Testing: one, two, three. Can anybody hear me?

Sorry for the long leave of absence, there's been a lot going on. To start it all off, one of my closest cousins and best friend Lexi got to come up from Arizona and stay with me for two weeks! I was so excited when I first found out that I think I screamed in pure joy. Although I'm not entirely sure, it was such a big blur of euphoric excitedness. Well anyways, the week before she arrived passed in a blur and then suddenly *poof* she was here! So I quickly put together an itinerary for the two weeks.

Monday: Sleep

Tuesday: hangout

Wednesday: Lagoon

Thursday: Seven Peaks

Friday: The Musical Tarzan

Saturday: Summer Fest & Fireworks

Sunday: Father's Day

Monday: BYU Art Museum

Tuesday: Bridal Veil Falls

Wednesday: Anthropologie Party

Thursday: Dropbox, The Host

Friday: Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Lex arrived late Monday night, which was also Tami's (my superb step-mom) birthday! (HAPPY BIRFDAY TAMI!) So, late that night after Tami's birthday party I went and picked up Lexi from her grandparents' house who live near my dad's home. We loaded up her luggage and went to my mom's house, because I had work the next day. During the times when I had to work Lex would hang out with Little One, Madisen. Otherwise we were joined at the hip! There are some people that somehow missed being your sister so God merely worked them into your life some other way, and Lexi and I are that way.

Well, anyways, it was wonderful. Tuesday we just caught up and hung out. Then Wednesday we went to Lagoon with some friends of mine. The only problem was, that morning my friend texted me saying they wanted to go to Lagoona Beach while we were there and I have been avoiding swimming this summer because I'm not allowed to go swimming the first six weeks after piercing my ears and my swimsuit is rather pathetic and I have been avoiding replacing it. (I'm a cheapskate, what can I say) So that morning Lexi and I ran to the store and I got a new swimsuit. Lagoon was great and I came back sun kissed. As it turns out Lexi and I are both terrified of the Ferris wheel, so we successfully avoided going on it.  (Thank goodness!)

Thursday, I took Calee, Calee's friend Sammy, and Lexi to the water park Seven Peaks. It was a little windy but sunny. However Lexi is a little desert salamander and it was far too cool for her so we spent a lot of time floating around the lazy river on a double tube. Friday I realized that I had sunburned my sunburn and I looked like a lobster back. After I finished working Friday morning, Lexi and I went and bought tickets to the outdoor musical Tarzan. Well, we got there a little late, *achem* since I never do anything by just barely getting by, by the skin of my teeth, but we got great seats! It was so good! I got to see my friends who were in the play and those who were there watching the play. At one point I ran into my friends Laura and Jon, and Jon said, "I thought you were a broad." I thought he was saying he didn't recognize me and thought I was just some weird broad talking to them, then I realized… oh he meant abroad- in China. Oops.

Saturday I woke up feeling exceedingly nauseated, so instead of taking Lex to the carnival I asked Maddie to. Then after work I caught up with everyone and we went to the High School to watch the Fireworks. Sunday was Father's Day, and as excited as I was about it, I felt distinctly uneasy. Lexi's (18) dad, Kendal, passed away earlier this year and it has been painful beyond words to say goodbye. Sometimes the memories reduce you to tears faster than you can brace for the onslaught of pain. I was worried because I didn't want to be insensitive to Lex. So late Saturday night we bought a keg of root beer and decided Lex would share my Dad. So here's to a great Daddy that is so wonderful I wouldn't trade him for any other dad in the world; who is a perfect surrogate Dad, to Lexi and others.

Monday Lexi, Adam, and I went to the BYU Art museum, mostly because I love museums. They are so beautiful, calming, and feel me with a sense of wellbeing and fulfillment. Tuesday I laughed myself silly as I tried to entice Lexi try to play in the water at Bridal Veil Falls. My desert Flower was not as well adapted to stomping through freezing fresh snow water as I am. (By the way, I absolutely *LOVE* playing in cold fresh water anything- rivers, waterfalls, lakes, etc.) So Calee, Lex, and I climbed up and down the waterfall without getting wet until we got to the flat bottom once more when Calee slipped and sat down in a foot of water. Wednesday night we went to my work party where my favorite brand of clothes called Anthropologie were half off. I bought a jumpsuit, and we played 'Dress up Lex' and ended up getting her three adorable shirts. Thursday I set Lexi up with Dropdox, so we could share music, and then we went to see 'The Host'. Considering how atrociously bad the twilight book to movie was I had very low expectations for The Host, so I was floored by how it was actually really quite good. At 8:30 the next morning I dropped Lexi back off at her Grandmas house, where her mom was, for a family reunion.

So now for the part that relates back to the title of my post: I recently found out that when in China I won't be able to access BlogSpot so I'm attempting to post this through my email since this is what I will have to do whilst abroad. So this is testing, one, two, three. Can anybody hear me?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPeEMNo26_Q

Quilting, Cleaning, & Chicken Dancing

Alrighty then, here we go! So the beginning of this week started with the overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia. I looked around my room and decided that I wanted absolutely everything out. I just wanted it all gone. So, I started thoroughly cleaning out my room. I even pulled the huge pillow off my sphere chair and vacuumed it. (I'm certain this is probably not how the designers intended the pillow to be cleaned, but hey it worked) As I was trying to find a spot in my dresser for some of my High School tee-shirts, I couldn't help but be struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. Here I was trying to fit shirts into my dresser that I never wear. I couldn't justify throwing them away because of  how hard I had worked to earn some of them, so I decided to do something with them so I wouldn't have to keep them in my room. Then the thought struck me. I would turn them into a quilt!

So without stopping to think everything through, I turned on Titian AE (witch I was watching with my three little cousins- all of them boys and very much so into anything aliens) and started cutting up shirts. My little eight year old sister walked into the room and asked horror struck what I was doing to my shirts. "I'm fixing them, can't you tell?" I responded. She then proceeded to tell me that she was going to go tell mom. The next day was Sunday I spent a good hour on my computer looking up fabric stores around my house that had decent prices. I had made a quilt before so I was preparing myself mentally for the reality of the price of finishing the quilt. To my great surprise however a fabric store near my house was having a Memorial Day sale on fabric the next day for about $2.50 a yard. However they were closing early because it was Memorial Day and would be closing an hour after my shift ended at work. So I ran to get fabric the next day right after I got out of work and was out of the fabric store before they closed!

Thus my quilting adventure begins. I'm currently still cutting all the shirt pieces down to the same size, but I'm trying to get this done uber quick. Because I know that if I drag out the process too long, I'm going to get bored of it and most likely not finish it. So, a few points of advice for anyone who is reading this and decides they want to turn a few of their old shirts into a new blanket. (So, do as I say not as I have done)

• wash & dry the shirts you want do use
• Iron the shirts
• cut the shirts in half. Along both of the side seams and along the sleeve

• Then cut all the shirts into squares; they should all be the same length and height
• you then have two options
• you can sew all the pieces together and that will be the front of your quilt
• Or you can do a checker board pattern with material sewn in-between all of the shirt fronts.
• you then add the backing material with the batting material sandwiched in between.
• if you have a quilting machine you can then use that to do the quilting, or you can do the quilting by hand, or add yarn ties in the quilt to hold the batting in place. (in my opinion none of these are actually quintessential so if you don't want to do them- hey it's your quilt)
• Then TA-DA! You're all done!

So those are my two major goals for the month. I want to get rid of absolutely everything in my room that I am not currently using. I want my room to be so immaculately organized that the gods of order smile down upon me. I will also try to put aside my slothful funk I've been in and crank out an amazing quilt. Though it isn't entirely my fault that I haven't been able to get it done yet; granted most of it is just me procrastinating, but I have a good reason for part of it! It was graduation week for Little One (my little sister)!

I was honestly so worried about Madisen graduating that I started having my old nightmares about me not graduating. Maddie had been working part time, finishing High School, battling senioritis, completing four make-up packets of East Shore High School packets (darn 9th grade English), and going to all of the senior class activities. With two days left till she walked in the graduation ceremony and got her diploma she took her final test passed with an 86% (I think) and that was that. Madisen was now officially qualified to graduate! She had done it; all that was left to do was concentrating on not tripping while walking through the 'O' during the ceremony.

The day before she graduated, however, was Babes (this is my nickname for my baby sister Calee) Scera Park's elementary Dance Festival. For anyone who doesn't know what this is, let me explain. Where my family lives in Utah, all the elementary at the end of the school year put on a dance performance. Usually it is outside on a football field, but Calee's was held at the Orem Shell Theatre this year, and all of the audience was seated on white plastic lawn chairs on a raked grassy amphitheater. Grade by Grade all the kids come onto the stage and do a dance choreographed to a song and all the kids dance in a costume their teachers have picked. A common theme is music through the ages, where they start with 50's music and work their way up to contemporary music. In between the numbers they have a little pre-recorded audio track talking about what the school and the surrounding area were like during that time era. It is absolutely darling to watch and it's fun to listen to all the groovy music. If you look around you can see lots of the adults and even some of the kids happily singing along.

Well, at Babes elementary Dance Festival during one of the intermediate parts they had a small group of kids and teachers go up on the stage and invite the audience to do the chicken dance with them. I, being in the best of moods, figured what the hey! So up I popped! It was time to celebrate! Summer was here, Madisen was going to make it, and I was in a slightly malicious humor that day. Looking down I realized to my astonishment that Madisen had not followed my lead and stood up to dance also. Quite to the contrary, she had sunken deeper into her white lawn chair and seemed to be hoping no one noticed me. Well. She was going to celebrate and partake in the light-hearted happy atmosphere of the day, even if I had to forcibly evict her from her chair. So leaning down I pulled Maddie to her feet and....

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200108610458320&l=2287539166711690267

(click the video for to see Madisen and I Chicken Dancing)