So pretty exciting stuff's been goin on around here...

Special Needs Mutual is FANTASTIC as usual! The spanish ward came and taught us Latin dancing, and Taven requested that we take a picture of us dancing. So in this picture is Taven and his buddy, James. The girl in the pink, Chelsea, is temporarily my buddy while her real buddy is gone. She's super funny and loves to hug me. She laughs a lot when Tanner tries to break up our "fighting" and gets super embarrassed if I suggest she go dance with a boy. Taven's awesome like always. This week he asked me if I would be his princess and I told him that I wasn't sure that would work out since I'm not a princess.

This is my group from Preference. And yes, we totally did go visit Rapunzel's tower! ;D

This is Thomas (in the middle). He is taking me to Sweethearts tonight and I'm so excited!! We're going power tumbling for our day date, and I'll admit that I am pretty nervous about that. Especially since the only time in my life I've attempted a flip I landed on my back and have had back problems ever since. But I'm sure it'll be great. :)

English oh English

Today in English had to be one of my favorites this year. We each read two essays (one that was due today, one due last time), and I was in a group of all girls. They are blonde. That's all the description they need. One very talented girl who is blonde but not so blonde wrote an essay about her first experience with kissing. Oh boy. I was trying so hard not to cry from laughing so much! My essay's were not nearly that funny. But apparently one was slightly humorous. I'll put it up here:

The lights dimmed. This was my cue to walk offstage. I knew that I had to change my costume before I came onstage again. I ran to the dressing room, beginning to unbutton my dress as I entered. I looked up at my friends and froze. Something was terribly wrong. Never in my theater experience had I encountered this dilemma. There was a boy in the dressing room. A boy. Perhaps one of the more shocking aspects of this was that the other girls didn’t seem to care. The group was talking as if nothing was wrong. I buttoned my dress back up, acted normal, and changed in the bathroom. I thought that surely he was only there momentarily and would be gone soon.

            I thought wrong. At the end of my next scene, I hesitantly approached the dressing room, only to enter and find the boy still there. I sat down on the floor, my mind racing with the challenge of trying to figure out what to do. Looking back it seems it shouldn’t have been a very hard decision, but at the time I was stuck. I knew this boy. He was very talented and I knew him to be uplifting towards other cast members. I didn’t want to ruin his reputation. I also didn’t want to be mocked by the other girls. There were so many of them and only one of me. Then I heard a girl say to the boy, “I’m about to change. Close your eyes.” This seemed completely unacceptable to me. The girl was entirely exposed, and her only protection was the boy’s eyelids which were not guaranteed to stay closed. The situation was still unfathomable to me. I had always thought these peers were so virtuous and proper, values clearly not being demonstrated here. For a moment my mind wavered, almost willing to overlook the situation. But I knew it was wrong.

            Luckily we were still in rehearsal, so I left the dressing room and approached the director in the auditorium, voicing my concerns. She was shocked at my news and assured me that things would change. That evening she announced that she would not tolerate students being in the dressing room of the opposite gender.

            The cast returned to the dressing room to change before we went home. I glanced at the boy and his outrage was obvious. It was surprising though that back in the dressing room, all of the girls were voicing their happiness that somebody had spoken up. Many girls were uncomfortable with the situation but were too afraid of their peers to stand up for themselves. Our peers have such an enormous influence on our lives, and many are so afraid of that influence that they cast aside their values or choose to overlook problems. They are scared that their peers will mock them. I used to be scared of that. Now I know that if I do what I know to be right, everything will work out.

Well that took a LOT of space... but hey. It's about three pages shorter than most essays in that class.

Well it's been pretty exciting around here. Many many things have happened.....

I swam in the Battle for the Paddle!!! (we won. of course.)

Secret Garden opened! Tonight is closing night. This show has been amazing and so different from every other show I've done. There hasn't been any conflict, we're not super stressed out, and the cast feels so unified. Usually at the end when I'm bowing it's really hard for me to keep smiling, but after this show I can't stop! It makes me so happy to see the accomplishments of the other cast members and share our message with the audience.

 I play a Dreamer (ghost) as well as Mrs. Winthrop of the Aberdeen School for Girls. She's not very nice. It's such a fun scene. :) Mary throws a huge tantrum and then I storm away (while making sure to not forget to take with me the money that they gave me).

Preference!!! My group was so so fun. I took Kahai Fa'alafua and I think I might have scared him a little bit because I was so loud and laughed so much. The only times he really sees me is in school (usually in English) and I'm VERY quiet there. So it might have been a little shocking for him.

My Uncle Chris went to Afghanistan about a week and a half ago. He is so awesome for being able to do that, especially now that his family has grown so much with his recent marriage. This picture makes me so sad because of my cousins in it. (Thank you to Deseret News for the picture.)

Spinach smoothies are still fantastic, although they look super disgusting. I haven't had much time lately to make them. Maybe I'll make one tonight. We'll see.

End of term!!!

The term is over! Hallelujah! I amazingly managed to get straight As this term. :) After She Loves Me, I didn't think there was any way I would be able to bring my grades up to As. But I did. :) And I have some sweet new art pieces that I turned in for the end of term!

This is my friend Taven with Jesus pushing his wheelchair.

"My Savior"

The end of this term also means that I am now in early morning seminary, so I can't be in the Special Needs seminary class, which makes me really sad. It was my favorite class this semester, and for sure the funniest!

Here are Tanner and Taven, who sat behind me and Beth every day. Tanner and I visited Taven over Christmas break. Taven's favorite thing to do is look at pictures of Jesus. He is so sweet and gets so excited everytime he sees me! Last week at mutual as he was leaving, I yelled bye to him, and he yelled back, "Bye Katie I love you a lot!!!!"

This is me and Beth. Beth is fantastic. :) I learned how to shout and yodel and cheer for no reason at all and not care what anyone else thinks. I learned that it's actually really easy to not be bored when someone tells you basically the exact same thing every day. I learned to put Beth's needs before mine and love her no matter what she did. Beth is an amazing person and is so excited to meet Jesus and be healed. I love her so so so much! Luckily I'll still get to see her at mutual! :)

Government

Right now I'm sitting in government. You can tell it's boring and we're not doing anything cuz my teacher doesn't even care that I'm doing this right now instead of watching the movie. (Note about the movie: If you listen really close, it's sometimes slightly humorous.) :D
I wish I had pictures to put up right now... but I don't. That's what happens when you use the computer at the school. I even had good pictures that I haven't had time to put up because it's the end of term and I'm completely SWAMPED with homework! I have all the usual homework, plus I found out that I'm supposed to have more art done than I do right now (which means I'm doing an entire piece today. Heh we'll see how that turns out), and Mr Keyes decided to give AP Music Theory a ton of homework right at the end of the term after not giving us homework the rest of the term. It's frustrating.

Quote from the made up president in West Wing:  This kid asks him if he's a man of principle and if he thinks being a martyr is bad. The President says, "We don't need martyrs. We need heroes. Heroes are willing to die for their country. But they'd rather live for it."    DEEEEEEEP. ;)

 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!