And the Saga Begins...

Summer time brings a whole new lifestyle compared to life during the school year. But oddly enough, it still doesn't feel like summer. Maybe it's just because this week has been so busy for me. It started not long after my last post with a wonderful game of Settlers of Catan. There is one thing that you should know about me and this game: I HATE this game with a passion unlike any other. I mean really, strategy games aren't usually my thing, so I just let my family play without me. This time however, I decided to play for some odd reason, and I am so glad that I chose to do so. I have never seen a game that is so competitive and ruthless. No one was just playing "for fun". The trading of resource cards was very intense, and the placing of the "robber" was a huge source of contention. My dad won the game since he was the first player to ten points. We figured that since it had been such an exciting game and so many of us were close to winning, that we would extend the game to playing to twelve points instead of ten. Within this time, everything became more tense, and the cry of "that's not fair" became more and more frequent from my sisters. Once my mom and I realized that my dad had won for a second time, we decided to slip each other cards under the table. Emilee went crazy when she found out. She and Julia had teamed up, and started bawling their eyes out when my dad laid down his final cards to win the game. Then, for the next few days, Emilee went around the house saying "Mommy cheats" and "Victoria cheats". She even wrote that on a piece of paper and was walking around the house showing everyone. Honestly, the game itself wasn't even that fun. The good part was my sisters' reaction to the game that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Things calmed down a little bit the next morning because it was Jed's birthday. I can't believe that he is 15, or that he is driving since he started driver's ed on his birthday. That would be awful I'm not even going to lie, but at least now he can kind of drive. That is quite a scary thing, and so far I feel very grateful that I haven't been in the car while he is driving to experience the torture that I put everyone else through at first.

The day after that, I resumed the project of working on my bedroom. We went and bought the paint Tuesday night, and started painting on Wednesday. That was quite the adventure, especially when my sisters decided to sit in my window sill behind the curtains while we painted. The painting is finally done, so the next step in finishing my room is to remake the dresser into a vanity. I honestly have no idea what the time table for that will be, but I do know that at some time or other, it will get done. Along with painting my room, the decision was also made to reorganize the entire basement. This decision was mostly made because there was a couch in my room that had been there for a few months that belonged in the family room in the basement, and I wanted it out. I now have much more room to work with, and I am so glad that this is the case.

The rest of the week went as normal though, until Sunday. We made the most delicious peach cobbler in our new ramekins. Don't believe me? Look and see for yourself!

I at least think that they look delicious, and my family was so excited to have them! I did however just have to be the mean sister and have a camera out the whole time to catch the excitement.

But the best part for sure was eating them after all the anticipation. I got some interesting pictures of messy happy faces during all that. Sam was the most fun to get pictures of though. It's probably mostly because he is such a crazy eater and all around goofball. It might also be because he takes longer to eat than anyone else, so he was the last one done, which gave me more time to take silly pictures of him.

Sam was definitely our messiest eater of the night. He had ice cream all over his face, the table, and anything else that he touched!

He fit the biggest bite of food that I have ever seen him take in his mouth and I got it on camera! It was just so goofy that I had to keep it!

And of course, he still has the cutest smile that I have ever seen, even with cobbler in his mouth!

The cobbler was certainally a great way to kick off summer, well at least it made it finally feel like summer vacation for real!

Out with a Bang! (It's About Time Right?)

This last week was so stinking amazing, and it was so hard to wait until today to post because I have so much to say and I was worried that if I posted earlier, then I wouldn't have enough for today. I guess I shouldn't have worried because each day was filled with many adventures that I will never forget. Anyways, one of the best things? Well, this little surprise that I found on my garage door yesterday might explain it a little bit.

In Case you can't tell what the faint writing says on the paper, School's out! I was going out to get in my car and drive to work yesterday when I saw this piece of art. I thought it was hilarious, true, and quite characteristic of my sister. It was obvious to me at least that Julia was the mastermind behind this all, so I guess I can applaud her on letting the world know how she is feeling in some way other that screaming "ow" when she stubs her toe about every five minutes. But for real, we are all so excited that summer is here. It has been long awaited at our house and now is warmly welcomed by the Jensen children.

So, I guess this will be the last school update for a while. I know it's kind of crazy, but I will just have to find crazier things to do this summer that will make up for it. So remember how much I HATE chemistry with a burning passion unlike anything that you have ever seen before? Well, I got just a high enough grade on the final to keep my A-. A few days before the final, my teacher handed us a paper that had our grade as it was then, the best case scenario from the final, and the worst case scenario from the final. I was at a 92.3 or something along the lines of a 92, and had the best case scenario of a 93-point-something and a worst case scenario of 78.8%. I was nervous going into that final to say the least. All I wanted was to keep the A-, which I barely was able to do. And what was my final grade in the class? 90.1%. I barely slid by on that one. Thank heaven for prayers and note cards! Now I'm just abnormally excited to burn every single paper from that class!

All my other classes? Normal for the most part. The story of Don Quixote was as interesting as ever in Spanish, the yearbook final presentation went basically as planned, and my US history final was a piece of cake. In seminary we were told last Tuesday that if we came to class on Friday that, "the doors might be locked, the lights may be off, and if you bang on the door, I might not answer" by our seminary teacher. So basically my last day of school consisted of going to advisory for 15 minutes, then going home for the summer because the only final I would have had on Friday was seminary. So I got home from school before Emilee and Sam even left for school! That was weird.

So now for the only class that I haven't mentioned yet: Jewelry. I basically finished my crazy "HLJ" ring on Thursday after school. I took a while, but it is temporarily done. Why only temporarily? I will show you, or at least try to.

Look where the lovely arrow is pointing. It is really hard to see in this picture, but there is no prong there. While we were setting the stone, that prong broke, so there is a little bit of epoxy stabilizing it until I can replace the prong cup. But that's not all that exciting, I will just have to break out the stone, cut off the prongs, and sand out the prong cup from inside the shank (that is the band of the ring by the way, not a weapon) before I can replace the prong cup. I am so excited to have it done though! Here are some more pictures and pics of my other ring:


Here is a decent shot of what the wire work looks like

Sorry, I'm not that good of a hand model. Just deal with it!

Kind of look like an engagement ring right? At least my sisters think so.

Here is the other ring. This one is the copper one with the custom bezel and lots of symbolism.

Here is a pretty good view of the Greek eternal life symbol that is cut out of the band on each side of the stone.

Top view-just so you can see how huge the stone is on my hand.

This is the "good side" of the ring as far as the bezel goes.

Front view-the stone is pretty abnormally shaped if you ask me. It was "so much fun" to sand this stone until it was flat. Not!

I know that it looks like this picture didn't focus. I promise you that it did. It just didn't focus where you originally expect it to. It is focused on the stamping inside the band that says "we will ever stand". I promised you I wasn't crazy!

So basically, life is good in the jewelry world. Yesterday I learned how to do laser welding. It was so scary at first, but it ended up being so much fun! I mean come on, how many teenagers can say that they have done that? I took me a few times of shooting the laser to be comfortable with it, but it is so cool! So basically, You hold the metal under a microscope, and set it on your fingers to steady it, center it under the laser, and shoot. So you are basically shooting a laser at your hand and hoping that you don't move, otherwise you will shoot your hand. I think that I only shot my hand once, so I guess I did pretty well for my first time.

I also was able to go to the grad party of my wonderful friend Ashleigh. She is so stinking amazing, and I'm very glad that she is staying here to go to school for two years before leaving home and going to school out of state. This ensures another wonderful year with her that I will have to take full advantage of before I go off to school.

All in all, life is pretty good right now, and I am definitely looking forward to an amazing summer before my senior year of high school.

One more week...

Now I'm starting to wonder if the end of the school year is a good thing. It feels like every single one of my friends graduated yesterday. Okay, so maybe that's a lie, but so many of my friends did graduate, and now all of my classes at school, especially seminary and yearbook, feel so weird. The part that scares me the most though, is that I will be in their situation in a year! Okay, I', done with that. It's just a scary truth that we will all have to face someday.

Okay, so my life in the jewelry world is going great! I had another good day at work yesterday, and I am so close to being done with my "HLJ" ring! That's my crazy ring with the faceted stone and crazy wirework. But anyways, all I have to do is set the stone! I notched the prongs on Friday, so it is all set and ready to go. I am definitely cutting is close as far as time restraints go, but I think that it is totally possible for me to do.

So back to the subject of graduation and the like. Seminary graduation is tonight, and I am so excited to be in the choir for the third year in a row. The songs are as beautiful as ever, and I hope that I can really help the choir do them justice tonight. We are going to sing: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (the same arrangement we have sang for seminary choir for about forever), How Great Thou Art, and These are the Days. It should be pretty amazing, and well worth every one's time.

Oh, last night was another stake dance. It was the best dance in a long time for sure. It was so stinking fun to see friends like Kaden, Parker, and Dallas that I don't get to see as often as I would like, especially Kaden since he moved to Coeur d'Alene. The dance was supposed to be the outdoor jeans dance at Mirabeau Park, but then it was moved to the Demars' house, well actually their barn, to be a barn dance. However the dance moved locations AGAIN a few days before the dance to the stake center, but thankfully it remained a jeans dance! I was crazy though, and wore heels with my jeans: white skinny jeans with white stilettos. Yup, it was totally worth having my feet hurt a little by the end of the night. But like I said, it was so much stinking fun, and totally worth my time at the end of my busy day that included a temple trip and work as well.

On top of it all though, this week I had to "run a house" while my parents were at the Great Wolf Lodge for some business thing of my dad's. But that whole adventure wasn't really all that exciting. It was just the way that it was for most of this past week. I didn't burn down the house or anything, and there were no crazy parties while they were gone. They had a good time, no one died, and the house is still intact, so I think all in all that it was a success.

The End is Near! (of School that Is)

So I kind of feel that my life is ridiculously busy since the school year is coming to a close. With finals in two weeks, I am kind of freaking out, since this means that I have to look back on an entire semester of chemistry and basically re-learn all of the information that I learned. I have a review packet that we have been "working on in class", but needless to say, it might not be quite finished yet.

This also means that I have to finish my two rings in jewelry. That will be an absolutely ridiculous endeavor, but if I can finish these two rings then I will have at least some kind of accomplished feeling because they both had some crazy thing involved with making them. I have all of the soldering procedures done on the copper ring with the custom bezel, which is super exciting because I could finish that ring in one day with no problem at all. The other extremely complicated ring might take me a little longer since I have to do a lot more work with the prongs before it can be completed. That ring however, has solder on the ring right now with the first stage of sweat soldering done. This means that the solder is melted to the band, but the other piece of metal hasn't been put on yet. The other metal (the wire work) is actually sitting in the band where it will go right now, and I will remelt the solder to complete the sweat soldering process tomorrow in class. After this is done, all of the soldering processes will be done for that ring. Once this is done, I will have to carefully bend the prongs to the correct distances from each other and notch them so that the stone will fit. I also will have to do some basic filing and sanding to clean up the ring a little bit, but no more huge things need to be done besides the prongs. Once the two rings are all cleaned up, I will hand buff them with the flexible shaft and set the stones. Then I will have two rings that I can say I put a whole lot of effort into making two beautiful pieces of artwork. Pictures will be posted of the final products, don't worry too much about that!

So, I know that after my rant above, you are all probably really tired of hearing about jewelry. But guess what, I'm not done with that subject yet. I just have a different viewpoint this time: my new job. Yes, I got the job working at Tracy Jewelers which I started yesterday. I worked from nine thirty in the morning until about five ten in the evening. It was loads of fun, and everyone there is great. I am basically the "jack of all trades" in there, so I do any odd job that they need me for. I will get to do a little bit of jewelry work back in the lab, answer phones and greet people as they come into the store, clean jewelry, file "jobs", and any other random jobs that they have for me to do. I really do enjoy it so far though, and it should be a great situation to be in for a while.

Along with the new job, I now have six piano students and might have up to five more potential students! I know for sure that I should have one more girl starting because she won the "month of piano lessons" from the silent auction that was part of the fundraiser for camp this year. Her little sister asked their mom if the lessons were for her, and she said no, but that she might be able to work something out. So there are two potential students, plus a friend of mine just had her teacher dropped her. She told me that she would like to have me teach her, but I doubt that it will ever happen. And on top of it all, a few of my mom's co-workers were interested in having me teach their kids lessons. I guess I will have to wait and find out though, but it looks like I might have one busy summer!