Warning: Long Post Ahead

Ho hum. Where to start? These past few weeks (maybe it's only been one, but it seems longer) have been pretty fantastic/crazy. I'll just give you the highlights in no particular order.

• I TURNED SIXTEEN!!! CHICKA CHICKA! I didn't do very much to celebrate in the way of parties. I'm not super fond of hosting parties, too much work and worry if you ask me. So I went with my cousins Lucy and Rachel to see the new American Girl movie at the cheap theater. It wasn't my first choice, but it was the best one playing at the time we could go. It was actually really cute and I liked it. We were the only teenagers in a theater filled with 5-10 year old girls, most of them with A.G. dolls on their laps. Funny. Later that night, we took my cake and ice cream up to my grandparents to share with the rest of my cousins and family. Mmmm, my mother made the. best. cake. you. ever. had. It was soooo good. Chocolate cake from scratch with fluffy mint seven minute frosting. Two layers. Oh. Wow. I got the Chi (chee) straightener I wanted, and some really good books. (Funny story. I was with my best friend Akira about a week before my birthday and she asked me what I wanted. I told her I was hoping to get a Chi straightener. She looked at me like I was insane and asked why I wanted a cheese grater for my birthday. lol.)
• My cousins from Arizona came up for a nice long visit. We were so glad to see them. We've had a lot of fun with them already.
• On Monday we went up to my grandparents for "Family Home Evening". It was basically a meeting for the adults to plan the huge family reunion we were in charge of (It started on Friday. Yes, we are a bunch of procrastinators.) So the kids were left with nothing to do. Lucy and I wandered into the back room (storage room) to look for canned raspberries. While there, looking through a book case we came across the Family Home Evening Jar my aunt Kathy gave each family for Christmas a few years ago. It's just a glass jar with a label and some ribbon filled with little slips of paper that have spiritual/get to know you/share deep thoughts/teach your kids/ fun questions printed on them. So we said "Hey it's Monday and we're not having family night. Let's have our own little family night right here." So we found some lawn chairs and sat down and took turns pulling slips of paper out and asking questions. lol. It was funny, and we got to know each other a little better.
• The reunion was fun but a lot of work. Well, a lot of work for my parents and aunts and uncles. :) Just kidding, I helped too, but not as much as they did. We had to shop for food for 150 people for six meals, set up, plan everything, and be in charge. That was the down side. The upside was all the FUN. We floated the river on Saturday and that was probably the best part. I was in a tiny yellow raft with my cousin Nicole, and Lucy and Rachel were in another little raft. Nicole and I did pretty well. We didn't win the race, but we didn't sink or drown and we finished ahead of all the big fancy rafts. Oh yeah, and we had fun. We called ourselves The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything because they totally have the best idea. You get all the fun of being a pirate without all the hard work and killing. Lucy and Rachel however, managed to hit the first tree they could find and sank within 50 yards of where they started the race. lol. They got rescued, so it's ok to laugh.
• Rachel is one of the funniest people I know. She made us laugh so hard we were rolling on the ground and gasping for breath. She was singing the "Do Ra Mi" song (yes, that's the correct spelling) from The Sound Of Music and doing an interpretive dance and adding phrases here and there. So, so, so funny!
• I guess this is a low light. I got three mosquito bites when we were up at my grandparents on my birthday. Now they've spread and turned purple and look like bruises. A girl in my ward got West Nile a few weeks ago, and she said that her bites looked just like mine. Oh darn. I feel fine now, but the incubation period is 2-15 days so I might still get sick. There's nothing a doctor can do with mild cases, so I've been taking tons of echinacea, goldenseal, drinking tea with fenugreek and yarrow, and eating mostly fruit and carrot juice, all of which should help. Oh, and I've been rubbing Tea Tree essential oil on the bites. So if I die (which I won't anyway) I'll be very surprised. But if the West Nile doesn't kill me, the nasty stuff I'm drinking probably will. (Seriously, goldenseal tastes like all the weeds in your yard, chopped up, cooked, left for a week to rot, boiled down to a concentrate, and bottled.) P.S. I'm totally kidding about the whole dying thing. Almost no one dies from it, just really old people.
• I go to girls camp tomorrow. It will be pretty much a six day vacation. We're staying in a huge cabin, going to see a play, having a movie night, and canoeing. Oh, and doing certification of course. :) I'm slightly worried about the whole West Nile thing, but if I get sick I'll just come home. I'm not super concerned. P.S. Is "canoeing" the only word in the English language that has three vowels in a row? I think so.