me trying to be cool HAHAHA

...it all went from "lame" to "jaw-dropping" in about two seconds.  I casually checked my email to find out that:

1. I got one of the lead parts in Pirates: A Love Story, an original production by our good friends Andrea McFeely {a Hollywood writer} and Karli Giles {a brilliant composer who was also my director for FunkyTown last year}.  This isn't their first time putting on this show, and when I saw it last year I was absolutely blown away by the beautiful colonial music and thoughtful script.  I'm playing Julianna, the lead's fiance who is everything good in the world.  She is strong, she fights to stop slavery, and she sings some very lovely songs.  You don't understand, sometimes I'll listen to full movie soundtracks so I can hear to orchestral music similar to that in this show, AND I've been obsessed with Elizabeth Swan's dresses pretty much forever.  Like I'm saying as a kid when most of my acquaintances were going through their High School Musical/Jonas Brother/Hannah Montana  fangirl  phases, I was playing with my Felicity and Elizabeth historical American Girl Dolls, longing to live a few centuries ago.
2. Despite the fact that there is so much competition and that I put it 2nd choice and wrote an entire third of my application on why I wanted to attend Hawaii, I got accepted into BYU Provo.  Still going to Hawaii, but I still cannot believe that the years and years of hard work have paid off like this.  I am so honored. 

this image may appear totally bizarre, but it appears during a brief few pages of my book

It seems as though my right brain is experiencing a boom.  Suddenly everything I want to do has to do with creativity, so I spend my time drawing, creating totally amateur composite images in Photoshop, and most importantly developing new ideas for my book.
Why do I write?  I've written since I was a kid, and though I once dreamed about being a published child writer, obviously it's a little harder than that.  For me though, it's not even necessarily about writing something to make money.  I don't know if I have the capability to write something worthy of the market!  But it doesn't matter-- I write because it makes me use both my brain and my heart.  I have fallen in love with my characters whom I've worked for years to try to develop as realistically as possible.  I spend hours exercising my mental muscles as I try to weave ideas of a plot into something intricate, something original.  In the case of the novel I'm working on now, it's a fantasy, which means that I am not constrained by any means as I create my own world with its own histories and cultures.Writing forces me to contemplate the many factors that cause a person to be the way they are, and to meditate on how a regular person reacts when being thrown into an irregular situation.  The average human is simply that-- human--not as brave and selfless as they would like to think they are.  So what could cause a person to develop these heroic traits?  How might they learn to deal with {since most can't simply shrug off} the pains brought on by sudden trial?  How do they love?

Here's a few quotes to give you an idea of what my weekend was like:

• "I'm a rat-finder." Sophie, A Moment of Proud Self-Discovery
•  "The ground is a battlefield." (dramatic pause) "Bacteria fight.  See there next to your feet?  There's a bacteria battle going on. And there.  And there. Everywhere." -Eric
• "Did you know that women make an average of 78¢ per hour less than men?  It adds up, you know.  We should do lesbian strikes, where all the women of the planet refuse to be with men.  Let's see how quickly men change their minds about gender inequality after that!" -Rachel

Unfortunately it's impossible to capture sunset properly.  It looks like a plain afternoon blue, but the light only lasted a few minutes after this picture and the sky was filled with beautiful colors.

Once it had gotten fairly dark, we climbed up the rest of the way where we were joined by Parley and his date.  "I'm just going to warn you, this will probably be the cheesiest date you've ever been on," Dallin said.  "Are you kidding?" I exclaimed.  "I dig cheesy."  So he turned the stereo back on and with the picnic pulled out some candles and some champagne glasses for the Martinelli's.   Ughhh it was too cute to handle-- as it states on my bio page, I'm way to much of a romanticist.
Afterwards, we hiked back down with flashlights and then drove over to Riverview Park.  Among other things, we messed around on the webs, made each other crazy dizzy in the spin machine {it was hilarious because we could not for the life of us stand straight}, and ran through water spouts {Parley got completely saturated after pretty much daring himself to jump over the giant fountain in the middle}.  Later we dropped the other two off and then Dallin and I headed to my place to hold puppies and watch August Rush with my siblings.
Thank you Dallin for giving me the best Valentine's Day ever!  Thank you for seeing through my shyness back in August, for finding me interesting enough to read my blog, for being patient enough to teach me how to longboard or do cool hiphop moves, for making me laugh and smile and feel at home and adventurous on so many occasions that it's hard for me to get out of the car or hang up the phone.

a bonus picture from the Masquerade Ball two weeks ago.

      Wow, I am feeling so happy with the present.  Although I wouldn't say I love school right now {I don't really understand many of my classes except for art, which is great because I can just sit there paiting the whole hour all by myself listening to my iPod- an introvert/future design student's paradise} but I survive the other classes by sketching away the time. Maybe that's terrible.  But aside from that, I'm really trying to live in the moment.  I have just 51/2  months before I leave AZ for good {which is CRAZY} so  I've enjoyed making the last little while worth it.
         We have a litter of puppies at my house right now, seven little cuties who are now 21/2 weeks old and love to use their newly-discovered voice boxes in the weirdest ways possible as well as chew on each other.  One of my new favorite memories now is when Dallin & I fell asleep on the couch with one of the pups cuddled up asleep between us.

unedited photo proof of my ability to do the dishes with an arm and rock a baby retriever to sleep in the other

         My New Years Resolution was to work out an hour every day.  I know it's not that impressive, but for someone who is in no sports / has no gym membership and has to be completely self-motivated, I'd say it's pretty good.  At least it's better than what I used to do {going home and goofing off on the internet with a dessert in hand}.  I was dedicated for a little until I got sick for two weeks and then got slammed by the amazingly fun business of Footloose-- but now that that's over, I've already started to get back into it.  Honestly, once I get into the habit, I love love love working out and can be frequently seen with a huge grin as I go running along the road.  I just know that I feel a million times better when I'm constantly excersizing, which also motivates me to eat healthy so I don't have to "work it off," which makes me feel even better.  The workout changes every day, but I usually do 30-40 minutes of cardio followed by 20-30 minutes of various Pinterest strength-training excersizes.
     Anyway, enough of my rambling.  Drumroll for the unbelievable thing I've been dying to say...
THIS GIRL JUST GOT ACCEPTED INTO BYU HAWAII.
Yes, I said it.  I found out last night while out at a restaurant with a big group of friends and pretty much freaked out.  My mom called to tell me and I almost couldn't believe my ears.  Could this be true?  My whole childhood I thought I'd never actually grow up, but now I'm actually getting ready to go to school in tropic paradise with kids from countries across the globe.  Like my hard work actually paid off, after years of dedicating practically all my time and efforts to make sure I was good enough to go to college.  I'm so excited.   I feel so blessed.
  But back to what I was saying earlier, I'm happy with the present.  I don't wanna go away quite yet because I wanna enjoy all the time I can with these amazing family and friends.

It was weird to see Tyler play the part of the cruel, bad-a Chuck.  I've known him since I was a baby in Boston!

Since Footloose, I've hung out a ton with some of the Bomont teens. In the front row from left to right, you can see Jessie (Ariel), Lois (Urleen), Adyson (Rusty), Jessica (Wendy-Jo), Kale (Ren) and Dallin (Willard); you can also see our CD rapper friend Joey J in the white shirt in the picture above this and Dale on the top second-to-left of the first picture.   Whether we're in a group-message swapping our most disturbing action-shot stage photos or chillaxing in the hot tub, these people know how to make anything enjoyable.

On the left: I must brag that Kale is National Youth Actor of the Year and  Jessie Jo has also won statewide awards.  Man, was it great to work with such a phenomenal cast!