So this is the life.

Funny how growing up kinda makes you wish you can go back to high school just a while longer... (never thought I'd say that. Ever.) Just a few months and a little exposure to some adult responsibility, and I'm desperately searching for the rewind button. Okay it's not that bad... but the teenager in me requires me to be melodramatic. ;)

College! Going well, but not all that fun. Community college pretty much just feels like high school for grown ups. I'm doing well in all of my classes... all As so far. Just lacking a bit in the social department. Most of my friends are off livin' the university life. But it is what it is, and it's free. So I figure I can tough it out till next year when I head up to BYU-I! Just one more year.

To get through the school year, my parents finally helped me get my first car! A '98 Ford Taurus. It was a cute little grandma car. I drove it for approximately 5 weeks before I managed to get in an accident and break the poor thing. It wasn't my fault, but it still made me sad to see my first car leave so soon. As of this week I am now the owner of a 2003 PT Cruiser. At least this car has a CD player... :) Haha. Here's to hoping this one will be with me a long, long time.

I guess that's all that's up with me... Keeping busy with school and work. How boring. Putting all of my money towards gas and my car. Also sad and boring. This growing up thing ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Dangity dang.

Well look at that. Another year gone by, and my boredom has yet again led me to my blog. I'm awful at updating these sorts of things! Maybe I'll actually catch on this time? We'll see. :)

Lots has happened this year! I mean, I'm graduated from high school now and moving on to a whole new chapter in my life. I guess I should highlight some important events and whatnot that have happened? I've been all sorts of busy, as always, keeping up with my usual inability to tell people no and the stress that follows such handicap. There was my last season of marching band; participating in a stake performance of Handel's Messiah; several gigs with my Concert Choir homies; babysitting for my beloved choir director Mrs. Corley; accompanying our newly established jazz band; keeping involved with National Honors Society; attending many church shindigs; picking up a new and very dear best friend, Caleb Tyler Wood; going to almost every high school baseball game of the season (despite how little I may have previously known or cared about baseball...) in attempt to support my new friend; playing lots of piano; going on all sorts of adventures with some of my good friends (usually entailing delivery of treats or winning of talent shows, etc.); attending my senior prom, complete with limo and hot date; and just being a teenager... all while trying to balance 3 AP classes and a full school schedule. Despite the incredible lack of sleep, the stress, the emotional breakdowns, and everything in between, I don't think I would change much about this year. Don't get me wrong though, I am so glad it's all over.

Most recently, many events have been reminding me that I'm growing up! I've started my own little business as a piano teacher, I've just been hired as a hostess at the Outback (my first real job!), I'm applying to college, and now I'm graduated from high school. I don't know if you can really absorb how weird all of these changes are for me.

Some of my dear friends are already leaving, and I feel kind of lame staying back and attending community college. I don't want to be one of those weird kids that can't let go of high school and move on with life. But we'll see what goes down! Goodbye Valley Vista High School.... hello life.

Sweet Summer Singers.

This summer I got a call from Tiffany Nebecker who used to be a member of my ward. She asked if I'd like to help out with a summer performance camp she was teaching. I couldn't pass up that opportunity! :o) We got together with Sam Buntin for a few meetings to prep before the two week camp. The camp was two hours every morning for two weeks. We had two age groups of kids, and I got to teach the 3 to 6 year olds. They were so dang cute! Both of the groups learned songs and choreography to songs from the '90s musical The Newsies. Each day would consist of theater games, song rehearsal, dance time for my kids, a craft, snack, commercial rehearsal, and showing each other what we learned for the day. It was really fun to see so many of the kids open up out of their bubbles and get so creative. At the end of the two weeks, the kids got to watch the commercials they made and got ready for the performance for their parents. Each age group performed King of New York, Santa Fe, and Seize the Day, complete with their undone dress shirts and Newsies style hats. They all did awesome! It was a way fun experience and I can't wait to help out again in the fall! :)

Bring on the heat!

What better way to kick off the summer than with friends? The first days of summer had me out of the house.

Right after school got out, I spent the day (more or less) with Mini Rach, Anthony, and Drew. We went to Erik's for a little while. Then we left him for Rachel's house, where we decided to go to Sam's party. We then proceeded to ditch said party and went back to Rachel's where we took naps, swam, ate some amazing alfredo, followed by red velvet ice cream cake (YUM! :P). It was a really fun, relaxing day... even though we didn't do all that much. Those three are definitely some of my favorite people to hang out with!

I don't entirely remember day by day what I did... though I know I was busy every day for some time. I believe it was the first Saturday of the summer that I went to Caryll Anne's graduation party. I love her to death! She was my alto buddy in choir. :o) She had all of her family at her party, along with myself, Adam, Logan, and Skylar. We chilled at her house for a while and ate food and played with her baby ducks! They were frickin' adorable. We decided to go swim at her community pool, which we were very disappointed to find didn't have a hot tub. Adam lectured us on self confidence, and we just messed around. It was fun. :) We walked back to her house to play with the ducks some more, texted one another while in the same room, then we sat on her porch to chit chat. We decided we wanted ice cream at that point, so we walked down to Safeway and all bought our favorite pints and a thing of plastic spoons. We sat outside the store and ate our ice cream. With Jack-in-the-Box across the parking lot, we couldn't resist picking up some fries for the walk home. We went to walk in when we found the dining room locked up. There were people sitting in there, so we were confused. Determined to get our fries, we all got into our "invisible car" and drove on through the drive thru. We were amazed at the fact that they actually took our order! It was the greatest thing ever. We drove around to pick up our order, while blasting the "radio" and pumping the hydraulics. Definitely the coolest bunch of kids you ever did see. All in all, it was a really fun night. I'm going to miss those Seniors so dang much! Choir most definitely won't be the same without them.

Let's see... I believe it was the following Tuesday that I had Drew, Erik, and Priscilla over. Originally, Priscilla was going to help me work out... but me and my lazy self decided that laughing at the scary dreads lady on What Not to Wear was much more entertaining. So we did that while we waited for the boys to show up. When they came, we all swam for several hours. We played Marco Polo for who knows how long. It was funny, because two or three people would always get stuck being it. With all of my brothers and their friends, we had a huge group playing which made it all the more fun. We came in and watched movies and made brownies. I then had to shoo them away and go get ready for a date with Cameron. I got all dolled up, and he picked me up to go see Robin Hood. It was a good movie despite how long it was. ;) Erik made sure to text and call me the entire date, just for fun, ya know? (that kid's lucky I didn't kill him after that... ;)) We ran in to a bunch of kids from Valley at the Golden Spoon right after, then we set off to try to find something else to do before he dropped me off. Despite our efforts, we were short on ideas. I ended up getting dropped off, but we found my brothers in the front yard playing with sparklers. That occupied us for a few minutes before he left. Much to my surprise, I got a goodnight kiss. And that was that. It was a pretty great day. :o)

Somewhere in the beginnings of my summer Miss Hilary and I went on a super fun shopping trip down at Lake Pleasant! We were on a low budget mission, and we proved successful. With so many stores to search through, I'm pretty sure we found the cutest, cheapest stuff in all of them. :) We made it through Kohls, Tilly's, Ross, Marshall's, Target, and a few other stores. We got free lunch at Subway (keepin' it frugal, yo ;)). It was just a fun day. Some of our plunders include leather leggings, cheetah print tights, super cute shorts, adorable tops, and a $3 belt. Hilary is an excellent bargain buddy! I love her.

Ooh. And one of my favorite happenings of the summer: On some given Friday, Logan and I went to help out with a play over at Valley. We grew bored and decided that West Gate would be much more fun. We tried to invite a ton of people last minute, but we only ended up with Conrad and his girlfriend Ashley (who I barely knew at the time). We picked them up and drove out to Glendale. We started our adventure with a ridiculous trek to the bathrooms. The boys were victim to a lot of yelling (it was their own fault, of course). But after that endeavor was over with, we wandered around with Ashley's handy dandy camera. What else does a group of teenagers need to have fun?! We went around from shop to shop, taking millions of pictures, and laughing nearly to death. Some slushies were consumed, Ashley (while wearing her Bob Marley-esque hat) was confronted for weed, and we continued to laugh nearly to death. It was a super fun night, and I was able to meet one of my new best friends. What could be better? :D West Gate is now most definitely one of our favorite hang outs.

Well... yeah. There are a few happenings of the beginning of my summer. More to come, of course!

And it's getting ready to come to an end... :(

Well, after browsing through a few of my friends' blogs, I feel like I should be posting much, much more than I currently do (which is obviously not very much). I have so much that I can share! :o) I think I'm going to attempt to wrap up my summer in a couple posts, then make blogging a regular habit. To the few of you that read this... I give you full permission to nag at me to update this as necessary! 

To start with, this summer has been pretty great. It's gone by much too quickly though!! There was a little stress, a bit of drama, a few tough losses, but so much fun and so many memories. I'm sad to see it begin to come to a close. No, it's not quite over, but band camp is around the corner, which means my social life is soon to be sent into hibernation for a few months. Not only that, but the homework is already beginning to pile up and school hasn't even started yet! But it's alright... one more year. I can make it. :) 

And now to tell you of all my fun!

It's been a while. :)

So, it's the first day of summer 2010 and my boredom has led me to my blog. Does anyone read this? No. But I feel like posting something anyways.

I've officially survived my Junior year, but just barely. This year has been crazy with lots of work, band, choir, church, and friends to keep up with.

All I really want to say at the moment is no matter how hard I try, I've found that I'm still a stupid teenager. I still get emotional over the littlest things. Boys are still dumb. I still procrastinate. I still suck at prioritizing. I still mess up. I'm still immature. I still can't be perfect. But I'd like to think I try.

There are people I miss, people I love, and people that make me who I am. Here's hoping for a great summer... <3

American Idol Finale '09! :D

This year I was given an AMAZING opportunity to go see the American Idol Finale with my friends Ciarra and Bria. We had a total blast! We left Monday afternoon. 7 hour car rides seem to be a lot more fun with your friends. ;) We took pit stops for food and shopping. We got to the hotel around 12:30. It was beautiful! I wish we had more time to go look around and take pictures. We woke up early on Tuesday morning to get all dolled up for the show. I must say, we all looked really cute! :) We walked down to wait in line, which was surprisingly shorter than we thought. We were pretty close to the front! Ciarra, Bria, and I were sent on the mission to find breakfast for everyone. We managed to pass the Starbucks that was right in front of us, and ended up wandering around LA for about 45 minutes. It was surprisingly fun. :) Once we brought back food, there were cameras going through all of the lines of people. One of them came to our group and asked for Kris fans. Ciarra and I actually talked. It was crazy! Shame it was for a local channel in Cali. I wanted to see us. After that it got a little boring. We were in line for 5ish hours. We wandered over to the red carpet where we saw Brooke White from last season. We got to talk to her! Sooo cool. After several false alarms, we finally got to go into the show (it was actually the rehearsal of the show, but I think it was better that way. :)). Ciarra, Bria, Austin, and I all got to stand in the pit right in front of the stage. :) IT WAS AWESOME. We were like 10 feet away from Ryan Seacrest, Adam, Kris, and Carrie Underwood! Coolest thing ever. After it was over, we almost stayed for the live show, but we decided we were all really tired. So we walked back to the hotel, ate, and drove home. I think most of us slept for pretty much the whole ride. We got back around 1 am. And that was our trip! It was super quick, but I had a lot of fun. :)

(PS: We weren't aloud to have ANY cell phones or cameras, so I have absolutely nothing to show for this trip. Depressing... I know. :/)