Things Are Changing!

I know I'm a day late, but it's October! :D

Even though personally I think September is better, October's pretty cool too. We are already experiencing some cooler weather here in Texas! (Which means 70s and 80s for those of you who already have snow).

In other news...

Les Miserables was fantastic! It's technically the only musical I've ever seen live (I've seen the movies of Chicago and Phantom of the Opera), but I think it's the best! Okay, wait...I saw a high school version of Oklahoma...but I was referring to the professional ones at like...the Bass Hall...or Broadway...haha.

Anyway, we went to the Cheesecake Factory afterward for dinner and, well, cheesecake. Pictures anyone?

 We were waaaay up high.

 Yay! Les Miserables!

Lemon Raspberry Cream Cheesecake. They decorated the plate for my birthday. :D

 

My mom's giant chocolate cake. My dad's face wins.

These may or may not be blood relatives of mine. I'll let you decide.

Guess what guys? I get to cross off #9 on my bucket list! Which technically says see Les Mis on "Broadway"...but what I really meant is a professional performance that does not include Anne Hathaway (who is playing Fantine in the upcoming movie, and I'm not sure she can pull it off).

I have also recently accomplished #37 and #41. Though the cinnamon rolls didn't turn out very well. Those were made at HEART, and it was my first time using yeast...I did it wrong, and the dough didn't rise. They still tasted good, there just weren't as many and they were kinda more like cookies, haha. BUT IT COUNTS. I don't care what you say. I'm gonna try again someday anyway, so what does it matter if I cross it off now?

Check out my list if you haven't yet and let me know if you can help me out with any of them! Ex: Your father owns an airport and your mother owns a hotel chain and you can get me free transportation, room, and board for that trip to Europe/visit to every continent. Or you know, your uncle is Steven Spielberg and he happens to be directing a new movie with Alex Pettyfer and Taylor Lautner and just so happens to need a 19-year-old girl about my size to be an extra...

It could happen.

And if it does...TELL ME. Pleaseandthankyou.

Happy October!

I Am Thankful.

(Note: I realize that in my post last week I said I would post about Thanksgiving "tomorrow or Sunday." Well, in my defense, I never did specify which Sunday...so the way I see it, I'm early. In case you were going to get on to me or something...you can't! Ha!)

My Thanksgiving was really great. It started out disappointing, because we had plans earlier in the year to travel to Alabama for Thanksgiving. However, that ended up changing, and instead of going to Alabama to celebrate with my family, we stayed here and celebrated with 20 of our closest friends! No joke...here we all are:

Back row, L-R: Cody, Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Simmons, Josh, Mr. and Mrs. Myers

Middle row, R-L: Me, Meagan, Kayli, Melissa, Mrs. Sanders, Cassia, Luke, 

Jessica, Mr. Sanders, Kaitlin, Mr. and Mrs. Nuckolls

Front row, L-R: Tyler and Jake. They were late for the picture, so we stuck them in front.

And this is what happened.

 

And can I just say that that is the longest caption I've ever written for a photo? That was the longest caption I've ever written for a photo.

Yeah, so funny story. It originally was not going to be this many people. It started out with 3 families, then 4, then 5. It was going to be a progressive dinner...but it got too big so the entire thing ended up at my house. 

 Our delicious food! And I do not know the girl in the pink tank top...

We ate lunch around 1, and everyone brought a dish that's a tradition in their families. Our contribution was 2 apple pies (which I got to make, and they turned out really good!) and buttermilk pies (which sound really gross but apparently aren't--tradition in my family).

 Eating. We specifically left one chair open on the girls side to see who would take it.

Tyler did. No one was surprised. And also, Luke looks like a creeper in the background.

The food was awesome. Afterward, all of us "kids" (ranging from 6th grade to college senior) played with an app on my iPhone that turns everything you say into a song. Haha, that was entertaining. Then we watched a play that several of us were in last spring called Is He Dead? Hilarious.

Watching Is He Dead? Tyler and I are not texting, I swear. We were playing Words With Friends.

With each other. (I won).

After we took the family picture, we played a giant game of Kingdoms. If you don't know, Kingdoms is a really fun game where everyone picks a name different from their own. One person compiles a list of all the names, but no one else knows what your name is. That person then reads off the list of names twice, and you then have to try to remember all the names and figure out who is who. If you guess right, that person joins your kingdom and you become a team. It's really fun. The funny thing is, the youngest person there was the winner. 

So all in all, Thanksgiving was really fun this year. I would take the time to list everything that I'm grateful for, but I think it's pretty obvious that I have a lot to be thankful for, plus I have somewhere to be in 20 minutes...and the list would for sure take longer than that. :-)

Best thing about Thanksgiving is that once it's over, it's officially Christmas time! And I love Christmas...I hate Christmas before Thanksgiving, but after Thanksgiving I love it. :-) I am listening to Christmas music as we speak. I can't wait to decorate and buy presents for everyone. Yay!

 I look awful in this picture, but I'm licking Meagan's face so it's all worth it.

I Fell For A Prince...Literally.

As some of you may know, yesterday I was in a play, The Princess and the Pea. I played the part of the princess, and it went really well! And there were like, over 200 people there, which was frightening slash awesome! haha

When I say it went well, I really mean it. Because even the mistakes we made turned out to be pretty hilarious.

Example 1: One of the characters accidentally knocked over part of the set, a gate, during one of the scenes. To cover, he said "That sure is a flimsy gate you've got there!" It totally worked with his character and the audience roared with laughter.

Example 2: If you know the story of the Princess and the Pea, then you know there is a bed with like 26 mattresses involved. We didn't have that...but we had a giant box made to look like 26 mattresses and one real mattress on top. There was a little ladder to get up on the bed. I was wearing a big poofy dress and am kind of clumsy (I trip a lot). Rehearsals went totally fine--no problems with getting on and off the bed. Last night, however, I totally tripped and fell. On stage with the lights on.

But don't worry guys. I totally handled it.

In the next scene, I was supposed to come back on and talk about how I didn't get any sleep because I couldn't ever get comfortable. So, in the 45 seconds I had to recover, run to the other side of backstage, assure everyone that I was totally fine, put my shoes on, and get back on stage for the last scene, I came up with a line to add.

"And this morning, I fell off the bed." To my great relief, it totally worked and everyone laughed. (I was really nervous about saying it, because it would've been suuuuuper embarrassing if no one laughed. haha)

If you know me, you know that I typically panic under pressure. Whenever things like this go wrong in plays, I'm the one to freak out and not know what to do. Like in last year's Christmas play:

We were toys in a toy shop. I was a doll, and another character was a singing soldier (one of those toys with a string on the back, and when you pull it, he sings). In the play I see his string, I pull it, but before I let go there's like 2 minutes of dialogue. Weeelll....yeah. The string broke in the middle of the dialogue. So what did I do? I pretended like nothing had happened and hoped that no one noticed.

Yeah. EVERYONE noticed. Thankfully, the other characters were able to recover nicely from that one, no thanks to me.

I'm still super impressed with myself for coming up with, according to one of my friends, the second funniest line of the night (second only to "That sure is a flimsy gate you've got there!"--the other ad lib).

I'm fine, by the way. It hurt and I have an awesome bruise on my leg, but hey, I didn't die. I was embarrassed for like, 3 seconds, but then I realized how funny it was and was trying SO HARD not to laugh the rest of the play. And it helped that I came up with that extra line to add. It puts everyone at ease when you show that you can joke about stuff like that.

I can't wait to watch the video...I want to see my face when I fell. haha

P.S. Apparently "mattress" has two "t"s...I kept spelling it with one and Firefox was FREAKING out at me with the squiggly red lines and I was like "What is your problem?" and then I right clicked and it was like "two t's!" and I felt really dumb.