Less Than One Week...

Yup, that's right. In less than one week, I will be enjoying the beautiful California sunshine! On Thursday, My family will be headed down to California to finish off our summer. What better way to go out witha  bang than Disney Land and Carlsbad! I know I'm looking forward to it. Lots of cousin time, beach time, and time to recoup and get ready for my last year of high school. I can't believe that I only have one year left! After that, I'll get "kicked out" and have to do the whole college thing. Seeing many of my friends leave to do that in the past few years has kind of freaked my out, especially because I know that it will be me that's leaving here in a year. But I still have one more year to live it up, which is really scary if you think about it.

Next thing. I made a Pintrest account yesterday. I'm not quite sure yet if this is good or not. For example, it has taken me at least five times as long as it should have to write this post because I have been peeking back at my feed far too much. However, it has proved to be quite entertaining, and I have found some cool ideas that I want to either try out, or fantasize about. All in all, it is just a great way to waste time!

Not much really happened this week though. Guess what? Worst part of my week was that Facebook decided to get sassy with me, and it switched me over to timeline! The curse hit me, and the timeline will automatically post this Wednesday the 22. I am not too excited about this, but what can I do!

The Best part of my week? Well, that isn't until a week from today, but it's close enough. My birthday is in a week from today. I am going to be 17. It's not really that exciting of a birthday, but I figured out a funny way of thinking about it. It just means that I am starting the 18th year of my life. Now THAT is a funny thought! My birthday should be lots of fun though since I get to spend it with some of my favorite family members while in California.

As far as the rest of my life goes, work is same as usual. I made five more necklaces on Saturday, which puts my necklace count up to 22 I think. I left work with sore fingers, as I have the past few weeks. This is getting to be a regular occurance though, so I guess I will just have to get used to it and move on. The nerves in my right index finger do seem to be healing though. After almost one month, you would think that my finger would be totally back to normal right? I mean come on, I was just tying balloons! Anyways, it is getting better. What else could I expect?

Two Eventful Weeks

The last two weeks have been rather eventful to say the least! I had the mind-blowing experience of going to yearbook camp two weeks ago. Talk about a lot of computer time and a lot of skipping class! I don't think that I have ever skipped that many classes, and I hope to never skip that many ever again. But don't worry, I was doing something productive. The other "yerds" and I from my school were either taking pictures in a slightly dangerous way, or working on planning and creating different things for this upcoming yearbook. We got a lot done and should have a "legit" and exciting book. There are going to be some features this year that are just mind boggling, but I can't share those top secret details with everyone.

Last week I was at a completely different kind of camp: girls camp. There isn't much that can compare with this. Stinky, smelly, giggly girls who haven't showered all week, lots of braids, and many tears. Why tears? Well, testimony meeting is very emotionally/spiritually moving. On top of that however, all of the girls that went on the canoe trip were quarantined. Three girls on the trip got sick, and the leaders didn't want to expose the rest of the camp and repeat a disaster that occurred five years ago. That year, almost every single person got sick and was puking. They had to end camp early that year because everyone was so miserable and most of the campers had to go home early because they were sick. Luckily though, that didn't happen this year! The quarantine was a heartbreaking experience, but we all understood the reasoning behind it. With a camp full of hugging, it was extremely difficult to try and not hug all of the wonderful people that were quarantined. Yes, there were rule breakers, but in the end it was all successful. I had three lovely girls to be a YCL for: Cate, Ahzhanae, and Emmah. We got to know each other so well by the end of that week, and because of that, we all had a few shoulders to cry on during and after the testimony meeting. I miss those girls already, and look forward to seeing them in the future.

Since then, I have had the wonderful privilege of meeting some new family members. My cousins Caleb and Emma came to our house yesterday along with their dad and new "bonus mom" and "bonus brothers". I consider all of their bonus family members to be my cousins and aunt already. They are amazing people, and I couldn't have asked for anything better for such a great family of mine! When they came, we got to have another treat: pizza with the pizza oven. My dad has been building a beautiful brick pizza oven in our back yard. It is finally done, and the pizza that we cooked in it tasted INCREDIBLE! We are going to have to be the party house from now on for sure!

One more thing... while at yearbook camp, I took a couple of photo classes. I learned quite a bit about all of the different settings on a camera and how to set them for a particular purpose. I was messing around a little bit with that yesterday and this morning. It is quite fun once you barely know what you are doing! Just a little bit of knowledge and a lot of messing around can go a long ways. Here's what I mean:

I learned how to do funny things with the shutter speed! This picture was taken at a fairly low shutter speed to get a pretty cool exposure. It totally looks like my brother Sam is a ghost, but he is really just walking around in the kitchen. I also had some fun just snapping other random pictures.

I took this picture while sitting inside on the couch around six this morning. I was already awake, and the sun just looked beautiful.

I was just sitting at our computer, and we have pictures of various temples rotating through as our background. Sorry the Picture is pretty blurry, but it's the best one that I can see myself with the temple. Not that I want to just see myself, but the temple is a really important goal of mine, so I want to see myself there someday, so this kind of helps to envision that.