The Smiles, The Frowns, The Ups, The Downs...

Hello, reader...of this blog, of this blog imported onto Facebook (though I don't anyone ever reads it there), of my ramblings, etc. I have not posted for about a month--and I have been meaning to, so here we are today. Once again, I think I'm going to use the bullets again--they really helped last time, I rambled SLIGHTLY less. Or at least I covered pretty much everything. Something like that...so here goes...and anyone who can name that (slightly altered) musical reference, gets a cookie! Or a hug! Or some...thing... :D

• On March 5 was my sister's choir concert! As usual, she did terrific...I am still so proud of her for doing amazingly in Treble Clefs! (In one year, she already made a higher choir than I did...yep, she's awesome!) What made her concert even better was that Emily (my friend from Shadow Mountain...the girl whose number I got at All-State auditions last year, lol...) and her brother were able to come watch the concert. And we got to hang out at Iceberg's...oh goodness, living in the past there...NIELSEN'S....afterwards! Some pictures:

I like the ones in front of the auditorium much better. (They were on an actual, functioning camera, rather than my dorky cell phone one.) And here's the ones that prove I'm incapable of keeping my eyes open in pictures where I'm smiling:

I have no idea why I looked like a cheerful stoner there. They didn't spike my custard with liquor, did they? OK, just kidding...but honestly, those pictures are kind of ridiculous...except for Emily, she looks amazing, happy, and her eyes are open! :)

• Well, let's see if I can remember everything...hey, by the way, that's the first time I've put pictures on a blog post! Yay for blog milestones...anyways, I'm going to go out of order. I can't remember what came next, whether it was the chicken or the egg. Anyways, this weekend was Conference--I loved it! The talks were wonderful (I will do my traditional 'awesome quotes' post soon...), the music was terrific and very inviting of the Spirit, and I saw Gabe Lopes in the Institute Choir on the Sat. Afternoon session! (While watching it on Sunday after the last session, on the Internet because I missed the first half...more on that in a second.) I wish Conference came more often...but Church every week is just as wonderful! :)
• OK, the reason I missed the first half (exactly, I got back home almost right when the second half started), was because I was singing the National Anthem at Relay for Life at Red Mountain...alone! Holy craziness, it was a weird but delightful experience, and it went really well. My cousin Natalie asked me about two weeks ago to sing the Anthem...she's on the committee for the Relay (my uncle is the Relay Chair), and apparently the person who was going to sing it dropped out. So she asked me! I forgot to send an email out seeing if anyone else could do it until less than a week before Saturday, and everyone was busy, so I ended up singing it alone...in front of a HUGE crowd of people (I'm horrible at estimating numbers, but it could have been a...thousand? I don't know, it was just a LOT of people). I started off kind of low...lol, it sounded weird...and nervous, but I got into it and it ended great! Yay for new experiences! And afterwards, I shook hands with the Mayor and a State Senator, Chuck Gray (he's my uncle's friend, we've been to his house to randomly eat pie..on Pie Night, of course...twice). (Neither of them saw me sing, they came late. And I was hopelessly awkward. But it was still cool. What's funny is a few Relays ago, I was helping and I got to shake hands with the LAST Mayor. Weird... :D)
• What else? Oh, I made All-State! Yes...I got 14th chair, which must have been an error or something, I've never got that high before. (Oh, lol, that sentence sounded awkward...the last part, anyway...hee hee, I need to think before I type. Wait, that wouldn't be any fun... :D) Anyways, I am excited to be in All-State for a third and final year...the music is INSANELY hard as usual (holy fast, very classical German song and song with weird arrows, to name a few), but also as usual, is incredibly amazing. I can't wait...well, I can, because I still need to get my music learned and memorized. So I can wait. :) And Emily made it too, again! She's terrific! Go Emily! :D
• I've really gotten into American Idol. This is my first season watching it (I held off on the first seven, partly because "Dancing With The Stars" is my true reality-show love), and even though half the time I sit wondering why the heck I'm watching, there are great moments on there. Allison is amazing! She's my favorite contestant right now (the only one I vote for, in fact...by the way, it's weird to be able to vote unlimited-ly..."DWTS" has a limit, and it's kind of less time-consuming that way), and she boggles my mind--her voice is so powerful and she has so much talent--and on top of that, as I've probably said like elevendy billion times already (at least on Facebook), she's YOUNGER than me! Wow...I hope she wins. And I hope Megan Joy (who I really liked, even if not a lot of others didn't...her voice was kind of inconsistent, but I really liked her tone when she sung well) gets a CD out soon! I might get tickets for the Idol Tour this year just to see her and Allison...
• Jazz, Baby, Jazz was SO wonderful this year...I hope BYU has something like that (I'm sure they probably do) when I get into the jazz program in the future, because I love jazz and love performing it! We were very loopy and hyper backstage...there was dancing, random whispered comments of "they're so amazing," "I like cheese," etc. about whoever was singing at that moment, and other polite but crazy shenanigans. My solo went well...I felt better about it than last year, mostly because I was slightly more confident this time around. (Last year, looking back, I felt like my solo was too non-assertive and awkward. Still good, but not what I wanted it to be completely.) Everyone did so terrific! Thank you, everyone, for giving their best and doing amazingly! It was a wonderful experience.
• Speaking of wonderful experiences related to Choir...we (A Cappella) got the chance on the 13th to sing with the mind-bogglingly amazing Shrine of the Ages Choir from NAU. It was an unforgettable night...we did very well on our set (I was surprised, it was the best we had ever sung those songs), and Shrine...there are no words. Well, there are a few, but in short, it was just, wow. We sang in the Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix...can you say "amazing acoustics"? Mr. A (choir teacher from last year who went up to NAU for his Masters) got to conduct "Water Night"...ohh, Whitacre.... :) And we got to sing "Homeland" with them...that was the best part. I had a weird, transcendental (?), out-of-body-like experience towards the end of the song...it was the part where we were supposed to sing VERY powerfully, and my voice suddenly started soaring, kind of on its own. It was the strongest I had ever sung (I was more than belting, it was going crazy), and I wasn't even pushing AT ALL. My voice just started flying freely--it was completely and utterly amazing! It literally took my breath away...even though there was about 600 less people (no joke), I liked it even better than the combined MPS Choirs-ness at the District Festival singing "Homeland" in October.
• I've recently had the chance to do two fun school projects--in English and Government. For AP English, as some of you may be familiar with, we had our "Hell Project" where we got to put 10 people in Dante's version of Hell from "The Inferno." My partner and I thought of some doozies...the Jonas Brothers, Joe Arpaio, etc., as well as some fun punishments. Obviously, I know that Heavenly Father is the judge, and I would never in reality want to put ANYONE--even those I may severely dislike and disagree with--in Hell, or Spirit Prison, or anything. But for the purposes of this project only, it was fun. As for AP Gov, we had to do presentations on a Cabinet department--and my partner was Zach Carpenter. We did our PowerPoint the night before...and somehow got it done while completely goofing off almost the whole time. It was a blast, and we made our presentation a good balance of all the info we needed, and I don't know how this worked out, but pretty much twice as much random comments, unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton (we had Dept. of State--I like her, but it's SO fun to make fun of her playfully), etc. I loved it, and apparently the class did, too...we were all pretty much laughing the whole time. Yay for PowerPoints with humor! :)
• OK, I will try to wrap this obscenely long post up soon...what else has been good and wonderful lately? Life? Music? Well, I'll probably think of something I missed in a second, but let's shift to "the downs" part of my life lately...you know how I've blogged somewhat about my online PE classes? And how I needed to get on those? Well, we have this annoying family-wide flaw where if we don't set a date or time to do something, and if I don't remind my parents enough, we don't do it. That's what happened in this case...I registered (successfully) for Bowling and Health and Nutrition through Distance Learning back in January, and I reminded my parents every so often that we needed to go to the District office to pick up my materials and start the class...and we never did. Well, a few weeks ago, I went on the website to make sure I could still start...and it turned out, that day was the deadline for picking up materials. I was, of course, looking at that after the office closed, so I was worried. Fast forward to today...my mom called the Distance Learning office, and we received horrible news--since I was past the deadline, as per their policy, I can't start my classes until the summer. The lady even said there was nothing we could do...which means as of now, I can't graduate, unless we're somehow able to work something out. I am REALLY freaked out and stressed about this, but I know that everything will work out and that I just need to have faith and put my trust in the Lord. It's all up to Him and His will and power now. Be sure to keep me in your prayers, if you can. (I feel self-centered asking that, sorry...)
• To end on a happier note...I love life. I've realized that lately...no matter how crazy/stressful/AAGH-y it is, there's always something about our time on this Earth to love. We should try to enjoy every minute of it, even if that minute may be painful or annoying. That makes everything much more fun, and truly joyful! :)
  

Well, that got more deep than I expected. Or maybe not. Anyways, I won't mince words and I'll just end this beast of a post. If you've actually read the whole thing, congratulations for getting through it all! :) Cheese out! :D