See you in 82 Days

Hi everyone, just giving you a little update.

This year I am in the Masters Commission program and as part of the course, we are embarking on a media fast for 82 days. I am really excited to see all that the Lord is going to do and how my relationship with Him will grow during this time of eliminating distractions and bringing my focus onto the Lord.  All your support in this would be greatly appreciated!

So, here's to an entirely new adventure!

Seattle Seahawks

I don't think that I have made this known to the internet world yet, but I am a HUGE Seahawks fan.  And this isn't just a this season kind of thing. I have been a fan for most of my life. 

My dad raised his two girly-daughters right--he taught us to love football.  

And not just enjoy supporting my dad and watching the game with him.  We get into it.  We cheer, cry, pray, and scream just as loud as any other Seahawks fan.  

I think I scared my new classmates a little bit today when I was driving home and listening to the game go into overtime.  I just get a little excited. 

My sister and I are big Sherman fans.

Basically just big legion of boom fas. 

This just makes me happy:

An Update

Yes, I haven't blogged in forever, I seem to say that every time that I write a post.

But, I have been a little busy.

I was accepted to the Kirkland Master's Commission! I even had my interview this morning and it is all official now.  I am going to be living with an awesome family, sharing a room with a great sister.

In the meantime, I have been working like crazy to make money; trying to come up with creative ways to supplement my part time job. My first successful project was a bake sale at family camp.  

Why not, I thought.  Everyone needs cookies for family camp and no one wants to have to bake in 80 degree weather.  Why shouldn't I do all the baking in 80 degree weather!

So I made a Facebook event and got quite a few responses, many more than I was expecting! So thank you to everyone who ordered! Your donations are much appreciated. 

Thanks to my "perfect cupcakes, cookies, and muffins" cookbook, Food Network, and Pintrest I was able to create a nice little menu of my favorite desserts that I have made before and love.  

My signature items included a pear gruyere pie inspired by the amazing but short lived TV show Pushing Daisies. Thanks Chuck for the recipe!

This pie is amazing.  Cheese baked into the crust, pears simmered in spices and port wine.  You can't get much better than that when it comes to a pie. 

[My little menu; if you are reading this and want to order something, leave a comment and I will fit that in my schedule :) ]

That's my little update of what I have been doing during Summer Holiday, and here is to baking!

Whovian

This post has been a long time in coming,  but here it is at last.

Doctor Who?

Yes, I am officially a Whovian.  But not the screamy-fangirl kind.  I watch Doctor Who because I appreciate the talent of the actors and the brilliance of the writers.  It is enduring and the kind of show that can span every part of one's emotions in a single 45 minute episode.  

When I got into the world of Doctor Who, I entered with extreme caution.  I had seen it for a while on the suggestions for Netflix and thought it must be really strange and cheesy when the description said "The ninth incarnation of everybody's favorite time-traveling doctor sets about fighting nefarious aliens and other foes in this epic sci fi series." 

But despite my caution I decided to watch the first episode of season 1.  

It was awful.  I'm sorry those of you Whovians out there who really like Christopher Eccleston.  I am sure that he is great, I just stopped watching him after the first episode, so none of this is a comment on his acting ability or how he was able to portray the doctor.  I am sure that he is excellent. But that first episode was...let me just say, interesting.  The acting was mediocre, the writing was flawed, and the effects were horrible.     

Needless to say, I wasn't impressed.  

So I didn't go back for a while.  But thank's to the geek section of pintrest, I decided to give it another shot. But this time I did my research-- the top best episodes of Doctor Who.  

And it came up with a David Tennant episode.  

It was decent, kind of creepy because I didn't know what was supposed to be happening, but good.  I enjoyed Tennant's performance way better than Eccleston's.  But I still wasn't convinced. 

Then, I came home one day to find out that my sister (who was even more skeptical than I--see her blog at http://sincerely-janine.blogspot.com/ ) had watched the first episode of season 5.  

She said it was incredible.  So I watched it, still not convinced. But by the end, I was swepped up in it.   Matt Smith won me over.  His performances episode after episode were equally impressive.  

He somehow discovered the magic to playing this extremely complicated character of the Doctor.  Matt Smith is a young man, but he plays someone who is 900 years old in a young man's body.  He captures the deep sadness in his expression and one gets the sense of the many lives that he has seen come and go out of the world.  But he also captures the humor and wittiness that makes up much of the show.  

He is old, powerful, and goofy.  How does that even work? I don't know, but it does.  

Try it out for yourself. Maybe you will think I am just crazy or maybe you will be captured by the brilliance of the story just as I was.  

But whatever you do, just be sure to begin this incredible journey at the right place--Season 5 Episode 1, "The Eleventh Hour."

Now, a few of my favorite pictures. 

Forth of July

Happy Fourth of July, from Houston, TX!

This time of the year, I am reminded how grateful I am for this nation and the freedom that we have.  This is one of my favorite pictures of all time.  

I Graduated!!!

[To get the full effect of this post, listen to this song while you read]

Hi, it has been a REALLY long time.  I have been a little busy...graduating! Yes, I am now completely done with high school.  What a strange feeling.  It hasn't really hit me yet; it probably won't hit me until school starts next year.  

I have the best friends in the world, I am so proud of my class and grateful to have been in the most amazing class to graduate Christ Church Academy (in my opinion). 

I am also so proud of the junior class who has spent the last year taking most of their classes with us.  They are amazing, and I am so glad that they won the overcomer's award this year at the school.  

They deserved it.

They have become some of my best friends this last year, and my senior year would not have been as fun without them.  I will miss them so much next year, but I am glad that I will not be going far.  We will visit often :)

Here is the speech that I gave at graduation about our past years at CCA.

Good evening family, friends, and class of 2013! It is an absolute privilege to speak to you tonight about the many years that we have invested here at Christ Church Academy.  Class of 2013, you are the most incredible, adventurous, yet caring class.  You are my best friends.  Our years here have certainly been hard at times, but the journey was worth it, the investment into the school was worth it, and the pay-off is worth it. 

Looking back, we were quite the rambunctious group of kids.  There were so many different personalities squished together in one class that it would take us a while to figure out how to get along.  There were the loud ones, the quite ones, the crazy ones, the reserved ones, the troublemakers, the tattle-tailers, and everything between.  Through our elementary years, we grew together as a class as we learned, most often the hard way, how to get along.  Those were our training years that began to build the foundations for a unified class.   As we learned how to be unified, we were also being trained to make the most of every moment in school because it wasn’t going to last forever.  And now standing here at our graduation ceremony, wearing the cap and gown, about to receive our diplomas, we certainly know that. 

Looking a bit more recently, our secondary years were times of testing to ensure that we really owned the truths that we had gained in elementary as our foundation.  We lost several classmates through the transition of elementary to secondary, but these original seven that had been there since Basic Skills remained.  Over the secondary years, Aunt Marcy prophesied over us, we were leaders, we were called to unity, we were ambassadors, we were refined gold.  In secondary, we had to make conscious decisions each year. Would we be leaders or just try to make it through each year without leaving any investment into the younger kids? Would we be unified or would we just each do our own thing to make it through? Would we be Christ’s ambassadors or would we decide what was right for ourselves? Would we be that refined gold that has proven itself or would we accomplish little and just try to make it through each year?  Each year we had to decide, and each year it was difficult.  BUT each year we found victory.  We are leaders, we are unified, we are ambassadors, we are refined gold. 

This year was unlike any year I have had at CCA. Just before the year started, our friend, mentor, teacher, pastor, and couch Dennis Trout passed away.  This began the year with sadness and uncertainty, but as a senior class, we wanted to go through this year, honoring Coach’s legacy.  Just before this year, the junior class lost a number of classmates. As a result, we received three incredible, sweet friends into our class from the 11^th grade, and it has only grown us and made this year even better than it would have been with just us seven. Through these apparent setbacks, we have still found victory this year.

This class of 2013 are your friends, sons, daughters, and grandchildren.  With your help, we have found victory this year and all of the years before in CCA and for that we are truly grateful.  We love all of you dearly.  

So here is to the last thirteen years that I have invested at Christ Church Academy! 

Here is to my graduated class!

A Paramount Preview

I LOVE going to see plays.  It is one of my favorite things, and I wish I had the money to get season tickets to every theater in Seattle.  But that's not going to happen any time soon, so right now, I just have to content myself by picking the very best play for the year to go and see. 

Because I love theater so much, in my rhetoric class, we had the assignment to write editorials on anything! Such a fun assignment! So, I decided to write about the theater (plays and ballet included in that). 

So here is my editorial for today.  My column is entitled "All Things Theater."  

All Things

   Theater

This year’s theater is beginning to wind down.  There are two more plays going on at the 5^th Avenue Theater, Jersey Boys and Pirates of Penzanse.  Director’s Choice has yet to play at the Pacific Northwest Ballet, but there aren’t many other shows happening.  This is the time that everyone is gearing up for the next year, which promises to be exciting.  So let me give you a brief preview of what is to come in the world of Seattle Theater next year, specifically, all of the Broadway shows that are going on at Paramount Theater. These are the plays that will compose Paramount Theater’s 2013 to 2014 season: Lion King, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the Wizard of Oz, the Book of Mormon, Evita, and Once.  Today I am going to give you a snapshot at my two picks from this season as must-see-musicals.  They are child and adult friendly, creative, and imaginative in nature.  These are my favorites, The Wizard of Oz and the Lion King.

The Wizard of Oz

To begin the next season with a bang, the Wizard of Oz is coming to the Paramount from October 9-13.  The tale of Dorothy, the Wizard, and the Wicked Witch of the West has been known to children since the book was written in 1900.  This classic  story has only recently been remade into a musical in 2011.  With the advent of modern technology, the theater is able to use projections to recreate the tornado scene on stage masterfully. Dorothy’s house moves across the stage while the witch is seen flying across the stage on her broomstick attached to wires.  Pieces of debris are seen flying passed and images of the inside of a tornado are projected moving on the stage.  All of these aspects together give a very real feeling of movement on the stage.  With this classic beginning, the theater sets itself up for success, appealing to adults and children alike in one musical.  

The Lion King

Lion King was my favorite movie growing up.  So when I got my American Girl magazine in the mail and saw that there was an entire section devoted to NicKayla T., the girl who plays the young Nala on Broadway’s musical creation of The Lion King, I was awestruck.  The costumes, characters, and way of portraying the animals were incredible.  Ever since that day when I was six years old, I have wanted to see the play. To my delight, it is coming to the Paramount Theater this year, and I am greatly looking forward to the opportunity of seeing the play for my first time. 

But just because I have never seen the play, doesn’t mean that I don’t know anything about it.  I have my American Girl magazine to thank for that (I’ve still got that magazine, by the way). The Lion King is currently Broadway’s fifth longest running musical of all time (beat out by the Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Chicago, and Les Miserables).  The play has six Tony Awards (best musical among them), eight Drama Desk Awards, and the Grammy for the Best Musical Show Album of 1999.  Basically, it is really cool.

The costumes are exquisite.  They are among the most complicated costumes for a musical or play.  The creators found a unique way of creating the animals on stage that precursored the resent creation of the War Horse. Each of the animals is a puppet that the people are a part of.  Some people leap across the stage, carrying puppets of antelope leaping so that the people just blend in with the animals that they are carrying (as seen in the picture).

  

And then there is the score.  Music written by Hans Zimmer and lyrics by Elton John, what is there not to love? That moment the first note is hit by the lead singer as the sun rises in the background is magical.  Even the animated Disney movie gives me Goosebumps; I can only imagine what the actual musical will feel like. 

So there you go, my two picks of Paramount Theater next season.  Next week I will give you a preview of the best 5^th Avenue plays to come.  These are some plays that are definitely worth seeing.