tennessee storms

so as most of you know most of the south got hit pretty hard by the storm that ripped through this past week. our cars and house suffered damage. my dad had the AhA! moment about two storm systems too late, so we now have two golfball like cars, with the '73 f-250 pretty much stratchless (one piece of trim is hanging by a screw, but thats it). the suburban has a broken passenger side mirror cracked and a dented hood. the focus has a broken passenger side mirror busted too with a left side tail light out as well. the house needs some patch work on the southwest side and the front of the house is going to need new screens in the windows. all of our exalia bushes look like they were sawed at (all the beautiful flowers are pureed across the front lawn :'(  very sad day) thankfully we dont need any windshields replaced or such. the biggest hail we got during the storm was about the size of an Easter egg. the trampoline was totally full of the hailstones and the street looked super eerie between hail storms. the stones were melting on the street making steam that rose really creepily. hahaha but we all survived. thankfully, even though my brother almost had a panic attack he was soo scared. but we all hid in the closet (parents made me.. not my personal choice) and got each other to calm down after a few verses of "How Firm a Foundation" and "I Am a Child of God". (THANK YOU!!!!)

owie bruises

so i was purusing the internet this morning and put my leg up against the desk to brace myself, because who know why. and out of the corner of my eye i see this NARLY bruise on my knee, and then a less nasty one on the top of my foot. the one on my knee was red and purple, and pretty nasty lookin'. i have no memory of how it got there, but it definitely explains why it hurt to put my knees together last night before going to sleep (i have a REALLY weird way of going to sleep at night, but thats another post for another day). and then the one on my foot i think i know where i got that i dropped my saber yesterday at guard so maybe thats where the hilt hit my foot. possibly...?

a new love and a new best friend

 

 

 

this is my new best friend. me and him will get to know each other really well up to may 10th which is slowly creeping up on me. I am going to have to go and set some goals to be prepared for my AP test really soon. I am soo not ready for this but I am getting there. soon

 

 

and this is my new love… my blackberry torch. I am soo excited about it. this phone is soo great. I had to get a data plan bc this is a smart phone, but I can deal with a $15 fee every month to use 200 MB of data a month. that includes pics and internet and games. as long as I am hooked up to the wifi I don’t use my data either. I am soo excited about it though. we burned my battery and about 4.5 MB yesterday playing hangman on it during accounting. sooo worth it though

home improvements

let me just say that living in a construction zone stinks. absolutely and quite literally some times.

for the last three years my dad has been working on the west side of our house (ie the kitchen) expanding the kitchen. the project started back in the spring of 2008 when my dad broke down the wall between the kitchen and the family room. that was then. now we have twice the kitchen space, a HUGE island, a longer L-shaped counter, hardwood floor throughout the downstairs, a fruit room, a covered patio, and a longer garage.

YEA!!

but wait until you hear what else we still have to do:
trim
flooring in the mudroom
all the sanding and mudding of the drywall in the mudroom
countertops

all on the to-do/honey-do list. it is quite long when you break it down. my dad is hoping to have all the trim done by the summer. maybe. depends on the budget i think.

but the kitchen looks great and my mom currenty has more drawer space than she knows what to do with. quite literally. i can not tell you how many times i have caught myself going to the pantry for a plate, cup, or bowl in the last week or so. it is going to get some getting used to for sure.

stake talent show

today we had an awesome talent show at my church. like so much fun. my sister sang while her best friend accompianed the song "the call" by regina spikter/ar. its a really good song. its the credit song for "the chronicles of narnia: prince caspian" if you were wondering. then a lot of friends sang or played instruments, and there were others who did both! it was really cool to see all the talent in my stake.

then we had a mom of one of the youth that is going on the youth conference trek teach us the virgina reel. SOOO much fun we all got into it and after a few times through you get the hang of it. and its really nice because you have the same partner through the whole dance, which makes it that much easier to catch onto. watch the steps on youtube if you dont know what im talking about.

then we had brother alred give us a beautiful spiritual thought about bringing the heavy burden home. they showed us the wonderful story of the willie-martin handcart companies and the call for help that President Young announced during a cold October General Conference many years ago. the video clip ends with the account of three 18 year old boys who single-handedly helped most of the company across a river in Colorado during the frigid November month. those three boys later passed on because of the effects of that relief effort but President Hinkley stated that that act alone assured them an eternal life in the celestial kingdom. what a beautiful honor. that story makes me cry everytime because it shows the great sacrifices that the early Saints made to follow the commandments of modern day prophets. what an amazing example to those of us living now who got through some rather different but similar trials. i believe that we were placed on this earth to go through our own trials and learn from them as well as others.

an amazing experience will forever be with me. a grade school friend texted me right before the final session of General Conference at the beginning of this month and told me that she had been baptized and her mom had become active again in the church. it made me soo happy to know that the missionaries had made such an impact on my life through her and it was soo great to hear from her again. i got to see her today and it was soo awesome. she is such a nice girl and i have so many fonds memories of her. ;)

babies

 

    3        babies my neighbor is having (2 girls and a boy)

    1        baby  a sister in my ward had (1 little girl)

    1        baby boy another sister in my ward had last week

    1        baby my teacher at school is having (they don’t know yet!! ssssshhhh)

    1        baby that a girl in the sophmore class is having. a little boy. and she’s

              keeping the baby, her boyfriends supportive as is her parents.

+ 1        baby my aunt is having (I don’t know, but they might)

            

      8      for a grand total

 

that’s right I know of eight new babies. well 7 if you count the 4 month old girl that my church leader has. she is sooo adorable!!

I love children!!!! :)

yet another childhood flashback

so my brother and sister found me and Rachel’s old Autumn Harvest dolls. (they are like American Girl dolls, but not). and they really wanted to dress the dolls up in the outfits that fit them. so I spent about a half hour racking my brain to remember where I put the dolls and which outfits fit which doll (because Julie got an American Girl doll from a friend and the outfits are just slightly larger, so they don’t fit quite right) and what the outfits even were. but they loved it, and surprisingly, Spencer and Christian were even into it. they were trying to decide which outfit went with a little camping set that we have. it was pretty funny.

but that just reminded me of all the endless hours me and Rachel spent doing the exact same thing: fighting over whose doll got to wear which outfit, who got to brush their hair first and which doll got to do the honors of being the one to sleep on the hammock overnight. those were the simple days hahaha before we all worried about cell phones and whether a certain someone liked us back or iPods and such.

I WANT THE GOOD TIMES BACK

pi day 3.14

pi day at my school is a pretty big deal.

the math club is pretty stoked and sets up these awesome contests to rotate through and participate in.

this year i was in the math club, so i got to be a part of most of the planning for this AMAZING event.
i worked the charades first block, cookie decorating & bingo second, third block i did musical chairs and charades again, and then fourth block i did the best thing ever: moon pie eating contests.

there were a couple of close calls with the up-chuck, but thank goodness most of them kept it down pretty well hahaha by the time we got to fourth block, we still had nine boxes of moon pies left, so me, carlos, rami, and peter decided we were going to up the competition: boys ate two and girls ate one, and each had to drink an entire glass of water with it. the guys were up to the challenge and a couple of them loved it. we had a couple of problems getting the girls to participate in the competition, but they finally got into and we had some girls dominate it. by the time we were done with the rounds, we only had about three and a half boxes of moon pies left. yipee!! haha which is better than the 8 boxes of sugar cookies we had left. but there were no guarentees those were going to last long if we were to set those out.

clean up of that room was kind of nasty because of all the water people spit back out from laughing and then those couple who kind of choked and it slipped from between their lips. kind of nasty, but i escaped that part of the clean up. (thanks rami!)

another sewing project

so I started and finished another sewing project in a collective 45 minutes. the bag is soo amazingly simple.

but adorable at the same time…

its just big enough to get my scriptures into without the case, and then have a little bit of room for my hand lol

<-- the outside

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is the inside and outside  -->    

if you want the pattern to this bag, or the other one that I make a ton, just let me know. I can give you the pattern number and make. I don’t know if it would work to put up on my blog, but let me know if you think that would work. :)

haircut

so I got a haircut. for the first time in about six months. it feels amazing!!

so this is a before:

sadly this is the best picture of me.

bags and all…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and then this is the amazing after shot: 

I love my hair cut!! I wish it was a little bit shorter, but I like this, because its still long, but its much shorter than it was. a full two or three inches is what she took off!

 

YIPEE!!!!!