School is important.  I get it.  I love learning because, even if we lose everything, no one can take away the knowledge we use to sculpt our minds.  But let's get real here.  Who doesn't love time to be a little free, have some independence, soak up the sun?  Cause I do.
   Well, with more time on my hands, I can be more flexible to exercise/eat right, draw, blog, swim, write songs/my novel.  I've already read two books, drawn some headshots of three of the main characters in my book, and have started developing a workout routine.   It's great too because, now that I know I want to get into graphic design, it's okay if I spend my whole day using my creativity.
 It's kinda funny.  Bryan is going to Italy for eight days with his parents for his senior trip {I know, right?  JEALOUS.} and I leave for the Grand Canyon for five days the afternoon of the night he gets back.  But before the two week period during which neither of us will be able to see or speak to each other, we managed to sneak in some time at the Salt River.  {You can tell who I am in the picture because I'm way shorter than everyone, including Bryan, who's somewhere between 6' & 6'1" while I'm somewhere between 5'& 5'1".  Tragic right?} It's at times like this that I love Arizona, because the blazing heat can make any freezing cold river feel like pure paradise as you float lazily down the current in tubes.  We tied all our tubes together and sipped our drinks and tossed the leftover giant marshmallows that we didn't eat at each other as the music played calmly from the canoe.
  Suddenly we struck some rapids-- my tube was at the back, and when we jolted over the boulders my tube got sucked under and I fell off while the rest of the people raced off in the frighteningly fast water.  Now I was stranded, trying to maneuver my way through some not-so-friendly river that, while not very wide or deep, was jagged with boulders and rapid water all the way across and blocked off by wild thorny brush on both sides.  Far ahead Bryan abandoned the safety of his own tube to come rescue me.  I wasn't trying to be damsel in distress at all, but I felt very distressed when, while trying to get to him, the water got too high and I lost my footing, getting whisked away into the dangerously quick current.  There was no way for me to avoid hitting rocks and, try as I might, I couldn't get regain my footing.  My best bet was to try to abstain from cracking my head on the rocks because then no bueno would very quickly become muy malo.  Finally I managed to get up.  Bryan, what a guy, had already been wading against the current to reach me, and we met up carefully in the middle with a long embrace.

    "I feel like this is something that would come out of a Nicholas Sparks book," he laughed.  "I hope you give me a really good kiss when this is over."     
   Well now I was no longer alone, but we still had the dilemma of getting out of the rapids and swimming who-knew-where to find our friends.  We tried to edge our way sideways for control, like he'd taught me back when we went skiing. Unfortunately, we realized we hadn't even seen the worst of the rapids when we reached a spot where the water plunged over a row of thick boulders.  We already had an abundance of battle scars, and even just standing there, the suction power was so strong that I almost pulled Bryan forward as I clutched his arm {trying not to lose him again}.  Bryan thought we'd have to succumb to the current like I'd accidentally done earlier if we ever wanted to get out, but luckily I found a branch to grab onto and we {thank heavens} eventually got out.  Finally, in the calm water, we were able to very tiredly swim to the shore where our friends had parked the canoes and collapse.  I gave him his well-deserved kiss.
  "Wow," I moaned, pointing to an inflamed area on my ankle.  "I can't even tell if that's a bruise or a scrape."
  "Oh, that would be a hematoma," Bryan explained.  "Pretty much a blood leak right underneath the skin."
  I raised my brow.  "You're not even a doctor yet, yet you already know these things..."  We know who's "right-brained" and who's "left-brained" in this relationship {although I recently found out this theory is a myth!}.     
   Even if I did have to go through a semi-embarrassing damsel-in-distress moment, it was a great start to summer.  At some point as we all floated relaxed on our tubes with the sunshine on our faces and the cool water on our legs, someone shouted out "WE'RE SENIORS!"   Wow, did realization strike.  One more super-fast-flying year, and then the childhood we thought would never end will draw to a remorseful close and we will be Adults, out in the Big World to meet our Destiny.

Rachel, me, Kendall, Paige

  I hadn't been to a graduation since my Aunt April's, when my mom and I flew to California for a few days to see her.  Being probably six at the time, I found it to be quite boring.  But at this year's graduation,  as the caps flew in the air with cheers of elation, none of my best efforts could stop my eyes from welling up with tears.  My dear cousin Kendall, the girl just five months older than me who I've known my whole life, is eighteen now and going to Beret's Honor College at ASU.
  As the family joined in celebration for some late night waffles, my brain couldn't help but reflect back on almost two decades of memories.   As a kid I remember thinking about the future as if it were impossible, that it would never come.  The fourth graders seemed like big kids, and I could not possibly imagine myself being a Teenager, though I figured Teenagers probably drove cars & partied with friends every weekend & went on dates & wore makeup & had dreadful amounts of homework & had people waving alcohol in their faces everywhere they went to try and make them sin.   The post-high school years?  Pssshhht.  Those were just a myth.
  Yet now as Kendall moves into adulthood and I closely follow, the years where today seemed like a fantasy feel like just yesterday.   I remember Rachel & I laying on the white kitchen tile of our Boston home, watching The Little Mermaid on our portable video cassette TV when suddenly the doorbell rang and Kendall & Paige arrived from Arizona, my first memory of them, since we were all just babies when my family moved east.  After that, a vivid influx of countless memories streams in my mind, making all the time that's passed even more shocking.   Where do I even begin?

• Our favorite activity was sleepovers, and over the years we would do stuff from sledding down the stairs in sleeping bags to cardboard princess castles to discussing politics and religion late into the night {even as primary kids} to laughing our heads off over a game of Balderdash-- although no matter how old we were, we never tired of the traditional Lundgreen sourdough waffles nor chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream.  At one of these sleepovers when we were probably around seven, we had a spa/makeover night, using my mom's foot bath massager, lining up in a hair train, and applying makeup on each other.  We convinced my mom to buy spa masks, and then Kendall suggested we put cucumbers on our eyes to make ourselves look young again.  Though I complied, I was not thrilled with the idea of looking younger-- if people already thought I looked five, now I'd look like a baby!  Another time in elementary school Kendall was going through a health nut phase.  We were making frosting, but when I tried to lick the creme cheese wrapper, she freaked out.  "That's filled with cholesterol!  The fat's gonna clog up your arteries!"  Needless to say I dropped the package real fast.  Or how about the time we Googled Greek mythology and freaked out because we accidentally saw a photo of a naked statue of Aphrodite?
• When we first moved back, Kendall & I would hang out separately from Rachel & Paige because of age difference.  But at some point we thought it would be more logical to have us switch because Paige & I shared the middle name Elizabeth while Kendall & Rachel shared the middle name Anne, so we, of course, formed the Anne Club and the Elizabeth Club.  But that was back in the era when we would pretend to give birth to baby dolls, so who knows why are brains thought that way.
• Uncle Dave always told us the story of Tick & Tock, a prankster pair of mice-sized men that followed the Lundgreen family over the rainbow from Denmark.  Tick & Tock, we learned, are pretty much the nicest little guys ever-- they will write birthday wishes on the whiteboard while you sleep if you are kind enough to leave them some cookies and playdough beds in the dollhouse-- but boy they can be troublemakers.  One time they left a trail of jellybeans from
  
  Paige's pillow all the way downstairs to the kitchen and into the waffle batter!   
• Christmases, of course, are filled with tradition.  Almost every Christmas Eve, our two families get together for a ham dinner before we read Luke II.  But as children, we would always reenact the Nativity, get matching jammies, and watch the online Santa tracker like hawks while others stared out the window looking for Rudolph's nose in the distance.  Of course, we were too young back then to realize that Santa usually doesn't get to Arizona till much later when we're asleep!  In the morning, though, breakfast with our cousins were usually filled with tales of how the reindeer accidentally kicked the window and such.
• When I was in fourth grade & Kendall in fifth, we both watched Titanic.  Our parents always called us "old souls," and for some reason the movie rocked both of us.  We were shocked at the horrible luck, pride, and irony that resulted in such a tragedy on April 15, 1912.  I can tell you off the top of my head that out of approximately 2200 passengers, only 700-something made it, while the other 1500 perished in the freezing Atlantic-- yes, Kendall & I were so horrified by this that we spent the next couple years researching every last fact, visiting museums, devouring every book from historical fiction novels to encyclopedias, watching other movies and then again the 1997 version more times than we could count {so many times I could probably hum the entire soundtrack to the exact key}.   Despite being a ten-year-old too young to even understand why my mom always had to skip the scene in the car {"You already had to fast forward the part where Jack sketched Rose naked, what more could they possibly do?!" I asked every time.}, I sobbed uncontrollably every time I watched the ship sink.  See, even now I get really irritated when people make Titanic jokes, because even then at that young age Kendall & I understood the horrors of death.  We didn't mean to be morbid, but rather we were compelled by the thought that life much more fragile than we'd ever realized {if you look at those numbers, that would be akin to taking my entire high school and killing everyone but the senior class}.  I remember one time finishing a novel and being so saddened by the orphaning of this fictional twelve-year-old & his sister that I spent the next few days in complete depression, angered that other kids my age could be goofing off when there were such horrible things happening in the world {it was a foolish notion that humanity is selfish for feeling happiness, but how else was a kid supposed to react?}.  So of course...  the Thanksgiving after we saw the movie, while everyone else was riding bikes, Kendall and I started writing a book.  It was about a group of kids named Hailey, Kalia, Jake, and Peter who accidentally got superpowers, including straight-F-report-card Jake's sudden brainiac abilities that allowed him to invent a time machine {the Lindenberg} that took them back to the R.M.S. Titanic, where they met a pretty third class passenger named Anna and got stuck aboard the doomed ship. We never finished it, and unfortunately, I don't even know what happened to the book!  I did proceed to write two short stories and several poems on my own. 
  
• If you haven't noticed by now, Kendall & I were history nuts, so we were thrilled when {when I was in third grade} Santa Claus gave us four girls American Girl Dolls.  Kendall got Swedish pioneer Kirsten, Rachel and I got American colonists Felicity {Patriot} & Elizabeth {Loyalist}, and Paige got 19th-century Mexican-American Josephina.  We played with these dolls so often that Santa later gifted us with more dolls such as Great Depressionist Kit & Victorian factory-worker Nelly.       
• Let's not forget our adventures at the giant jungle playground Makutu's Island, or rollerskating/launching rockets/rolling down the grand hills at Freestone Park, or escaping to a beautiful Scottsdale hotel for my fifteenth birthday. Of course, no number of years will make the four of us girls & my mom stop laughing every time someone mutters the word "nipple" under their breath, and we will probably spend the rest of our lives hearing references to "a type of fly that moves so fast, no one has ever seen it."  I hope even when we get older we'll enjoy chick flicks like Twilight & When in Rome and still do stuff like spontaneously deciding to see movies that start in ten minutes like In Time. 
    

I know there are way more memories that I've forgotten to write down, but that's the thing-- when you've grown up together, how can one little blog post serve justice to an entire lifetime of memories?  I never believed my mom when she told us that she felt like she was a kid just yesterday, but now I'm starting to understand.   It's funny how Kendall, who vowed not to marry before she was at least 24, now has a steady boyfriend who will get back from his mission when she's 19 {and I too have a {BF}.   But I guess even if childhood is slipping away, life isn't.  In fact, it's just beginning.  So good luck dear cuz.