There's a snake in my boot!

So I am not much of a cowgirl, but last night I dressed up as one for a church activity. I put on my dad's snake skinned boots, my brother's belt (I don't like belts so I don't have any), braided my hair, and topped it of with some drawn on freckles. I could not find a single cowboy hat so I guess I wasn't totally a cowgirl, but I sure felt like one wearing boots and braids.



Don't worry I was not the only one dressed up. Mostly all of the other girls dressed up. They all looked very cute as cowgirls.







The theme for the activity (which involved a cute little skit) focused on eight values. Faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrety, and virtue. Eight girls breifly exlained the meaning behind each value with a little rhyme. Then one last speaker tied all eight values together and gave ways that we could apply them to our lives. I thought that it was not only a fun activity, but it was also very insightful.

Don't play with your food!

I think that everyone has been told at one point in their life not to play with their food. But what your parents didn't tell you is that some people make a bunch of money by sculpting their food into art.


This person took a long watermelon and carved it into a donkey.


The Japanese like to make cute little animals out of rice and then put them into soups.


Starchy Pete here was probably made to show people which foods are starchy. It probably had a lecture to go along with it explaining how and when to eat starchy foods.

There is even a company that will cater office luncheons or parties. They mostly make their decorations out of fresh fruit, which if you ask me, is just as tasty, but also healthy. (http://www.ediblearrangements.com/)

I have made a few sculptures out of my food throughout the years. Not quite as elaborate as the professionals that get payed, but still kinda cool.



These two sculptures are more like towers, that I made out of the Valentines candy that my teacher gave me.

Why do cemeteries have fences?

Cause people are dying to get in.



Saturday night found myself driving around in a cemetery with 40 minutes to kill. I wanted to make sure that I gave my self enough time to get to a babysitting job so I left early. But I must have given myself too much time.
Driving around in a cemetery is not something I do on a regular basis. Actually I don't think that I have ever done it. But there was not really anywhere else near by that I could go. It was kinda cool driving around looking at the different tombstones, with my doors locked of course. I found myself calculating how long people had lived, how long they had been married or how long they lived after their spouse died.



I thought that this one was cool. This person was born exactly 120 years before me!



I saw this gravestone and it made me so sad. I cannot even begin to imagine how hard it would be to have to bury your own baby. I know a couple of people who have lost babies and I could see that it was so hard on them. But it also is so sad because those babies didn't get the opportunity to live like I have.

I did get kinda creeped out thinking that I was the only one living in the whole area. And then I started to hear some strange noises that I knew were leaves underneath my car, but sometimes my imagination can run wild. I am happy to say that I made it out of there alive. No zombies got me.

Not a fan of change

Yesterday, I found out that I was accepted into BYU-Idaho. This is not my first choice and I am still waiting to hear back from another school, however, I was nice to know that I had a place to go next year. But then it hit me, COLLEGE!! Am I even ready for that yet? I almost started to cry. Idaho is so SO FAR AWAY from home!

A lot of my friends say that they cannot wait to go to college, they are ready to get away and start a new life. But not me! I am not looking forward to the day when I have to pack up all my belongings and drive across the country. Yeah there won't be anyone telling me what I can and cannot be doing. But that means that that person won't be there to make me dinner, tuck me in at night, or take care of me when I am feeling sick. How will I ever survive?

The idea that things are about to chance so dramatically and never go back to normal REALLY freaks me out! I am sure I will make new friends and that I will find ways to enjoy my new life. As for right now, thinking about the future makes me really appreciate the present.

Chapter 1 part 1

Here is the first part of the first chapter. It has taken me longer then I hoped, but I am sure that I will get into the habit pretty quick. Hope you like it.

Too far! 1,293 miles too far! 1,293 miles is how far my parents have gone this time. To think that they had gone behind my back and planned a family trip even though they knew that I had plans for the New Years. Sometimes I wonder if they plan things just to ruin my plans. They knew that I had made plans this for New Years Eve and we have never gone away for the holidays. No, not in all my eighteen years of living with them had they chosen to take the family away for the Christmas season. But when I choose to make some plans to spend time with my friends, it was out with old traditions and in with the new. This year was supposed to be different, but different as in I was supposed end up with Jeremy.

The guy of my dreams. Jeremy is good looking, popular, funny, and perfect in every way. Which makes him the one that every girl wants to be with. Every girl including this one. This girl who may or may not even exist to him. Because I am a girl who has not “gotten around” that much. Not really any at all. I have only been with one guy. The guy that had once broken my heart by asking to be “just friends” and the guy that is now my best friend because I had agreed. I want a change. I want to be with Jeremy. No matter what Thomas says about Jeremy being one of those guys. You know, the ones who only get with girls for one reason. The ones who throws parties that anyone who is some one goes to. The parties that I normally don't get asked to go to. This time he had sent an invitation to me. Maybe it had been an accident that an invitation landed in my mailbox. I just had to go to find out. There was a glint of hope that he knew I existed. He had given me this chance to get with him and I wanted to take it. All that was keeping me away was a party. I just had to go to this party and I would be with him.

But no! My parents destroyed all my hopes of being with Jeremy and now I was stuck in the family SUV. And to make matters worse we are going 30 mph in a 70 zone, because they had chosen to drive straight through a blizzard. Nice one mom and dad! I mean if you are going to plan a trip, plan it! By the way, planning includes considering what the weather is going to be doing on the drive up, making sure that all of the people don't have other plans, and finally following through with the plan. Well you suck at planning! Cause we we are driving through a blizzard, I had plans, and we left a day later then you “planned” . Three strikes, and you are out! All you planned was which way we were going to take,which shouldn't really count because you are thinking that we should go a different way to try to get to better weather. You did follow through with one part of the plan though, making me miserable. That is only one out of five. That twenty percent will not get you very far if you are planning on taking any more of these quick Christmas get-aways. I am not sure that twenty percent is enough to get us there this time.

Sitting here blinking away tears as I stare at the frozen fields slowly pass by, I can only think of one thing, everything that I am going to miss. The party, my friends, the comfort of my own bed every night, a traditional Christmas, and Jeremy. This party was going to be my one and only chance I was ever going to get with Jeremy. When he came up to me, smiled, and said, “I will see you at the New Years Eve party on Thursday night.” I knew there was a bit of him that wanted me as much as I wanted him. I didn't tell him that I would not see him Thursday night, but I didn't say that I would either. All I could manage was a I smile and a shy OK. I would have never been able to keep myself from crying in front of him if I would have tried to explain that I would not be there for him to kiss the very minute that the new year started. Not unless he was planning on following my family and I up to Utah for the holidays. Which he isn't. Anyone who is willing to drive almost thirteen hundred miles to come and see me, would surely prove his love. He is not that type and it would never happen to me. Not now. Not ever.

This trip may have just started, but it is already become an unbearable pain. It is like my heart is being torn apart. I am being taken away from people I love by people who love me. Maybe what hurts the most, the fact that the people who love me, don't understand what I want. Nor do they seem to care about finding out. They seem to be on a one way track to get where they want to be, even if they have to drag me with them thirteen hundred miles to get there.

A Rocken Adventure

Today was one of those Saturdays where there was not much to do. I asked my three younger sisters if they wanted to go rock hunting with me at a near by stream. They thought that it was a good idea and finished cleaning their room in record time. Then we bundled up.



We wore our rubber boots so we could walk in the water to get rocks without getting our feet wet.

After a while, we found that Klarie, my youngest sister had a hole in her boot. Water had gotten in through the hole and she would not stop complaining about how cold her feet were. We found a big rock to sit on and took off her boots. Come to find out her right sock was completely soaked through.



I took off my socks and slipped them one to her feet. Then we put some plastic, from a snack that we had brought, around the sock to protect it from getting wet again. We fastened the plastic to her sock (well my sock) with a band aid that Katelyn, another sister, had brought. It looked kinda funny, but warmed her feet and kept them dry, so she was happy.




There were a few times that the water was too deep for my youngest sisters to cross so I would carry them across. One time I tried to help Kelcey jump across a deep part. That plan was not thought out very well because she ended up splashing icy cold water on everyone and she got soaked.



Aside from getting cold and wet, I guess the adventure was a success for my sisters because each came home with at least fifteen rocks each. As for me, I was just glad to be home. Home where it is dry, warm, and I have socks again.

No time like the present to prepare for tomorrow

The other day when it had snowed a few inches and I was planning on staying home snuggled up with a book, my mom decided that she wanted to get out of the house. A Wal-mart trip was planned because she needed a few things. The roads were a little slippery, but not too bad. I was surprised by the amount of cars in the parking lot. Usually there are hundreds, but on this particular night there were about fifty, give or take a few. I was even more surprised by the items that were placed strategically at the door. Rows of candles, shelves of flashlights, lanterns, little containers of propane, numberless batteries, and other materials one might need in case of an ice storm or other natural disaster.

Shouldn't people already have these things? Why do people wait till there is actually a disaster to buy things that will help them survive? Do they think that it will be like normal and they will be able to just hop into their cars and get what they need at the store? But what if they can't? What if a Earthquake destroys the roads like in Haiti ? It is true that a earthquake that big might never happen here, but there are other natural disasters that could. Such as a ice storm. Like the one that hit a few years back.

During that ice storm, it was close impossible for anyone to go anywhere. Ice on the roads, trees and power lines that had fallen, and the possibility of tree branches falling at any moment all made driving very dangerous. Power was out for most of the city. If people needed food, batteries, flashlights, blankets, generators, or even fire wood, they would have to risk the dangerous driving conditions and possibly have to drive all around town to find a store that was not sold out of the things that they needed.

I wonder why these people were not prepared. Or that they don't seem to learn their lesson. We never know when a disaster is going to hit or how serious it will be. Why wait to prepare for something that we don't know is going to happen? We should be more like the Doe-Doe birds in Ice Age the movie. "Prepare for the ice age!" as they would say. I don't think that we should be quite that obsessive about preparing, but we should take it seriously and not wait till the last minute.