PIANO

Hello everyone. Last night, I was browsing youtube with my little cousin Mckenna when I came across a clip from one of my favorite movies, 不能说的秘密 (Bu Neng Shuo De Mimi, The Secret). I started freaking out and told Mckenna (who is 9 years old) that she has to watch it with me, so we stayed up until midnight watching it. The movie was made in China and is spoken in Chinese so we got to watch it with subtitles. It's about this guy who goes to a music school to study piano and meets a mysterious girl and they fall in love but she has this secret and it's so crazy and aaahhhhhh. I watched it in my Chinese class last year, and about three minutes until the end of the movie, the bell rang for class to end. All of us were freaking out because the ending is so intense so no one got up and we watched it to the end. Mckenna really enjoyed it even though I had to explain a lot of it to her. I think everyone who reads this blog who loves piano, music, a good love story, crazy intense endings, Chinese people, or a good movie should watch it on youtube. You will LOVE it.

My piano teacher gave me sheet music for Mozart's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with 12 variations. She told me to choose three to learn, so I've been listening to them on youtube to decide which ones to learn. It's so cool how each song is composed very differently from the others, yet they all have the same simple tune we all know in it. It's amazing.

So the reason for me telling you about these random youtube piano players is because I've been thinking about the piano lately. Actually a lot. I started playing the piano when I was either 7 or 8. I've been playing for half my life. So you'd think that I'd be pretty freaking good. But I'm not. I'm average, mediocre. I can play all the notes in songs that I play, but I mess up at least once per song and it doesn't sound musical. It's not pretty. It sounds like all of the right notes are being played, but it doesn't sound nice or smooth, it sounds choppy and unimpressive. I hate watching kids my age play amazing pieces flawlessly at piano concerts and sound amazing because it makes me feel like I'm a terrible piano player. Part of the reason that I'm not as good as I like is because I've had piano teacher problems since I moved to Farmington. Before I moved here, I had a couple piano teachers, but the last one I had was amazing. In the two years I had her, I improved so much, it's crazy. When I moved here, I got a piano teacher that I went to early in the morning every Thursday with my little sister. I hated going, she would turn on Mozart and make me sing along and she just wasn't really my cup of tea. I begged my mom to find another teacher, so she let me quit. For many months, I didn't have a piano teacher but I practiced every day and still tried to teach myself because I love to play. I finally got another teacher. She was good, except she would make me play stupid piano computer games that are way below my level (which my current piano teacher now makes my 8 year old sister play) and would run my lessons super late which is super annoying. She would spend most of the time trying to explain things that I didn't understand and she didn't let me do what I love most which is learning new, fun songs. She just talked half the lesson about theory. As important as theory is, that doesn't help me much because I have a very small attention span when it comes to theory. I soon quit her too. A few months later, I got a new piano teacher who my cousins actually take from. I loved her, she was so great and would let me learn new, fun pieces and I actually enjoyed going to my lessons. I did improve with her. However, sadly, she had to get surgery so she decided to cut back on students. So I no longer had her as a teacher. It was pretty upsetting. Finally, months later, I got another new teacher, Katherine Chipman. And she is amazing! She is majoring in piano at the University of Utah. I can't say I look forward to my lessons, but she really knows her stuff and is a good teacher and can actually help me succeed. So, I decided to take advantage. I was talking to her at my last lesson, asking her how good I'd have to be to major in piano (I don't plan on majoring, but I might want to minor in it), and she said I'd have to start practing the piano at least four hours every day. That's a lot. On a good day, I practice for an hour. I have a hard time practicing though because I hate practicing when my whole family is home because I feel like I'm disrupting them with my playing, so four hours would surely annoy them to death. I contemplated it a bit, but after watching 不能说的秘密 (the piano playing is incredible) and listening to Twinkle Twinkle, I've decided that I want to play like that. I don't want to be mediocre, I want to be amazing and have people love to listen to me and be amazed by my talent. I am average at sports and average at art, but I don't want to be average at music. I want this to be my thing. I want to be like my Great Grandma Veldron who used to accompany symphonies and who thought the piano was so important. I want to be able to play and master any piece I want. So, today I texted my piano teacher and said "I want to be amazing at the piano and I'm willing to work hard. Can you make me amazing?" So she texted me back and told me that she will teach me to handle any piece but I'll need to practice more classical music and technique exercises, be more consisten with practice and lessons (heh..), learn to perfect pieces, and piano would have to be the focus of my life and that she could get me ready to audition for an amazing teacher. YES. That's what I want. I'm gonna practice the piano 4 hours a day and not care if my family get annoyed because I want this really bad and I'm doing this for me because I love the piano and I love to be the best and I haven't been the best at anything in years which is saddening. I want to be better, I need to be better. Playing the piano is my favorite thing to do and I'm willing to do all of the yucky theory and technique and scales and classical music. I'm gonna see if I can get into my church and play the grand piano in the chapel because I hate my piano. The pedal sucks, it's off key, and it's a bit annoying to play on now that I'm getting better and I need a good piano.

So anyway, that's my long post about the piano and how it's going to be an even bigger part in my life for now on. I really hope I can get much better, I mean practing 4 hours a day and about 24-28 hours a week instead of maybe 4 hours a week should get me really far. I'm gonna be spending one whole day of my week just practicing. Wow. It will all be worth it in the end. I love the piano. :)

My Dad's Birthday!

My dad's birthday was yesterday (he's 42 :o), and it's a bit of a tradition in the world to give people presents for their birthday. Well I am kinda broke since I no longer have a job, so I decided to draw a picture of him playing his guitar. It probably took me about 3 hours so not as long as other pictures usually do but it turned out pretty good. Anyway I just thought I'd share. I did a picture of my parents for my mom's birthday which I have posted on facebook. I'll post it on here if I can figure out how to put another picture on with my phone. K bye everyone!

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Viewmont Girls Lacrosse 2011

The Lacrosse season started and I've had two games so far. I started conditioning for it in January (not fun) and we started using our sticks in February. Last year was our first season, and we had about 18 girls on the team. Two of them only showed up to get their pictures taken and to get their uniforms so that they could tell everyone that they played lacrosse (losers). This year, there are about 36 girls on the team. Instead of being an only JV team, we had to have a varsity team and we got just barely enough girls to have a junior varsity team too. We didn't have try outs, they just put us where they thought we would do best. And I wasn't very happy with their decision that they made at first.

Everyone from last year's team was put on varsity.... except me. That's a downer. I was so mad, I didn't want to do lacrosse anymore. They put two freshman and two people who've never played before on varsity, but not me. I was on their first ever team, and if it wasn't for me then there wouldn't have been a team because I got Sammy to do it too and if neither of us had done it then there wouldn't have been enough girls to play. I paid for it too, I paid for all my gear and registration with my money from Lagoon and my mom was the treasurer. And they decided to put me back with all of the beginners who don't know how to play lacrosse. Thanks, I feel good about myself. I had a rough couple of weeks: it was hard to see all of my teammates from last year playing without me and doing scrimmages and learning new skills while I was left with all the new girls and got to learn how to throw and catch all over again as if I hadn't been doing it for over a year.

However, now that I've played at JV play day and have played two games with them, I've discovered that I LOVE being on JV. All of the girls are so nice and really fun to be around and have picked it up really quickly. I didn't really like some of the girls from last year's team and a lot of them are really cocky. Also, I didn't get to play very much last year. I was lucky if I got to play ten minutes in a game. Now, I play most of the game. The past two games, I played the entire first half and then sat out for only about three minutes in the second half. I also get play new positions. I used to just play offense, but now I play A-wing which is pretty much mid-field, and they had me play D-wing a couple of times too. Also, the girls on the team actually pass to me. Last year, they rarely passed to me in a game even if there wasn't a defender within twenty feet of me and they had five on them. During my first game, I played two new positions and made my first ever legal check during a game and I switched to my left hand a lot which is pretty tricky to do. It's going to be a great season.

Since there are now two teams to coach, we got a third coach,Brandon Supinger. He is our new JV coach, and he just graduated last year I think. I really didn't like him at first, but I'm starting to like him more and more every week and he's getting better at coaching. He used to just stare at us while we practiced, but now he actually gives us feedback. He's also in my ward. We got our ward boundaries changed and he was added in. It was a bit weird when I found that out.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my first two games. I will post more as the season progresses. I'm # 13. Enjoy :)

Look at me go!

Almost had it

Mike Fifer is holding up a sign with my name on it :)

I look so buff, I love it

Oh man I just love my face.

WE ARE VIKINGS HERE US ROW!

Yeah... we won :)


We like to promote eating healthy as a team.

Going to battle

And this is our team picture:

This one's me close up. I'm not sure how I feel about this picture, but I sure look angry and ready to play.

My Sweet Answer to Morp!

My friends and I got together and decided that we want to go to our high school's dance, morp (the opposite of prom, that's why it's spelled backwards... :0). I decided to ask this nice chap in my ward named Aksel Albertson. He moved here a year and a half ago, has a twin brother, and is a junior and is very nice. I wasn't sure how to ask him and I was putting it off. So, my good friend Sammy came over one day after school with a giant stuffed animal monkey coming out of a banana. I printed out a piece of paper that said "I would go BANANAS if you'd go to morp with me." I then cut out a tiny piece of green paper, wrote my name on it, folded it up, and stuck it up the monkey's nose. It was rather gross yet super cute. We ran to his house, put it on the front porch, rang his doorbell, and ran away. The term generally used is doorbell ditching. So I've been waiting for his answer to come, and tonight it came.

I was driving home from a nice visit with my cousin when my phone rang. I saw it was my sister Ashley, so I ignored it (I'm a very good driver and would never do such a thing as answering my phone while driving) since I was about forty-seven seconds away from home. When I entered the house, Ashley acted secretively obvious that something significant had just happened.

I went into the kitchen, and there was a box of chocolates with a note:

My family opened up the box of chocolates and I looked all over the box and didn't see anything. We decided that it must actually be in the chocolate so we started cutting them open:

After cutting a lot open, I became confused and was wondering what else he could have possibly meant and how on earth did he hide an answer in there. All the chocolates looked happily in place. I invited people to just start eating them. My mom picked up one to eat and looked on the bottom. It looked a bit smeared on the bottom, so she cut it open.

There was a little ball of aluminum foil. I took a look at that and just started laughing. I took it out and starting unrolling the little thing of aluminum foil. The whole time I'm looking like an idiot because I have a mouth full of chocolate so I'm trying to keep my mouth closed while I'm laughing.

Inside of the aluminum was a tiny note:

How cute!!!!! Wow that was the cutest idea I have ever seen, I was so thrilled!! So I now have an official date to morp this Saturday!!! Feel free to steal this idea, it wasn't mine.

My Church Hobby

I have found a hobby to do during church when the talks aren't quite enough to entertain me. I got a mini composition book some years back, and I used to write notes in it but no longer do. One Sunday, I got bored and so I decided to draw the shoe I was wearing. The following Sunday, I was wearing a different shoe, and so I drew that too. I didn't do this every Sunday, but whenever I remembered and whenever someone happened to be wearing a new shoe, I would draw it to pass the time. It has also been proven that people who doodle or draw while listening to someone talk can remember more of what they said, so this is actually helping me with my church education and is improving my drawing skills. They aren't amazing, but they are pretty fun to look at and I'll hope that no one compares my drawing skills to anyone (especially amazingly talented artist girl cousins...) So here are my shoe drawings, from my first ever drawn shoe to the one that I drew last Sunday. In the upper left corner of the paper, I wrote the first name of the person whose shoe I drew. Enjoy! P.S. I have issues with scanners and have yet to learn their ways, so I did just take pictures of these pictures with my camera.


First one that I ever drew. It's simple, but I'm very fond of it. This shoe was the start of it all... This is actually my older sister's shoe, but I was wearing it at the time and I wear it more than her so I considered it mine.

This one and the next one are the same shoes, just from different angles.

This was a very old, battered shoe.

This one was tricky for me at the time, and you can tell. I doubt it would be now though because I'm just so amazing now. Not one of my favorites, I don't like sandals and I refuse to wear them.

I love this one, I was very proud of myself and this is one of my favorite shoes.




I really like this shoe, and it's actually a really nice red color.


My dad drew this.


This is a pretty poor representation of the actual shoe. The shoe is not that fat and has a higher heel and is very black and shiny. I bought it for a school dance. I wasn't having a very good drawing time.


This shoe makes me happy.


As does this one.





My dad wanted me to draw his shoe during church one day.



And this one I did last Sunday.

Well that's it, those are my amateur shoe drawings. I draw shoes as people in my family wear new ones to church, so I'll post more if my sisters get more shoes to wear and for me to draw. Goodbye.