I have three words...

but what are they?

a) HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER!
b) I love grits
c) Favorite... Day... Ever...
d) All of the above

of course it's d. 9 times out of 10, if "all of the above" is an option, that's probably the answer.

anyways, as you may or may not know, today was my 18th birthday. ("today" being the 21st... even though i am technically typing this at the wee hours of the 22nd) this day started out with happy signs on my bathroom mirror and a ridiculously tasty breakfast, courtesy of my cute mama.

i tried to get a picture of the signs... it ended up being a happy picture of myself. whoops.

Bacon, eggs, waffles, & grits... i love birthday breakfast.

following such things, i then drove MYSELF to the Wal Mart in St. George to wait for my best friend Nikiah to meet me there. the plan was for she and i to hang out for a bit, then my friends Rendon and Clay (and they brought their friend Hayden, who is awesome, for the record) would meet us in St. George once Rendon got out of wrestling practice. anyways, i ended up waiting by myself for quite a while at Wal Mart, but it was fine since i had lots of stuff to get for my birthday party (more on that later). once Nikiah got there though, we decided to go ahead and go have lunch at Olive Garden... because i LOVE that place!

We got some frozen [virgin] margaritas at Olive Garden. Mmmm...

she and i ended up kind of just kickin around St. George for a while waiting for the boys to get there, which was fine, since the main point of this excursion was so i could hang out with my far-away best friends on my birthday. unfortunately though, the guys didn't get to town until like 3:15 in the afternoon, and Nikiah had to leave around then to get back to Manti in time for her sister's dance review. So all 5 of us hung out for about 30 seconds, then Nikiah left. :( that then left 4 St. George-retarded people to find something fun to do before i left to go to Kanab for my party (which the boys were not able to go to, due to Rendon's daggum wrestling practice in the morning, so they wanted to get home at a semi-decent time).

Oh my stars... how i do love this girl. (:

after Nikiah left, the four of us tried to figure out something to do. while deciding on a course of action, Clay was like "Look! A D.I.! Oh, we're so going there to look for a Big Wheel." (don't ask.) so we go in this D.I., we're just pokin around you know, doin our thing. well at one point, Rendon and Clay are off doin somethin, and Hayden and i were just standing there when some random mysterious man walks up to us, hands me a plain white envelope, says "Merry Christmas", and walks away. the first thing i thought was that he'd found it in the store, decided he didn't want it anymore, and passed it on to me so he wouldn't have to put it back. i held the envelope for a minute, not really sure what to do with it. by then, all three of the boys were there by me. so i opened it, and Rendon said "Jennifer, there's money in there." i opened it some more, and i said "Rendon, there are 100 moneys in there." sure enough, there was a legitimate $100 bill along with a card inside this envelope. needless to say, i kind of freaked out a little bit. all i could say was "is this real? what just happened?" finally, a D.I. employee came over and was like "Yeah, you're like the 5th one today." "what?" "Yeah, these people just give out $100 bills to random people around Christmas time. they do it every year." "but why?!" "it's their way of spreading Christmas cheer."

what are the odds though, right?! i mean... first of all, it's my birthday. second, why me? not to sound like vain or full of myself or whatever, but i mean... it's my birthday, so i tried to look really cute today. meaning... do i look like i desperately need that money? why didn't he give it to like a homeless man on the street? granted, the DI is certainly a place to go to find people in need, but really? a group of teenagers trying to find something to do? i feel a little bit bad for getting it. maybe it should have gone to someone who like doesn't have electricity at their house right now. you know? it's just insane... i still can't hardly believe it happened to me. it's just so... coincidental. after that happened, i was really quiet for a long time. i've kind of been in deep thought ever since then.

after i came back into reality, Rendon, Clay, Hayden, and i realized that we couldn't just hang out at the DI all day long, so we decided to go bowling. HA. first of all, it probably took us close to like 45 minutes to even find the first bowling alley, and when we did, the guy was like "oooh sorry, but we have a league coming in soon. we won't have any open lanes until like 9:30." while Clay was close to enraged at this point, i was pretty much hysterical. i thought it was sooo funny. obviously, i was in a pretty great mood. so we went to find the other bowling alley, which took another 20 minutes or so... only to get the same exact answer. which made it all that much funnier to me. meanwhile, Rendon, Clay, and Hayden are just being themselves, which is about as funny as it gets. i was close to tears the whole time from laughing so hard. we finally ended up at the Laser Mania place in St. George, so we played a round of laser tag and glow in the dark mini golf. i took last place in laser tag (i've always been awful at that game), but Rendon and i tied for first in mini golf. whoo whoo!

This was a Spiderman thing in the minigolf place... right in the middle of my backswing, Rendon goes "WOAH it's Spiderman!" Totally threw me off. Oh well... haha

after a couple hours, i realized that i was going to be late for my own birthday party, so i figured i probably should split. the boys drove me back to Missy (who'd been at Wal Mart since like 10:00 this morning), we said our goodbyes, and i headed back for Kanab.

my Kanab party was way fun. i had it at the La Estancia (a housing complex in town) clubhouse and just invited some friends to come over and watch a movie, eat food, and/or sit in the hot tub. it was great! a lot more people showed up than i'd anticipated, which is always nice. i'd wanted to take pictures of that party, but my phone (aka, my digital camera) was dying, so it wouldn't let me take pictures. :/ oh well, i got some pretty decent ones, i'd say!

all in all though, this was probably literally my favorite day ever. yes, including that one from the Chuck Wagon in sophomore year. while that one was dang near perfect, today was beyond phenomenal. between becoming an adult, hanging out with all of my best friends in one day (with the exception of Ashton, but i forgive her), partying with my other way good friends, being the target of a Christmas miracle, and hearing from my family, i don't think this day could have gotten much better.

and thus, i thank my lucky stars.

Sub-4-Santa Part 3

alright soooo i mainly am just doing this post because i feel like i need to finish the series. basically, i want to just share some pictures i got from S4S shopping last week.

the trip was way fun. it was mostly Student Council members, with some other random kids thrown in just for funsies. anyways, we all went to St. George, got into teams of one boy and one girl, then we got a list of things to get for certain kids in certain families. there were needs (like clothes) and wants (like basketballs and bikes and such). i got teamed up with my good friend Dustin, and madness shortly ensued.

for some reason, i've got it in my head that Dustin's eyes look like those of a Muppet. anyone with me?

This is me with all of our loot. (:

Dang right! haha

We went to The Pizza Factory after we got done shopping... i just thought these breadsticks were neat.

This... has no explaination. Sorry.

Oh my stars!

i'm currently waiting on a song to download off iTunes. right now, i've been waiting for about an hour, and i've gotten 2.4 MB out of 9.8 MB downloaded. the time remaining has ranged from 12 minutes to 8 hours. i'm not putting up with this, no matter how desperately i want this song. (which, i won't lie, is pretty desperately.) maybe i can get ol' Dustin to find it for me on Limewire or something.

my legs hurt.

Sub-4-Santa Part 2/Sterling Scholar

this week, we had the Kiss It competition that started, the Christmas tree decorating, and the slave auction.

--for the first one, it goes like this: a boy and a girl from each grade get some kind of a bucket or something and they each go around basically begging everyone they see to try to get more money than the other person in their grade. at the end of Kiss It, whoever has the least amount of money has to kiss a mystery animal. so the idea is that you want to get the more money than your opponent so you won't have to kiss a fish or a ferret or a snake, etc.

--i'm pretty sure the Christmas tree one only started last year. anyways, every grade sets up a Christmas tree in the main hall and decorates to the best of their abilities. then a neutral panel of judges comes and decides who has the best tree. i think the winner gets like $100 in their class account. (actually, now that i think about it, i'm not sure this is really a part of S4S...) i do have kind of a problem with this one, though. see, last year when i was a junior, there were like 7 or 8 of us that got together at like 9 at night, we set up some Christmas music, and we just had a grand ol' time. our tree was sooo cute, all set up like Christmasy and Cowboyish. unfortunately, a mom from the senior class came in and did the seniors tree and it was like... amazing. gorgeous. however, we did not feel so awesome about having to split the prize money with them in the end, after we tied. and again this year, we had a little decorating party with the senior tree, but guess what happened? the juniors tree is SO cute--but i don't know any juniors that would go to that extent to do that much work on a tree. turns out, a mom did all the work again. it's an outrage. ugh.

this is our awesome awesome tree that actual seniors spent like 2 hours on last night. i love it. (:
we had some leftover stars that flash back and forth, so Kira (our Senior Class President) decided we should decorate Senior hall, as well as our tree!

--finally, the slave auction. this year, i was nominated to be one of the slaves. whoo. if you don't know what that is, i'll explain: a boy and a girl from each grade is "auctioned" off at an assembly, and whoever pays the most (you can have up to 5 people that get together and buy someone) gets to have that person as their personal servant from Monday-Thursday. like, they can make their servants dress up in whatever they want, make them breakfast, give them piggy-back rides to class, etc. well, i went for like $120 or something to a group of kids that i pretty much never talk to, which was a little weird for me. one of them is a girl i work with, and one was the guy i went to prom with, but still... at one point, i was up on the pedestal thing being auctioned off, and my friend Rhees, who'd already bought the freshman boy slave with 3 of his friends, hollered at the auctioneer "hey, can we trade Matt for Jennifer?" i was rootin for yes, but K.O. said no. shoot.

Monday was the auction, and Tuesday & Wednesday, i didn't really have to do anything, just bring some baked goods that Judah and Dalton asked for. but then on Thursday (my last day of enslavement), i was required to wear a Tweedle-Dee/Dum costume. a legitimate one, with a big ol' hoop around the tummy and everything. fortunately, i only had to wear it 1st and 2nd hour. then i had a practice Sterling Scholar interview, so i had to wear professional attire (that was called for by Mrs. Yates and Mrs. Quarnburg, not my owners). after my interview though, Alex (she's the one i work with) told me i had to wear like a Tinkerbell outfit--complete with wings--for the rest of the day. (by the way, i did NOT photodocument my costumes. i uh... "forgot.")

we had an assembly 6th hour for the slaves to present their cakes and poems that we were supposed to make for our owners. yes, i was still in my Tinkerbell dress. i'd made my owners a 2-layer devil's food cake with chocolate chips and chocolate frosting. this is how my poem to them went:

Last Monday came full of ice and snow.
that day would be rough, as you all probably know.
We had our assembly, i went next to last
To be sold to whoever threw out the most cash.

Christi it was that kept bidding higher.
(Rhees, Dason, Judd, & Craig tried to get me, but they'd already hired.)
Judah and Dalton were also a part,
So was Alexis to make slavery start.

Day One wasn't bad, i just wore a sign.
Day Two i brought brownies, & cookies the next time.
Day Three, i got a suit that made me want to cry.
"Wear it tomorrow," they said. i thought i would die.

And so i came today dressed as Tweedle-whatever...
I may have lost my self-respect and dignity forever.
Now here i am dressed as a fairy of some kind,
But soon i'll buy you back... and revenge will be mine.

that last line needs some explaination, i think. see, in order to keep owners from going crazy and making their slaves do anything TOO outrageous, there's a catch: no matter how much the slave was bought for, if the slave can come up with $25 on Thursday, they get to buy back ALL of their owners for Friday. so i did, and i had Judah bring me a cake, Christi had to wear the Tweedle-Dee/Dum costume, Alexis had to dress up like a "prep" (she absolutely hates anything name-brand), and... well, Grygla didn't have to do anything. i'd run out of ideas when i got to him.

the makings of the most chocolate-y cake i have ever, ever made.

moving on. Sterling Scholar has officially started. i did really well on my practice interview, and then we had like a presentation to tell us about what we should and should not do in future interviews. it was neat. i'm pretty jazzed about Sterling Scholar, to be honest. i'll regret saying that in a few months, but oh well. we all even got our pictures up in the hall finally! whoo!

they always hang senior pictures of the Sterling Scholars in each category in the main hall of the high school. this is a shot of Jamie Croteau (Dance), me (English), and Chelsea Vreeken (Family & Consumer Sciences). we even got new picture frames this year, so we're lookin pretty legit! (sorry about the glare, though. not much i could do about that.)

Sub-4-Santa Part 1

it's that time again. time for Sub-4-Santa.

for anyone that doesn't know what that is, i will tell you. to shorten Mrs. Kelly's tear-jerker story about how Sub-4-Santa came to be, i'll just say that basically, our school librarian (Mrs. Kelly) realized like 25 years ago that not everyone in Kanab always gets to have such an awesome Christmas. so she started this program, which involves the entire school donating money to raise enough to buy things for families in town that can't really afford nice things for Christmas. this is my first year being on Student Council, so this is actually kind of a new experience for me.

Sub-4-Santa usually lasts about 2 or 3 weeks, and this past week was our first. we did three fundraisers this week, one of which was new to KHS. we put the four milk jugs in the offce (one for each grade. whichever one gets the most money in it by the end of Sub-4-Santa gets like $200 in their class account), the early-out lunch (any 4th hour class that can raise $25 can get out 15 minutes early for lunch), and the all-new Sub-4-Santa Winter Formal Dance.

our Student Body President, Rhees Jackson, always has these great ideas, but then forgets to tell the rest of the student council. he'd had the idea a while ago for a winter dance, and maybe having it for Sub-4-Santa... but we never discussed it in a meeting until last Saturday. the idea was that we would use the leftover decorations from the Christmas Festival (more on that later) to have the dance, but that meant we'd only have a week to advertise this dance. this is where i came in.

i spent about 10 minutes on this poster. yet somehow, it looks almost identical to the one i spent an hour and a half on. ugh.

by Thursday, i'd only heard of one guy that had asked a girl to the dance, and that was my friends Dustin and LaRisa. that's it. but then right before 6th period, i was telling my other friend Carley about something embarassing that had happened in 5th hour. then she said "well it's okay... your day is going to get a lot better... bye!" and then she left. i just stood there and was baffled. i caught on eventually though, and ran out to my car to see what she was talking about. sure enough, there was a metal popcorn tin by my driver's door with a big silver bow on it and a note.

since i was already late for 6th hour, my teacher made me wait until after class to even find out who asked me to the dance! it was awful! anyways after class, i had some friends help me. i opened the popcorn tin, took out the cardboard divider that kept the buttered, caramel, and cheese popcorn, and proceeded to methodically pour the popcorn into some plastic bags to find the name... i wasn't in the mood to dig through all of it. in the middle of the whole thing was simply a Reese's Chocolate Christmas Tree. har har har... it was Rhees. clever.

to answer him, i chose to use an old inside joke between me and Rhees. one time in Sociology last year, we spent the whole class playing with those pink and white Circus Animal cookies, so that's always been kind of a joke. so i went and bought some of those cookies, and made a punny poster that said "It would take a pack of WILD (circus) ANIMALS to keep me from going to Winter Formal With You! ♥-Jennifer". i then used the Animal Cookies and, with the help of Rhees's sister Calli, left a trail of them leading from the garage door to his room. then i left the poster and whatever cookies were left on his bed, and my job was done.

part of my trail of cookies going down the stairs... ha.

so that was all Thursday. Friday night was the Christmas dinner that X-Press always sings at with the Symphony of the Canyons. this year though, they decided that if people are paying $35 a plate to come eat dinner and see the concert, they don't want to have to go through a buffet line. so what does that mean? KHS music students got to serve. :/ it wasn't too bad though, in retrospect. but i did get butter on my new formal dress. haha

the concert itself went alright, nothing to go down in history. but at the end, when X-Press sang the classic Christmas song "Breath of Heaven", i was in tears and i couldn't sing a part of it. when it was all over, i turned in shock to my friends Chelsea, Chanelle, Carley, and Tyrell and said "We're done." never again will i sing at the Christmas dinner... it's weird. even freshman year when i wasn't in X-Press, i was in band and back in that day, all of the music groups played/sang at the dinner. so basically, i've been doing this for the past 4 years, and now it's like... over.

Saturday was the Christmas Festival, which is always in the same place as the dinner the night before. it's got booths for all kinds of things, including a lady from Cedar City that was selling her jewelry and the Arizona Girl Scouts. i helped sell raffle tickets and baked goods with Chelsea, because all of the music students are required to help for at least 11 hours for this whole thing. yikes.

the festival ended at 4 p.m., then i stayed unti like 6 helping to clean up. fortunately, we were having the dance in that same place that night, so we didn't have to take down all of the decorations (we got to leave a bunch of the Christmas trees and all of the hanging decorations), just the tables and the tarps that covered the floor. so then i came home, took a shower, and started getting ready for the dance.

i ended up driving to town to meet Rhees at his house, since he doesn't really know where i live, and i just didn't feel like it was necessary to make him an hour late for the dance just to pick me up. so i got to his house, then we went to the dance... where there were like 10 other people. sound familiar? an awful lot like Sadie's? haha there was really not a huge turnout like we'd hoped for (we tried to advertise it as a winter-version of Homecoming), but we ended up making about $300 towards Sub-4-Santa, so that's good. also, Rhees's mom Julie was the photographer, and she donated her services. whoo! i'll try to put those pictures up when i get them, because they're actually pretty funny.

all in all, that dance ended up being more fun than i'd anticipated. after the dance, Rhees took me and Dason back to his house (i had to get my car, after all), we we all hung out for a little bit with Calli. finally, i deemed myself too sleep-deprived to have any further human contact. i was saying the stupidest things, then finding them hysterical. how i considered myself okay enough to drive half an hour home, i'm not sure. good times, though... good times. Rhees and Dason never fail to make me laugh until i am crying.

Me and President Jackson at the dance. I'm not sure what he's looking at, but what a guy. (:

next, i get to be auctioned off as a slave for a week to who-knows-what kind of people. we'll see how this goes.

Current Heroes.

Thought of the day:

last night, X-Press had a practice with the symphony for the Christmas festival this weekend. at one point, my friends Rhees and Dason were playing with my phone (because, in their words, my phone, an EnV Touch, is "dynamic," whereas Rhees's phone, an EnV 2, is "semi-dynamic," and Dason's phone, a 5-year-old generic one, is "anti-dynamic."), and they put a silly picture of the two of them as my internal screen. the picture itself made me laugh until i was crying, because it was just the two of them on a bus trip that Rhees had sent to my phone just for this reason. in it, they're both smiling, but they ended up looking certifiably insane. once i got past the picture, i saw that they'd changed the banner to say "Happiness Is A Choice." knowing those two, i know they just put that to kind of match the picture, but it really struck a chord with me, whether they meant it to or not.

after the several unpleasant posts recently, i realized that i've been in an extremely foul mood for like the past month. and i really don't like myself that way, you know? i mean, i know the real reason behind such a mood, but that doesn't help me any. so on my drive to seminary this morning, i decided that happiness really is a choice... i just haven't been making it. and it took a silly little joke from two friends to make me realize that.

Rhees and Dason don't actually know this, but that little banner really made a difference to me. plus, that picture makes me laugh every time i open my phone. so as of this moment, this one where i am choosing to let go of the little things and just be happy, this moment where i am choosing to come out of my constant state of self-pity and join the world... this moment, these two friends are my heroes.

This isn't the crazy picture on my phone. This was actually taken right before the whole phone scene, and i think it portrays their heroic-ness very well.

thanks, boys. i owe you.

B100D Donor!

if you can't tell, i stuck a little "100" in my "Blood", because this is my 100th post. (: anyways, i had the opportunity to donate blood today at the high school, and it was such a great experience. i was talking to the lady that was taking care of me the entire time, and while she was pricking my finger we were talking about in "Elf" when Buddy is like "my finger has a heartbeat." haha

favorite story of the day: after i was done actually getting my blood drawn, Dana (the nice lady) told me i was done, and she said "Four minutes, forty-six seconds. Not bad at all! Anything under 6 minutes is considered really fast." So i said, "Do i get some kind of medal for having really speedy blood?" just joking. Well, after she bandaged up my arm, she stuck a cute little pink gauze bow on there and said "Here's your badge of honor." it was awesome! however, i apparently made everyone at school very jealous, because there were little bows all over the place for the rest of the day. oh well, i was first. (: also, i am proud to announce that i did NOT pass out or vomit. i have a tiny bit of a bruise on the tip of my finger where she pricked me, but that's okay. i just want to say that i feel AWESOME about donating blood.

I tried to get a picture of my face, my sticker ("I MAKE A DIFFERENCE") and my bandage all at once.

I thought the "A." stood for Anderson, duh. But really, it meant "Appointment", as opposed to a "W" for "Walk-In." I learned this after i saw Dason Ott, Chanelle Johnson, and Carley Barber with stickers saying "Dason A.", "Chanelle A.", and "Carley A.". haha

My cute cute bow. (: I threw away the green bandage (of course), but i kept the pink bow.

on a side note, here's something interesting: me and my mom are the only people in my immediate family that have O negative blood type. meaning, our blood can literally go to anyone. the rest of my family is O positive. well, i was just talkin to mama about this, and we were all celebrating because we're universal donors, but then she said "but i'm sorry about all the shots you're going to have to get when you're pregnant." "...........what?" then she went on to explain that if my babies have positive blood types, my blood will try to attack them and then we both get very sick. so i guess i have to get like a buttload of extra shots when i have babies, just so my actual blood doesn't have a freak out. bah.