Chior and Math Books

So in my chior class (my obviously favorite class - singing!!!) I met two mormons! Morgan and Samantha. Morgan is in the Katy stake and Samantha (a convert! Yay!!) goes to the bering building. :) It was so cool!
Also, in chior we actually talk to people - most of us get there at least twenty minutes early - so we get to know each other much better than we would in a different class. There are only about sixteen people in my chior class, so we'll know each others names pretty soon. xD

I've decided not to carry my superduper heavy math book to school. I'm going to leave most of it at home (it has loose-leaf pages) and only take what I might need of it from that day. It's way too heavy, especially if I bring my laptop as well - which I usually do.

On tuesday I got to go see How To Train Your Dragon 2 with my sister Natalie and Lydia, and our friend Katherine (Kat!), and our mom. IT WAS EPIC. The movie and being able to hang out with Kat before my family moves. Our new house will be only twenty minutes from her school though, so we will be able to go see Kat in her school plays/musicals much easier. :)

- Cali

School Starts . . . Tomorrow

So school starts tomorrow, unfortunately. My math book ways at least 50 pounds (in my opinion) and I do not want to have to get the other two books I'll have to carry around with it. Ugh.

My tumblr is on hiatus as of today, as are a few other things. The only page I'll really update there is my countdowns.

Good luck to all you people starting school tomorrow! At least you don't have to wake up at five in the morning because of time restraints and your siblings having a class at six. Oh well, I guess I'll live.

- Cali

New Branch - No, Not a Tree Branch, a Church Branch

So we are moving to a new area which means same church new people. A ward is basically a small area of people (a congregation), and a stake is made up of a few wards. A branch is smaller than a ward. We are going to visit the branch tomorrow - we want to check it out just in case - and that means waking up earlier than usual on sundays. Grr. Oh well, we'll figure it out. Somehow.

- Cali

Classes

I hate registering for classes. First of all, every single time I've ever registered or tried to I was late in the year, so I either couldn't find classes or was left with extremely weird times. So stressful. Ugh. And this time it isn't my fault that I'm registering now - we didn't know where we were moving so I couldn't register at a normal time.

To add to that I was tested on Math today and, of course, failed. So I have to take a PREM (basically prep testing for math) and a Math class. Great. I was told to take Psycology, Biology, PREM, and Math. I've found all of the others, basically, but the Biology class times are weird. And super annoying. Ugh. All of the times are in the afternoon, and I've never had an afternoon class - cause I really don't want to and I have to be able to work. We figured it out though. I am a little happy because I found out that I can take a CHOIR class. xD Yay! Singing! <3

And back to not so happy because I apparently can't enroll in either of the Math classes until I get "approved" by a counselor, which is so annoying because I've seen the counselors already - maybe twice today - to give them the results from my Math test and I have no clue why they didn't approve it then! Seriously, it takes at least an hour of waiting before we finally see a counselor. Ugh.

But we got everything worked out and I am now enrolled at HCC. Finally.

- Cali

I Miss Mutual

I know two posts today is probably a little much, but I can’t help it.

I MISS MUTUAL!!! (If you don’t know what that is it’s when YM and YW – youth between the ages of 12 and 18 – get together to hang out and play games and learn spiritual stuff, either combined: YM and YW together; joint: just YM or just YW; and classes: where you go into age groups 12-13, 14-15, 16-18). I’m 18 and have graduated from highschool, so I can’t go anymore. :(

So I miss it, which is partially why I’m here tonight (I was hanging out with my 18 months younger sister, Natalie, and one of our friends, which is the other reason I’m here).

Tonight the YW are playing games – there will be a spiritual message afterwards, of course (prepared by Kat – our friend – though her older sister helped a bit). Some of the games I’ve mostly heard of while others shall be interesting to watch. xD

The first game was “Mingle, Mingle, Mingle”. You walk around saying “mingle, mingle, mingle” ect. until the announcer calls a number. You then go into groups of that number. Done.

Then they played “The Floor Is Lava”. There are two teams and, basically, the floor is lava and you can’t touch the floor or you burn. You are given a hoolahoop, a plate, a thin stick, and two or so chairs to get across the gym or wherever you are without dying. Whoever reaches the end first wins.

Next was “Woman, Hunter, Bear”. Also two teams. The woman chases the hunter, the hunter chases the bear, the bear chases the woman. The objective is to get all of the players on one team.

Next was “Walk & Talk”. You pair up with someone you don’t know very well, walk around, and talk to each other about each other in order to find three things that you have in common.

The last game they played was a communication and team building game “Building Towers”. They got into teams of five - three teams in all - and started building. Whoever builds the highest tower wins, basically. Some people are given stipulations (stuff they can't do) like one person wasn't able to speak and another couldn't use their dominant hand.

That is basically what they did. xD I watched. 

Kat basically said not to worry about labels and how people label you. "You can be whoever you wanna be and no one can say otherwise. We shouldn't be stuck in our own bubbles." While I was still in YW's we were talking a lot about introverts and extroverts and how they are different. Kat was I think trying to remind them that each of us is special and that no matter what labels people give us we should always remember who we are - we are Daughters of God. We are princesses in His kingdom. We can do anything we put our minds too - especially if we use Heavenly Fathers help. 

- Cali 

School Is Annoying

I mentioned in my last post that because we are moving I am changing schools, moving from WCJC to HCC. Now this wouldn't be too bad  except I am transfering - I have enough college credit hours to transfer. As I was homeschooled, at WCJC I had to be tested on my Reading, Writing, and Math skills. I completely failed the Math portion, so HCC tells me I have to get tested for Math. 

Of course I have to get tested for Math - aka: pure evil. In trying to get out of having to be tested - since I know that I'm going to fail the test, as we haven't been doing Math since last summer (and yes, that is my fault) - we bring my test scores from WCJC. Of course I passed the Reading and Writing portions - by at least ten points, thank you - so I absolutely don't have to take tests for those. But we find out that HCC doesn't use Compass testing anymore and so I have to get re-tested for Math. Ugh. 

Wish me luck! I'm seriously going to need it. 

- Cali

Moving . . . Again.

It has been confirmed - my family is moving again. To Brookshire, TX. Sounds cute, looks country (yay!! We love the country and super miss it). I was surprised to find I'm actually sort-of okay with the fact that we will be moving again. I say that I hate moving - and I do, I really do - but this time I am kinda glad. I will hate leaving my friends and having to make new ones - my being in Relief Society now doesn't help (I'm just now getting used to being in RS, and that's just because some friends are down from school for the month) - and to make things worse we are moving into a branch! I'm afraid that my family will double the branch, as there are twelve of us. We will bring one nursery, five more primary kids, two Young Women, a Young Man, two RS, and my dad. I don't know how small the branch will be. When my family lived in Pampa, TX (in the panhandle), our ward was tiny and we literally did double everything then. I'm hoping the branch will be somewhere in-between Pampa and the ward we are in now - not almost overflowing but not tiny.

Something I think is good about the move is that I will be changing schools - instead of going to WCJC - Sugarland Campus, I'll be going to HCC - Northeast/Katy Campus. While WCJC was good in the fact that I know people who've gone to that exact campus and that it was already connected to the college that I one day want to actually go to - BYU-I. I'll just have to find out whether or not HCC is connected as well. I'm not sad to be leaving my WCJC friends behind - I was going to try and drop most of the ones from last semester anyways. I will miss two of the teachers though - Dr. Lester (the music teacher) and Mrs. Matejceck (the aerobics teacher). Dr. Lester was fun to annoy (and funny when annoying us) and a good teacher on top of that; Mrs. Matejceck was just fun.

Another thing I'll miss about WCJC was that there was a library right next door. Literally. It took maybe three minutes to walk from the class building to the library. It was awesome. I went to the library every day I was there - which was about every other day. The library in the . . town where we are moving is small to say the least - though not as small as the library in the last place we lived, Shepherd. Now that was small. Tiny even. The library in Brookshire is, as far as I remember being told when I visited, only connected to one other library. I bet that by next summer I will have gotten through all of the good books in the Brookshire library and a quite a few from the other one. Oh well.

A good thing about Brookshire is that it is in the country. I found it was slightly - very slightly - cooler as a side affect, and we might be getting chickens and bees. Because . . . we will be living on an acre of land. Thank goodness, more running space for the kids, they'll be outside more. xD Not that I'm complaning about them being noisy, I'm used to that (unless I'm stuck in a car with what seems like thousands of screaming little ones), sort-of. It has come to the point where I feel weird if there isn't some sort-of background noise - I can't imagine somewhere quiet. Yet.

Because the room arrangements are epic - I'm going to have the twin I named (or helped name, however you want to think of it), Rebecca, as the other person in my room, instead of Natalie. Now, I love Natalie, don't get me wrong, it's just that she takes my space sometimes. Becca I've roomed with once before - she was much younger then, as we still lived in Utah, and is turning 9 at the end of this month (wow) - because of nightmares, I think. A fun thing about rooming together and us actually going to be owning the house is we get to paint the room - and while Natalie and I like clashing colors (the shade of blue I wanted, and the shade of green she wanted definitely didn't go together), I can definitely agree with Becca and blue. Natalie is going to be sharing with Lydia and Susan (Sue is the twin Natalie named or helped name) and they will all probably agree on colors easier than Natalie and I were when we thought we would be sharing the same room again. Raymond and Benjamin are still sharing, which is sort-of obvious as they are the only boys (other than dad but he usually doesn't count) I am a little frightened about one of the other rooming arrangements though - Abigail, Hannah, and the baby, Rachel, all together. I really hope they all survive. ;)

If the neighbors are friendly and actually like us (unlike the neighbors where we live now) we might get to ride horses. Okay, so that might just be a dream of mine and the younger girls', but can you blame me? I haven't ridden a horse since Pampa at least, though probably before that. I love horses (cue girlish sigh - shut up!). Also if the neighbors like us there is a possibility we might get cow or goats milk or cheese that hasn't been destroyed by store chemicals. Haven't had that since I think . . . when we were in Utah. But then there are a lot of things we haven't had since Utah, so.

These are honestly all my feelings on the matter - well, all the feelings and thoughts I can think of at one in the morning (honestly, I stay up too late, but i'm letting myself slide one last week before going back to normal). xD

Being in Brookshire is overall not sounding like too bad of a thing. Well . . . for me, at least.

- Cali