money and let me know what time, or just let me know what time and I'll get them and I'll make sure you pay me back later. You really should come. Because if you don't then I won't be happy. And it will be super duper cool. And I am the best "extra" in the musical. And I get to wear a 60's outfit. And my hair will be straight. And it will be super duper freaking awesome. Okay that's all. Bye!

BYU Language Fair

Aaaah, posting is getting too hard!! I never want to post any more because no one really cares that much about what I do anyway and when something semi-cool does happen I never want to post. I need to get back to blogging, this is only my 12th post this year, at this rate I'll only post 36 times this year and that is unacceptable.

Last week, I went to the Brigham Young University Language Fair. I'm taking Mandarin Chinese this year, and BYU has a Language fair every year. The past two years, I went for French. Pretty much they just have you go into this building where everything is in French and you can buy stuff, play games, and do competitions. Also, you can be sent to jail if you're caught speaking English. In 7th grade I got caught many times and just broke out every time (it was so much fun having college people chasing you down the hall and hiding!!), but last year they were more tight on their "security" and made you do a worksheet before they let you out. I still got caught mulitple times, it's kinda fun. Anyway, I absolutely hated taking French. The teacher was terrible and I always avoid her in the halls because I don't want her to talk to me. The actual language was fun though. So this year I decided to take Chinese for some crazy reason and I absolutely love learning it (even though I hate the class). I study a lot at home and I know a lot so far.

Last Thursday, we had to meet at the school at 6 am to go on the bus to get to BYU because it takes over an hour to get there. I set my alarm and was going to be ready extra early so I would have time to run to a gas station to buy a lunch before getting to the school. Well, I went to sleep, and then woke up to a weird buzzing noise. I recognized it as my cell phone. I opened my eyes, looked at my alarm clock, and saw that it was 6:10. I had a mini heart attack right there. I answered and it was my friend, Sammy, asking where I was. I freaked out and was about ready to cry and destroy my stupid alarm clock. I ran upstairs while talking to Sammy to wake up my mom. The bus was going to leave at 6:15. I told Sammy I just wasn't going to go, but she told me I was going and I better throw some clothes on and get my butt to school. So I did just that, five minutes later I was out the door. I got to the bus on time because my sweet Chinese teacher, Bao Laoshi is so nice and waited for me. The school was locked and I was already upset so I just left all of my stuff in my mom's car because I didn't feel like dragging all of my school and lacrosse stuff on the bus (I had a game after school). When I was on the bus, I had the pleasure of sitting by someone's dad who was making sure we knew our Chinese and had flash cards and was quizzing us. That was exciting. We made sure not to sit by him on the way home.

We got to BYU, and eventually found the building we were supposed to be in. We got passports, and got greeted by some Chinese speaking people who let us in. We then went to a table where we give them our money in exchange for their fake money which was 2 dollars for every dollar we had. I had 10 bucks so I had a nice, pink 20 paper bill. Sammy and I went inside and bought a fan and a lantern for each of us then just wandered around for a bit looking at stuff and doing activities. The trading real money for their fake money was smart, because it made the value to seem less and I had no problem spending my 20 when I probably wouldn't have if I was holding actual money. My friend, Ethan Drake, made me go to a competition where I had to have a conversation with a Chinese lady in front of a bunch of people in a big room. I felt like an idiot. I can speak and understand Chinese and write it, but I cannot understand them if they talk super fast. I did an okay job but still felt stupid, and I got 14 out of 20 and a cute certificate. Yay me. After that, Sammy and I got bored. The Chinese fair was so close together and kind of claustrophobic and not as spread out as the French Fair had been and it wasn't a place that we felt like spending the next four hours at. Therefore, we ditched and went to go find the Spanish fair. We went to the cafeteria and found some of our friends, Zack and PJ, who were at the Spanish fair so we just followed them around. We followed them to a building where they had to do a skit in Spanish for a competition so we sat and watched them and waited while a Spanish guy kept on asking us if we wanted to compete. Me and Sammy told him we were very sure that we didn't want to compete. The longest sentence I can say in Spanish is "Por favor deje nos un mensaje" I think that's right. That was my grandma's answering machine for 10 years (Hola, you have met Carol, or Joe. Por favor deje nos un mensaje.") After hanging with PJ and Zack for a while, we went back to the Chinese fair for a bit, went back to the Spanish fair, and just walked aroud a lot. It was really fun.

On the way back, we had fun sleeping and throwing mints and we got from the Chinese fair out of the bus window at people on the highway with their windows rolled down. It was entertaining.

I had a lacrosse scrimage (fake game) later which was super duper fun and hot, and then a real game the next day which we won and I almost scored at (I've scored twice this season). It's been a spiffy week.

Sky Ride at Lagoon

Hey I haven't posted because there wasn't anything post worthy in my life other than lacrosse and I'm sure you guys have had enough of that. I could always tell you about my first kiss or something like that, but I'm sure you guys don't want to hear about that. Finally, something somewhat post worthy, my first day of work was today!! Yay!????

My older sister Ashley and I both are working at Lagoon this year, but instead of doing games I'm doing rides and so is Ashley. I've probably told you this, but why not say it again to refresh your memories. So today, I was supposed to work these two rides called "Lady Bug Bop" and "Dinosaur Drop" which are these rides that take you about thirty feet up in the air and drop you over and over which they have at about every amusement park, only this one doesn't go as high and it's cuter. I went there for about ten minutes before my supervisor called me on the phone and told me I needed to go to sky ride. Great.

Sky ride is kind of like a ski lift. You get on and it transports you from the north end to the south end or the other way around and it carries you maybe 100 feet in the air I think and takes seven minutes or something to go to each side of the park. It doesn't stop for loading or unloading so you have to go fast. Me and this guy named Alberto worked it, and for the first while I just unloaded people. Not a lot of people were on earlier in the day, so when no one's on, you have to clean. So each time one of the carriers came down, I would follow it while wiping it down then turn around and go meet the next one. It's pretty simple though, and it's tricky at first trying to say a speech so fast before people get off or start rising when they get on and you have to be constantly walking because you walk forward with the carrier and then you let go, turn around, and let the next people on or off and then walk with the carrier then turn around again. People have to stand in the ride area and when the ride comes, it just kinda knocks them onto the seat, and then when people come off they have to hurry and run off the carrier when I open the lap bar. I like letting people off more, because when you let people on you have to make sure not too many people are getting on, there are no loose articles, and you have to check for hand stamps and sometimes people have a hard time getting on the ride so you have to stop it. There are orange ropes that are in between the loading and unloading station that you pull on if someone needs help getting on or off or if there's an emergency or something and those save my life because we've had kids getting on that start to fall off or people who can't walk very well. When we do that, we have to call the other side and say "clear" so they can start the ride again or if they stop it then they call us. It's very nice. I made some stupid mistakes, but overall I think I did a spiffy job.

I've been avoiding my games managers and supervisors. I'm sure nothing would happen if they did see me, I just don't want them to. One of my favorite supervisors from games did see me though, and he said "What are you doing with a rides shirt??" and told me he'd delete me from his friends on facebook. He's cool. I miss my old games friends.

K, now that I've done a bad job explaining because I have nothing better to do, then I can express how "excited" I am to be doing stuff like that until the end of October, which is about 6 and a half months. Yay. Goodbye, thanks for reading this post I wrote because I have nothing better to do.

Lacrosse!!

This weekend has been pretty crazy! I had five lacrosse games in less than twenty-four hours and I am sooo tired now! Sorry, I don't have any pictures of me playing (ALL of the cameras in my house seem to have disappeared, it irks me), but hopefully I will soon have some up so that you guys will have proof that I actually play lacrosse other than my word and those two team photos.

Anyway, I had a game last Tuesday against Weber at some park in Weber. I had to bring my lacrosse stuff to school and change right after. The whole team met up at my school at 3 and then we just all piled into peoples' cars and left. We got there around 4, so we of course ran and practiced our catching and all that fun stuff. My friend, Sammy Facer, and I weren't very happy because we, once again, didn't get to start and we haven't gotten to play very much at any of our past games which isn't fair. Everyone else is comfortable playing and knows how everything goes while it's a treat if Sammy and I get to be on the field for more than five minutes and we still don't really get what we're doing. Our team scored 12 goals before we got to play. When I finally did go in, I was pretty excited and nervous since I don't get to play too much. I play attack and so does Sammy. The ball was over on our offense side and someone tried to score, but Weber's goalie caught the ball and then yelled "clear!" and then is supposed to pass it to one of her teammates. The goalie threw the ball, and I noticed that it was going near me so I instinctively moved that way and put my stick up.....and caught the ball. I stood there in shock for about two seconds, I had just caught the ball and made an interception. Did I really just do that? Then, I heard a bunch of girls yell "Celeste, RUN!!!'' I came back to my senses, freaked out, and started running with the ball towards the goal. A bunch of girls from the other team blocked me though, so I threw it to someone else. After that was all done and some ref had blown the whistle over something, I looked around at my coaches and they yelled "good job!" so I gave them a thumbs up. After that, I tried to get a ground ball but another girl got there first, so I checked her (hit her stick with mine) and the ball fell out but she got it again so then I tried to check her again but did an illegal one and got called for it. Oops. Around three minutes later, a girl on my team, Addie, got the ball and started running back to offense. Someone from Weber did an illegal check, so we had to stop, and she was about ten feet from me. She gave me a meaningful look and I heard one of my coaches yell "get the ball Celeste!" So, when the whistle blew again to resume game, Addie threw it to me. I, of course, dropped it. But then, I ran and picked it up and ran as fast as I could to the goal and dodged all of the other players and threw it and I scored!!!! I was so happy and all the girls on my team were freaking out. It kinda bothered me that they were making such a big deal about it since they obviously didn't think I could do it or they wouldn't've been going so crazy, but I was so happy!! But of course, a few minutes later, my coach, Sam, pulled me out again. She said I did a good job though. I was happy, I made my first goal, and my goal for the whole season was to score and I did it at the third game! I got to play more the second half (lacrosse games are divided into two 20 minutes halves), but didn't do much else. Sammy was mad though, because she missed cheerleading at her last away game to come to this game, and she barely got to play so I felt kinda bad. I didn't get to play much either, but scoring made up for that. It was a good game, and we won 17-3.

The next couple of days at practice, I improved a lot more and Sam and Alli (my other coach) kept on telling me how much better I'm getting.

On Friday, we had our first tournament game. We went up to a place in North Salt Lake called Hatch Park and played against Davis. We weren't really happy we had to play them because we had already played, and beaten, them two times already. My mom and sisters all came to watch. I got to play a lot more that game, almost the whole time. At the end of the game, us and Davis were tied 7-7, so we had to go into over time where we play two three-minutes halves. We scored two more times so we won 9-7.

Because of some things that came up, Sammy and I decided we wanted to have a sleepover at my house.

The next morning, we woke up at 6 am to go to lacrosse. Sammy's mom had brought her stuff over. So my mom drove us to lacrosse and we played against Woods Cross. Sammy could only go to half of it because she had Lagoon training at 9 (I had training too, but I skipped it). They beat us, but it didn't matter because it was only a tournament and not a season game and it wasn't really fair since they were varsity and we are a first year team and only junior varsity. After that, we drove back to Centerville to have an actual game for our season against Olympus at 10. We beat them, and I scored again. It was a pretty fun game, but it went by fast. After that, we had to drive back up to Hatch Park for a game against Cache Valley at 12. They were varsity too, so we got beaten again. We then had one more game, and since Davis lost to Wood's Cross, we had to play Davis for a fourth time at 2:30. No one wanted to play them so we weren't very happy. Needless to say, we beat them again.

When I got home, I was so tired so I took a three hour nap. When I woke up, I saw that I had gotten sunburned, and I now look ridiculous because there's a tan line on my arms where I rolled up my under armor (long-sleeved undershirt for lacrosse), and I have a small place right on the bottom of my legs from my leggings because they don't go all the way down, and my face is sun burned. But, I have a nice, attractive white line going across my forehead, around my eyes, and on the bridge of my nose from my goggles. A lot of people were commenting on it at church, but it doesn't look too bad now since I put make-up on it (thank-you Mary Kay!).

So, I had a pretty exhausting yet exciting day yesterday (and Friday I guess...). I'm so happy because I got to play a lot more and I got the ball quite a bit. I still never stop surprising myself with how stupid I am on the field though, I do so many stupid things and do panic passes once I get the ball, but hopefully that will go away with more experience. I love lacrosse!!!

P.S. Sorry if my grammar isn't very good in this post and or if it was hard to follow at all. I'm too tired to try to have it make more sense, so just pretend it does.

For Lack of a Better Title: Stuff

My life is getting crazy. I'm doing musical theater, choir, piano, lacrosse, and I'm working at Lagoon. starting towards the end of next month, I'll be having musical theater multiple days a week and even until late at night after school once the musical comes closer. Right now, I only have it on Mondays after school. Choir was a bit crazy because I've had a couple performances this past week and still have some to go in a couple months. I still have to find time to practice the piano and I have it once a week. Lacrosse is every day after school from 3:30 to 5:30, and I still have 8 more games. I have around 8 more days of training for Lagoon and the season starts in a couple weeks and I'll soon be working every weekend. Let's not forget that I like to hang out with friends every weekend too. What am I getting myself into? Oh well, it will all be worth it. Well it should. I hope. Maybe.

On Tuesday right after school, Ashley and I went to the rides department orientation at Lagoon. I had to miss a lacrosse game that day for Lagoon and choir. We got to watch cute videos from the 90's about operating rides at amusement parks. That lasted a couple of hours and was very gripping, I was so into it I almost fell asleep from the excitement. After it ended and talking to my managers because I wasn't in the computer for some annoying weird reason, I got home for five minutes to put on my choir dress, then headed to Syracuse.

The concert choir and madrigals at my school went a thing called Large Ensemble Festival. There were six other choirs there I think that sang, but I missed all but the last one because I was late getting there. Each choir sings three songs and sight sings and gets rated, 1+ being the highest (just like solo and ensemble) and 5 the lowest. We sang the three songs that we sang for our concert, Dies Irae, Ich Liebe Dich, and Music Down in my Soul. It was a bit hectic on stage because there were so many of us. When the lady was announcing our choir and our choir officers, she said some of their names really weird so everyone on stage was trying not to laugh. Also, right when we started our first piece, someone behind me hiccuped which made everyone start to laugh and then someone started clapping all weird for our last song which made a couple people laugh too. It makes it hard to sing when you're trying not to laugh, and also Ms. Swallow was making faces at us when we did something weird. I thought we did a good job though. Ms. Swallow had to play the song Dies Irae on the piano and it's really complex so she barely conducted us on the song and we had to sing it with only her looking up every now and then to bring us in. We sounded really good on our other songs. The songs we did were very advanced for a junior high and most junior highs wouldn't consider doing songs like that, especially a 5 part German song a-capella. The sight singing was tricky. During class, we just sight sang hymns out of a Baptist hymnal with words, but the one we did at the LEF had no words so it was easier to get lost and then the parts were all over the place. We did a good job though. We got a 1's on our songs and a 1- for our sight singing which was really good. Amanda (my cousin for those who don't know yet even though I mention her quite a bit) was at the LEF too. She goes to Fairfield and she got to see me sing. I was sad I missed her school sing, I've never gone to one of her music things and it makes me feel kinda bad. I got to see her after though and I gave her a hug. We finally got done at 7:30, and then we had to wait outside for half an hour for the buses to come and it was freezing! After suffering through the cold, we got on the buses at 8 I think. It took us a while to get home, and it was kinda fun riding in a dark bus with a bunch of kids from choir. It was a cool experience and I'm glad my school's choir did such a good job.

For mutual on Wednesday, we did something like the Amazing Race where we were put into teams and drove around Farmington and found five different leaders who made us do the chicken dance, play tennis, run three laps, pop balloons, and do a puzzle. It was fun, and we got root beer floats at the end.

All I remember from Thursday was lacrosse, and it was spiffy.

Friday was fun. During English, my teacher was working on grades and citizenship and having everyone tell her what assignments they did and what citizenship they think they got and all that good stuff when she mentioned how me and another girl could use some extra credit. I had a B+ but I probably had the lowest grade in the class. Suddenly, without any warning at all, she said "Celeste is going to give an oral report about how Pyramus and Thisbe is similar or different than Romeo and Juliet. She has one minute to prepare, someone start counting." I had a bit of a freak out right there. I just stared at Mrs. Shinn for a couple seconds in freak out mode and then looked around like an animal trying to find an escape route. I frantically tried to find any notes I might've taken on the short story called "Pyramus and Thisbe." The girl in front of me let me borrow her notes and quickly read over them as fast as I could and tried to gather my frantic thoughts together while Mrs. Shinn kept on talking to everyone else about other stuff. She then had me go to the front of the class and have me give me report. I must say, giving oral reports with one minute notice that has to do with a weird story I only read three days ago and with nothing but my brain isn't too fun. However, I gave it as best as I could and everyone told me afterward that they were impressed. Go me. My grade went up to an A-. Now, I have all A's except for math, but there's not much hope for me with that anyway so I just pretend that that grade doesn't exist.

After school, me, Sammy, and Davis went to the annual boys basketball team versus the teachers game at our school, but we only went for 15 minutes. We then went to Davis's house for an hour, then me and Sammy went back to my house. At around 9, Davis came over and hung out with us which was super fun. I straightened my hair that day, it was sexy.

This morning, I got to go to go to Lagoon for training!! It started at 9 AM and it was freezing. There were only 5 other people in my group, and we learned how to work Speedway Junior which is a little kid ride where they go in little cars around a track. We also did Dinosaur Drop and Lady Bug Bop and the rollercoaster. After taking a test and being kind of certified, I went home for an hour during lunch because I was cold and hungry. I went back there again at 1 for our SBA. I forget what it stands for, but they tested us on the rides. But, they didn't have us actually work them, they just had us go through how to work them. Since I'm 15, I don't get to press all the cool pretty buttons like the people over 16, I just get to load and unload people and press a couple of not as cool buttons. I am now certified to work at those rides. I got done early and Mom and Ashley had the cars, so I just started to walk home. Davis wanted to pick me up though, so when I was half way home, he (well, technically his dad) picked me up and took me home which was so nice of them and saved me from walking an extra 30-40 minutes. It was delightful.

Just so you guys know, and so that people won't freak out at me later for some stupid reason, everything I say on this blog regarding Lagoon is my opinion only and isn't the opinion of Lagoon as I am not authorized to say anything on behalf of Lagoon. There, now if someone has a problem, they can look here and now that these things I say about Lagoon are my own opinion on how wonderful it is and nothing I say on here is Lagoon's opinion or in behalf of Lagoon. These are my own opinions.

Now, I'm going to attempt to take a nap because I've been falling asleep in English this week, I'm soooo tired! Goodbye

Lacrosse, Basketball, and Choir

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been thinking about it, but there was nothing so terrible exciting in my life that I felt I had to share it with the world of bloggers. However, it's been too long and there have been some pretty spiffy things that have happened this past week.

Wednesday night, I had a choir concert! We sang three songs, Dies Irae, Ich Liebe Dich, and Music Down in my Soul. Dies Irae is a Latin song by Mozart that is super fun to sing. It's really loud and powerful and is saying how when God comes again on the judgment day, on the day of wrath, we had better hope we were good or we'll be screwed. I actually enjoyed singing soprano on this song, because it was so intense, and I love singing high note intensely. It was just a cool song. The next song, Ich Liebe Dich, is in German. I sang second soprano. It's a slow love song, and it isn't too many people's favorite. It's really slow and boring and was a pain to learn, but now that I have performed it, I do respect the song as a nice arrangement and full of sweetness, and now I like to tell my choir friends "Ich liebe dich" because it means "I love you" in German. I think German is so cool, and once I'm done with Chinese and English, I want to learn it. The third song was Music Down in my Soul. I absolutely loved this song. It's so much fun to sing, we're singing about how much we love the Lord and how we've got this "music down in my soul, and it fills my heart with the joy of the Lord". It's super fun and upbeat and energetic, and at one point, a bunch of basses sing "Do you love the Lord?" and then the rest of us sing "I love the Lord!" and then later on we do some clapping. I loved that song, and it was even cooler because I was a second soprano, so I wasn't trying to screech out a bunch of high notes. It was a good concert, and I've got to perform them again at Large Ensemble Festival this Tuesday at a high school.

On Thursday was my first Lacrosse game!! I was so excited, and we got to play our rival school, Davis. I didn't get to play as much as I liked, but it was still fun to just stand there in my mini skirt and watch my team play and cheer them on. Our uniforms are so cute, and I love the mini skirts! Though, I must say it is definitely a new experience running around in a game with a mini skirt on. Anyway, we kicked Davis' butt. I was especially happy because their boy's varsity team was there, and they were totally showing off and wouldn't shut up and were annoying me. The Davis JV team were kinda annoying to play, they clumped a lot and didn't really play very cleanly and all of our girls were getting frustrated with them. The final score was 12 to 5, and then we got to sign some of our posters which we are going to sell. This is the poster:



I'm on the far left, looking like I'm from the ring. I hate the picture of me, I think I look stupid and maybe it would work more if you could actually see muscle, but I'm at an angle were you can't even tell I have any (and yes, I do :]), but overall the picture is pretty spiffy. We signed like ten of them. It was then that I noticed that I have a crappy signature. Oh well. I love lacrosse!

On Friday, Ashley and I went to the Lagoon parkwide orientation. Afterwards, we helped our mom clean for her Mary Kay party, then I went off with Sammy. We went to Kohl's to try on dresses, and then we went to my young women basketball game. We made it to regions, and we won our game that night again. We are undefeated! After that, I just hung with Sammy at my house for an hour and tried not to fall asleep because I was so tired.

Today, I went to another Young Women basketball game, we were in the quarter finals. However, the team that we played were amazing and we just couldn't beat them. Even though they beat us pretty badly (29 to 9 I think) I still have so much fun because I've never played such a competitive team before and I really just enjoy playing. I didn't make any of my shots (they were sooo close!), but I ran with the ball down court a couple of times which is very exciting, and I think we all did a really good job. Even our smallest and newest player, Abbie England, make two shots and even made a foul! Now, I'm about to go to a Mary Kay part for lacrosse. I hope people come! Bye everyone!

P.S. I cut my hair, it's like three inches shorter, thinner, has more layers, and my bangs are shorter now. I love it!!!!

Ashley Black Read This

Hey Ash. Just in case I die young (or just while facebook is still around), look on pg. 80 of my Harry Potter journal. Also, I'll want orange flowers, people to sing Beatles songs at my funeral, and you can have my iPod if I still have it. That is all.

Aliens at High School Churches

I better post before it gets any later and I forget what even happened this week. What if I just stopped posting altogether? I bet all of you would just break down and cry.

Sunday was fun, I got to give a talk! It was on charity, and everyone told me I did a good job, but that's probably because that's what people are supposed to say. Even if someone gives a downright terrible talk, you must tell them they did an excellent job. Dad kept on making faces at me while I was sitting up there which is always fun. I do like giving talks, I don't see why people freak out so much. You go up there, say what you need to, amen, and go sit down. And it doesn't matter if it was terrible, because by the next week no one will remember it anyway.

On Monday, my dad, sisters, and I went to see the Princess and the Frog. Or at least we tried to. We accidentally went into the wrong theater. We were expecting the Princess and the Frog, when all of a sudden a bunch of green alien people come on the screen. I thought it was just a commercial, but they started doing the beginning credits while showing the happy little green people going around town, smiling, laughing, and introducing their lives. I was horrified, I did not want to watch some stupid cartoon about aliens for the next two hours. I've never even heard of the movie before. Emma even whispered to my dad when it first started "I didn't know they had kubo." Help me. We ended up staying to watch it since we were already there, and it actually wasn't too bad. I kind of liked it. The beginning was just really cheesy and stupid, especially to someone who's never even heard of it before. It is called Planet 51, and it's about these green people who live there and freak out because an alien (human) comes to their planet. I did end up liking it, it was pretty funny.

Tuesday was spiffing. I got this piano song off of youtube called Haze and it's just a song some kid made up, but I absolutely love it. There isn't any sheet music though since the kid just made it up, so I put it on my ipod, and I got out my blank music book thing, and I just listened to the song and wrote down the notes. I was proud of myself because I found out the key and time signature and wrote it all down and made it work just by listening to it, and now I play it a lot because it's so cool. I don't know if what I did is even allowed, but it's not like the guy will find out, and I did put the title and his name at the top of the piece. I spent most of Tuesday on the piano.

I had mutual on Wednesday, and we did "Fear Factor". We were put into three teams, and we had five different stations, each for ten minutes. The first one I did, we had to find 7 scriptures in 10 minutes saying "if ye are mormon, ye shall not fear" or something like that. We only found like three. The next station, we had to do sit-ups, two at a time, for two minutes straight. We had to see which group would get the most sit-ups. I was the first girl to do sit-ups, and I did 90 in two minutes. At first I was disappointed I only did 90, until all the rest of the girls didn't get over 80. Then I felt pretty proud, and even more when some boys couldn't do as much as me. (The next day, my stomach was sore) The next event thing, we had to eat gross food. We had McDonald's french fries, hamburgers, root beer, and baby formula all blended together which we had to drink. I took one sip and had to cover my mouth to keep from throwing up. It was so sick, I think it was just the root beer that made it so deadly. It also depended on the person, some people thought it wasn't too bad, and others were gagging. It was the grossest thing I've ever had. The next thing my group did, was we had a person stand in the middle, and then everyone sits in a circle around them with their knees bent and the feet in the middle and pressed up against the standing person. The person standing (which was me the first time) then crosses their hands on their shoulders, locks their knees, and falls back. You have to stay stiff, and as you fall, the people sitting push on you and they pretty much just push you back and forth like a rag doll until someone drops you. I didn't really want to do it, because it was a bit awkward being a girl, but it was fun. The last station, we just made paper airplanes and tried to see how many we could fly onto a box on the floor. After we were done, we were informed that we were all winners and we got creamies.

During school on Thursday, the 9th graders got to go to Viewmont High School to take a tour and have the teachers talk to us. We left at about 8:45 from the school. I could tell the people at the high school didn't like us. Whenever our senior tour guides saw one of their friends, they would say "Ohhhh having fun with the 9th graders?" sarcastically and then giggle at their own cleverness at using sarcasm to make fun of freshman. I felt like I was 5, because they gave us name tags so we know our name, bus, tour, and teacher. We were in an art class learning about their program, when the bell rang right when we were about to leave. The senior tour guides wouldn't let us into the hall at first, and then they made us walk in a line right up against the wall so we won't get lost and the scary high school students won't trample us. I thought they were going to have us hold hands and sing the ABC's next. I saw my sister and her boyfriend there, so I felt cool knowing juniors. Yay me. We got back to school during lunch, and when I got back there I felt like I was in elementary school all over again. High school made Junior high seem more crappy than it already is and really small. And all of the sevvies look like they're in 4th grade. I wonder if we look like that to the high school kids.

Today, nothing too exciting happened. I just hung out with Sammy Facer, Riley Smith, and Ben Fisher after school (after accidentally falling asleep for three and a half hours :D) while seven kids under the age of 12 caused mayhem at my house. I told the kids would get physical if they came downstairs and bugged us. The only person I let downstairs for more than 30 seconds was Chelsie, because she's almost twelve and she's the most mature, and because I just plain like her.

Anyway, that was my spectacular week. I hope you guys like the new background and music. I tried not to choose annoying songs or backgrounds. There was one that was amazing, but I thought it would distract you from reading more. And it just makes it hard to read. Goodbye everyone, have a spiffing day.

Singing While Dancing at School

Okay my last couple of days have been crazy-ish, enjoy.

On Tuesday night, I went to the the annual special needs Valentine's dance for mutual. It's so much fun, the special needs people are so fun to dance with and also all of the youth in our ward have tons of fun just dancing and not caring what other people think. The only guy in my ward that I danced with this time was Mike Fifer, the other slow dances I danced with special needs guys, it was spiffing. There was this one lady there that just loved to get in front of everyone and dance, and I swear she knows every song known to man. She also had a boyfriend that she was showing off to all of the girls, she was awesome. I had such a delightful night!

The next day, Wednesday, was solo and ensemble day, which if you guys don't know about, too bad because I don't want to explain it again. Anyway, during school I had a field trip to Empire, which is a Chinese food restaurant. Us Chinese kids got to go which was dandy and we all felt cool because we ate with chopsticks and ordered in Chinese. Right after school I had to go to piano lessons. Right before, I was practicing my solo a ton, but I was freaking out because my voice kept on cracking, and I was mad because it doesn't usually crack, but then I remembered that I was sick last week and I had a sore throat. I freaked out and drank tons of water and had cough drops. I went to piano lessons for 45 minutes, and then my sister Ashley drove me to my school. She was so busy talking to me that she accidentally got on the wrong high way, so I was freaking out a little inside because I didn't want to be late and I had to pee really bad, but we eventually got off and I made it to the school in time. I went in to the band room and sang my solo for the judge, and my voice didn't crack which was a miracle. I was confident and I thought I did a great job. Twenty minutes later, I went in again for my ensemble. We sang "Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be", and it was just four of us girls. I thought we did a pretty good job, but not the best we could've done.

Right afterward, my friend Heather's mom who is my Young Womens leader, took me to the church and from there, the Bountiful temple. We were there for a couple of hours, and I was able to read a lot from the Book of Mormon while waiting which was good because I'm way behind in seminary. On the way home, we saw a huge house off the side of the road, so I had my YW leader, Kristen, turn around so we could look at it. It looked like a hotel and I was very jealous, even though two minutes before I was saying if I was rich I wouldn't buy a really big house. I changed my mind. It was a fun but busy day, and I was exhausted when I got home.

Today, I found out that I didn't make districts for solo and ensemble, but I did get a 1- which was the same I got last year and really good since the highest score you can get is either a 1 or 1+. My friend, Heather, made it to districts though. My ensemble got a 2+. I also got back my math test, and the class average for the test was 75%. I really think it's the teacher's fault, because we have smart people in my class (well obviously since it's an honors math class). Math is just hard this year, and I want to throw up when I think that I'll be in pre-calculus next year. Gross. Math definitely isn't my forte this year, well actually it never is, it's usually my mezzo forte or something, so this year it's like my pianissimo... Ok never mind. I thought I should get extra credit in seminary though, because we had to make math equations and make like prayer + faith = testimony except for trickier, and I did logarithms, so I felt smart. It was fun explaining it to the class, because no one but like four people who are in Algebra 2 with me got it, and they told me I explain better than Mr. Free. Sweet. In musical theater, we started learning some songs for the musical "Bye Bye Birdie", and soon I will probably hate those songs, and even now they are stuck in my head.

That's it, I'm tired and I've got to survive one more day of school so I should probably go let my body regenerate or charge or whatever it does while you sleep. Goodnight, you all make my dark days brighter.