In progress...

My new camera is so cool. It can record slow motion videos! Caroline and David and I had lots of fun with it last night!

Christmas!!

David has turned 14 and is now a Teacher! The grandparents all came for him to get set apart, which was really fun.

David with his birthday cake (made by yours truly).

It's a tradition on Christmas Eve for all the cousins to either go bowling or laser tagging. This year we did bowling. Which is good, because I very much dislike laser tag. I got up the courage to play it on Chamber Tour, so now I'm actually able to play, but I still don't like it.

These are all the teams. Mine lost. It was sort of funny, because even when playing 5-Tap (which is when it's considered a strike if you get 5 or more pins) I only got 3 strikes the whole game. Ah well. It was still super fun.

My dad won highest score. I think he had 176. Which is pretty incredible. I don't know many people who can do that.

As always, Santa came to the Abbotts house on Christmas Eve and gave us all presents! We took the pledge to go to bed when our parents said and "not get up until Mother or Father says so".

I got to play piano again for our Nativity.

Halle was Mary and Matthew was Joseph. We have this pregnant belly from when Stephanie was on Student Council and dressed up as Maternity Barbie for school. Halle was so excited to get to use it! After the Nativity, she came in with it under her clothes and said she had gained a ton of weight from all the Christmas candy.

This is the whole gang together. I love Tara and Jordan who agreed to be angels but only if they could be Charlie's Angels.

Christmas was on Sunday and we had church at 9 AM, so my parents wrapped the family room. That way we couldn't see the tree or any of the presents until after church. (We did get to open our stockings before church).

In our Sunday clothes on Christmas. We changed back into pajamas after church.

Michael's lone stocking. So sad. :(

Gotta love the triplet pajamas! They are sooo soft and warm.

Michael gave me this children's story book for Christmas. It's in Romanian, and so far I have the first four pages translated. 

This is the family talking to Michael on Skype. That was super cool. :) I loved getting to see him while talking to him.

We had to take a family picture because this is the only one we'll have for two years!

Christmas was awesome. Although it was weird having it on Sunday and having church, I really liked it that way. It made people focus more on the true meaning of Christmas. It's been a great year and I'm excited for 2012!

Michael's Package

A couple of days ago we got Michael's christmas package in the mail! Unfortunately, the stuff inside wasn't wrapped, so my parents took it to their room and wouldn't let us see any of it. But then yesterday they brought out some little bags and told us we could have this stuff. The first bag had Romanian coins in it, which was pretty sweet. Their coins are called Bani. And lots looked different cuz they were newer than others. Then the second bag had these candy bars. They are sooooo good. They're called Lion bars and they are fantastic!

Skiing!

This morning I went skiing for the first time this season. It was pretty rough, but not too bad. Next time should be better. 

My body was dying the whole time. I forgot that it takes time to get used to constantly using your muscles and being in those boots. Very very tiring.

I forgot my camera, so these were taken with my phone. I hope they look ok!

 Me, Caroline, and David up at the top of the back mountain.

Santa came down today from the North Pole to experience the best snow on earth! And to give out some candy canes. :)

Down in the valley it's been so dark and cloudy lately. I haven't seen blue sky in a while, so it was really nice to go up to the mountains where the air is clear and the skies are blue. It was sort of freaky seeing the thick layer of clouds over the valley!

It's the most Wonderful time of the year...

Today I went with my cousin Lindsey to wrap presents for my grandparents neighbor in Vintage. While there, this lady gave us water bottles and told us that these were her favorite water bottles. Ok... didn't know water bottles tasted all that different... except that these ones were Orangemint and Spearmint flavored. How weird, right? So I drank some and thought it tasted really weird. Upon going home and drinking some more, I decided that it tasted VERY weird. I don't like it. At all. Yuck. The bottle looks pretty cool though. And now I'm gonna go throw it away.




Ok Nicole wins best gift award. I'm sure of this even though it's not Christmas yet. Today she came over with my Christmas present and insisted I open it in front of her so she could see my reaction. And boy was there a reaction!! she gave me a zebra cover for my phone! In case you aren't aware, I'm very much obsessed with zebras. A LOT. They are so fantastic. My phone looks so great now. :)



My other recent happening was that I was in the movie for the Seminary Centennial which will be showed at the seminary centennial fireside on January 22nd. I believe it should be during Pres. Eyring's talk. It's awesome being in a church film. Everyone is so professional (yet still such drama people) and it's so organized! They took us out to the N.K. Whitney Store replica which had been transformed into a schoolhouse where we spent the whole day. And it was FREEZING COLD. Oh my goodness. We couldn't feel our feet for the majority of the day. So when you see church movies and think to yourself "wow, they look really cold" it's probably because they are really cold. I guess it's more realistic, right?
Something I've always wondered about church movies is the atmosphere. When you watch the Joseph Smith Movie and such, it always looks like there's stuff floating around in the air. Well, before every shot, they fire up the smoke machine and try to suffocate us. Then they turn off the heater. And we freeze and it's all smoky. What fun. :)
(Side note: Even though these last two paragraphs may have sounded negative, they really aren't. I loved the whole experience. :))
Whenever I've thought of making movies, I always imagine the star having people fix their hair and make-up in between every shot. It totally happens, but with everybody, not just the main character. The make-up and costume people are constantly fixing things, even if they're tiny things such as someone's eyelashes wrong (I couldn't figure out what was wrong with them) or a collar folded slightly wrong. It's pretty cool but sort of weird too. There was one time the costume lady took about ten minutes just fixing my skirt. Then she put some fake dirt stuff on my shoes and sprayed them with something and told me not to move at all.
I met the gaffer!!! My friends always look for the gaffer in movie credits, so I made sure to meet one. It was great. :) He was very nice. And he has magic tape to be used for anything the director wants.
What is the point of the producer? Ok yeah they have a purpose, but at least at the shoot, the producer just sat there the whole time doing nothing. Seems sort of boring to me. Before every shot, she'd yell "ROLLING!!!" at which point everyone knows they'd better shut up. Or else. I don't know what the or else is cuz everyone always shut up. Which made me happy cuz I'm used to high school drama where it's practically impossible to have everyone quiet at the same time.
In all it was a wonderful experience. The spirit was so strong there and everyone was so kind. It was fun to be part of a film and have that new experience.








And now it's Christmastime! For sure the best time of the year. The family visits more often, everyone's cheerful, and more people think about the Savior than any other time. What a great way to end the year. :)

Jennie Martin

This is Jennie. Quite often she looks like a model. She moved into my neighborhood when I was in 7th grade and we've been best buddies ever since. :) Jennie teaches me how to dance (when she can remember what she's supposed to be teaching me) and lets me vent all I want and tell her about Andy.



This is Andy. I love him to death but he might not know that. I wish we were better friends but I don't think he usually wants to talk to me... Basically that sucks. Oh well. I'll get over it eventually maybe.

She Loves Me!!!

Being in a play is an interesting thing. I love acting and all that jazz, but the endless rehearsals kill me. Especially with the amount of homework I have being in three AP classes. Bah. But the play is very worth it.


This is me falling on Caleb Tinney right after kissing him. How embarrassing.



Me and Adam. Gotta love it. :)

Tuesday was interesting. I had rehearsal until 5-ish. Then I went home for a half hour and had to go back to the school for Carmina Burana. Gross. About halfway through the concert, I started feeling sick. But I'm a little stubborn, so I just told myself that I was overreacting and that nothing was wrong. But by about movement 19 or 20, I was dying. It sucked. Then all of the sudden my ears got hot, and the rest of my body was really cold. My vision started blacking out and I couldn't hear anything. I remember thinking to myself, "Is this what it feels like when you pass out?" and then thinking I should probably sit down in case I did pass out. And I started swaying back and forth cuz I didn't have any balance anymore. So I sat down for a while and felt like crap. Almost passing out is really hard on you. During the second to last movement, I made myself stand up again (even though I really really didn't want to). I didn't sing the rest of the time though, I just mouthed the words. By the end during the bows, I still felt sick and was almost in tears. I could barely stand up still. Not a good time... So I texted my mom and asked her to come drive me home. So she came and got me and drove me home.Right before the concert, I had looked at my phone and had seen that Sister Chynoweth, the Special Needs Mutual young women's president had called me and left a message. I had tried listening to it, but it was too late. Then after the concert, I saw that my mom had texted me saying sister chynoweth had called and to come home before listening to the message.When I got home, my mom took me over to the couch to rub my shoulders. She then said Sister Chynoweth had called. She explained that my buddy from mutual, Kayleen, had died Saturday and that her funeral was earlier in the day on Tuesday. I wish I had the words to explain my emotions. I've lost loved ones before. But this was so different. I haven't known Kayleen for very long, yet in those few short months I've become so close to her. It seemed almost unreal that she had died so suddenly, but I knew it was real. It was so unexpected and came so suddenly- like when my Uncle Steve died. I wasn't told he was going to die. I didn't get to say goodbye. That was hard.I called Sister Chynoweth to talk to her about it.
I've gone to special needs mutual once since then. I made myself busy and helped out with whatever they needed me to. It was fun, but sort of weird without Kayleen.


This is me and Kayleen my first week at mutual. I was with her the whole time even though we hadn't been assigned buddies yet. She kept on saying all night that she wanted me to be her buddy because we were best friends. And then we were buddies and she was so happy. :)


(p.s. this is an old post that I forgot to actually put up until now.)

Random Sketchbook Pictures

The one with two pictures are my portraits of Andrew Allred. They're from last year, then this year. Improvement? Yeah... a LOT!