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Sunday games night

I feel like blogging.

Today is Sunday. Well actually now it is Monday but I'm still going to blog about the night. 

Tonight my dad made lasagna (he makes delicious lasagna) and homemade ice cream. I helped cut up the strawberries- and learned that strawberries are my favorite fruit.

Tarl, Ashkia, Bryant, and Annie all came over to enjoy the Sunday evening with us. We all ate our lasagna and homemade ice cream and had so much left over (as usual, we always make too much).

Once it got dark, and we got bored- we decided to play games. We played Bang, which I never REALLY played, since I'm not a big fan of card games, but we played. Bryant, Annie, Ashkia, Tarl, Ollie and I. 

I thought that since it was a card game, I would be bored laying down cards the whole time but let me tell you, I got into it. We played round after round after round- we all had such a fun time laughing at eachother and just being happy. This lasted for a while but then we moved on to another game called Quelf.

Quelf is a more interactive game and SO MUCH FUN when you have a lot of fun people playing with you. We spent the rest of the night answering ridiculous questions, putting on little performances, laughing and laughing. Ashkia and I had to slow dance, Ollie did his own version of "belly dancing" for us- mom wrote a funny poem, the list continued of different ways to make us all laugh.

I like spending time with my family, and it's so much fun to see Ashkia and Annie come over tonight and add their own part in our big (and still getting bigger) crazy, weird, happy family. I like us.

Bits and Peices

https://vimeo.com/m/100946703

Every summer, my porter cousins come to Utah for a month or so for a reunion. I have a few cousins that are my age- so it's nice for them to come because they're pretty much just like my best friends. My cousin Emmy took a lot of pictures of us this year, so I thought I'd share some with you guys. 

Here  my cute cous Gracie and I in PC. After a journey to the closest smiths- we found some glitter and decided to take some pictures at da park. 

We went to sweet tooth fairy and bought some cute cookies

Took some more pictures at the park

Our great grandpa wanted to take us all out for lunch at BYU 

And for dinner we went to a "chrishna" temple. In the back they had lots of llamas and parrots and peacocks. 

The parrot was SUPER creepy. So what it would do is it would stick its foot out and motion for you to put your finger in it. So of course I made my cousin savanna do it. So she put her finger in and it held for a second and then it lifted her finger up to its mouth and started trying to bite it off. So...traumatized. 

Here is the temple

Anyway- that is a little part of my summer. So far so fun.

The Talk I Gave in Sacrament

I was asked to choose a topic from this months focus on "Marriage and Family". I chose to speak on Family History because I think it is important to learn about our ancestors and to make sure they have their temple work done. My grandma and grandpa have worked in the family history library for the past few years helping people research their ancestors. They tell me lots of stories about my ancestors. These stories are important to me because they help me get to know my family members that have gone before me. Their stories help me understand who I am, where I came from and where I am going. I would like to share with you, a story that my grandma tells which has influenced my life.

-My great great great great grandparents were poor quarry workers, they joined the church with a large family and made a commitment to move to Utah with the Saints without any knowledge of how they would be able to do it. They joined the church in Horsley,  Glouschester England, but moved to Bristol by the sea so when the time came to go with the Saints, they would be ready. But there was never any extra money. Finally, after spending five or six years in Bristol, they realized this was going to be harder than they had thought and they would need to make a new plan.

If there wasnt enough money to send the whole family, perhaps they could send a few at a time. In a giant leap of faith, they sent the oldest son and daughter, then ages 17 and 15 on a boat to America and the Saints. Months and months went by. They hoped and prayed that the Lord would protect their precious children. Each day they waited for some word from America to tell them their children had arrived safely in the valley of the Saints.

When they finally received word about what had happened, they couldn't have imagined a harder journey.

When Joseph Laban and Sarah Emily arrived at the Missouri River Crossing, they didn't have time or money to outfit themselves for the long trip. Faced with the dilemma of finding work in a strange country among strangers and saving money for a trip the following year, or taking the advice of those who seemed to know how to solve their problem quickly, they joined the willie handcart company.

On the way Joseph Laban became so ill with pneumonia that Capt. Willie insisted his sister leave him in the snow in that little valley in Wyoming so at least she would have the strength to make it over the mountain. She refused and when she went to wake him up the next morning she found that he had been sleeping between two dead men all night and hadn't the strength to get up.

Without waiting to determine whether or not she deserved the fate, this 15-year-old girl from England who missed her mother and father and little brothers and sister so much that she cried herself to sleep at night, found a friend who would help her, and lifted her brother from between two dead men and placed him in the handcart where her own clothes had been. Beginning that morning until the wagons came to rescue them, she pushed her big brother to the mountains toward the Salt Lake Valley.

Sarah Emily was about my age and she had to do some scary and hard things.  Sometimes when I am faced with a hard situation I like to think that with heavenly fathers help I can have the same strength that she did.

This year at youth conference we focused on standing in holy places.  One of the activities that we did was to learn how to use the family search website to learn about our ancestors and search for those who might still need temple work done. I hope to be able to go and do some baptisms for people in my family.

One of the most special things about this gospel is being able to participate in the ordinances that tie us to our families forever. Searching for our relatives, learning about their lives and their stories and then helping them to get their temple work done can bring us closer to them and to our Heavenly Father.

I know that some day I will be able to meet Sarah Emily and thank her for her example of stregth and faith. I hope I can be like her.  I hope we can all make time in our lives to get to know those family members that have gone before us and help them to have the blessings of the gospel.

The Last Play

Everyone does the play at Clayton, there was probably about 500 kids in it this year. Its probably my favorite part about my school. Seventh graders get the not-so-good parts, (That was me last year) and eighth graders get bigger, funner parts. This years play was Joseph and the Amazing technicolor Dreamcoat. I was a 50's Dancer and a Purple Egyptian Princess.
I was glad with the part I got since all of my friends were 50's dancers too. It was the funnest dance and I loved the whole scene. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to do it since I couldn't dance.
Mrs. Kearl (Head Director) moved me from the front, to the back, which is never a good sign, but soon I got it and she moved me back up.
I wasn't expecting to be a Purple Egyptian princess. After practice one day, Mrs. Kearl called out 6 girls to stay after for a little while. She called my best friend Megan. I waited for her in the empty auditorium when she finally came back. She looked kind of mad. She told me that she was too short and that Mrs. Kearl wanted ME to come down, so I did, but what I didn't know was that we were supposed to stay longer than I had left, and that was when they learned what to do in their dance. I got up onstage one rehearsal and didn't know what was going on. I walked back and forth here and there, and tried to look like I was trying. Over the many practices, I finally picked up on what everyone was doing around me, and had the dance down the day before the first performance. I was still nervous I would mess up here and there.
I think that this part was meant for me, to give me a challenge because even though I was so nervous and was about to tell Ms.Kearl I didn't want to do it, I did it, and I'm so glad I did because now I feel like even though I was just a background dancer, that I can accomplish anything. 
Its always sad when the play is over, because it pretty much took over our lives for half the year. After the play, there were lots of tears and hugs, (to be honest I don't even know why everyone cry's, because i'm just happy that I can come home and sleep for once.) and they threw a huge cast party. Always love seeing these plays, and even more BEING IN THEM!!! I can't wait to come to next years and see what they had to put on this time!

PURPLE PRINCESSES

  I am on the top right, second in.
         THE 50's DANCERS                            

 

  CUTE SHOT AT PLAY PRACTICE

 
CAST PICTURE

Something to blog about.

I was looking through my old pictures, and i decided to do a blog on them. It seems like all these memories are from forever ago. But now that i think about it, I've still got a few years to go before i die, and really i'm just beginning my actual life. Time is passing faster and faster and now i realize that with the snap of a finger i will be graduating from high school and moving on with life.
Well anyway...i found some....interesting "Annie is a weird child" pictures that i thought you might want to know about.

Here is Ambryn, Jenny, and I eating suckers at an old lady genealogy party.

Here is Annie in her beautiful Luigi halloween costumer that would not velcro up, and came down at above the ankles.

Here is Annie about to kill someone, with the apron that she made for Olya birthday on.

 Here is Annie on a her normal sunday.

Here is Annie  at lava hot springs, trying to work the dang Go-Pro, but just taking very attractive photos of herself instead.

Here is Annie casually next to a grassy stream, and a big dry rock in Moab with Megan and Olivia.

 Here is Annie creepily walking in the shadows of city creek with her cousins.

Here is Annie in the summer, spending the day in Logan.

Here is Photogenic Annie standing in front of a waterfall.

Well. I guess that's it for today. Weird child Annie is getting weirder and weirder so you better watch out, you better not cry.

I hope everybody knows that I am deathly afraid of bees. Because I am. They are my worst fear besides ghosts, spiders, lightning etc. except bees is more of an everyday thing. I've only been stung once before today. My dad always tells this story about how he was driving the travelal and right when he was in an intersection this car comes speeding at him no breaks or anything and crashes right into him, he got pretty bad whiplash since there is no head rest and I'm pretty sure it hurt. When he gets out if the car the lady's standing there saying "sorry! But there was a bee in the car!". My dad laughs and I laugh too but in my head I'm thinking "yup, that's gonna be me.". Today I was running around my grandmas back yard barefoot, with grace, my cousin who is visiting from st. Lois for the summer. So anyway just walking around taking pictures of stuff and I stepped on a bee. I thought it was a big stick or something but it flippin freakin hurt I was more freaked out than hurt so I cried ad screamed like literally a 3 year old. It's been more than 5 hours and I'm still getting pains, and I have a whole in my foot because it went in pretty far and stayed in for a little less than a Minuet before my grandma pulled it out. The last time I got stung by a bee was when Andrew was really little. We were down in this creek by my house with kaleb and Olya and Andrew. We decided to go home so we walked up the big hill that led I the side walk. I saw a bee out of the corner of my eye and backed away like everyone does when a bee is that close. So I flipped my hair which apperantly got stuck in my hair. So I felt something moving in my hair and started trying to get it out because I thought it was a fly or an ant or a spider or something, but I couldn't get it out, so I asked Olya to see what was in my hair. She gasped as soon as she saw which brought a million possibilities into my mind, so again I freaked out and kaleb pulled the bee out of my hair, which ripped the head off, and pulled the stinger out of my head. I have many stories about bees but only 2 about being stung. I guess that's what happens about having fears. You worrie so much about them and have lots of experiences trying to avoid them but they hardly every ending up doing REAL damage. So I guess the only fear is yourself.