Oh Thanksgiving: the turkey, the potatoes, the family. This is definitely my favorite holiday. :) I love how everyone starts to get into the true holiday spirit. :) Oh how I love people. ♥
I had Thanksgiving with some of my cousins. :D The Ashbys, and the Ashbys. Haha! How great! We went to American Fork, Utah. After eating food we played games and bonded as family loves to do. It was so fun, and I saw my clone. Well, okay, she looks nothing like me. But she is my cousin Elizabeth Ashby. And she's only 6 weeks younger than me. I love her guts to death! (That is, if guts could die.) Even though our names are identical, Lizzie and I look nothing alike. She is FAR more gorgeous than I will EVER be. :) Oh the joys of having a cousin with the exact same name as you. :D
I would like to take this Thanksgiving(/Christmas... because my blog post is a few weeks late, but I fooled you by changing the date on the post) season to share what I am thankful for.
(In no particular order.)
1: Friends.
-All of them. They are always there for me, no matter what.
2: Family.
-They make me happy. (Most of the time.) And when they bug the heck outta me they teach me patience. :)
3: An education.
-I might hate school. And I might never do my homework. But I AM thankful for the opportunity I have to learn and gain an education.
4: Being well off.
-This isn't meant to be a braggy post. I'm serious. I am so thankful to have a father who works hard at a well-paying job to support my family and still has money left over for the fun stuff. There are so many families that don't have this blessing, and I am truly sorry for them.
5: The gospel.
-I am so grateful to have the true gospel in my life. It helps me get through hard times. It lets me know that everything will be okay. :)
6: Music.
-Without music, I would be lost in this world. Music brings everything to life. Feelings, truth, gospel... music is life. I'm thankful for choir, Jive, orchestra, and all the music teachers I have ever had. Thank you.
7: My talents.
-This goes hand in hand with music, but encompasses more. I so thankful for all the talents God has given me.
8: The leaders of the church.
-I am so grateful for the apostles. I love those cute little old men. :) They are so funny, yet wise. I know that they always speak the truth.
9: DVR.
-Without DVR I would never be able to watch all the many shows I love.
10: Missionaries.
-Not only are the male missionaries the most attractive men I have ever seen in my life ;), but I know that they are doing the Lord's work. I also know that having two missionaries in my family has blessed us greatly.
11: Modern technology.
-Yes, it has it's downs, but for the most part, technology is a great thing. It speeds up and simplifies communication and finding information as well as makes things such as blogging, pinning, and Facebooking possible.
12: Food.
-Yum. I love eating, cooking, and baking food.
13: Temples.
-Not only are they gorgeous, but when I am there I feel the spirit so strongly.
14: Attractive, funny, nice men.
-;) Well, men/guys. (Some of these guys aren't quite 'men' yet.) They are fun to look at and to talk to, it's like a double win!
15: Being me.
-Sometimes I feel like it sucks to be me, but in reality, I love it. :) When I'm sane, I would never ask for anything different than just to be me.
16: Having so many things to be grateful for.
-Many people don't have as many things to be as grateful for as I do, whether it is because they don't view certain things as blessings, or because they just don't have as much.
"Sadie Hawkins Dance! In my khaki pants! There's nothing better. Oh, oh, OOHHHH!" ...How true that is! (Well, the "nothing better" part. I didn't even wear khakis.) Yesterday was Sadie's. :) I asked my Kimbo friend Zack Mulberry. I've known him for like two years and have wanted to go on a date with him the entire time, and finally, it happened! Yes! :) He is so nice and funny! (Not to mention attractive.)
The date was so fun! We had been planning to go to the CSI ropes course, but the weather was windy and snowy, and the indoor course was closed due to basketball, so we went bowling instead. I honestly think I had more fun at the bowling alley than I possibly could have had at the ropes course though. :D The first game we bowled normally, and the second game we drew M&M's before our turn, and whatever color we got represented a different way we had to bowl. It was so hecka fun. :) The highlight of my day was when Zack drew brown and had to bowl backwards. And right before he went, his brother's best friend's family walked in and they were watching him and laughing. Then when he bowled the ball went straight into the gutter and then bounced into the gutter of the other lane. It was super funny. :D
For dinner we needed to order everything, including utensils and plates. The problem, however, was that the entire menu was in code, so you ordered three things randomly but had no idea what you would get. Zack's first course was a dessert plate, spoon, and napkin. It made me laugh that he didn't even get any food. :) My first course was a plate, red vinegar salad dressing, and milk. But I didn't have a cup, so I drank my milk from off my plate. (I left the dressing there, cuz I'd rather NOT just eat it plain, thank you very much.) After our three courses of confusion (although I watched to see what other people got and what they ordered so made a giant logic problem out of the meal and knew exactly what I was ordering by the second course... heh, yeah, I'm a nerd), we were allowed to actually order the food we actually wanted and use cups and silverware and such. And the food was DELISH.
Here is us painting the Party Bus! (AKA, my van.) I drove the group around in my family's van. I hung Christmas lights up inside of it (too bad I didn't get any pictures of those, cuz they totally rocked), and we painted all the windows. Zack is the Justin Bieber fan who wrote "Bieber Fever" on the back of my van. McKenna didn't like that, so she wrote "NOT!" underneath. I don't think McKenna even ever
realized that I later crossed out her contribution. I kinda like JB, you know? Plus, I felt like I should support my date in his choice of music by young male pop artists.
Our group: Emily Cotterell, Kendall Hall, McKenna Thompson, Dan Plant, Me, Zack Mulberry, Tori Arritt, Bryant Foster, Annie Romney, and Jared Berry
<---This one's my favorite! Don't we look so cute together? :) Man, I love this kid! It's so hard to believe he's a senior! Now that swim season is over I'm almost never going to see him anymore! And then he's going to leave for college. :( Swim team will never be the same without him yelling "Hey Wizzles!" all the time. Yes, he sometimes calls me Wizzles. Don't ask me why. I don't know. My mom thinks it's cute, but I think it's annoying. But I do kinda like it a little in that "well, he's my friend and he's trying to annoy me because he's my friend" kind of way. Plus, I'm not gonna make him stop cuz I totally have been crushing on him for forever, and so I really don't mind what he calls me as long as he keeps talking to me and remains my friend. :)
I really like this one too. --->
I'm bigger than Zack, so I didn't want to get on his back and crush him, but I did want a piggy back picture... like really badly. So I told him to get on my back! We had to move a few more steps up the canyon, though, because in the other pictures there was a cliff directly behind us, and the first time Zack tried to jump onto my back I collapsed, so he was afraid I was going to drop him off the cliff. (But I'm totally strong enough that I would never do that.) He obviously didn't trust me, however, (like, seriously! He was wrapping his arms around my neck and choking me he was freaking out so much!) so we traveled away from the cliff, so there isn't as much of the river in the background of this picture as there is in the others.
Here are the backs of our shirts. Zack looks great, but I look like crap! I wish someone had told me that my hair was all messed up! It'd look so much better if my hair just flowed down and didn't get caught on my shoulders. And my shirt looks off-centered, but I swear it isn't! Part of the many hours I put into making these shirts included me measuring them to make sure the they were centered. It must just look crooked because of the way I was standing or something. But my OCD isn't a big fan of this picture because of aforementioned reasons.
All in all, yesterday was an amazing day. :) Between the date, dinner, and dances (we played Just Dance 3, went to the school dance, and went to the stake dance), I had so much fun! And Zack said he had a lot of fun to, so that's good. The biggest thing I worry about when it comes to girl-ask-guy dances is impressing my date. I don't want him to think I'm lame! I'm pretty sure I impressed Zack enough, though. :)
I'm not really a hateful person... but I have decided what I do hate: negative people. Lately I've been trying my hardest to always be positive. I was talking to my two friends Emily and Rachel the other day, and they said that it bugs them when people are always happy. (They were in bad moods.) They think that it's abnormal to always be happy. I disagreed with them at first, but then I started thinking... everyone goes through trials and feels sorrow, so no one can always be happy. But! Being happy and being positive are completely different things.
Positivity: having an attitude with which you always look for the best in everything, and try to focus on the happiness.
Happiness: actually being joyful and smiling and feeling like everything that actually matters in your life is going great.
I used to think that I'm always happy, but then I realized I'm not. Not really. I'm positive and that's all that matters. There are quite a few things in my life that could cause me to be so very upset and grumpy all the time, but instead I choose to be positive. Something that actually does cause me to become happy is service. I love bringing joy to other people. When Emily and Rachel were all sad and mad that one day, the next day I brought them "bricks of pudding." I totally made their weeks. :D It made me so happy to just see their faces light up when I gave them their bricks. (By the way, bricks of pudding are an inside joke between us, so the fact that I actually made some for them was pretty hilarious.) Service is incredible. Even just the little things. I think that when I serve I am touched more than those I serve.
~~~
Change of topic. Okay, so after Jive the other night the scariest thing happened. (Not to me, thankfully. I would have cried.) It was a living nightmare. There was a person in Kiefer's car. A random person. Hiding in his backseat. Thankfully he saw them, and was driving near a friend so he called them and they looked in his car and saw the person. Then Kiefer pulled over and was about to run out of his car when the person hopped out and ran down the street. CREEPY. I honestly have nightmares ALL THE TIME about people hiding in my car. I've always been so paranoid about it. But I always thought it was an irrational fear. I mean really. I always lock my car, and I live in Twin Falls, ID, where very little crime ever happens. Ever. And that guy could have very easily been in my car instead. Kiefer said his car had been locked (so honestly, how the heck'd that guy get in?), and my car had been parked in the exact same parking lot. If that guy had broken into my car I could have been killed. Because the way I drive home is mostly in the dark out in the middle of nowhere between a bunch of farming fields. Easy place for someone to hide a body. Hearing about what happened to Kiefer makes me so thankful for being safe that night. I am even more careful to check my car now than I was before. Eep.
State Water Polo Tournament. Need I say more? Actually yes, I do. Saturday, November 5, 2011. Let it be known that the Magic Valley Water Polo Team became State Champions... and almost twice in one day. (I'll explain a little later.)
First game, versus Idaho Falls. Let's just say that game was incredibly easy... :) We won 13-2. Second game, versus Hillcrest. That was very possibly even easier, 15-1, I think. The third game wasn't so easy, however. This game was for the combined schools' teams State Champs. We were up against Moscow. Points were scored back and forth; it was a close game. But we ended up winning by two in the end, 6-4. And that was it. We were State Champs. The end, right?
WRONG.
Well, not completely wrong. We still were State Champs, that just wasn't the end. By some odd miracle we were allowed to play against Bishop Kelly (yes, THE Bishop Kelly, the State Water Polo Champions for many years consecutively in the past) for the individual schools' State Champs title. Why they let us play for that when we are a combined team, I know not. ...But that doesn't matter. What matters is that we played them. And almost won. Heck yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, people always say "Almost doesn't count," and such, but for us, for this, almost does count.
Bishop Kelly wasn't pleased when they heard they were playing us. They assumed we would be just like all the other teams they played that day: sucky. During the first sprint they butterflied. BUTTERFLY. Wow, losers. I think they were trying to intimidate us. it didn't work. They just looked like idiots. And it cost them the ball. We got it first, and went in for a shot, and made it. That's right. We got the first point. Suck it, BK. By the end of first quarter we were ahead 2-1. I think BK got it into their heads that we weren't messing around, though, and they started to pick it up. Second quarter no points were made till the very end when BK made a lucky shot. We went into half tied 2-2. Over the second half it was really intense and the game ended 4-4. More shots went into the net than that, however. A lot of them just didn't count due to fouls and such. But yeah. Because the game was tied we went into a shoot off. We pick five shooters; they pick five shooters. The pressure is on. Especially for the goalies. We ended up losing, but barely. But it doesn't matter. We still won a State title and showed BK up. That's all that matters isn't it? :D
So... today is 11-1-11. And I just noticed that on Pinterest I have 11 boards, 111 pins, and 11 followers. I think I'm gonna not pin any more today. :D
11-1-11:11,111,11= pure luck. Today must be special.
