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.

Long Time No See...

So I don't know if I will really survive the rest of my summer. I have so much going on! Not that everything that I have been and will be doing is bad, it has just kept me very busy. Needless to say, I am actually fairly excited for school to start. I thought that I was having "withdrawal problems" at the beginning of the summer because I haven't been able to see many of my friends, but it is so much worse now. I mean come on, you know it's bad if you have crazy dreams involving many of your friends on a regular basis. It seems like every morning, I wake up having had the most bizarre experience of my life. Like, a few nights ago, I was a spy or something and had to jump off of a landing above some stairs in a cathedral. There was other stuff going on too, but that was the last thing that happened before I woke up. Okay, so maybe that isn't the craziest dream that I have ever had, but my summer has been filled with quirky things like that, so I think that it's about time for me to get back to school and try to have a normal schedule and not feel deprived of many of my friends. I could honestly make an entire blog post of all the people that I am excited to see, but I won't waste your time.

Okay, so I really have been up to some great things lately. Take my adventure to Boise two weeks ago for an excellent example. I had a BLAST with an amazing group for BYS. Yellow 40 (our group) was one of the best groups that I have ever had the chance to be in, and I feel was a complete blessing to me. The experience was wonderful, and I know that I will never forget it. It strengthened my testimony of Jesus Christ and his restored church. I also made many friendships that will last for quite some time. My roommate was awesome! Really, I had a blast getting to know Kaycee. While our group was a little crazy, I couldn't have asked for anything better! It was the best, and I guess crazy isn't bad, right?

Carson, Brent, Jake, Colton, Tyler, Kendall, Nick, Jace
Chalea, Rachel, Me, Stephanie, Angel, Kaycee, Sydney, Katie, Chelsea

Look at us! Great group and awesome counselors!

So that was how I spent that week! Last week? Mega girls camp prep! I was so busy getting ready for that! I did all of my shopping, started my ward t-shirt, spent all of Wednesday making the 1st level banner (which looks really cool!), going to the precamp meeting on Thursday, and have been working on devotionals off and on all week. Girls camp is next week and I am super excited to go and have a blast as always! Before that though, I get to go to yearbook camp this week! I am kind of freaking out for this, but I know that it will be a great experience and I will learn so much!

Oh, before I forget, Aborcrest last Friday night was great! The view from up there is breathtaking, and the weather decided to play along. I met some great people there, and made a great new friend. The memories of that night will last with me for a while, that's for sure! I still can't totally feel my right index finger on one side from tying so many balloons though! It was a great night despite my fingers feeling like they had fallen off. I mean, it can't be that bad if you are thought to be 22 years old! It was absolutely hilarious, and another great story that I can tell about how old I look. I don't think that I look that old, but I guess that other people do! Maybe it will work out to be an advantage some day. So far, it has just given me so many things to laugh about.

Summer is going by far too fast, but it has been one that I will never forget!

Good times!

Look what I just found! This video was so fun to shoot, and is hilarious to watch. This was filmed just over a year ago for the stake relief society birthday dinner, so needless to say, it is funnier if you are Mormon. Anyways, my brother Jed and I are in the seminary section of the video. Please enjoy, I know I did!

We have a visitor!

So I feel like a horrible person since I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. I know, it's not really that big of a deal, but it's annoying to me! Anyways, life has been pretty hectic, but I guess that's life when you have four jobs. Aside from the normal insanity, my wonderful cousin Anna came to visit. We are so excited, and are really enjoying having her here with us. She is quite the personality! I sure know that I will miss her when she goes bask to Carlsbad, CA.

Okay, let's see what else there could possibly be to talk about in my life. Work is good. I just set my first pair of diamond earrings yesterday. That was quite the adventure! I didn't do a good job notching the prongs on the first mounting, so I will have to do that one over, but the second earring turned out great and gave me lots of hope! Maybe someday I will actually be good on a professional level at all this. Hopefully that ends up being sooner rather than later because I already do this on a professional level-ish. It is my job, but I look at it as more of an apprenticeship because I feel like I still have so much to learn. I do have to say though, that it is pretty cool to see something sold that I worked on.

Speaking of selling things, my mom suggested that I start and etsy store. It would be so fun, but I don't know how good I really am. She suggested that I sell things like this:

I made this and a few other similar ones for some artwork for my room. I figured that it's cheap to do it myself, rather than look for some things to put on my walls that I'm not really happy with, but paid a lot of money for. This way, it's also much more personal and something that I can relate to instead of something that just looks "cool".

Along with that project, I naturally have several others that I am working on simultaneously. They include other things for my room, things like more friendship bracelet style anklets, and another photo project. This one was a random craving more or less that I had one day. I just wanted to dress my sister up all fancy and take some pictures. That then expanded to a full project. So here is a little preview of the "America Project".

I think that I'll have a lot of fun doing this! I just decided to do some kind of representation of many/most/as my as I want to do of the decades in this country's history. I started at the beginning, and will hopefully make it to the current day. These are two "sneak peaks" of the first two sets that I did. I am sure grateful though that I have such a beautiful and willing model to help me out with all this! It looks like I need to do some photo shopping though, because you can see the vent for our AC in the second picture. Oops! Minor details right?

Last thing on the line-up for today. I get to go to Boise this week for BYS! I am so excited for this wonderful experience that I will get to have. It was wonderful last year, and I am consequently looking forward to a great week. But that's only the beginning of all the camps that I have lined up for this summer. There was the possibility that I could go to EFY the following week, but I decided against it, mostly because I have to work that Friday. Normally I could just take the day off, but this isn't just any old normal work day. Tracy Jewelers (the place I work for) is hosting "Hot Summer Nights" at Arbor Crest winery.

See? So I get to go work at this. It's not just any normal work day that I can just get off. But after that week, I will have a yearbook camp at Gonzaga. This is going to be very intense. I am ready to have my mind sucked out of my head, thrown in the blender, and hurled right back into my skull. That is just how mind boggling this should be. Sorry about the interesting mental picture that I just painted, but that is how I feel about it. Don't get me wrong, I am excited and it will be a good thing to go to camp. It will just really blow my mind! I'm not done though! The week after that, I will be attending girls camp, where I might not have any hearing left by the end of that week. I am really looking forward to this, but I will certainly be glad once it is all over. I will be so camped out that I will just want to go and sleep for a week straight! I know that won't happen, but I can dream right?