Tomorrow is my last day of school.
  The finals that I took today were relatively easy.  I was pretty worried about math, since I just barely have an A in it, but the final was better than I hoped.  It was just a very time-consuming test, so I'll have have to finish it tomorrow at lunch.  Otherwise, the finals haven't been too bad.  And I think I am going to keep my record of straight-A's!
  The thought of tomorrow being the last day of eighth grade seriously blows my mind.  Junior high... over?!    I will admit... I'm not JH's biggest fan...  But I remember, even in 5th grade, thinking of 7th grade like it would never come.  High school?  Simply a figment of the imagination.
  But seriously.  Life goes by so fast.  In some ways, it seems as though the next four years will go by so slowly, but I know it's only JHx2.  It is certainly a giant leap, though.  Now is the time when I will start making important choices in my life, determining my future.  Really reaching for the stars.  I know it will get hard at times, but high school will be the time to make more friends, gain a stronger testimony in Seminary, learn, {jackpot 16}, and much more.  This will be it.
  So now, allow the page to be turned as the next chapter of my life begins.
    

• Finals
• Packing
• Finding out that Dad's letting some of the guys in his company stay in our house while we're gone
• Olivia and Sophie falling off a swing that broke in midair and Olivia possibly breaking her nose.  At least Mom had told them to slow down and they did before it happened.  Could've been worse......
• Eric whacking his head on the table
• Adam losing his wallet with all his $60 in it, possibly stolen at school.  (Many tears later, Mom luckily found it in another pair of jeans, right before she threw it in the washer.)
• Finals

  Yesterday...  Not even an hour after I got home from school, Mom called me telling to be ready to have her pick me up in ten minutes.  Apparently she had just gotten a call asking if I could be in the recording for my stake's Camp theme song this year.
  Of course I immediately said yes.  The woman who is in charge of it is Sister Cavenee, whom I took lessons from and is no less than the most talented singer in the stake.  So we rushed over to her house, where there was about eight or so other girls.  Most of them were sixteen, so I felt like it was an honor for me to be asked to tag along.  Once I was there, we all got in the car and listened to the song in the car (since most have us had just heard it once).  For the past two years, Sister Cavenee actually wrote the songs, but this year she just took another song and changed the lyrics just slightly.  I also found out that the song- with our recording- would be taught to the girls at Time to Blossom.  Whoa!
 We were taken to the home of who I think was her brother.  At the back of his house was a fantastic recording room carefully constructed for the sake of sound.  And then it was so neat to listen to each other as we sang, the song seriously breath-taking.
  It was a really neat (if not quite unexpected) experience.  I hope that the Young Women who hear it will like it just as much as they too learn it.

  It's been exactly three years since I started The Flip-Flop Fantasy.  Wow, how time flies!
  I know I have certainly changed as well.  Of course I did.  The blog was started the end of 5th grade, and tomorrow starts the last week of 8th grade.  In some ways, I even feel like a different person.  I have grown...

• Spiritually
• In maturity
• Less sensitive
• About 4 or 5 inches (Yesterday I measured myself and I am FINALLY 5' tall!)
• Musically, artistically, and in writing
• Way less shy
• Way more comfortable on stage 
• In understanding
• And in school (you should hope).

  You would not believe how glad I am that I started this blog.  I know I will forever cherish the memories tucked inside its pages.  

  On Wednesday, April 6th, I had the opportunity to receive my Young Women's medallion.  It was our ward's Young Women in Excellence night. I was so excited that all my hard work had paid off, and that excitement only grew when I realized what day it was.  April 6th was the 281st anniversary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, thus also the real birthdate of Christ.
  Personal Progress was such a wonderful learning experience.  It taught me to be more Christlike by serving others, following the commandments, and simply helped me grow a testimony.  The leaders are right when they that the testimony is the seeds that I planted for my Faith project.  If you nourish it with goodness, it will soon blossom.
  I am glad that I finished Personal Progress when I did.  I've heard that in high school you don't have much time.  It's also great because my "armor" is thick.  Now that I've finished, I would really like to earn my Honor Bee.
  And for those of you who are slacking on your PP, I encourage -  no, plead with - you to really work on and finish it.  It is so worth it.        

  First off, happy birthday to all the May babies of the family- Dad, Sophie, Kendall, and Eric!  Today is Eric's b-day, and I am hoping to make it great.  I want to take him out to ice cream at McDonald's, but we'll see if that works out.
  So on Monday we found out that we had an essay exam in social studies that had to be written without any notes or anything.  He gave us the possible essay questions, so I chose the one about the start of WWII.     The night before the essay I wrote the whole thing and got it memorized it.  Literally, as I wrote the test on Wednesday, I just had to pull the words from my memory as if out of of book, and hardly had to think about it.  100%, I elatedly found out today.
 Also, last Thursday Mr. Hickman FINALLY started the solo auditions for a part in the song For Good, from Wicked.  He kept saying two weeks prior to that that he would do it, and then postponing it.  Anyway, he did it.  Almost everyone in the choir tried out that first day.  The funny thing was, he chose a really strange, difficult part of the song that I didn't even know was solo.  My voice kept cracking, but so did everyone else's, and he kept having me sing.  Then the next day he did the good solo part, but only tried two girls (the solo actually was split into two parts).  I asked him at the end of class if we would have more people try out.  He said yes, and by his tone of voice I inferred that he was going to have me try.  This was true and... drumroll....  I got the solo with one of my best choir friends, Dae (who was actually in the trio with me in the last concert)!!!  We were both so excited because Broadway is "our music type."  And let me tell you, Dae is really good, with gorgeous vibrato.  Even long before the try-outs I knew she would get one of the parts.
  Yesterday was the day of the concert.  It went really well, and I wasn't even slightly scared, though just months ago I would've been terrified!      

• Well, first off, that I am writing this right now while I have a thousand things of homework.  But that's only because I absolutely cannot figure it out and am waiting for Mom to get home and help me.
• In Spanish, we had to get in groups of two and create a lesson about a certain concept to the class.  My partner and I taught it through a skit.  Well, naturally I took over and created the whole thing, the script and the handout to go with it, making sure it was perfect.  I don't mind that kind of stuff.  So, we performed today, and I made sure everything was super dramatic and funny.  But only halfway through the entire thing, my partner said, "Okay!  I'll hand out the worksheet now!"  What?!!!!  I gave her a look of bewilderment and tried to discreetly let her know that she had skipped a ton of the skit/lesson.  She didn't understand.  So I broke my character, tossed any thought of the rest of the storyline over my shoulder, and taught the rest of the lesson just plain (which was really awkward).  Yeah... well I just checked Snapgrades and found out that we got 25 POINTS docked off!  It's a only B, but in my world, that makes a huge difference, especially when it lowered my overall grade in the class down two percent.  So much for all that hard work!  Oh well.... What can I do...  I forgive her... 
• In Social Studies, the class listened to the song We Didn't Start the Fire.  It is basically a blob of names and events and simply random things from 1949-1989.  Well, we had to get into groups of six and write a new version of the song, from 1990-present.   The group I ended up was not doing anything the first day of working on it, so yesterday I decided to go home and write the whole thing myself.  Then today I found out that it was supposed to have some internal rhyming.  That wouldn't be too hard to change a few things around, I figured.  So you'd think that, since I wrote the entire song by myself, that they'd think they should probably help me fix up the internal rhyming.  Nope!  Only one out of all my five group members helped me!  Hey, at least it gives me more control of the assignment and thus my grade!
• Tonight was the Hurricanes Award Night.  For the second year in a row, I have gotten an award from a teacher I totally did not expect.  This time it was math, which is by far my lowest grade (though still an A) and my least favorite subject.  At the same time, I was awarded for working as hard as I can, which I really do try to do, even if I make really stupid mistakes on some of the tests sometimes.    

  Last Friday, all the youth 14+ in my stake got to go to the Special Olympics Eve ceremony.  Special Olympics is held every year for those who are disabled.
  It was so cool to see all those people who were part of it.  Even though they were disabled, they were about to see their dreams come true.  What I especially loved about them is that they were so kind and loving.  Even though we didn't know them, they were so quick to come up and give us hugs.
  I was disappointed to not be able to see the actual games, but either way I was so glad I could be there.

I was pretty worried about this week.  But now it's over.  And everything went better than I thought. Whew!

• Both the tests took were pretty easy.  The math one really scared me, but once I got it, I realized that studying pays off.
• In Science, we had to make Power Points or iMovies on a certain topic we didn't get to choose.  Luckily I ended up working on it with a friend, but the topic wasn't the easiest (human impacts on the environment- I really didn't want to sound like a Hippie or Al Gore) and the computer kept crashing.  I was't very happy when it didn't get done at school when it was supposed to be done, and my partner and I had to take it to my house and finish it.  Turns out, that was a really good thing.  My computer has a newer version of iMovie that is both easier and cooler, and so it had a lot more effects and stuff that other people didn't have.  I was still worried about him not liking the speed or something.  But when we showed it to the class, everyone loved it, and it got 100%.  On SnapGrades there was a little note beneath it saying that it was the best one yet.  Then today Mr. Cochran asked if he could download it to show to students next year!  I guess a little hard work and frustration pays off too!
• For our final in PE, the same thing happened.  We had to get in big groups to create a game and teach it to the class.  I thought it would not go well.  It was called Blind Man, and when we performed we had very little time and people weren't listening the best.  But in the end, Ms. Cuppage said that she would give us extra credit because she wanted to use it for her students next year.

Tomorrow is the big choir festival  Hopefully the good luck won't have worn out by then!    

  MAY DAY.  Today is Dad's birthday.
  We have already started our celebrations with a giant, delicious breakfast.  Dad was very pleased to find that Mom bought him a new wheelbarrow- plastic, so there'll be no rust and no splintering handles.
  Unfortunately Mom and Sophie are leaving any minute now...  They were invited by their best friends to go to Disneyland, and the tickets just happened to be for tomorrow.  This is how Sophie is celebrating her birthday, which is the 12th.  Even if they will be gone till Tuesday, it will be so fun for them.
  Anyway, I will be doing Dad's big meals.  For dinner I am making jambalaya!  Today's Sunday, so we can't do anything big, but we will make it the best we can.
  I am so grateful that I can have him in my life.  He is so smart, faithful, kind, patient, and everything else that's good!
  And even if he is a year older, everybody still think's he's 29.