This is the first normal day in... how long?
  Grandma and Grandpa Lundgreen left this morning.  I love them to death, but it's nice being able to relax since they've been here for a week with Thanksgiving and everything.
  It's also normal because I actually have a lot of homework.  Dang.  Fortunately I have no tests to stress about because there were two today.  Speaking of which, my math teacher passed back the tests we took last week...  I literally felt sick to my stomach every time I thought of the stupid thing before I knew what I got, because I kind of ran out of time on it and had to guess on like the last six or seven problems {after studying till 1:30 AM the night before}.  But I was very happy to find out that: A) I wasn't the only one who found it to be extremely difficult, and B) I got a B!  Ok, so maybe an 81% isn't all that wonderful and last year I would've been totally upset that it wasn't an A, but I thought I got a C or a D.  Oh yeah- And in English, we're reading Much Ado About Nothing.  I hate how so many people complain about Shakespeare, because I find it very entertaining!  A challenge?  Oh, yeah, but isn't that the point!
  I was very happy to find out that one of my guy friends {NOT BOYFRIEND, MIND YOU}, is, like me, writing a novel!  I mean, I thought I was one of the only ones!
  And then of course there are those terrible untrue rumors that get spread around about us cheerleaders being lesbians for each other that everyone believes... Fortunately, no one has asked me about it, unlike some of the girls who have been asked like five times if they are lesbian.  So, does this mean I've still maintained my dignity?
  High school!

• Only a tiny bit of homework again!
• Not so pleasant: there's a giant test in Spanish tomorrow.  I was so not expected that.  BUT my teacher/cheer coach also surprised us by giving us a notecard and fifteen minutes to write absolutely any info we wanted to use on the test tomorrow.  What a relief {though I study anyway} !
• In cheer, my stunt group {or more like groupS... for some reason everyone fights over me as flyer} decided we want to start to doing basket tosses: a trick that is extremely scary, something I haven't done since the age of nine,  BUT also very fun and impressive for the newly started basketball season... wink, wink...
• Not so pleasant: the piano recital that I haven't been able to practice for due to Grandpa's hearing issues is on Saturday morning.  BUT it's only in front of my fellow piano students {almost all younger than me}, not a giant event like I originally thought.
• Oh!  How can I have forgotten mention last week how I came home from school to find that we had finally gotten one of those really nice Nikon cameras?!  Trust me, I've already taken thousands of pics {to be uploaded the moment we figure out how the heck how}.

  Don't you just love those little changes in the daily plan that give you more free time and/or make things way easier and/or more enjoyable?  Some examples:

• A long lock-down drill in math class. 
• Less homework.
• No cheer practice {boy am I glad I sit behind Savannah in English- not only does she thoroughly entertain me, she gives me all the information from Coach I don't receive as a cell phone-neclectee}.
• No Extra Mile Club meeting to make me miss the bus I hadn't even been planning on taking in the first place.

  Four days without any stress.  Hallelujah.


Thursday:
  Grandma and Grandpa Lundgreen have been staying with us.  So on Thursday we spend most of the time in the kitchen preparing for the Thanksgiving feast.  At two we went to our cousins' house.  There were twenty-two people in all- my family, my grandparents, my cousins, and my cousins' cousins from their mom's side of the family.
  Turkey, potatoes, yams, rolls, cranberries, green beans, reunion salad, pies...
   It was so fun to meet up with everybody and just chat.  Fortunately the adults decided the six oldest girls {it's funny because all three families have girls as the two oldest, one fifteen and one thirteen}- Kendall, me, Jamie, Rachel, Paige, and Corrie- were old enough to sit with them; their conversations are much more intellectual than the little kids' shouting about bacon.  Afterwards, us girls, feeling slightly guilty about the amount of food we ate, decided to take a walk on the green belt behind their neighborhood.  It was absolutely gorgeous, with a cool atmosphere, glowing greenery, and even a few droplets of rain.
  When we got back from the walk, we decided to watch a movie.  It was called Sarah's Key, and I don't know whether to say it was a good movie or a bad movie.  I do know that it was without a doubt the saddest movie I've ever seen {and I've seen a lot of sad movies}.  Let's just say that I am very thankful that I don't live under any of the circumstances any the characters were living under.
  To feel happier we watched some funny videos {including BYU Divine Comedy, Kid History, the aftermath of wisdom teeth removal, and parents telling their kids they took their Halloween candy} and then started playing Scum.  I didn't remember at all how to play it, but somehow I managed to win all four rounds.
  After being together for almost eight hours, we were still sad to leave.  So the kids somehow managed to convince the parents to let us have a sleepover, with the six older girls staying and the eight little kids going over to my house.    Though Kendall and the parents went up earlier, the rest of us girls stayed up till 3:30 AM {and could've stayed up for hours more} watching a chick flick, playing White Lies and BS {Baloney Sandwich}, and listening to each others' true laughs.  Man, I forgot how fun being a stupid teenager is!


Friday
  Friday was Black Friday and Jamie's 15th birthday.  The three younger girls took forever to get up and then get ready, but we went to Dana Park to eat lunch and shop.  After going to Costa Vida, we spent most of our time in the bookstore and then flipping through some vintage calendars at Anthropology.  The calendars included all this info about the Zodiac signs, which were so insanely accurate that none of us could put them down, even though we didn't plan on buying them.
  Friday night my parents went out to celebrate a friend's birthday, so Grandma, Rachel, and I played Scategories and Monopoly.    Definitely a way to make you smarter!

Today {Saturday}
  Today has been dedicated to Christmas.  The radio blasting songs like The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, we've put up lots of decorations just as I've been waiting for for the past like ten months and twenty-five days, to be exact.

  Oh, the wonders of relaxation!    

   

• heavenly father
• life
• air
• gravity
• family
• friends
• love
• the atonement
• music
• food
• home
• freedom
• animals
• seasons
• creativity
• names
• hope
• church
• learning
• patriotism
• contrast
• clouds
• dancing
• eyes
• water
• believing
• seminary
• books
• art
• clothing
• trees
• secrets
• surprises
• time
• journals
• history
• numbers
• courage
• sacrifices
•  ears
• honesty
• fire
• pencils
• prophets
• teachers
• moon
• tradition
• health
• babies
• personal progress
• stars
• uniqueness
• pictures
• science
• laughter
• culture
• soldiers
• flight
• inspiration
• good presidents
• innocence
• sleep
• fun
• hands
• truth
• pioneers
• temples
• founding fathers
• gardens
• noses
• acting
• change
• trials
• fun
• eternity

  Wow.  I actually have a four day weekend and no homework.  Can this be for serious?

  What a day.  Just a Thursday, but absolutely psycho.  I mean, the massive amounts of homework and tests to study for were pretty big, but that's not even it.

1.   At tumbling I did two roundoff-backhand-spring-back-tucks with the coach not even getting close to spotting me.  Grandma and Grandpa Lundgreen came to Arizona for Thanksgiving, and even though they're currently staying with my cousins, Grandma came to see me.
2. Upon riding home, we got a call from the kiddos saying that they found a kitten in the middle of the road.  Its sibling had been hit by a car already, so they brought at home.  She is about five weeks olds, fitting in the palms of your hand, and is super sweet and cute with pretty gray stripes and white mittens on all four paws.  We named her Belle.   
3. Dad taught me how to drive in the church parking lot {and I did pretty good}.

  Today for mutual we discussed genealogy.  They showed us how we could, using a certain website, find many of our ancestors whose names we could then take to the temple for ordinances.
  I feel like my heart been tossed out into the open and can't decide if its a warm, summer day, or a frozen wintery night every time I hear the word "genealogy."  I always immediately think of the giant Lundgreen book or the Girouard family website.  Both are filled to the brim with many names and dates... photographs and maps...  In the Lundgreen book, there are dozens of interesting, funny, sad, or awe-inspiring stories that give life to those people.
  But that's it!  Those people... In so many cases we don't know who those people are, the ones who are our very reason for existence!   They are just a name, a picture... or not even that.  Just another mystery floating around the universe from not long after their death...

  So now is the time to change that.  I am going to learn about my ancestors, but even more importantly I will be the ancestor whose name is not just Katherine Elizabeth Lundgreen-

   I was born the first daughter of a strong, LDS family on October, 10, 1996.  I have blue eyes and long, dark-golden-tinted blond hair that I prefer to wear straight down.  I am five feet tall and weigh ninety-five pounds, more or less.  I was baptized at the age of eight.  I have five younger siblings named Rachel, Adam, Olivia, Eric, and Sophie.  I am a writer, an artist, a gymnast/cheerleader, an actress, a singer, and a pianist.   I have always owned a pet or two or more.  I am a Freshman at Highland High School.  I have read the Book of Mormon three times, half the Dotrine and Covenants, and am 390 pages into the Old Testament.  I try to appreciate all the amazing gifts God has given us, even if they don't seem like gifts.  I am a truly existing soul.

  And isn't this why I am writing, right here, right now?              

  Last night I got back from Camp LoMia.  We had had a youth conference that started on 11/11/11 about the Power of One, how it only takes one person to make a huge difference.
  There were lots of amazing lessons- about temples, dating, etc-, fun games- scaling a 12-foot wall, balancing twenty+ people on a small canvas, obstacles course, ziplining-, crafts, snow on the ground, and a dance.   Both times it was 11:11 11/11/11 we celebrated- the first time releasing 400 balloons into the sky and the second time just partying like it was New Year's.
  Gotta admit, the dance was my favorite part.
 

  Oh, my.
  Did I ever tell you how much of a passion I don't have for math?
  Funny that I'm at the Honors sophomore level too.  But I just figured, even if I sometimes hate it- (1.) Any other level would be too easy, (2.) I might as well take the Honors credit, (3.) The only reason I haven't had the best grade in that class, though I have now raised it to an 88%! is because I make stupid mistakes on tests {no matter how long I take to go over each problem carefully}, which would happen regardless of what level I was in, and (4.) Math is just important.
  Right now I am just a teensy bit tired {literally} of staying up till like midnight trying to figure out lots of problems that all have different formulas to go with them.   
  But it'll be worth it in the end... right?

  So the little girls thought it would be fun to craft with clay.  Seeing they had a lot, I took some and starting carving a swan.  After a few minutes I left it on the table so I could write for a little bit.
  But when I came back down to work on it again, it was warm on the baking sheet and hard as a rock.
  You've got to be kidding me.
  "Olivia!  Why'd you bake it?!"
  "Sophie said that you said we could."
  "What?!  I never said that!   I told you guys like five times that you were welcome to bake your own.  Does mine look done?"
  "Yeah."
  Yeah, right!  I had carved the basic shape, but its body was still lumpy with my fingerprints.  The only thing that was even slightly done was one wing, which I had removed in order to shape properly and prick in some feathers with the tip of a knife, then pressed back on at the base. The other wing had been only slightly severed off before that first wing-creating step.  
  So gorgeously done.
  Too late to fix it now.
  So what's the moral of this story?  {Refer to title.}

  Two weeks ago my Seminary teacher randomly came up to me and asked if I could sing a duet.  Although I have no idea how he knew I like to sing, I happy answered yes.
  So yesterday I sang Come Thou Fount with my friend Ashlyn, our other friend Georgia playing the piano.  Since we're in different classes, we got to perform twice.  And it was so much fun!  We had arranged one version of the gorgeous classic so that there were sections of solos, harmony, and unison.  The song also has a good range, so we were able to use both head voice and chest voice.  The whole time we performed almost without nervousness and smiled out into the audience.
  Surely there's nothing better than sharing your testimony through music!

  I absolutely love Mutual.  I love the the whole youth program.  Actually, how about I just say that I love the whole Church?
  Anyway, today all the YW were combined for the activity.  We went to the Beecroft's giant underground wally-ball court and played in the dark with glow sticks.  Definitely pretty legit, if you ask me!
  I'm so glad that I can have so many friends who have my same standards who I can have so much fun with every week!